In part 1 of this story, which was published last week, I showed how you could use a drag and drop method to open a photo directly in Photoshop and also how to open as a Smart Object. In this second part we are going to look at drag and drop to a Photoshop droplet and how to link a photo back to a folder view in Bridge.

Drag and drop to a Photoshop droplet
In part 1 we looked at creating a Photoshop droplet for use in the post-processing stage of a Lightroom export. But you can also drag and drop from Lightroom to a Photoshop droplet. The steps suggested here are fairly similar, except you need to pay attention to how the Create Droplet settings are configured.

1. Here is a view of an Action that I created in Photoshop to resize a photo to 10” x 8”, sharpen for print output and save it as a TIFF.

2. After recording the action I went to the File ➯ Automate menu and chose Create Droplet. In the Create Droplet dialog I located the action I had just recorded, specified an output folder to save the processed files to (which I named ‘Output folder’) and saved the Droplet to the Desktop. But there are a couple of important things to point out here. In the Play section I checked Suppress File Open Options Dialogs. Checking this option would prevent the Camera Raw dialog showing each time I processed an image via the droplet. In the Destination section I checked the Override Action “Save As” Commands because the action I was converting to a droplet does indeed contain a Save step at the end and I needed the droplet action to override the save destination contained in the action and use the destination folder I had specified here instead.

3. Once I had set up the Photoshop droplet I was ready to put it to use. I made a selection of photos from the Library module and dragged them across to the 10×8-print droplet.

4. Dragging the photos to the droplet initiated the Photoshop action steps in Photoshop and when this was complete, the output folder contained the processed 10″ x 8″ files.

By the way, I have noticed a possible bug in Photoshop CS3 where if you process photos from Lightroom to a droplet where the Suppress File Open Options Dialogs is checked, this file opening behavior may remain sticky for all photos that you try to open via a drag and drop method – the Camera Raw dialog is bypassed when opening. The only way I know to restore the default behavior is to quit Photoshop and relaunch again. If you are trying to follow the steps outlined in part 1 and are not seeing the Camera Raw dialog, this could be the reason why.

Drag and drop to open a folder in Bridge

1. With Lightroom you are free to organize and sort your photos in lots of different ways that are not directly dependent on knowing how they are organized by the underlying folder structure. For example, here I am looking at a Collection of photos with a common cityscape theme where the photos have all originated from different folders.

2. If I click on the Folder Action arrow in the Metadata panel (circled in step 1 above) this will take me to a Folder view in Lightroom for that particular photo.

3. If you want to see where the photo actually lives at the operating system level, you can choose Photo ➯ Show in Finder, or use Command–R (Mac), Control–R (PC), to reveal the image file in a new finder window.

4. But there is another way, one that allows you to link back to Bridge. You can drag and drop a photo from the content area to a Bridge program alias/shortcut and this will locate the image in the folder it belongs to and display it within a Bridge window.

5. When you do this, it will open the folder the photo belongs to in a new Bridge window and highlight the selected photo.

______________________________________________________

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book by Martin Evening is available from Peachpit, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all usual bookstore outlets.

Martin Evening has worked on the development of Adobe Photoshop as an alpha tester from the program’s earliest beginnings. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book describes all of Lightroom’s features in detail, with photographers in mind. Photographers who routinely work with raw (and even jpg & tiff) images will find Lightroom–and The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book–an indispensable tool in their digital darkroom.

Lightroom-news has a free PDF download of Chapter 1. (click here to download-4.6MB PDF).

Free Lightroom 1.1 PDF update

You can also download a free PDF update for the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom book. Go this link for the full instructions on how to access the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book 1.1 update.

The following tips do assume that you already own Phtoshop CS2 or later, and therefore have access to Adobe Bridge which is the browser component of the Creative Suite (Adobe Bridge comes with Photoshop whether you buy the entire Suite package or just the standalone program). So let me show you how you a few ways you can improve the workflow between working in Bridge and working in Lightroom.

NOTE
This first tip works fine if you are using Windows XP, Mac OS X 10.4.9 or earlier. It won’t work apparently if you are using Mac OS X 10.4.10.

Adding Lightroom as a Favorite in Bridge

1. Wouldn’t it be good if you could have a hot button in Bridge that took you directly to Lightroom? Well, you can. All you need to do is navigate to the Applications folder and add the Lightroom application, or an alias (Mac) shortcut (PC), as a favorite in Bridge. Just drag the application icon to the Favorites panel to add to the list of other Favorites.

2. Once you have added Lightroom as a favorite to the Favorites panel, you can simply click on the Lightroom favorite to jump straight over to Lightroom from Bridge.

3. And then when you are in Bridge you can use the Command–H (Mac) or Alt–Tab (PC) keyboard shortcut to hide the Lightroom window and return to the last used program, which in this case will be Bridge.

Adding a watched folder in Bridge

1. Following on from the last example, you can add an auto import folder as a Bridge favorite. In Lightroom, choose File ➯ Auto ➯ Enable Auto Import and follow this by opening the Auto Import settings dialog and choose a watched folder. Then go to Bridge and add this folder as a Bridge favorite.

2. Now you can drag and drop images from Bridge into the designated auto import folder. They will then be auto imported into Lightroom and appear in Lightroom’s Auto Imported Photos folder.

Importing folders into Lightroom via Bridge

1. Unfortunately, you can’t drag and drop folders from Bridge onto a Lightroom favorite and have them import into Lightroom. But if you keep an alias/shortcut of Lightroom on the desktop, you can drag and drop a folder from the Folders panel in Bridge to the alias/shortcut.

2. In this example I dragged the folder shown in step 1 to the Adobe Lightroom alias icon and this launched the Lightroom Import Photos dialog shown here. This workflow technique will let you use Bridge to browse your computer hard disks to inspect image folders in detail before choosing to import them into Lightroom.

This last tip can be really useful if you are just starting out in Lightroom and beginning to add photos to the Lightroom library. You can use Bridge as a preview browser to inspect folders before proceeding to import them. This can easily save you lots of time since you won’t have to go through the Import Photos dialog to preview the images before you import them. Bridge will offer you a much faster route for browsing the photos beforehand.

______________________________________________________

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book by Martin Evening is available from Peachpit, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all usual bookstore outlets.

Martin Evening has worked on the development of Adobe Photoshop as an alpha tester from the program’s earliest beginnings. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book describes all of Lightroom’s features in detail, with photographers in mind. Photographers who routinely work with raw (and even jpg & tiff) images will find Lightroom–and The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book–an indispensable tool in their digital darkroom.

Lightroom-news has a free PDF download of Chapter 1. (click here to download-4.6MB PDF).

Free Lightroom 1.1 PDF update

You can also download a free PDF update for the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom book. Go this link for the full instructions on how to access the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book 1.1 update.

One of the things users will notice is a new application icon which heralds the beginning of the new Creative Suite 3 icon art.

Be aware also that it will take some time to get it downloaded-the Mac version is 684MB (including Bridge and Camera Raw 4) and the Windows version is 355MB. The larger Mac file size is due largely because it’s a Universal Binary that includes both the PPC as well as MacIntel optimized code.

Users will also notice a new splashscreen and more strikingly, a whole new user interface as shown below.

Photoshop CS3 UI

Click on the image to see larger sized image in a new window.

There will be a slew of stories coming out about the new features and functionality included in the Photoshop CS3 beta, chief among them for Mac users is the fact that Photoshop can now finally run natively on MacIntel machines-and the best term to use when describing the speed is FAST, very FAST.

But the public beta also includes a brand new version of Adobe Bridge version 2.0.

This new version sports a new UI and additional functionality that is a jump over Bridge 1.0. First and foremost, the Bridge engineers have tried to make it a lot faster.

Additional new functionality will also be welcomed by users of Photoshop CS2 and Bridge 1.0 including the new Filter panel and the enhanced Preview panel. And, did I mention it was faster?

Bridge 2.0

Click on the image to see larger sized image in a new window.

In Bridge 2.0 you can preview multiple images in the Preview panel.

The Preview panel also has a loupe view that allows close inspection of detail.

Camera Raw 4.0 (alpha)

Click on the image to see larger sized image in a new window.

The Photoshop CS3 beta also includes a new version of Camera Raw, the alpha version of 4.0. The new functionality is very similar to the controls found in Lightroom but the interface is not exactly final. So, it is subject to change.

So, when the downloads start, and new beta users of CS3 can get their hands on it, PhotoshopNews will be posting a variety of stories to help you out. Be sure to check back in the coming days.

Through clever file naming and management, ACR Version Control duplicates and renames the sidecar XMP files that hold the conversion settings for your raw files. This means you can easily create multiple XMP files for the same image, and easily switch from one to the other.The package includes three small applications Create New Version, Set Current Version, and Delete Version.

Simply drag an existing XMP file onto any one of these to create, activate, or delete a version.The package is available for immediate download from http//www.completedigitalphotography.com

The software is free, but youll get a warm fuzzy feeling if you make a donation using the Paypal link at the bottom of either page.

Adobe has at last provided codes that enable UK freelance photography members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) to join its photography directory.

Adobe’s photography directory is a resource that’s available from within Photoshop and InDesign and is supported by Adobe Bridge. The directory provides access to work and contact details for photographers, and was launched in conjunction with some of the world’s largest photo agencies.

The directory is searchable by city, state and country as well as by photography specialty. It can be accessed directly via the Favorites tab in Adobe Bridge located in Creative Suite 2 and Photoshop CS2. The Adobe Photographers’ Directory will also be available on Adobe.com and Adobe Studio.

Read entire article

According to Adobe Tech Support, this was a very small update mostly aimed at fixing a security issue. Here is the summary of changes.

- Improved interoperability with Epson R-D1 generated JPEG files – EXIF information is preserved properly when updating XMP.

- Hasselblad / Imacon 3F (*.fff) Files no longer being corrupted by XMP updates

- Improved security fix for launching from URL feature that is rated “critical.” (http:www.adobe.com/support/security/severity_ratings.html)

- Improved support for SSE2 processors – should now launch and work on all Pentium 3s and up

- Changed “Lightbox” workspace to “Light Table” workspace.

Editor’s Note: The Mac version is now showing the 1.0.4 update in Adobe Updater. Previously, only the Windows version of Updater was showing the update.

This story updated at 10:30AM, 06-18-06

Issue: After you start Adobe Bridge 1.0.3, you receive one of the following error messages:

– “Online Services encountered an error. The service will now be terminated or paused if possible (Error: )”

– “There was a problem with your internet connection. Please check that you are connected to the internet and try again.”

Detail

You are not connected to the Internet.

Solution: Install the Photoshop Service update.

In any Adobe Creative Suite 2 application other than Acrobat 7, choose Help > Updates and then follow the prompts in the Adobe Update Manager to download and install the Adobe Photoshop Service update.

Issue: Thumbnail previews of Camera Raw images in Adobe Bridge 1.0 display too dark or too light.

Details

You selected Use Auto Adjustments in the Camera Raw Default Image Settings.

Solution: Deselect Use Auto Adjustments and save the settings as a new Camera Raw default.

1. Right click (Windows) or Ctrl-click (Mac OS) an image in the Bridge and choose Open in Camera Raw.

2. Deselect Use Auto Adjustments in the Settings pop-up menu.

3. Choose Save New Camera Raw Defaults from the Settings pop-up menu.

4. Click Done to close Adobe Camera Raw.

Note: You will need to create new Camera Raw defaults for each camera model from which you import images. Camera Raw defaults are applied only to images that do not have Camera Raw adjustments made to them before you open the files in Adobe Bridge.

Background information

Adobe Camera Raw applies the Auto Adjustment settings to the thumbnail previews of Camera Raw files in Adobe Bridge 1.0; these settings can cause the previews to be lighter or darker than you expect them to be.

Read original Tech Document

Press Release: ORLANDO, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Feb. 27, 2006–Lexar Media, Inc. (Nasdaq: LEXR – News), a world leader in advanced digital media technologies today announced Lexar® Smart Download, an intelligent acquisition plug-in module that will allow photographers to rapidly download and manage images directly from their memory cards via Adobe® Bridge, a component of Adobe Creative Suite (CS2). On display at the Photo Marketing Association International Show (PMA), the new plug-in will make it possible for photographers to leverage advanced features offered by Lexar Professional ActiveMemory(TM) CompactFlash® (CF) and Secure Digital(TM) (SD) flash memory cards and will provide a productivity boost with the ability to manage multiple concurrent downloads using Lexar’s Professional Firewire and USB 2.0 CompactFlash Readers.

“Professional photographers and designers need solutions that will help streamline workflows and allow them more time to concentrate on creative expression,” said Mark Hilton, vice president of Creative Suite products at Adobe. “The Lexar Smart Download plug-in takes advantage of the Adobe open scripting interface by allowing direct image downloads along with important IPTC metadata to Adobe Bridge and Creative Suite 2, a very compelling utility for our customers.”

“The vast audience using this popular image browsing application should appreciate the immediate improvement in the digital imaging workflow provided by Lexar Smart Download,” said John Omvik, director of professional product marketing, Lexar. “Professionals need the ability to have their metadata automatically read and applied throughout the digital imaging process. This valuable plug-in will allow IPTC and captioning information to stay with stored images at every step in the process and will dramatically reduce the administrative redundancies for those photographers who capture many images when using Adobe Bridge to view their content,” he added.

The ActiveMemory System (AMS) is Lexar’s innovative digital photography workflow technology that stores user preferences and host device settings in a protected area on AMS flash memory cards. These settings can only be modified by the host application that created them and can be used to auto-configure multiple AMS-enabled products within the system. Also, these settings are preserved even when the card is re-formatted or other data files on the card are deleted, because the AMS data is stored outside the standard DOS file structure on the card. The AMS functionality coupled with Lexar Smart Download makes it possible to drive concurrent downloads from multiple cards and readers, creating a truly compelling benefit for any serious photographer looking to save real time in their daily workflow.

Beyond AMS, Lexar Smart Download also supports the simultaneous downloading feature of Lexar’s award-winning Professional CompactFlash Readers and will benefit all photographers who look to reduce the time currently required to download stored images via Adobe Bridge. Available in both USB and Firewire formats, Lexar’s Professional CompactFlash Readers are uniquely designed to stack and directly connect to one another (to a hub with USB models) and to the host computer for high-speed, simultaneous download of images stored on multiple flash memory cards. Depending on the volume of flash memory cards and stacked readers, the workflow improvements provided by simultaneously downloading stored contents is unfathomable.

In addition, Lexar Smart Download will support the download of content to primary and secondary destinations (folders) simultaneously. It will also provide the ability to organize images during the downloading process by date, making it possible for photographers to systematically manage their images, files and folders effectively.

Lexar Smart Download will be available as a stand-alone application on Lexar’s direct selling website for $29.95. In addition, Lexar Smart Download will soon be included with all of Lexar’s Professional ActiveMemory CompactFlash and Secure Digital flash memory cards. The plug-in will be available for both Mac OS 10.4 and Windows XP/2000 and is scheduled for release by the end of March. More information on Lexar’s professional products can be found at www.lexar.com.

About Lexar Media, Inc.

Lexar is a leading marketer and manufacturer of NAND flash memory products including memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers and ATA controller technology for the digital photography, consumer electronics, industrial and communications markets. The company holds over 94 issued or allowed controller and system patents, and licenses its technology to companies including Olympus Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., SanDisk Corporation and Sony Corporation. Lexar sells its memory cards worldwide and through an exclusive agreement, also sells memory cards under the Kodak brand. Headquartered in Fremont, California, Lexar has operations in countries around the world. More information is available at www.lexar.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include statements related to the benefits and availability of, and consumer demand for, Lexar’s products, including Lexar Smart Download and ActiveMemory flash memory cards, and the growth opportunities available to Lexar. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking statements. These risks include that the growth and success of our business depends on our ability to achieve and maintain technology leadership, and develop, sell and market products that are commercially accepted. Readers should also refer to the risk factors described in our filings with the SEC, including our most recently filed Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. We assume no obligation to update the information in this release.

Lexar, ActiveMemory and the Lexar logo are trademarks of Lexar Media, Inc. All other brand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.