Lightroom-News.com

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book 1.1 update:
The Library Module interface

Catalog path (Mac only)

If you hold down the Command key and mouse down anywhere on the catalog name in the title bar you can access the path location for the current Library catalog (see the Library menu feature story for more about the catalog system in Lightroom 1.1). This will allow you to quickly locate where the current catalog is stored. But note that this is a Mac only feature.

Find panel
On the face of it, the Find dialog has undergone a cosmetic makeover. The top section is better laid out so that users are more clearly aware that they can select different Text criteria to search by other than ‘Anywhere’. And the Rule section, which is now placed beneath is also more prominent.

Let’s recap how the Find panel works, to carry out a text search you would check the box marked Text and select what kind of text you wanted to search: such as by ‘Filename’. You would then combine this with a rule such as Contains (where there is a partial match), Contains All (for an exact match), Doesn’t Contain (to exclude files that match the text entered below), Start’s With (obviously anything that begins with the phrase entered) and Ends With (for anything that ends with the phrase entered). So for example, you could use the Text search section to search specifically by ‘Filename’ using a ‘Contains’ rule and enter the phrase you are looking for in the text field below. I use this search method quite a lot whenever clients make their final image selections and send me a list of filenames. Usually all I need to do is to do a search by entering the last four digits.

Here is an example of a Find panel text search in which I have asked Lightroom to search all Metadata for text that contains the phrase ‘ann’ anywhere in the metadata text, be it at the beginning the middle or the end.

Copy Name searches
If you look more closely at the text search options you will see that you can also search by Copy Name, which is a new metadata term that has been added to Lightroom 1.1. Copy Name is discussed more fully in the Metadata panel section below. But basically you can use this search term to search the copy names that have been used for all your virtual copy images.

Empty field searches
In the Title and Caption sections you will find: Is Empty and Isn’t Empty rules and in the Keywords section: Are Empty and Aren’t Empty. The purpose of these rules is to let you search for photos where no title, caption or keywords have been added, or alternatively select only those photos that do have captions titles or keywords. Note that when either of these rules is selected, the field search is overridden and the search field box dimmed.

Date searches

Instead of using the term ‘Capture Time’ to search by date, the term Date is now used. This change now more accurately reflects what the EXIF ‘Date Time Original’ field actually means since this field does not strictly always refer to capture date. It could refer to the date a scan file was made or the date that a new Photoshop document was created. I’ll be discussing later the new changes to the way date capture and date time information is displayed in the Metadata panel.

And if you check the popup menu shown here you will notice how there are some new date search settings. You can now also search by: Today, This Week, Yesterday and Last Week.

Count display in Folders panel

When carrying out a filtered search via the Find panel, a true count of the number of files found in a particular folder/collection/matching keyword will now be shown as how many numbers of files there are out of the total number of images. In the above example you can see how a text search has resulted in a count revision in the Folders panel underneath.

Navigator view of Folders panel contents
Another new Folders panel feature is the way the Navigator view will update as you roll the mouse over the Folder list. The Navigator will preview the first photo that appears in the folder, thus providing a visual reference to make it easier to locate the folder you are looking for.

New Metadata Browser options

In the Metadata Browser panel in the Library module you will notice that there are now four new add categories: Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO Speed Rating and Label. These additions are pretty self-evident in that they provide extra ways to filter the images that are displayed in the content area. Although in the case of ‘Label’ this is exactly the same as clicking on the one of the color label swatches in the Filters section of the Filmstrip.

In order to make the Metadata Browser panel more manageable you can use the Metadata section in the Catalog Settings (File > Catalog settings…) to determine which items will be visible in this panel.

Quick Develop panel
Now let’s look at the changes to the panels on the right of the Lightroom Library mocule interface, starting with Quick Develop. Here is an expanded view of the Quick Develop controls showing the new look panel settings:

I think the new look design is overall a lot clearer. The Quick Develop controls went through a number of different designs during the public beta and I always felt the buttons we ended up with in the shipping version of Lightroom 1.0 looked more like ‘placement icons’ than the real thing. The Saved Preset menu remains unchanged and if you click on the disclosure triangle next to it, this will reveal the Crop Ratio and Treatment menus. Again, the options here are the same as before, but the interface is in my view a lot clearer now, especially with regard to whether the image is in color or grayscale. It could be argued that you now need two mouse clicks rather than one to switch from color to grayscale. But to be honest, I think it is better to memorize the V shortcut as a means for toggling between color and grayscale mode and rely on the Treatment menu as more an ‘indicator’ of which mode a photo is in.

White Balance is clearer (rather than ‘WB’) and the Tone control section is neatly separated with the Auto Tone button at the top and the reset button relabelled Reset All, which makes it a lot clearer that clicking on this will reset all the develop settings values that have been applied to a photo and not just those that have been applied via Quick Develop, so the warning I would give you here is to use this button with caution. Down at the bottom you will notice that the new Clarity develop adjustment has been added to Quick Develop and if you hold down the Option key (Mac), or Alt key (PC), the Clarity adjustment will switch to say Sharpening and the Vibrance control below it will switch to say Saturation. When you do this, the Sharpening control in Quick Develop will allow you to adjust the Amount sharpening. All these new features: the clarity adjustment and new sharpening controls will be discussed later on in more detail in the Develop module feature.

Keywording panel

Over in the Keywording panel the Keyword Tags section has a new menu next to it. The default view will show: Enter Keywords and this can be used, as before, to enter new keywords and edit existing ones. Or, you can select the Keywords & Parents option to view only without editing them.

Keyword Sets behave the same as before. You can click on the Keyword Set menu to load one of the keyword presets that ship with Lightroom such as: Outdoor Photography, Portrait Photography or Wedding Photography.

Keyword removal
If keywords are removed using an external program, the keywords will not appear removed when you view the photo in Lightroom.

Metadata panel

New view modes
The Metadata panel has two new view modes. The Large Caption view mode will display a nice large Caption metadata field, offering you lots of room in which to write a text caption. In the past the metadata fields in version 1.0 would always expand automatically anyway, but the large caption space here does at least make the Caption field easy to target. Click anywhere in this large field and you will be ready to start typing. Perhaps more usefully, hitting Enter or Return will allow you to add a carriage return in this field section instead of always committing the text.

The Location view mode offers a new alternative metadata view, perhaps more useful for reviewing travel photographs.

New Metadata panel interface
The other main difference with the new Metadata panel is that it now has lots of new action arrow buttons. To give you a clearer idea of what’s new here in the Metadata panel, I have used the All metadata view and highlighted the new items in yellow.

The Sidecar Files item will show up whenever there is a sidecar file associated with an image. These are always hidden from view when you inspect images in Lightroom and so this extra item in the Metadata panel let’s you know if a sidecar such as an .xmp sidecar is present.

The Copy Name field is new to Lightroom 1.1 and refers to virtual copy images made in Lightroom. In the example below you can see that the original DNG image has been highlighted and that three virtual copies have been made from the original master (you can tell they are virtual copies because they have a turned up page icon in the bottom left corner).

Each virtual copy image in Lightroom can be an alternative version of the original master (or negative as it is sometimes described in Lightroom). By making virtual copies you can try out different crops or color treatments. But since virtual copies all refer to the same master, they will all share the same file name. Now in Lightroom 1.1, whenever you create a new virtual copy, Lightroom will label each new virtual copy as: Copy 1, Copy 2 etc. But in order to make the virtual copy naming more meaningful you might wish to edit this name. In the example above, I have renamed the Copy 2 photo (second one from the right) as ‘Grayscale’. Which brings us to the Go to Master action arrow in the Metadata panel. If you have a virtual copy image selected in Lightroom you can locate the parent master photo by clicking on this button.

File Size is another new item and will display a photo’s file size, showing how many megabytes it takes up on the disk.

If you click on the action arrow next to the File Type metadata (Show photos with this file type) this will filter the photos in the Lightroom catalog to reveal all photos that are of the same file type. The same result can be achieved by going to the File Type section in the Metadata Browser panel and clicking on a file type in there.

Audio sidecar files now readable in Lightroom
Just when you think you have covered every angle, you find something else that’s new! Ian Lyons has written an article for computer-darkroom.com in which he explains how Lightroom 1.1 can now read audio sidecar files that are associated with a captured image and list these in the Metadata panel. If an audio sidecar file is present and you click on the action arrow next to the metadata item, Lightroom will playback the audio file on your computer. GPS Tagging and Audio Files by Ian Lyons.

Metadata change tracking
If you have read the feature story about what’s new in the Library module menu, you will remember that Lightroom 1.1 has a new Save Metadata command: Command–S (Mac), Control–S (PC) that will allow you to save the metadata settings directly to the file. Normally, the Lightroom metadata settings edits are only ever saved to the central catalog file unless you have the Automatically write changes into XMP option switched on in the File > Catalog Settings dialog. So apart from that, the metadata settings will not get updated to the photo files themselves unless you explicitly ask Lightroom to do so, which is where the Save Metadata command comes in.

In order to keep track of which files have been updated and which have not, Lightroom now offers a few visual clues. If you go to the View menu and open the Library View Options dialog (shown above), there is a checkbox in the Cell Icons section called: Unsaved Metadata. When this is checked you will see a metadata status icon appear in the top right corner of the library grid cells which will appear whenever there is what Lightroom calls a ‘metadata status conflict’, which in other words means: ‘you’ve updated the metadata for this photo and the metadata information embedded in the photo’s XMP space is now out of sync with the current Lightroom catalog file’. If the metadata written to a photo’s metadata is now out of date this isn’t really such a bad situation to be in. After all, the metadata has been saved really, it’s just that the metadata update is so far stored in the catalog file only (which you are backing up regularly right?). The appearance of this icon is more of a reminder that should you wish to update the metadata to the file as well, it is now time to do so and Lightroom is highlighting for you the files that are in need of ‘metadata saving’. A downward arrow indicates that Lighroom settings need to be saved to the file. An upward arrow indicates that settings have been edited externally and need to be read. Lightroom will even show an interim icon as it scans a photo checking to see if the metadata is in need of an update.

Over in the Metadata panel there is a new item called Metadata Status, which will say ‘Has been changed’ if anything has been done to edit the photo metadata settings since the last time the metadata was saved back to the file. In other words, this tells you the same thing as the metadata status icon that can appear in the Library grid cells.

In each case, if you click on the icon in the grid cells or the button next to the Metadata status entry in the Metadata panel, this will open the dialog shown here which will ask if you really want to save the metadata changes to disk or not, which I think could be better described as ‘do you wish to confirm saving the metadata changes to the photo’s XMP space’?

Labels, crop mode and ISO
Now for a quick roundup of the next bunch of action arrows in the Metadata panel. Show photos with this label will filter the catalog images to reveal all those with color labels that match the selected photo. If a photo has been cropped in Lightroom, the Cropped item will appear in the Metadata panel (showing the crop dimensions in pixels) and if you click on the action arrow next to it, this will take the photo directly to the Develop module in Crop mode. Show photos taken with this ISO will filter the catalog images to reveal all those with ISO settings that match the selected photo.

Date representation
Next to Date Time Original is the Go to Date action arrow. This will go to the Date section of the Metadata Browser panel and filter the catalog to show all photos with matching dates.

But note that there are a few changes to the way file dates are handled and now displayed in the Metadata panel. The Date Time Original means the date that a photo was captured or was first created.

In the case of camera capture files that have not been converted to DNG, the Date Time Original, Date Time Digitized and Date Time entries will all agree.

Where a camera capture image has been converted to DNG, the Date Time entry reflects the fact that the file was modified, resaving it in a different file format. In this case a raw file was converted to DNG a few days after the time of capture.

Similarly, if I was to create an Edit copy as a TIFF, PSD or JPEG version of the original, the Date Time will reflect that this version of the master image was created at a later date.

And if you import a photo that was originally created as a new document in Photoshop or was originally a scanned image, only the Date Time field will be displayed showing the date that the file was first created.

Mail and Web links

You will note that the E-mail field now has an action arrow next to it. This will allow another Lightroom user to send an email to the creator by simply clicking on the action arrow.

Do this and Lighroom will automatically create a new mail message via whatever mail program you are using on your computer and if the program is not currently running, Lightroom will launch it automatically.

And similarly, if you click on the action arrow next to the Website field this will take you directly to the creator’s chosen website link.

Copyright status
The Copyright section also now has an action arrow next to the Copyright Info URL which when clicked will take you directly to the web link. Above that there is also a Copyright Status field which is new to Lightroom 1.1 (but is already included in Bridge CS3), where you can set the copyright status as being: Unknown, Copyrighted or Public Domain.

You can edit the copyright status via the Metadata panel, or you could go to the Metadata panel Presets menu, choose: Edit Presets… and create a new custom metadata preset where all images you apply this preset to (such as when importing) will be marked with the desired copyright status.

But I should write a word or two here about what the term ‘Copyrighted’ means. Strictly speaking a ‘copyrighted’ image is one that has been registered with the US Library of Congress, and this is a term that applies to the US only. So if you say an image has been ‘copyrighted’ it has an explicit meaning in the US that does not translate to mean the exact same thing to those photographers who operate outside of the US where US copyright laws do not apply. If you operate in the US and use this field to mark an image as being ‘copyrighted’, then you should be aware of the precise meaning of the term and get these images registered. If you choose to use the Copyright field only to indicate this is your copyright, this statement should be clearly understood in nearly all countries and all that you need to enforce your rights ownership.

Editing Metadata presets
It is also worth pointing out here that there is now an Edit Presets… option in the Metadata panel Preset menu list. When you select this you now have the option to modify an existing metadata preset and click Done to update the preset, or use the new Preset menu (see top section of the dialog shown in Figure 2.33) and select Save Current Settings as New Preset… This neatly addresses what was a major shortcoming of version 1.0.

Metadata panel data entry efficiency
One of the things that has always bugged me about Bridge is the way the metadata entry is engineered. Even in Bridge CS3, if you select an image, make the Description field active and enter new text, you have to press Enter to commit, select the next image, then re-target the Description field all over again to enter more text for the next image.

It is said that Lightroom 1.1 now makes the metadata entry more efficient and offers an easier way to update the metadata. But in actual fact I believe this ’new’ behavior has been there all along in version 1.0 anyway. Or maybe it is now more stable than it was before? Whatever the case I missed this feature first time around!

So here is how it works. In the above screen shot you can see a library grid view of images taken at a model casting. I tend to shoot these castings with the camera tethered to the computer and update the Title field with each model’s name and model agency as I go along. In the screen shot shown here you can see that the Title field is currently active and I have typed in the model’s details. Instead of hitting Enter to commit this data entry, one can use the Command key (Mac), Control key (PC) plus a left or right arrow to progress to the next or previous image. This step will commit the text entry and progress to the next photo and keep the metadata field active so that you are now ready to carry on typing in the information for the next photo.

Toolbar
There are a few small items worth noting in the toolbar such as changes to the Compare view behavior, the new painter tool and the sort ordering.

Compare view display
When using the Compare view mode to compare images side by side you can now choose to make the info overlay visible as well. To enable this, go to the Library module View menu > Loupe Info > Show Info Overlay. Or use the Command–I (Mac), Control–I (PC) keyboard shortcut.

And if you have the Navigator panel open you can now use this to navigate the Compare view display. Use a single click in the Navigator preview to zoom in to whatever the close-up view zoom level is and then click or drag the zoomed in rectangle to analyze different areas of the two images. And of course, you still have the lock button in the toolbar to unlock the zooming and scrolling for the two images in order to navigate each one separately. To return to the normal zoomed-out view, double-click anywhere inside the Navigator preview.

Painter tool
The Painter tool replaces the previous Keyword Stamper tool. The Painter tool can be used the same way as the Keyword Stamper. You can use it as an easy way to repeat applying a keyword to images in the content area, except the Painter tool now allows you to go much further. To find out more about how this new feature works, check out the Lightroom menus feature story.

Sort functions
The Sort menu in the toolbar now resolves some of the possible contradictions in the way color labels are identified in Bridge and how they are identified in Lightroom. Instead of having a single sort option of sort by Color Labels, there are now two options: Sort by Label Text and sort by Label Color. And the reason for this is as follows:

In Lightroom 1.0 and 1.1, the default color label set uses the following text descriptions alongside each label: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple (to access the dialog shown here, go to the Library module Metadata menu and then go to the Color Label Set menu). OK, this is not a particularly imaginative approach, but the label text that is used here neatly matches the label text descriptions that were used in Bridge 1 (as included with the Creative Suite 2). Notice in the Lightroom 1.1 dialog shown here that it says: ‘If you wish to maintain compatibility with labels in Adobe Bridge, use the same names in both applications’. So far, so good. Lightroom 1.0 and 1.1 are both compatible with Bridge 1.0 when using the default settings in both programs.However, in Bridge 2.0, as included with the Creative Suite 3, the text naming was changed to a new default setting. Shown here is how the default label text appears in the Bridge 2.0 program’s Labels preferences.

If you install both new programs and use the default settings in each, the label text descriptions differ. This has led to problems such as white labels appearing in Bridge 2.0 where Bridge 2.0 cannot read Lightroom’s color label metadata correctly. In these specific instances, Bridge 2.0 can ‘see’ that a color label has been applied, but it does not know how to interpret the metadata correctly. Bridge 2.0 can read the color label text descriptions and display these in the Bridge Metadata File Properties section, but it does not read and apply the label color part.

If you were to choose a color label set in Lightroom such as the Review Status set shown here, the problem will persist between Lightroom and Bridge 2.0 because the descriptive terms used in both programs will be different. Furthermore, the Bridge 2.1 update has not necessarily managed to resolve this conflict and the message remains the same. If you want to be absolutely consistent between applications when applying color labels, then make sure the label text matches.

If you edit a photo’s color label setting in Bridge and then in Lightroom using the Library module Metadata ➯ Read Metadata from File command, a similar conflict will occur. But instead of showing a white label, Lightroom will display no color labels in the grid or filmstrip views. If you go to the Metadata panel on the other hand, you will see the label text description that was applied in Bridge next to the Color Label item in the list. I would say that Lightroom handles the conflict situation better, but how can you use the label criteria that was applied in Bridge and make use of it in Lightroom? Well this brings us neatly back to the Lightroom 1.1 update and why there are now two new sort options for color labels.

The sort by Label Color option allows you to sort photos by color labels that have been applied in Lightroom. The sort by Label Text option allows you to sort photos that have had text labels applied in Lightroom as well as letting you to sort photos where the labels have been applied via Bridge (because Lightroom is only able to read the label text part correctly).

Sort order button
The sort order button now makes a lot more sense. Even though I have been using Lightroom on a daily basis I could still never work out the old stairs going up/going down icon! This new one makes it much easier to work out whether the sort order is ascending or descending.

And another useful feature is the way the sort order is now numerically-sensitive. This means that Lightoom will reorder the following number sequence correctly: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12, 13… Previously, Lightroom would have reordered the numbers like this: 1,10,11,12,13,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. I think most people probably did not even notice there was a problem here because they were using their camera or Lightroom to name their files and Lightroom would always rename using zeros to fill in the empty numbers before a number sequence. It was more often a problem where someone had perhaps made a whole lot of Edit copies and gone beyond –Edit10. Anyway, this is now no longer a problem.

Filmstrip

Rating filters
Nothing too much has changed here except to mention that the rating filter section interface is now more obvious. Instead of little dots, we now have grayed out stars and this makes it easier to tell that ‘this is where you click’ to activate the rating filters. The rating menu uses an icon button to represent whether the filtering rule is: Rating is greater than or equal to, Rating is less than or equal to or Rating is equal to. Again, this is more clearly worded than before and will hopefully make things easier for newcomers to understand.

Breadcrumbs text
Look carefully at what is know as the ‘breadcrumbs text’ just above the filmstrip on the left and you will see the current library grid view Folders/Collections/Metadata Browser view showing the number of selected photos, the target photo file name and the number of selected photos will now be highlighted.

Color label filtering
In the color label filter swatch section of the filmstrip you can now Option–click (Mac) or Alt–click (PC) on a color swatch to make an inverted color swatch selection.

To be more precise, if you Option/Alt click on a color swatch, this will select all photos that have a color label assigned except for that color. The inverted swatch selection will exclude photos that have no color label.

But remember, if you go to the File menu the Filters > Filter by Color Label submenu includes options to filter photos by No Label, to select all those photos that have no label status. And there is also an Other Label option that will allow you to filter photos that have a label status that is not completely recognized by Lightroom. In other words, choosing File > Filters> Filter by Color Label > Other Label will allow you to filter photos that have been color label edited in Bridge but the label text descriptions are not currently synchronized with those used by Lightroom right now (see the previous section on Sort functions for the ins and outs as to why Lightroom and Bridge sometimes have different ideas about what these color labels mean).

Modified filters and selections via the filmstrip
But that’s not all… you can also use the modifier keys to make more precise filter selections. Here is how it works. As before, you can click on a color swatch or star rating to filter images by color or star rating. If you hold down on the Shift key, you can add photos to the filter view in the grid view. So if you hold down Shift and click on the red and yellow swatch plus the one star filter rating, you can filter the view to show red and yellow labeled photos with one star only or one star and higher etc. And keep the Shift key held down to click on swatches or stars to remove them from the filter. Hold down the Command-click (Mac) or Control-click (PC) and click on a color or star rating (or a pick, or the Virtual copy filter), and instead of filtering the photos you can make a selection based on the buttons you click. Now hold down the Shift key as well as the Command/Control key and you can add more photos to the selection. And to remove photos from a selection, use: Command + Option (Mac), Control + Alt (PC). The key combinations used here should be very familiar, if you are used to using these modifier keys when making Photoshop image selections.

Virtual copy and Master copy filters
Last of all we have the new Virtual Copy and Master Copy filter buttons. These can be used to filter the display to show or hide the virtual copy photos only and show or hide the master copy photos only.

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If you have found this extract useful and would like to read more then you will be pleased to know that Martin Evening, author of The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book, has also written a free Lightroom 1.1 PDF supplement update for readers of his book. The PDF is a compilation of all the Lightroom 1.1 update Lightroom-news stories, is 177 pages long and will soon be available for download via the Peachpit website (registration required). This is not a book revision, but a supplement to the original book in which Martin Evening desribes in detail all of the new features found in Lightroom 1.1. Martin writes: “I wanted to provide a free update for Lightroom 1.1 that would satisfy readers who had already bought the book as well as all those who hadn’t bought it yet but wanted to make sure they were up to speed on all the new program features”.

How to download the PDF supplement
The PDF update supplement will soon be available free for everyone to download. All you will have to do is visit the peachpit website at: www.peachpit.com/register. There you will need to create a new account by providing your email address, full name and a password to access the site. Once you have confirmed your account details proceed to the register page and enter the 10-digit ISBN number of the book. Please note that this PDF is not limited to those who are buying the book. Everyone will be welcome to register and download the PDF. Just copy and paste the following ISBN number: 0321385438 as shown below.

You will then be ready to download the PDF supplement after it is published. Watch out for further announcements on Lightroom-news for when the PDF is ready to download.

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).