LR_HowTo, LR_Reference, Why, LR2, LR3

Lightroom: Create Wallpaper in Lightroom

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 17. May 2012 - 5:07

Many smart photographers offer free backgrounds, aka wallpaper, to people and potential clients. What's a wallpaper? It's an image used as a background for a computer, a tablet, or a cell phone. The problem with the wallpapers is that you need to offer a wallpaper at the resolution of the computer/device or it will look bad. Ask the owners of the iPad 3, aka the new iPad. Many apps and wallpapers do not support the new resolution and look terrible on the iPad 3.

Sit down, strap your seat belt, there will be some math involved.

  • Select the photo or the photos
  • Print and output to JPEG. Sounds simple but remember the math…

For “regular” computers, this means desktops and good laptops, you should set the resolution to 96 ppi. For the iPad 1 and the iPad 2, the resolution is 1024 by 768 pixels at 132 ppi, For the iPad 3, aka the new iPad, the resolution is 2048 by 1536 pixels at 264 ppi. Many Netbooks have a screen resolution of 1024 by 768 at 72 ppi. The iPhone 4 has a resolution of 960 by 640 pixels at 326 ppi.

You will need these numbers. What does this all mean? It means that you will have to make a few wallpapers of the same image for the different sizes and resolutions.

Lightroom: Catalog Size

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 15. May 2012 - 5:23

You can the size of your current catalog by going to Edit > Catalog Settings on a Windows, or Lightroom > Catalog Settings on a Mac on the General tab.

Lightroom: Catalog Size

Lightroom: Catalog Size

Here is what's included in the SQLite database file aka the Lightroom catalog:

Lightroom: The Negative

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 3. May 2012 - 5:21

In the “good old days”, before the advent of digital, many professionals and a few “more serious” amateurs used slide films, but the vast majority of people, including most portrait and wedding photographers, used negatives to take their photos. Today, it's rare to see a negative.

There is no need to use Photoshop, it's very easy and simple to create negatives in Lightroom:

  1. Select a photo, it should be of a simple design
  2. Create a virtual copy
  3. In the Tone Curve section of the Develop module, switch to Linear

Lightroom 4: Basic Panel Sliders The “Right Way”

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 1. May 2012 - 5:57

As everybody knows by now, Adobe has changed the way the sliders of the basic panel operates. 0 = No effect, and then there is the +100 to -100 and the effect depends on the beer, the tequila or the coffee.

So what's the right way? Of course, my way is the “right way.” In Lightroom 1, 2 and 3, I used the Auto as the starting point for my changes/setting the photo, not anymore in LR4. I do not like how LR4 does the Auto.

Lightroom 4: Before and After in less than 20 seconds

Lightroom 4: Before and After in less than 20 seconds

This is not a finished photo, but it's more than good enough to show the person and if he picks it, then it will be fine tuned like opening the eyes, sharpening for the skin, clarity, vibrance…

“Cloud” or Bust

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 26. April 2012 - 5:05

By now, you must have heard that Adobe will release Photoshop CS6 in the first week of May. One of the big new feature is the cloud! I see and read a lot of “misunderstanding / misinformation” about the cloud. People use the word “cloud” just like people used the “information super highway” expression in the years 1996-1997.

  1. What's the cloud? When they talk about the cloud, they either mean that the data and/or some programs are on computers/servers that are accessed via the Internet. In the “good old days,” the data and/or the programs were stored on the local network. You could walk to the server room and see the computers, the lights, the cables and some techie that was looking after the whole “shebang.” The advantage and/or the problem with the cloud is that you do not know what's inside, how it's configured…

Lightroom: Searching For… And… Or…

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 20. April 2012 - 5:31

Lightroom uses SQLite for keeping tracks of “things” in the catalog. In the Lightroom world, it's called a catalog, in the computer world it's called a database. Databases are like rolodex on steroids. You can ask all kind of questions, aka queries in the computer world, aka filters in the Lightroom world, like: show me all the photos that have dogs and are a family pet… or show me all the photos that I have NOT sold to customer…

The library module is “just” a front-end to ask questions about the information in the catalog.

  1. Lightroom supports AND and OR conditions in “regular” and smart filters.
  2. Lightroom supports some NOT conditions with the smart filters.

This post is about the “regular” filters

AND

“Show me all the photos that have ALL the keywords:” Granville Island AND motorcycle

The SQL query would be:

  SELECT photos
  FROM catalog
  WHERE keywords = 'Granville Island' AND keywords = 'motorcycle';

Lightroom: Why Use Virtual Copies?

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 17. April 2012 - 5:50

Lightroom 4, box cover

Now that Adobe has changed how Lightroom 4 treats the flags, labels and ratings, virtual copies have become much more important.

To create a virtual copy, select a photo, then: Menu > Photo > Create Virtual Copy or Ctrl-L / Option-L

What’s a virtual copy?

It’s an “almost” copy of a photo. It's not a copy of that photo, it's a different version of that photo. You can have many virtual copies/versions of the same photograph. Personally, I prefer the term “version” to “virtual copy.”

Lightroom 4: The “Proper” Camera Defaults

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 5. April 2012 - 6:07

I really don't like the defaults with the Process: 2012 for my Canon 7D. The Tint is too warm for my taste, the Exposure is always -0.56 and the Contrast is +24 while the Tone Curve is linear. The White is either -35 or +35 or +54.

Lightroom 4 Defaults for Canon 7D

Lightroom 4 Defaults for Canon 7D

I don't like them, so I created my own defaults for the Canon 7D in Lightroom 4.

Lightroom 4: Adobe Broke the Collections

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 15. March 2012 - 6:15

In the good old day of Feb-2012, aka Lightroom 1, Lightroom 2 or Lightroom 3, you could flag or rate a photo without worrying. With LR4, a photo can only belong to one collection! In LR1, LR2 or LR3, a photo can belong to many “regular” collections, with just drag and drop. Then you could decide on ratings or flags. For example, one photo can go in a customer collection and be rated as a 5 star, the best for that customer. I like that photo and want to add it also to my portfolio collection. In my portfolio collection, it should be only a 3 stars. I have much better photos than that, but that photo should be in the portfolio collection and if I find a better idea of what to do with it, it could even go up to 4 or 5 stars. Can't do that now anymore in Lightroom 4.

In Lightroom 1, Lightroom 2 or Lightroom 3, all the flags, pick…, and the ratings were local to the collection. Now in Lightroom 4, all the flags and the ratings are global to the whole catalog.

Lightroom: Make Your Skies Pop

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 6. March 2012 - 7:21

Skies are often under-rated. The vast majority of the times, the skies are only “good” during the sunrise or the sunset. The problem is that the vast majority of the photos are not taken at sunrise or sunset. That's why in the 1980s, the color polarizing filters were popular, just like HDR is today.

In Lightroom, the common recommendation is to use the graduated filter to darken the skies. The problem with the graduated filter is that making the skies darker, doesn't make them any more interesting. It only makes the photo more balanced.

Lightroom: Make Your Skies Pop Skies are often under-rated. The vast majority of the times, the skies are only “good” during the sunrise or the sunset. The problem is that the vast majority of the photos are not taken at sunrise or sunset. That's why in the 1980s the color polarizing filters where popular, just like today's use of HDR.In Lightroom, the common recommendation is to use the graduated filter to darken the skies. The problem with the graduated filter is that making the skies darker, doesn't make them interesting.Instead of using the graduated filter in the `Develop` module, go to the **`HSL / Color / B & W`** section of the right panel. Go to the `HSL` > `Luminance`, click on the sampler tool (red circle) then move to your skies and lower the `luminance`. Lightroom will read the actual colors and reduce it's luminance for you.This photo is from Amsterdam. No processing at all, I just imported it in Lightroom and reduced the sky's luminance. Lightroom analyzed the portion of the sky that I picked and decided that it contained enough yellow. On a bright sunny day, it would be mostly blue. This photo went from a straight snapshot to “Now it merits a second look.” It's worth trying to do a post-processing on this photo.lightroom-skies-02.jpg — ©2012 Syv Ritch -- foto-biz.com: http://www.foto-biz.com/usageterms

Lightroom: Make your skies pop with the luminance

Lightroom: Rearrange Keywords

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 24. February 2012 - 7:10

Some people are very good at making decisions and at sticking to them. These people immediately decide on some keywords and that's it, no more changes. I can't. I often have to go back to add more keywords, to change some keywords or even to delete some keywords. Lightroom does not have an automatic way of changing, rearranging and reorganizing keywords, but it is only a 2 step process.

Lightroom: reorganizing the keywords

Lightroom: reorganizing the keywords

If you need to do change more than one keyword, you should do it one keyword at a time. All the operations should be done in the Grid view.

Lightroom: Improve Your Photos in Less than 1 minute

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 20. February 2012 - 7:10

Whenever somebody complains that their photos do not look “right”, the “Mr Know-It-All” will always give the same answer:

Hey, idiot! Why are you asking that dumb question? Obviously, you didn't calibrate your …

Just add the word monitor, printer…

Does calibration help? Yes, but not as much as you think, the problem is that it's almost impossible to match colors over different mediums. You can say and do whatever you want, you will never be able to exactly match the LCD screen that is illuminated from behind to a print that reflects light.

So what can you do? You have to make some choices and decisions.

You can calibrate everything and use Pantone colors (standard colors) in your photos, while matching the Pantone colors at every step of the way and hope/pray that the other people viewing your photos/prints are also fully calibrated from their lighting to their Adobe RGB capable LCD monitors.

You can decide that most of your photos are used for screen display by other people or to be viewed in various web browser, on iPhones/smartphones, photo frames…

Lightroom: Getting Good Prints from Costco

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 10. February 2012 - 6:10

Everybody is bashing Costco because their prints are cheap. I use Costco, not by choice but by necessity. I have a custom lab, but anything as next day service is very expensive and same day service, we are not talking 1 hour service here, cost an arm and a leg ($39 for one 5” by 7”.) I could print my own but I can never get it right on the first or the second print. There's always a tweak here and a tweak there, I want/need to change the print one more time…

I use Costco for most of my proofs, to show the customer before the final prints, even for myself to see if the concept will work.

The Secrets of Huge and Sharp Prints

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 6. February 2012 - 6:10

I just printed this photo 20” by 30” or 50 centimeters by 76 centimeters.

Pouch, the cat Wile E under his favorite tripod/platformpouch-20080810-0104.jpg — syv ritch ©2008 — foto-biz.com: http://http://www.foto-biz.com/usageterms

You can't see it as a print, you can only view from the web. But… It looks great on the wall. Viewed even close, there's no pixilation, no visible noise with a naked eye even at 5 inch from the print. All the hairs and whiskers are sharp.

Lightroom: Smugmug Publishing Plug-in

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 2. February 2012 - 6:10

One of the least used feature, but very powerful feature of Lightroom, is the Publish function. Basically, Lightroom will export the photo to the destination if there's any “important” change to the photo. The important change could be the description/caption, the title, the keywords, the Develop treatment…

I use Smugmug for my photo “back-end.” I chose Smugmug over Zenfolio because Smugmug is integrated in Lightroom (I didn't know then, what I know now.)

  1. I'm not saying that Smugmug is better than Zenfolio. It's your personal choice. Each one has its good, its bad and its ugly.

The Recovery Slider in Lightroom

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 1. February 2012 - 6:32

Lightroom Develop Module Sliders, recovery/fill/black

Lightroom Develop Module Sliders: Recovery, Fill & Black

Everybody uses the Exposure slider to make their photo lighter or darker. Then the problems starts, what to do with the recovery, fill... The problems are due to Adobe's "poor documentation". I will attempt to clarify.

The recovery slider works best with RAW photos. It will still work with JPEG photos, but not as well.

Lightroom: You Have a Bad Backup

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 25. January 2012 - 6:10

Do you have a backup? The vast majority of the people do not even have a backup. My personal experience is that less than 1 in 10 people do have a backup. The problem is that people that claim to have a backup, actually have a bad backup! People claim that they have RAID 1, 5 or 10 or they use a Drobo box. Those are not backups.

The purpose of a backup is:

What's the cost of re-entering the data?

— Syv Ritch, http://www.foto-biz.com

  • A guy, that I know, does weddings. He just raised his price from $199 to $249 per wedding.

Running Out of Ideas for Keywording?

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 17. January 2012 - 7:02

It works with Lightroom 2, Lightroom 3 and Lightroom 4.

What's the purpose of keywords?

The purpose is to find the photos among the thousands of photos in your catalog. It can be for you or it can be for customers or it can be for internet searches.

The keywords are associated with a photo to describe:

  • subject matter
  • status
  • style
  • use

The simplest way of creating keywords is just add another keyword when you need it. The problem with just adding them on the fly without any structure is fine for the first few dozen keywords. Then it becomes unwieldy when it becomes thousands.

The “cleanest” way is to create base categories, then expand these various categories.

Lightroom Keywords Categories

First: Always fill in the IPTC information. The problem, with the IPTC information, is that you can't search for it! The IPTC search is so limited that I find it useless. It's only possible to search if you already know the exact word and you cannot select in which IPTC field.

Speeding up Lightroom, not so Cheap

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 5. January 2012 - 6:00

Just before Xmas, I started to have problems with my computer (again.) This time, it was the video card. Either the video card was on “the fritz”, or the problem was with the driver. I had an nVidia 310GT video card that came with the computer. So I bought an Asus nVidia 550GT video card for the grand total of $129 Canadian.

This new video card with the current video driver, from nVidia's website, supports hardware acceleration. This means that any of the screen operations are not done by the CPU but by the video card.

Lightroom: Remember the Why of a Virtual Copy

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 16. December 2011 - 9:16

Lightroom has this wonderful concept of the virtual copy. A virtual copy is just a set of adjustments that is stored in the catalog, it's not an actual file. The beauty of the virtual copies is that it's possible to have hundreds of virtual copies of the same photo but with different adjustments, crops, colors, black and white…

Some people are amazing, years later, they remember every single detail of why they did… and then, there's me. I need to see some notes, then I can remember the tiny details. That's why I need to keep track of why I created the virtual copy.

Renaming a virtual copyLightroom has this wonderful concept of the virtual copy. A virtual copy is just a set of adjustments that is stored in the catalog, it's not an actual file. The beauty of the virtual copies is that it's possible to have hundreds of virtual copies of the same photos but with different adjustments, crops, colors, black and white…I use the `Copy Name` to type in my explanation of what I did and/or why. For me, a large number of the virtual copy are the balck and whites and that's obvious. But I also do virtual copies for printing the different size that forces me to crop such as 8½ by 11 vs 11 by 17 vs … That way I know what's what.lightroom-virtual-copy-name.jpg — ©2011 Syv Ritch -- foto-biz.com: http://www.foto-biz.com/usageterms

Lightroom: Renaming A Virtual Copy to Remember the Why of a Virtual Copy

Lightroom: 3.6 is Out

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 13. December 2011 - 11:27

Adobe has release Lightroom 3.6. It's the final, it's not a release candidate. Lightroom 3.6 is available at: http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/ and scroll down to Lightroom Windows or Macintosh. I can't give the direct link, because it changes on regular basis.

What's different between the Lightroom 3.6 Release Candidate and the Final/Production Release? At least one bug fix:

  • When printing large images that are “on the warm side” the print/jpeg output was orange. That's the one that affected me, and this was introduced with Lightroom 3.6 Release Candidate.

Lightroom: Where is the Selection Criteria: “Description”

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 13. December 2011 - 6:00

I use Smugmug for my photo back-end for photos.foto-biz.com. The problem that I have is that I wanted to make sure that all the photos have a description.

The proper way would be to use Lightroom with a smart collection. If the description is empty then display the photo in the collection. Should be simple. Yes? No!

Lightroom: Selection Criterias I want to find the photos in Lightroom that do not have any description.The question is where is the description selection criteria?Nowhere to be found.

Lightroom Available Selection Criterias

Lightroom: Default Keyword

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 9. December 2011 - 7:46

lightroom-default-keyword

Right-Click on the keyword > Use this as Keyword Shortcut will either enable or disable the default keyword.

183 Megapixels Photo

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 1. December 2011 - 6:44

This is a humongous, ginormous, image: 183 megapixels. As you can see from the Lightroom screen capture, it is: 37,717 pixels wide by 5,110 pixels high, that's 192,733,870 pixels.

I did this image on a Canon 7D. It's a composite of 42 photos. It was part of a serie of photos that range from 35 megapixels to this one at 183 megapixels.

183 Megapixels photoThis is a humongous, ginormous, image: 183 megapixels. As you can see from the Lightroom screen capture, it is: 37,717 pixels wide by 5,110 pixels high, that's 192,733,870 pixels.I did this image on a Canon 7D. It's a composite of 42 photos. I'm not that interested in a Nikon D800, a D900, a D4, or a whatever the name will be and their rumored 36 megapixels sensor. Where are the lenses for such a sensor? At 18 megapixels per photo, it took me 2½ hours to compile the image on an iCore 7 8Gb RAM. I have so much detail that I can read the labels in the background.I can't put it on my website, I tried and it brought the web server to a crawl. I can't upload it to Smugmug. It's too big. Luckily this image is for printing. I haven't yet discussed it with the printer. I'll do that on Friday.I was able to import it in Lightroom but now Lightroom is extremely slow. The raw image is 1.6 gigabytes, that's a lot of disk IO for the preview. Looks like after the printing, I will have to delete the image from the catalog and recreate it as a JPEG with a 40% to 50% quality to make it manageable.

Lightroom: Don't Import Suspected Duplicates

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 30. November 2011 - 6:10

Usually, when importing photos into a Lightroom catalog, the Do No Import Duplicates is checked on. The question is what's a duplicate? Everybody in their right mind would assume that 2 duplicate photos are 2 identical photos. It turns out that for programmers, 2 identical photos are not the same as 2 identical files.

What Lightroom really mean is 2 identical files. What are identical files?

  • The same name like: charlie-20111129-1234
  • The same file extension like: .cr2

This means that charlie-20111129-1234.cr2 and charlie-20111129-1234.jpg are not identical files.

Lightroom: The Case Against DNG

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 23. November 2011 - 6:24

Adobe created the DNG format: Digital NeGative, we are at version 1.3. According to Adobe:

Key benefits for photographers:

  • DNG format helps promote archival confidence, since digital-imaging software solutions will be able to open raw files more easily in the future.
  • A single raw processing solution enables a more efficient workflow when handling raw files from multiple camera models and manufacturers.
  • A publicly documented and readily available specification can be easily adopted by camera manufacturers and updated to accommodate technology changes.

Lightroom: Importing 100 Thousand Photos — My Summary

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 22. November 2011 - 7:21

After a few major crashes, I decided to start from scratch, almost (I had saved all of my XMPs.) I created a new catalog and imported 93,259 photos. I was able to import all of them in less than 5 days!

Here's my summary for the:

Lightroom: Importing 100 Thousand Photos — Part 3

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 18. November 2011 - 6:40

In this blog post we will discuss the crux of the matter when it come to importing a large amount of photos like I had to do, 93,259 photos.

The “standard” advice is to:

  1. Render Previews 1:1 so that you don't have to wait when you are scrolling through the Develop module or browsing at 1:1

Lightroom: Importing 100 Thousand Photos — Part 2

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 16. November 2011 - 6:50

In Lightroom: Importing 100 Thousand Photos — Part 1 I spoke about the importance of checking vs un-checking the Include Subfolders on the performance. Now we'll look at the basic import operations, the different ways of getting the photos into Lightroom:

Lightroom: Import Options

  1. Copy as DNG
  2. Copy
  3. Move

Lightroom: Importing 100 Thousand Photos — Part 1

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 14. November 2011 - 6:25

Importing photos in Lightroom is very easy to do, just like any the other camera processors. Click the import button, select the photos, press OK and some time later you are done. This works without any problem when you import only a few hundreds photos. If you want to import a thousand photos at a time, now we start to talk as much as 6 hours depending on your settings. Now try to import 10 thousand photos in a weekend, wish you good luck. A 100 thousand photos and now we are talking at least a month.

1.

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