Lightroom Reference Covers LR2 and LR3
Lightroom has all kind of wordings, especially in the Develop module. Some of it makes sense, but some of it…
- Exposure: sets the image brightness.
- Contrast: Separates the dark and the light tones from the middle tones.
- Shadows: Adjusts dark image areas.
- Highlights: Adjusts light image areas.
- Whites: Adjusts the white clipping.
- Blacks: Adjusts the black clipping.
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
Here is what's included in the SQLite database file aka the Lightroom catalog:
A friend and customer recently spend “muchos dinaros” on a top of the line laptop. iCore 7, a real ATI video card… By the time it was all said and done with Microsoft Office 2010… $2,000+ Whew! Lots of money. Andrei asked me how he could move his Lightroom/Photoshop and his data from his computer to the laptop.
- Backups, backups and backups
- Install Photoshop
- Install Lightroom
- Restore the photos
- Restore the catalog (without the previews)
- Install the many plugins
And that's where the problems really started.
There's no manual for Lightroom. The help files are “crappy” shall we say. That's why, there are people like Scott Kelby “raking the dough.” But at 450 pages, that's a lot, for many people it's overwhelming and very detailed. I bought it and even today, I still use it on a weekly basis.
Adobe wrote a very nice, free and easy to comprehend gettting started manual, 75 pages, in PDF format, available at:
The Quick Collection is the equivalent of a scratch pad. You can add group of photos, delete, change/process, keywords…
The Quick Collection is the collection with the + after it, it doesn't have to be the collection named Quick Collection.
- DPI stands for "Dots Per Inch". DPI only applies to output devices, that's for monitors and printers…
- PPI stands for "Pixels Per Inch". PPI only applies to input sensors, that's for camera sensors…
If somebody talks about PPI when talking about screens or printers, they don't know what they are talking about! Many printers do not deal in DPI but in LPI "Lines Per Inch", those are mostly CMYK commercial printers, printing presses, magazines, newspapers…
What's the difference between a 300 DPI and a 72 DPI? None, zero, zilch!
Lightroom is designed by Adobe be the front end to Photoshop, but many people have lot of problems because Adobe hasn't explained clearly how Lightroom and PhotoShop talk to each other.
Secret #1
The Lightroom version must match exactly the Camera Raw version of Photoshop.
- Lightroom includes its own version of Camera Raw. Lightroom doesn't use Photoshop's Camera Raw. Lightroom is a non-destructive editing program.
You just bought the latest Canikon at 18 megapixels or at 24 megapixels. How big of a print can you do? Almost unlimited. How can that be unlimited? Won't your photos become just dots? Actually that depends on a few of things:
- Viewing Distance
- Printing Process and Print Resolution
- Upsizing Resolution
Please note the order. It's the most important!
- Viewing Distance: Under 3 feet or under 1 meter, you should print at 300ppi. For a viewing distance of more than 3 feet, such as a print to be hanged on a wall, you should use 200ppi.
All these years, I've been doing it wrong! I must be an incompetent and not know what I'm doing. I don't feel too bad, because it turns out that most of us have also doing it wrong! What am I talking about? We haven't followed Adobe's “Official Workflow.”
Adobe has commissioned Robert Edwards to write the “Official Workflow.”:
A digital workflow specialist helping creative professionals drowning in data.
In the Grid mode, while I look and decide what's happening with the photos, I set the auto-advance Photo → Auto Advance. That way, by just pressing any key, I will both mark the photo and advance to the next photo. Here are my settings:
Flags
P -- Pick/Keep the photo, or to be moved to a collection. That's when I don't want to use the Quick Collection.
X -- Delete the photo. When in the All Photographs: the photo will be deleted. When in a collection, the photo will be deleted from that collection.
