LR2

Lightroom 2

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

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.

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: 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: 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: Really Deleting Photos from Collections

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 2. November 2011 - 5:23

When marking a photo with a Reject Photo or pressing the Delete key, Lightroom only deletes that photo from that collection. But what about the other collections and what about really deleting that photo?

  1. The hard way? Switch to the collection All Photographs, you will keep your position and Lightroom will highlight the photo that you want to delete and press the Delete key.
  2. The easy way?

Lightroom: Real Black and Whites

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 27. October 2011 - 5:26

Lightroom has the treatment Color and Black & White in the Basic section. By selecting the Black & White, I only get “mush”. I don't get any blacks and the only whites that I get are in the burned out skies.

Here's my way of getting “real” black and whites.

Black and Whites before and after

1.

Improve Your Photography with Lightroom

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 20. October 2011 - 5:53

In the “good old days” aka before digital aka film, if you were a professional, you would take your photos, process the film, make a contact sheet of the film and file the negatives in a PVC free plastic sheet. Finally, we would print a few of the photos.

Now we have to import everything into Lightroom before reviewing the photos. This photos are automatically placed in the Previous Import collection and in the All Photographs collection at the same time. They will stay in the Previous Import until the next import.

My steps

1.

Lightroom: Fast or Slow, it's Up to You

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 4. October 2011 - 5:53

Did you know that you decide whether you make Lightroom zoom along or crawl as a slug?

By now, you must know that Lightroom is a non-destructive editing software. What most people forget is what it means and how it affects Lightroom's speed.

Let's review the process.

  1. You start Lightroom
  2. Lightroom loads the catalog, that's the .lrcat file. It's just 1 file
  3. Lightroom loads the ancillary files, overlays, plug-in, settings

Exposure vs Brightness

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 28. September 2011 - 6:15

Every so often I get an email asking me about the difference between the exposure and the brightness in Lightroom.

  • The exposure slider makes the photo darker or lighter. The exposure affects everything: the shadows, the mid-tones and the highlights.
  • The brightness slider affects mostly the shadows and the mid-tones. The brightness slider makes the photo sparkle and jump out of the screen without burning the highlights.

Some people like to first set the exposure/recovery/fills and blacks then deal with the brightness.

Lightroom – Correcting Existing Misspelled Keywords

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 20. September 2011 - 6:05

It's very easy and simple to correct existing keywords that are misspelled. Right Click on the keyword in the keyword in the right panel → select Edit Keyword Tag or Rename and type in the new spelling. You are done!

What about all the existing photos? It's already done. How?

None of the photos are actually associated with the keywords. Here's the table that configures the keywords. Each photo is associated the various id_global.

Renaming a Lightroom Catalog

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 8. September 2011 - 5:28

Rename a Lightroom catalog is easy, it's simply renaming 1 (one) file and that's it. The problems is where is the catalog located? Why hasn't Adobe provided a menu function for renaming the catalog?

  • The catalog is named (the catalog name).lrcat

So you have a few choices for finding the catalog:

  1. Do a straight search from the OS (Windows or Mac) and look for: (the catalog name).lrcat
  2. In Lightroom on a Mac: Catalog Settings / Edit → Catalog Settings → General Tab
  3. In Lightroom on Windows: Edit → Catalog Settings → General Tab

Lightroom: The Quick Collection

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 1. September 2011 - 5:30

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.

Lightroom: Alltop

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 28. August 2011 - 15:01

http://alltop.com is a venture of Guy Kawasaki, of Apple fame, Kathryn Henkens and Will Mayall. It started in 2008. It's based on a completely different model from Google. It's based on topics and RSS (Real Simple Syndication).

They have many topics, including:

  1. http://photography.alltop.com/
  2. http://lightroom.alltop.com/

The http://lightroom.alltop.com is only about websites designated as “Lightroom websites.”

I'm listed on both http://photography.alltop.com/ and http://lightroom.alltop.com/ but I'm really “special” about Lightroom.

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