DAM

Digital Asset Management

Lightroom: Rearrange Keywords

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: Getting Good Prints from Costco

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.

Lightroom: Kind Of

A vacuum cleaner is something that uses a fan to push air out to create some vacuum to suck up dust and dirt. So what's that got to do with Lightroom? You see, Lightroom is a software that runs on a computer.

Most computers have many fans, my workstation has five fans. Four of the fans pull air out and the fifth fan push air in.

Lightroom: Smugmug Publishing Plug-in

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.

Lightroom: Remember the Why of a Virtual Copy

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"

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

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

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

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

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
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