Last week I posted a follow up  called: Migrating Lightroom 2 Catalogs to Lightroom 3 – Revisited.

Let me know if you have any questions!

From the course description …

“Are you a new to intermediate Lightroom user who is looking to take your Lightroom experience to the next level? Do you have the basics down, but still want to know more? Does Lightroom drive you crazy sometimes? Would you like to learn how to better integrate Lightroom into other aspects of your digital life? Would you like to avoid common problems and learn from the mistakes of others? Well then this is the course designed for you. After answering questions from thousands of Lightroom users over the last 3 years I created a course that covers the most common things people have been struggling to understand while integrating Lightroom into their photography workflow.”

Continue reading about Lightroomers Guide to Lightroom class over at ppsop.net. The part of this class I am most jazzed about is that it allows for a level of interaction between me and the students you won’t find in most online learning experiences. This class includes lessons, assignments, video tips and lots of Q&A interaction via the classroom message board. You’ll be able to reach me via email, my blog, and twitter too, so it is the next best thing to having me at your side for 4 weeks while you take your Lightroom skills to the next level!

PPSOP was founded by one of my long time photography heroes, Bryan Peterson, who authored (among many others) my all time favorite book on understanding exposure, perfectly named, Understanding Exposure. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to wrap your head around exposure once and for all.

Bryan produced a great video explaining how PPSOP courses work. My class will continue to run throughout the year so if the January 8 start date doesn’t work for you keep checking back for the next session. I look forward working closely with you over those 4 weeks!

If you are brand new to Lightroom and you are looking for a great place to get started then I suggest taking Jon Canfield’s Lightroom From Import to Output first and then take my class next. I’ve designed my class to build on the materials in Jon’s class so your learning continues to the next level!

By default Lightroom always chooses the most current version of Photoshop you have installed as the primary external editor, but you can configure other applications to be used in the Additional External Editor section.

The File Format, Color Space and Bit Depth options are the same as the previous version of Lightroom, and choosing the default settings is recommended. The external editor video tutorial Matt Kloskowski created for Lightroom 1 is still valid in that regard if you want to learn more.

Read  Configuring External Editors over at peachpit.com.

The only way Windows users could successfully export multiple photos directly to an email attachment from Lightroom was using a (free) third-party app called MAPI Mailer created by Steve Sutherland. Well, I just learned (thanks to Lightroom-News.com) that Steve has upgraded MAPI to a full fledged Export Plugin, which removes the previous limitation on how many photos could be attached at a time.

Steve has even created a set of instructions on how to upgrade your old MAPI Mailer export presets (if you have them) to work with the new plugin. Thanks Steve!

1. Select photo(s) to be watermarked, click Export.
2. Configure Export dialog to include Mogrify watermark, check the Add to This Catalog box, configure other settings as desired, click Export.
3. Select imported watermarked photos and switch to Web module.
4. Configure gallery and upload.

Here’s an example gallery. To make it easier to manage these watermarked copies I always configure the Export dialog to save them into a subfolder within the folder that contains the original photos, but you might want to do it differently.

For my watermark I use the Text Annotation feature of the Mogrify plugin to add my name, copyright and email (all pulled from each photo’s metadata) to the center of each photo at a low opacity and then I use the Graphical Watermark panel to add a PNG of my signature to the lower left corner. This feels like a good compromise between keeping the photo viewable and keeping my name associated with the photo. I also use Mogrify to add a border. I’ve found this to be the most flexible and efficient process for adding a custom watermark to all photos leaving Lightroom. I do the same for the photos in my blog posts or when sending via email. I’ve even used it as a way to add my signature to prints.

EDIT: I have written a more in-depth tutorial on using LR2Mogrify for anyone needing more detail: Watermark with Lightroom

When exporting to disk you have the option to add those copies to the catalog (kind of like an auto-import).  In addition, you also have the option to stack the copies back with the source photo, but only under certain conditions.

• You have to export the copies to the same folder as original photo (no subfolder).
• You have to check the Add to This Catalog box.

Those options are pretty straight forward, but here is one that caused me some confusion until I realized what I did …

• You have to select the photo for export while working from within a folder.

It kinda makes sense in that you can’t stack photos from within a collection, so apparently you can’t stack the exported copy with the source photo if you make the selection from within a collection. In fact you won’t even see the stacking option visible.

So, I hope this helps you avoid the frustration I went through trying to figure out why I couldn’t stack!

In a nutshell, exporting is the way to apply the changes you have made in Lightroom, everything from Develop adjustments to keywords, to new copies of your imported photos. The key word to keep in mind is copies. Lightroom is not applying these changes to your source photos.

Read Understanding the Lightroom Export Process over at peachpit.com.

[click to view larger]

So, since you intended to overwrite the originals you are thinking, “Great, just what I wanted”, so you click Overwrite. The next thing you see is a popup that says “An error occurred while exporting”:

Uh oh. You weren’t expecting that, so you click Show in Library and Lightroom shows you a special collection of “Error Images” which contains all the photos you just exported and they are all sporting new question mark icons. Now you are really concerned so you open a file browser and check the actual folder and find all the photos are gone.  Yep, gone as in deleted.

If you are used to working in a pixel-editor like Photoshop it is normal to save your edits back to the original file, so on the surface it sounds like it might just work in Lightroom too. But it doesn’t. The difference between Lightroom and Photoshop in this scenario is that your original photo is not actually open in Lightroom. What you see is a preview of your original. When you export copies Lightroom grabs the original, makes a copy and then applies the Develop adjustments you made. This produces a brand new file.

So, in our scenario we are asking Lightroom to replace the original with this new copy, but Lightroom needs that original to make the copy! The end result is that Lightroom removes the original to make room for the new version, but then has no file to use for creating the copy with your adjustments. Ouch!

Thankfully in Lightroom 2 beta the option to overwrite originals is turned off. If you attempt the same operation you will see this instead:

[click to view larger]

The text now reads “Do you wish to skip the existing files or rename the exported files to avoid collision? You can not choose to overwrite the existing files since some of them are the source files.” I’d love to see the same functionality added into the next Lightroom 1 dot release.

If you are reading this because you just learned this the hard way let me first express my condolences, then direct you to a third-party application that has the ability to export JPGs from your preview cache:

LRViewer

The quality of the copy you can get from the preview cache will be determined by your File Handling choices on the Catalog Settings dialog, but they quality is sure to be 100% better than nothing.  Here’s hoping you never need it.

As an example, I used the Mogrify plugin to export the photo below directly to my web server, and in the process add 2 borders, a graphical watermark, and pull the title from the IPTC and display it in the lower left corner. Cool!

A couple of plugin developers got together and extended this functionality even further by creating a plugin structure that allows multiple export plugins to work together in a single export. This plugin for a plugin was dubbed a “piglet” by developer Jeffrey Friedl. A great example is being able to use Tim Armes’ Mogrify piglet with Jeffrey’s Flickr plugin to export that same photo directly to my Flickr account while adding the same borders and watermark in the process.

So, aside from these examples Export plugins allow you to:

• export directly to a web server
• export directly to a photo-sharing site
• export information pulled from your Lightroom database in the form of a text file
• perform additional pixel manipulations
  • add text and/or graphical watermarks
  • add borders
  • apply sharpening
  • resize
  • convert to profile
  • and more!
• harness the muscle of other applications on export (such as Exiftool or ImageMagick)

Below you will find links to all export plugins that I am aware of (will update as new ones arrive on the scene):

• Adobe’s Export SDK home – download the SDK itself, and join the SDK discussion
• Flickr – export directly to your Flickr account
  
• iStockphoto – export to your iStock portfolio
  
• Picasa Web – export right to Picasa
  
• Smugmug – export to your Smugmug gallery
  
• Transporter – export a companion text file full of your photo’s metadata
  
• Zenfolio – export to your Zenfolio gallery

Did I miss any? Let me know!

1. Create watermark action in Photoshop
2. Turn action into a droplet and save in Lightroom’s Export Actions folder
3. Configure Lightroom’s Auto Import function so that images saved from the droplet are automatically imported
4. Select images in Lightroom that you want to watermark, click Export and select your droplet as the “After Export” action
5. Bring all the auto imported watermarked images into the web gallery
6. Upload to your web space

Pick up the September 2007 issue of Photoshop User magazine for the detailed steps!