Lightroomers!

Wow, it’s been one year since v 1.0 shipped! Lightroom has come along way in that time, and its future looks bright. Here’s to all that the next year will bring!

Here are some ways you can mark the occasion:

• Where Were You on 02-19-1990?
• Download some new Lightroom web galleries from The Turning Gate: TTG Shadowbox Gallery and TTG XML Auto Index
• Leave a workflow comment over at Lightroom Killer Tips

While there are a growing number of Lightroom blogs and podcasts offering excellent free video tutorials (which is great!), but you may be one of those people who just want to go through a soup-to-nuts video course on using Lightroom, well there are three sources I recommend checking out:

• Kelby Training - From the “fine, fine people who bring you Photoshop User Magazine”, Layers magazine, Photoshop User TV, Photoshop World, and the top selling books on Photoshop and Lightroom comes a subscription based video training offering that is out of this world. You can purchase either a monthly or yearly subscription (NAPP members get a discount) which gives you access to everything in their online arsenal, which is being added to all the time. At the time of this writing there is only one Lightroom course (Photoshop Lightroom Basic Training) from Matt Kloskowski, which is great for anyone looking to get up and running with Lightroom quickly (more are on the way). Don’t worry though, there is plenty of great Photoshop and Photography training to keep you busy while you wait. You can sample the first three videos from every course, so go check it out.
• Lynda.com - I had the great pleasure of meeting Chris Orwig when I worked the Lightroom track at Photoshop World in Vegas last year. Chris is a guy who is just as passionate about photography as he is about teaching, and it shows. He has two Lightroom titles on Lynda. The first is a Lightroom Essentials course which will not only teach you what you need to know to get started with Lightroom but will inspire you to step away from the computer and grab your camera, and the second is a follow up that covers the new features added in Lightroom 1.1. Lynda offers monthly and yearly subscriptions which puts their entire catalog at your disposal. You can also try-before-you-buy as each course offers some free videos to check out.
• Luminous Landscape - If you ever wanted to invite two Lightroom experts, who also happen to be top-notch photographers and print masters, over to your house for over 5 hours of training, then look no further than Michael Reichmann and Jeff Schewe. This training, in the form of 9 downloadable quicktime files, walks you through every aspect of the program. These guys know Lightroom inside and out. The benefit of downloading these files is that you don’t need to be online to watch them. They even provide iPod versions. The videos are well organized and populated with bookmarks to make it easy to skip around to the topics you want to hear about.

There is much to be gained from getting involved with an online community of folks who share a similar interest to your own. Not surprisingly there are a growing number of people who like to talk about their experiences with Lightroom. When you have a problem and are looking for fast help a forum populated with expert users is a great place to turn. There are 3 main Lightroom-centric forums that I participate in regularly. While there is certainly some overlap in membership each has its own unique flavor. Here are my favorites:

• Adobe’s User to User - Populated by folks who have been using Lightroom since the beta days this forum is a treasure trove of Lightroom history. This forum is pretty much all business, and it is a great place to go if you want to delve deeper into Lightroom’s workings or you need help with a problem. I can’t imagine there has been a Lightroom problem that hasn’t been raised (and usually solved or at least acknowledged) here before. Keep in mind that although this forum is housed on Adobe’s turf it is a “user to user” forum, so don’t go there looking for official Adobe Support (that is not to say the Lightroom Team doesn’t pop in from time to time). The forum software is a bit clumsy, but there is gold to be found in there if you are willing to look for it.
• Flickr Adobe Lightroom Group - If you are a Flickr user then you’ll want to join this group. Very friendly to new Lightroom users, and a very active group overall. Discussions range from problem solving to discussing techniques and the latest Lightroom news. The Flickr forum software makes the Adobe U2U forum look good, which is actually kinda scary. That said, if you are already on Flickr you’ll probably find this to be a group worth participating in. Just don’t ask about the group photo pool.
• Lightroom Forums - This aptly named group was spawned from the U2U forums so it is chock-full of Lightroom users, gurus, developers, authors, and even some Adobe staff. Very friendly to new Lightroom users, these folks practically answer your questions before you’ve posted them. Since it is simply a forum dedicated to Lightroom it provides all the benefits a dedicated forum can provide. More a labor of love than anything else you’ll be hard pressed to find a better group of Lightroom users waiting for you to pull up a chair. Filling in your signature with your system particulars before venturing out has been known to make the Moderators swoon.

As there are only 24 hours in the day (and several are reserved for eating) these are the only Lightroom forums I frequent. Are there any others that are free and open to all? I’d love to hear about them.

I don’t know how I’d get by without the Internet. There is such a wealth of information on any subject just waiting to be found. Lightroom is no exception. Like anything on the Internet sometimes it is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, so I’ve compilied a list of the top Lightroom-centric blogs I check on a regular basis:

• Lightroom Journal - If you are going to watch any blog you may as well keep an eye on the one from the team behind creating Lightroom. As it says on the site “Tips and advice straight from the Lightroom team.” This is not the most active Lightroom blog out there, but it contains need-to-know info that no Lightroom user should be without.
• Lightroom Killer Tips - A Lightroom blog from Matt Kloskowski (of NAPP fame). Matt is not only a guru for all things Adobe, but he writes in a very accessible style and is very tapped in to what Lightroom users want to know about. Aside from top-notch video tutorials you’ll find free templates/presets and essential Lightroom tips. Truly lives up to its name.
• Lightroom-News - With an A-list team of Editors, Contributing Editors and Contributors “dedicated to news and information about all things Lightroom” the content available here is of the highest caliber. Information is updated on a regular basis so plug that rss feed into your feedreader and don’t miss a post.
• George Jardine - Technically “George Jardine on Lightroom and Digital Photography”, George is Adobe’s Pro Photography Evangelist and has been blogging about Lightroom since it was in Beta. Subscribe to his podcast in iTunes so you don’t miss a post.
• Photoshop Insider - Scott Kelby’s blog is not exclusively about Lightroom, but as President of NAPP, editor and publisher of Photoshop User magazine, and top selling Photoshop and Lightroom author (to name but a few of this man’s accomplishments) his blog should be a frequent stop for anyone interested in getting the most out of Photoshop and Lightroom. Plus I think he’s as entertaining as he is eductional.
• O’Reilly’s Inside Lightroom - O’Reilly put together a great collection of Lightroom resources and topped it off with a blogging team of Lightroom professionals. Lot’s of content served up fresh. Active comment section on the blogs adds to the value of this offering.
• John Beardsworth - John is an photographer, author and IT consultant who is a frequent blogger covering a wide range of digital photography topics. He has a great insight into how to get the most out of your Lightroom experience and shares it freely.
• Photoshop Services - You’d be hard pressed to find someone as knowledgeable about Photoshop and Lightroom who is more helpful than Victoria Bampton. She’s the person I turn to with each release of Lightroom to find out what is new.
• Lightroom-Blog.com - This is Sean McCormack’s personal Lightroom blog (he’s also a contributor to Lightroom-News). Sean likes to dive down under Lightroom’s hood and see how to squeeze just a little bit more out of it. If you like to roll up your sleeves and tinker with Lightroom’s guts then this is the blog for you. Great stuff.

Do you have a favorite not covered here? Tell me about it I’d love to hear.

With the release of Lightroom 1.3 came the first SDK. While it only extends Export functionality it is a very powerful and welcome addition to the application.

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!

My “Under the Loupe” tutorial on using an export action to create a custom watermark for the web galleries is finally out in Photoshop User magazine (Sept 07, pg 84). Here’s the nutshell version:

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!

Are you working on JPG images by chance?

Since JPG files (as well as TIF and PSD) had a white balance value applied when the original file was rendered into that format (whether by your camera or via post-processing) you can no longer set an absolute white balance value. It was a mistake that the settings appeared for JPGs in Quick Develop of version 1.0, and they have since been removed in 1.1, and you will only see the relative adjustments of “Auto” and “Custom” (or leaving it “As Shot”).

The logic behind them was intended solely for Raw images.

Only with Raw images can you set an absolute white balance value because that file has not been processed yet. So, if you were processing Raw images you would see all the absolute settings.

If you have a layered PSD or TIFF in Lightroom that you want to edit in Photoshop, but you also want to keep the layers from being flattened then you need to choose “Edit Original” or “Edit a Copy” from the Edit in Photoshop dialog box.

You will see under each of those options that “Lightroom adjustments will not be visible”, which means that Lightroom adjustments can only be applied when the image is flattened.

To apply Lightroom adjustments you have to choose “Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments”, which of course will result in a flattened version of the image with the adjustments applied.

A number of people have reported problems installing their paper profiles on Vista. If you are having the same problem try running the EXE file in compatibility mode for XP:

- right-click the exe file
- choose Properties
- click the Compatibility tab
- check the “run this program in compatibility mode for” box
- choose Windows XP
- click OK
- install the profile

- launch Lightroom, go to the Print module, click the Profile drop-down, choose Other, and verify that the correct paper profile is now included.

If you are finding that imported images, or copies of images made after editing in Photoshop are mysteriously becoming overexposed automatically, then the first thing to check is to see if you are applying auto tone adjustments. Go to Edit > Preferences > Presets, and uncheck “Apply auto tone adjustments”.

If that was checked, now that you have unchecked it import some new images and see if that solved the problem.