Archive for March, 2010
Switching between old process and new process in Lightroom 3
Lightroom 3 is built around a new, improved demosaicing engine (the raw converter code that makes a full-resolution, full-colour image out of your raw file). It also includes the older conversion engine used in Lightroom 2 and earlier so to see the full power of Lightroom 3, you need to make sure you’re using what Adobe calls the 2010 process (that’s the new raw conversion engine) on each of your raw files. The old engine is referred to as the 2003 process. (In Lightroom 3 public beta 1, they were called process version 1 and process version 2—the new names are a definite improvement.) This is a per-image setting so you can choose which images use which process and can mix old and new in one catalogue.
How do you tell which process you’re using?
As of Lightroom 3 public beta 2, the main sign that you’re using the old (2003) process is the unmissable presence of an exclamation mark in the lower right of your image when you’re in the Develop module. The symbol appears next to any image that’s using the old engine and looks like this:
To switch to the 2010 process, just click that warning symbol. You’ll get the chance to review the before-and-after changes and to apply the changes to the whole filmstrip. Comparing the the changes side by side at 100% can be a useful way to understand the differences between old engine and new.
Above; the box you see when you click the exclamation mark in the Develop module
A warning about noise reduction and sharpening
In Lightroom 3 public beta 2, released today, local sharpening controls (brushes, gradients) and luminance noise reduction are both much more powerful than they were in Lightroom 2. You might find some settings for sharpening, negative sharpening and luminance noise reduction that you’d used previously to be way too high for the new versions so carefully review as you update your work.
To switch back to the 2003 process
To remind yourself of how a picture looked using the old demosaicing engine (aka process version 1 or the 2003 process), you can always switch back. In Lightroom’s Settings menu, go to Process, where you’ll see a choice between the 2003 version and the 2010 version. (The old process is labelled 2003 because Adobe Camera Raw—or ACR—dates back to that year. Even though Lightroom was only released in 2006 as a public beta, it shares code with ACR, which means that at some point, there will be a version of the ACR plugin that has offers this new raw conversion engine, too.)
Above: switching between processes using the Settings menu
Alternatively, you can now choose your process version from a new menu item in the Camera Calibration section of the Develop module (lower right).
Above: the new Process menu inside the Develop module’s Camera Calibration section
Use virtual copies and the compare function
When you begin to use Lightroom 3, it can be useful to make a virtual copy of a picture and use the old engine (2003 process) and the new side by side on the same image to get a feel for the difference between the two raw converters. For the full effect, choose a high-ISO image, with local sharpening applied. The second public beta now includes an option to view images side by side when you convert from the old process to the new but it can be useful to do it manually, particularly for images in which you’ve used many brushes. Compare results at 100% using the compare function (hit C in the grid, with both versions of the picture selected) and you should see a significant—and sometimes dramatic—difference in quality.
Why do some or all files use the old process version in Lightroom 3?
If Lightroom 3 can tell that you’ve done some work on a raw file in Lightroom 2 or a pre-v6 release of Adobe Camera Raw, it will keep using the 2003 process for that image so that the picture continues to look just as it did in Lightroom 2. That’ll happen if it sees an XMP sidecar file next to the raw file and can tell that the XMP file was created by Lightroom 2 or ACR 5.x or earlier.
What are the main differences between the 2003 process and the 2010 process?
The new 2010 process uses the new demosaicing engine in Lightroom 3, offering finer detail and better rendering of high-ISO work, among other things. Dramatically improved noise reduction, too, and much more powerful local sharpening controls. (Brushes, gradients.)
For an early and subtle example of the difference in quality between version one and version two with default settings, even at low ISO, see an earlier post on protecting fine colour detail in Lightroom 2. Towards the end, it contains some Lightroom 3 screen shots of the example image—there’s a clear difference in the way that colour noise reduction works.
Now that Lightroom 3 beta 2 is available and contains working luminance noise reduction, we’ll post more example files soon. Initial testing suggests very impressive NR results but it will take more time to be absolutely sure.
March 23rd, 2010 by Bahi
Lightroom 3 public beta 2 has been released
[Update: that was quick! Lightroom 3 public beta 2 is out and it looks good. Luminance noise reduction that—at first glance—seems to work extremely well and an easier way to switch between the old raw conversion engine and the new. I'll leave the rest of this post intact but it's now outdated, less than an hour after it was posted as a pointer to a rumour.]
The free Lightroom 3 public beta was released in 2009 and was a big hit, particularly among low-light shooters, but the beta is due to expire at the end of April. Could it be that there’s a new version on the way before the final release? Take a look at this thread at the (usually very useful) Lightroom forum over at the Luminous Landscape. Apparently, there was an announcement that even made it to DP Review before being pulled. Perhaps by the time you read this, it’ll actually be out. This is the Adobe page to check.
If there is another public beta on its way and if it offers a peek at the new luminance noise reduction that Adobe has been working on, it will be very welcome. We’re keen to see how the luminance NR compares with third-part solutions like Noiseware, Noise Ninja, Topaz Denoise and Neat Image.
March 18th, 2010 by Bahi
Which camera settings matter when you shoot raw?
Almost all DSLRs come with plenty of options governing aspects of image quality. They almost all affect JPEG output but which of those settings and options matter when you shoot raw? We’ll look at this briefly in this article and in more detail later.
Exposure settings matter, whether you shoot raw or JPEG
The exposure of a given scene will be determined by these settings:
- Shutter speed
- Aperture
- ISO setting
(The ISO setting in digital photography is not entirely straightforward and will perhaps get its own article. For now, we’re keeping things simple.)
As you’d expect, aperture, shutter speed and ISO setting all make a difference to the images that your camera records, whether you shoot raw or JPEG.
Secondary camera settings: do they affect raw files?
A DSLR’s menu system will offer control over other aspects of your image, whether you’ve told it you’re shooting raw or JPEG:
- Sharpness
- Contrast
- Saturation
- Colour mode (Adobe RGB, sRGB)
- White balance
Sometimes you’ll see picture controls that change many secondary settings together. For example, your camera might offer an option like “Vivid”, which sets saturation higher and might also affect contrast and/or colour mode. These controls might also change the way colour appears, including small shifts in hue, sometimes emulating certain types of film.
The questions
Which of these secondary settings, if any, affect your raw files? Which of them should you be concerned about when shooting raw? And, again assuming you shoot raw, do they affect any other aspect of your photography.
Before answering them and explaining the answers, let’s categorise everything inside a raw file as being one of two things.
A note about raw files
Simplifying somewhat, everything inside a raw file is either a measurement of the light falling on a part of the sensor or it’s a note about camera settings. You could say that it’s either data (the values for light on the sensor) or metadata.
Let’s say that you take a shot on a current 24-megapixel DSLR. Inside the resulting raw file will be roughly 24 million values representing the light that fell on the sensor during the exposure, one value for each sensor element, or sensel. We can consider all this stuff to be the data that’s eventually turned into an image in your raw converter.
The metadata is a record of things like the shutter speed you used, the aperture, the type of camera, the type of lens you used, the white balance and sharpness settings, which saturation you’d specified and so on. Lots and lots of stuff, only some of it documented publicly by the camera manufacturer.
Some answers
So which of the secondary settings listed above directly affect the data in your raw file?
The answer is: not a single one. Think of there being a note in the raw file that says: this photograph was shot with sharpness set to high and contrast to minimum, noise reduction set to zero and colour space set to Adobe RGB 1998; colour temperature was 5500K and the green-magenta bias was 30% magenta. Most raw converters, including Lightroom and Aperture, read the note and display large parts of your metadata but the only thing they use to influence their initial versions of your images is the white balance information. Everything else—including all the other secondary settings listed above—is ignored. Even the white balance setting is used only for the initial rendering.
Despite the presence of the metadata “note” inside your raw file, none of the 24 million values recorded by your 24-megapixel camera to represent the scene itself were directly affected by those secondary settings.
When you shoot JPEG, things are very different; each and every secondary setting above has a chance to affect each and every pixel of the JPEG. In the case of white balance or contrast, it is almost guaranteed to affect every pixel, often in a way that might limit the changes you can cleanly make later. That doesn’t mean JPEGs are bad or unusable, particularly if you’re in complete control of your light and white balance—it just means that the raw converter inside your camera is making decisions that it might be best to leave for later.
To be continued…
Although the secondary settings have no direct effect on the raw file, they do affect the histograms you see on the back of the camera. As a photographer, you might use those histograms to change the exposure settings (shutter speed, aperture, ISO) that you choose, perhaps as a result of exposure compensation that you dial in. The story isn’t over. We’ll revisit this topic soon.
And speaking of data and metadata…
The metadata
You can get all future articles by e-mail or RSS (both are free) and you can call us on (020) 3092 2907 to book your own Lightroom course or to book a support visit. Visit the main blog page here. Have fun shooting!
March 16th, 2010 by Bahi
Photoshop Elements 8 offer at Amazon UK
Update 12th April 2010: the price of Elements is now back to normal. The offer lasted till 11th April 2010 so over three weeks in total. Still very good value but the prices mentioned below are no longer available from Amazon directly . The article will stay up since it provides some detail on using Elements with Lightroom.
First, our apologies to the regular Photoshop users among you and to those of you outside Europe. You can skip the rest of this note.
We don’t plan to do this sort of thing often but we received e-mail today from Amazon UK mentioning that it is now listing Photoshop Elements 8 at less than £50 as of 16 March 2010. That price includes VAT and shipping. This is the boxed, retail DVD and by UK standards, that price is an absolute bargain. (US readers who are still reading will raise their eyebrows at that description but sadly, it’s true.) The list price is £75 and it routinely sells on Amazon for £65.
It comes as a Mac version
Compared with most of the newer image editors intended for casual and occasional use, Elements wins hands down. It now offers layers, full Adobe Camera Raw compatibility, adjustment layers, and layer masks (for adjustment layers). It even offers smart sharpening and a version of the context-aware scaling function that you find in the full Photoshop (attempting to keep people and buildings in proportion while you stretch the image).
Who’s it suitable for?
Photoshop Elements will suit you if you don’t need to do much retouching outside Lightroom or Aperture but do need to clone out a stray object or element or if you need to run third-party noise-reduction plugins or something else requiring Photoshop. It will also suit you if you previously outsourced most of your own post-processing (or provided your clients and editors with images that weren’t retouched) and are only now beginning to do more of it yourself. It’s an excellent, low-cost way of beginning your Photoshop journey.
Elements 8 compared to Photoshop CS4
For occasional use, Elements 8 has only three significant weaknesses compared with Photoshop 11 (CS4).
- It doesn’t allow you to do as much work on 16-bit files as the full version of Photoshop does
- It doesn’t offer any access to the LAB colour mode
- It doesn’t allow you to convert to CMYK.
(It’s also not a 64-bit application but neither is the full Mac version of Photoshop CS4.) Both LAB mode and the ability to work at 16-bit depth are useful but for many people who do most of their work (including local adjustments) in a raw converter like Lightroom or Aperture, these things might matter less than they once did.
LAB mode in Photoshop is very powerful but relatively few people use it today, particularly after recent additions to Photoshop’s functionality, offering the “fade to luminosity” function. (That’s not to say LAB isn’t useful, powerful or under-rated—it’s all those things and fans of LAB mode will be horrified, of course, to read all this. It’s just relatively unusual to see people actually use it today, now that editing in RGB is as powerful and capable as it now is.)
You’d convert to CMYK if you’re preparing press-ready work (for magazine or book adverts, say). Again, you’ll already know if you need it. If you ask nicely, many publications’ prepress folks will do the conversion from RGB to CMYK themselves if you provide them with tagged files that you produced in a colour managed workflow.
Working in 16-bit mode, particularly in a larger colour space like Adobe RGB (all things we will discuss in future articles) is a way to help preserve smoothness of tone and colour, among other things. It will help avoid banding and other colour artefacts. The banding and other issues are mostly likely to appear when you do lots of work to the contrast, saturation and exposure of part or all of an image, particularly in areas of the image the show smooth surfaces
If you have used Lightroom, Aperture or another raw converter to do most of the grunt-work, like exposure compensation, highlight recovery, tone, white balance, contrast, dodging and burning) on a raw file, you’ve done most the things that would cause problems with 8-bit files. Performing some further minor work (some cloning or healing in small areas) on an 8-bit file is not usually something to worry about.
In addition, if you’d like to use Photoshop to run a noise-reduction plug-in like Neat Image or Topaz Denoise, the plugin will usually work in 16-bit mode in Elements 8. If you intend to use layers to blend the post-NR image with the regular image, you need to convert down to 8 bits so the conversion after you’ve run the noise-reduction routine to minimise the effect. (Elements 8 opens and saves 16-bit TIFFs—it’s just that layers and some of its own built-in filters and functions don’t work in that mode. Luckily, the third-party NR plugins work fine.)
Lightroom integration with Elements 8
Above: setting up Lightroom to work with Elements 8 for work that will remain in 16-bit throughout.
Lightroom integration with Photoshop CS4 is deeper than with other image editors like Elements. However, Elements offers most of what you need: in Lightroom’s preferences, perform a one-time setup. You specify that Elements 8 is your image editor, you tell Lightroom which colour space to use when creating an export file and which format to and bit depth to work at. Once you’ve set it up once, you’ll have a keyboard shortcut (for example, command-option-E or ctrl-alt-E) to invoke Elements but you can also right-click an image inside Lightroom and edit in Elements that way. Because it’s set up, the bit depth, file type and colour space will be taken care of automatically after that.
Lightroom also allows you to set up Elements 8 in different ways (16-bit TIFF, ProPhoto, 8-bit TIFF sRGB) so that you get a choice of options for each image that you send to Elements: you would choose the most appropriate for the task at hand.
Above: examples of what you might see when you right-click an image in Lightroom having set up different ways of sending an image to Elements 8.
If you do work that requires you to shift to 8-bit mode, first switch to a smaller colour space. (ProPhoto RGB is not a sensible choice for 8-bit work. More on colour spaces another time.)
What you don’t get with Elements 8, compared with CS4, is the smart objects integration, the HDR-from-raw-files integration and the ability to create panoramas from your raw shots.
To run noise-reduction plugins
If you were using Photoshop Elements to run a noise-reduction filter like Neat Image or Topaz Denoise, you’d choose to work with 16-bit TIFFs in something like Adobe RGB space. Lightroom will create a TIFF that contains all your existing Lightroom edits and will send it to Elements. When you finish and save your work in Elements, you’ll see the edited file in Lightroom, next to the original. Lightroom will handle the 16-bit TIFF as it would any other file, allowing you to export JPEGs, print, etc.
We own and use both CS4 and Elements 8 (for which we paid a good deal more than £49!) here at Shoot Raw, just to make sure we keep up-to-date with both. We can recommend Elements 8 for photographers who don’t spend a huge amount of time doing advanced Photoshop work or for people beginning with Photoshop, who’d like to get familiar with the application.
One more thing: if you were to buy Elements at £49 and then upgrade to Photoshop CS4 today at the Adobe UK site, you’d end up saving £30 over the cost of just buying CS4 outright from Adobe. Though it’s impossible to say this with absolute certainty, that saving is likely to continue when CS5 is released.
Amazon UK is marking this is “for a limited time only”. No idea how long it’ll last. We’ll try to update or delete this note when the offer has gone.
Disclosures and disclaimers
We earn commission from Amazon UK if you click one of the links and check out and pay for a product within that shopping session. That’s nice but the commission (about £2.50 per copy of Elements that you pay for during your visit to Amazon from our links) clearly isn’t reason enough to plug the product. We’re recommending it because it’s good (as long as you understand its limitations—see above), because the sub-£50 price is an absolute bargain and because Amazon UK is a reputable seller. (On which subject, we’d recommend that you buy directly from Amazon rather than one of its resellers—look for “Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk “.)
The Mac version:
Below: the Windows version
Coming up
We’re going to start a series of articles looking at exactly which camera settings affect the data in your raw files when you work with Lightroom and how. We’ll be looking at the primary exposure controls—shutter speed, aperture, ISO—and secondary camera settings like saturation, sharpness, contrast and colour mode (meaning options like Adobe RGB and sRGB). Over the series, we’ll be giving you definitive answers and explaining the technical language.
If you were sent a link to this post, you can subscribe by e-mail or RSS to receive all future articles in full. It’s free.
March 12th, 2010 by Bahi
Week-end reading
A clutch of stuff from around the web: what photo buyers want from your web site, what technical tests don’t tell you, retouching before the age of Photoshop, some photography business resources and a piece about putting all the technical stuff into context. But first…
An example of why you should back up your stuff
Unlike many stories about the importance of backup, this one has a happy ending. Matt Kloskowski, of Lightroom Killer Tips, is teaching at Gulf Photo Plus in Dubai and found that a cloned copy of his MacBook drive, Fedex’d from the US, reached him just in time for him to be able to teach his first class after his internal drive failed. Read Matt’s story here and if you need to, you can remind yourself of our recommended Lightroom backup strategy.
Retouching didn’t start with Photoshop
This is one for younger photographers. Joerg Colberg over at Conscientious has a typically interesting article about retouching and improving negatives and prints—and we’re certainly not talking about scans here. Take a look. (If, like us, you’d rather stick with your Wacom tablet, we mentioned an excellent Photoshop book for photographers in this post a couple of days back.)
Photo business info from Photoshelter
Though it’s usually John Harrington or Dan Heller making the running in this area, it’s worth keeping up with Photoshelter’s information on running a photography business. They talk about SEO, workflow, licensing, selling and more. Obviously, they’re trying to sell you Photoshelter accounts (not a bad thing—we’ve used Photoshelter and might cover their services in a future article) but the information is good in its own right.
What photo buyers say they want to see on your web site
What people say they want isn’t always reliable—we know that.
There’s a Nikon story that says when the company surveyed its professional customers about an emerging technology called autofocus a couple of decades back, it learned that pros couldn’t care less about it. Hindsight reminds us that autofocus happened to be a bit slow and rubbish at the time. Perhaps it’s not surprising today, then, to learn that when other companies took the idea seriously and released decent autofocus systems, Nikon quickly lost a bushel or two of market share. The company had believed its survey results and hadn’t taken the idea of autofocus seriously enough. I don’t think the pros who answered the survey were lying: they really believed that they didn’t want autofocus and they just happened to be wrong.
Henry Ford is famously quoted as saying that if he’d asked his potential customers what they wanted, they’d have asked for a faster horse. You get the idea.
Now, with all that said, take a look at this result from a survey of photo buyers:
Above: an excerpt from the Photoshelter 2009 Buyers’ Survey.
That’s fairly representative of the surprises in store in the survey. If you’re reading this, you almost definitely have a web site for your work or are at least thinking of building one so look at this Photoshelter page about what photo buyers say they want from photographers’ web sites. The big surprise for me when I watched this last year was the general lack of love for big photos and the overwhelming demand from buyers for thumbnails of small photographs. That seems to run counter to the trend but then, new trends often don’t survey well, as the stories above suggest. (I share photo buyers’ loathing for auto-playing Flash sites, as it happens, particularly if they begin to play music without being asked.)
If the survey page whets your appetite, there’s also a presentation of the buyers’ survey results in an hour-long movie. Its glacial pace makes it a little frustrating at times but there is actually some very useful information in there. If you’re just about to build a site or overhaul one and you make sales online (or hope to), it’s definitely worth the hour spent.
What tests don’t tell you
There’s a very good article from the inestimable Ctein about what tests don’t tell you, published on Mike Johnston’s outstanding site The Online Photographer. Ctein provides an example of how banding (which you see often see in high-ISO work, especially when you push a low-light exposure) is rarely reflected in the noise measurements of digital cameras that you see online, even though it’s a form of noise. He uses it as just one example of how tests can be incomplete. The comments that follow the article are just as relevant, too.
Ctein is a wizard, famous for his dye transfer prints, among other things. Even his regular small inkjet prints (we have a couple in the form of some Christmas cards that he mailed to his supporters last year) are something special. Kodak once called him the world’s best printer and I can believe it.
And finally… putting all the technical stuff into context
Photographer David duChemin is the writer and photographer of a very warm, uplifting book called Within the Frame (Amazon US
Last week, David published on his blog a piece called Confessions of a So-Called Pro to help put all the technical stuff into context and remind us what’s really important about photography.
It’s well worth reading. Here’s an excerpt:
I often leave my ISO dangerously high. I get more email about why I shot something at ISO 800 than anything else and that tells me (a) I should get my act together and (b) y’all need to lighten up on the whole ISO issue.
Well said. David duChemin also publishes electronic books for $5 each and if you like his work, you’ll enjoy this audio interview (free) that he did with Ibarionex R Perello for The Candid Frame podcast. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to hear that Mr duChemin was once a standup comedian…
The usual blurb
You can get all our articles for free by e-mail or RSS. We run one-on-one Lightroom courses in London for professional photographers and serious amateurs, although in the light of David duChemin’s article, above, perhaps “serious” isn’t the right word…
Thanks to our friend Danny De Vylder, who sent us our copy of Within the Frame last year and introduced us to David’s work.
March 11th, 2010 by Bahi
Best Photoshop CS4 book for photographers
For many photographers, Lightroom is almost a complete solution
Up until some time in 2007, more and more photographers switching from film to digital photography were turning to Adobe Photoshop (sometimes used together with Adobe Bridge) to perform routine post-processing tasks. Simple changes to tone, contrast, white balance and exposure, and the usual dodging and burning—all were being done in a relatively cumbersome application designed for much more complex things. That situation is changing quickly, with many of you now doing that kind of work in Lightroom or Aperture. (There are now many digital photographers—even those who shoot raw—who don’t use Photoshop at all and that number will rise.) However, there are still some things that just can’t be done in Lightroom: if we need to adjust the colour of an object or part of an image, or need to add or remove small elements by some means other than cropping, it’s still Photoshop that we turn to.
Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers, by Martin Evening
You could probably fill a small shop with examples of all the weighty volumes on Photoshop but there’s one book we can recommend for photographers who’d like to get the best out of Photoshop CS4 for regular photographic post-processing work (rather than t-shirt design or the million-and-one other things that Photoshop is also used for). It carries a suitably no-nonsense title: Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers is by Martin Evening and is published by Focal Press. It’s written by a professional photographer for other photographers and it does the job very well. You can find it at Amazon UK
General approach
This isn’t a book of just screen shots, small captions and white space. It tells you exactly what you need to know for the detailed post-processing of your own digital photography and does so in words rather than just pictures, meaning that to enjoy the book, you need to be comfortable reading a fair amount of text. However, it doesn’t assume or require any previous Photoshop knowledge—it’s perfectly suited to someone starting from scratch.
Setup
Before getting into the use of Photoshop, Martin devotes a couple of chapters to the setup and configuration of the application and your computer. Two chapters might seem a little excessive but if you get CS4 set up correctly, the resulting performance improvements usually repay any time spent. It’s quite common to see Photoshop performing sluggishly on quite capable hardware, for want of some quick changes to its setup.
Martin Evening uses Lightroom
Martin Evening’s approach is well suited to Lightroom users; he makes it clear in the book that he has chosen to use Lightroom himself to manage his own work and he documents that approach quite well. (He even has a book on Lightroom—Amazon UK
Above: the Adobe Camera Raw plugin (included with Photoshop) being used to import a raw file into CS4. Same controls as Lightroom’s develop module, different interface
Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom
One chapter of Photoshop CS4 for Photographers is devoted to Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), which will seem familiar to Lightroom users, even those who haven’t yet used Photoshop CS4. Camera Raw’s code and functions are very similar to those of Lightroom’s Develop module, though its interface is very different. That matching code base allows very close integration between Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4— you can move Lightroom image edits intact into Photoshop and continue to be able to adjust them within CS4. For example, you could adjust for chromatic aberration even while correcting for something like lens distortion— just open the image in CS4 as a smart object from Lightroom. It’s worthwhile becoming familiar with ACR if you’re primarily a Lightroom user intending to dip into Photoshop—it deserves the chapter it gets in the book.
Good for reference but very readable
Evening’s book also provides a good basic grounding in colour management and it comes with a DVD that contains example files and a good collection of demonstration videos. It’s worth watching those before you start on the book itself. You’ll be equally comfortable dipping in for answers (there’s a decent index) or making your way through the whole book, step by step. You’ll finish knowing exactly how to work on photographs non-destructively in Photoshop CS4, doing the things that aren’t possible in Lightroom—particularly detailed healing & cloning, colour changes to areas of an image and the use of elements from different images. (You’ll learn how to make and quickly finesse selections and masks and how to use layers and adjustment layers to get that sort of work done.) And, of course, you’ll be able to integrate Photoshop CS4 into your Lightroom 2 workflow.
More about Martin Evening
You can find Martin’s work here. If it’s your kind of thing, you might be interested in watching this episode of George Jardine’s excellent podcast series that covered early versions of Lightroom.
Twentieth birthday for a game-changing product
There’s an interesting video of a discussion (18 minutes) between the Knoll brothers and two key Adobe employees, filmed this year, about the genesis of the application that Thomas Knoll wrote and how it became known as Photoshop.
Shoot Raw Store
We’ve added Martin’s book to our store for UK and European readers.
One-on-one training
If you’re more comfortable with face-to-face training, you’re in the right place. We’re taking bookings for March and April for our Lightroom courses in London. We have an offer available for emerging photographers who are currently turning professional or are thinking of doing so. There are still spots available for March!
March 6th, 2010 by Bahi
A note for e-mail subscribers
Many of you subscribe to Shoot Raw updates by e-mail but if you’re reading this in your inbox, it’s probably the first update you’ve had from us for some time. That’s because there was some invalid code in an article we published a few weeks ago about how to back up your Lightroom work.
The service that sends our articles out by e-mail is Google’s Feedburner, which (we now know) silently stops sending e-mail updates to subscribers when it hits a problem with invalid code in one of the articles it’s supposed to mail.
There were four articles that weren’t sent to e-mail subscribers, though they did make it to those of you who get the RSS or Atom feed:
- Migrating your library from Aperture to Lightroom or Lightroom to Aperture
- Some Shoot Raw updates
- Ten backup tips for Adobe Lightroom users
There’s one in particular that we’d like you to glance at, especially if you’ve been hoping to book some training but have been worried about cost:
Alternatively, you can just visit the blog and read them all there on a single page. From today, you should be getting your e-mail updates the usual way—when we publish an article, you’ll get it mailed to you in the morning. When we don’t publish anything, no e-mail is sent.
Several of you have subscribed since the problem began and will have experienced a resounding silence since you joined. If you’re new, welcome! You can expect more regular updates in the future. (Till the next time we break something…)
If you find the articles useful, please forward them on to anyone else whom you think might be interested. Thank you!
March 5th, 2010 by Bahi
Migrating your library from Aperture to Lightroom or Lightroom to Aperture
There is currently no way to move or migrate your raw files from Lightroom to Aperture or from Aperture to Lightroom without losing your edits.
That’s what most of you have been searching for but it’s not possible today. If Apple, Adobe or a third-party publisher provides this functionality, we’ll post something on it straight away and we’ll edit this page to point to the new article. (Subscribe for free via e-mail or RSS to get all our articles when they’re posted.)Possible in theory
It is theoretically possible for someone to write software to make the move easier. Both Lightroom and Aperture store all your edits as metadata. Any third-party conversion software would read and interpret the metadata in the database used by Lightroom 2 or Lightroom 3, or inside the XMP sidecar files; it would then translate that information, which describes all the edits you’ve made in Lightroom, and add it to the Aperture 3 database or vice versa if you’re travelling in the opposite direction. Your original raw files would remain untouched and in their current locations or would be relocated from an Aperture package.
One problem is that there’d have to be a lot of subjective decisions about interpretation, given the differences in camera profiles between the two applications, their different approaches to noise reduction, sharpening, highlight recovery and so on. It’s a difficult task and the market for such an application is quite small so the product is likely to be expensive. I hope one appears but would consider it unlikely.
Moving JPEG or TIFF renderings of your raw files
If you decide to export JPEGs or TIFFs, you probably need no further help—you can bake your changes into the files, export them and include the IPTC metadata. You can do this as well moving your raw files, using your JPEGs as guidance when reimplementing edits.
If you’ve decided to move the raw files
If you’ve decided to redo your all your edits as and when they’re needed, here’s what works and what doesn’t.
Migrating raw files from Aperture to Lightroom and vice versa
- Your keywords will travel between the applications if you choose to write XMP sidecar files or if, in Aperture, you select the pictures you’d like to export, choose File=> Export=> Master and then include the IPTC metadata, either as a sidecar file (strongly recommended) or written to the original raw file (definitely not recommended). See below.
- Ratings (star ratings, from zero to five stars) will also travel in XMP files if you’re moving to Lightroom but not if you’re moving from Lightroom to Aperture. (Apple’s somewhat unconvincing explanation of this is here. ) One workaround if you’re migrating to Aperture: in Lightroom, select all photos with a one star rating, add a keyword like “onestar”; select all photos with a two-star rating and add a keyword like “twostar”; repeat for all star ratings before saving XMP files. (See below for the XMP procedure.) After importing into Aperture, reverse the process: find all the images with the “onestar” keyword, assign them a star and so on. (C’mon, Apple, you can do better than this!) [Update: Apple's notes for the Aperture 3.0.3 update suggest that it should now be able to read ratings from XMP sidecar files. We haven't gone back to test this.]
- Edits… no. As above, you currently need to bake your changes into TIFF files or JPEGs if you’re desperate to keep your edits intact. Of course, you can always do both—move your raw files and export TIFF or JPEGs of certain images to sit alongside.
- Mapping of IPTC metadata can be tricky. Apple has an article on the subject here.
With these limitations in mind, here are some suggestions for moving your library from Aperture and Lightroom or Lightroom to Aperture with the appropriate options in place. Again, this is for moving raw files without edits but with keywords and other IPTC metadata.
Including metadata with raw files from Aperture 3
This screenshot from Aperture 3 shows the pop-up menu that includes the two relevant options. To get to this stage, choose File=> Export=> Master.
We’d recommend getting Aperture 3 to write the XMP sidecars, as shown in the screenshot above. In general, try to avoid any alterations to the raw files themselves whenever you can. (In the past, there have been examples of bugs in raw-conversion software that have caused difficulties with modified raw files; these difficulties didn’t show up for a long time. Whenever possible, leave the raw files untouched and write sidecars.)
Including metadata with raw files from Lightroom 2 or Lightroom 3
Exporting metadata from Lightroom is as simple as selecting your pictures and hitting command-S (ctrl-S on Windows) to write an XMP sidecar file for each image. Alternatively, when you’re viewing your grid (to get there, hit G), just select all your pictures and go to the Metadata menu. Choose:
Metadata=> Save Metadata to FIle
When this operation is complete, each raw file will have an XMP sidecar file next to it and Aperture will read these sidecars when you import the pictures. You can then import them into Aperture the way you’d import any new raw files and your keywords will be included. (Remember: Aperture will currently ignore your photo’s star ratings—see above for a workaround.)
One-on-one Lightroom workflow training in the UK
If you’re migrating from Aperture to Lightroom, we have a really great training offer on this month for our Lightroom courses in London and the South East. You get to save lots of time and trouble and master your workflow quickly, with expert tuition. See this page.
March 4th, 2010 by Bahi
Workflow courses in London based on Lightroom—March offer
March offer for emerging photographers and amateurs
For March 2010, we’re going to accept a maximum of four bookings for one-on-one workflow tuition from photographers who aren’t established professionals. For each of these four bookings in March, we will charge just £380 plus VAT for a complete two-day digital workflow and post-processing course. That price is for photographers based in London and it gets you a one-on-one training course, built for you and delivered at your premises. The training is based on Adobe LIghtroom and you can get an idea of an example course by looking at these notes, which were for a group course we put together earlier in the year.Let’s talk first—for free
Each course is tailored for you, after we speak over the phone, though the notes for the group course do give you an idea of typical content. The purpose of the first phone call is to prioritise topics. That helps us devote more time during the course to the things that matter most to you. We find out in advance what you’re struggling with or have questions about and we’ll focus on those areas. It could be the quality or the look of final images, print quality, exporting and sharing, the speed and efficiency of your post-processing, colour management, the ability to file and retrieve your work easily or something completely different. We’ll learn a lot during that first phone call and customise the course based on what you tell us. The phone call is free and there is no obligation to book a course after we’ve spoken. (We hope you do decide to book a course but we don’t hassle you if you don’t!) During the calls, we get to hear what photographers are struggling with; you get to talk to us and decide whether you think you’d want to take a two-day course with us. And if you go ahead, you’ll get a course that’s made for you.Where?
The courses can be held anywhere that you have access to your computer—usually your home or office. If you use a laptop, it could be any place where we can work quietly and without distractions. (For a very reasonable cost, we can arrange a small training room in central London.)Leave a week between the two training days
As always, we recommend leaving a one-week gap between day one (where there’ll probably be lots of information to digest) and day two, which is more advanced but is best completed when you feel comfortable with that first day’s training. Use what you’ve learned on day one for a week and become really familiar with it. You then get the most out of day two. So for a whole week, you’ll be using Lightroom on your own images and you’ll get plenty of practice with the new techniques and workflow. A week later, on day two of the course, you’ll get all your questions answered before we build on that knowledge to get into the advanced stuff. (During that first week, you’ll build up plenty of questions.)Who’s eligible?
How do we decide whether you’re an established professional and therefore not eligible for these prices? Well, if you’re making a living from your photography, you’re an established professional. If you’re a serious amateur thinking of turning pro, you (and three others) get these lower prices. Same with fine-art photographers who aren’t yet earning enough to rely on that income—you qualify.Collectives, clubs and groups
If you represent a group of photographers who might be interested in digital workflow training, we’d be delighted to offer you group training or one-to-one training for each photographer individually. We’d be happy to offer special rates to reflect the numbers. Get in touch and we can meet up for a chat first to discuss what exactly you’re looking for.So what about pricing for professional, full-time photographers?
We have good news for established professional photographers, too—we’ll be putting new standard prices on the site later this week. If we’ve spoken previously, visit the site on Friday and you’ll see new prices.Lightroom courses for photographers outside London?
If you’re outside London, the same rates apply but we’ll need to charge something towards travel. We don’t make money on travel (it’s charged at cost) and so far, have never needed to charge for travel time so drop us a line and we’ll happily work something out.Best before end 31 March
We’re going to run this offer during March and see what response we get—we won’t repeat it unless things go well this month. So if you’re interested in mastering those workflow and post-processing skills, now’s the time to book.Requirements
You need a computer running Adobe Lightroom 2 and ideally, a version of Photoshop or something similar. It helps to have your camera with you during the course and a good selection of your own images. Most of what we do is done within Lightroom but we do cover Photoshop integration. Healing, cloning and work that involves working on detailed selections is also best done in Photoshop, as well as panoramas and HDR work. Of course, how much time we spend on Photoshop is up to you—it’s your course. We’ll decide in advance what to aim for, during and after our phone conversation. We turn up with a laptop running Lightroom 2.6 and Photoshop CS4 but you will need your own system to work on—you need to be able to walk away with the environment we’ve set up and the work we’ve done so you can continue where we left off. Before we speak on the phone, try to list on paper all the reasons that you’re looking at post-processing training on Lightroom. Be sure to include things that you are finding particularly difficult, irritating or slow at the moment.Payment
We accept payment by cheque, PayPal or bank transfer. You pay half the total cost before the first day’s training, and the remaining half before the second day. You get a full VAT invoice. Before any of that, though, book your free phone call and decide if this is the right course for you. If you are unhappy with the course at any stage, write and tell us why and you get a full refund—no further questions asked.Next step
The next step is to let us know you’re interested and would like to arrange a phone call. We’ll suggest a few times, you pick one and we’ll call you. To get started, send an e-mail to develop@shootraw.co.uk with the subject “March Offer”. In the message, tell us what you’re looking for and how best to get hold of you and we’ll get in touch. (We never share our customers’ details with any other organisation.) If you’re among the first four people to qualify, you get to book your course this month—if not, we’ll put your name on a reserve list and we’ll arrange your booking in April.
Spread the word
If you know someone else who might be interested in a one-on-one Lightroom course this month, please pass on the link. You can copy this shortened version of the URL:
http://bit.ly/lightroom-london
Or click here to send the URL to a friend using your usual e-mail application. We appreciate your support—thank you!
March 1st, 2010 by Bahi
Some Shoot Raw updates
Digital workflow: new prices for Lightroom training courses in London
Shoot Raw has been around since November last year, offering digital workflow tuition and courses based on Adobe Lightroom. During that time, we’ve have noticed one consistent thing: serious amateurs who want to get better at post-processing workflow have been calling or writing to arrange one-on-one training and, so far, we’ve been too expensive for them. Well, we’ve taken the hint and we’re reworking our price structure. We’ll have some welcome announcements later this week, for both amateurs and pros. If you’ve been in touch with us previously for prices but haven’t been able to justify the cost of a course, drop by again on Wednesday. We’ll have offers for amateurs and professionals.
Four Corners Film
I did three days at Four Corners Film last week, teaching digital processing and workflow, based on Lightroom. The students were a great group, interested in different types and aspects of photography but working well together. I really enjoyed it and I hope they did, even though there was a lot of information to take in. Considering that this is the first time the course has been run, it has been really successful so far—the students have learned 35mm film photography, processing in the chemical darkroom, lighting and digital workflow and will go on to learn about marketing and to complete a project, finishing with an exhibition. I saw some really good work there, too. It’s a great opportunity and it’s the kind of course many self-taught photographer will benefit from.
PIN network for photographic businesses in London
Four Corners Film runs a professional development network for existing photographic businesses; both of us at Shoot Raw joined last year and have found it very useful. It’s free to join and is called the Photo-Imaging Network (PIN). You can find more details about it here. There are meet-ups, seminars on business skills, networking and marketing events and some really good talks (sometimes organised in conjunction with London Metropolitan University) from established artists. We’ve recently attended talks by fine artist John Goto,, commercial photographer Ray Massey and his son Jean-Michel, fine artist and portrait photographer Franklyn Rodgers, photographer Zoe Maxwell talking about her work as archive specialist at Autograph ABP and Anne Williams, course director of LCC’s MA Photography programme . If you’re a London based photographic business, visit the PIN page and get in touch with Four Corners to see if there are still places available. There was even a new bursary announced last week, offered exclusively to PIN, which will be awarded to one PIN photographer for a project about the East End.
The BJP—now monthly
By Internet standards, this is very old news because it was announced more than a week ago but the British Journal of Photography was just relaunched as a monthly and we’re really pleased to have secured a slot this month in their directory listings.
More on Wednesday…
March 23rd, 2010 by Bahi