Still some users choose to go to the effort of rolling their own Lightroom catalog backup solution instead. Why? There are many potential reasons but two that stood out for me were the amount of disk space the uncompressed backups consumed, and the awkward steps required to trigger a backup outside of your regular schedule.

My TPG LR Backup plugin was created to help resolve these backup limitations. It reduces the disk space consumed by Lightroom’s catalog backups. And now it can also help trigger those catalog backups whenever Lightroom 4 users need them!

With the introduction of Lightroom 4 my plugin can now schedule a catalog backup at the next shutdown, regardless of your regular backup schedule. In fact you don’t even need a backup schedule to use this new feature. Once the TPG LR Backup plugin is installed you simply open up the File –> Plug-in Extras menu and select the new Offer to Backup Catalog at Next Shutdown menu item. Once you OK the resultant dialog Lightroom will now show you the standard catalog backup dialog when you next exit Lightroom. Simple!

Currently the only other ways I know of to backup a Lightroom catalog on demand are to:

• temporarily change Lightroom’s catalog backup schedule to “Every time”, and then reset it to the normal schedule after you next restart Lightroom
• set Lightroom’s catalog backup schedule to “Every day” or “Every time” and cancel the backup dialog when you don’t need to run a backup
• copy the catalog file to a new location while Lightroom isn’t running

I know which approach I’d rather use to keep my Lightroom catalog safe!

This work by The Photo Geek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License

Easily backup your Lightroom 4 catalog on demand

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Personally I used to find it daunting to sit down to edit a largish photo shoot. Confidence in your critical judgement and editing process is something that doesn’t come easy to everyone and as with most things it takes practice to develop. When you shoot irregularly it can be difficult to build up that experience and a repeatable process you can be confident in. That is why I found this post on Chase Jarvis’s blog so intriguing.

I’m a mere mortal. I don’t have to deal with 15000 photo shoots, and it is rare I have any larger than 500. And the post isn’t the first article or book I’ve seen discussing volume photo rating and culling. But it did resonate with me for a number of reasons:

• it requires multiple passes over a shoot. Initially this felt inefficient but I’m seeing the wisdom of it now. It really helps develop a sense of the whole shoot while cutting down on the temptation to double back and second guess myself I experience when trying to use a single pass approach. Multiple passes help you gain confidence you are making the right choices and can be quicker in the long run.
• each pass through the shoot indicates a speed it should be performed at, not just the type of photo you are trying to eliminate during the pass. It helps remind me to spend less time agonising over the photos that never had a chance of making it anyway.
• the way Scott presented the process made it feel real and achievable. Sometimes a clinically described process makes sense but you trip over the details when trying to implement it. No such issues encountered here.

Scott uses Aperture when describing his photo editing process but I found it quite easy to implement using Lightroom. Some suggestions for those interested in trying it out:

• you might already (like me) be using stars as a permanent rating system for your photos. This isn’t a problem – you can use both rating schemes together! Pick a label colour and keep it just for your bulk photo editing process and use this new star rating system with that colour label only. When you have finished editing the shoot change the label applied to the photos and reset the star ratings to align with your permanent rating system. I recommend using the purple label colour, as it is the only label without a keyboard shortcut so is a perfect choice for setting as your initial, unprocessed colour label via an import preset.
• you might be tempted to use pick flags (pick, unflagged, rejected) and the Refine Photos command instead of stars. While this could work I’d suggest only trying it after you are thoroughly versed with the process and confident you can edit a complete shoot in a single session. If nothing else it would be difficult to remember which pass you were working on when you next open this shoot, and thus what the pick flag signifies in this pass.
• create a set of Library module filter presets to help you step through the process by hiding photos eliminated by previous passes. You can download mine to use as a starting point and update the criteria to match your environment. Install them by opening your Lightroom presets (preferences) folder and extracting the zip file’s contents into the Filter Presets sub-folder. These new filter presets will be visible after the next Lightroom restart.
• while you are still familiarising yourself with the process why not repurpose the panel end marker as a reminder? I first saw this technique applied by John Beardsworth (here and here) and figured this bulk editing process would be a perfect candidate for its own panel end mark. You can download mine here. Install it by right clicking on the current panel end mark, select Panel End Marks –> Go to Panel End Marks Folder, and extracting the zip file’s contents into the folder. You can then activate the panel end mark by right clicking on the current one, and selecting Panel End Marks –> FlourishCJBulkRate.png.

Photo editing your own work is not only a practical necessity, it is also a great learning tool. It helps you better understand what works for you,  and just as importantly what doesn’t, so you can hone your photographic awareness and take better photos. Critically thinking about your own work isn’t easy but I found this post on Chase Jarvis’s blog helped make the whole process much more approachable. Hopefully you will find my suggestions for adapting the process to Lightroom helpful and like me you’ll be able to tackle that backlog of photos building up on your computer!

This work by The Photo Geek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License

Photo Editing For Mere Mortals

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Those who do backup their systems might not be capturing everything they want to restore in the event of a failure.  Most Lightroom users who do backup would backup their photo files but not all will remember to backup their Lightroom catalogs, which contain all of the develop adjustments they have spent hours making while turning snapshots into masterpieces. Fewer still will remember to backup those templates and presets they have spent time collecting and creating, and the other program settings they have tweaked to their liking and help them efficiently execute their digital workflow.

The recent major update of my TPG LR Backup plugin (formerly Config Backup) can help make the backup of your catalog and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom configuration files painless, so you can work safe in the knowledge that your data is being safeguarded in case disaster strikes.

How I backup Lightroom

To backup my photos and Lightroom I use the following approach.  Your needs and environment may be a little different from mine so please treat this as a guide only and adjust the processes to suit your individual needs.

Pre-requisites

Before backing up Lightroom I use SyncBackSE to copy all image files to a separate system.  I’m not going to detail this aspect of my configuration because you can easily fill a book on this topic (and Peter Krogh already has – the highly recommended The DAM Book).  If you want to learn more about this I’d suggest starting with the Backup section of the dpBestflow.org site Peter contributed to. It not only explains the topic clearly (including videos) but also includes a number of example Backup System Configurations  to get you started.

Lightroom 2 and above includes a catalog backup feature.  I switch this on using the Edit –> Catalog Settings menu item and set it to backup my catalog weekly.  This ensures every time I start up (Lightroom 2) or shutdown (Lightroom 3) Lightroom checks whether it should create a new backup of the current catalog.

Plugin Configuration

Once I’ve enabled Lightroom catalog backups I then use features from my TPG LR Backup plugin to build upon this base level of protection. Installation instructions for the plugin are linked from the plugin’s home page so I won’t repeat them here. Please note the remainder of this post assumes you have registered the plugin to enable the automatic backup functionality.

Open the File –> Plug-In Extras –> Configure Automatic Backups menu item to show the following dialog:

The From folder needs to match the folder where you configured Lightroom to write its catalog backups.  The To folders indicate where you want the configuration and compressed catalog backups to be written. These can point to different locations but I prefer to write both types of backups to a single Lightroom backup folder.

TIP: If you use more than one Lightroom catalog consider using the Edit –> Catalog Settings menu item to configure all of your catalogs to write their backups to the same folder. This will allow the plugin to compress all of your catalog backups regardless of which catalog you have open when you start Lightroom.

I set the configuration to be backed up once per week, and the catalog backups (created by Lightroom’s inbuilt backup feature) to be compressed whenever they are found. The latter is particularly important because catalog backup files can be quite large and can quickly overrun your disk space. Compressing the backup files typically results in an ~90% size reduction so you can afford to keep more backups than you would otherwise.

It is recommended that your configuration and compressed catalog backups be stored on a separate hard drive from your Lightroom catalog and configuration files. Doing so will help increase your chances of recovering from a disaster. If your hard drive fails, backups will do you no good if both they and your Lightroom catalogs are stored on the failed drive.

Once you have configured your automatic backups press OK to save the settings, and it is best to restart Lightroom as soon as possible to test that everything works as expected. If this is the first time you have enabled automatic backups they will also run at next startup (regardless of the selected backup timing) to confirm you have configured your backups correctly.

Plugin Operation

If you are a Lightroom 3 user and have just setup catalog backups then you should see the following dialog when you exit Lightroom.  Make sure the backup folder matches the folder configured for your automatic backups then select the Backup button.  Lightroom will then take a few moments to copy your catalog and add it to the selected folder.

If you’ve used the settings suggested in the previous section then next time Lightroom starts you should see the following appear at the top of your Lightroom workspace. You may need to open the top panel of the Library module to see it.  This progress bar lets you know that TPG LR Backup plugin is executing your backups in the background while you continue working on your images.  Once this step has completed you will have a new zip file in your backup folder for each type of backup that was scheduled to run.

If you ever want to know when your last backup occurred just open up either of the plugin’s menu items and you will be able to see the most recent backup events at the bottom of the dialog.

Feedback

I hope this post has given you some ideas on how to setup your own Lightroom backups. Please let me know via the comments if there is anything other part of my backup regime you would like me to expand upon.

This work by The Photo Geek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License

Quick and easy way to back up Lightroom

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The Lightroom 3 beta is taking a step in the right direction with its new Publish Services.  The included Flickr plugin will synchronise ratings and comments back to your catalog but only time will tell if this capability will support retrieval of individual client selections from Publish Services.  In the meantime Lightroom 2 users can make use of web galleries to achieve a similar outcome.

Matt at The Turning Gate has developed a number of web galleries, including TTG Client Response Gallery, TTG Highslide Gallery and TTG Highslide Gallery Pro, that can help Lightroom publish self-contained web sites that automatically email a client’s selects.  Articles and tutorials regarding web gallery usage are available on Matt’s site so I won’t repeat that information here.  These galleries cover part of the workflow gap – allowing clients to inform you of selects – and my TTG Client script addresses the remainder by converting the response emails into Smart Collections ready for import into Lightroom.

New TTG Client Script features

I first published this script as part of my Working with a Wedding Client’s Photo Selects in Lightroom 2 post last year.  This revision provides the following functionality improvements over the original version.  Usage of the script remains unchanged and is described on the TTG Client script homepage.

Support for TTG Highslide Galleries

Over the past year Matt has released new Highslide galleries that can email client selects to the photographer.  The TTG Client script now supports client select emails from these galleries.

Workaround for Lightroom 2 (LR2) bug when hyphens (-) are used in filenames

LR2 has a minor bug that means it quietly renames files to replace hyphens (-) with underscores (_) when producing web galleries.  While the gallery itself will work fine it makes it difficult to match the client selects back to the original file names in your Lightroom catalog.  The Turning Gate recommends file naming conventions to avoid this issue but this could require renaming of files imported before you started using these galleries.  This new release of TTG Client script allows you to continue with your current file naming scheme and instead treats every underscore as a search wild card so the Smart Collections can locate the selects.

This work by The Photo Geek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License

Capturing your Client’s Selections in Lightroom

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Update: A newer version of this plugin is now available. 
Please visit the Elemental plugin page to download the latest version, and find the latest documentation for the plugin.

Lightroom’s non-destructive editing capabilities support most of my digital photography workflow needs.  I rarely need to resort to external tools to edit my photos, but rarely is not quite the same as never.  There will always be some situations where Lightroom needs a little help.  For me stitching together panoramas, correcting lens distortion and correcting perspective issues are the main culprits.

Before Lightroom I was a Photoshop Elements (PSE) 6 user.  I had been hoping to completely migrate away from it and remove it from my system, but I still keep it around as an external editor to pair with Lightroom.  I’d love to be able to splash out and use Photoshop instead but as I’m only a hobbyist I simply can’t afford it.  An upsell version (from PSE) of Photoshop CS4 would cost me over $1200 AUD at the Adobe store.  That’s a lot of money for a piece of software I would rarely need to use, especially when my couple year old version of PSE does everything I really need at a fraction of the price.  My photography would benefit more from me investing that cash in a brand new Nikon DSLR camera body, lens or flash than a software upgrade.

One of the things I’m missing by not using Photoshop is tighter integration between my external editor and Lightroom itself.  The Lightroom Photo->Edit In menu contains a number of entries (see above) that allow you to work with files in Photoshop CS3 (or later), launching directly into the desired feature without having to render those files first.  This would not only speed up my editing process but also reduce the need to waste CPU cycles rendering files that will only be discarded later anyway.  With Photoshop Elements my only option is to use the standard external editor feature which doesn’t allow me to launch directly into the PSE feature I’m planning to use.

My new Elemental plugin resolves these issues.  It adds 5 new menu items to the File –> Plug-in Extras and Library –> Plug-In Extras menus, emulating the integration available to users of the full Photoshop product.  This includes letting the user select photos and launch them directly into the Photomerge dialog, or open them as Smart Objects (a feature Adobe doesn’t advertise is available in PSE).  It even adds some new options for good measure, namely Remove Lens Distortion and the ability to directly Open in PSE.  And it does this all while avoiding the Camera Raw dialog which should be redundant given your Develop module edits in Lightroom.  The only feature I couldn’t reproduce was Merge to HDR in Photoshop because PSE does not have a matching feature.  By all reports the HDR generated by Photoshop was of limited usefulness so I doubt many would miss it anyway.

Usage

When you first try to use one of these menu options the plugin will attempt to locate your installation of Photoshop Elements.  If you have used the default install location the plugin shouldn’t require any configuration.  If it can’t find PSE then it will open a dialog asking you to locate the PSE editor before you continue.

There are also a few other dialogs you may see during regular operation.

First is a reminder to save your files before opening in PSE.  Saving your metadata (Ctrl + S, or Cmd + S) writes the Lightroom edits to the photo or XMP sidecar making them available to other applications.  If you don’t save your files first PSE will show the initial, unedited image which is unlikely to be what you intended.  Once you’ve gotten into the habit of saving before opening you can configure the warning to not show again.

Next is a warning that displays if one of the selected photos is a virtual copy.  Virtual copies do not have a dedicated, matching image file so you can’t save the metadata to the file or sidecar and they can’t be opened in PSE.  For virtual copies you will be given the option of opening the master file instead, or ignoring the virtual copies entirely.  Once again the dialog can be set to not show again if you have a preferred option you will always use whenever virtual copies are selected.

The last dialog is one you will only see if you use the plugin for more than 3 weeks and it will only show once.  Its a “buy me a beer” donation request.  I’ve put a fair amount of work into this plugin (including learning a new programming language) to make Photoshop Elements do things its not supposed to be able to do, and to work not only on Windows but also the Mac platform.  I’m hoping you will find my plugin useful enough that you would consider saying thanks in a liquid fashion.  If you are extra keen you don’t even have to wait for the 3 week reminder.  You can donate (and update the configuration) at any time by opening the Elemental entry in File –> Plugin Manager dialog.

I hope you find this plugin useful and as always please leave comments below if you have any feedback you would like to offer.  I’d also like to send out a big thank you to Mark over at Rusticolus Images who quite patiently tested the plugin on OSX and helped me iron out a number of rather large kinks on that platform!

This work by The Photo Geek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License

New Plugin Brings Lightroom and Photoshop Elements Together At Last

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Accelerator Usage

If you look closely at the screenshot above you will notice an underlined character in each menu item.  Specifically the s character in Plug-in Extras, the B character in Customisable Configuration Backups, and the 1 character in 1-Click Configuration Backup.  These are known as accelerators and are a standard Windows feature to allow the use of your keyboard to navigate menus.  For Mac users I’ve been receiving mixed messages as to whether this feature can be directly applied on your platform.  An alternate approach compatible with your operating system is listed at the end of the post.

To use the accelerators provided above you would press:

1. Alt + F to open the File menu
2. S to open the Plug-in Extras sub menu
3. 1 to execute the 1-Click Configuration Backup

And so on. This might seem convoluted but your average keyboard shortcut junkie can slam those keypresses into the machine pretty quickly  If the menu item is something you need to call pretty regularly (say a Photomatix HDR menu item) this time can start to add up.

Setting Up Accelerators

Adding the accelerators to Lightroom takes advantage of Lightroom’s existing localisation capabilities. 

1) Locate your resources directory

You will need to create or update your TranslatedStrings.txt configuration file.  This is found in the resources directory found at the following location:

<Program Installation Directory>\Resources\<language code>

For example on my English localised Windows XP system this translates to:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2\Resources\en

Other language codes are fr and de for French and German respectively.

2) Create or update your TranslatedStrings.txt file

If you are using the English version of Lightroom your resources directory is unlikely to contain a TranslatedStrings.txt file.  In this case you can simply copy this file into the directory. 

If your directory does contain a TranslatedStrings.txt file:

1. Open TranslatedStrings.txt in a text file editor
2. Search for the string “AgSdkMenus/Menu/PluginExtras”
3. If the string does exist, add an ampersand (&) into the text following the equals (=) sign.  This should be placed immediately before the character you want to be the accelerator.  e.g.
   "$$$/AgSdkMenus/Menu/PluginExtras=Plug-in Extras" would become "$$$/AgSdkMenus/Menu/PluginExtras=Plug-in Extra&s" to make s the accelerator character
4. If the string does not exist, add the following line to the file:
   "$$$/AgSdkMenus/Menu/PluginExtras=Plug-in Extra&s" 

French and German speakers should translate the value after the equals (=) sign so it makes sense to you. Just be sure to include an ampersand (&) to mark the character to become the accelerator key.

3) Accelerator enable the plugin

Plugin developers can accelerator enable their menu items using code similar to the following in their Info.lua file:

LrExportMenuItems = {
    {
        title = "Customisable Configuration &Backups",
        file = "ManageBackup.lua",
    },

Please note the only difference between this and your average menu item definition is the single ampersand character. 

If you are trying to accelerator enable a third party plugin things get a little trickier.  If the plugin is open sourced you can directly modify the Info.lua file in the manner mentioned above.  Reload the plugin after the change and the accelerator will be enabled.  If the plugin is compiled you can’t modify the file directly.  If the plugin is localised (i.e. you will see $$$ strings in the Info.lua file after opening it in a text editor) then you can add a new line to the TranslatedStrings.txt file to override that value and add the accelerator.  Unfortunately the Photomatix Pro plugin is not localised otherwise I would add that as an example here.

Mac OS X Alternative

Mac OS X includes a facility to create keyboard shortcuts for any menu item in any program.  Details are available here.  Once you enable the keyboard shortcut capabilities you can try using Ctrl-F2 (Focus on Menu Bar), arrow keys and the accelerator keys above to access your plugin menu items. 

If you still can’t take advantage of the accelerators then consider adding a shortcut directly to the feature in question. 

1. As mentioned in the article above you control these settings in System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts. 
2. Once there press the "+" button to add a new keyboard shortcut. 
3. Choose which application it applies to (Lightroom) then enter the exact name of the menu item. 
4. Enter the keyboard shortcut you want to use and you should now have direct keyboard access to the menu item!

Closing Remarks

I hope you find this useful and please leave a comment if you wish to share your experiences.  I’m particularly interested to hear if any Mac users can access the accelerators via the Ctrl-F2 key combination, and if any other developers choose to accelerator enable their plugins.

This work by The Photo Geek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License

Accelerate Access to Lightroom Plugin Extras

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Update: A newer version of this plugin is now available. 
Please visit the LR Backup plugin page (formerly Config Backup) to download the latest version, and find the latest documentation for the plugin.

It is vital that every Adobe Photoshop Lightroom user backup their catalog and configuration files.  If you don’t and your catalog gets corrupted, the results of all the time and effort you invested retouching your photos disappears.  While you can use the “Automatically write changes into XMP” setting to work around the catalog corruption issue you will suffer a performance penalty for enabling it.  Most find its easier to use Lightroom’s built in capability to regularly backup your catalog.

One obvious downside of backing up is the increased consumption of disk.  For example my backups for a ~10000 photo catalog are around 220Mb each.  Multiply that by 52 backups a year and 11Gb of my laptop’s limited disk capacity is spent on something I’ll hopefully never need to use.  Compressing each backup is an effective way to combat this, and in my experience catalogs zip to approximately 10% of their original size, but it is yet another task you need to undertake to keep disk space under control.

I’ve developed a backup plugin to help speed up and simplify backing up and compressing Lightroom files.  It adds two new menu items to the File menu’s Plug-in Extras sub-menu.

1. Customisable Configuration Backups – Allows you to customise and manually trigger the backup and compression processes
2. 1-Click Configuration Backup – Immediately backs up the Lightroom Preferences File and Catalog backups using your previously configured settings, and optionally displays the results of the backup process.

The Customisable Configuration Backups menu item calls up the dialog shown to the left.  It allows you to specify where preference file backups should be stored, displays summary details of backups currently found at that location, and to request a new backup be created.

The catalog compression section assumes you are using Lightroom’s inbuilt capability to create catalog backups.  You supply the details of where Lightroom stores those backups, choose a location for the compressed version of those backups, and then request the backups be compressed.  All backups will be compressed into separate zip files named after the catalog and date/time of the backup.  You can also choose to move, rather than copy, the backups into the zip files once you are comfortable everything is working properly.

The 1-Click Configuration Backup menu item automatically backs up the preferences file and compresses all catalog backups using the preferences last used in the Customisable Configuration Backups dialog.  It optionally displays the results using a cutdown version of the main dialog.  If you wish to enable or disable the displaying of the results dialog use the “Show Results After 1-Click Backup” option at the bottom of either the Customisable or 1-Click dialogs.

I hope you find this plugin useful and please feel free to share your experiences or suggestions in the comments section below.   A big thank you goes out to Sean over at the Lightroom Blog for testing the plugin to ensure it was Mac compatible.

This work by The Photo Geek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License

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There have been free alternatives available for some time now but they weren’t that easy to locate or use and had to rely on approaches (e.g. WIA) that couldn’t take full advantage of all of the camera’s capabilities.  Nikon’s public release of newer SDKs redresses that and has spurred developers to produce more sophisticated alternatives.  These may finally bring tethered shooting to the Nikon masses.

Why Shoot Tethered?

Photographers use tethering for two main reasons:

1. Image Review and Workflow – Shooting while tethered provides immediate feedback about your work on a larger screen, making it easier to review and adjust your approach mid shoot and let the “keepers” enter your digital workflow more quickly.  (More detail)
2. Remote Control – Previewing, configuring and triggering your camera remotely can be extremely helpful when doing product, macro, time lapse or self portraiture photography.

The feature set for free tethered shooting software has traditionally focused upon the needs of “Image Review and Workflow” users.  The new Nikon SDKs allow better support for “Remote Control” users, especially with the introduction of Live View.

Selecting Your Software

The most appropriate tethering software for you will be dependent upon a number of factors:

• User Type – Are you using tethering for “Image Review and Workflow” or “Remote Control” purposes?  The latter user type has fewer options to chose from and may need to resort to commercial options to meet all of their needs.
• Camera – Cameras released prior to the D80 are unlikely to be supported by the more sophisticated, free tethering alternatives.  SDKs for older models must exist but Nikon have only released SDKs product July 2007 or later (at the time of writing, this includes the D3, D3x , D40, D60, D80, D90, D200, D300, and D700). 
• Operating System – Few tethering software vendors support both the Windows and Mac platforms.  Only one Linux option appeared in my brief search on the topic.
• Budget

I had access to Windows XP and a Nikon D70S while preparing this post.  As such I was unable to test Mac and Linux specific software or perform in depth testing of programs utilising the Nikon SDKs.  Also some software has been released in German only and could not be reviewed. 

The material below focuses upon the free alternatives available, and has split the free choices into separate “with Extensive Camera Support” and “with Modern Camera Support” categories.  Commentary about my experiences is included when I’m able to test the software.  Where I can’t test software directly I’ve included links to relevant publicly available data.  This can be used as a starting point if you wish to conduct your own investigation into application suitability for your needs.

A list of commercial alternatives has been included for completeness.  Limited detail is provided and I suggest readers use the vendor websites to gain a better understanding of the vendor’s solution.

My Picks

Keeping in mind that I tether for “Image Review and Workflow” purposes and use a Nikon D70S and Windows XP, my top picks are:

1. DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control – it works, and has the widest feature set of any non-Nikon SDK tethering software on Windows
2. Loligo Tether – visually more appealing but had reliability issues during testing

If I upgraded my camera body to something a little more modern my list would become:

1. DCamCapture – use of Nikon SDK should result in more robust and fully featured connectivity with the camera
2. DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control – it works, and has the widest feature set of any non-Nikon SDK tethering software on Windows

Mac users should definitely look into Stefan Hafeneger’s Sofortbild application.  The feature set is impressive and I wish that DCamCapture’s feature set was as rich!  If you use both a Mac and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2, or require support for older cameras, then StudioTether would be preferable.  While Sofortbild has more advanced features than StudioTether many of them would become redundant when added into a Lightroom-based workflow.

gPhoto2 was the only option I found for Linux users though I’m sure there are more available.  See this post for details.

Good luck with your adventures with tethered shooting, and please share your experiences with us in the comments section below.

Free Software with Extensive Camera Support

Tethering software in this section uses the underlying Picture Transfer Protocol, rather than Nikon’s published SDKs, to talk to your camera.  This provides wider compatibility at the expense of supporting more advanced camera features such as Live View. 

Two options were tested to confirm whether they could meet my needs, with the results outlined below.  An overview of all options (including those I couldn’t test) is included at the end of the section.

DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control

DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control is a hosted script using WIA over a PTP link to interact with your camera.  It provides features for both Image Review and Remote Control users.  It is designed to solely manage the link to the camera, with more advanced workflow tasks being left for the user’s preferred viewer/workflow tool.  Personally I prefer this approach because there are plenty of viewers and workflow tools to choose from and I’d rather the author focus on getting the tethering right.

The interface was a little slow on the initial connection – times of more than 2 minutes were common – but this seems to be a common complaint with WIA based applications.  So be patient and give the application time to connect.  The hosted script development approach means you may see the odd script error message pop up and be asked whether to continue running scripts on the page.  In practice the program seemed to recover and continue performing its duties if you selected “Yes” to continue running scripts. 

There was one repeatable (and long standing) issue that will impact Remote Control type users.  When you use the “Shutter Release” and “Download Immediately” features together the image capture format is swapped.  e.g. select JPG and “Download Immediately”, click the “Shutter Release” button, and an NEF format file will be transferred to your computer.  Strange, but once you know the issue is there you can easily work around it.

Despite my concerns with the hosted scripting development approach, this was the only program I could get to consistently work with my Nikon D70S for tethered shooting.  I’d recommend trying this program first if you have a camera not supported by the Nikon SDKs.

Loligo Tether

Download Here 

Loligo Tether is a .Net framework application using WIA over a PTP link to interact with your camera.  

It is designed for Image Review type users.  It includes some basic image viewing capabilities but for best results should be combined with a dedicated viewing or workflow application.

I had high hopes for this application and was planning to use it in preference to DIYPhotoBits.com Camera Control.  Unfortunately there was one minor issue that got in the way: I couldn’t get it to consistently work with my camera when using either my camera or the program to trigger the shutter.  To be fair to the author they did describe this as an alpha release so my expectations were unrealistic.  This problem may be specific to my environment so you might want to test it yourself.  I will keep an eye on the application’s progress but until reliability improves it is hard to recommend this for general use. 

All Options Considered in Free Software with Extensive Camera Support Category

Free Software with Modern Camera Support

Tethering software in this section uses Nikon’s published SDKs, rather than the underlying Picture Transfer Protocol, to talk to your camera.  This provides simpler access to more advanced camera features (e.g. Live View) at the expense of camera support.  At the time of writing Nikon’s SDKs support the D3, D3x , D40, D60, D80, D90, D200, D300, and D700 only.

An option was tested to confirm whether it could be used for cameras that weren’t officially supported, with the result outlined below.  An overview of all options (including those I couldn’t test) is included at the end of the section.

DCamCapture

Download Here

DCamCapture is an application developed using the SDKs Nikon began releasing last year.  This allows access to more sophisticated functionality than the previously mentioned applications (e.g. Live View) at the expense of supporting older cameras.  Nikon’s D80 is the oldest camera model for which an SDK is publicly available.  For me personally this means I’m unable to test this application as I own a Nikon D70S and the software refuses to connect to that model.

DCamCapture provides features for both Image Review and Remote Control users.  While it does support Live View and provides an IPTC editor I’d still suggest teaming the application with a dedicated image viewer/workflow tool for best results.  From the current documentation it is difficult to know exactly how many of the exposure setting controls are available when trying to remotely control a camera.

I can’t comment on the application usability as I don’t have access to a newer camera to test with.  Digital Photography Tips and Techniques has reported some usability issues but it is unclear whether these issues are model specific, so its worth conducting your own testing in case it is model specific or they have released another update since then.   To be fair to the author they did describe this as an alpha release so we should set our expectations accordingly.

All Options Considered in Free Software with Modern Camera Support Category

Commercial Software

All options listed in this section are commercial software.  Please refer to the software websites to confirm whether the feature sets are compatible with your requirements.  Most provide trial versions so you can properly test the product before having to part with any money..

Name	Compatibility	Suitable For	Comments
TetherPro $49.95 Current Version: Unknown	Camera(s): All OS: W2K, XP, Vista	Image Review, Remote Control	* Remote Camera Control – Adjust Camera Settings via your PC * Intelligent rules giving Complete Control over your image files * Automatic Image Backup for Safety * Adobe Compatible Image Tagging (Rating and Colour coding) * Automatic Printing of images and Proof Sheets
NKRemote $95 Current Version: v1.0.3	Camera(s): D90, D300, D700, D3 or D200 OS: Win XP, Vista	Image Review, Remote Control	* Display live images on the PC screen* * Auto focus and manually control focus from a PC* * Run a Photobooth: automatically take a sequence of photos and print them out * Sophisticated control for time lapse photography * Preview images in black and white or color
Camera Control 2 $153 Current Version: v2.5	Camera(s): D3X, D3, D2X, D2Hs, D2H, D2Xs, D700, D300, D200, D100, D90, D80, D70s, D70, D60, D50, D40X, D40, D5000 OS: W2K, XP, Vista, Mac OS X 10.3.9/ 10.4.11/ 10.5.1	Image Review, Remote Control	* Picture Control Utility: In certain Nikon digital SLRs such as the D3, D700, D300 and D90 customized image adjustment, including tone compensation curve data, can be saved to tailor the camera’s behavior to the photographer’s vision, improving efficiency when using multiple cameras at the same time. * LiveView support: Live previews direct from the camera are supported on the D3, D700, D300 and D90 when this feature is enabled. See what you are about to shoot! * Compatible with WiFi operation: In addition to supporting USB cable connections, Camera Control Pro offers compatibility with the optional wireless transmitter models WT-2a, WT-3a and WT-4a. When attached to a digital SLR, the WT-2a, WT-3a and WT-4a enable remote shooting and setting via a wireless LAN over WiFi. * Compatible with Nikon’s Image Authentication Function: Image data can be transferred and stored without affecting the authentication function.

(via DIYPhotoBits, NikonRumors and Digital Photography Tips and Techniques)

This work by The Photo Geek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License

Choosing Tethered Shooting Software for Nikon DSLR Cameras

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Update: A newer version of this plugin is now available. 
Please visit the Metadata Panels plugin page to download the latest version, and find the latest documentation for the plugin.

My Metadata Tagset plugin for Lightroom 2 has been updated.  The new version contains additional tagsets to help document the metadata fields available, including a number of those available in popular third party plugins.

The plugin now includes six additional tagsets for use in the Library module:

For those interested in writing their own tagsets, the ‘LR: All’, ‘Miscellaneous Plugin’ and ‘Undocumented’ tagsets are the most useful for documentation purposes.  Even if you shy away from using undocumented features it is worth reading the last section of the ‘Undocumented’ tagset because it demonstrates some of the ways to control tagset field formatting.  Please note ‘LR: SDK’ is not particularly useful at the moment, other than to demonstrate SDK documentation issues which I’m currently discussing with the Adobe developers.

With this release I now have all of the main features I need for my own purposes, and have provided sample code for everything I’ve found out about tagset metadata fields and formatting techniques.  Please leave a comment if you have suggestions for other features that should be added.

Installation

1. Download the plugin: Latest Metadata Tagsets zip
2. Copy the file where you want the plugin to permanently reside, then unzip the file.  This should create a sub-directory called metadata-tagsets.lrplugin.
3. Open Lightroom 2, then select the File\Plugin Manager menu option.
4. Press the Add button, select the metadata-tagsets.lrplugin directory created in step 2, then press OK.
5. The plugin is now installed and enabled.  Press Done.

Usage

When you open the Library module and display the right panel, a Metadata section is shown towards the bottom of the panel.  To use the new features:

1. Select the drop down list showing available tagsets (depicted above).
2. Choose one of the new tagsets at the bottom of the list.  For example, the Default (with Location) tagset.

I hope you find this plugin useful and feel free to share your experiences or suggestions in the comments section below.

This work by The Photo Geek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License

Simple Metadata Entry Plugin for Lightroom 2 Updated (Version 20090310.002)

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Update: A newer version of this plugin is now available. 
Please visit the Metadata Panels plugin page to download the latest version, and find the latest documentation for the plugin.

According to Scott Kelby I must be either a serial killer or a micro biologist.  Apparently they are the only two types of people who religiously maintain metadata for their photos, but as you might suspect the reality is a little more mundane. 

I keep my metadata up-to-date on all my rated photos for two main reasons:

1. So I can find them later; and
2. To help me grow as a photographer by allowing me to better understand what an image captures and how.  

Applying keywords, IPTC location information and geoencoding (when appropriate) helps me to find my photos later.  Gaining insights into my photography depends more upon captions, ratings,  labels and EXIF data.  My quandary was Lightroom 2 addresses these goals using two separate Library Metadata panel layouts: Location and Default. 

Constantly changing backwards and forwards between these two tagsets (i.e. Metadata panel layouts), or scrolling around the massive All tagset, unnecessarily slows down my workflow.  Fortunately this was a simple issue to resolve as the Lightroom 2 SDK provides a way to define new tagsets.  The result is my newest plugin which provides two additional tagsets for use in the Library module.

The second tagset was added because I found the SDK documentation for tagset development to be  insufficient and (in places) inaccurate.  The LR: All tagset implements most of the fields available in the Metadata panel, so if you are interested in modifying my plugin to better suit your individual workflow you have a working example of most of the fields you can select from.

Installation

1. Download the plugin: Latest Metadata Tagsets zip
2. Copy the file where you want the plugin to permanently reside, then unzip the file.  This should create a sub-directory called metadata-tagsets.lrplugin.
3. Open Lightroom 2, then select the File\Plugin Manager menu option.
4. Press the Add button, select the metadata-tagsets.lrplugin directory created in step 2, then press OK.
5. The plugin is now installed and enabled.  Press Done.

Usage

When you open the Library module and display the right panel, a Metadata section is shown towards the bottom of the panel.  To use the new features:

1. Select the drop down list showing available tagsets.
2. Choose one of the new tagsets listed at the bottom of the list.  For example, the Default (with Location) tagset depicted here.

I hope you find this plugin useful and feel free to share your experiences or suggestions in the comments section below.

This work by The Photo Geek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License

Simplify Entry of Common Metadata in Lightroom 2

Related Posts:

• Simple Metadata Entry Plugin for Lightroom 2 Updated (Version 20090310.002) (12)
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