Overview

This latest version adds a number of significant features to the product:

• A Map module for managing location information
• A Book module for creating photo books
• Advances in image processing via a new Process Version (PV 2012) and controls
• Soft Proofing for a better colour management workflow
• Emailing images directly from within Lightroom
• Enhanced Video capabilities and format support
• Enhanced DNG capabilities and workflows
• New Adobe Revel (formerly Adobe Carousel – see here for details) export workflow

More details about these and other features later.

With the latest beta the minimum system requirements have been changed with support being dropped for some older operating systems. The new minimum requirements are:

Mac:

• Multicore Intel® processor with 64-bit support
• Mac OS X v10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) or v10.7 (Lion)
• 2GB of RAM
• 1GB of available hard-disk space
• 1024×768 display

Windows:

• Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor
• Microsoft® Windows Vista® with Service Pack 2 or Windows 7 with Service Pack 1
• 2GB of RAM
• 1GB of available hard-disk space
• 1024×768 display

If your system is up to specification why not start the download while we dive deeper into what is included in the beta?

My Five Favourite Features

Rather than provide an exhaustive overview of the beta I’ll be talking though some of my favourite features instead. At the end of the post I’ve include links to other Lightroom 4 beta resources that will help fill in the gaps for those interested in the features not covered here.

Enhanced Video Capabilities and Format Support

While Lightroom 3 already includes some support for video files this beta has significantly expanded those:

• Lightroom is now able to directly playback video within the Library module
• Videos can be trimmed using the new controls visible within the Library module’s Loupe view
• Most Quick Develop tools can be used for processing a video, including the application of presets. See screen shot below for further details.
• Publish and Export services now fully support video and can optionally convert to H.264 or DPX formats during export.
  

   

   

   

   

• Most popular DSLR, compact camera and smart phone video formats can now being imported, including 3GP and AVCHD.
• The video frame (“Poster Frame”) used for the Library module’s thumbnail can be chosen by the user. 
• Individual frames can be extracted from a video as standalone images.
• A new Video Metadata Tagset has been added to the Library module’s Metadata panel, containing a variety of new video specific metadata fields. For the metadata geeks these fields appear to be a subset of those defined by the XMP Dynamic Media namespace.

These additions make Lightroom a much more useful part of a photographer’s video workflow. It is now capable of importing, playing, trimming, processing and publishing videos so could become the main video digital asset management tool for many photographers.

Lightroom’s video editing capabilities are no match for a full Non Linear Editor (NLE) but even larger projects requiring more full featured video editing tools could benefit from Lightroom’s video management and publishing capabilities. Smaller video processing tasks (e.g. cleaning up and publishing a video from your smartphone) can be quickly completed in Lightroom’s Library module.

TIP: When attempting multiple edits to a video at once it can be useful to capture a “Poster Frame”, use the Develop module to adjust the captured frame to the desired look, create a preset from the edits then use the Library module’s Quick Develop to apply the preset to the whole video.

Map Module

The beta adds a new Map module for working with location information in a visual and engaging way:

• View recorded locations for images directly within Lightroom, using satellite, street, or terrain maps
• Add location information to photos by dragging and dropping them only the map
• Save favourite map locations for use when searching for or tagging image locations (see screen shot below).
• Manage publication of location information selectively, through checking the private flag on a saved location, or broadly by checking the Remove Location Info option in your Publish or Export service.
• Load GPX tracklogs and use them to tag images with matching date/time stamps (see screen shot below).

The Lightroom Map module is fun to play with, but strangely enough it is the location information privacy features that are making GPS location capture a more regular part of my photography. I try not to attach location information to photos taken at the homes of my friends and family for privacy reasons but I frequently forget to turn tracklogs on or off and it made this a fairly frustrating experience. Now I can save these locations in Lightroom, and enable the privacy setting to hide their location information, and always capture location information safe in the knowledge this will never be published outside of my personal catalog.

Advances in Image Processing (Process Version 2012)

Lightroom 3 introduced some major improvements to the product’s image processing capabilities (officially known as “Process Version 2010”), and Lightroom 4 has taken this even further with the new Process Version 2012 and associated controls:

• Controls in the Basic Panel have been simplified (no more Fill Light or Brightness adjustments) (see screen shot below)
• Content aware Shadow and Highlight controls extract greater dynamic range from a single image
• Improvements to the operation of the Clarity and Chromatic Aberration controls
• Additional settings can be applied as Local Adjustments, including Noise Reduction, Temperature and Tint (White Balance), Shadows, Highlights and Moire (see screen shot below)
• Curve adjustments can now be applied per channel
• Soft proofing is now available in the Develop module (a separate headline feature)

The new controls may require some time to get used to but the results that can be achieved make this well worth the effort!

Book Module

Lightroom 4 adds the oft requested photo book creation feature via its new Book module:

• New Book module helps users create Blurb and PDF photo books directly within Lightroom
• Auto layout feature quickly creates initial book layouts using your preferred presets
• Easily adjust page and photo locations via drag and drop
• ~180 page layouts have been built-in for use in your creations
• A Favourites feature is available for easy access to your preferred page layouts
• Advanced layout, formatting and type features are included to give you the flexibility to customise your photo book’s appearance
• Easily add photo metadata (e.g. captions) to your pages
• Tight integration is provided to the Blurb book printing service allowing you to prepare, cost and upload your book directly within Lightroom

Initially the Book module will provide deep integration with the Blurb book printing service only, but I suspect this will expand over time just as Lightroom 3’s tethering feature started with a restricted set of camera makes and models and slowly expanded from there.

Personally I’m looking forward to spending more time with PDF photo book creation, to produce electronic photo books to share online with family and friends or view on my tablet.

JDI (“Just Do It”) UI Refinements

In addition to all of the major features added by the beta, there are a number of small refinements that help make the product more usable and deserve calling out. Some that I personally appreciate:

• Develop preset lists displayed by the Import dialog and Quick Develop panel are now hierarchical, making large sets of Develop presets (e.g. collections bought from third parties) much more usable.
• Metadata Status can now be used in Smart Collections and the Library module’s Filter bar. Very handy for those who don’t use the “Automatically save to XMP” preference but still want their Develop settings saved to their images once they have finished with a set of images.
• Additional options for restricting metadata Published or Exported with your images (e.g. “All except Camera & Camera Raw Info”). 

Lightroom Beta Learning Resources

To help get you started with the Lightroom 4 beta Adobe has provided a number of resources:

• Beta download site on Adobe Labs
• Forums for discussing the beta
• Official post announcing the beta and the features it offers. There is also a list of resources available regarding the beta, including a number of non-English resources for our international friends.
• Lightroom video channel on YouTube

Lightroom regulars have also been preparing learning resources so if you are looking for additional information I’d recommend checking out the following:

• Victoria Bampton’s Lightroom Queen site will have an exhaustive “What’s New” post and an updated keyboard shortcuts sheet.
• John Beardsworth has launched his new Lightroom Solutions site and will be covering the beta. I’m particularly looking forward to his thoughts on the new Book module.
• Laura Shoe will be covering the beta on her blog and has a knack for being able to explain product features and usage in an easy to understand fashion.
• Usual suspects Rob Sylvan (Lightroomers), Gene McCullagh (Lightroom Secrets), and Sean McCormack (Pixiq) will be providing What’s New posts and more content over the next few weeks.
• Andrew Rodney (Digital Dog) provides a  colour geek’s view of Lightroom’s new Softproofing feature
• If you prefer your beta information in video form then check out David Marx’s contributions at The Lightroom Lab and Terry White’s walkthru of the beta.

I’m sure lots more great content will be coming from these Lightroom legends over the coming weeks!

Hopefully this post has piqued your interest and you will try out the Lightroom 4 public beta. Have fun experimenting with the latest and greatest imaging tool from Adobe, and please let us know either in the comments or official forums about your personal experiences with the beta!

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

Adobe Releases Lightroom 4 Beta!

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The free Craft & Vision ebook is an anthology of eleven articles written by authors publishing eBooks under the Craft & Vision banner. The theme is “things I wish I had learned sooner”, with each author contributing an article or two on topics they are passionate about and would have helped them progress quicker if they had been given this same advice earlier. 

In practical terms this means the content is targeted towards beginning to intermediate photographers who still have enough of the journey ahead of them to need this advice. While the eBook is a decent size (69 pages) and each article is complete in its own right, it can’t provide in-depth coverage of each topic as their simply isn’t the space to do so. What you do get is some sound advice and a great (and did I mention free?) opportunity to get to know the Craft & Vision authors, their passions and their writing styles. So if any topic discussed in the eBook grabs your attention and you want to know more, it is easier to make an informed decision about whether one of the author’s other eBooks would suit your learning style.

As with other Craft & Vision titles the eBook is available in PDF format and is designed to be read in landscape orientation. The layout is attractive and well chosen images drive home the points being made. I read my copy on a 10.1 inch Android tablet and found the text and images quite legible on that sized screen.

With an eBook containing eleven separate articles it would be tempting to produce a quite lengthy review of each and every item included in the eBook. Instead I’ll try to focus on the highlights then give you a sense of the remaining content.

My personal top three articles from the anthology were “Understanding the Stages” (Alexandre Buisse),  “Create Projects and Collaborate” (Andrew S. Gibson), and “Slow Down and Learn to See” (Stuart Sipahigil). They each tackled topics that help us understand the photographic journey itself, not just skills and techniques we need to pick up along the way.

“Understanding the Stages” was the article that resonated most with me. It describes the stages one goes through as a photographer, what most of us focus on at each stage (gear, technique, etc) and how much we are willing to share and accept advice/criticism at each stage. I’ve been grappling with these concepts recently when trying to understand my own position along the photographic skills continuum and I found the discussion helped advance my self-awareness. It has encouraged me to take a look at how and why I share my images and I expect to be making some changes soon (and sharing more) as a result.

“Create Projects and Collaborate” provides a different perspective on the same topic, understanding the photographic journey and how to progress along it, with an emphasis on collaboration. My day job (and geek tendencies) mean I’m more comfortable with the “maturity model” approach used by Alexandre, but others might find Andrew’s coverage of the topic suits their learning style better. Either way I’d suggest reading both to get a better understanding of that long journey we still have ahead of us, and help remind us that we shouldn’t expect to travel it alone!

“Slow Down and Learn to See” discusses conceptual versus perceptual seeing and the skills we need to develop to help us see the photographic opportunities that surround us every day. I sometimes find myself with “photographer’s block” – an inability to think of anything worth photographing – and tried one of the suggested exercises while sitting in a waiting room the other day. It was amazing the different perspective it gave me and the possible images I came up with in a fairly mundane setting. Admittedly I will find it difficult to put aside the suggested time to practice learning to see (young children and standing still are not concepts that fit well together) but I will definitely be trying these exercises again.

Most of the remaining articles contain solid advice for beginning to intermediate photographers, either as an introduction to a topic or a refresher regarding techniques we’ve seen previously but may forget to practice.  Some tackle technical issues (”Tame Your Digital Exposures”) but most cover various aspects of composing or strengthening the content of your images. Special mention goes to Piet Van den Eynde for “Forget Lens Stereotypes” which covers breaking the rules by using the “wrong lens” to capture a scene. I must admit I’ve been finding myself falling into the “must use a portrait lens for a better portrait” trap myself so it was a timely reminder.

Some of the articles were for more advanced practioners, namely Michael Frye’s “Learn to Direct the Eye”. and Eli Reinholdtsen’s “The Power of the Moment”.  “Learn to Direct the Eye” was an interesting read about how to direct the viewer’s eye within an image. Unfortunately it’s difficult to do justice to this topic in such a small space, but Michael obviously knows his subject and when I’m a little further along my photographic journey I will review his work on the topic. “The Power of the Moment” discusses Eli’s approach to Street Photography. I have immense respect for those practising Street Photography as I don’t feel confident enough in myself and my craft to take this on yet. My personal circumstances mean I’m unlikely to be able to slow down and dedicate the time required to do this justice for many years. Hopefully one day.

Out of all the articles there is only one I would classify as a teaser. Martin Bailey’s “The Power of the Print” is a short introduction to some of the concepts important when printing. It will be interesting to see his “The Passionate Printer” eBook when it is released early next year but I felt this article was too short to provide any useful advice about printing .

I enjoyed reading the complete eBook and found some timely insights, many useful refreshers and some glimpses of techniques I hope to use when I’ve made it a little further along my journey as a photographer. And the fact that it is free is just the icing on the cake! I’d recommend that any beginning to intermediate photographers download a copy to read. You are sure to pickup a tip or two and gain a better understanding of the photographic road ahead in the process.

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

Review: Craft & Vision’s Free eBook

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Earlier this week Adobe announced to the world the existence of version 5.5 of its Creative Suite product line.  Until now Creative Suite has been released on a 24 month cycle and Adobe has only recently revised this strategy to include a significant mid cycle release.  This will help the product line keep abreast of the latest trends and emerging opportunities in between major releases. For CS 5.5 those three focus areas were:

• Create, deliver and monetize rich content and applications for virtually any screen. The suite now supports Mobile Development for Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and iOS using technologies such as Flash, AIR and HTML5. It also includes advances in Digital Publishing to produce rich interactive publications, especially for tablet devices. This is intended to complement the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite.
• Integrating tablets into creative workflows. Adobe released the Adobe Photoshop Touch Software Development Kit (SDK) to allow developers to create tablets and phone based applications to interact with Photoshop. Adobe also announced three new iPad applications that demonstrate the creative possibilities of using tablets to drive common Photoshop workflows – Adobe Color Lava for Photoshop, Adobe Eazel for Photoshop and Adobe Nav for Photoshop.
• Adding powerful new video capabilities. The revised Production Premium suite delivers breakthrough performance, workflow improvements, creative innovations and powerful new audio editing capabilities.

This has resulted in changes worth of a version update being made to the following products:

• Adobe InDesign CS5.5
• Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5
• Adobe Photoshop CS5.1
• Adobe Acrobat X Pro^*
• Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5.5
• Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5^*
• Adobe Flash Builder Premium 4.5^*
• Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5
• Adobe After Effects CS5.5
• Adobe Audition CS5.5^*
• Adobe Device Central 5.5
• Adobe Media Encoder 5.5

* New product or significant product upgrade introduced by Creative Suite 5.5.

Demonstrations of some of these added or changed features can be found on Adobe TV.

Other applications in the Creative Suite may have received updates (for example, Adobe Photoshop) but these were not explicitly tied to the CS 5.5 release. These updates should also be made available to existing CS 5 customers through the standard Adobe Updates feature. And other products might not have received an update at all. Suites and individual products that are tied to the CS 5.5 release will be chargeable upgrades even for existing CS 5 users, though there are some exceptions.

Adobe also introduced a subscription plan as part of this mid-cycle release, something they have been trialling in Australia over the past year and are now rolling out to the rest of their user base.  To give an idea of how this works I’ve taken pricing information from the Australian Adobe Store and calculated the financial outlay required to keep current with the Master Collection suite, or the individual Photoshop Extended product, over an arbitrary 5 year period. These calculations assume the costs on the Adobe store stay relatively consistent over the period and the products of interest receive updates twice per cycle (i.e. both mid cycle and major version updates).

As can be seen below users that intend to stay current with the latest release can really benefit from subscription plans, particularly when they are using individual products rather than the whole suite. Please keep in mind that not every individual product will receive a significant mid-cycle release (more on that later) so depending on the product chosen the subscription versus outright purchase expenditure crossover point may be earlier than indicated below.

**All prices in Australian Dollars, from Adobe Store – Australia, as at 15 April 2011

*** Upgrading from the last released equivalent version. e.g. from Master Collection CS5 to Master Collection CS5.5

**** Subscriptions types refer to the length of commitment to the subscription. All subscriptions are charged monthly.

To further illustrate this point we’ll consider two scenarios to see how regular upgrades might play out in future.

Creative Suite 5.5 and the traditional photographer

The traditional photographer, and by that I mean a photographer who is solely interested in creating and publishing still images, may require only the Adobe Photoshop product from the Creative Suite. They would make limited use of other products included in the suite offerings so the individual product should prove sufficient for their purposes.

If they aren’t currently a Photoshop user, or are using an earlier version of Photoshop (e.g. CS4), then the tablet features, subscription plan or even the many headline features included in the previous CS5 release might be sufficient to encourage them to purchase or upgrade now   If they are already using Photoshop CS5 it is highly unlikely they will upgrade at this point in time.

The Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 version supplied with CS 5.5 is effectively the same as the upcoming 12.0.4 Photoshop version, except for the addition of the subscription plan facility. Both will support the new Adobe Photoshop Touch SDK and iPad applications being released in May.  Both will support the Camera Raw 6 plugin updates that will be made available through the remainder of the CS 5 release cycle. As such there is no real reason for an Adobe Photoshop CS5 user to upgrade to CS 5.5 unless they wish to do so as part of a cross-grade to one of the suite offerings.

This skews the version cost comparison chart above and dilutes the financial component of the business case for using a subscription plan on an individual product purchase.  It also demonstrates an ongoing challenge Adobe will have – managing the pressure to keep subscription plan users happy by releasing new major or mid-cycle versions of every product, every year.

Creative Suite 5.5 and the contemporary photographer

By contrast a contemporary photographer, and by that I mean a photographer who is interested not only in still images but video and/or publishing as well, is much more likely to be interested in purchasing one of the suite offerings instead of individual Adobe Creative Suite products.

A number of well known photographers such as Chase Jarvis and David duChemin have chosen to expand beyond the traditional photographer paradigm to build their brands and business. Whether they are writing books, producing mobile apps, self publishing ebooks, or using video to provide educational offerings, the contemporary photographer is finding it necessary to cross skill into design and/or video production areas they wouldn’t have thought necessary even 5 years ago.  This makes the Design Premium, Production Premium or even Master Collection suites more attractive as they only need to buy one box to get all of the tools they need to take on these opportunities.

While the Photoshop application itself did not receive a CS5.5 level update this time around, some products in each of the suites did and can be expected to be updated during every Creative Suite release. Design Premium received updates to Acrobat, InDesign, Dreamweaver and Flash products.  Production Premium received updates to Flash, After Effects, Premiere Pro and Audition products. These updates make significant improvements to the ability to target multiple output devices with published content, and the performance and results when processing video. These should make CS5.5 a worthy upgrade for anyone who spends significant time in these products even it they are already using CS5.

Should you subscribe or purchase outright?

So once you have decided to invest in Creative Suite should you subscribe or purchase outright?

On paper the financial cutover point where a subscription plan becomes more expensive than an outright purchase is typically between 3 and 4 years. Whether you are willing to invest up front and continually upgrade for that long to save money in the long term is a question only you can answer.

What that calculation ignores is subscriptions make access to the more sophisticated Creative Suite offerings approachable and justifiable for those who can’t afford the hefty outlay required to purchase a suite outright.

Those who work with Creative Suite for a living might find a subscription plan preferable for tax reasons, so you might want to check with your accountant before making your next upgrade. If nothing else we now have a valuation of the cost of maintaining our tools and this can be factored into our thinking when developing our standard price lists or quoting for the next assignment.

A more subjective reason for considering a subscription is it will remove the “do I upgrade or not” decision when the next major or mid-cycle release comes along. Instead of debating whether the features of the latest version provide sufficient value or whether you should skip an update, your ongoing subscription will entitle you to the  upgrade and in fact you should immediately upgrade to get maximum value from your investment.

While subscriptions for individual products look more attractive than those for suites at the outset, their value can be diluted by those skipped mid-cycle releases that we have seen during the release of CS5.5. The pricing of the subscription plans for the suites may have an earlier cutover point but you can pretty much guarantee that a number of products in the suite will be upgraded every year so they may prove a better deal in the long run.

Subscription plans look pretty tempting for those who are preparing to buy into the Creative Suite products now. If you already have made an investment in a previous version their business case begins to dilute because you already have the sunken cost of the original version and you would probably be better off paying for upgrades rather than a subscription. 

Regardless of whether you choose to take advantage of a subscription plan I think their introduction will ultimately benefit all users. They have encouraged the adoption of a mid-cycle release, removing some of the shackles that impacted Adobe’s time to market with new features in the past. This will help spur on competition in the market and that surely must be a good thing!

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

Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, subscription plans and the contemporary photographer

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Refresher: Importing photos and video into Lightroom 3

We’ve previously discussed Lightroom 3’s revamped Import feature so we’ll be jumping straight to the facets most relevant for Android users.  If you are using Lightroom 2 the first part of the series describes how to import photos from your phone but you will need to upgrade to Lightroom 3 if you want to manage video in Lightroom as well.

A reminder before we begin.  If your Import dialog doesn’t look like the one shown below you will be using the compact version of the dialog, so please click the arrow button (depicted) in its bottom left hand corner to reveal the full dialog.

The first part of this series described three main approaches for importing content from your phone:

1. Synchronisation software (e.g. HTC Sync)
2. Mass Storage Device, accessed directly from Lightroom
3. Mass Storage Device, accessed via third party import application

When importing content directly into Lightroom (option 2) you need to select either the Copy or Move import type at the top of the dialog depending upon whether you wish to leave a copy of the files on your phone or not. Add is not advisable as Lightroom’s Develop module could only work with these files when the phone was physically attached to your computer.

Synchronisation (option 1) and third party import application (option 3) allow a little more flexibility because the content is already on the computer before Lightroom is asked to import it.  An Add import type is acceptable in this case if you would prefer the images to remain in their current location.

If you use a third party import application (option 3) to load the images and videos then chances are you have already setup the file naming and folder structure you prefer.  If not you may wish to use the File Renaming and Destination sections of the right hand Import dialog panel to adjust these details on the way into Lightroom.

Why some video won’t import into Lightroom

Lightroom’s Import dialog doesn’t always detect videos in the source.  In this example another video (MSD_20110106_0050.3gp) exists in the same directory but the dialog gives no indication any files are missing. An Adobe knowledge base article explains that only a few formats are supported:

• AVI
• MOV
• MP4

In practice this means that files using other file extensions will be ignored even if their content should technically be supported by Lightroom.  Videos with other types or file extensions will simply not appear in the grid for selection during import.

Shooting Lightroom compatible video

Knowing this limitation we can take steps to ensure our videos will be compatible with Lightroom 3.  On the HTC Desire this means opening the included Camcorder application,  using the menu to access the Settings tab (the gears icon in the bottom left corner of the screen) and verifying the Encoding Type is compatible with the MP4 file type.  While MPEG4 is the most capable of the encoding types shown here technically they all are suitable, and your choice can be guided by the encoding quality you require.  e.g. use MPEG4 if you wish to capture 720P video.  Unfortunately there is no matching option to change the video’s file extension so all videos are created as 3GP files not visible to Lightroom.

Preparing your video for Lightroom 3

Now that we know the video content is compatible with a Lightroom supported file format (MP4) we only need to perform one more step before Lightroom will let us import the files. 

In the first part of the series we mentioned that Samsung Galaxy S video is supported “out of the box” by Lightroom.  Using Phil Harvey’s versatile exiftool application we can get a better understanding of how these Lightroom acceptable videos are structured.  Executing the following command (split over two lines due to space restrictions) indicates a supported file is structured like this:

exiftool -ext 3GP -ext 3GPP -ext MP4 -s -FileType -MIMEType –MajorBrand
-MinorVersion -CompatibleBrands -CompressorID -AudioFormat .

======== ./SamsungGalaxySVideo.mp4
FileType                        : 3GP
MIMEType                        : video/3gpp
MajorBrand                      : 3GPP Media (.3GP) Release 4
MinorVersion                    : 0.3.0
CompatibleBrands                : 3gp4, 3gp6
CompressorID                    : avc1
AudioFormat                     : mp4a

Executing the same command on a HTC Desire video returns a rather similar looking result:

======== ./HTCDesireVideo.3gp
FileType                        : 3GP
MIMEType                        : video/3gpp
MajorBrand                      : 3GPP Media (.3GP) Release 4
MinorVersion                    : 0.3.0
CompatibleBrands                : 3gp4, mp41, 3gp6
CompressorID                    : mp4v
AudioFormat                     : samr

The video compressor and audio format are different across the two videos but fundamentally they both use the same 3GP format and brand (release).  The only significant difference is the filename extension.  To confirm this I manually renamed the 3GP video file from my earlier test to use the MP4 file extension and re-ran the import on the directory.  This time the video was detected, and upon importing all of the usual Lightroom 3 video features were available.

The reason this works is the 3GPP and MP4 file formats are related, as described on the MP4 Registration and Wikipedia sites. 3GPP is a part of the “MP4 family” and is structurally based upon MPEG4 so it is valid to rename a 3GP or 3GPP file to use the MP4 extension.  Some phones already take the step to store 3GP files as MP4 without user intervention. 

In the interests of simplifying my digital workflow I created a one line command script called Rename3GP.cmd to automate renaming my Android videos for me.  It uses exiftool to check all 3GP and 3GPP files in this or child directories, and rename the file extension if we are sure this is a suitable 3GP file.  The command (split over two lines due to space restrictions):

exiftool -P -r -m -overwrite_original_in_place -ext 3GP -ext 3GPP
"-FileName=%%d/%%f.mp4" -if "$MIMEType eq 'video/3gpp'" .

If you want to run this at the Windows command line or on a Mac instead you would modify this slightly by removing the extra percent (%) signs. 

exiftool -P -r -m -overwrite_original_in_place -ext 3GP -ext 3GPP
"-FileName=%d/%f.mp4" -if "$MIMEType eq 'video/3gpp'" .

Running this script or command prepares your Android’s video files for Lightroom and from here on in the import process is the same as for any other Lightroom supported file.

I hope you have found this series useful and please feel free to share your experiences with us 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

Finding the best approach for importing photos and video from your Android phone into Lightroom (Part 2)

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My HTC Desire can capture photos, video and voice notes using the software that came pre-installed.  While Lightroom does have some limited ability to support audio files (as sidecars to photos) it is unable to manage standalone .amr voice note files, so for the remainder of this discussion we will be focussing only on photo and video media. 

Your options when importing from an Android phone

Your main options for making an Android phone’s content available to a computer are Sharing, your handset’s included synchronisation software, or accessing the content as an external Mass Storage Device either directly from Lightroom or via a third party import application.  

The synchronisation software provided varies from company to company and on my HTC phone the software is known as HTC Sync.  Samsung and other vendors provide their own equivalent but the rationale used in evaluating the options should still be relevant.  Most synchronisation software has similar capabilities so the discussion here should help you to make your own informed choice. 

The Android Market contains a number of applications providing ways to export images from your phone to third party services.  Adobe Photoshop Express is one example and can export images to Photoshop.com, Facebook, and TwitPic.  These applications can be useful in their own right but they do not assist the Lightroom import workflow so have not been considered here.

Video can be the Achilles heel of many of the import mechanisms mentioned below.  If you are considering recording video on your phone then choose your import mechanism wisely, and part two will discuss the preparation of video for import into Lightroom.

Sharing

Many Android applications (e.g. HTC Desire’s Gallery application) provide a sharing option when viewing a photo or video.  Selecting this option lets you chose from a number of mechanisms for sharing items with other people or services.

This is great for quickly sharing individual items but not terribly useful as the basis of a reliable import workflow for Lightroom.  Selection of content to share is manual increasing the chances you will miss files unintentionally.  It also requires a secondary service such as Dropbox or Bluetooth to transport the files to an location accessible by Lightroom’s Import dialog. Other options such as email can be used but require more manual processing to detach the files and store them somewhere Lightroom can access.  Sharing is best used for quickly getting individual photos or videos off your phone and somewhere others can see it.

Synchronisation Software (e.g. HTC Sync)

The manufacturer’s preferred synchronisation software is included with most Android phones.  It is typically used for synchronising Calendars and Contacts between a computer and phone.  For HTC devices this is the Windows only HTC Sync application, and the last major release (version 3) introduced the ability to synchronise photos and videos back to your computer.

To take advantage of this feature enable the “Copy device Camera Shots to PC” option in the Gallery synchronisation options.  From then on HTC Sync will copy all photos and videos taken by the device into a pre-defined sub-directory in Documents or My Documents.  This is convenient because it prepares your images for import into Lightroom automatically every time you synchronise the phone.  Other brands offer their own syncing software so users of handsets should have an equivalent option available to them.

This was originally my preferred import option but HTC’s synchronisation software has one issue that makes it unworkable for my video workflow.  During the file copy process it resets all of the date/time stamps for the files and replaces them with the time they were synchronised to the computer.  For images this is a minor nuisance because the EXIF metadata is unaltered and contains the relevant dates.  Unfortunately video files do not have an equivalent of EXIF metadata so once those date/time stamps are lost it becomes difficult to impossible to determine when those videos were taken.  This interferes with my preferred file naming scheme and is a “show stopper” issue for me.   Synchronisation software from other manufacturers might not have this flaw but please verify this yourself before entrusting you video import workflow to this option.

Mass Storage Device, accessed directly from Lightroom

One of the simplest options for importing your files into Lightroom is to connect your phone and computer via the supplied USB cable, switch the connection to the “Disk Drive” type, then start Lightroom’s Import dialog and wait for it to detect the phone.  The Micro SD card should soon appear in the dialog just like any other external USB device and the photos and videos will be found in its DCIM folder.

As you are accessing the content directly from the memory card the dates and times recorded for the content will remain intact, so the video file renaming workflow should now operate correctly.  Unfortunately a new problem quickly becomes evident. Lightroom doesn’t recognise the HTC Desire’s video files so refuses to import them.

The HTC Desire includes a number of different modes for recording videos but all store the files with a .3GP file extension.  Lightroom does not currently recognise this as video and will not offer to import the file.  This impacts not only HTC phones but also those by other manufacturers (e.g. Motorola), and even other phone operating systems (e.g. the PalmOS use by my old PalmOne Treo 680), that choose to save their videos with this file extension.  If your phone uses .3GP or .3GPP as the extension for its video then Lightroom will ignore the files so cannot be used as the import mechanism.

Mass Storage Device, accessed via third party import application

The easiest way to work around the Lightroom Import dialog limitation is to use a third party application to copy the files to disk first.  I currently use this approach and the Image Ingester 3 product to import my files.

While this adds another step to the importing process it also grants some flexibility (e.g. more extensive file and folder renaming options) and ensures all of your images and video are imported onto your computer regardless of their filename extension.  Once on your system you have options to prepare your videos for import into Lightroom via its Import dialog.  More information will be provided about the preparation process in part two of this post.

Choosing the most appropriate import approach

After reviewing all the options presented the decision making process becomes fairly straightforward.  It all depends upon your interest in video and the capabilities of your phone.

If you don’t currently, and never will, capture videos on your device then using your phone’s native synchronisation software (e.g. HTC Sync) or Mass Storage Device mode (via Lightroom’s Import dialog) to import is the simplest approach.  The limitations mentioned above don’t impact an image only capture workflow, but if your workflow ever does expand to include video you will need to quickly change your import approach or risk losing valuable video metadata.

If you do capture video, take a quick sample with your phone and verify what file extension it produces.  If your phone is a Samsung Galaxy S or any other phone that shoots AVI, MP4 or MOV videos (yes, even an iPhone) then use the Mass Storage Device mode (via Lightroom’s Import dialog) to import.  It is the next simplest way to retrieve the media from your phone, retains your video date/time metadata, and Lightroom will recognise your video files so this option should support your video workflow.

If your phone produces .3GP or .3GPP video files you will need to use the Mass Storage Device mode (via third party import) option to maintain your video date/time metadata and ensure these video files ignored by Lightroom aren’t lost. My tests with colleagues’ Android phones indicate at least some HTC and Motorola users will need to take this approach.  Once the video files are safely store on your computer you can then prepare your video for import into Lightroom.

If you fall in the last category then please stay tuned for part two of this post, where I will describe the process of getting your .3GP video ready for processing by Lightroom. 

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

Finding the best approach for importing photos and video from your Android phone into Lightroom (Part 1)

Related Posts:

• Finding the best approach for importing photos and video from your Android phone into Lightroom (Part 2) (4)
• Import Improvements in the Lightroom 3 Beta (6)
• Photo Editing For Mere Mortals (0)

A couple of months ago I took the plunge and bought a WiFi only Kindle.  As a self-confessed geek and gadget freak the Kindle had been on my radar for a while, but the release of the third generation was enough to coax me to open my wallet and purchase one.  What made the decision for me? The price drop and native PDF support. 

As an amateur photographer I was hoping I could use my new Kindle to catch up on my ever increasing backlog of photography ebooks and electronic editions of my paper books. My research into its suitability for this purpose didn’t find much to confirm its usefulness one way or the other so it was hard to make an informed decision. But at that price I only had to buy a few books electronically instead of physically and it would have paid for itself so the gadget lust eventually won out. 

I’m sharing my experiences here to help others make a more informed decision when considering purchasing a Kindle. I’ve included plenty of photos so you can see for yourself the points being made and decide how important they are given your reading habits. Just click on a thumbnail to see a much larger version of the image.

What makes photography books different?

Kindles are great ebook readers.  The E-Ink screen is perfect for extended reading sessions because the underlying technology mimics how we read paper, via reflected light bouncing off the screen (page) rather than using a backlight to transmit through the screen and directly into our eye.  The result is a screen that works better in varied lighting conditions and reduces the user’s eye strain when reading for extended periods of time.

That doesn’t automatically mean they will be suitable for reading about photography.

What makes the reading requirements of photography books different from the typical Kindle fare?

• Significance of design and layout: Photography is inherently a visual medium. When writing about photographic composition, techniques, and other factors the authors invariably use the layout of the work and a number of (usually large) images to help make their points. Visit your nearest bookstore (or bookshelf)  and pick up any title about photography and you will see what I mean.
• Colour: Unless your enjoy reading purely about black and white photography there will be large amounts of colour used to help embellish the design and layout. 
• Form factor: Photography books tend to be larger than novels. As an example the “Vision and Voice” book I have sitting next to me is 9 x 8 inches in size, larger than the screen of any readily available ebook reader or tablet device.
• Available document formats: Most books related to photography are available electronically in PDF format rather than native ebook document formats. 

The average Kindle is intended to read books or newspapers with few (or no) images, natively in black and white, and delivered in document formats that can smoothly adjust their layout to suit the limitations of the device.  This is a far cry from most photography books and it would be unwise to simply assume the Kindle will be suitable for reading that type of material.

There will obviously be some compromises required. The real question is are those compromises workable or will readers resort to more familiar modes of reading the heavily graphical material?

How much of an impact is the Kindle’s novel sized screen?

The base Kindle resembles the size of a small novel, which is significantly smaller than the average photography book.  To get a sense of the difference compare the size of my copy of “Vision and Voice” with its ebook equivalent (40% discount code: EBOOKA-PP) .

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When viewing the ebook in portrait orientation the screen is much too small to be usable, at around a quarter of the size of the physical page.  Pictures give a reasonable impression of the original material but the text is too small to be readable.

Viewed in landscape orientation the situation is much improved.  “Vision and Voice” is wider than most books and yet the Kindle’s screen still manages to cover almost two thirds of the page width.  The display shrinks the text size to compensate but I still found the results quite readable even though my eye sight is far from perfect. As most ebooks available online (e.g. Craft and Vision, ProPhotoPublishing) are laid out according to standard paper sizes (A4 or letter), viewing in landscape orientation brings the screen width even closer to the intended page width. This improves readability even further and allows text and images to be displayed at close to original size.

The trade off of using landscape orientation is a single page is displayed in two or three fragments.  From a navigation point of view this is fairly transparent but it does impact how the content is experienced by the user.  More on that later.

More intricate images will require magnification to be able to interpret their finer detail.  Unfortunately viewing the screen at anything larger than the “fit-to-width” setting does significantly impact navigation on the Kindle. Multiple key presses (Aa key, then the 5 way navigation pad to activate “Actual Size”) are required to enable magnification, and once in this mode you navigate within the current page using the 5 way navigation pad. On the images below you can see a shaded area on each of the scrollbars indicating the current viewable area.  For this particular book viewing at “Actual Size” means there are eight separate viewing areas per page.  When reading left to right, from the top of the page to the bottom, that means we require at least 10 navigation controller presses (right, down, left, then repeat…) to navigate a full sized screen. At this point the user interface is no longer transparent to the end user and noticeably impacts the reading experience. Personally I would find it unworkable to read a book this way.

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The verdict? As long as the text size remains readable in landscape orientation, and the file doesn’t contain too many detailed images that require close examination, the Kindle’s form factor didn’t overly impact the reading experience.

How does the Kindle cope with graphical layouts?

Photography books tend to make heavy use of graphics and page layout to support their points.  This layout can be maintained on the Kindle by using the Portable Document Format (PDF) to store the document, as PDF is purpose built for maintain integrity of the displayed content regardless of the device rendering it.  The problem here is the interaction of form factor and layout, and more specifically how much of the page layout must be seen at once to help support the overall message.

Take the “The Magic of Black and White Part I – Vision” ebook from Craft and Vision as an example.  The content is designed to be viewed a whole page at a time, or preferably a two page spread at a time, and so uses a one and a half page image to help demonstrate its point.  When zoomed out to view a full page at a time in portrait orientation you can make some sense of the image, but when viewing in landscape orientation with “fit-to-width” enabled the image loses much of its impact.  The reader will need to assemble in their mind’s eye four screens into a single image to fully understand how the image supports the concepts described in text.  Part of the message being conveyed by the layout is lost or impeded due to the limitations of the technology.

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Textual photography ebooks with supporting images, such as the “Lightroom 3 Mini-guide ” from X-equals, tend to be more forgiving.  In this example the text size is almost large enough to read in portrait orientation, but the layout is equally acceptable when viewed in landscape as the images are less than a single page in size. In addition the image detail is sufficient when viewed in landscape to not require magnification beyond the “fit-to-width” display mode.

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In some cases layout does not necessarily contribute to the underlying message but can still impact readability.  A case in point are ebooks that use a multi-column layout and the example I’ve used here is Ken Rockwell’s “Nikon D90 User’s Guide”. The document needs to be viewed in landscape orientation for the text to be readable, but thanks to the multi-column layout you need to navigate down the page to read the first column then return to the top of the page to begin the next column. This visual flourish does little for the content but does impact its usability when viewed on a smaller screen.  This issue does not lessen the value of the ebook content, and I personally own copies of useful multi-column ebooks from Ken Rockwell, Craft and Vision and others, but serves as a reminder to view a sample online before purchasing content to be read on your Kindle.

In rare cases the design is such that the display device doesn’t impact the message at all.  The only case I’ve come across is the "101 Inspiring Poses" by Christopher Grey.  What makes this book different?  It contains no text, and the images themselves don’t need to be interpreted in detail so viewing these in portrait orientation, a full page at a time, is perfectly adequate.

The verdict? Graphical layouts can be acceptable on the Kindle provided the reader is comfortable mentally reassembling larger images viewed a piece at a time. In my experience this only became a problem where books use full page (or larger) images which can tend to lose their impact when viewed on the small screen.  Books that use multi-column layouts are too tedious to navigate on the Kindle and should be read elsewhere. 

Is PDF a suitable document format for the Kindle?

Given photography books rely heavily upon graphical layouts they are usually supplied as PDF to maintain the integrity of the displayed content. PDF support is a relatively new feature introduced in the latest generation of Kindles and prior to that documents had to be converted to a native document format to be readable on the device. Would photography books be easier to view on the Kindle if they were available in a native format rather than PDF?

Ebook formats, such as the mobi format often used for distributing material for Kindles, tend to assume the content is primarily textual. They are designed to allow resizing of display fonts and reflowing of the text to suit the size of the current screen. This is important for typical Kindle content but it is near impossible to support both the design intent of a heavily graphical layout and this type of device display flexibility in a single document format. Referring back to the earlier ”The Magic of Black and White” ebook example and its one and a half page image spread, how should this be resized and the text flow adjusted to cater for the display size of different ebook reader screens? There is no simple answer and it would be difficult for any ebook reader to make intelligent decisions about what the author would consider most important to retain from the original design.

Some authors are providing ebook reader friendly versions of their documents in addition to the more graphical PDF version. Victoria Bampton’s “Adobe Lightroom 3 – The Missing FAQ” is one such example, and comparing the two versions demonstrates some of the trade offs required to take full advantage of the display device’s capabilities. In this case the loss of some visual flourishes does not overly impact the FAQ content, and the increased usability (and ability to read in portrait orientation) more than makes up for the trade offs.

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One limitation of native ebook reader document formats is you have less control over displaying (or magnifying) images. This may be partly due to authors choosing to drop image resolution to reduce the size of the document, but regardless of the cause it makes more detailed images harder to view than with PDF versions of the documents.

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There are products available that will let you attempt your own conversion from PDF to ebook reader native formats. Calibre is one of the better known solutions for this. In my own attempts I found the conversion of graphical layout intensive books problematic and ultimately futile. There were two main causes for this:

1. Large images, whether background or standalone, were difficult for the software to intelligently place
2. Using PDF as the source format for a conversion reduces the quality of the result. PDF is focussed upon the display of the content, and not the semantics of the content (paragraph structure, etc), so results are better if a Word document, HTML, or similar source format is used.

The verdict? Displaying PDFs on an ebook reader may not be ideal, but ebook reader native formats cannot maintain the graphical layout of photography books so normally PDF is the better choice. Only consider using ebook reader native formats for books with fewer (and smaller) supporting images. It is not recommended to attempt conversion of a photography ebook to a native document format unless you have something other than a PDF format to use as input to the process.

The verdict: How practical is a Kindle for reading photography books?

The Kindle can be quite practical for reading photography books, as long as you adhere to a few do’s and don’ts:

Do:

• Use the author provided ebook reader version, if available
• Check for samples ebook pages online before purchasing a book, to ensure you will be comfortable reading it on your Kindle
• Use PDF format for viewing books with a graphical layout
• Read documents in landscape orientation

Don’t:

• Try to view documents with multi-column pages
• Try to view documents where viewing multi-page images are crucial to understanding the content
• Try to view documents where you will need to frequently zoom into actual size to view image details

It will require some effort by the reader to work around the limitations of the device, and it will not be suitable for reading every book in you photography library, but it is still practical if you are willing to work within the device constraints.

Ultimately the decision comes down to personal preference, whether the user’s reading habits are compatible with the guidelines provided above, and whether your budget could extend to one of the alternatives below that provide a larger viewing area and a less constrained viewing experience.  I’m willing to work within the Kindle’s constraints for now, but will keep an eye on the alternatives and may reconsider my position in another year or so.

How would I expect other ebook readers or tablets to compare?

The base Kindle isn’t the only ebook reader on the market, and there are alternatives (namely tablet devices) that are also useful for reading books. Based upon my experience with the Kindle, and the publicly available technical specifications for some alternatives, I’ve made observations about how I’d expect a representative sample of the competition to relate to my experiences described above.

In summary the physically larger Kindle DX and iPaddevices have the potential to be used in portrait mode, and render usable multi-column and multi-page image spread documents that would otherwise be impractical on 6 and 7 inch screen devices. They have a lot of potential for reading photography ebook content and some authors (namely Craft and Vision) have recognised this and have started releasing iPad specific versions of their content to take advantage of this format.  If your reading habits support it and your budget can extend this far you should consider a Kindle DX or iPad device to give you greater flexibility in your reading choices.  Otherwise colour and E-Ink screens are the only significant differentiator between the remaining devices, and once again your reading habits will be the deciding factor as to which is more important to you.

Ebook Readers

All alternative ebook readers listed below are physically larger than the Kindle used for this article, and also have a higher resolution vertically though only the Kindle DX has a higher resolution horizontally. That means the text being read will be larger provided the 7 inch screens are being used in landscape orientation. The trade off is the 7 inch screens will require you to read a single page in smaller fragments (e.g. three to four fragments, instead of the Kindle’s two to three fragments) because the horizontal resolution has not increased to match the vertical resolution.  So it is possible the 7 inch screens will make the photography book reading experience more difficult because of excessive page turning and less of the page being displayed at any given time.

The Kindle DX has a 50% larger screen in addition to the larger horizontal and vertical resolutions. This may make the ebook text readable in portrait orientation, and if so this would significantly improve its usability with photography books. Multi-column documents could be read without constantly navigating around the screen. Double page image spreads could be viewed with a single page turn. This would make a much wider range of ebook content usable on the device and would resolve most of the qualifications made when recommending the smaller Kindle.

The NOOKcolor is the only colour ebook reader device included in this list. It has obvious benefits when reading heavily graphical photography books, but at the expense of being usable in fewer lighting conditions (e.g. LCD screens are difficult to use in full sunlight) and less suitable than E-Ink screens for longer reading sessions.

Product	Price *	Screen size (diagonal)	Screen Resolution (pixel)	Screen Type
Kindle (Wi-Fi) (included as baseline for comparison)	$139	6 inch	600 x 800	E-Ink, b&w
Kindle DX (3G)	$379	9.7 inch	1200 x 824	E-Ink, b&w
NOOKcolor	$249	7 inch	1024 x 600	LCD, colour
Sony Reader Daily Edition	$259.99	7 inch	1024 x 600	E-Ink, b&w

Tablets

One of the main attractions of a tablet is it is not a single purpose device like the average ebook reader. This increased utility means the user is more likely to have it with them when a reading opportunity presents itself, and the greater usage can make it easier to justify the additional upfront expense. For photographers they can even serve as a legitimate business tool to display their portfolio, amongst other tasks.

The iPad, as with the Kindle DX above, has the potential to be usable for a much wider range of photography ebook content than the 6 and 7 inch screen devices it is being compared with. The physically larger screen and pixel resolution should support reading in portrait orientation and be suitable for the types of photography books not recommended for use on the Kindle evaluated in the main article. The iPad also is able to display the books in full colour, though with the same reading trade offs as with other LCD screens. It will be usable in fewer lighting conditions (e.g. can’t be used in full sunlight) and is less suitable than an E-Ink screen for longer reading sessions.

The Galaxy Tab, and other 7 inch and smaller tablets, will suffer from the same issues as the remainder of the smaller ebook reader and tablet devices being considered here. It should not be purchased solely as an ebook reader, but it should be usable as an ebook reader if you purchased it for its general tablet capabilities.

Product	Price *	Screen size (diagonal)	Screen Resolution (pixel)	Screen Type
Apple iPad (16GB, Wifi)	$562.98	9.7 inch	1024 x 768	LCD, colour
Samsung Galaxy Tab (T-Mobile)	$869.95	7 inch	1024 x 600	LCD, colour

* All prices are indicative and were recorded on December 9, 2010

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

How Practical is a Kindle for Reading Photography Books?

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A little over a week ago Tom Hogarty – Product Manager for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom – announced the Lightroom 3 public beta (download here).  Its been more than a year since the last version of Lightroom was released so I was keen to see what improvements had been m2de to my favourite photography program.  So keen in fact that I didn’t wait till I got home from my holidays and started using it immediately to import and organise photos taken on the trip!

For those of you new to Lightroom the Import feature is how you load photos into your catalog so the program can find and work with them.  The Import feature has obviously received a lot of attention from the Lightroom team this time around.  There are three major changes that have been made, and a number of usability improvements.  Major changes:

1. “Import from Disk” and “Import from Device” dialogs have been merged into a single Import dialog
2. UI has been completely overhauled aesthetically
3. UI now has Compact and Expanded modes that give you control over all aspects of the import task on a single screen

There have also been a number of usability improvements including:

• Import presets have been added to store and access your common import settings
• Expanded mode has added Grid and Loupe views for selecting photos to import
• Import’s backup will now store files using your renamed rather than camera created file names
• If you shoot using your camera’s RAW + JPEG  mode, both photos are now imported even though the RAW (or DNG) will be the only photo to show in the Library
• New “Shoot Name” field available for file renaming templates
• Additional folder naming presets

This is a beta so don’t expect perfection just yet.  The dialog can get a little sluggish under certain circumstances and I’ve logged a bug report about one specific case (Copy as DNG when source and destination are on the same drive) that can stall the import entirely.  But all in all I found it was reliable enough for my import workflow and I’m liking the new UI more and more every day. 

One of the great things about this being a beta is it will only get better over time.  I’m personally crossing my finders and hoping these three usability improvements make it into the final release:

1. Extending folder renaming to use a template-based mechanism similar to to file renaming, including access to the new “Shoot Name” field
2. Backups to be stored using the same folder structure, not just file names, as the imported files
3. Allow resizing of the dialog and the side bars within it.

I will get to the other new and improved Lightroom 3 beta features over time but wanted to share my observations after working with one of the first features most users will be encounter.  If there are any other features you are keen to hear about now  Tom has posted links to other beta related articles and resources.  And if you plan to test LR3 yourself then I’d recommend reviewing Victoria Bampton’s LR3 Beta – Popular Bugs and Forum Threads post to find out its most frequently noted limitations.

Detailed Look at Import UI

Compact Import dialog

When you first try to Import Lightroom defaults to the Compact dialog and launches over the dimmed main UI. 

Key elements of the Compact dialog:

• Source: In addition to displaying the currently selected source, clicking it allows you to change the source and access and manage the Recent Paths list.
• Import Type: Select between Copy as DNG, Copy, Move and Add import types.  All types other than Add allow renaming of files and folders during import.  Copy as DNG converts RAW files to Adobe’s DNG file format during import, but leaves the image’s backup copy (if enabled) in the original file format.
• Destination: In addition to displaying the destination folder, clicking it allows you to change the destination and access and manage the Recent Paths list.  The Folder settings provided below will be used to create folders within this location.
• Mode: Switch between the “Quick Settings” (default depicted here) and “Summary” modes (displays a summary of all Import settings in the Import Settings area) using these buttons.   The “Summary” mode is depicted in the screenshot below.
• Import Settings: Select a Metadata preset and Keywords to be applied to all imported files.  When required by the file naming scheme, “Shoot Name” and other fields also display in this area.
• Folder: Choose between “By original folders”, “By date” and “Into one folder” folder naming schemes.  “By date” allows you to choose between 13 predefined folder naming templates.  All options also allow a subfolder to be included within this folder naming scheme.
• Source Status: Upon selecting a source Lightroom immediately scans the folder (and subfolders, if configured) for images and displays the status of that scan in this area.  The arrow here toggles between the Compact and Expanded dialogs.
• Presets: Displays the active Import preset, and allows you to choose or create presets using the arrow to the right.  Presets store most detailed settings that can be configured in the Compact and Expanded dialogs.
• Buttons: Initiate or cancel the import.

If you are familiar with Lightroom 2 you will have noticed that the file renaming, Develop Presets and Preview size features are not available via the Compact dialog.  To configure these you must use the Expanded dialog, though once set you can always create a new Import preset that captures these details and can be chosen from the Compact dialog.

Additional screenshots of the Compact dialog’s “Quick Setting” and “Summary” modes (respectively) can be found below.

Expanded Import dialog

Clicking the arrow button at the bottom left corner of the Compact dialog opens the Expanded dialog.  The description below refers only to elements that differ from the Compact dialog.  

Key elements of the Expanded dialog:

• Source panel: In addition to the source section available in the Compact dialog, you also have access to detailed device and folder information via the left hand side of the Expanded dialog.  Devices and Drives are listed separately.  Drives allow you to drill down through the folder hierarchy, while Devices do not give you this option.
• Display area: Displays either thumbnails or a single photo depending upon whether Grid or Loupe view has been selected (respectively).  Import status for a photo can be changed using its checkbox, right clicking on it the change the Import Photo state, or using the P (Pick) or U (Unpick) keys to modify the currently selected photo.  At this point in time there is no way to change the import status for multiple (but not all) photos at once, so arrow keys and the keyboard shortcuts are the quickest way to work around this limitation.
• Toolbar: Controls the display area view, sort order, and allows bulk modification of import state.  Thumbnail size is also configured here but is not depicted as it was not visible on my netbook’s small screen.
• Import settings: Fine grained import settings are managed to the right hand side of the Expanded dialog.  These are controlled through four panels, only two of which are available in the Add import type:
  • File Handling: Sets the preview size, whether duplicates will be imported, and whether a second (aka backup) copy of the files is created during import.  The second copy option copies the original files directly into the nominated directory using the naming scheme assigned in the “File Renaming” panel.  This option is disabled when using the Add import type.
  • File Renaming*: Sets whether files will be renamed and which (if any) template will be used to configure that process.  Renaming uses the same custom and EXIF field formatting approach available in Lightroom 2, with the addition of the “Shoot Name” field mentioned earlier.  If included in the file naming template you will be able to specify the values of the “Custom Text”, “Shoot Name” and/or “Starting Number” fields here.
  • Apply During Import: Sets the Develop preset, Metadata preset and multiple Keywords that will be add to your files.
  • Destination*: Provides the same folder creation options available in the Compact dialog.  In addition you can browse the destination folder structure to locate and set the import destination.

* Not available for Add import type

All four import types (Add, Copy, Copy as DNG and Move, respectively) are depicted below, including at least one example of each of the Import settings panels.

I hope you’ve found this trip through the improved Import UI useful, and good luck with your Lightroom beta testing!

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

Import Improvements in the Lightroom 3 Beta

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A recent tweet pointed me to the latest in a series of great Digital Photography School tutorials on photographing babies.  They cover the full gamut from preparing for the arrival, to maternity shots of the expectant mum, the birth itself, then the ongoing opportunities presented as the little one grows up.  Reading though them proved to be just the refresher I needed to prepare myself and remind me of the possibilities.  Below are brief introductions to each of the articles to help you decide which ones you might be interested in.

Personally I found the posts from Darren Rowse (the editor of Digital Photography School), Natalie Norton and Candace Lindemann most useful.  I enjoyed their differing perspectives and amateurs and professionals alike should find these enlightening.

Preparing for a Baby Photographically

Darren Rowse talks briefly about mentally preparing for your baby’s arrival, and capturing images of clothing and other accessories prior to your baby’s arrival.

Tummy Time – 7 Tips for Taking Great Maternity Shots

Natalie Norton’s tips on taking maternity shots of the expectant mother.  Includes some great examples of her work.

5 Keys to Taking Beautiful Maternity Portraits

Annie Tao’s also provides tips on photographing the expectant mother.  While there is overlap with the advice from Natalie it is still useful in its own right..

Photographing Birth Scenes

Darren Rowse talks about the practicalities of taking photos during the birth and the post-processing they may require.  Not a topic I have seen discussed elsewhere.

3 Quick Newborn Photography Tips

Loraine McCall provides advice on how to prepare for photographing newborns, including posing and the practicalities of dealing with babies.  While geared towards professionals it provides a few tidbits for amateurs as well.

Baby Time: Photographing Babies Without Losing your Mind

Natalie Horton’s tips on photographing a newborn.  Her advice is applicable to amateurs and professionals alike and include some tips (bring a hat!) that I haven’t seen before and are great suggestions for common issues.

Baby Photography 101

Chas Elliott’s post is geared towards professional photographers but has some interesting tips on timing and use of props that amateurs will find helpful as well.  He previously posted an article on taking photos of expectant mums which I haven’t included in this list because it was for professionals only.

10 Tips for Photographing Babies

Darren Rowse shares tips from his experience as a new dad.  The practical experience is evident and this is a great read for anyone who will be spending a lot of time around a newborn.

5 Tips for Gorgeous Infant Photographs

Christina Dickson’s tips are a quick summary of the fundamentals to keep in mind when photographing babies.

More Baby Photography Tips

Candace Lindemann shares a great article using her experience as a photographer mum.  She discusses working with older babies and channeling that boundless energy they seem to have!

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

Refresher on Photographing Babies and their Journey into the World

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Unless you are a full time photographer the answer is likely no.  I’m an amateur photographer and find that Photoshop’s cutdown version – Photoshop Elements – meets all of my needs and there is no compelling reason to move to the full version.  But there is one compelling reason to choose Photoshop Elements over Photoshop.  The price.

Its large enough in the US, but internationally the price difference between Photoshop Elements and Photoshop is remarkable. At the Adobe Store Photoshop CS4 costs* $699 USD or $1415 AUD ($1180 USD) and Photoshop CS4 Extended $999 USD or $2019 AUD ($1690 USD). Photoshop Elements costs $99.99 USD or $165 AUD ($140 USD).  This means Photoshop Elements costs Australian consumers a little more than 1/10th of the price of the most basic Photoshop CS4 version. Its no wondering the Photoshop Elements community is growing so quickly outside of the US!

Photoshop vs Photoshop Elements

A recent post at Lightroom Secrets compared the features of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements to help users understand the incremental benefit of buying the full version.  The essence of that comparison (and my own research) is Photoshop provides:

• Customisation – Photoshop allows customisation of the UI via keyboard shortcuts, menus, workspaces, presets, actions, and (official) support for scripting
• Enhanced 16-bit – Additional Photoshop fliters supports 16-bit images
• Enhanced Colour – Photoshop supports CMYK and Lab colour modes, and custom curves
• Enhanced Layers – Photoshop includes layer masks, additional adjustment layers, and full support for smart objects
• Enhanced Selection – Photoshop includes paths, pen tools and quick masks
• Additional Tools – Photoshop includes additional features such as HDR and content aware scaling
• Enhanced Tools – Photoshop includes more advanced versions of some tools such as Camera Raw and Camera Distortion

The importance of many of these features diminishes when you are using Lightroom as your primary editor and only dipping into Photoshop every now and then.  Other features (e.g. Content Aware Scaling) would be nice to have, but as an amateur photographer I don’t think they are worth the additional $1250 AUD I’d have to spend to “upsize” from Photoshop Elements 7 to Photoshop CS4.

Bottom line?  Most photographers using Lightroom won’t miss the features they lose by choosing Photoshop Elements over Photoshop.  But the money they save could go a long way towards a new lens or flash that could make a significant difference to their photography.

Improved Photoshop Elements Integration With Lightroom

Another benefit of Photoshop is the level of integration it enjoys with Lightroom.  Photoshop Elements is added as an external editor, while Photoshop has a number of menu items dedicated to improving workflow when it is combined with Lightroom.  To close this functionality gap I’ve created an Elemental plugin for Lightroom which provides Photoshop Elements users roughly the same level of integration Photoshop users get "out of the box".

The Elemental plugin adds 5 new menu items to the File –> Plug-in Extras and Library –> Plug-In Extras menus, emulating the integration available to Photoshop users.  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 as available in Photoshop Elements).  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 as Lightroom’s Develop module contains a superset of the options available in PSE’s version of Camera Raw.  The only feature that can’t be reproduced is Merge to HDR in Photoshop because Photoshop Elements does not include this feature.  As many Photoshop users utilise an external HDR tool rather than the one supplied with Photoshop this hopefully won’t prove too much of an issue.

Where Do I Sign?

If you are ready to take the plunge and add Photoshop Elements to your workflow, Adobe sells the products online and may have specials running so please try the Special Offers page before using one of the direct purchase links has a number of specials running at any given time that can (North America only) specials running till August 10.  Links are included below for your convenience and by purchasing through these you will be helping support the ongoing development of my Elemental plugin.

Find all current special offers on Adobe products.
Photoshop Elements 7. Extraordinary photos. Amazing stories.
Photoshop Elements 7 + Premiere Elements 7 – Complete photo and video editing made easy.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Macs

UK readers can use the following links to support my plugin development while purchasing the products but unfortunately no discounts or coupons are currently available: Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 & Adobe Premiere Elements 7 – Full, Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 – Full and Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Macintosh – Full.

If you aren’t quite convinced why not download a trial copy of either the Windows or Mac version and find out firsthand whether it suits your workflow?  I’m sure you’ll find, like me, that Photoshop Elements covers all of your main “pixel pushing” requirements without doing too much damage to your bank account!

* Note: All prices were converted using Google’s current exchange rates on August 3, 2009.

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

Why Lightroom Users Should Seriously Consider Adding Photoshop Elements To Their Workflow

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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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