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

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

New TTG Client Script features

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

Support for TTG Highslide Galleries

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

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

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

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

Capturing your Client’s Selections in Lightroom

Related Posts:

• Working with a Wedding Client’s Photo Selects in Lightroom 2 (36)
• Export Backup Plugin for Lightroom 2 Updated (Version 20090208.003) (16)
• Backup Your Rendered Images When Exporting From Lightroom 2 To The Web (0)

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

Related Posts:

• New Plugin Brings Lightroom and Photoshop Elements Together At Last (25)
• Simple Metadata Entry Plugin for Lightroom 2 Updated (Version 20090310.002) (12)
• Simplify Entry of Common Metadata in Lightroom 2 (9)

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

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

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

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

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

Usage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Plugin Brings Lightroom and Photoshop Elements Together At Last

Related Posts:

• Why Lightroom Users Should Seriously Consider Adding Photoshop Elements To Their Workflow (31)
• Simple Metadata Entry Plugin for Lightroom 2 Updated (Version 20090310.002) (12)
• Simplify Entry of Common Metadata in Lightroom 2 (9)

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

My recently released backup plugin helps you backup your Lightroom configuration files and compress Lightroom generated catalog backup files.  To access these features you use one of the new menu items it adds to the File menu’s Plug-in Extras sub-menu.

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

Due to the vagaries of my own personal experience, namely recent Blue Screens Of Death that corrupted my Lightroom preferences file, I focused on backing up that file and forgot to include presets, plugins and other important pieces of the Lightroom configuration information.  The latest release will now backup all of these and more.

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

Config Backup Plugin Updated… To Backup More Configuration Settings (Version 20090606.002)

Related Posts:

• The Quick Way to Reclaim Disk Space and Backup Your Lightroom Configuration (13)
• Export Backup Plugin for Lightroom 2 Updated (Version 20090208.003) (16)
• Backup Your Rendered Images When Exporting From Lightroom 2 To The Web (0)

Accelerator Usage

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

To use the accelerators provided above you would press:

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

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

Setting Up Accelerators

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

1) Locate your resources directory

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

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

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

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

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

2) Create or update your TranslatedStrings.txt file

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

If your directory does contain a TranslatedStrings.txt file:

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

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

3) Accelerator enable the plugin

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

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

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

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

Mac OS X Alternative

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

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

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

Closing Remarks

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

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

Accelerate Access to Lightroom Plugin Extras

Related Posts:

• Config Backup Plugin Updated… To Backup More Configuration Settings (Version 20090606.002) (12)
• The Quick Way to Reclaim Disk Space and Backup Your Lightroom Configuration (13)
• Easily backup your Lightroom 4 catalog on demand (2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Quick Way to Reclaim Disk Space and Backup Your Lightroom Configuration

Related Posts:

• Config Backup Plugin Updated… To Backup More Configuration Settings (Version 20090606.002) (12)
• Export Backup Plugin for Lightroom 2 Updated (Version 20090208.003) (16)
• Backup Your Rendered Images When Exporting From Lightroom 2 To The Web (0)

If you are:

• Sean “I want a restart shortcut key” McCormack, or any other Web Gallery developer for that matter
• Scott Photoshop In”sight"er Kelby [via Amanda Kern’s “Lightroom 2 Tour” sketch notes):

When something doesn’t work – QUIT! … fixes 99% of problems on Mac

• someone who finds that Lightroom 2’s performance or behavior slowly deteriorates during a work session

then you already know that Lightroom needs a “power nap” every now and then to get back into  perfect form.   Restarting the application is a simple, effective, and potentially time saving way to get LR2 back on track so you can process your photos at optimum speed.

Back when Lightroom 2.2 was released the performance degradation issues became frequent enough I wrote a script to speed up the restart process.  While Lightroom 2.3 has resolved the most significant of these issues, I’m still finding I need to restart regularly enough that others might find the script useful too.  When Lightroom really starts to grind it can take minutes to shutdown, and the script allows you to wander off to grab a coffee rather than babysit the restart process.  This should be especially useful for Web Gallery developers who by all reports need to restart way, way too often.

Installation

1. Download the script: LRRelaunch-20090324_001.zip
2. Open Lightroom 2.
3. Select Edit > Preferences > Presets (Windows) or Lightroom > Preferences > Presets (Mac).
4. Select Show Lightroom Presets Folder.
5. Open the Lightroom folder. If it doesn’t already exist, create a new folder named Scripts inside the Lightroom folder.
6. Unzip LRRelaunch-20090324_001.zip and drag or copy the LRRelaunch.lua file into the Scripts folder.
7. Close the Windows Explorer, or Finder window, to return to Lightroom 2.
8. Exit then reopen Lightroom 2.

Usage

When you open Lightroom 2 you should now see a new Scripts menu to the right of the existing Help menu. 

You can now open the Scripts menu and select the LRRelaunch menu option to restart Lightroom 2.

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

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

Even Lightroom Needs a Power Nap Every Now and Then

Related Posts:

• Capturing your Client’s Selections in Lightroom (7)
• New Plugin Brings Lightroom and Photoshop Elements Together At Last (25)
• Config Backup Plugin Updated… To Backup More Configuration Settings (Version 20090606.002) (12)

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

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

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

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

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

Installation

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

Usage

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

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

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

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

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

Related Posts:

• Simplify Entry of Common Metadata in Lightroom 2 (9)
• New Plugin Brings Lightroom and Photoshop Elements Together At Last (25)
• Export Backup Plugin for Lightroom 2 Updated (Version 20090208.003) (16)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Installation

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

Usage

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

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

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

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

Simplify Entry of Common Metadata in Lightroom 2

Related Posts:

• Simple Metadata Entry Plugin for Lightroom 2 Updated (Version 20090310.002) (12)
• New Plugin Brings Lightroom and Photoshop Elements Together At Last (25)
• Export Backup Plugin for Lightroom 2 Updated (Version 20090208.003) (16)

My Export Backup plugin for Lightroom 2 (in Adobe speak, a post-process action) has been updated today.  The new version contains some usability updates:

• Destination folder now has a “Most Recently Used” (MRU) drop down list to help you quickly export files to your favourite folders.  A delete button (the minus sign next to the drop down arrow) helps you clean up folders you no longer want kept in the list.
• A separate subfolder field has been added, similar to that found in the Export to Files Export Service.
• Windows Explorer or Finder can show the backed up files once the export completes.

With this release I now have all of the main features I need for my own purposes.  Please leave a comment if you have suggestions for other features that should be added.

Installation

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

Usage

Next time you export files you will notice an Export Backup entry in the Export dialog’s Post-Process Actions list.  

To use this feature:

1. Select the Export Backup entry, then press the Insert button.  Note: The Insert button will remain inactive if you select the wrong Export Backup entry.  This will add an Export Backup Location section near the end of the Export dialog.
2. Either manually enter or choose the base directory where the rendered files should be copied. 
3. If desired, specify a subfolder to be appended to the folder name.  This is typically used to enter the album/collection name or any other folder name that changes from export to export.
4. Select either Overwrite or Skip option, depending upon how you want to proceed if the same files already exist in the destination directory.
5. Continue with your file export as usual.

When you export your files to Flickr, Gallery 2 or whatever photo hosting service you use, you will now also have a local copy of the rendered output for your own records. 

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

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

Export Backup Plugin for Lightroom 2 Updated (Version 20090208.003)

Related Posts:

• Backup Your Rendered Images When Exporting From Lightroom 2 To The Web (0)
• New Plugin Brings Lightroom and Photoshop Elements Together At Last (25)
• Config Backup Plugin Updated… To Backup More Configuration Settings (Version 20090606.002) (12)