I’ve recently created a Snapshotter plugin for Lightroom 3 that allows you to bulk create Lightroom snapshots while within the Library module. Lightroom’s interface will only let you create snapshots from within the Develop module, one image at a time.  This is fine if you are using snapshots only for recording creative interpretations of an image but is too restrictive when considering other uses for snapshots such as:

• Creating snapshots to identify the exact develop settings used when printing, exporting or publishing a group of images (e.g. creating a FlickrUpload-20100610 snapshot for all images uploaded to Flickr on that date)
• Converting virtual copies back to snapshots so all interpretations of the master image are stored in a way accessible from Photoshop.

Personally I create virtual copies (VCs) to experiment with different image develop settings and then compare the results side by side.  Once I’ve chosen the best I’ll create snapshots for each of the VCs worth keeping, then delete the VCs, because all of those snapshots are actually stored against the master image so will not be deleted.  This is also a great approach for dealing with multiple crop sizes for the same image.  My family have three different sized digital photo frames in use and converting VCs to snapshots is a great way to ensure this doesn’t clog my catalog with more thumbnails than truly necessary.

The Snapshotter plugin assists the snapshot creation process by adding a new Create Snapshot(s) from Images menu item to the File –> Plug-in Extras menu.  Selecting this opens a dialog allowing configuration of the snapshot name to be used, and the option to restrict snapshot creation to virtual copies only, when creating snapshots for all selected photos.  The snapshot naming function currently supports one substitution variable:

{CopyName}    Virtual Copy name

that will be replaced with the relevant metadata from each image.  Information about how this and the other elements of the dialog operate are described in the online help accessible using the button labelled with a question mark (?).

Please leave a comment below to let us know how you use Lightroom’s snapshot feature, and how the Snapshotter plugin helps this or could be improved to help it more.

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

The Easy Way to Create Snapshots in Lightroom 3

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Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 (LR3) is finally out of beta!

The Lightroom team’s official blog announced earlier this week that Lightroom 3 is Now Available.  They also shared a list of Lightroom 3 Resources to get people started with the release and the Lightroom 3 Help is also available online including the downloadable PDF version for offline use.

To discover what the new release has to offer I’d suggest checking out:

• Ian’s Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.0 Feature Review over at the Computer Darkroom
• What’s new in Lightroom 3 from Victoria Bampton

Needless to say I found the release compelling enough to have already upgraded from Lightroom 2!

Victoria will also be releasing her Adobe Lightroom 3 – The Missing FAQ book and eBook soon so its worthwhile keeping an eye out for that.  Some excerpts from the book are available on her site now.

A few others have shared Lightroom 3 resource lists as well:

• Lightroomblog’s resource list
• Heninger’s The Mother of all Lightroom Tuesdays!

There are others but most include limited content beyond that mentioned in these lists.

Lightroom 3 Educational Resources

A number of the Lightroom educators have been working overtime to prepare material to coincide with the product launch: 

• Lightroom Blog
• The Lightroom Lab
• Lightroom 3 Learning Center from the CameraDojo

Of course there is plenty of (semi) official content available as well:

• NAPP’s Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Learning Centre
• Julianne Kost over at AdobeTV

Lightroom 3 Plugins

The new Lightroom release has also attracted the attention of the plugin development community:

• Jeffrey Friedl, the king of Lightroom plugin development, has shared the status of his plugin development activities in his Lightroom 3 Plug-in Information post.  This includes details of his new Flickr Publish Service.
• I’ve release Snapshotter plugin – my first Lightroom 3 specific plugin
• The Lightroom 3 SDK is now publicly available to developers.

The SDK has added many new capabilities that will keep developers busy for months to come.  More on that in a later post.

Getting Lightroom 3

If you are interested in giving the product a try a fully functional 30 day trial is available for download here.  Some tips if you want to continue to use the product after the trial period is over:

• If you qualify for the educational version of Lightroom 3 there are significant savings to be had – as much as 80% off the full price
• Non-US residents should compare prices with other online stores before purchasing at the Adobe online store.  Some regions have been reporting that Adobe’s online store pricing is inflated compared to that readily available elsewhere.  Australia used to be one of those locations but a quick check confirmed the Adobe store pricing is on par with or slightly cheaper than that available elsewhere online.
• If you have a decent broadband connection and don’t need the physical packaging consider using Adobe’s download delivery method to save a little extra off the asking price.  If you used the trial version mentioned above you don’t even need to redownload the software.  The registration key will convert it from a trial to full version.
• Support the Lightroom community!  If you make use of Lightroom blogs, vodcasts, podcasts or plugins then please consider purchasing via their affiliates.  The net cost to you might only be a few extra minutes during the purchase process but it will help support those that produce the content you value!  I have included my links below but if these aren’t suitable consider heading over to the Lightroom Blog, The Lightroom Lab or CameraDojo and supporting them instead.

I hope you found these resources useful and enjoy using the latest release of Lightroom as much as I do!

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

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 has been Released!

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

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

New TTG Client Script features

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

Support for TTG Highslide Galleries

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

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

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

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

Capturing your Client’s Selections in Lightroom

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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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