New Plugins at the Photographer’s Toolbox

Since my last update two more of my plugins have been migrated across to the Photographer’s Toolbox and relaunched with updated names. They are TPG LR Backup, formerly known as Config Backup, and TPG Metadata Panels, formerly known as Metadata Panels . These naming changes mean existing users will need to manually remove the old version of the plugin when they first upgrade to the latest release of the rebranded plugin. Hopefully the new automatic upgrading feature users gain will make up for this inconvenience. 

In addition to the new automatic updating feature TPG LR Backup includes the following improvements:

• Ability to automatically run backup and compression tasks at Lightroom startup.
• Improved support for Lightroom 3 users, especially on the Mac OS/X platform
• Numerous UI improvements.
• Integrated help that displays at first run, can be accessed from dialogs, and also from Lightroom’s Help menu
• Improved robustness and checks for invalid configuration attempts.

and TPG Metadata Panels now includes:

• Added or improved tagsets to be task focussed and only display relevant metadata for that task.
• Lightroom version awareness so newer IPTC Extension fields are available to Lightroom 3 users, and version specific tagsets only display on compatible systems.
• Removal of SDK documentation tagsets that were useful only to developers. Lightroom 3 SDK documentation improvements have made these redundant.

Updated Plugin at the Photographer’s Toolbox

The TPG Elemental plugin has received a few updates, and since the last post here has received the following improvements:

• [Lightroom 3 only] Each photo is now automatically saved before opening in Photoshop Elements (PSE), removing this previously manual step.
• Now supports PSE 10, and the Mac App Store (MAS) variants of PSE 9 and 10.
• Updated Lightroom and PSE version awareness better detects PSE versions installed at default locations.
• Plug-In Manager and configuration dialogs now indicate compatibility and potential limitations of the selected PSE editor, and suggests actions to resolve these limitations. User is able to override these checks if desired.
• A new configuration setting allows control over the channel bit depth used for an image, and a dialog explains the implications of this setting when first used.
• Help is now available via Lightroom’s Help menu.
• Various error handling and robustness improvements.

If any of these updates sound relevant to you then please head over to the Photographer’s Toolbox and download a copy to try out now!  More features are currently under development so be sure to keep the automatic update feature active to receive new functionality as soon as it is available.

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

My Recent Lightroom Plugin Activity over at the Photographer’s Toolbox

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

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

How I backup Lightroom

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

Pre-requisites

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

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

Plugin Configuration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plugin Operation

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

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

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

Feedback

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

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

Quick and easy way to back up Lightroom

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My TPG Elemental and TPG Snapshotter plugins are now distributed primarily by the Photographer’s Toolbox. The major features add in their most recent releases:

• automatic updates: the plugins will automatically check for and notify the user of updates at startup, or when manually requested by the user
• registration capabilities: the plugins are both donationware, and now have built in functionality for requesting and verifying registration information

In addition the TPG Elemental plugin has:

• Improved detection of Photoshop Elements installations, especially on Photoshop Elements 9 or 64 bit systems.
• Improved robustness.

and the TPG Snapshotter plugin has:

• 20+ new tokens for use when naming snapshots, and a selection popup menu to simplify finding the token you want.

If any of these updates sound relevant to you then please head over to the Photographer’s Toolbox and download a copy to try out now!  More features are currently under development so be sure to keep the automatic update feature active to receive new functionality as soon as it is available.

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

Recent Lightroom Plugin Updates over at the Photographer’s Toolbox

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The move to Timothy’s site has resulted in a few changes here at The Photo Geek.  First the practical matters. 

To aid with the transition all my plugins will have a slight naming update.  Elemental has become TPG Elemental.  Snapshotter has become TPG Snapshotter.  And so forth.  This naming change means existing users will need to manually remove the old version of the plugin when they first upgrade to the latest release of the rebranded plugin.  Hopefully the new automatic upgrading feature users gain will make up for this inconvenience.

Also users need to ensure all future donations for plugins are made using the plugin’s homepage on the Photographer’s Toolbox.  Currently that means donations for TPG Elemental and TPG Snapshotter will need to be made via their respective homepages.  This is necessary to allow the new registration functionality in the plugins to operate.  Those who have already donated and “bought me a coffee” should have heard from me via email. Thank you again for your generosity.

This brings me to matters of a more philosophical nature.

I’ve been developing Lightroom plugins on and off for almost two years now.  It has been a great little hobby spending time on the code and developing functionality useful for my own photographic workflow.  Over time I’ve been spending more and more of my effort on functionality for the benefit of others, and less on the personal workflow/hobby side.  As Jeffrey Friedl so eloquently described the “unfun” side of development can take its toll.  For me it has slowed the rate of plugin releases, leaving feature requests languishing on the shelf longer than they should have.

You might have noticed the donation button on the right side of the blog and and plugin pages.  Following in Jeffrey’s footsteps I’ve experimented with the PayPal donation concept and even made it possible to donate from directly within the plugins themselves.  The hope had been that users would “buy me a coffee” to encourage further effort on my plugins.  Unfortunately that experiment wasn’t particularly successful.

After teaming with Timothy I am now adopting his “donationware” model.  Plugins are released with restricted functionality – typically working with a reduced number of images at a time – to allow evaluation of the plugin’s functionality.  If you wish to remove the restrictions you can make a donation on the plugin’s homepage, and you will be emailed a registration code to unlock the plugin.  A donation will only be required once and all future updates are free.

Early signs from the move are promising, not only from the donation side but also from the impact of this added encouragement, as Jeffrey put it.  Having an automatic update mechanism makes it more feasible to publish smaller, more frequent updates to plugins.  Having peers such as Tim, and now John, to talk things over with is helping keep interest levels high and momentum going.  I’ve even been inspired to get access to a Mac and devote time to testing releases on both Windows and Mac platforms, with Lightroom versions 2 and 3, to catch more issues before updates are released. (You would be amazed how many tiny inconsistencies are found across the 4 main Lightroom/operating system combinations.)  All in all I’m feeling more energised and ready to work on plugins. 

Thanks for your support and understanding as I continue the move through to this new plugin development and delivery model.  Hopefully you will enjoy the results of the energy and enthusiasm your encouragement generates!

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

Jumping into the Photographer’s Toolbox: Teaming up with Timothy Armes and John Beardsworth

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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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It immediately shows the impact of code changes as you make them.  This might not sound like a big deal at first, but when hunting tenacious bugs the repeated interruption of reloading a plugin and restarting its test scenario is disruptive.  You can now test code by making a change in your favourite text editor, saving the file, and hitting the Run button.  Contrast that with the additional steps of opening the Plugin Manager, reloading your plugin, closing the Plugin Manager, and invoking the plugin to start the test again and you will get a sense of how much simpler your coding sessions can become.

The Test Harness provides a framework for managing and running individual LUA scripts.  This makes it possible to write small, single purpose scripts to focus in on a new feature you are experimenting with or a bug you are trying to squash.  Without the Test Harness you either need to experiment directly within the plugin under development, trying not to get distracted by or trip over code extraneous to the task at hand, or write your own test plugin to host the code  Either way you end up losing time that would be better spent adding features to your latest masterpiece.

Need help with a particularly thorny coding issue?  One click and the Test Harness will turn your script into a plugin you can zip up and post to one of the online communities for developers.  This makes it easier to give Lightroom SDK forum members, Lightroom Forums Plugin Discussion members, or even Adobe’s supporter staff a simple and self-contained demonstration of the issue you are working on.  When asking someone to lend you a hand make it easy for them to give you what you want.

Those are just some of the reasons I invested the time to write the Test Harness plugin.  It has already paid me back for the development time I’ve put into it, and with a new version of Lightroom (and an updated SDK) just around the corner I’m confident it will end up paying for itself many times over.  I’m sharing it with other Lightroom developers in the hope it will help you spend less time fighting bugs and more time extending the functionality of a great product!

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

Spend More Time Writing and Less Time Debugging Lightroom Plugins

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

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

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

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

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

Usage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Plugin Brings Lightroom and Photoshop Elements Together At Last

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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)

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Accelerator Usage

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

To use the accelerators provided above you would press:

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

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

Setting Up Accelerators

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

1) Locate your resources directory

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

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

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

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

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

2) Create or update your TranslatedStrings.txt file

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

If your directory does contain a TranslatedStrings.txt file:

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

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

3) Accelerator enable the plugin

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

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

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

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

Mac OS X Alternative

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

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

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

Closing Remarks

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

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

Accelerate Access to Lightroom Plugin Extras

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