Stuart’s 57 page eBook aims to help you determine the right photo sharing plan for you. It discusses the reasons why you need a sharing plan, and guides you through the major dimensions of your plan:

• Why you want to share photos;
• Who you want to share them with;
• How and where you should share them; and
• What photos you wish to share.

It includes exercises to help you work through these issues and develop the answers that best suit your personal needs. Stuart explains his personal sharing plan and uses his decision making process to illustrate the topics being discussed. By the time you finish the eBook you should have a high level sharing plan ready and you will be in a position to spend time working through the details of the plan, such as reviewing where you want to share photos.

This is not a recipe or workflow book. It doesn’t attempt to give you the correct answer that everyone should try to mimic. This is a book that teaches you how to think about your photo sharing needs. While this isn’t necessarily what I expected when I first open the book, I think its what I needed. I’m an analytical person (read: geek) who would have loved to get down into the nuts and bolts of which sharing site or social network is best and pour over the stats and feature sets. But as Stuart said the features sets and players can change rapidly in this space so any comparisons of products will date quickly. Instead he looked at the main classes of online sharing sites available and looked at the reasons you might want to use each. This should allow the eBook to age well as new classes of photo sharing technology don’t come along that often.

It also reminded me that a sharing plan is not just for online sharing. Prints, photo books and public display are great ways to share your work and for certain audiences (e.g. my grandmother) these might be the only viable way to share with some segments of our audience. Stuart goes even further discussing ideas for sharing not just your work, but also your passion for photography through classes, photo walks and teaching. These are items I wouldn’t even have considered as part of my plan without his advice.

The concept of a sharing plan isn’t new. In the corporate world I normally see this referred to as a Communications Management Plan, with some Stakeholder Analysis on the side. But Stuart has captured the essence of this concept, adapted it to a photographer’s needs, and presented it in an easily digestible and beautifully laid out manner that shows he understands his audience. And I’m must fit squarely within that audience given my favourite quote from the book:

Remember, identifying your audience is important even if you aren’t planning on making a living through photography. If you don’t take the time to figure out who they are the only audience you’ll reach is yourself.

(Guilty as charged.)

There were some unexpected points made in this eBook, namely:

• The importance of editing your work (“what” you are sharing) so only the strongest work is presented to your target audience. Stuart also suggests some ways to get assistance if you are having trouble judging your own work.
• Reminder for all users to view the Terms of Service (ToS) before publishing photos to a service. ToS can vary wildly from site to site and if you are not careful you might end up signing away your intellectual property without even realising it.
• Understanding your audience doesn’t necessarily mean you will be republishing your work in multiple locations. Stuart found that he had been over segregating his work and was finding it difficult to publish to his many online services. Now he publishes centrally and links back to that site from the other locations.

While I’d personally have liked to see some more geeky talk about sharing photos I think Stuart probably made right call leaving that detail out. People like me would have been distracted and potentially would have missed the main lessons of the book!

This is another quality Craft & Vision title that I’m happy to recommend. Stuart has done a great job capturing the essentials on how to create and maintain a photography sharing plan and I’m currently following his advice to create my own plan. Thanks Stuart for sharing your experience with us and I’m looking forward to reading more of your work in the future!

If you are interested in picking up a copy of “Shoot + Share: Getting Your Photographs Out Into the World”, do so before 11:59pm PST April 28, 2012 and the promotional code SHARE4 will get you a 20% discount at the checkout. Or if you want to pickup 5 or more PDF eBooks from the Craft & Vision collection use the code SHARE20 to get 20% off the lot.

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

Review: Shoot +Share eBook

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• Review: Craft & Vision’s Free eBook (2)
• Photo Editing For Mere Mortals (0)
• Finding the best approach for importing photos and video from your Android phone into Lightroom (Part 2) (4)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Easily backup your Lightroom 4 catalog on demand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo Editing For Mere Mortals

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• Review: Shoot +Share eBook (2)

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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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)

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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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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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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

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