Archive for the ‘Lightroom’ Category
Raw Processing Concentrate is described as “A real-world guide to creating stunning images with Adobe Lightroom.” The creators of this tutorial, Rob and Lauren Lim of Photography Concentrate, are two photographers based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. They bring their experience and passion for the art of photography to these lessons.
This is not the usual module by module introduction to Lightroom. Rather it is a way to approach the processing of your raw images using Lightroom as your tool. Rob and Lauren were kind enough to give me a copy of the tutorials for review and I have to say I did enjoy them. There are over 5 hours of video tutorials. A small portion of the time is spent covering the Library module and Lightroom’s export features. The majority is spent examining the techniques available to you in the Develop module.
The techniques presented in the videos are sound and can be quite useful when you are faced with how to address an image and what road to take it down from an artistic perspective. If you are struggling with how to process your images or just a bit overwhelmed by all of the options Lightroom affords you, then this tutorial is for you.
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We all know that Lightroom is not yet a net-workable application. While we can point our catalog to images on a network accessible drive we cannot put our catalog on a network drive. This presents a problem to those of who like to work on a laptop and a desktop.
There are techniques that we can use to work on two computers with a single catalog. Some include importing and exporting catalogs or parts of catalogs to keep everything in sync. All of that can lead to mistakenly overwriting good data with old. Or, perhaps, it gets too confusing to keep track. With a very large catalog this is our only recourse at present. However, for a smaller catalog here is a technique that leverages the cloud.
All you need is a Dropbox account! What? You don’t have one? Well before you read any further click here and get your FREE 2Gb account. Even if you don’t use it for this technique it is a very handy thing to have. The magic of dropbox is how it works so seamlessly. Each computer you install it on gets a local dropbox folder. Everything that happens in that folder is duplicated to your dropbox account in the cloud and then down to every other computer you’ve installed dropbox on. A recent addition allows dropbox to keep the folders in sync over your network for a quicker response.
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Last week Adobe released a maintenance upgrade to Lightroom. Lightroom 2.7 is available at Adobe’s download site or you can have Lightroom check for updates and download from there. Also released was an update to Camera Raw bringing it to version 5.7.
The update mainly supports new camera models including:
- Canon EOS 550D (Digital Rebel T2i/ EOS Kiss X4 Digital)
- Kodak Z981
- Leaf Aptus-II 8
- Leaf Aptus-II 10R
- Mamiya DM40
- Olympus E-PL1
- Panasonic G2
- Panasonic G10
- Sony A450
The demosaic algorithm used to interpret raw data was updated bringing it more in line with the stellar improvements we’ve seen in Lightroom 3 Beta 2.
For more information take a look at Tom Hogarty’s article on Lightroom Journal.
Adobe has released new betas for Lightroom 2.7 and Camera Raw 5.7. They are available at Adobe Labs. Click here for Lightroom 2.7. Click here for Camera Raw 5.7. This release supports new cameras: Canon EOS 550D (Digital Rebel T2i/ EOS Kiss X4 Digital), Kodak Z981, Leaf Aptus-II 8, Leaf Aptus-II 10R, Mamiya DM40, Olympus E-PL1, Panasonic G2, Panasonic G10, and Sony A450.
Adobe also had the following release notes for the betas:
- Slideshow playback on Windows could cause Lightroom and/or the computer to crash. This has been corrected in Lightroom 2.7
- In Lightroom 2.7 the camera raw cache limit was increased to 200GB (for an excellent discussion of what the camera raw cache is, see Seán McCormack’s article at Lightroom Blog!)
- Please provide feedback on the Camera Raw plug-in on the User to User forums
- Please provide feedback on the Lightroom release candidate here.
With Lightroom 3 Beta already out, we’ve seen a number of great new features including better import/export, improved noise reduction, print and slideshow coolness and more.
With a great feature base in place, there’s certainly always room for improvement, though. The following are a few features I would like to see in future versions of Lightroom.
Tethering
Tethered shooting allows you to connect a USB cable from your camera to your laptop and, while shooting, have the images show up instantly on the computer.
Lightroom sort of supports this today using watched folders. It does require, though, other software to transfer the pictures from the camera to the computer. I’d really like to see all this integrated into Lightroom as one full package.
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I was in a recent DALPUG user group meeting and the topic of Lightroom vs. Aperture came up. Specifically, someone mentioned that they were a bit tired of how slowly Aperture released updates to support the RAW files of new DSLRs from Canon, Nikon, etc.
I’ve always generally been okay with how fast Ligthroom supported new cameras, but the discussion got me thinking about how fast both these tools support new cameras.
The following are the results of my research. You can scroll to the bottom of the post for a bit more information on how I collected the data. As you can see, it isn’t exhaustive, but it is composed of over 30 models, primarily from Canon, Nikon and Sony.
While this may not guarantee how fast Lightroom and Aperture will support the RAW files from your new camera in the future, it is interesting to see how fast they’ve done so in the past.
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It’s a big place out there on the web. We certainly appreciate you stopping by Lightroom Secrets for some Lightroom goodness! But, if you still want more there are several excellent resources.
Monthly (or so) we feature a Lightroom related site. Check the Featured Site section in the sidebar. There is also a list of Interesting Sites for you to explore. Give them a look. Perhaps you will find another site to add to your list.
Another excellent source is Alltop. Alltop aggregates sites in a wide range of topics. Here’s how Alltop describes what it does:
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Hi, I’m Brian. I hail from Denver, Colorado and as previously announced, I was able to talk my way into being a contributor to this fantastic blog.
Not surprisingly, I love Lightroom. I’ve used it since the first public beta and haven’t put it down since. It’s the best workflow tool for professional and amateur photographers alike. Period.
So, on this, my maiden post, I thought I’d briefly share the top 5 reasons why I (and you should if you don’t already) use Lightroom. I look forward to future posts where I can continue to share my knowledge and passion about Lightroom and photography.
Reasons to Use Lightroom
Reason 1: The Adjustment Brush
This is my single favorite feature. If you aren’t familiar with it, it allows you to apply affects (exposure, clarity, color, etc.) to just parts of the image. It was new in version 2 and is, by itself, worth every penny they charge for Lightroom. In version 1 I would open nearly 50% of my final photos to apply local sharpening and other adjustments. With the addition of the adjustment brush that number shrunk to 5-10%.
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Lightroom Secrets is pleased to welcome a new contributor, Brian Reyman! You can’t have enough Lightroom tips, tricks, tutorials, or news! Brian will stop by from time to time with his insights into Lightroom.
Brian lives and breathes Adobe products and loves using pretty much all of them. He was recently named an Adobe Community Professional for Lightroom! As an Adobe Certified Expert in Lightroom and User Group Manager for the Denver Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop User Group, Lightroom is at the top of the list!
When not shooting and using Lightroom (or other Adobe products), Brian is an IT professional living in Denver, Colorado. You can find Brian enjoying time with his great wife & kids or out playing sports or shooting (pictures of course) in the Rocky Mountains.
Welcome Brian!
