From tour to home.

As a matter of course I brought my laptop with me on my recent family trip. It gives me an opportunity to play with imagery as I travel and occasionally check stuff online. WiFi access was sparse at best, but it was good to still be able to get a little editing done while on the road.
Getting home means moving everything off the laptop and onto the desktop. There are a couple of approaches that you can take. As I keep images stored on a date basis, the easiest way to get images across with edits in place is to save XMP on the laptop by selecting all the images from the trip and saving with Command/Control S. Next I can access the laptop a number of ways: With Target Disk Mode, I can directly import the images, from their dated folders on the laptop drive, to the main desktop. I can also go via my home network, but that is not particularly quick. I could also copy the files to an external disk and then onto the main hard drive.
Another option is to choose the folders and files from the trip and use File>Export as Catalog to create a copy of the settings, previews and negatives. This can then be imported with the Import from Catalog command. This is useful if you've created a series of Collections, which are not saved with the XMP.

Moving files from laptop to desktop.

Over the bank holiday weekend I was in Kerry. The weather was quite variable and made for interesting shots, so I shot loads! Because I was traveling reasonably light and need to buy larger memory cards (2 Gb is really too small for a 40D), I had my laptop with me. So now I'm at home with a laptop, full of edited and selected photos. So what do I do?

1. First off I select the new folders from the Folders panel. I'm saved in 2008/06/01 order so I can pick the correct ones by selecting the right dates!
2. Then I select all, to make sure each image is selected. On the road it's better to make snapshots, rather than virtual copies as these transport more easily.
3. From the Metadata menu I use Save Metadata to Files. Control/Command S is the shortcut.
4. Next I restart my laptop in Target Disk mode by holding down T as it boots up. PC users with a firewire port can create a firewire network, or use an external drive to do the transfer.
5. I then choose Import Photos from Disk.. from the File menu. When the dialog comes up I navigate to the laptop drive icon and then choose my folders.
6. Because I've already done stuff on the laptop, I choose none from Develop and Metadata settings and Filename from the renaming menu.
7. Finally I go get a cup of tea, because there's a lot of files to copy over!

Alternatively I could choose the files and use the File>Export as catalog command. The restarting in Target mode, I could use File>Import from catalog from my desktop catalog. Because I've not made any collections, I didn't see the need for the extra time involved. Of course if I'd made previews of all the files, then it would make more sense, because I'll need to generate these on the desktop.

Catalog Corruption

In the midst of all the Beta 2 excitement, I've a post on a version 1 issue. Beta 2 is not ready as a production tool so I've still doing my work in V1.0.
I've finally gotten a mix of time and motivation to finish a new site for my main website, that is until Lightroom started doing very strange things. I've noticed a slowdown recently, so I figured I could do with optimising the catalog. I'd skipped the backup when I last started (I know, I know), so I let it run this time just in case.

Lightroom went through the integrity check slowly, in fact so slowly, I opted for bed rather than wait on it. As I said in the Beta 2 post, I decided to sleep out the announcement. When I woke this morning and checked the computer, I was greeted with this ominous message:

I checked the technote by clicking on the link. It leads to this page. An interesting read. I've had a lot of catalog churn recently with organisation, along with Web Gallery creation, so I've been restarting and occasionally having to force quit Lightroom. Somewhere along the way the catalog had become corrupted. Knowing that Dan Tull has put a lot of work into catalog rescue, I figured that either the repair would work, or Dan would have another test catalog. I wasn't worried as I have a recent backup. So I clicked 'Repair Catalog' and let Lightroom work away.

After a while the delightful news came back:

Phew. I'm glad my faith was justified! Instances like these prove that even with a good system, things can fail, so back up!

The arduous process of Consolidation

As you may remember, I opted to go with a date based Import structure, to ease the import process. I'd been slowly but surely moving files into dated folders, but eventually I got to the point where it was too time consuming. I made the decision to save out XMP, remove from Library and then reimport via a dated structure. All the image ultimately will end up on one drive, meaning a straight backup of the drive duplicates all the Library photos. As the drive is a 750Mb Drive, it allows me reasonable room for expansion without thinking too hard about future storage. I have been getting better at deleting, so Hopefully the balance of images in the Library will settle out as I remove older, unwanted, images.

Some notes:
Lightroom does not store Virtual Copy information in XMP, nor does it store collections. I will have to rebuild collections. In truth I can live with that.

Virtual Copies on the other hand can be saved with a work around. For VC's that you absolutely have to keep, copy the settings to the master file and save them as a Snapshot. Snapshots are retained in Metadata. The other option is, of course, to make a hard copy of the file.

With the hindsight from doing this, I do have a few recommendations for those upgrading drives and considering how to control the images within the Catalog.

Connect the new drive. In Lighroom create new folder on this drive. Copy your entire folder structure to the drive, you may want to do this in sections, just to be safe. Lightroom shouldn't have an issue, but doing it in sections frees up the CPU and drive from time to time (for email etc!). Tada.
Now use this drive for your future imports.

If you want to get rid of that folder you created on the drive as a top level folder, select it and click '-' beside the word 'Folders' in the Folders Pane. Don't worry, you're not deleting it. Select 'Promote Subfolders' from the options. Now your original hierarchy will be the same as on the original drive.

Catalog Backup in Lightroom

I have spoken about ideas for easier backup in the past, but I'm just going to give some detail on the automatic backup feature within Lightroom. To set up Backup in Lightroom, we need to open the Catalog Settings. This is located in the File Menu and can be accessed by using the shortcut Command-Option-, (Ctrl-Alt-, On PC).

Fig 1. The Catalog Settings command.

Once this has opened, go to the Backup section of the General Tab. Clicking on the drop down menu reveals the frequency of which you can backup: Never, Monthly, Weekly, Daily, every restart or just the next restart.

Figure 2. The Catalog Settings Dialog.

Figure 3. The Backup Options in Catalog Settings.

For this part of our example I selected 'Next time Lightroom starts only'. The Dialog in Fig. 4 appears when I restart Lightroom. A little trick to make the restart easier is to go to File>Open Recent and then click on the name of the CURRENT catalog. This will restart Lightroom with the same catalog we're working on.

Figure 4. The Back Up Catalog Dialog.

Looking at Fig 4., we can see 3 buttons and a check box. We can either Skip Now or Backup. We can also check the box to test catalog integrity before backup, which is wise, as a broken backup file is useless. The last button is the Choose button (See Fig 5). This allows us to select the location to which the backup Catalog is written. I recommend an external drive at minimum. If you do select an external drive and it is unavailable at backup time, Lightroom will write to the default Backups folder inside the folder where the Catalog resides.

Figure 5. The Choose button allows you to select the backup location.

If you choose a repeated option, then a fourth button appears, allowing you to skip this backup, but allow further backups to continue as normal. See the images below for a screen capture of the other available options in Backup.

Figure 6. The Weekly Back Up Catalog Dialog

Figure 7. The Monthly Back Up Catalog Dialog

Figure 8. The Daily Backup Dialog

Figure 9. The Everytime Option Dialog

When you've allowed a few backups to happen, you'll start to notice something about catalog files, especially if you have a large photo library. They can get quite big. My main Catalog file is 1.1 Gb for 70,000 photos. When you've a few backups done, I recommend you delete older ones that are no longer necessary. Also you can use either the system archiver on Mac, or Winzip on PC to compress the file down in size. The file is full of text and compresses down significantly. For example my 1.1Gb file compresses to 140Mb. Quite a difference!

Personally I have the automatic backup set to Weekly, but I do backups after major imports/edit sessions, just to be safe.

The need for Speed: Quick Develop

Why would anyone want to use a tool that provides only a limited way to handle photos? Well, the answer is in the name. It’s because they want to work quickly. Quick Develop is a great tool for balancing the look of images in a hurry. The key difference between the buttons in Quick Develop and the sliders in Develop is this: Quick Develop makes Relative changes, whereas Develop makes Absolute changes. So how does this work in practice? Well, let’s say I have a few images I’m working on. Most are at 0 exposure, but let’s say I’ve already tweaked one or 2 to have +1 stop of exposure. I’m looking at all the photos and thinking I need to lighten them all a bit, including the ones I’ve already worked on. So I reach for the exposure button in Quick Develop and hit it a few times. All of the selected images will increase in exposure by 2/3 stop (each hit is 1/3 stop). If I tried that in Develop with Auto Sync on, all the images would go to 2/3 Stop, meaning the ones that were already tweaked have darkened (because they were at +1 at the start). Not so good. Quick Develop works best there.

What I love about Quick Develop is that it’s entirely visual. When you use the tools, you can only adjust by viewing the image. Sometimes in Develop we can, too often, work by looking at the numbers. As in “I shouldn’t really push this more than a stop, I’ll tweak the brightness instead”. Nah. Just get the best level visually and deal with any noise issues later in Develop. As photographers we deal with a visual medium, so we need to base our editing on what we see and perceive, rather than looking a numerics. It can happen in other fields too, like in sound mixing where you can end up looking at meters, rather than listening to the music.

So what’s the downside? Well you can’t save any Quick Develop settings into a preset.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could have relative presets? You could add or subtract any of the basic settings by a relative amount, so the current settings are the starting point of the Preset. Great!

To end here’s a Quick Develop tip: Hold down the Alt (Option on Mac) key and Clarity and Vibrance will change to Sharpening and Saturation.

This could well be the last post before Christmas, so Happy Christmas to all Christians, and Happy Holidays to everyone else! (I am in a Catholic Country here folks!)

Import by date file structure.

A recent near miss with serious data loss has me rethinking my current import by genre strategy. In a fairly recent post on Lightroom Forums.net, John Beardsworth argues for always importing by date and using metadata to create any other required structure. The background to this post by him is that I was touting a structure like Landscapes>Ireland>Connemara>Bunowen, rather than by date.

"Unless you use a strictly date-based structure, there is always the risk of your pictures either being duplicated or falling between the cracks and being controlled only in your imagination. Where, in Sean's example, would one put a shot that fits more than one category - a portrait in a bleak Connemara landscape. In bands, or in Connemara? Why not in both? Or should it depend on the size of the person relative to the landscape. A second set of considerations is reconstruction - imagine a catastrophic system failure and what makes rebuilding easier. A subject hierarchy or simple date based folders? In other words, using your folder system to analyze your work is a dead end - that's what metadata is for."

My issue began when doing some backup. Somehow the power supplies of my archive drive and the backup drive became swapped and both drives crapped out (the somehow being my own stupidity, I suspect). I surmised that perhaps the 12v and 5v lines were swapped in each (they have identical connectors) and that by swapping the drives and the caddies, I might get one working. I was right and managed to avoid serous data loss through this. Needless to say I bought a new drive immediately and backed up the photos.
Now I did have most of the stuff on DVD also, but newer stuff wasn't there because my DVD backups were monthly at the very least. Since I changed to using 2 drives for backup, I've been lazy about using this procedure. Also the Genre method makes it hard to save monthly. I'm back to importing by date now, but with one change.

I want to have my shoots in their own folder. Sometimes I might have 3 or 4 unrelated items in one day, eg portraits during the day, band promo shoot in the evening and a live gig at night. I don't want these together in one folder, so here's where a simple bit of typing can help.

Currently Lightroom only allows one set of metadata/keywords/settings at a time on Import. Because of this I tend to do multiple imports from one card if need be. So to decide my import location I now choose the 2005/December/17 style date import as per Fig 1. (I could also use 2007/12/07, but I like seeing the month name.)

Fig 1.

I then double click on the folder name that is being applied to edit it. I leave the date string intact as 2007/December/09, but I add to with a /Lights. The leading "/" forces Lightroom to create a new subfolder in the date folder. You can see the full string in Fig 2.

Fig 2.

With 2 shoots from that date imported in the same way, I have the shoots in individual, but date based folders.

Fig 3.

Of course now I need to consider how to get my older folders into this order. I have a few options: Use dates from the Metadata Browser to manually create dates and move the subfolders to these. I could simply save out all the Metadata and remove the files and reimport by date. I'd lose Virtual Copies and Collections this way though. Any option I choose forces compromise, so this will dictate the choice. As an interim option I could also simply make a date/month/subfolder option for now and add the date as time allows. I suspect the latter choice will be the easiest, with least loses.

And now John will get a chance to say 'I told you so'.

Audio in Lightroom

I've known about the presence of audio files in Lightroom 1.1 for a little bit now, but as I don't own a camera that can import them, I not investigated it much. Ian Lyons on the other hand, does and has. Due to his practice of converting files to DNG and deleting the audio, he only recently discovered that you can, in fact, hear audio files created to go with your images. These voice annotations are treated as sidecar files and can be accessed by clicking on the arrow beside the name.
More information can be found in Ian's post on them, along with an expansion of information on GPS in Lightroom.

Update: I see that James Duncan Davidson has also posted about this over at the O'Reilly Inside Lightroom Blog

Jeff's Metadata Viewer Preset Builder

I've mentioned Jeffery Friedl and his cool tools here before. Well he's now updated his Lightroom Metadata Viewer Preset Builder for Lightroom 1.1. Quite a mouthful! So what does it do?
If you look at the Metadata Pane in Library you can see a viewer dropdown list to the right of the label 'Metadata'. It includes default templates such as All, Quick Describe, EXIF and others. Jeff's LMVPB allows you to create your own Metadata views that include the information you need to see when you look at metadata. Jeff describes the tool in great detail in the article and even if you don't feel an immediate need to use the tool, it is still quite informative and a useful read.

Jeff also does a list of his favourite new features in Lightroom 1.1.

Keeping life simple.

In my work as a sound engineer (not to mention my photography work!), I meet new people everyday. Be it bands, friends of friends or audience members, I get to make new acquaintances all the time. One of the first topics that ladies get to is my son. He's 2 and has a huge shock of curly blonde hair. So I get to break out the photos and do the proud father routine. I have a small bunch on my phone (a Nokia E61-love the big screen!), but I'm very bad at adding new ones. Tonight I bit the bullet and I set Lightroom up to get the pictures to my phone quickly and easily.

Being on an iMac, I have bluetooth built in, so this for me is the best way to do the job. First I invoked Shift Cmd B from the Finder, which is the internal command to open Bluetooth File Exchange. From there I right clicked on the dock icon and selected 'Show in Finder'. This was the quickest way for me to get to the original program icon (already knowing the shortcut).
Next I switched to Lightroom and hit Export (Shift Command E to be exact). Using the final option in the Post Processing section, I selected 'Go to Export Actions folder Now'. This opens the folder in Finder. Now I have the 2 Finder windows I need. With Option and Command held down, I drag the Bluetooth File Exchange icon into the Export Actions folder. This creates an alias in the folder.

Finally I go back to Lightroom and the close and open Export again to refresh the Post Processing menu. I then create a preset that sends a smaller size copy of my file to Bluetooth File Exchange and save it as an Export Preset.
To facilitate the speedy transfer, I have my phone and the computer paired. Now whenever I want to send images to the phone, I switch on bluetooth. I then select my images in grid and choose the Bluetooth preset from the Export Presets menu. Of course this leaves me no excuse for not having new pictures to show.

Offline Media

Lightroom photos can inhabit any drive they like, internal or external. The beauty of it is that unlike browser based photo editor/managers, Lightroom allows you to access your files when the external drives are disconnected. This is because of the database that is the heart of Lightroom. Offline drives and folders appear in red in the Folders Pane. If you have used Render Standard Previews on import or from the menu prior to disconnecting, you will also be able to work with a screen sized version of your offline image. If you have rendered 1:1 previews, it is even possible to get large size prints, using draft mode printing. Mac users can even recreate the missing image by using Preview from the Print driver to print to a new file. You can create virtual copies, add to collections and change keywords and metadata while the file is offline. One thing you cannot do though is actually edit the file. Develop creates a new preview when you change the settings and needs the original file.
This leads to one slow part of Lightroom. When you reconnect the drive to start editing, Lightroom takes a finite amount of time to check the drive when it comes online. A quick way to speed this along is a little unothodox: Restart Lightroom after you plug the drive in and it will find the drive much quicker.

Upgrading your Beta 4 Library to Version 1.

The upgrade path from a Beta Library is fraught with peril. Not really, but it does require patience and understanding, especially if you have large Library.
I've prepared a video as I do a jump from Beta 4 to V1. Before you begin your upgrade, please read the Readme and help files. Heed the warnings about upgrading therein. Unhide all image files and Import all Photo Binders into the B4.1 Library before starting. On that note, upgrade previous Libraries to B4.1 also. The process will backup the B4 library, in the event of a failure. To aid you in your upgrade here is the video: Library Upgrade Video.

Create your own Metadata-Viewer Preset

Author Jefferey Friedl has placed his Metadata Viewer preset generator online.
In the Metadata Pane, you can select what type on Metadata you want to view using the drop down menu (as per screen shot). Jeff's tool allows you to create your own.
Follow the instructions in the file on where to place it.

There are warnings on using these files though
"This file is formatted for use with Lightroom Version 1.0. There are no
guarantees that this file nor the instructions herein will be supported by any
other version of Lightroom.

This file itself may be inspected, edited, and redownloaded at:

http://regex.info/Lightroom/Meta/View=j2z

Adobe does not officially support the use of this file; use at your own risk."

The file listed in one I've created and it works in Lightroom Version 1.

Metadata Browser

I've put together another short video, this time on the Metadata Browser. The Metadata Browser is a powerful feature that allows you to find things by Lens, Camera, Creator, Date, File Type and Location.

A quick and dirty look at email in V1.0

A quick, off the cuff, video on emailing from V1 of lightroom.