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]]>According to the release notes The goal of this release is to address several bugs that were introduced with the release of Lightroom 2.0 and provide additional camera raw support. A comprehensive list of issues fixed in this release is included below:
You can ask questions, make comments, help your fellow Lightroom users, and get the help you need! The site is moderated by Adobe personnel and other outside Pro Contributors (including yours truly!) so you can expect that someone will answer your question or direct you to the proper site for help.
This Community Help site has been in place for Flex™ users for a few months and has been a great resource. Now Lightroom™ users can benefit from the same excellent technology.
Head on over and see for yourself!
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Lightroom 2.0 is finally here! Some of the new features include:
- Local adjustment brush
- Enhanced organizational tools
- Volume management
- Extensible architecture
- Multiple monitor support
- Flexible print package functionality
- Streamlined Photoshop CS3 integration
- Enhanced output sharpening
- 64-bit support for Windows® and Mac OS
If you are a Lightroom 1 user or if the Lightroom 2.0 Beta has you hooked stop on by Adobe and get your copy today!
]]>[From Adobe - Photo Management Software - Photoshop Lightroom]
But Lightroom offers a few more overlays for other compositional guidelines. I don't believe it's a documented feature (or at least not very well documented!). When you are in the crop tool press the O key (that's the letter O) and the overlay will change! Here are the other overlays:
A Diamond overly:
A Basic Grid:
There are three overlays based on the Golden Mean. The Golden Mean is one of those naturally occurring numbers like pi. It is basically the ratio between numbers in a Fibonacci series where each successive number is the sum of the preceding two numbers (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc.). That can be used in the following three overlays available in Lightroom:
The Golden Mean version of the Rule of Thirds:
The Golden Triangle:
The Golden Spiral:
Another slick feature with the last two overlays is the ability to change their starting point. By pressing SHIFT-O when one of them is on the screen the layout will change. If the first Golden Triangle doesn't look right press SHIFT-O and see if the new one is right.
The Golden Spiral offers eight variations. Here are three:
Next time you are looking for other ways to compose your images try these overlays out. You may go down some creative roads you haven't travelled yet and discover a whole new world of composition!
]]>The three major fixes from the last update include:
If you are a Mac use click here for the update. Windows users can click here.
Tom Hogarty from Adobe has posted full details in his blog. Also, don't forget to download the corresponding update for Camera Raw and the DNG Converter! (Mac, Windows)
]]>That's 103 new features! Sounds good until you start looking at them. Many are not features at all but badly needed corrections to existing aspects of the program. Still more are "me too" features that Lightroom users have been using and enjoying since Lightroom Beta!
Apple is trying to sneak in the back door here by dropping the price of Aperture to $199. (The upgrade price for existing users is $99.) That price undercuts Lightroom by $100 but is it enough to win back Mac users who have abandonded Aperture infavor of the more robust Lightroom? I don't think so. Lightroom hasn't even hit version 1.5 yet but Adobe has it on a fast track and is giving their users much more frequent updates and feature enhancements. This may be too little to late on Apple's part.
One glaring ommission from Aperture 2.0 (perhaps I missed it and it's there) is the continued lack of presets! Lightroom came out of the starting gate with preset abilities and photographers use this feature extensively. Many Aperture users left the fold because of this flaw in Apple's offering.
Lastly, Aperture is still only available to the Mac crowd so Apple continues to ignore the large Lightroom user base over on the Windows side. I think Adove has got it right here and Apple needs to take notice! All that being said, Aperture is still a fine photography workflow program. Some of it's unique (for now) features are loved by many photographers. If you're a Mac user you have a choice.
]]>Apparently, Adobe is listening to Lightroom users more than we could hope and many of the features we are hoping for (plus some we didn't even think of) are under consideration. When the next update will appear and what it will include remain a mystery. If we can get Scott in a back room for a while we could break that non-disclosure agreement! Only kidding!
You can read Scott's full post here .
]]>All of the basics are there. But now you can click on the Learn More link at the bottom of each help topic for more information and useful sites and tutorials. Go and take a look at http://learn.adobe.com/wiki/display/LR/Home.
The site is administered by Adobe, moderated by experts from the community, and developed with the assistance of a panel of Lightroom Learning Advisors. So you'll also find links to the moderators’ and advisors’ favorite Lightroom sites, plus links to troubleshooting sites and a page that lists third-party presets, galleries, and extensions.
]]>But what do you do if you have a large number of images and you need to find out which ones are not in a collection? Here is a step-by-step way to select all your non-collected images.
While in the Library module, open your Collections panel on the left.
Now click on the first collections in the list to highlight it.
While holding down the shift key click on the last collection in the list. You should now have all your collections selected and all the images in them appear in the grid.
To select all these images either press Control-A (Command-A on the Mac) or go up to the Edit menu and click Select All.
What's that you say? You're right! Now you have all your collected images selected. Here's how we get to our goal of select all images not in a collection.
Go to the Library panel and click on All Photographs.
Now the grid shows all your images with the collected ones selected. To finish off got to the edit menu and click Invert selection.
Viola! Now the grid shows a selection of all your images that are not in any collection!
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Adobe has released the latest update to Photoshop Lightroom. Now at version 1.3, several areas have been addressed. While none are earth-shattering, Adobe has taken the time to implement subtle changes based on user experience. Dig a little and you'll be pleasantly surprised.
For you Mac fans - Leopard is now supported! Mac users can get the upgrade here.
Windows users can get the upgrade here.
Ian Lyons over at Computer-Darkroom has an excellent review of all the changes. Check it out!
]]>The latest version of Eltima Software's Flash Decompiler, dubbed Trillix 3.0, is a powerful and useful tool to have in your Flash arsenal! If you are a Flash developer you may shy away from decompilers. Perhaps you see them as the tool nefarious people use to steal your designs. But wait! Here is a tool that you can really sink your teeth into!
All it takes is a lost computer or a forgotten backup and you will be glad you have this tool. If you can get to your SWF file you can save yourself hours (or days) of work.
The interface is elegant and very reminiscent of Microsoft's Office 2007 interface. You can set this up the way you like to work. If you like to see all of the information at all times the various panels can be locked in place. If they are unlocked then they will gracefully glide in and out of sight as you hover your mouse allowing you to see more of your player area.
There are five main tabs that lead you to the five major working areas of the
program:
In each of these areas you can set a multitude of parameters to yield the result you want. On top of that you can set up batch decompilations!
All in all, Trillix is an excellent tool! Eltima says they are still working on version 3.0 to resolve some minor bugs and glitches. Compared to it's next best competitor SoThink from SourceTec Software it shines! You can download a free trial at Eltima's
site.
Whether you come back with 300 images from a landscape shoot or 3,000 from a wedding you still have the inevitable task ahead of you of going through the images and deciding what stays and what goes. There are many ways to approach this. Some people will rate images with stars; 5 stars are OUTSTANDING and 0 stars go to the cyber trashbin. Others use the color coding method; RED for great shots, BLUE for the trash. Still others will do a combination of stars and colors.
I don't know about you, but for me, with very few exceptions, I have three categories of images:
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom provides an excellent system for me in the form of the Pick and Reject flags. Here's what I do when I'm ready to start my review process.
After I've imported the images into Lightroom I go down to the filter bar in Library grid view and filter for unflagged images. Then I close all of the panels with SHIFT+TAB which leaves me with a screen full of thumbnails. I tend to make my thumbnail previews fairly large so I can see some detail. You can even do this in loupe view.
Now I'm ready. Looking at the first image I either hit the P key or the X key. P is for Pick and X is for Reject. (We'll get to U in a minute). Once I do that the image disappears from my view! It's not gone it's just that the image is no longer unflagged so the filter removes it from the view.
If I'm undecided then I move on to the next image and leave the previous one alone. As I progress through my shoot the only thumbnails I can see are the unrated ones. When all the images are gone I know I've made a decision on all of them.
I can now change the filter to show me Rejected files only. I take a quick run through of these and if I've changed my mind I hit the U key to unflag the image and remove it from the rejects. It's a simple matter at this point to create a directory and drag the rejects to it for holding. I like to keep the rejects around but sequestered until I'm sure I really don't want any of them.
Turn off the filter and now your picks and unflagged are there. Now is the time to bestow the honor of 5 stars on those marvelous few images.
This has been a real time saver for me. No longer do I hover over an image stuck in the unanswerable quandry "is this a 3 star or a 4 star? 4...no wait it's not tack sharp so 3...but the composition is stunning so 4...and so on and so on...." So if you haven't PUXed yourimages give it a try. You'll like it!
]]>The first of such decisions centers around sharpening your images. Yes, RAW images do look "fuzzier" than their JPEG cousins. That's because when you shoot JPEG your camera is making those sharpening decisions for you before it serves up the already baked image. With RAW you now get to decide what gets sharpened and how it gets sharpened.
There are three main sharpening stages:
In the simplest of terms sharpening looks to find those areas where light and dark edges meet and enhance that contrast without generating edge artifacts (such as halos). Capture sharpening will adjust the image as it comes in from the camera to a point where you think the image should be. Capture sharpening should be applied as a first stage before you do anything else to your image. Once you have the sharpness you desire on input you can make better decisions about where to go from there.
Both Lightroom and Camera Raw offers excellent capture sharpening functionality. Make sure you've upgraded to the latest versions - Lightroom 1.1 and Camera raw 4.1 . If your workflow starts in Photoshop you can also achieve excellent capture sharpening. There are many third party plugin applications out there to make your Photoshop sharpening tasks easier but by far the best is Photokit Sharpener from the folks over at Pixel Genius . This plugin covers all three sharpening stages excellently.
Capture sharpening is arguably the easiest of the three stages but a necessary step in the creative process if you are cosidering output of any significant size. We'll talk more in future articles about creative and output sharpening.
For you Lightroom users, I've included a zip file of four capture sharpening presets that mimic the capture sharpening from Photokit Sharpener. Just unzip the file and place in your Lightroom presets directory.
]]>Learning to see light and how that light falls on your subject is a skill that can turn your everyday snapshot into fine art photography. Some of you may remember the instructions that came with general consumer cameras back in the 50's and 60's. They told us to make sure that the sun was to our back and falling directly on the subject. Remember that? Good. Now forget it!<!--break-->
Grab that shoebox out of the closet and take a look at the results of that advice. Are all of your grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles squinting and making weird faces in all those old family photos? IT'S BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE SUN BLASTING INTO THEIR EYES!!! So forget those old tips.
Before you even pickup the camera learn to look. What's your subject? What environment is your subject in? How is your subject lit? What kind of light is it? Can you move the subject easily or can you move in relation to the subject? All these questions and more should be running through your head. When you have some answers then, and only then, put the camera to your eye.
Light can have dramatic impact on your image. Just look at the differences between a fashion closeup lit with studio strobes and some classic 40's Hollywood stills with that familiar Film Noir feel. While it's true that photography has to do with light it is just as much concerned with shadow.
By moving the light or moving your subject you can alter how the light falls and consequently how the shadows are shaped. In the studio, it's easy to move the strobe or hot light. Outside, unless you're part of a new Biblical epic, you can't move the sun so you must move the subject. Make use of reflectors so open up shadow areas. Look for areas of open shade outside where you can get great lighting on your subject with out the squinting so familiar in the shoebox photos. If you can't find open shade then think about diffusing the sunlight.
Yet another tool you have at your disposal is patience. Ansel Adams would sometimes wait days for the light to be just right. Of course that kind of patience won't work if you're photographing children. But for landscapes - you bet!
Once you have the subject lit the way you want continue to compose the shot. Don't forget about the Rule of Thirds and other composition aids. There's a saying that the only thing that gets in the way of a great photograph is a camera! So get out there and find the light! We'll talk more about htis later.
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