Tip – An Unexpected Lightroom 3 Sharpening Tip

Over the last couple of months, I’ve had the opportunity to test drive the Lightroom 3 Beta before it came out. I spent a pretty decent amount of time kicking the tires but there’s one little feature/tip that I didn’t find out until this week. Before the Lightroom 3 Beta, when sharpening you had to be zoomed into 100% to see the effects of the sharpening. If you weren’t you wouldn’t see any change. But now in the Lightroom 3 Beta you can see your sharpening even at the lowest zoom level. Cool huh? Have a great weekend!

Lightroom 3 Beta Q&A

Here’s some Lightroom 3 Beta Q&A’s for ya:

Q. Will the beta run next to my real version of Lightroom 2? Basically, can I use both?
A. Yep. No problem you can use both at the same time.

Q. Will my Lightroom 2 Catalogs Work with Lightroom 3 Beta?
A. No. You’ll have to import a whole new set of images in order to use the beta. You can’t just open (or export) a LR2 catalog.

Q. If I use the beta will I be able to upgrade to the real version of the software and keep all of my work?
A. That’s where things get tricky. Adobe always recommends that you don’t do any work in the beta that you’re not prepared to eventually lose. It really is just for testing and demo purposes. So there’s no guarantee that the work you do will be portable to the full version of LR3. However, in the past, the catalogs have upgraded but again, that’s not a promise for the future. I always have a hard time with this one because once the beta comes out, I have to be honest with you and say I start using it full time. I know I shouldn’t and I know its bad, but what can I say. Once I get a taste of the new features its no fun to use the old ones anymore. Let’s hope that it does indeed upgrade the catalog from the betas as Lightroom has done before

Q. When will the full version of Lightroom 3 actually ship?
A. Adobe isn’t releasing that information right now. In an interview I did with product manager Tom Hogarty, he mentioned that it wouldn’t be as long at the beta period for LR1 (like a year or so) but it wouldn’t be as short as the beta for Lightroom 2 (only a few months). And the software itself has no indication like a “This software expires on October 31, 2009″ or anything like that.

Q. In your movie on the Lightroom Learning Center, you said that the Luminance slider under Noise Reduction was grayed out and not hooked up yet. But I imported some photos and its there. Why?
A. Yeah, the Luminance slider will be grayed out when editing raw files that haven’t been edited before. If you’ve imported a photo into Lightroom that was edited in a previous version of LR or Camera Raw, then Lightroom is applying the old noise removal and sharpening stuff to it. You’ll know this is the case if you go to the Settings > Process Version menu in the Develop module and see “Version 1″. That means its using the old stuff. You’ll have to update to Version 2 to take advantage of the new sharpening and noise removal improvements (and the lack of Luminance slider).

Q. What’s all the hype around the Import dialog? I don’t have any problems importing photos.
A. As an existing Lightroom user I don’t think the Import dialog improvements were really meant for you. If you’ve been using Lightroom, then chances are you know how to import by now. However, an easier Importing process is essential for Lightroom to grow beyond current users to new ones. Its been a little clunky in the past. Those that know it, know it. Those that never used Lightroom will now understand that importing process (hopefully) easier then you did when you were learning.

Q. So Matt, what’s your take on the beta?
A. My take is actually very similar to what Tom Hogarty was saying in the interview I did with him. The beta feels a bit more unrefined to me then previous ones. That’s pretty evident when there’s a slider that doesn’t even work (Noise Removal). For so long people have almost gotten used to the fact that a beta was really close to a shipping version of the software. Adobe’s not saying for sure but they have alluded to the fact that there will be more features coming in the full version. So I think its cool for now. The features that are there are definitely worth trying out, but there’s a handful of features that aren’t there (as many of you pointed out) that I hope make it into the full release. In the short term, the beta is nice but not life-changing. It does whet my appetite for what’s to come which, in the long term, I’m sure will have a bigger change on my everyday workflow in Lightroom.

Adobe Announces Lightroom 3 Beta!

Hey everyone! Big day today… I’m heading up to New York to PhotoPlus East early this morning but that’s not the big news. Adobe has once again released a public beta of the new version of Lightroom. Lightroom 3 Beta was announced and is now available as a free download for anyone (not just existing Lightroom users). I’ll give you the main points here but, honestly, Scott Kelby, RC Concepcion and I have each created various videos and articles over at NAPP’s Lightroom 3 Beta Learning Center. So rather than just repeat everything (that I’ve been up all day and night for the last 3 days creating for the learning center), I’ll just point you there instead

The Main Stuff:
• The Beta is for everyone
• Big changes in the Import dialog
• Noise removal has changed quite a bit
• Slideshows can now be exported as videos (with music)
• Custom print templates in the Print module
• Houston, we have watermarking!

So here’s your marching orders:
1) Don’t complain about the beta. Remember, its not finished yet. Its a beta.
2) Head over to NAPP’s Lightroom 3 Beta Learning Center
3) Download the Lightroom 3 Beta from the Adobe Labs website
4) If you’re a Kelby Training subscriber I’ve created an entire online training course, The Lightroom 3 Beta Power Session, that dives a little deeper into the new LR3 Beta features.
5) Keep an eye out at Tom Hogarty’s (Lightroom Product Manager) blog
6) Don’t forget to stop by Scott’s blog as well
7) Stay tuned here at Lightroom Killer Tips. As I find and create new things you can bet I’ll be showing them here first.

Thanks for stopping by. If you see me wandering around (with red bleary-looking eyes) at PhotoPlus East in New York today or tomorrow be sure to stop by and say hi.

Lightroom Weekly Worth-a-click

Here’s a few links worth checking out while you’re web surfing today:

• Sean McCormack wrote a very cool little article on Lightroom plug-ins. There’s a lot of ‘em out there and this sums it up very nicely.

• X-rite’s Color Checker Passport has direct integration when it comes to custom profiles in Lightroom.

• Rob Sylvan wrote an article called “10 Things I Wish I Could Tell Every New Lightroom User“.

• SneakPeek Photo has a Quick Look plugin for Digital Photographers. It lets you click on an unopened photo file (no matter where it is, even on your card reader) and hit the space bar. Up pops the picture into a large view that immediately gives you detailed info about the photo. Its kinda a cool idea but only for Mac.

• Adobe is putting on some e-seminars for design pros. There’s one in October and one in November. You can sign up here.

Have a great day!

Video Tip – The Missing Filter Options

I decided to record a video for today’s tip because a) I started to write it out and realized it was a very difficult to put this one into words without lots of screen captures and, b) I’m lazy and a video was much easier. Enjoy and have a great weekend.
- Matt

Click here to download the video to your computer. [Right-click and choose the "Save As" option]

Lightroom Q&A

Here’s some more Q&A’s for ya.

Q. When you compose a HDR image, do you keep all your original raw files in archives, or just the resulting TIFF?A. You know, this is a great question and I’m surprised it hasn’t been asked earlier. Personally, I keep all of the raw files for now. But I probably should change that. What I have seen some people do is save the actual .HDR file that is produced by the HDR software as well as the resulting TIFF image. (You can do that in Photomatix before you enter Tonemapping mode by going to the File menu) That way, they have the TIFF (which is what they really want) and they have the .HDR file in case they ever wanted to process the HDR again. I guess if HDR software ever really dramatically changes and you needed your originals to go back and re-process the HDR file then you’d want the raw files, but who knows if/when that would ever happen. Again, the answer is that I keep my raw files. However, its not a bad idea to get rid of them and just keep the images you really want. If any of you have thoughts/solutions on this please post a comment because I’d like to hear them.

Q. What is going on with Photoshop User TV and your DTown TV shows? They haven’t been updated in a while?A. Sorry, had to kick this off with a non-LR question but I’ve been getting asked this a lot lately. Photoshop User TV took a break while we tweak the set and overall show. Things are wrapping up so we’re hoping to get a show in by the end of October or at least the beginning of November. And things will be WAY different so make sure you stay tuned. DTown TV, as you may have heard, ended about 2 months ago. We did our last show and announced that we’d be back (in a month) with a brand new show. Well, one month turned into two and with the whole Photoshop User TV redesign things are taking a little longer then we expected. Rest assured a “digital photography” based show will be back right after we get Photoshop User TV going and rest assured that I’ll be mentioning it all over this site when its ready – and rest assured that some one will complain that either 1) I’m talking about non-Lightroom related info and that I should stop promoting my other stuff or, 2) That the new show we do doesn’t talk about their specific camera and about exactly what they wanted from the new show

Q. I watched your “Importing Raw + JPEGs” video the other day. I understand that Lightroom won’t import the JPEGs with the Raw files unless I tell it to, but what about moving and backing up. Will it move and/or backup the JPEGs to the same folder I tell it to for the raw files?A. Yep, Lightroom will move the JPEGs to the same folder you tell it to move the raw files to. And if you have LR backing up your photos on import then it’ll backup the JPEGs as well.

Q. Do you use a Wacom tablet with Lightroom? I know it works fine with Photoshop but does it work with Lightroom as well?A. Yes, I use a Wacom tablet with Lightroom. Mostly because I just use a tablet in general and I’m in Photoshop and Lightroom most of the day so it just doesn’t make sense to switch between tablet and mouse. The LR settings for tablets are actually pretty cool though. If you’ve got one of those new Intuos 4’s you can use the little circular wheel thingee to change your brush size which helps a lot. Also, at Photoshop World the other week, Wacom introduced a way to share preferences and settings with your tablets. I actually created an entire preference set for the Intuos 4 for use with Lightroom and I put some pretty neat things in there like zooming with the tablet, using the scroll wheel to spot heal the entire image with the tablet and a bunch of other stuff. Its for NAPP members only and you can download the preferences and see how to use them here on the NAPP member website.

Q. Sticking on the whole JPEG/Raw topic (I added that part), I’ve already imported a bunch of JPEG and corresponding Raw files into Lightroom. But I want to get rid of the JPEGs so what’s the correct way to do this?A. The best way to do it would be to navigate to the folder with the Raw+JPEGs. Then use your Filter Bar (View > Show Filter Bar) and filter the Metadata to just show JPEGs in that folder. Then select all of them and delete them and make sure you delete from the catalog AND hard drive, not just the catalog.

That’s it for today. Have a good one!

Video – Importing Raw + JPEGs into Lightroom

I figured I’d pick off another common question I get during this week’s video. It deals with what happens to your JPEGs when you shoot in the Raw+JPEG mode on your camera. I always get lots of questions from people that say they shoot Raw+JPEG but Lightroom is ignoring them. Actually, its supposed to. See, Lightroom has a preference setting that lets you tell it what to do with the JPEG files. We’ll take a look at it in this video.

Click here to download the video to your computer. [Right-click and choose the "Save As" option]

My New Lightroom Backup Training Course

First off, there’s a tip post right below this one so don’t forget to check it out. Also, I Just wanted to let you guys know that I had a brand new online training course go up on Kelby Training.com this week. Its all about backing up Lightroom. It sounds easy, but its probably the most-asked questions that I get (or I wouldn’t have created a whole course for it). I don’t just show you how to backup your catalog and photos but I show you why and the best ways to do it to make sure you’re back up and running in no time if something ever happened. I even went through some disaster scenarios. Like, what would you do if you’ve been backing up the way you should and one day you open Lightroom and its corrupt, or your computer crashed and your catalog is gone – what would you do? I go over those scenarios as well as some things like switching computers and backing up preferences and presets. I’m really psyched with the way it came together, and I made sure to keep each lesson right around the 3-4 minute mark so its easily digestible. You can find it (and the course outline) over at www.kelbytraining.com. Thanks!

Tip – Some Little Known Lightroom Shortcuts

Happy Friday. Everyone loves shortcuts right? So here’s a few little known Lightroom keyboard shortcuts to keep you going for a while.

Mac on left / PC on right
• Go to Full Screen Mode and hide all panels at the same time: Cmd-Shift-F / Ctrl-Shift-F
• Go straight to Camera Calibration panel (useful for camera profiles): Cmd-7 / Ctrl-7
• Go straight to vignettes: Cmd-6 / Ctrl-6
• Export Photos using Previous Settings: Cmd-Option-Shift-E / Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E
• Apply Auto White Balance: Cmd-Shift-U / Ctrl-Shift-U
• Go straight to Find by text in the Library Mode: Cmd-F / Ctrl-F

Also, if you have your own shortcut (and I mean a killer shortcut that you’ve never seen before and its not in the menus) then please feel free to post it here in the comments. Thanks and Happy shortcutting!

Lightroom Q&A Day

Hi everyone. Just got back from Photoshop World and I have lots of good questions that I got from the show to share with you. Let’s get started:

Q. Matt. Did you have a good time at Photoshop World and was there a lot of interest in Lightroom?A. Heck yeah to both questions! Photoshop World was awesome. Its one of the few times a year I get to get out and see the people that I work to train everyday. Thanks so much to everyone who came up and said hi. As for questions and interest in Lightroom, it was crazy. I know the name of the conference is Photoshop World but I’d say that 70% of the questions I got were about Lightroom. Great stuff though.

Q. Concerning the “Merging Catalogs” video you did last week, is LR smart enough to not duplicate the same RAW files once it merges the 2?A. Yes, Lightroom will not import if it detects duplicates. However its going to leave your library a mess. There’s really no magic bullet to rectify this situation other then good old hard work of you going through your photos and figuring it out yourself. Again, Lightroom will help alert you to duplicates but there’s a bigger problem here – you’ve set up your folders and catalogs so that the same photos exist in multiple places. No program is going to help you “fix” that per se. They’ll let you know you’ve done it but you have to fix it.

Q. Can you do a video on the easiest way to move photos from multiple hard drives to one in Lightroom? I have filled up several external drives and want to consolidate to a Drobo but don’t want to have Lightroom spend hours to create a new catalog if I just move the files outside of Lightroom?A. I’ll see if I can make a video out of it but here’s something to get you started. First, I did a video a while back on moving folders in Lightroom that kinda covers this but not totally. Next, try just moving them. Do all of the consolidation yourself. Then, since you’ll have inevitably broke the links to those photos when you open your catalog in Lightroom, just right click on the little folders with question marks (in the Folders panel in the Library module) and choose “Find Missing Folder”. Then point it to your new drive and everything will be good again.

Q. Can I export all my photos of the same catalog as JPEGs, but keep the same folder structure (basically I want to export the folders also not put them in just one folder)? A. Nope. Best you can do is put them all in a sub folder but they’re still going to be on the same level and not in a folder structure.

Q. Is it possible to use a Lightroom catalog made with the Mac version, with one made with the Windows version??A. Absolutely. It’ll work just fine.

That’s it for today. Have a good one!