Deal Alert! onOne Software and NAPP Membership

I just found out about a killer deal that NAPP is going with onOne Software. You’ll get the Perfect Photo Suite (which includes pretty much all of onOne’s products) and a NAPP membership for $350. You’ll save about $250 that way. The deal expires on Dec. 8 so if you’re going to pull the trigger you’ve got about a week. Here’s the link.

Lightroom, Storage Space, and Big Catalogs

Happy Monday everyone. I hope you had a great weekend. A couple of things to kick off the day before we get into the real topic:

1) First, today is Cyber Monday. You know, that highly manufactured day that e-tailers have created to sell lots of stuff online. As a full time employee for Kelby Media Group, I can tell you that the deals we’re running today don’t happen any other time so make sure you stop by and check them out.

2) We’re hosting a live episode of DTown TV from B&H Photo in New York today at 2:30 EST. In fact, I’m on a train from New Jersey to New York as I write this. We’ll have some great prizes, tips and a tour of the humongous store so make sure you tune in. See you in a few hours!

The Issue
OK, now on to the topic of the day: Lightroom and storage space. I started thinking about this when I read an article the other day. It mentioned that you shouldn’t worry much about storage space. Basically, the underlying recommendation these days is shoot a lot – don’t delete – save it all – because storage space is cheap. Here’s the thing for me though. Cost isn’t the problem. I never think “Darn it! I’ve got to spend another $100 on a drive for my photos”. It doesn’t happen that often and when it does happen, it’s the cost of doing business.

Convenience
My problem is convenience. Every drive I add is one more drive that I now need to keep track of for my photos. And it’s one more drive I need to back up. When it really becomes a pain is when I have photos on one drive that I’m working with, then I want to switch to another group of photos and they’re on another drive. Then it becomes a game of trying to keep your photos you “think” you may want to work on, on the same drive but I’ll inevitably come across a shoot that I don’t have on the connected drive. Best case scenario, all my drives are close by and I can switch easily. Still a pain in the neck, but not the end of the world. Worst case, I’m traveling and I don’t have that drive with me.

The Alternative
One alternative (and my question to you) is to really be vigilant about deleting photos. For example, I have 50,000 photos in my Lightroom catalog. Of those 50,000, a very small percentage will get used for my portfolio or sent to any clients that I’m shooting for. So what do you do with the rest? Delete them. Delete them from your main photo drive and any backups. It takes some discipline though. As you’re going through those 1000 photos from a weekend trip, you’ve really got to step back and ask “how many do I need from this trip?”. Sure those 168 photos of the waterfall are great, but do you really need 168 to remember it, or will 2 suffice

Delete Every-So-Often
I’ve realized that after the shoot I try to be good about deleting, but I’m too emotional at that point. So my plan lately has been to go back every so often and delete more. I travel enough that I’m on a plane at least every month. I use that time to go through my Lightroom catalog and press X (reject) for every photo I want to get rid of. Then when I’m done, I go to Photo > Delete Rejected Photos. Amazingly, I seem to free up gigabytes of space each time I fly. A little time separation seems to do wonders with my editing abilities

HDR?
And let’s not forget HDR. This throws an entirely different wrench into the system. I’ll go out and shoot lots of HDR photos. But like all of my other shots, only a VERY small percentage make it to show off. Now I’ve got 5 photos for every 1 photo in my catalog and it’s taking a huge toll on my storage space. As much as I want to delete, there’s that little voice saying “But you may need them one day”.

So what do you do? Do you save everything? Are you crazy-good about deleting photos and your 700 photo shoot turns into 30 and that’s it? Somewhere in between? I’m interested to hear some varying thoughts here. Plus, I’m sure the answers will be very different based on what you do. A wedding photographer probably has no problem using a different drive for each wedding and probably doesn’t delete many photos. If I shot a wedding and had 1000 photos, I probably wouldn’t delete the rest after the album was done and delivered. But an enthusiastic hobbyist probably doesn’t need 43 photos of the outside of the cruise ship they were on, when just 2 or 3 will do. Thanks for reading and have a great day!

PS: I know that some will probably wonder after reading this, just how many photos your Lightroom catalog will hold. The answer is a lot. I’ve heard numbers ranging everywhere from 35,000 to 125,000. I have 50K and my catalog is fine.

The Easiest Way to Share Lightroom Catalogs with Different Computers

I recently got a Dell Precision M6500 for various tasks. While I still use my Macbook Pro primarily, I have to say the Dell is more and more tempting because it knocks the socks off my Mac when it comes to speed. Anyway, I was testing a PC-only Lightroom plug-in and I stumbled across (what I feel at least) is a great way to share your catalogs if you use multiple computers.

First, it requires that you store your photos on an external hard drive (which I already do).

Now, let’s say I’m working on my Mac and I’m working on a bunch of photos. I add keywords, Develop module changes, new Collections, etc… Well when I’m done, I close Lightroom. Then I go to where the actual catalog file is stored (You can see the location under the Lightroom > Catalog Preferences menu on a Mac / Edit > Catalog Preferences menu on a PC). I copy the .LRCAT file on to my external drive.

Next, I attach the external drive to my other computer, copy the .LRCAT file over and open Lightroom. I have to say, it sure beats doing the File > Export as Catalog and File > Import as catalog “thing”. I mean, either way, I need to copy something to a drive to get it over to my other computer right? This way just feels much cleaner to me and since my photos are all stored on the external drive.

If you’re wondering why not just work on the catalog directly from the external drive, it’s because that will significantly slow down Lightroom as it needs to write to that catalog file pretty often. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted as time goes on to let you know how this method works for me in the long run. But for now, I’m really digging it. Thoughts? Comments?

Photoshop Layers Book Webcast Follow Up

Some of you had some questions from my Layers book live webcast yesterday, so I wanted to do a quick follow up. I’m feeling a bit under the weather so forgive any misspellings and such (let’s blame it on Nyquil). Also, I’m heading out to Seattle later today to teach the Photoshop for Photographers seminar on Thursday. There’s still room if you want to snag a spot. Now, about the webcast:

• First, thank you so much if you were able to participate. I know it wasn’t in front of a live audience but those webcasts always make me feel like there’s a group of people in front of me. They’re fun to do and I appreciate all the get well wishes.

• The webcast will be available for you to watch (yes, free) if you weren’t able to make it. I’ll let you know the link as soon as I have it.

• Since the response was so great, I’ve decided to continue to sign any books that are ordered through Kelby Training’s website. Just order there and it’ll automatically get signed before they ship them.

• A question I didn’t get to answer (but I should have) was whether or not the sample images were available if you buy the book. Yes, they definitely are. In the introduction you’ll find a link to download the images I use in case you want to follow along. There’s also some videos I recorded specifically for the book.

• Nobody asked this but I thought it was cool to see that all of you propelled the new Layers book into the top 1000 of all books on Amazon (and I don’t think the 500 copies that my mom ordered factored in at all – kidding! ).
Very cool and a big thank you (see screen capture below).

Thanks again for all of your kind words about the book so far. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it and I’m truly grateful for all of your support. Take care!

Free Photoshop CS5 Layers Webcast today at noon

Hey everyone. To celebrate the release of my new book, Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop’s Most Powerful Feature, I’m doing a live webcast today at 12 EST. You don’t need to have the book or anything like that. I’ll simply be going over some tutorials from the book as well as answering some of your questions during a live Q&A. Just visit www.photoshopuser.com/webcast at noon to join in. Hope to see you then.

Lightroom Tip – What If You Accidentally Delete Your Photos?

Hope you’re having a great Friday so far. I’m slightly ashamed (but not very) to admit that it’s 2:00 am and I just finished playing the new Call of Duty: Black Ops game with a few guys from work (no names mentioned ). Anyway, my friend RC showed me a very cool plug-in that I thought could use a quick mention. It’s one of those “last chance” plug-ins and you’ll likely only use it if you accidentally lose some of your photos.

See, if you’ve managed your photos in Lightroom, it builds a fairly hi-res preview for those photos. Well let’s say that you delete (I mean gone for good) some photos or you simply just don’t have access to them (maybe they’re on an external drive that you don’t have with you) and you need to salvage something. There’s a plug-in called LR Viewer that allows you to extract previews as JPEG files. It’s not ideal but it could come in handy in a pinch so tuck this link away in your “just-in-case” folder.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Lightroom Video – Quick Develop Adjustments for Multiple Photos

This week’s video comes from a request I got on my Facebook page. It’s a pretty specific question and something that you’d normally think Lightroom doesn’t do. But when you learn about the Quick Develop loophole, it’s actually pretty cool. Enjoy!

Lightroom Video – Camera Calibration Profiles

Even though they’re at the very bottom of the Develop module panel, one of the first settings I change on my photos is the Camera Calibration Profile. The problem is that it’s one of those really tedious things to do for each photo you edit. Especially when you know that you want to apply the same profile for a bunch of photos. Well, in this video I’ll show you a couple of ways to apply a profile if you’ve already imported your photos, and a way to do it if you know ahead of time (before you import your photos) which profile you’d like to use. Enjoy!

I Have Two Lightroom Words For You – “Solo Mode”

I was in New York last week at Photo Plus East and I realized something. So many people don’t use one of my absolute favorite features for getting around in Lightroom. First… story time. See, I was walking through the expo and some one stopped me to say hi. He also had a Lightroom question. Well, the question got pretty involved so I asked him if he had his laptop there to show me (I figured it would save both of us time). So he opened his laptop and we were able to figure out his issue pretty fast.

In the process though, he was scrolling up and down the right side of the Develop module to get to the panel he wanted. So I asked if he knew what Solo Mode was. You’d think I gave him a million dollars when he saw what it did

What’s really interesting is that I saw the same guy the next day. He told me that he’d gone back to his studio (that he shares with several other photographers) and told them about it and none of them knew what Solo Mode was either. To add icing on the cake, I answered another LR question that day and showed the person Solo Mode and they almost kissed me (it was a guy so I stopped him ). At this point I realized two things: 1) I need to start charging for advice (totally just kidding!) and, 2) I needed to write a tip about Solo Mode.

What is Solo Mode?
Solo Mode automatically keeps only one panel open at a time. As you open another panel, the other automatically collapses. It’s great to keep you from having 7 panels open and scrolling up and down to switch panels. To turn it on, right-click on any dark gray area in your left or right side panels.

(click to see this larger)

You’ll see a pop-up menu show and Solo Mode will be one of those options. Just click it to turn it on. Don’t forget that turning it on in the right side of the Develop module only turns it on for those panels. You need to turn it on for the left side too. And it’s module specific so turning it on in Develop, doesn’t automatically turn it on for, say, the Library module.

Do you use Solo Mode? Weigh in and let us know if you agree? If not, give it a try. Once you turn it on, you’ll never go back. See ya!