Lightroom 3.4.1 is Now Available

Hey folks. Last week I mentioned a rare bug in Lightroom 3.4 that had to do with JPEG photos. It only affected a very small amount of people with a certain camera though. Nonetheless, if you were one of those people then it was definitely a problem. Anyway, Adobe has quickly released an update that addresses the issue. It’s available for download now in Lightroom under the Help menu. Also, you can read more about it over at Tom Hogarty’s blog (Lightroom Product Manager).

Are you a Lightroom Flagger or Rater Recap

Last week I wrote a post about 3 (and a half) reasons to use Flags Instead of Ratings in Lightroom. Then I asked whether or not you were flaggers or raters. I was pretty surprised at how many comments came up (over 100). So, first of all – thank you. As I’ve said before, it’s the community here that makes a site like this possible, and I’m always grateful that you spend some of your valuable time here.

Since there were so many comments, I figured most of you wouldn’t (or couldn’t) have the time to read through all of them. But there was a lot of really interesting thoughts on the topic, so I didn’t want them to go to waste. They even got me thinking about different ways to do things. Now, I couldn’t’ go through and recap all of them, but here’s a quick recap some things I found interesting.

• First off, I found that a majority of people use both. Flags at first but then most people resorted to the star rating system to refine their picks. I have to admit. After thinking about it, I’ve done the same before. I’ll usually do my flagging first, but sometimes I 5-star the absolute best from that group.

• One thing I didn’t point out about flags is that they’re specific to the folder or collection in which you flag them. Meaning, if you created a collection and then flagged some photos, they wouldn’t be flagged back in your original folder. It’s not necessarily a good or a bad thing. It’s just something you should be aware of when flagging so it doesn’t catch you by surprise. For me, flagging photos is how I get them into a collection so it’s not a big deal. But definitely something to keep in mind.

• Flag status doesn’t get stored in metadata. So they couldn’t be read by programs outside of Lightroom. Again, not a huge deal-breaker for me personally. I don’t have a need for other programs to recognize my flags. And I’d never approach using LR with the thought that maybe one day I wouldn’t be using it. It’s kinda like getting married, expecting that one day you’d get divorced
That said, a reader (Christian) pointed out that some website scripts would read stars and I could definitely see a value in that if you had your photos tied in with websites and portfolios, etc…

• Mike McCarthy had an interesting comment:
“1 – Crap, 2 – Possible Keeper, 3 – Definite Keeper
Once I go through a shoot this way, I delete the 1′s. If I have a lot of 3′s – which doesn’t happen often! – I [P]ick the better ones on a second pass. I then process the flagged 3′s and increase the final edited copies to 4′s for exporting for the client. Anything that I want in my portfolio gets made into a 5 and automatically added to a smart collection.”

• Mike’s comment above got me thinking. I’ve been approaching stars as if you HAD to use all 5. But you don’t. You could just as easily say you’re only going to use 1-3. 1 is bad (or “crap” as Mike puts it), 2 is OK, and 3 is a select. Even if you don’t go as far as Mike did with 4 and 5, just using 1-3 could work well to keep it simple.

• When I wrote this, I really wasn’t targeting it toward, say, a stock photographer. Most stock photographers have more requirements and a need for something more than flagging. For example, some stock photographers will give photos a yellow label if they’ve been submitted to the stock agency. A green label if they’ve been accepted. A blue label if they’ve been rejected, but it’s something they plan to resubmit after changes. And a red label if it was rejected and it’s not going to get resubmitted.

• Glyn Dewis wrote another interesting comment:
“I Quickly go through shots flagging up the Picks and Rejects. Then when working through the Picks in Lightroom, those that are ‘complete’ are labelled ‘Green’ and those that are going to be taken over to Photoshop are labelled ‘Red’.”

So what’s all this mean? It means there’s lots of different ways to do things If you’re part of the group that flags first, but then moves to some sort of rating system then you’re part of the majority. Anyway, if you get a few minutes it’s definitely worth reading through the comments from last week. You may pick up on a better way to work through your photos.

Lightroom Public Service Announcement Day

Hey folks. Thought I’d give you two quick Lightroom-related public service announcements today:

1) I realize most of you reading probably own Lightroom. If you do, you’ve also probably been telling your photography buddies that they need to get it. Well B&H Photo has Lightroom 3 on sale for $100 off. That makes it $169. Not to shabby huh? Offer ends on June 4 so tell them to download the free 30-day trial. They have plenty of time to check it out, before June 4, to see if they like it.

2) Adobe has issued a warning about a potential JPEG bug in Lightroom 3.4 and Camera Raw 6.4. It’s actually a very rare bug and I haven’t seen or heard any reports of it. I’ll point you to Lightroom Product Manager, Tom Hogarty’s blog for more info but at the end of the post it reads:
“To date we’ve only found one camera that generates these large blocks of private data (which is what is causing the bug), the HP PhotoSmart R607.”
It’s still worth taking a look to see if you’re affected though.

That’s it for today. Have a great weekend.

3 (and a half) Reasons to Use Flags Instead of Ratings in Lightroom

Are you a flagger or a rater in Lightroom? You know, how do you sort your photos? If you’re a flagger, you go to Photo > Set Flag and choose Pick, Reject, or Unflagged. If you’re a rater then you to to Photo > Set Rating > and choose 1 to 5 stars. So which do you use? Personally, I stopped rating a long time ago and just use flags.

First, I think flagging is just simpler. You’ve got 3 choices. I like it. I don’t like it. Or, I’m just not sure yet. In many cases, simple is better, and I think this is one of them.

Next, when it comes to finding your favorites, flagging makes it easy. If it’s flagged, it’s a favorite. If you use ratings, it get’s a little more complex. For example, let’s assume 5 stars means it’s really really good. Well what does 4 stars mean? It’s really, pretty good? So when it comes time to filter so you just see your favorites, what do you want to see. Your really really good photos or your really, well, kinda pretty good photos?

Now come the rejects. We all have them (well, I don’t – but I’m sure most of you do – KIDDING!!! Totally just kidding!!!). So we’ll assume 1 star means it sucks, right? Does 2 stars mean it kinda sucks? Maybe not totally sucks but pretty close. With flagging, you press X when you don’t like a photo to reject it. That’s it. I hate it and I want it gone. Then it gets an X. And don’t even get me started on what a rating of 3 means

If it doesn’t get a P (for Flagged or “pick”) and it doesn’t get an X (for reject) then it’s unflagged. Which, in my book, means I just can’t decide right now. I’ll come back to it later. And most likely you’ll reject it anyway. There’s just something about it that you can’t bring yourself to reject right now.

The Half Reason
Oh yeah, there’s a half reason why I think flags are better. In Lightroom if you go to Photo > Delete Rejected Photos it automatically removes all the rejects from your library. Notice there’s no Photo > Remove 1 Star Photos menu item there. That means the guys making the menu’s in Lightroom even like flagging better

So what are you? A Flagger or a Rater? Or both?

Video – Lightroom Quick Develop Printing Trick

I saw a good question on my Facebook page (just click “LIKE” to follow it on Facebook) last week and realized it would make a great video for the site. It has to do with a tip I’ve covered before about Quick Develop, along with a tip I’ve covered before about making your photos brighter if they tend to print too dark. You can actually put both of these together to come up with a great solution if you find you need to make a change to a bunch of photos. But not just a change that synchronizes your photos, which basically means you’d make all the settings the same. Say you’ve already made changes to them. Instead, you can make adjustments that move a specific setting by the same “amount” for each photo. It’d definitely something you need to see rather then read, so stop reading this and click Play

100 Way Lightroom Kicks Bridges Ass! (for photographers)

Last week, Scott Kelby mentioned a whole bunch of Lightroom learning resources that we, over at Kelby Media Group, have. One of them was a brand new mega-tutorial-thingee that Scott and I recorded recently. It’s called 100 Ways That Lightroom Kicks the Bridges Ass for Photographers. The idea originally came from Scott when he and I were talking about the inevitable “Why should I use Lightroom if I already have Bridge” question we get. Instead of doing a long exhaustive video of the differences between LR and Bridge, Scott came up with this idea instead.

On the site, you’ll find 100 short (some are just 30 seconds, some are 2 minutes) videos that go over ways that Lightroom kills the Bridge if you’re a photographer. Even if you’re already a happy Lightroom user, take a look. I bet you’ll pick up a tip or two. Here’s the link. Stop by and let me know what you think.

Lightroom Tip – Facebook and Flickr Commenting

First off, don’t forget that Kelby Training is having a huge sale on DVDs. I’ve done a bunch of titles over there and you can pick up some pretty good deals right now. There’s a some there for $9.99, and a lot of them (like my Mastering Color for Photoshop CS4) are still perfectly applicable for CS5. Look at it this way, you’re bound to get at least one out of a DVD to make it worth $9.99 (but you’ll probably get more). OK, on to the tip:

You probably know by now that Lightroom 3 has Facebook and Flickr integration in it. Just go to the Library module, on the left side, and scroll down to the Publish Services panel. You can post photos to a Facebook or Flickr account right from within Lightroom. But I always find that a lot of people miss a really cool feature that goes along with this. Comments. Yup, you can read/add comments that go along with the photos you post in Lightroom too. It’s the bottom-most panel on the right side in the Library module and it’s called the Comments panel (go figure ). Anyway, if you post to Facebook and Flickr you know you can’t resist comments. I’m not the only one that goes in and hits refresh every 5 minutes right? Anyway, now you can refresh and see/add comments without ever even leaving Lightroom. How’s that for convenience? Have a great weekend everyone!

Layers in (sorry WITH) Lightroom Follow Up :)

Hi all. I wanted to take a VERY quick moment to follow up to the onOne Perfect Layers post (and comments) from the other week (sorry, I was on vacation last week). Here’s the deal. I saw three types of comments. 1 and 2 below address them pretty quickly. Number 3 below is my main point because that’s the comment I saw the most. Here goes:

1) Layers “for”, Layers “in”, Layers “with”?
One word. Yup, one word did all of this. You got us on a technicality. Should it have been written “Layers With Lightroom”. Yes. It was a simple, unintended mistake. I’m sorry. Trust me, if I could go back and change things I would. Never in my wildest dreams did I think the controversy that started here, on Scott’s blog, NAPP forums would come from this one accidentally misused word. I also never thought some of the well respected sources in the LR industry would say the things that they’ve said about NAPP over this one little word, and our enthusiasm for a product that we honestly thought would help people. You know what really surprises me though? It’s why everyone is so irate that that this plug-in opens into it’s own window. Scott and I were talking about this one quite a bit, because people’s anger over Perfect Layers opening into it’s own window really caught us by surprise. It never crossed our mind that this would become an issue because all plug-ins (that modify photos like Nik, Topaz, onOne do) open exactly the way this one does. When you use a plug-in in Photoshop, does it open a new window or does it meld seamlessly with the interface? It opens a new window right? That’s why they’re plug-ins not plug-outs. They let us work in our program and launch it (from with “IN” the program) when we want. When you use any other plug-in around, in Lightroom, it opens a new window. That’s just the way plug-ins work for Lightroom. They all do, which is why we never thought we had to qualify this one with the proper word. By the way. I just did a Google search on press releases for various plug-ins for Lightroom. Do you know how many of them stated “in Lightroom” or “within Lightroom” somewhere while describing the plug-in? At least half of the ones I found. It’s just the way the industry has come to refer to plug-ins for Lightroom. Until now, it hasn’t been a problem but I can promise you this. The word “in” will now leave our vocabulary

2) But I already have Photoshop.
Then this product is not for you. I come in to contact with thousands of Lightroom users each year who came over from, say, iPhoto. They don’t have Photoshop, nor do they want it (see #3 below). This product is for them.

3) Why not Elements? It’s cheaper!
Here’s the thing. The people who tell me “I don’t want to go over to Photoshop” don’t use price as their big reason why. Instead, it’s the difficultly and learning curve associated with Photoshop and Elements. Elements is every bit as hard to use as Photoshop. It’s ridiculous that in this day and age, my mom (who is learning about photography) needs to go into a program as complicated as Elements or Photoshop to make a simple layer adjustment. There are thousands of features and tools she’ll never use, and all it does is confuse her to see them all. Elements is not a program that some one can just open up and start using. Perfect Layers is meant to bridge that gap. If you’re one of the people saying “But it doesn’t have near the amount of features that Elements or Photoshop do” then you’ve hit the nail on the head. It doesn’t. It’s not supposed to. The beauty of Perfect Layers is in it’s simplicity. I believe less is more in this case.

If you really want to know the sinister plot behind it all, it goes something like this. We’re hanging out with the guys from onOne one day and the topic came up. “Hey guys, here’s a cool idea. We meet people all the time that could benefit from layers in (sorry WITH) Lightroom. Adobe doesn’t seem to be doing it, so why don’t you give it a try?”. That’s it. No controversy. No lying, no deceit. There was no sinister “Ha Ha!!! We’re going to screw everyone now!!!” laugh the day it was released. Did I take part in being enthusiastic about it? Sure, but only because I genuinely believe that there’s a place for a product like this and I thought it was going to help people. And don’t forget, neither Scott or I told you to run out and buy this right now. All we said was, go try it. It’s free. Let the developers know what you think of it. That’s it.

In the end, I know the majority of you don’t believe I (or anyone I work with) did anything bad here. There were only about 40 comments for the whole thing. It may have blown up in a forum or blog post or two elsewhere, but it was the same sour people writing back and forth to each other about how deceptive we must be. But sometimes the squeaky wheel does get the oil. So… squeaky wheels… Stop! No need to question my (or anyone I work with) ethics. The idea and enthusiasm for Perfect Layers came from a good place. If we’re wrong about thinking it has a place, if onOne is wrong about how much they’re charging, the market will speak with their wallets. In the meantime, be nice

Thanks for reading.

News – Lightroom 3.4 (and Camera Raw 6.4) Released

I know I’m a little late with this one, but I was on vacation with my family last week and took the week off from, well, just about everything Anyway, just in case you haven’t read about it already, Adobe released Lightroom 3.4. There’s some new overall camera support as well as tethering support for a few more cameras (60D, 550D, and Nikon D7000). There’s also some minor bug fixes. The best thing to do is check out Tom Hogarty’s blog for the full write-up. And of course, you can download the update over at Adobe’s website or simply just go to Help > Check for Updates after you launch Lightroom. Have a good one!