Why I Don’t Backup My Photos Using Lightroom

If you’ve used the Import dialog in Lightroom, you’ve probably noticed an area under File Handing called “Make a Second Copy To:”. This is Lightroom’s way of letting you make a backup of your photos as you import them. That way you can get your import and your backup all done at once. A while back, some one pointed out that when you use this feature, you don’t have much control over how the backup drive stores the photos. Basically, it just stores them in a folder named “Imported on….”. For me this is a big problem because it’s not how I store my photos in my main photo drive. So now, my backup drive and my main photo drive would be out of sync.

That’s why I leave this feature turned off. Instead, I simply import my photos like normal (by the way, I cover this stuff in my Lightroom In Depth classes on Kelby Training by the way). I store them on my main photo drive in a “Photos” folder and I put subfolders under that for each shoot. So it looks something like this:

Then, once a day/week/however long I simply clone the main photo drive to the backup drive. You could use a simple copy/paste or you could save some time by using a program like Super Duper (some other options including PC). Either way, the goal here is to have your photo backup drive look exactly like your main photo drive. That way, recovering from your backup drive is simple. Don’t get me wrong. I’d rather you use the 2nd copy feature in the Import dialog over nothing at all. But if you want my actual backup solution and why I don’t use Lightroom’s features to help me with this, now you know.

My Lightroom 4 Doesn’t Look Like Your Lightroom 4

In poking around forums, etc… I’ve seen a bunch of questions over the last few days about people not seeing the new Develop Module sliders in Lightroom 4 Beta (specifically the ones in the Basic Panel). In LR4, Adobe changed the Basic panel to include sliders that 1) Make more sense and, 2) Are way more powerful. However, because they’ve changed them so much you can indeed have two versions of the Basic panel because they couldn’t automatically switch older photos for you. So here’s the deal: Your Basic panel should like like the image below:

(click for larger view)

If it doesn’t, that means you’re editing a photo that was edited in an older version of Lightroom or Camera Raw. It’s easy enough to change though. Just scroll down to the Calibration panel in the Develop module. Under the Process setting make sure it reads 2012, not 2010.

Now you’ll be using the newest Lightroom stuff and you’ll be able to take advantage of the new sliders in the Basic panel.

Lightroom 4 Beta Q&A – The Day After

First off, I wanted to say a HUGE thanks to Tom Hogarty for spending the day with us at Kelby Training yesterday to answer all of your questions (and to Adobe for letting Tom get away for the day). The live broadcasts will be running all day so feel free to stop by Kelby Training’s website and watch them. Also, Tom and I answered a bunch of questions over the course of the day. I figured I’d dedicate a Q&A day to some of the most popular ones:

Q. If I upgrade to Lightroom 4 Beta, will it hurt or corrupt my copy of Lightroom 3?
A. Not at all. Lightroom 4 Beta is a totally separate install and doesn’t affect your copy of Lightroom 3 at all.

Q. Can I use Lightroom 4 Beta for my production work?
A. I wouldn’t really recommend it. Adobe definitely doesn’t recommend it. Having your paycheck tied to a beta version of the software probably isn’t such a good idea. That said, I can’t guarantee I’ll follow my own advice

Q. Can I upgrade my catalogs from Lightroom 3 to Lightroom 4 Beta?
A. Didn’t you read the previous question? You’re not really supposed to move your production/important work to LR4 Beta. In an effort to keep you from doing just that you can only create a new catalog for LR4. You can’t open an existing one from a previous version of Lightroom.

Q. Okay, but will the final release version of Lightroom 4 upgrade my Lightroom 3 catalogs though?
A. Absolutely!

Q. How about all the work I do in the beta version of Lightroom 4. Will that get upgraded too?
A. Yup. Adobe doesn’t make any promises that they’ll upgrade your beta stuff but in the past they’ve always been able to.

Q. Will Lightroom 4 Beta only work with Photoshop CS5?
A. Nope. Lightroom 4 will work just fine with CS4 (or CS3 or CS2 or Elements for that matter).

Q. Where can I get some awesome Lightroom 4 training?
A. Great question! No one really asked this but it’s a good way for me to plug a few things. First, Scott Kelby and I created NAPP’s Lightroom 4 Beta Launch Site. And don’t forget all of the live webcasts that Tom and I did on launch day over at Kelby Training.

Q. When will the final version of Lightroom 4 be released?
A. Adobe hasn’t officially announced this yet. In the past it’s been anywhere from 2 months to 14 months.

Q. Really? So you’re gonna leave us hangin’?
A. Sorry… I’ll lose my cushy Lightroom gig if I reveal any more I can say this… The expiration date listed for Lightroom 4 Beta is March 31, 2012. Typically, it’s not good practice for a company to let the beta expire without releasing the final version before the expiration date. It tends to leave people hanging and forget all about your brand new version of the product. That’s all I’m sayin’

Q. Will my plug-ins work with Lightroom 4 Beta (for example, onOne’s software, Nik’s Silver Efex Pro or Viveza)?
A. Here’s the deal. The official answer is that you should probably ask the plug-in company. Adobe does provide them with pre-release versions of the software so they can start planning and making their plug-ins available. That said, I installed Lightroom 4 Beta and most of my plug-ins were carried over in the Photo > Edit In menu. So give it a try. But officially, most plug-in companies probably won’t make any major updates until the final version of Lightroom 4 comes out.

Thanks for stopping by. If you have any other questions, post them in a comment and I’ll do round 2 of Q&A.

How This Blog (and your comments) Changed My Lightroom Backup Strategy

In this blog post a few weeks back, I wrote about a question that I got quite a bit during my Lightroom 3 Live seminars. The question (so you don’t have to go back and read) was how many Lightroom backups do I save. You know, when you quit Lightroom you can set LR’s preferences to backup your catalog. By default it will do it every week or so, but you can tell it to backup every time you quit Lightroom if you want. Well, each time it backs up it saves a folder of your backup. If you’ve got a decent sized catalog, those folders can grow to take up quite a bit of space and I heard from a lot of people wondering how many of them they should save.

My answer to them was none. I simply backup my computer every night using Super Duper for Mac. So I not only have a backup of my computer, but also a backup of Lightroom’s catalog in the process.

After reading your comments, I’ve since changed my strategy though. See, when Lightroom backs up your catalog, it does an integrity check. Several people pointed out that they’ve had corruption problems with their catalog before. So theoretically, my backup plan could cause a problem. What if my catalog became corrupt? Then, that night I backed up to Super Duper. But instead, my backup now became the corrupt version? Now, it’s never actually happened to me. And I don’t personally know anyone who’s had a corrupt catalog either. But there were enough comments from people who’ve had a corrupt catalog that I thought it was worth giving some thought to.

My new strategy has changed slightly. I set Lightroom’s backup preference to once a week. Then I make sure I delete all prior backups (you don’t need ‘em). I continue on with my usual backup plan of backing up to Super Duper every night. So now Lightroom’s working catalog is backed up, Lightroom’s backup catalog is backed up (with full integrity check so I know it’s not corrupt), and my entire Mac is backed up too.

As a side note, that’s why I love this blog. It often takes on a life of it’s own. The comments, questions, answers, etc… all have a huge part in feeding it and giving me plenty of things to think and talk about when it comes to Lightroom. And that all happens because of you. So… thank you

The Most Asked Lightroom Question From Over 700 People

Last week I had two stops on my Lightroom 3 Live seminar tour. We hit Phoenix on Wednesday with nearly 400 people and Indianapolis on Friday with over 300. First, the crowds were great. Everyone was just so psyched about learning Lightroom in a start-to-finish day like we covered. What’s always interesting for me though, is that I get out from behind my desk at the office and find out what questions are really bugging Lightroom users out there.

This past week, one question won above the rest, hands down. Ready for it? The question was: How many backups do I have to save of the Lightroom catalog? You know, when you quit Lightroom you can set LR’s preferences to backup your catalog. By default it will do it every week or so, but you can tell it to backup every time you quit Lightroom if you want. Well, each time it backs up it saves a folder of your backup. If you’ve got a decent sized catalog, those folders can grow to take up quite a bit of space and I heard from a lot of people wondering how many of them they should save.

My answer: none. Yep. I don’t save any. In fact, I don’t use the backup feature for Lightroom. Instead, I back up my computer every night. I make a fully bootable backup using Super Duper for Mac. Acronis makes something similar for PC as well as many others. Just Google “PC Backup software” and you’ll find them. That’s it though. There’s not much more to it. (I do also have a Time Machine too so I can always go back to another day’s catalog if I wanted to.) But I have a daily backup of my entire computer so, if my Lightroom catalog ever goes bad or crashes, I’m covered. I just go to my backup drive. Not to mention if my computer ever crashes, I’m covered as well – not just Lightroom but EVERYTHING is backed up. Actually my hard drive crashed last Monday right before I left for the week and that backup came in really handy but that’s a whole other story

Anyway, that’s my report from being on the road last week teaching Lightroom. A big thanks to everyone in Phoenix and Indy for making me feel right at home. And for lot’s of “oooooo’s and ahhhhh’s” throughout the day (sorry, inside joke – you had to be there)
Seriously though, I had a ton of people come up through out the day saying that they read the blog and just wanted to say hi. If you’re in Tampa, Arlington (Dallas), or Philly then I hope you’ll try to catch one of the next seminar dates.

Winners to the Lightroom 3 Live Seminars

We have a winner! Actually a few of them. You’ll get an email from me in the next few days (unless you’re in Phoenix) with the info you need. Thanks for stopping by and I hope that, even if you didn’t win, you’ll still try to come out for the seminar. See ya!
• Maria Weber – Phoenix
• Ryan Rittenhouse – Indy
• Sarah Smithers – Tampa
• Fred – Philly
• Lisa Hall – Arlington

Tip – Wanna keep people from seeing your metadata?

Have you ever published a photo somewhere (Flickr, your website, blog, etc…) and some one emails or comments to you and asks “Why’d you shoot that photo at f/16? Don’t you think f/11 would have been more appropriate?”. Or perhaps you’re delivering them to a client and you simply don’t want them to know all of the camera info (maybe you got a killer shot with a point-n-shoot but you don’t want them to know it ).

I call them Metadata Creepers. They creep into your images that you unknowingly posted all of the metadata for and look through only to ask you semi-irrelevant questions. Well there’s a way to automatically get rid of your camera info. When you go to File > Export and the Export dialog opens, you’ll see a small checkbox called “Minimize Embedded Metadata”.

Turn that on and Lightroom will keep any copyright information in the metadata but it’ll remove all of the camera-related stuff. Hope that helps. Have a great weekend everyone!

Lightroom Q&A

I figured I’d catch up on some Q&A’s today as well as going back to some old ones that I was asked again recently.
Also, don’t forget, if you’re in Tampa I’m teaching a Lightroom/Photoshop Workflow class at Dave Cross Workshop’s next week. Sign up here.
And I’m taking the Lightroom 3 Seminar Tour to Phoenix and Indianapolis in late October. You can find out more about the full-day seminar and sign up here.

Q. I watched your eyeglass reflection video the other day. Would onOne Software’s Perfect Layers do the same thing.
A. Almost. Perfect Layers doesn’t have the Auto-Align feature that Photoshop has, but as I mentioned in the video, that feature doesn’t always do the trick and I end up resorting to changing the blend mode or opacity of the layer anyway.

Q. I use Photoshop Elements 9 in combination with Lightroom 3. Do you know why it’s not possible to open images as layers in Elements 9 (Photo > Edit In > Open as Layers in…)?
A. I really don’t know “why” you can’t do it with Elements other than you simply can’t. However, the workaround is to open one photo in Elements, then open the 2nd one and put them into the same document manually. It’ll take an extra 20 seconds but you can definitely get to the same place without that feature.

Q. How can I save my print templates to a JPEG like you did in your multi-photo print preset?
A. In the Print module, scroll down on the right hand side panels to the last one (the Print Job panel). The first setting is called “Print To”. Just turn it to the JPEG option and you’ll save your layout as a JPEG instead of sending it to the printer.

Q. I really like the look of that multi-photo grid preset you released a while back. But how do I get my photos in to it?
A. Just drag photos from the filmstrip into a grid square. Once they’re there, you can reposition how the photo looks in that square by holding down the Command (PC: Ctrl) key and clicking on the photo to drag it around.

Q. If I store my photos on an external drive, does the speed of my external drive affect Lightroom’s performance?
A. Definitely! There’s still lots of information being read back and forth between those photos and the speed will affect how fast Lightroom feels. From what I’ve found, a 5400 RPM drive would fairly slow. A 7200 is better. USB is going to be mostly bad and Firewire will of course be better.

Q. So Matt, knowing what you just said about storing your photos on an external drive, what do you do?
A. OK, I really asked myself this question I store all of my photos (not my catalog) on a Lacie 1TB external 5400 RPM Firewire drive. It does feel sluggish sometimes but for the most part things move along pretty quickly.

Thanks for all the questions. I hope this helped a little. Have a great weekend!

Tips – 10 Things You Need to Know About Compositing

Graphics.com posted a list of “10 Things You Need to Know About Compositing”. It’s taken from a small section of my latest Photoshop Compositing Secrets book, where I wanted to include some tips and tricks for compositing that just didn’t seem to fit into a regular tutorial. Here’s the link if you want to check it out.

Guest Post Over at Scott Kelby’s Blog Today

Hey there Lightroom peeps (that’s about as slang as I get ). Scott Kelby opened his blog to me once again today. I wrote a post called “How Photoshop Changed My Photography“. The blog post seems to be going over well, but it’s always equally interesting to see some of the insights in the comments too. I hope you’ll stop by and take a look. Have a great weekend!