Lightroom Tips

We have an HDR crusade!

Hi folks. If you haven’t read the post below and you’re into HDR photography then make sure you check it out. Now, I’ve known about the plug-in for a couple of weeks, but blog reader Larry Lohrman pointed me to a post on the Photography for Real Estate website. In a nutshell, he wrote Photomatix to ask that the exported image be re-imported back into Lightroom (kinda like Photoshop does automatically when you save). Now, HDRsoft did respond (which is great) but their Lightroom correspondent felt:

“they do not like to have their processed image in the same location as their RAW file, and do not think this is a good thing. They systematically separate both, and thus prefer the ability (as implemented in Photomatix Pro 3.1beta with the option on the Save dialog) to import the final processed image in Lightroom the way they want”.

I don’t know about you but I don’t want to “systematically” have to do anything. I want the software to do it for me. It just makes sense that if we went somewhere from within Lightroom, we want to be right back there automatically when we’re done. It’s the only way to make using plug-ins with Lightroom feel seamless. I think we do indeed want the images back in our catalog so we can manage the processed HDRs with the rest of them (isn’t that why we use Lightroom). I know, I can do this with a checkbox (in Photomatix 3.1 beta) but then it opens the Import dialog and it doesn’t automatically save my image in the right folder, and well, the whole process felt clunky to me.

So here’s what I propose. A crusade if you will, to let the folks at HDRsoft know what we want. I’ve actually talked to them and they’re very nice people with a great product. I think they just need to hear from you that this is the way you want it. Now you could always go to their website and send an email but I’ll make it one step easier. Leave a comment here telling how you feel about the need to automatically re-import the HDR processed image. If there’s enough demand, then early next week, I’ll copy all the comments into an email and send it their way to let them know how we feel. Sound like a deal? Thanks!

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