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!

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