Tip – Rotating Identity Plates in Slideshow
Your tip for today falls victim to one of those little things that I never knew about before and found out about the hard way. It has to do with the Slideshow module. You know how you can put an Identity Plate on your slideshow right? You can also put other various text overlays that show some metadata about your photo (which is exactly what people really want to see when they’re watching a beautiful slideshow by the way) 🙂
Anyway, I ran into some one who showed me their computer and the fact that their ID Plate was rotated 90°. Naturally, I’m used to working with the ID Plate in the Print module so I just assumed there’d be a little rotation option next to it like there is in Print (you know, 0°, 90°, 180°). But there’s not. I sat there stumped for about 3-4 minutes trying to figure out why their ID Plate was sideways. Finally, I just switched Slideshow presets for them and the ID Plate showed up the way it was supposed to.
But for the next 5 nights I couldn’t sleep because it just didn’t make sense (ok maybe not, but it really did bug me). Finally, while working on something in the Slideshow module today I realized there’s two little rotation icons in the toolboar (see the image for this post in the top left). I realized they’re not for rotating your photo but for rotating any text overlays that you’ve added to the slides. In fact, unless you have text overlays on the slide they’re grayed out.
I know! It’s a tiny thing but hopefully I saved you much frustration and many sleepless nights if you ever run into this. Take care and have a great weekend.
not a comment but a question Im wondering if Im the only one that having a problem exporting to photoshop for editing from beta 3 lightroom and if theres a solution ?
Hi Matt,
Not really a comment to your tip, – but here’s one I found; apologies if you have covered this one before, but it sure saves me time.
Here in England, I shoot a great deal of football (ie soccer) games, and I use Lightroom to rapidly trawl through a few hundred photos looking for any that I might even have got in focus. 🙂
I have accidentally discovered that the ` key (to the left of Z on the Mac keyboard) will pick a photo, and then pressing it again will remove the pick! So my left thumb can pick/unpick, zoom in/out and reject, and along with Photo>Auto Advance, I can zip through my photos at the rate of knots.
As I say, sorry if you’ve already spoke about this one, but I thought I’d mention it just in case.
Keep up the good work.
Geoff
Matt,
I’m glad I’m not the only one who worries about such things. You probably feel, like I do, that if somebody else did it you’d like to understand it and know how to do it yourself. It’s fun though, isn’t it, working on something until you figure it out? That AHA! moment is worth all of the effort (well, usually).
Thanks for this tip and for ALL of the stuff you do for us. I really appreciate it.
Bill
David,
Simple answer is Yes!
In Windows Xp you can navigate to where all your presets & templates are stored(along with the Lightroom Defaults) by right clicking on one of your custom presets & clicking on “Show in Explorer”.
The path is:
C:Documents and SettingsUserApplication DataAdobeLightroom
Then just copy the whole lot or just what you want.
When you reinstall Lightroom under Windows7 just navigate to wherever W7 stores Lightrooms application data & copy across what you need.
I am unfamiliar with both Vista & W7 but I presume that there should be no compatibility issues.
A custom template or preset works cross platform( mac to pc & vice versa) so I doubt whether Windows7 will have any recognition difficulties.
Hope this Helps
Matt:
I’m not sure how to ask a general comment rather than a reply to one of your posts. Therefore I am sending this and hopefully you can direct me to the proper place.
I am doing a complete install of Windows 7 ( poor me, sorry I’m not up to switching to a MAC quite yet) and was wondering how to make sure that I don’t lose my presets. Can I just save the folders that are listed in Lightroom ( ii. Develop presets, Export Presets) and then install or copy them to the correct folders after I reinstall Lightroom.
Thanks for helping out….David