Author Archive
Tell me why
Someone asked me: “If Lightroom doesn't use the embedded jpegs, why bother create them at all?” If you don't use other apps to examine your DNGs, I don't see much reason at all right now. In fact the other day I saw a rather silly and unsubstantiated blog post (not worth linking) that alleged LR's …read more
Gary Gilmour’s Eyes
I've darkened the site's colours a little recently - not because of Lightroom, I should add, but because I've always been a Factory Records kind of miserablist. Anyway, I like them and they look right on my PC and Mac, but let me know if they don't work. Because of a complaint (see the comments) …read more
Some might say
I'm not a big one for canned recipes - what's that saying about giving a poor man a bowl or teaching him to fish - nor have I ever felt Nikon Capture's colours were objectively better than ACR's. But it is a question I keep asking myself, just in case, so here's another Lightroom preset …read more
The mad hatter rides again
Right now, Lightroom isn't the program for special effects. I've little doubt such things will come in due course, but right now there are a number of things that you can do - with a little bit of wine-crazed ingenuity. This image was output directly from Lightroom using the same original as this but was …read more
Bridge over troubled water
Co-ordinating Lightroom work on two computers isn't as easy as it could or will be. The need for portability is well understood, and I loved the beta's Binders concept, but it was right to sacrifice it for Folders, and no doubt there'll soon be a better way to move images and metadata between systems. Dan …read more
Word up
Chris Shepherd has been busy getting a controlled vocabulary into both Lightroom and iView: Now that I am trying Lightroom I thought I would try out if it is possible to use a controlled vocabulary when keywording images. David Riecks at Controlled Vocabulary has produced a controlled vocabulary keyword catalogue, which is a great basis …read more
Don’t fence me in
Having both programs, I wouldn't underestimate the difficulty of a Lightroom user comparing it with Aperture, and an Aperture user coming at it from the other direction, but that's exactly what Michael Clark on O'Reilly's Lightroom Blog and Micah Walter at O'Reilly's Aperture Blog are attempting (though Micah does seem to be writing mainly about …read more
I fought the law
In What’s he building I wrote about how to use iView and the new Adobe Media Gallery. It wasn’t a tutorial, just something for those who can fumble their way around iView scripting, and I’ve now wrapped everything up together in a zip file which contains: The AMG template (open source) which contains the Flash …read more
With God on our side
Now Lightroom is released, there are lots of threads comparing it with its Mac-limited competitor Aperture. See Adobe's forum and this Apple thread where one wanker (you would have had to read the thread but Apple have now deleted it) shouts that Aperture is the one because …most of all, it's not just the features. …read more
Outside (again)
A little but important update to my post on Lightroom's Auto Sync feature. Ctrl/Cmd clicking the Sync button switches you “permanently” into that mode, but there's more - holding down Alt/Opt + Ctrl/Cmd changes the button's display and switches you temporarily into Auto Sync mode. So hold down Alt/Opt + Ctrl/Cmd and use the mouse …read more
Spooky
Sean McCormack's latest Lightroom video shows how to add a decorative border to a print. He's using the Print module's ability to overlay an image other than the identity plate. I noticed the same feature when I was writing my Lightroom book, but didn't think of a decorative border. Instead I came up with a …read more
Common people
Part 2 of the interview with Lightroom's chief designer Mark Hamburg is at since1968.com. This one's mainly about the program's extensibility, and you'd expect me to find it particularly interesting: Developers will have to write their extensions in Lua. At one point?and it probably complicates the app a little?there was probably some notion that we?d …read more
Turning Japanese
Maki Kawakita does some stunning combinations of Manga artwork and photography, superimposing models on comic illustrations. She is featured in George Jardine's latest Lightroom podcast, though she's not pressed to explain how she uses Lightroom to produce her work.
Be my number two
With Lightroom about to launch, it's no harm to see what's going on across at its Mac-limited competitor, Aperture. Automator actions and stock library plug ins give you a pretty good idea of the sort of things to expect once Lightroom gets its scripting and SDK released. Other Aperture resources: Bagelturf articles “written to be …read more
It’s too bad
I'll put Michael Slade's lovely series of black and whites of the Great Salt Lake, Utah, in the Lightroom category as he uses its Flash web gallery feature to present the pictures. It's a nice idea to add a couple of text slides to the presentation - even if “it's shores”, “it's trance”, and “it's …read more
Neat neat neat
Andrew Rodney describes Color management in Lightroom (pdf) We didn?t see much in the way of color management in Photoshop until v. 5.0, nearly 8 years after its initial release, and it was still rough around the edges. For a 1.0 product, Lightroom looks promising with respect to color management, but it?s a delicate balancing …read more
All the young dudes
With days left to go before Lightroom is released, Michael Tapes has a series of free videos (with a higher res DVD also available for $10.95). I got to know Michael virtually through the beta testing program and am not at al surprised that the style is professional and common sense - and I learned …read more
Illumination
My Lightroom postings here are all freshly-crafted, but I've also got a book coming out and yesterday I finally saw the cover. I know I sound like a proud father, but it looks good, don't you think?
Complete control
Lightroom posts here will not be tutorials - you can get good short ones at places like Sean McCormack's and from these NAPP videos. In LR, the hows are far less difficult than understanding the whys. Here I hope to convey principles - such as the best practice for Lightroom's “Collections”. These virtual folders are …read more
Somewhere
The Library module is significantly improved in Lightroom v1.0, though it remains somewhat less coherent than Develop. The big change is the Folders panel replacing the old Shoots. While the name was clever, Shoots were a horrid confusion of virtual sets with physical folders that threatened to repeat one of Aperture 1.0’s worst mistakes, so …read more