Author Archive

Apple kills Aperture

Even before yesterday’s announcement about the end of Aperture, consistently the most-visited page on this site was Moving from Aperture to Lightroom.

Syncomatic and LrMobile

I’ve updated Syncomatic to facilitate an interesting new workflow involving LrMobile. Shoot Raw+JPEG in the field, import the JPEGs and adjust them in LrMobile, and then sync that work to the raw files with Syncomatic.

One big folder?

Scott Kelby says put all images in one folder first. I want to stay with two folders. Is LR still appropriate?

Long term thinking

Roger Martin asks if Adobe’s switch to subscription-limited software is a bold, creative customer-friendly management decision, as The Economist suggests? Or could it be a desperation move in the form of a financial gadget that is aimed at covering up a lack of innovation?

Lightroom for the pub?

Adobe have now released Lightroom Mobile. What do I think of it?

Is there an easier way to get text into Lightroom?

Coming soon to my ListView plug-in, automatic updating from Excel to Lightroom. Have you ever seen an easier way to get text data into Lightroom?

Does it look OK?

I’m going to post something rather interesting later – a video showing Excel writing directly to Lightroom without any text files – but the other week I read an article on the BBC web site’s responsive redesign and so before recording the video I thought I’d do a quick bit of site redesign. And when …read more

Making a photograph

Chuq Von Rospach’s post Photography Before and After — Sunrise at Merced National Wildlife Refuge. As Ansel Adams said “you don’t take a photograph, you make it”.

Running a Photoshop action

Is it possible to run a Photoshop action from LR? Yes, by running a droplet. I’ll assume you know how to make a droplet – if not, see this example – and then you can approach it a couple of ways. One way is to save the droplet anywhere on your computer. You then set …read more

More numbers

Adobe announced its FY2013 Q4 results yesterday and I suppose that the headline is that they have met their target of 1.25 subscribers by the year end. And who is surprised?

How to use Caption Builder

Anyone want to try a new feature that’s coming in my Search and Replace plugin? The new feature is called “caption builder” and lets you build up captions from other fields.

Oh no you don’t – DNG and panto season

It’s amazing how often some Lightroom users still assert that a disadvantage of the DNG file format is that any time the metadata changes in the DNG file, you have to backup the whole DNG file again (and again). This isn’t a disadvantage of DNG – it’s a failure to re-assess and think through your …read more

5 reasons to rename your raw files

Why do you rename your source images?

“Make a second copy to”

Why does the second copy upon import go into a folder called “Imported on November-11-13” and not into a folder named to match the folder on the hard disk that was set as the Destination for the import?

Parse and audit – workflow filters

I’ve just released version 1.47 of my Search Replace Transfer plugin. Apart from a couple of bug fixes, there are some new capabilities. You can now filter your catalogue on almost any EXIF/IPTC/Develop field.

Grayscale mode and droplets

How to export pictures in Grayscale Mode from LR. You can use a Photoshop droplet for this, and many other tasks.

New book – Digital Photo Workflow

My latest book Digital Photo Workflow (Made Easy) teaches a lot about Lightroom while not being a slider-by-slider manual. It’s a short book that tries to cover everything you need to get going.

Breaking up is hard to do

Peter Krogh of The DAM Book fame has released an ebook Multi-Catalog Workflow with Lightroom 5.

Downloading CS6

If you need to reinstall CS6, where can you find it in Adobe’s site?

Shelter from the Cloud?

Adobe’s Photoshop Photography Program deal offers Photoshop and Lightroom as a time limited offer. Until December, existing Photoshop customers can subscribe at $9.99 / £8.54 per month.