Author Archive

Should I save as PSD or TIF?

Should I save as PSD or TIF? TIF. There are no quality differences, and there’s almost nothing that a PSD can do that a TIF can’t do just as well, just obscure things like saving Duotone mode images (hat tip Victoria Bampton). In the long run it’s important to save your Photoshop work in a …read more

Book notes

Over the last week Adobe has said a couple of interesting things about the books module.

Share your catalogues

Can you share Lightroom catalogues over Adobe’s Creative Cloud?

Simultaneous exports are up to 60% faster

Imagine you are doing a large export. What’s faster, selecting all the images and hitting export – or breaking the export down into a few batches and exporting each batch individually?

Oh xxxx xxxx xxxx!!!!

I’m a great fan of Lightroom’s Auto Sync feature which allows you to adjust multiple images simultaneously – it’s simply the most efficient way to work in Develop. But I always add that if you do use Auto Sync you’ve also got to keep your head screwed on, because it’s equally easy to unintentionally apply …read more

Book to iPad via Blurb

For a while Blurb’s site has let you convert books created with their BookSmart software into eBooks for the iPad. That wasn’t possible with books uploaded from Lightroom’s Book module, which used the PDF to Blurb method. Well, this afternoon I had left Lightroom uploading a book of my re-enactment photos and  returned to it …read more

Integrating with InDesign

If you want to create a book in InDesign using raw files adjusted in Lightroom, the way I recommend it to use a Publish service to create and maintain a folder of TIFs which you then use for the InDesign project: In Publish Services, click the + to add a new service. Select the Hard …read more

Dropbox for web galleries

Here’s an idea that I came across yesterday. What made it more interesting was that I very confidently expected it wouldn’t work! If you use Dropbox, you may know about its Public folder. You put files in it and can right them and choose “Copy public link” from the context menu. You can paste the …read more

Clouding over?

If you’re attracted to Adobe’s Creative Cloud subscription service and use Lightroom, after months of “coming soon” it’s available now. Also see Adobe’s Lightroom and Creative Cloud FAQ. Am I subscribing? No, at the time of writing (June 2012) I’m still thinking about it – and also still thinking about upgrading my CS5.5. If anything Adobe …read more

List View 1.59

I’ve just released ListView 1.59 with a series of significant changes and improvements

Optimize

If you are still having problems with Lightroom 4’s speed, see this list of things to try. Also, run a File > Optimize Catalog and make sure you read Adobe’s standing advice on optimizing performance.

Mac vs Win

Earlier this year there was a bit of fuss when it was announced that LR4 wouldn’t support Windows XP, so I took a look at how this site’s visitors were split by operating system. It looked like of the half who were using Windows, 12% were on XP. As you’d be crazy to visit this …read more

No more babysitting imports?

Not sure this works with every camera and on both Mac and PC, but see Importing Multiple Memory Cards Into Lightroom At The Same Time. For people shooting a lot of pictures and who has multiple card readers, this will be a big plus.

Incentives

Former Apple guy Chuq Von Rospach writes an interesting article Aperture vs. Lightroom. It is, unfortunately, an easy call… : … Apple may have been the initial innovator here, but they fumbled it, and Adobe has taken the ball and run with it. It’s the technology leader, and it’s where the innovation is. Aperture? After …read more

Photoshop smart objects

How do I update a Photoshop smart object with changes Lightroom has made to the raw file? In Lightroom, go to the original raw file and make the adjustments. Then either: Edit as Smart Object, sending a new file to PS with the raw edits. Open your existing TIF file  in PS, and drag this …read more

Nikon Transfer

If you have a Nikon D800 – possibly any recent Nikon DSLR – avoid using OLD VERSIONS OF Nikon Transfer to copy files from your flash cards. UPDATE: Nikon confirm problem and recommend proper practice I honestly don’t understand why a Lightroom user would ever use Nikon Transfer, but some do so. And what they’ve …read more

Looking over the fence

It’s time for Aperture user Scott Bourne’s biennial wobble Here’s Why I’m Seriously Considering A Permanent Switch To Adobe Lightroom. After saying how he prefers Lightroom’s raw conversion quality and its “much faster, speedier processing”, this seems the most interesting part: Now if I knew Aperture 4.0 was around the corner and that Apple answered each …read more

4.1 Released

From Adobe’s official Lightroom Journal, Lightroom 4.1 Now Available. Whether or not you had problems with 4.0, I definitely recommend installing this release. Lightroom 4.1 is now available as a final release on Adobe.com and through the update mechanism in Lightroom 4.  The goal of this release is to provide additional camera raw support, lens profile support …read more

Toe in the water

Unless you’re a new user to Lightroom who doesn’t care about getting upgrade discounts, only uses Macs, and is in N America (at least for now), I’m not sure you’ll care too much that Lightroom 4 is now available on the Mac App Store. But it is there now. I have bought odd bits of …read more

Why integration?

Q Why are raw processors trying to be like the DAM/Library/Image managers?