General Archives

Stay free

Until a year a two ago, mySQL seemed to be the open source database to back, but barely a week goes by without SQLite popping up behind the scenes of some program I use - it powers both Aperture and Lightroom. Today's Guardian carries an interview with SQLite's creator: It's very clear to me that …read more

If I could only be sure

Ian Lyons has written a nice tutorial on locating missing files and folders in Lightroom. Most of all he points to a little-known detail - even when the targeted folder isn't missing, you can force the program to display the Locate Missing Folders command. This is invaluable when you use Explorer/Finder to move large numbers …read more

Cigarettes and alcohol

At the Bluefire Blog, Micah Bowers, the designer of Lightroom's Flash galleries, shows a method for adding background sound. Wisely, he adds Sound that automatically plays in websites is appropriate in some circumstances, and terribly annoying in others. This can be particularly true when you don?t offer volume controls or a mute button (which this …read more

Born again

In a long PhotoshopNews post Jeff Schewe describes the new controls available in Adobe Camera Raw 4.1. It's a nice appetizer for what's going to be in Lightroom 1.1. I'm on the fence about the value of the Clarity slider, a wide area sharpening contrast adjustment. Apart from preferring the original name, “Punch”, I suspect …read more

I started something I couldn’t finish

Gunar Penikis has posted a surprisingly-ugly but interesting example of using Flash for a Bridge panel: Once loaded into the Bridge startup scripts folder, the BridgeExportToJPEG extension will demonstrate a Flash UI panel in Bridge that is functional in driving Bridge to create JPEGs and manipulate XMP metadata. All the thumbnails that are created in …read more

The masterplan

PHPture is an interesting plug in for Aperture which, if I understand correctly, uses a web server on your Mac and the PHP language to run a web site which looks like Aperture. It accesses Aperture's database and shows stacks, thumbnails, and a project listing, and makes your image versions available over a network or …read more

You send me

Here's a handy little registry hack which adds a “Send Folder to Lightroom” choice to Windows Explorer's right click menu. Either download and double click my registry file - read it first just to be sure - or copy this code into Notepad and save it as a file with an “reg” extension, then double …read more

If things were perfect

I don't run Aperture seriously, more out of curiosity, but it's frustrating that metadata is stuck inside its library until you export the masters, duplicating your files. That is especially annoying because I often go through new pictures on the laptop while watching TV, like United's annihilation of Roma last night, and the same master …read more

The song remains the same

Lightroom or iView for DAM? It's such a big question, an amorphous one too, and I've not had much spare time recently. But I spent a bit of time giving an answer and thought I'd add it here too. The devil is always in the detail of one's personal needs and right now I am …read more

Achilles last stand

Not sure when he wrote this, other than in the last 6 months, but Robert Edwards looks at Aperture or Lightroom = Neither: I'm not suggesting there isn't a use or market for Aperture and Lightroom. Certainly their sales figures suggest otherwise. What I am stating is neither Aperture or Lightroom is the panacea digital …read more

You’re going to make me lonesome when you go

After being rather too sceptical at first, I’ve been trying LightZone 2 and looking at its touted integration with Lightroom. I was going to make a longer posting but instead there is now a good article at Outback Photo on Lightroom and LightZone in Tandem. While I now think the integration is a little more …read more

But I’m different now

Someone, who knew my opinion on the issue, sent me this spoof on Geek Culture's cartoon about Creative Suite 3's many versions. If Lightroom customers want it, so too do Photoshop users.

She’s lost control

In this post I wrote about using Lightroom's Collections to record virtual copies or versions. My thinking has changed a little since I wrote that piece, though I do still use Collections, and the key point remains that you must mark the virtual copies immediately after they are created and while LR still has them …read more

Why didn’t you call me….

James Duncan Davidson discusses the extension of the Photoshop brand into an online service and then turns on its addition to “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom”: The only people who will be impressed by the Photoshop brand being applied to Lightroom or an online-based photo tool are the very people who don't know what any of it …read more

Round and round

O'Reilly's Lightroom vs Aperture has some interesting articles and even more interesting threads such as this discussion of Aperture's flexibility vs Lightroom's modularity. While I prefer a palette-based interface, as in Aperture, I don't think Lightroom's modular approach slows me down, and one commenter put it really well: I'm still confused as to why modularity …read more

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