General Archives
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
Outside
Lightroom v1.0 is finally announced. At $200 or under ?150 I feel the price is about right and am also pleased the licence isn't limited to one brand of computer (Tom Hogarty here). Already people are posting v1 tutorials - see the wonderful Adjustment Painter - and I thought of doing one or two, but …read more
With a little help from my friends
There's an interview with Lightroom's chief designer Mark Hamburg at Since1968.com: The volume problem really hit home in the fall of 2003 when I did my first shoot of nearly 500 images in one day. The things we?d been experimenting with like light table simulations just fell apart in the face of that sort of …read more
What’s he building? (Update)
I'm not overwhelmed by Lightroom's web gallery generation module - behind the scenes it's overcomplicated to customize, for instance to add a shopping cart link. But I was a bit overrun with work when Adobe Media Gallery was published and have only just got to look at it: Photoshop Elements and Lightroom ship with a …read more
And the gods made love
The other day I posted about being able to examine the Lightroom database using the open source SQLite Database Browser. Well, according to Fazal Majid, Aperture uses the same underlying database…. Find the Aperture library, right click it and select “Show package contents”. The application data seems to be a folder structure with a large …read more
Always look on the bright side of life
There's a new Lightroom podcast at George Jardine's iDisk (look for “1127 Podcast - Phil Clevenger and Mark Hamburg”) which initially focusses on the programs interface design. A little on the bland side - you'd hardly base a design on anything other than a “content is king” mantra - but it's interesting enough as it …read more