Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

5 Things to know about the Lightroom Import dialog

In Lightroom 3 the Import dialog was updated and there are heaps of cool tools here to speed up and make the import process more efficient.

Here are five things that you should know about the import dialog.

1. Back up as you import

In the Import dialog’s File Handling panel you can select to make a second copy of your images upon import to another folder. This option is available provided you are using either Copy as DNG, Copy or Move as the option for importing images into your catalog – if you have Add selected this is not an option. This is a quick and no fuss way to ensure you always have a backup of your photos.

You should be aware that if you chose Copy as DNG the backups will be in the original raw image file format and they won’t be converted to DNG.

2. Fix as you import

In the Apply During Import panel is a Develop Settings option. Here you can select from any of the Develop Presets that you have in your Develop Module. If there is not a preset for a fix that you want to apply, create a preset with those fixes that you want to apply to all your images on import. Once saved as a preset you can then apply those fixed automatically using this option. The presets are shown in alphabetical order and no distinction is made between yours and those shipped with Lightroom.

For example, for one of my cameras, I prefer to set the Profile to Camera Standard in the Camera Calibration panel of the Develop module. By creating a Preset for this, I can apply it to all images as they are imported whenever I download from that camera.

3. Apply Metadata

Also in the Apply During Import panel is a Metadata option. Here you can create a copyright preset and apply it as images are imported. Typical copyright presets will include IPTC Copyright and IPTC Creator data. You should also include IPTC Status: Credit Line. The remainder of the IPTC information is generally added on an image by image basis but you can, at the very least, apply basic copyright information on import.

4. Rename files

If you prefer to rename your files to something other than what they are named by the camera open the File Renaming panel and choose a template to use. Where a template includes a custom name, shoot name or sequence you can type the relevant data into the boxes in this panel. The files will be automatically renamed as they are imported. If you are making a copy of the images at the same time as importing them, the backups will be renamed too.

5. Organize by date

In the Destination panel you can select to create a subfolder for the files as you bring them in and, if desired, organize this by date and then select a date format to use. So you can, for example, create a subfolder such as Rome Trip and have various additional subfolders added automatically for each of the days that you captured images during that trip.

 

If you scroll down in the folder system, you will see the intended folder structure with the numbers of images listed. This allows you to check the folder structure is correct before committing to importing images.

If you already have a folder that you plan to use then don’t select the Into Subfolder checkbox and instead select just the folder that you want to import into.

Bonus tip

Once you have the Import dialog set up as you want to use it most of the time, create an Import preset using the Import Preset option at the foot of the dialog. This allows you to select the preset any time to set up the dialog the way you usually want it to look. You can then make changes to it to suit a particular import and click to Import your images.

 

If you always use a standard importing process you can shrink the Import dialog to a small bar by clicking the Show Fewer Options button in the bottom left of the dialog. This bar still shows the settings you have in place – but it is more compact – and these settings too can be altered if needed.

 

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:48 amNo Comments links to this post

Friday, November 25th, 2011

Craft great Black and white images in Lightroom

Most of us know we can convert and image to black and white in Lightroom by simply pressing the letter V. However, for the exact same image, your version of Lightroom might give a very different result to my version of Lightroom. The explanation is that there are two settings available for black and white conversions in Lightroom.

I’ll show you what these are, how to configure the one you want to use and how to quickly switch between them.

With a color image on the screen in Lightroom’s Develop module, press the letter V to convert it to black and white.

Open the B&W panel – it’s called Greyscale in Lightroom 2 – and check out the color sliders.

Depending on the preferences that you have set, the sliders might all be set to zero or they might show a black and white adjustment tailored to the image itself which Lightroom calls Auto mix.

The auto mix adjustment applies an auto exposure adjustment to the image as well as a conversion that maximizes the distribution of the grey tones in the image. This is customized for the image so every image will be given a custom adjustment much as you will get if you click the Auto Tone button in the Basic panel. Notice the subtle differences in the histograms in each of the adjustments here.

Whether or not you see this Auto mix applied to a black and white image is controlled by your Lightroom preferences. To see these, choose Edit > Preferences (or Lightroom > Preferences on the Mac), select the Presets tab and there’s an option there which reads “Apply auto tone mix when first converting to black and white”.

If this is checked you will get the auto tone mix applied to the image, if not, you will see a black and white adjustment where each color is given the same adjustment value of zero.

Regardless of which setting is in place you can switch between the two in the B&W panel.

If an Auto mix has been applied, hold the Alt key (Option on the Mac) and you will see an option Reset Black and White Mix. Click this and all the sliders will be set back to zero.

On the other hand, if your sliders are all set at zero, click Auto to apply the auto mix adjustment to the black and white image.

Step 5

You can further adjust the black and white regardless of whether you have an auto mix applied automatically to it or not by adjusting the sliders.

You can also select the Target Adjustment Tool and drag on an area of the image to adjust whether it is light or dark. Dragging downwards will darken it, dragging upwards will lighten it.

 

 

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:53 amNo Comments links to this post

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

Lightroom’s Selected and Most Selected Images

One of confusing things when you’re getting started in Lightroom is understanding the concept of selected images and the most selected image in Lightroom.

Step 1

To see this at work, start in the Library module and press G to move to Grid view. Click on any image to select it and Shift + Click on another image. You’ll now have a sequence of images selected.

Notice that in both Grid view and on the Filmstrip the first image that you selected has a lighter border around it than all of the other selected images and notice that the unselected images have darker borders.

The image with the lightest border is the most selected image and it is the image that will be affected by changes that you make to various settings, in particular when you are working in Loupe view with multiple images selected.

Step 2

What you have selected in Lightroom and the view you are in impacts how changes are applied to an image.

In Grid view if you select the Quick Develop panel and choose a different white balance setting then all the selected images that are selected will be altered.

Step 3

However, if you are in Loupe view and if you make the same change only the most selected image will be altered and not all the selected images.

Grid and Loupe view work very differently and it’s important to understand, particularly in Loupe view, that when you have multiple images selected, there is one that is most selected.

Step 4

When you have all images in a folder or collection selected it can be difficult to see just how to deselect the images. To deselect a selection, click outside the thumbnail area of any of the selected images in an empty area of the cell it is in. This deselects the current selection so only the image that you just clicked will be selected.

 

 

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:43 amNo Comments links to this post

Friday, November 18th, 2011

Lightroom: Add your IPTC metadata on Importing images

Most of us have heard of IPTC metadata but not everyone knows what it is, whether it is important to them or how to add it to their photos. In this post I’ll cover some of the basics of adding personal information about you as photographer as IPTC metadata to your images. I won’t be talking about image specific metadata such as keywording or captions – that’s a topic all of its own – this post is limited to things like your name, copyright status and so on – the type of information that doesn’t change from image to image.

What is all the fuss about?

The IPTC or International Press Telecommunications Council (www.iptc.org) develops industry standards for interchange of news data. It publishes standards for adding to a photograph certain data about who took it, what it is about and its copyright status among other things. This data is stored inside the image as IPTC Photo Metadata and it was originally developed for use by photojournalists. Nowadays many photographers add this to their images on a routine basis and many more probably would if they knew how to do it and why it is important to do so!

The primary reason to add personal details to your images is so that anyone locating that image somewhere on the web can determine who owns copyright in the image and what they can do with it. If the image is copyrighted the metadata can show this and give the finder the information they need to contact you if they would like to get permission to use your photo. Alternately if you prefer to apply a Creative Commons Licence to your work you would state this so that anyone can easily determine what they are licensed to do with the image. Without this data it could be difficult if not impossible for someone to locate the owner of an image. It is also one way to alert people to the fact that this image belongs to you.

Where does the information go?

The information added to the image is added inside the file – it doesn’t appear on the image itself so no one will notice any difference in the way the image looks. It is visible only by using a program which can read metadata. These days, most photo editing programs can do this – for example, the Metadata panel in the Library module in Lightroom shows the metadata in your images and it can also be used to add metadata to your images.

You can also add metadata to your images as you import them into Lightroom. The Apply During Import panel’s Metadata option not only lets you create a metadata preset but also to use it to add metadata to your images as you import them.

Add metadata on import

Before you can add metadata to your images it’s best to create a metadata preset with all the details that you need to apply to a typical image – this saves you having to type it afresh for each image. To create a preset, choose File > Import Photos and open the Apply During Import panel. From the Metadata drop down list choose New and type a name for your preset.

Completing the fields

Many of the fields in the panel are fields which relate to an individual image such as Label, Caption and Subject information. You won’t complete these fields in your preset – they’ll need to be added on an image by image basis as each image is usually different. The fields you can complete are in the IPTC Copyright and IPTC Creator Information sections.

Typically in the IPTC Copyright field you will type your copyright text – I type © 2011, Helen Bradley, All Rights Reserved.  To get the copyright symbol hold Alt on the Windows keyboard and type out 0169 on the numbers keypad.

In the Copyright Status box choose Copyrighted.

In the Rights Usage Terms field you will explain how the image can be used – for example type no reproduction without prior permission.

Copyright Info URL is a field which is not recognized by a lot of other programs – you can complete it but you should be aware of this.

The IPTC Creator section is where you add your details including your name, address, email address, website and so on. If you have multiple email addresses or websites – separate them with commas.

Some other fields you may complete are in the IPTC Status and in the IPTC Extension Administrative sections and are Credit Line which shows how you should be credited when the image is used – for example Helen Bradley Photography.

 

In the Source field you can add your name as copyright holder.

In the Digital Source Field you would typically select Original digital capture of a real life scene for a photo taken with a digital camera.

Stripping metadata from an image

You should note that any field that has a checkmark to its right will be added to the image when you apply metadata to it.

For this reason, it’s important that you don’t check any field that is blank or that empty field will be added to the image overwriting any metadata that is already in the image in that particular field when applied.

That said, in some cases you may want to strip the IPTC metadata from an image. In this case you could create a preset that had nothing in it but every checkbox checked. This would then overwrite any corresponding data in those fields in the image’s metadata with ‘nothing’ effectively stripping that metadata from the image.

Save and apply a metadata preset

When you’ve finished creating your preset, click Create to create it. If you are editing a preset you will choose Update Preset <preset name> from the Preset dropdown list at the top of this dialog. Click Done to exit the dialog.

You can apply the metadata preset to images as you import them by making sure that the preset is selected in the Metadata box in the Apply During Import panel.

You can also apply a metadata preset that you’ve created to any image by viewing that image in the Library and from the Metadata panel select the preset to apply to the image. If you are in Grid view (press G) then you can select multiple images and apply metadata to them all at once.

More information

The topic of IPTC Metadata is big and understanding it can be very overwhelming. I’ve tried to give you a simple approach that will work for most amateur and hobbyist photographers in most cases.

There are some good resources online and some I like for their ability to explain what the fields mean include these pdfs:

http://www.iptc.org/std/Iptc4xmpCore/1.0/documentation/Iptc4xmpCore_1.0-doc-CpanelsUserGuide_13.pdf

This is a 22 page pdf that contains a lot of useful information on interpreting what the field names mean and what goes in them and has some examples.

http://www.iptc.org/std/photometadata/documentation/IPTC-CS5-FileInfo-UserGuide_6.pdf

This 40 page pdf guide has a lot of information specific to Photoshop CS5  (and by extension is relevant to Lightroom users) and is more recent than the previous guide.

http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/imagedatabases/iptc_naa.html

This webpage has a set of sample IPTC fields in a table – scroll down to find them.

 

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:14 amNo Comments links to this post

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

Save space – Compress your images in Word

A reader just asked if they added 50 images to a Word file would that blow out the file size when they send it to their colleagues. Answer: Yep! big time.

Most specially if you use your your beaut iPhone to capture the images, or a good compact camera or if you just insert big pictures. You see, unless you do something those big pictures will be inserted in the file and included in it when you save it – you can end up with a monster Word file (think 5Mb x 50!)

The solution to the problem is to compress the images. To compress all the images in your Word 2010/2007 file so that they take less room, click on any image and choose Picture Tools > Format tab.  Locate the Compress Pictures button and deselect Apply only to this Picture so all images will be compressed.

If there is an Options button click it to see the sizing options (this appears in Word 2007 but not in Word 2010). Then choose the Target output – typically Screen or Print are good options as they will view well and print just fine. Check the Delete Cropped Areas of Pictures checkbox so cropped data won’t be saved. Click Ok. Then save the document.

This compression feature will reduce your file to a better size for sharing without compromising the quality of the document. And the changes affect only the images in the document not the originals on your disk.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:59 amNo Comments links to this post

Monday, November 14th, 2011

Photoshop – convert a black background to white

I was recently asked how to convert the background of an image from black image to white. It isn’t a trivial task so it got me thinking. One of the problems is that things shot against a black background actually pick up black or dark reflections so it’s not enough to merely remove the black – you also have to solve some of the reflection problems as well.

This method won’t work on every image but provided the subject is well lit so there are minimal dark reflections to deal with, it is quick and effective.

Step 1

Start by making three copies of the background layer of the image by right clicking it and choose Duplicate Layer three times.

Set the top layer’s blend mode to Color and the second top layer’s blend mode to Lighten.

Step 2

Target the third top layer and choose Image > Apply Image. Set the Channel to Red as it is typically lightest in the areas where the data is that you want to retain. Select Invert and make sure the Blend mode is set to Normal. You will see the image now with the background removed. Click Ok.

Step 3

Now all you have to do is to tidy up the problems. Typically this is problems with color or the edges. For this I make yet another duplicate of the background layer and drag this to the top of the layer stack. Make a rough selection of the background using a tool like the Quick Selection tool and then hold Alt (Option on the Mac) as you click the Add Layer Mask icon at the foot of the layer palette. You can now use this layer to add color or to fix other problems.

In this image I reduced the opacity of this layer to around 30% to bring back some missing detail in the flower.

I also added a new layer, set its Blend Mode to Color, sampled some color from the flower and painted over some of the petals where they showed pink once the black was removed.

The image is © Lars Sundstrom from sxc.hu

 

 

 

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 am1 Comment links to this post

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

Personalize Lightroom with identity plates

 

If you’re a professional photographer, teacher, someone who routinely shows off images in Lightroom or if you just like the personal touch, why not personalize your Lightroom interface? The Lightroom branding which appears in the top left corner of the screen is customizable using the Lightroom Identity Plate feature. Identity Plates are usable throughout Lightroom to brand your prints, slideshows and some web sites but what suits one of these modules won’t necessarily work for customizing the interface.

The Identity Plate that appears in the top left of the Lightroom screen is configured by selecting Edit > Identity Plate Setup (on the Mac choose Lightroom > Identity Plate Setup).  To create a simple Identity Plate, choose Use a Stylized Text Identity Plate and type the text into the text area. You can select and format the text in the font, font size and color of your choice. Click the Enable Identity Plate checkbox and the changes you make will appear in place so you can check how they look. You may need to size the text to fit the space – Lightroom won’t scale it to fit automatically.

To save the Identity Plate, choose Save As from the dropdown list and type a name for the Identity Plate. You can then select and use it in one of the modules later on – for example you can add it to a print layout.

If you prefer to use graphics in your design such as your signature or a graphical design element you can create a graphical Identity Plate in another application such as Photoshop. The file you use should be no more than 60 pixels in height so it fits in the space available – there is no option to scale it to a smaller size, for example. For this reason, if you plan to use a Graphical Identity Plate such as this for more than just customizing your Lightroom interface you will need two of them – one small image for customizing Lightroom and another one sized appropriately for printing at a high resolution.

When creating your Identity Plate in an application like Photoshop, build it in a layered file and make sure the bottom layer of the document matches the color of the Lightroom interface – ie make it black. This way you test the Identity Plate to make sure it will look good when placed on a black background. Then turn off the visibility of the black background layer and save the file as a .png, .psd or another format that maintains transparency (not jpg). If you save as a .jpg image the transparent background will be white and you will probably also have small unsightly artifacts in your design.

Back in Lightroom, open the Identity Plate Editor and choose Use a graphical Identity Plate, click Locate File and browse to find the file on disk.

Save this Identity Plate so you can always reuse it if you change the Identity Plate in future.

You can use this same process to create a transparent image in your graphics program to use as a graphical Identity Plate for the other modules. In that case make sure that the Identity Plate is created at an appropriate size for printing. Crop closely around the image so that it can be easily sized and moved into position later on. You need to do this because it is not possible to size an Identity Plate any larger than the screen or page size and you cannot skew an Identity Plate out of shape when resizing it – its proportions will be constrained as it is sized up or down.

 

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:57 am1 Comment links to this post

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

Photoshop CS5: Oil Painting with Pixel Bender

One of the cool new tools from Adobe Labs is Pixel Bender. This free extension lets you apply any one of a series of filters that comes with the extension to your images in Photoshop CS5. But that’s not all – Adobe also provides a simple interface for Pixel Bender that lets you create your own filters. As a result a community is building around Pixel Bender with users sharing custom created filters with others. In this post I’ll show you how to get started with Pixel Bender.

You will find the Pixel Bender extension here for download: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/pixelbenderplugin.html this is the version for Photoshop CS5 and CS5.5. Go to this site to find the Pixel Bender download for Photoshop CS4 you will see the link in the top right of the page. Make sure to download the version that matches your operating system and your version of Photoshop CS4, or 5/5.5 (32 or 64 bit). The extension is an .mxp file and you need to install it using the Adobe Extension Manager.

You can install the extension by double clicking on the file to launch the Adobe Extension Manager. If you’re using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you should run the Adobe Extension Manager as an Administrator. So, from the Start menu, locate the Adobe Extension Manager entry, right click it and choose Run as Administrator. The reason for this is that the extension needs to be placed in a folder that you can only access if you have administrator privileges. If you launched the program manually choose File > Install Extension and locate and select the extension that you just downloaded.

Accept the license terms and the extension will be automatically installed inside the appropriate Photoshop CS5 program folder.

When you’re done, close the Extension Manager, close Photoshop and reopen it.

Pixel Bender won’t work on images larger than 4096 x 4096 so start by resizing your image if necessary. If desired, you can convert an image to a Smart Object before applying a filter.

To run Pixel Bender open an image and choose Filter > Pixel Bender > Pixel Bender Gallery. You’ll see a list of filters in the dropdown list which currently displays CircleSplash. Select the OilPaint filter and then adjust its settings. Using Stylization, you can adjust the length and bend of the brush strokes – the larger values look best.

Cleanliness will adjust the smoothness of the effect and typically looks good at around 7 or 8. Colorization allows you to apply more or less color to the image. BrushScale changes the size and length of the darker brush strokes – a small value gives thin long lighter brush strokes and a larger value gives shorter thick very dark brush strokes. BrushContrast will adjust the contrast of the brush strokes and is probably better left at a value approaching 1.

In short, adjust the sliders until you get a result you like. If you are unsure how a slider is affecting the image drag it all the way to the left or right to see the effect. Then adjust from there.

When you’re done, click Ok to apply the result to the image. Unlike most filters which convert images to look like an oil painting, this one does well at identifying edges in the image so the painting looks more realistic.

 

 

 

 

 

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:25 amNo Comments links to this post