Adobe Lightroom: Adjusting Exposure in Quick Develop

Lightroom: Adjusting Exposure in Quick Develop

Quick Develop is ideal for images that do not require much post-processing or for a batch of images that are all similar.

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Once the selection of which image you are going to work on first is made, expand it to the Loupe View. Here you can rate from no stars to five stars as well as rotate the image if necessary.

The next thing to look at is the Histogram. A Histogram is a graphic representation of the type and amount of colors used in an image. As computers see it, there are 256 colors in the spectrum so the Histogram has 256 vertical lines each representing a color (from 0 to 255). Black is represented on the left hand side, mid-tones in the center and lighter tones on the right. How much of each color in an image is represented by the height of the line, the more of a color there is, the higher the line. An ideal image stays within the 256 lines as anything that spills over the edge is lost data – the white edge shows as burn out and the black is just pure black with no contrast.

The image above is dark and the Histogram shows there is very little white or light colors in the image. However, by looking at the picture, we know there should be some white around the dogs muzzle, chest and feet and there should be some hot spots or contrast in the water. To fix that, there are two things you can do: hit Auto Tone or manually adjust the Exposure.

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Auto Tone can work on some images but in this case, it overexposes the image, making it too light. The Histogram, however, says the image is fine – I don’t think so!

Instead, manually adjusting the exposure gives a more balanced output:

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To check your work and visually ‘see’ whether you have overexposed the white, zoom in by clicking in the center of the image window (in this example, I have shrunk the panels and nav bars to show more of the image).

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The white is not blown out but the zoomed in Auto Tone version is bordering on it and there is definitely a loss of depth and contrast to the image.

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Histograms, although important, are only one tool in the post-processing toolbox. Use your eyes and your common sense when adjusting the levels of an image.

Tags: Adobe Lightroom, Lightroom Adjusting Exposure

Adobe Lightroom: Library View

I keep saying how Lightroom is easy and speed up post-processing, or posting, of images.  The fine folks at Adobe designed Lightroom to streamline the photographer’s workflow, saving them time and allowing them more time to be doing what they love – shooting pictures.

After you have imported some images into Lightroom, it should look something like this

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:

Along the top, the Library module is highlighted with the left module panel showing the image selected, the Library you have accessed, the name of the Folder as well as the Keyword Tags and Metadata Browser listed between all the images with the Import and Export buttons at the bottom. On the right module panel, you should have a Histogram and the Quick Develop options as well as the area to add more Keywording and Metadata options along with the Sync Settings and Sync Metadata buttons on the bottom of it. Along the far bottom should be a filmstrip navigation strip of all the images in the folder.

In the center is a thumbnail of the images in the folder and under the thumbnails are a few more important buttons.

First is a checkerboard button called the Grid View (see screen shot above). The Grid View is the view you have open right now – the cluster of thumbnails of all the images in that folder. Along that toolbar a few buttons, there is a spray can or Painter Tool that helps with applying or removing information as well as buttons that allow for sorting and filtering to go on as well as quick deletion of garbage images and you can increase or decrease thumbnail size as needed.

Beside it is the Loupe View (pronounced ‘loop’):

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The Loupe View allows you to zoom in and out of the image with a click of a button. The buttons to the right of the View buttons to where you can rate the image with stars, flag images and quickly rotate images (this can also be done on each image in the Grid View – hover the mouse over the image and two arrows appear in the bottom corners).

The next button is the Compare View:

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If you have ever had a ton if images to process quickly and decide which the best of the bunch is, you will love this view! There are a variety of buttons to help you make the selection including flags, star and reject buttons directly below each image. When you are finished and the decision is made, click ‘Done’ and it will take you back to the Loupe View.

The final view is the Survey View:

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This view allows you see multiple images at a time. Click on two or three images in the filmstrip nav bar and then click on the ‘Survey View’ button and ta-da – there they all are for your perusal!

Tags: Adobe Light Room, Library View

Adobe Lightroom: How to Use Metadata and Keywords Effectively

Lightroom: How to Use Metadata and Keywords Effectively

You are a photographer, why would metadata and keywords mean anything to you?

For many reasons, the most important being protecting your rights and the use, or misuse, of your images. Every photograph you shoot is your intellectual property and immediately is under your copyright to sell or use as you see fit. Unfortunately, many choose to ignore these laws and will try to use your image themselves or even claim that it is their image.

For decades, film photographers would mark on the back every image printed with their copyright, name and date and lock their negatives away. Not only did they understand that their current income was dependent on ‘owning’ that image but also future income. Fine art photographers such as Ansel Adams left a substantial estate to his family who will continue to profit from his images for decades because of his understanding of copyright and protecting his images from theft.

Digital photography has made it much more difficult to protect your intellectual property and as soon as it is up on the web, all bets are off. Right click and ‘save as’ means anyone can steal your image, granted, a small version of it but a copy just the same.

Wikipedia calls metadata ‘data about data’. Surprisingly, your camera adds metadata to every file, or image, it produces including what make and model it is, what lens was used, the ISO, aperture and range etc. Most cameras even include their serial number now. All other data, however, must be entered by you and thankfully, Lightroom makes the process fast and easy.

The metadata is entered when the images are imported. See near the bottom of the Import window in the screen shot below:

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If you click on the option bar and ‘New…’, another window pops up like this one:

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At the top is a place to name the metadata preset. Most photographers have several presets, a basic one with the minimal amount of copyright and creator information filled out as well as one, for example, for magazines or clients they work for regularly. This information can also be added to as you work on an image by clicking on Library in the top navigation bar and then scrolling through the right hand panel until you reach Metadata:

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As you import your images to Lightroom, add as much information about the group or Catalog as you can at the time. Then, as you sort through the images, add further information to the metadata as you go such as the rating, a title, captions, etc. You can then select similar images and click on Sync Metadata of the right hand panel and the information is attached to each file.

Ideally, metadata protects photographers from misuse of their images. This means that photo developing labs, magazines or newspapers, for example, would print the image without the permission of the photographer. It is not a perfect world and few editors and even fewer photo labs look at metadata before printing the photographs. However, if you want to file a suit against the person misusing your image, the embedded metadata gives you proof of ownership, strengthening your case.

Keywords are along the same lines but are used by search engines, both on the internet and in your computer. Keywords are basically a way to add information to a database that allows an image to be searchable by, for example, a subject, a date or a location. Search engine spiders use these keywords to find and label your images (or website) so they can find them when someone types in the appropriate search. By having these keywords imbedded into your image, search engines can easily find your image.
Which keywords work for each photo is a trick in itself. Describe the subject, the location, the date for your own use and add your name with a variety of spellings so that the image can be found even if the searcher does not have the correct spelling. Now add a few descriptive words to the image. Is it a picture of a dog? What color is the dog, what is it doing in the image, what is its expression, does it have a ball in its mouth, is it wearing a pink jacket. Where was the picture taken – outside, in a field or by a lake or maybe in the studio? The better your keywords, the better the chance a search engine will find the image. I also include my name both spelled correctly and misspelled.

Learn to use your keywords and metadata to both protect your work and help people find it. One protects your income while the other helps you to earn more!

Tags: Adobe Lightroom, Meta Data

Adobe Lightroom: Importing Images

Lightroom: Importing Images

Lightroom is designed to work as both a quick fix program and an in depth processing tool that streamlines your workflow. Unlike Photoshop and other image manipulation programs, in Lightroom you must ‘import’ the images you want to work on which the program holds in its library. When you are done manipulating the images, you then ‘export’ them and along with that export comes the metadata and XMP and DNG files.

When you first open Lightroom, it will look something like this:

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On the bottom of the left hand Panel is the button ‘Import’. When you click on it, a dialogue window comes up:

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The first option you can change is File Handling: where you want the file located while in Lightroom and how you want it handled.

The first choice is in the same file from which you are importing the image, the second and third are copy or move the file to a new location and the last is to copy the file as a DNG file (digital negative file). Most of the time, if it is already on the computer, importing the file in its current location will work best as otherwise you can end up with multiple versions. If you are importing from a memory card or other device, it is necessary to copy or move them from the external location onto the computer (you do not actually have to do this but boy, do you end up with a mess if you don’t!). I recommend copying the files from an external device as moving can mean that if anything inadvertently happens during the transfer, the files could be lost. Where you want them copied to and organized is personal preference.

If you back up your images to an external drive (which you always do, right?!?), checking the Backup box next can save you a step – always nice when handling large files!

File naming again is personal preference and can change from job to job.

Information to Apply is important – this is where all your metadata and keywords comes into effect.

The first option is Develop Settings which we will get into shortly – for now keep it as none. The next is your metadata and if you click on ‘new’ you will see a whole list of information you can fill out to personalize each group of files. You will find out more about in the next few entries.

Keywords are image or group of images specific for the most part and are used by search engines and databases for finding and retrieving images. When filling this out, put a comma between each word or phrase and include misspelled words for greater search parameters i.e. if you are adding the word ‘sailboat’ also add ‘sail’ and ‘boat’ as many people spell it as two words.

Initial previews is back to personal preference but the larger the previews you import, the larger the file and the longer it will take to import. The smallest effective file is both the quickest to load and the easiest to manage.

Click on Show Preview if you only want to see the images you are about to import in case there are some that are garbage right off the bat or if you only want to import a few from the card.

Click on Import and the progress of the work should show in the top left hand side of the screen:

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Now that you have images in a Catalog inside Lightroom that are ready for the quick and easy image manipulation system Adobe developed to streamline workflow and speed up post processing for the professional and amateur photographer.

Tags: Adobe Light Room, photo editing software

Adobe Lightroom: Basic Setup & Configuration

Adobe Lightroom:  Getting Started – Part One & Two

Part One

Before you begin working with Lightroom, it is a good idea to set the program up to work the way you want it to work. Most of us do not do it the first time we sit down to it but instead, rush ahead only to return to the beginning at some point to understand and take advantage of all the many features of the program.

The first time you open Lightroom, it will look something like this:

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There are two navigation bars: top and bottom and two panels: left and right. All four can be temporarily shrunk by clicking on the light grey arrows in the center of each bar. This way the center window is larger like so:

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By hovering your mouse over the grey arrows, the nav bar or panel will return so you can click on the process you want to fix or clicking the arrow will return the bar back to normal.

Lightroom is fully customizable with the ability to retain not only your metadata for each image but even permanently etch your business identity into each image. This means that whenever the image is imported into Lightroom, your Identity Plate will be at the top of the page instead of the standard Lightroom plate allowing for greater visibility as well as making it more difficult for your image to be ‘borrow’ by someone.

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To access this feature, click on Edit>Identity Plate Set Up – a screen should come up that looks like this:

Click on the top left box to customize the Identity Plate and make the changes as you like to the template. Or, drop in a ‘graphical identity plate’ already made up with your company logo like this:

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Now you and your identity are clear anytime your image is opened in Lightroom and for professional post-processors, this puts your business name in front of your client every time they look at their images – not a bad way to drum up more business!

Adobe Lightroom:  Getting Started – Part Two

Lightroom is a fully customizable program. It is meant to be intuitive and quick to use but to do that, it is best to have it set up before you begin importing any images. Take the time at the start to set it up the way you want it to work and continue to check your preferences from time to time to make sure that the way you have it set is still the best for the application.

To further customize Lightroom, click on Edit>Preferences.

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Under the General heading, you can adjust your language preference, whether the splash shows up during start up, whether updates are checked for upon start up, what Catalog is opened upon start up and what sounds are played when files are imported or exported.

Lightroom keeps track of warning dialogs for you so you can reference them as needed. When starting a new project, click on Reset Dialogue Prompts to clear the memory and start again.

Catalog Settings you to adjust how often the catalog is backed up (default is once a week upon start up) and optimize the file loading system under the General tab. Under File Handling, there is the option to customize the size of the previews, the quality and how long they are kept (previews take up memory space so they are automatically discarded after 30 days unless otherwise specified). There is also the ability to change the Import Sequence Numbers on this page – not import for the beginner or someone who does not use huge numbers of files at one time but can be adjusted at a later date if needed.

Metadata is “data about data” – a file within the file that keeps all of the information about the file in one place and complete. For photographers, this can mean all of the copyright information, the camera data and creator’s information, location of the shot and even the name or label of the image. This is critical to ownership of the image and should be included on each file. For the beginner, click on all the boxes on this page so all the data is included in every eventuality.

The next tab on the Preferences Window looks like this:

Presets are an important part of Lightroom – the more you work with them and feel comfortable adjusting them, the faster your workflow will go.

Under the Default Develop Settings, there are several boxes.

For the beginning digital photographer or someone unfamiliar with image manipulation, checking off ‘Apply auto tone adjustments’ might mean less work with each individual image. Auto tone adjustments allow the computer to make the necessary changes to exposure, brightness, contrast, ect. However, for anyone comfortable with hand adjusting images or who has control issues like me, this box should not be checked.

‘Apply auto grayscale mix when converting to grayscale’ is up to the individual much like the ‘auto tone adjustment’ above although allowing the computer to make these adjustments usually produces a better finished product then hand adjusting the levels.

If you use multiple cameras, each with their own quirks, making the defaults camera specific can streamline workflow to that camera, saving you time and a few headaches.

And finally the last box in the defaults section is ‘make defaults specific to camera ISO setting’. The more extreme the ISO, the more difficult it is to hand adjust them and the more knowledge is required to maximize the image without blowing out whites etc. This is a setting that can be adjusted as the user becomes more familiar with Lightroom and image manipulation.

Always keep the Store presets with catalog’ box checked – it does not hurt anyone to have that extra info stored inside the catalog and for anyone who has ever had to go back to an image a year or two later, it is nice to have the information saved.

The Import Tab looks like this:

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This Preference page is straightforward and very much personal preference. The ‘show import dialog…’ box should be ticked if you like to have everything automatic but I warn you, every time you plug in an external hard drive, scanner, cell phone or printer, the dialog box will come up.

Using camera generated folder names is clumsy for the most part.

If you shoot in both RAW and JPEG simultaneously, this box should be checked. Any changes done to the RAW file will be made to the JPEG file, speeding up your processing time.

The file extension .dng stands for ‘digital negative’ and it carries all the information about the image, embedding it into the RAW file. It also guarantees the file will be able to be used in the future as RAW processing may change, much like how an old Word can still be opened by Word 2007 but not vice versa.

The JPEG Preview is personal choice but Image Conversion Method should be put to Preserve Raw Image file in almost all situations – beginners keep it here. Compressed can be checked for beginners, or unchecked if file size is not an issue. Embed Original RAW File should be left blank for beginners.

The External Editing Tab is purely dependent on how you want images to function once you have exported them from Lightroom.

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Depending on your background with Photoshop or other editing programs, you will want to set it up your own way.

For beginners, set it up as it is above and you will always be able to adjust your images in various applications in the future.

File Handling is again personal choice.

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The only suggestion I would have is that if many of your images end up on the internet would be to put the bottom option of ‘when a file name has a space’ to ‘replace with an underscore’. Web browsers stumble over a space whereas the underscore or dash they handle fine. Setting Lightroom to fix all file names will save you some future headaches guaranteed!

The final tab under Preferences is Interface:

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This tab is the most fun as it further customizes the way Lightroom appears on your computer. Most is purely personal preference so play around with these options to see which works best for you.

Lightroom is now ready for you to begin importing images. They will appear the way you want them to appear and importing and exporting should be effortless on your part.

Tags: Adobe Lightroom, Lightroom settings

Adobe Light Room:Why Lightroom?

Why Lightroom?

‘Simplify photography from shoot to finish’

A perfect tagline for one of the easiest professional level programs on the market, Adobe Lightroom is just that – a simple way to streamline your workflow from the moment you take the shot to presenting it to your clients.

For many years, the industry standard for photographers was Photoshop. This incredible product did everything you could ever want or ask with ease. Oh, did I say ease? That might be an exaggeration. Photoshop does everything Lightroom does but Lightroom simply makes the process easier and when time is money, easy is a significantly better alternative.

For the amateur photographer looking at upgrading from the software that comes bundled with their camera, Lightroom is a logical step. The program is intuitive, easy to learn and fully expandable. Did I mention cheap? Compare the $199 US for Lightroom 2 to the $699 for CS4, Lightroom is much less of a hit to the wallet. And Lightroom is no lightweight – it is a professional photographer’s tool just like Photoshop but with a tool with a different purpose. Many people make the mistake of thinking that Lightroom replaces Photoshop but it does not. Lightroom is all about speed and workflow whereas big brother Photoshop is about image manipulation – these are two different horses all together.

Because they are both made by Adobe and work well in conjunction with each other, any learning that begins in Lightroom very quickly leapfrogs to Photoshop. Terminology, tools and concepts learned in one is transferable knowledge to the other. Beginning your training in the more user-friendly and less expensive Lightroom before moving on to Photoshop would be a less stressful direction then jumping into Photoshop like many of us were forced to do in the pre-Lightroom days.

Easy begins with the importing of the images. Insert a memory card and a page opens asking if you would like to import the images. From there you have a choice of how you want the file(s) handled and a list of information you would like applied to the file including Develop Settings, Metadata, Keywords and how you would like the preview downloaded. With a click on Import, you are off to the races.

Do you spend much of your time in the studio? If you are like me, memory cards drive you crazy. Studio work is fast and it takes longer to download the images then it does to fill a card. Why not tether your camera directly to your computer while Lightroom automatically imports the files? This removes a time consuming and frustrating step while requiring less memory when shooting in the studio. Images are ready for viewing as soon as you are done the shoot and post-production can begin immediately.

Editing large numbers of images can be a time-consuming nightmare. Lightroom allows images to be ‘Synced’ – make your adjustments to one image and save the Preset. Now apply it to all the images in the group. In seconds, you have completed a day’s work. Batch Processing in Photoshop is similar, ranted, but requires more steps and a few extra clicks of the mouse.

Not sure if you like the adjustments you made? Compare the before and after images side by side!

Need to remove some specks in the image or red eye? Click a button and away you go, just like in Photoshop. Put images through photography specific filters for an antique, black and white, sepia and many more looks.

Lightroom makes adjusting exposure, hue, saturation, clarity and luminance easy and the ‘curve’ tends to be more user friendly then other programs. The histogram is not only easy to work with but offers the camera settings and data that is imbedded into the image.

With a click of the mouse, you can step from the Library and Quick Develop page into the full Develop area, build Slideshows, adjust for Print and publish directly to your website.

Lightroom does not replace Photoshop, it only speeds up and enhances the already incredible program. Eventually all photographers want to flex their creative juices and Photoshop is the most logical purchase but until that time, this program will help you to enhance your photography quickly, easily and without any time in a classroom.

Make your life easier and take Lightroom for a spin. Adobe offers a 30 day free trial at adobe.com.

Author Ann lockley
Copyright ©2008 picturephotosoncanvas.com

Tags: Adobe Light Room, Light Room, photo editing software, photo work flow