General

• On Mac, the ‘hit zone’ for the right scroll bar in the grid view has been expanded so that a closed right hand panel doesn’t automatically open too easily. The automatic panel opening experience has been modified so that it takes a longer amount of time for the panel to open in cases of overshooting the scrollbar. (Mouse towards the white triangle for instant opening) Please provide feedback on this new behavior so that it can be modified or added to the Windows version of Lightroom.
• Images can be sorted by aspect ratio
• The catalog selection dialog has been expanded and improved

Library

• You can backup your catalog when you quit Lightroom instead of on launch
• A volume can be ejected or un-mounted from your system directly from the volume browser in the Library module.
• Collections can be created directly within a collection set by right-clicking on the collection set
• Images can be sorted by aspect ratio
• The name of a collection is displayed when an image is added to a target collection
• Stack badges can now be toggled on or off independently in the filmstrip via an interface preference
• Erasing with the spray paint tool now requires the use of the Alt key
• Select a folder in the Library module and choose a new option “Import to here” to launch the import dialog with that folder preselected as the destination
• The import dialog provides source folder and destination volume capacity information
• The option to include items from subfolders has been included in the primary Folder panel drop down menu
• Choose Library -> Show Missing Images to locate offline or missing files
• A lock icon has been added to the metadata filter bar in the Library module to make filter selections “global” across folders or collections
• An icon has been added to grid thumbnails to indicate that an image is part of a collection. Click on that icon to view and/or visit the collection
• Favorite sources can be added to the filmstrip source pop-up menu for quick access to specific collections or folders
• Flash state is now included as part of the smart collection filter criteria
• When the ‘spray can’ is used to add an image to a collection, the collection name is now displayed upon application
• The optimize catalog feature is now available in the File menu
• Lightroom now imports CMYK files. Any output, with the exception of export original, or adjustments to these images will take place in an RGB color space
• Filters are now longer automatically “sticky” on folders or collections

Develop

• Hitting the X key in crop mode will rotate the aspect ratio
• Crop presets choices have been edited for clarity
• A checkbox has been added to the toolbar to turn on/off overlay visibility
• All adjustment brush and graduated filter sliders can be reset by holding down Option/Alt and clicking on Amount
• The color setting for the adjustment brush and graduated filter clearly display an ‘x’ overlay when no color is selected
• The Collections panel is now available in the Develop Module
• The targeted adjustment tool is deactivated when switching to a new Develop panel
• The local adjustment brush and graduated filter panel have been simplified to a single mode (Previously there was a button and slider ‘mode’)

Slideshow

• The music selection in the Slideshow module has been decoupled from iTunes on the Mac
• Click the track duration to sync the length of the slideshow to the length of the music track

Print

• Black or a custom color can be selected for a print layout background
• The Identity Plate can be moved in small increments by selecting it and using the arrow keys
• Match photo aspect ratio is now a persistent option in the Cell panel

Export

• The file extension case(UPPER/lower) can be selected in the export dialog

Be sure and check out out complete Lightroom 3 Learning Center for lots of other information about Lightroom 3.

To download the Lightroom 3 Shortcut keys file, follow this link:
http://blogs.adobe.com/edtechatadobe/lightroom_3_shortcuts.pdf

To Download a 30 Day trial version of Lightroom 3, please visit: http://www.adobe.com/downloads/

Be sure and check out our Learning Lightroom 3 Workshop coming to a city near you!

Lightroom 3 Quick Links Learning Lightroom Workshop Tour Lightroom 3 Shortcut Keys Podcast with Tom Hogarty, Lightroom 3 Product manager Tom Hogarty’s Lightroom Journal Lightroom 3′s Lesser Known New Features

Kerry Garrison Publisher – CameraDojo.com Welcome to the CameraDojo Lightroom 3.0 Learning Center. We have prepared some of our favorite videos here for you and will be adding more resources to this page as often as we can.

With Lightroom 3 beta 2, watermarking has finally grown up, pretty much copying feature for feature from LR2/Mogrify. LR2/Mogrify still wins if you need to add different borders around your image and even place watermarks in the logos, but most of us are going to be quite happy with the new built-in watermarking tool.

To use the new watermarking tool, simply go to the Export dialog box from clicking on the Export button in the Library module or go to the Edit menu and select “Edit Watermarks”.

The image above shows the watermark selection and editor from within the Export dialog box. Once you select the Edit Watermarks, you will be taken to the Watermark Editor.

The Watermark editor will let you create text or graphical watermarks. I think most people will probably stick with the graphic one since the text version only allows for a single font and style to be used so if you have a multi-line and/or multi font/style text logo, you will not be able to recreate it in the text mode.

For graphical watermarks, you can use either a JPG or a PNG file. I recommend using a PNG so you can use transparencies instead of being stuck with a box shape for your logo. You can also set the opacity level (transparency) and determine the size within the image. I like using a proportional size of about 30% myself with a 2×2 Inset just to bring it away from the edges a little. Finally, you can select where on the screen you would like it to go.

The following image is an example of the type of output you can get using the new Lightroom 3 beta 2 watermarking tool.

While this new watermarking tool will mean a lot of people don’t need to go to third-party tools, it could still use a little improvement. My suggestions would include the following:

• Allow for the use of Photoshop .PSD files
• Provide multiple effects settings based on image orientation
• Provide some basic border controls
• Allow for custom rotation angles
• Ability to use filenames as watermarks

Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled to have this new ability and I personally won’t need another tool now. I suspect this is where the Lightroom watermarking will most likely end up and if you need more advanced watermarking, you can use LR2/Mogrify.  Check it out and have some fun with it, you now have no reason not to watermark your images.

The following image was taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II at ISO 25,600,  f/4.0, 1/250th with a Canon 50mm 1.8 lens. As you can see in the first image, there is simply too much noise.

Canon 5D Mk II ISO 25,600 No Noise Reduction

In the next image we have cranked up the color and luminance noise reduction which certainly softened the image somewhat and then we added back in some sharpness to help compensate as best we could. As you can see, this makes the image much more usable.

Canon 5D Mk II ISO 25,600 Lightroom 3 Noise Reduction

This represents a significant improvement over the previous noise reduction method and really makes the super ISO ranges a lot more usable. Stay tuned for more small snippets about more of the new features in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Beta 2.

Yes, sometimes it IS who you know

I had heard there was an easy way to organize images from multiple cameras but I had poked around trying to find it but I never really figured it out. Of course, the actual answer was far simpler than I had thought and had thus overlooked it several times. I was recently talking to my good friend Rick Miller who is a solution specialist for Adobe, and had mentioned I thought there should be an easier way to accomplish this. Rick, not wanting to be stumped by a Lightroom question helped me look for the answer and sure enough, there it was…sort of.

Metadata is your friend

This is going to be so simple you may wonder how come you didn’t accidentally run across it yourself. When you are in the Library module, make sure you are in Grid mode. At the top of the Grid you should see the Library Filter bar, if you don’t, just hit the key. Next, click on Metadata on the Library Filter bar. Right here you will see that the images are group by camera model. If the different cameras you are using are all separate models, then you are set, just select the Camera model to filter all of the images associated with that camera.

If you were using different cameras but they were the same camera model, fear not, we just have to go through one more small step. At the top right of any of the columns you see there is a small icon, click on that and add a new column, now click on the blank column title and select Camera Serial Number. Now you can filter by the individual camera.

Timing is Everything

Now that we know how to sort on the images, we now need to have a reference point so that we can adjust the time on what set of images to match the time on the rest of the images. Now if you haven’t done the shoot yet, the best thing to do is have everyone take a picture of something like their feet. Even if you are shooting alone, just take one shot with the first camera, then swap cameras and take a shot with the second camera, there is no need to try to do them at the same time.

If you are editing an existing shoot, you need to figure out the time difference. With multiple shooters there is almost always a shot from each camera at the beginning, if you didn’t pick up your second camera until the middle of the shoot, this can be a little more tricky. But play along and let’s see how to do it anyway.

Let’s say our sync shot was taken at 1pm, and the second camera is off by 20 minutes. All we have to do is filter by the second camera, go over to the Metadata block and select the edit icon next to Capture Time. At this point a dialog box will come up with several options for time adjustments.

The problem here isn’t that the functionality we want (to adjust by 20 minutes) isn’t here, the problem is the text for the option isn’t very clear. If you read the description at the top of the dialog box it actually tells you that it will adjust the time of the image that is displayed and all of the other images that are selected will be adjusted by the same amount of time. So if we are seeing the first image, and we set the time to 1pm, all of the rest of the images will be adjusted accordingly and all of the images from both cameras will now be in complete time sync.

Video Demo

In the following video, Kerry Garrison shows how to adjust the time of your images to all sync up together.

What exactly is this colorspace stuff anyway? Basically its the amount of color that is contained in the file when you save it. The three most common colorspaces are Adobe RGB, sRGB, and ProPhoto RGB.  As my friend Rick Miller puts it, you can relate gamut to containers of beer. With sRGB being a 12oz can of beer, Adobe RGB would be a pony keg, and ProPhoto RGB being a full kegger.

The image shown here (courtesy of Cpesacreta) shows the relative sizes of the different colorspaces.

The difficulty here is knowing when to use which colorspace. Who would take a 12 ouncer when they can have a whole keg right? You would think, but the problem is that not all devices can actually display the larger colorspace  which can cause even more problems when it comes to viewing the images, add to that the lack of color management in most applications (like web browsers) and you will often get dull or washed out colors when viewing the images.

Wait a second, huh? If you use a colorspace that allows MORE colors, than why would the images look WORSE when viewing them? The answer that since almost no devices can actually display Adobe RGB, you wind up with an intepretation of the image causing it to look dull.

Effects of Color Space

Does all of this really make a difference? Let’s take a look at some images that were shot in RAW (thus no colorspace recorded on capture) and then saved as both Adobe RGB and sRGB using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

Adobe RGB

sRGB

Adobe RGB

sRGB

Adobe RGB

sRGB

Adobe RGB

sRGB

In all of these cases, the images saved as sRGB should appear more vibrant in Internet Explorer and Firefox since they are not color managed applications. Apple’s Safari browser is supposed to properly display Adobe RGB files and Firefox is supposed to have color management in upcoming versions. However, until everyone is using a browser you should avoid Adobe RGB in order to provide the best images to the widest audience.

What about ProPhoto?

ProPhoto offers the widest gamut of the available common color spaces so should have a place somewhere right? Well yes it does. The best use of the ProPhoto is to use it within your workflow to preserve the largest amount of color in your images and then only do a final conversion to sRGB when saving your images as jpegs.  This is quite easy with Photoshop and Camera Raw while Lightroom uses ProPhoto RGB internally (Geek Note: Actually, Lightroom uses Melissa RGB which uses ProPhoto RGB chromatisity values working in linear gamma, named after Melissa Gaul, one of the Lightroom engineers).

Should you shoot in Adobe RGB or sRGB?

This is another tough question that different people will answer differently. The simple answer is niether. Shoot in RAW and convert to the colorspace you want during your workflow process. If you want to shoot in JPEG then you have to make the choice. The best thing to do is actually experiment with your equipment and software to determine what gives you the best results. Some people think you should shoot in Adobe RGB and then convert to sRGB if the file is for the internet, while others think you should shoot in sRGB so no conversion or translation is applied, thus you should get more accurate color representation.

In the end, you have to make up you own mind as to what works best for you, but you do need to be aware of the differences and some of the issues you can run into based on your choice.

Author: Kerry Garrison

References used in this article

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sRGB-AdobeRGB1998.htm
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/adobe-rgb.htm
http://www.steves-digicams.com/techcorner/October_2006.html
http://www.smugmug.com/help/srgb-versus-adobe-rgb-1998

My good friend Rick Miller, one of the Senior Solutions Engineers for Adobe has written up a document that will help you learn all of the shortcut keys and put you on the path to Lightroom Shortcut nirvana.

Special thanks to Rick for compiling this list and making it available to everyone!

Download Shortcut List PDF (click here)

• Camera Dojo
  We have free and paid sets of Lightroom Presets available Our most popular are our Camera Tools and Dojo Essentials.
• Adobe Exchange
  There are a growing number of presets available on the official Adobe Exchange website
• Lightroom Killer Tips
  About once a week Matt posts a new Lightroom preset for free. There are quite a few there now.
• Wonderland
  Over at Wonderland they have two really nice set of free Lightroom presets
• OnOne Software
  OneOne Software has 85 free Lightroom Presets designed by Jack Davis
• Presets Heaven
  Presets Heaven is trying to be the ultimate list of free Lightroom presets
• Inside Lightroom
  Inside Lightroom has a nice collection of free Lightroom presets organized into different categories
• Digital Freak
  The folks over at Digital Freak have a file with over 600 free Lightroom presets in it
• Gantico
  Very nice selection of free Lightroom presets that is added to on a regular basis
• Mathias Blix
  Mathias created some really creative Lightroom presets and now offers them up for free
• X-Equals
  Bandon Oelling has created some really nice presets that he has made available
• Laconic Stockpile
  Really nice sets of B&W and Vinage presets
• Gavin Seim
  Gavin sells several preset packs but has some free samplers that are really good as well.
• Lightroom Presetting Group
  This Flickr group has collected over 180 Free Lightroom Presets
• Life In Digital Film
  free film emulation presets

Have you ever imported some RAW files and when you first open the image in Lightroom the image is vibrant and looks great and then all of a sudden the image switches to something that is less sharp and the colors are all bland? If you have seen this phenomenon, what you are seeing initially is the embedded JPEG image being displayed first and then the on-screen image changes to the RAW sensor data image. The reason why there is a difference is that the JPEG images have had your camera settings applied to them before being saved. With Canon camera, this is usually Standard, Faithful, Landscape , Neutral, and Portrait. Other camera brands have similar types of basic settings. Many people complained that the JPEG image was often very nice and it took a lot of work to get your RAW images to look as good as the JPEG image.

To solve this, Lightroom needed to have a way to understand what the cameras where doing to the images. Initially, you could use the camera calibration controls to dial in some default settings, but this was really inaccurate and rather a pain to use. Shortly after Lightroom 2.0 came out, Adobe came out with the first beta versions of the camera profiles. These profiles were actually based on the characteristics of the different cameras and can be used to very quickly get your image looking better right from the beginning.

Sometimes the effect is more subtle

For some people who still shoot JPEG instead of RAW, one of the complaints about RAW is that it takes longer to process RAW images to get them look good. Lightroom 2.2 with camera profiles solves this problem quite nicely. You can easily create a camera profile preset (or download ours here) and use them as an import preset so that it is applied to every image as you are importing them. Applying the Standard profile during import will get the vast majority of your images looking almost identical to what you would get from saving the image as a JPEG.

Beta Profiles

If you have installed the beta profiles, you can go ahead and remove them using the following instructions specific to your operating system.

Go to the following folder (based on your operation system) and delete anything with the word “Beta” in it’s title. Then restart Lightroom and all should be good in the world again.

Mac: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles
(note: the Library folder for Macintosh HD, not your user account)

Windows 2000 / XP: C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataAdobeCameraRawCameraProfiles

Windows Vista: C:ProgramDataAdobeCameraRawCameraProfiles

Video Demo

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 Camera Calibration from Kerry Garrison on Vimeo.

Author: Kerry Garrison

The plugin we will use is Timothy Armes’ LR2/Mogrify which uses ImageMajick to do things such as:

• Graphic watermarking
• Multiple text annotations
• Multiple borders
• Image resizing
• Adjust saturation and brightness
• Export against an ICC profile file

How much does this amazing plug-in cost? Well, it is free if you want to be limited to only exporting 10 images at a time. If you need to do more, than Timothy will accept any donation that you think is fair.

Installation
First off, we need to download LR2/Mogrify from Timothy Armes site at:

http://timothyarmes.com/lr2mogrify.php

Follow the installation instructions there for either Windows or Mac OSX. I won’t cover the installation since it is only a few simple steps.

Usage
Using LR2/Mogrify is as simple as using Lightroom’s existing Export function as the functions are added into the export utility. The easiest way to get things started is to create a new file in Photoshop with an empty (transparent) background and your logo on other layers. If you don’t have Photoshop, anything that can create a PNG or GIF with a transparent background will work.

From the Library module in Lightroom, select an image or images (up to 10 with the free version) and click on the Export button.

In the Post-Process actions enable the features you want like borders, or Graphical Watermark. In our case we will select the Graphic Watermark, select the file that we want to use, select the bottom left hand corner of the image, and resize the image if needed.

After you configure all the settings you want, click on the Export button to start the process. In a few seconds you have created your first watermarked images.

Here are a few images showing some different watermark styles as well as a multi-line border setup.

Who would have thought that doing advanced watermarking would be this easy? Please consider donating to Timothy for his hard work on bringing us a tool that provides the functionality that should have been included in Lightroom.

Below is a video showing exactly how this works:

Advanced watermarking with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom from Kerry Garrison on Vimeo.

Correcting white balance with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 from Kerry Garrison on Vimeo.