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.

If you would like to see or hear more from Sara, be sure and check out her upcoming Aperture DVD that will be available for purchase from http://photographymentor.com.

Too see what Sara is up to, check out her websites at:

Sara’s Website

http://www.sarafrancephotography.com

Sara’s Blog

http://www.whereintheworldisfrance.com

Sara’s Store

http://shop.sarafrance.com

Go|Bee Bags
http://www.gobeebags.com

Show Hosts

Kerry Garrison (http://kerrygarrison.com)
David Esquire (http://esquirephotography.com)

You can listen to this podcast now using our player widget in the right hand sidebar

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

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Overview

Front View

I often see posts in different forums from people trying  to figure out how to provide remote power for on-location shooting. I have seen everything from picnic coolers full of electronics to generators with expensive inverters strapped on.  For the cost of building one of these picnic cooler power packs and your time to buy all the parts and assemble it, you are just as well off to spend the $349 for the Explorer XT and have a professionally built package that you know is going to work well.

Features

Carrying Bag

The Explorer XT is rated at 350 watts of  continuous power and 1200watts peak power. For studio strobes this can handle up to 2400ws. The Explorer XT is designed as a portable power source for most flash and power pack units to be used on location, away from available power.

The Explorer XT is equipped with two (2) 12V, 7Ah sealed lead acid batteries, with an auto volt-charging feature which accepts 100-240V. It also has a 14V car battery charging where an internal circuit converts the 12V/14V source to a 24V. It also has an auxiliary battery port, allowing the user to connect another battery in case you need extended battery life. Battery power level indicators with beeper and charging indicators allow you to monitor power consumption and charging status.

The Explorer XT comes with a handy carrying bag to make hauling it around easier. The bag opens on both ends to allow access to all of the ports without removing it from the bag.

Specifications:

• Power Output: 350 watts (continuous)/ 1200watts (peak)
• Number of output sockets: 2
• Battery: Two (2) 12Vdc, 7AH SLA provision for external battery pack
• Charging Voltage Input: 100V-240V / 14Vdc (car battery charger)
• Charger: Built-in
• Weight: 8.5 kg (18 lbs)
• Dimensions: 14.5″ x 5.5″ x 7″
• Available Models: 115V/60Hz (North American, Japan) 230V/50 Hz (EU, Asia-Pacific, Middle East
  230V/60Hz (Philippines)

Setup

Rear View

What setup? You take it out of the shipping container and its ready to go.  The only thing you need to do is keep it charged up. According to the instructions, you should keep in plugged in even when not in use, this will keep the lead acid batteries in optimum condition as well as always being ready for use.  This was a concern of mine since a fan is running and even though the instructions say it will use a trickle charge, I wanted to know how much power draw it was really taking. Using a Kill-A-Watt to measure to power draw I found that while the system is charging (charge light is blinking) was 80 watts, wow, that would be pricey to have plugged in all the time. However, as soon as the system hit a full charge (charging light went solid) then the power draw dropped to only 6 watts, now that’s more like it as I have numerous electronics around the house that use more than 6 watts when in standby mode so keeping the Explorer XT plugged in all the time.

Usage

The Explorer XT is designed to be dead-simple to use. Just turn it on and plug in your devices and use them like normal.  The Explorer XT has two outlets on the front that output clean power from the Explorer XT’s internal pure sine wave inverter.  Having a top-notch pure sine wave inverter is important as it helps protect the devices that you have plugged into it. Besides just being a portable battery solution, it can also be used in between your equipment and a low-cost gas generator. At first that may not make sense, why would you need the Explorer XT if you have a generator? The issue is that low-end generators can’t handle the peak demands that studio strobe lights require and they don’t have pure sne wave inverters. By using both a generator and the Explorer XT the Explorer XT will handle the load of the strobes while the generator will work to keep the batteries charged up.

Results

The only way to really test out the Explorer XT was to hook up some strobed and start shooting. While the unit is rated for up to 2400ws, I don’t have anything near that power, nor do I need it in my home studio. I hooked up two PhotoBasics Strobelites (150ws each) and one PhotoBasics StrobeLite Plus (200ws) for a total of 500ws and started shooting away with all three lights on full power.  The Explorer XT has three charge level indicator lights, High, Mid, Low, at 225 shots the light flickered betweed Hi and Mid and finally went solid on Mid at 250 shots. The only difference from being plugged into the wall socket is that the recycle time dropped from four seconds to five seconds, and if I was shooting as fast as they could recycle would creep up to about six seconds. A short pause in the shooting and the recycle rate would speed up again. At 250 shots and only having drained about 1/3 of the battery charge I finally ended the test since I don’t like putting unneeded wear and tear on my lights or camera but it did show me that I can easily do most any typical shoot that I do and still have plenty of power left to also run other accessories like a blower or laptop.

I am very impressed by the performance considering the small size and relativly light weight of the unit.

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

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.

Continue reading the article to view the video.

Lightroom 2.0 Library Module from Kerry Garrison on Vimeo.

Continue reading the article in order to view this video.

If you are using the new adjustment tool in Lightroom 2.0, this is going to save you lots of time in getting your adjustments painted in properly. If you hit O (oh, not zero), while you are in the adjustment tool you can turn on the overlay and paint with it still turned on. Hit O again to turn it off. You can also use Shift-O to toggle the overlay colors. A second tip is to use the Alt key to “un-paint” an area. This video shows how these shortcuts work.

Before using this technique you will need to install the camera profiles that are available here:
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles

Lightroom 2.0 Overview from Kerry Garrison on Vimeo.

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

Creating vignettes with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom from Kerry Garrison on Vimeo.

Continue reading to view the video:

Author: Kerry Garrison

Lightroom Digital Workflow from Kerry Garrison on Vimeo.

Continue reading to view the video:

Continue reading to view the video:

We started by taking a picture of my wife’s scrapbooking room as there is a lot of subtle colors and light and dark spots, at a high ISO setting, this is sure to create a lot of noise in the image. While high ISO settings can help take pictures in low light conditions, you do add more noise (distracting artifacts) into the image. While sometimes the noise is ok, other times it can render the photograph unusable.

For this example, we used a Canon EOS 20D on 3200 ISO and used a tripod to get a good shot. Click on the image to zoom in and see the noise that is in the image. This is most noticable on the plastic paper holders and in the gradient ares between the bookshelf and the basket. While there are good programs that will help remove noise, getting good noise reduction from Lightroom would save use a lot of extra time during the workflow process.

In the second example, we kicked up the noise reduction in Lightroom 1.2 to see how well it would work. Its almost impossible to see it in the thumbnail but when you zoom in, you can clearly see that the amount of noise is dramatically reduced. This is certainly a top-notch noise reduction system now.

If you aren’t using Lightroom as part of your workflow, you should check it out, its an awesome product that reduces the amount of time you need to spend in Photoshop as Lightroom is much faster for most of your processing needs.