Back from Focus

Hi Folks! I know I've been a bit quiet here, but that's because I was at Focus On Imaging for most of this week, along with preparing for it. I did 2 talks a day on the Phototraining4U.com stand. I know I've mentioned it before, but I'm their Lightroom Master, so I was there promoting this new aspect of the training. The other new Master there was Kenny Martin, showing off a new portrait promotion called 'Photo Noir', or 'Back 2 Black'. I was very impressed with his talks. (As a former MPA president, he's well able to present!).

For my early talk, I did a landscape develop tutorial, followed by a beauty retouch tutorial. In the late talk, I did a little on Split Toning for Sepia and Cross Processed looks, followed by showing off my plugins. The plugin talk was a little short the first day, so I got up early on Tuesday and made a power point presentation to give it more direction.

Thanks to all the people that came up to speak to me both with questions and, of course, those with compliments on the training that's up on Phototraining4U.com.

Finally I should mention that there's plans afoot for a UK tour with Mark Cleghorn from PT4U. We'll be doing a Photoshop and Lightroom tour in November, so keep your eyes peeled for more information on that.

ProPhoto Resource

Cris Mitchell has just announced a whole slew of articles from industry experts for this months Pro Photo Resource online magazine. I've an article on Lightroom Metadata Handling there this month. Go check it out.

Focus on Imaging

Hi folks,
I'll be at Focus on Imaging in Birmingham from 7th-10th of the month (yep next Sunday is the 7th). I get in during the afternoon of the 7th so I don't think I'll be speaking that afternoon. I will be on the remaining days on the Mark Cleghorn/Phototraining4U stand (F50) though. Times are not confirmed yet though. See you there.

The gloves are off?

The photo workflow part of the net seems to be abuzz with experts on the demise of Lightroom with the introduction of Aperture 3. Fellow Irish based photographer Marco Davi make his case for Aperture. And of course he's welcome to that opinion, and he does have some valid points. And one bizzare one.

First up he calls Lightroom's UI clunky. Personally I've stated for years that I find Aperture cluttered. And Aperture 3 certainly has done nothing to change that perception. His statement that he constantly has to click on scroll bars shows that maybe he's not the expert he thinks he is. There are certainly times when scrolling is necessary, but with simple modifiers like Control/Command clicking on a panel to collapse all, and Alt/Option to invoke solo mode, it's not an all the time thing. Personally I can find pretty much most tools under my fingertips. That's because I learned the single key shortcuts that cover the bulk of the getting around in Lightroom. G,E and D, being key to getting about (pardon the pun). Having collections in Develop with LR3Beta means that the library disconnect is gone. In truth, I don't work that way. I do my file management, get my selected images, and then develop those selects. Then back out as needed for export etc. Of course, if you have all the Adjustment options selected in Aperture, then you have to scroll too.

Next up Marco states that brushes work better. Well, yes and no. The mask options do allow the emulation of blending modes in Photoshop, along with mask inversion. These are an excellent addition this type of tool, and Lightroom should have them. Lightroom does allow you to build individual masks with a mix of settings. Mixing Flow and Density, you can easily build quite complex masks. These can be used with the Graduated Filter, which I don't see in Aperture as yet. No doubt it'll be on the must copy list also. With Lightroom brushes, even if you paint with a full setting, you can start a new brush in the same spot and double the amount. Another thing is that if you hover over a brush pin in Lightroom, you can click drag to change the overall setting for that mask, similar to using layer opacity (so if clarity was -100 and sharpening 50, dragging clarity to -50 would force sharpening to 25 for example). For me, there isn't a clear winner, but I'd like to see the improved mask options go into Lightroom.


Presets. No different than Lightroom, so I'm sure this is a reason to switch?

Loupe. If you're on a single monitor system, open the 2nd monitor window. Make it loupe sized, zoom in to 1:1, click Live Loupe. Viola. No charge.

Light Table. Can't deny this is nice, but you can emulate it a fair bit using Custom Package in Print. Again it's not the same, but while I really wanted this feature way back, I rarely need it. When I do need to see many images, I just use Survey Mode.

Full Screen? If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know my favourite shortcut: Shift Control/Command F.

Competition. I'm all for competition. It drives technology forward. But buying two products and into 2 upgrade paths? That's not competition, that's bad finances. Bizzare.

Lightroom 3 Beta has new demosaicing and improved noise reduction that make the image quality outstanding. And as a photographer, this is what truly matters. Everything else is a distraction.

And as a Web plugin developer? Web in Aperture sucks, unless you want to make your own full pages from scratch using tokens. There's no way to make something that can offer the level of customisability that you can get in a Lightroom Web plugin. My website plugins couldn't happen in Aperture.

There's still great stuff in AP3. Video import, video inside slideshows. Timeline is a great feature. But, there's very little customisability for the user, same as Web. Places is excellent, but to me faces is more consumer oriented and not really beneficial to my workflow. Maybe if I shot more events?

I'm not the only one commenting on this, Matt Kloskowski has a post over on Lightroom Killer Tips too.

Fixing a weak catchlight in Lightroom

Hi folks,
With all the plugin related stuff going on recently, there's been little time for a video. So here's a short one to help with catchlights.



Make sure you click through to see it at a larger size.

One day of discount

Hey folks,
just a quick reminder that the intro discount on LRB Exhibition will run until 23:59:59 Fri 12th MST. So a little over 24 hours still left on it.

Import video up on PT4U

My 20 minute video covering Import is now up on PhotoTraining4U.com. It covers the Import dialog and Auto Import among other things.

In Progress

There's been a few feature requests in the few days since LRB Exhibition was launched. I'm glad to say it's getting good reaction. Anyhow, here's the list of stuff that have been added/fixed/changed since release based on user feature requests.

1.1 changelog

Added Top Gap

Added Numbers checkbox

Added body image check box.

Fixed repeat

Changed less for fewer

Change UI colours

Added a Switch to the galleries to hide the menu and force all images into Gallery 1, acting as a single gallery rather than a website.

Added Number Height slider

Added Menu Gap slider

Menu gallery swap

Menu and Identity Plate transparency choices

Added Flickr code and made icon.

I'm sure there will be quite a few more feature requests before 1.1 goes out, feel free to add them to the comments at the end of the LRB Exhibition post.

LRB Exhibition

Written from the ground up with new internal code and ideas, LRB Exhibition is a new 'Website in a gallery' plugin for Lightroom's Web module. From the Portfolio family, it allows the user to create home, about, contact and general use pages, along with 6 galleries and 2 external links.

The main image area in the gallery is based around a single image preview in an enclosed space. Using jQuery, each slide can be navigated to either using the navigation arrows, or numbered links to the relevant slide. LRB Exhibition is far more mature that LRB Portfolio was at version 1.0, in fact it's almost par with LRB Portfolio 2.51, and probably equal to 2.4. It does however have features not available to LRB Portfolio, such as per page image and text placement and a floating text box.

Install.

Mac: Double click on LRB_Exhibition.lrwebengine to install.
PC: In Lightroom Preferences (Edit>Preferences), click Presets. Click 'Show Lightroom Presets Folder'. Open the folder. Look for a folder called 'Web Galleries'. If it's not there, create it and drop LRB_Exhibition.lrwebengine inside it. Restart Lightroom


Intro Video.

Here's a quick look at using the gallery. Click through for the full size verion.



There will be more forthcoming.

Basics

A basic look at how this gallery works:
Create a collection of images you want on the website. Decide how many galleries you will have and then sort them into order for each gallery. You might have 35 images for the first gallery, 20 for the next and maybe 26 for the 3rd of the 3 galleries you've decided you'd like.
Next go to Web and select LRB Exhibition from the list. Make sure All Fimstrips Photos is selected in the Filmstrip, or that you've selected all the Photos. Go to the Gallery section and enter those numbers in each gallery section. Give the galleries names for the menu. Now go add details to the Home, About and Contact pages. Same for the Blank page, which can be used for pricing, or services etc. These page have individual text box sizes and locations, along with a choice of locations for the image on the page.

Once you've customised the gallery to your taste, be sure to save your settings as a Template. While Lightroom will remember the settings for the collection, if something bad happens, you're better off with a Template to get those settings back.

A lot of the internal stuff works in a similar way to LRB Portfolio, so you can access that User Guide for more details. Like I say, there will be more video tutorials to add usage.

Features

• Home, About, Contact and Blank page
• 6 Galleries, 2 external links
• Google Analytics support
• SEO features built in
• Custom jQuery Gallery
• Multiparagraph, floating text boxes
• Clean layout
• 900X600 images
• W3C vaild (base code)

Sample Gallery
Click to view a sample gallery.


Buy
LRB Exhibition is €15 plus VAT.
For the first week of sales, you can get a 20% discount using the sales code LRBEX20. Remember to update the Cart after you enter the code, or it will not be applied. Please note the download allows for 9 updates, after which you require a new purchase.

The Future
Like any software, LRB Exhibition will take on a life of it's own in the wild. Feel free to ask questions or add suggestions in the comments.

LRB Exhibition almost ready

My new web Plugin LRB Exhibition is almost ready for launch. Written from the ground up with new internal code and ideas, this is my second website in a gallery plugin for Lightroom. From the Porfolio family, it allows the user to create home, about, contact and general use pages, along with 6 galleries and 2 external links.

An earlier prototype of the plugin was used to create SkyWaterLand.com. It's been much improved since then though. Once I get the all clear, I'll upload and launch the product. This will be the same price as LRB Portfolio (15 euro), but I will have a 20% Discount for the first week. The code for this will be announced in the launch post.

The main image area in the gallery is based around a single image preview in an enclosed space. Using jQuery, each slide can be navigated to either using the navigation arrows, or numbered links to the relevant slide. LRB Exhibition is far more mature that LRB Portfolio was at version 1.0, in fact it's almost par with LRB Portfolio 2.51, and probably equal to 2.4. It does however have features not available to LRB Portfolio, such as per page image and text placement and a floating text box.

Launch should be very soon. And no this is not vapourware!