O'Reilly Digital Media

I’m sure you’ve heard the news that Microsoft must pay $1.5B as the result of a lawsuit brought by Alcatel-Lucent. You can read about it, but it sure is a good lesson. You better do your homework before licensing patents.

I encourage everyone to look into the use of Vorbis Ogg format. First, it sounds very good. And it’s patent free! From the xiph website:

Ogg Vorbis is a fully open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free, general-purpose compressed audio format for mid to high quality (8kHz-48.0kHz, 16+ bit, polyphonic) audio and music at fixed and variable bitrates from 16 to 128 kbps/channel. This places Vorbis in the same competitive class as audio representations such as MPEG-4 (AAC), and similar to, but higher performance than MPEG-1/2 audio layer 3, MPEG-4 audio (TwinVQ), WMA and PAC.

Why don’ t podcasters use this format? It’s free, and it’s easy for users to obtain the decoder if they don’t already have it. In fact, why doesn’t everyone use this format? (Heck, even my company’s demos are in MP3… must change that.)

I love it when the real world meets the book-writing world, as it did last week when I was finishing up the slideshow chapter for my O’Reilly Lightroom Adventure book

Derrick Story was down from Sebastopol and we were in my studio office organizing a new Adventure slide show for an on-line presentation. We were using Lightoom’s Slideshow module, of course. With the module it’s really easy to create a simple, yet elegant, slideshow complete with transitions and sound.

Aperture gives photographers a chance to make quick, easy and attractive web sites full of photos. But for some photographers, the standard choices that ship with Aperture are not enough.

You can build your own templates or customize the ones that ship with Aperture if you know HTML and/or CSS. (NOTE: If you want to learn HTML or CSS, O’Reilly offers several top-notch books on this subject.)

Here’s a very basic primer on how to make your own Aperture web templates.

As I’ve written about before, in the last few months I’ve been using lots of different tools to work with my digital photographs. For example, I’ve been maintaining my main image library in Aperture, but using Lightroom to create large prints with. With the recent release of the Photoshop CS3 beta and the full release of Lightroom 1.0, I’ve been working with multiple applications even more. And the more I work with all of these applications together, the more that I wish that the incredibly important metadata about these photographs was fully interoperable across the set of applications I use.

Adobe’s applications, most notably Lightroom, Bridge, and Photoshop, are fully interoperable with RAW file metadata. When you rank and keyword images in Lightroom, that information is reflected in Bridge. This is accomplished not through some secret API sauce on Adobe’s part, but instead through XMP metadata. This metadata is either embedded into the image files, or in the case of camera RAW files such as NEFs and CR2s, as side car XMP files.

It takes a lot of time to add metadata to your photographs. This is important stuff that you don’t want to have to perform time and time again. It’s information that should be able to travel with your image data when you hand it off to somebody else. It’s data that needs to be preserved for the future. And, it shouldn’t be locked up in any one application’s silo. It’s just data.

So, given all of that, my number 2 feature request for the next version of Aperture—right behind performance improvements—is full support for XMP in externally referenced files. When a keyword is added to an image in Aperture, it should be written to an XMP sidecar file so that if you open your images in Lightroom or Bridge, all of your metadata is right there. I don’t expect, of course, for Aperture to support Adobe Camera Raw settings. That would be asking for Aperture to emulate exactly how Adobe Camera Raw works. But, for keywords and IPTC metadata, it would be a much appreciated feature addition.

It’s a big decision when you decide on an application and platform to manage your pictures. In a few years time, your picture library might reach thousands upon thousands of images, and if the pictures are all tagged with keywords and collections, you will have invested a substantial amount of time in your photo library.

There’s also the possibility that the application you use to manage your pictures might be discontinued, or maybe you just want to make a change, but discover a problem if the new program is not based on open standards. To organize your collection from scratch is hardly an option and if the application is not based on XMP/IPTC standards, nor has some advanced export functions, you are in a difficult situation. Most advanced DAM applications write information about the picture (Keywords, rating, collections) into XMP, and if using DNG, into the file itself. This is helpful for enabling different applications to work together in a workflow or switch from one DAM application to another.

Selecting a DAM application that isn’t dependant on one platform is important in my opinion. I have used applications like IMatch and IDimager (both very powerful DAM applications) in the past and both are Windows only applications. Aperture is only for Mac. Lightroom and IView are for both platforms.

Until recently I haven’t thought much about this multi platform compatibility because I have been Windows user for the last 15 years, and the Mac platform hasn’t really been something I’ve been interested in, and therefore almost never thought about. I work as a software engineer, and the platform I develop for is Windows, so Mac has never been an option for me. When Apple converted to Intel processors things changed because now people can use both Windows and Mac on the same machine. This is a masterstroke by Apple. I have been reading a lot about Mac OS, and trying out the machines. I’m totally hooked on Mac and the Mac community now. I have decided to stop using Windows outside work and get on the Mac bandwagon. Vista doesn’t interest me at all. Mac OS X is superior in my opinion, and I also really like the design of the Apple machines. I haven’t been this excited about computers for 10-15 years - I almost feel liberated :-)

Soon I will move my image gallery over to the Mac, and thankfully all my pictures are in Lightroom and IView, which are both available for Apple. So it shouldn’t be that much of a problem. It wouldn’t be as easy moving the other direction for people using Mac and Aperture - but that’s probably not much of an issue…

This morning I woke up to make an 8 a.m. bus ride to a couple of Dominica’s waterfalls. First on the list was a nature hike along a river and up a mountain to the Sari Sari Falls. The waterfall is about 75 feet tall (I would guess by looking at it) and it empties into a pretty nice pool where you can swim and enjoy the views.

I’m not sure how I managed to do it, but I made it through the entire day without dumping my camera in the river. My boots didn’t fair so well, and they are currently drying on the porch.

For the trip, I packed light, carrying my Canon 20D, 10-22mm, and 70-200 IS. I packed all the gear and a water bottle into a day pack, and usually had the SLR strung around my shoulder and neck while hiking. The next time I go, I will probably pack/bring my tripod. I have one of the older steel Gitzo tripods and while it is pretty much an indestructible beast of a tripod, it is pretty heavy, so I left it home this time.

We spent the day climbing up muddy rocks and wading through rivers. Man, I really love my job! In the end I shot a couple hundred frames, and got to swim under two waterfalls.

I rarely have to rotate images anymore. Usually, my camera is smart enough to detect its orientation and automatically rotates my images for me. When Nikon and Canon started implementing this technology into their DSLRs I jumped for joy. What a timesaver! However, there are times when the auto-rotate function doesn’t quite work. For instance, today I thought it would be cool to get some low angle shots while standing in the river. Instead of submerging my battery pack and frying my camera, I decided to turn the camera upside-own to get as close to the water as possible.

When I got back to my apartment, I began importing cards and cleaning my gear. As I started sorting through my images in Lightroom, I began to notice a few details about the user interface. Let me preface this by saying that most of the problems with the interface are just things I need to learn, but as I have been saying all along, I think that intuitiveness is an important component of an intelligently designed and useful user interface.

For example, to rotate those upside-own images all at once I have to be in Lightroom’s Library module and in Grid view. If you are in any other module, or looking in another view mode in the Library module, you can only rotate images one at a time. On top of this, the rotate arrows that are present in the Grid view thumbnails aren’t present in the film strip or anywhere else. So, you have to use either the keyboard shortcut, or a menu option to rotate anything at all outside the Grid view. In Aperture there is always a rotate left or right button on the bottom bar, and it can be used to rotate a single image or a set of images, regardless of where you are in the program. I suppose it might sound like I’m really nitpicking here, but I have to say, it just reinforces my main problem with Lightroom: the modules.

I really don’t like having to think about where I am in a program in order to do something as simple as rotating a set of images. I will save most of my opinions about the modules for my upcoming summary article, but in a nutshell, I really think the whole concept of a step by step workflow is a tired and linear way of thinking. Am I alone here?

To see a small set of images from today’s trip, check out the link here.

MTV recently turned 25. The cultural behemoth has morphed many times since its initial coming out, when it woke up a whole generation to the power of music videos, and played a key role in music discovery and promotion. To this day, there is no underestimating the power of MTV’s brand; it’s one of the most widely recognized around the globe. However its value and import in the US music market in 2007 remains less than clear. The original MTV audience has become the VH-1 crowd as it has aged. What is clear is the importance of digital media and distribution to MTV’s future; indeed the hot topic this year pivots around distribution of digital video on the Net as well as on portable, mobile devices.

So what is the new MTV (if there is one entity)? Arguably you could say it’s You Tube — with the added twist of allowing the consumers not only to become content creators but also to be their own programmers (of a vast catalog of content, branded and user-generated). Or perhaps Joost (formerly known as The Venice Project). But regardless of who it is, the cat’s out of the bag in terms of empowering artists and consumers themselves to create, distribute, and program their desired content. This of course is enabled by digital media technologies, sites like You Tube & others, and the fact that this generation (known as “The Millennials”) are demanding the ability to do all of those things now.

What’s next for MTV itself as a result? In a word. Darwinism — it must adapt to the needs and demands of this new generation, harness its incredible archival vault & find a way to monetize it, morph in a new direction that the power of their brand allows it to do, or die trying (somehow I don’t think the latter will happen). Stay tuned as the MTV (de)-evolution continues.

While reading one of the comments on Micah’s Aperture vs. Lightroom post last week on the Inside Aperture website I came across a sweet trick to Auto Synch the develop module adjustments in Lightroom. I had never heard about this trick before and I was blown away that I learned it on the Aperture website. Looks like we are all learning a lot from this Lightroom vs. Aperture comparison.

First, in Lightroom’s Develop module the normal way to copy develop settings is to adjust one image and then select the other(s) you want to develop and hit the Synch button in the lower right panel. Very simple and straight forward.

But here is the Auto Synch feature - if you select the images you want to work on as a group then you can hold down the Command (Mac) or Control (PC) key as you click the Synch button and it turns to Auto Synch as in the image below.

Now whenever you make a change to any of the images in your group it changes the settings for all for the selected images in the group automatically. I couldn’t even find this trick in the Lightroom instruction manual so I thought this might be pretty interesting for those of you that shoot lots of similars and want to speed up your workflow.

In comparison, Aperture uses the lift and stamp tools to synch image settings. The lift and stamp tools have a lot more versatility than the Synch button in Lightroom because you can pick and choose what settings you wish to apply to other images. While that is all fine and dandy it is a slower process - that is the price of versatility. Alternatively, you can use Shift-CMD-C to copy your settings and Shift-CMD-V to past them into another image. And you can also lift from one image and select a group of images to stamp those settings to which speeds up the process. I have to say that both methods in Aperture seem overly complex to me for what should be a really simple process and is in Lightroom.

I’m not trying to knock Aperture here - just telling it like it is. At the moment, I am in the process of writing up a full article to wrap up my Lightroom vs. Aperture comparison and today I spent two hours trying to figure out some fairly simple stuff in Aperture. I’ll have a lot more to say in the upcoming article. I’m trying to not form my opinion of Aperture too quickly but the more time I spend reading the user manual trying to figure out things that should be fairly obvious the less excited I get about using the application. Just my opinion….

Adios, Michael Clark

It was reported some time ago that many Aperture users were seeing strange lines on their images after exporting to JPG. While it seemed that this problem was solved in v1.5.1 it seems that some people (including myself) are still having the problem from time to time.

The fix seems to be to download the Apple Digital Camera RAW Support Update 1.0.1 (Universal) which can be found HERE.

I downloaded the update, installed it and then did a test batch export and I did not see any nasty lines in my images. If you are having this issue, downloading the update seems like the thing to do.

Until next time,

Keep shooting.

Allen Rockwell
Allen Rockwell Photography

Well, it has been a really nice weekend here in Dominica. Yesterday I spent some time volunteering at the Portsmouth library where I did my best to tutor some kids in math. Math was never my strongest subject, but I guess after taking so many classes, multiple times, the basics eventually sank in. We practiced multiplying decimals, and when I got home I used my renewed skills to calculate what my 17-35mm lens would equate to on the new Canon EOS 1D Mark III.

I have also been working with Lightroom and Aperture quite a bit this weekend. I am still trying to figure out some key concepts in Lightroom, and I have even learned a few new tricks in Aperture.

Today I spent some time playing with the Export functions of both programs. I know this might seem like a pretty lame topic, but there are some differences that I thought stood out to me. A couple are items that are just plain missing (or at least I have yet to find them) and I also have a few gripes here and there about intuitiveness, a topic I keep coming back to.

First and foremost, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to export a Master in Lightroom. Am I missing something here? All I want to do is select a bunch of images and send their Master files to a folder on my desktop. Now, I know I can easily click Show in Finder, but that only works for one file at a time. I also know that I can use the Folder menu in the left hand side panel to move images around, but then we are taking about the original copies, which I want to keep in place.

I looked in the Export dialog box and the best I could come up with was to export in the DNG format. I even searched through the help file and came up empty handed. So, please, if any of you Lightroom aficionados out there know how to do this, please let me know. It seems like it should be a pretty obvious thing, but I can’t find it.

One smaller detail I noticed is that Lightroom is shipped with three Export presets. Now, I know I am going to have a pretty easy time creating all of the custom presets I can think of in Lightroom, but it would have been nice to have a few of the basics set up for me right out of the box.
In Aperture I really like the fact that I can set Black Point Compensation, and add a Gamma Adjustment on export. These two features are especially useful when dealing with clients, as you really never know what a clients workstation will consist of. I also noticed these options were missing in the Print module, where they might be even more important. It’s true, a good color management system should be able to make these settings obsolete, but in the real world, (regardless of how many times you calibrate your setup) sometimes a print just needs a little more contrast than what we are seeing on screen.

On the topic of user intuition, I really like the way Aperture presents its Size To settings in the Export Presets dialog box. It’s one of those things that just makes perfect sense to me. In Aperture you simply select Original Size, one of three Fit Within options, or Percent of Original. With the Fit Within setting you essentially pick the size of the box you want your image to fit within, and Aperture takes care of the rest.

Of course you can do a Fit Within with Lightroom as well, it just doesn’t really say so. In Lightoom you click Constrain Maximum Size and then you just fill in the width and height. All they need to do here is reword the dialog and I would be happy. Once I realized what they were trying to say, I was all set, but it would have been nice if it was more clear. I mean, I’m talking about real world user friendliness, and this stuff may seem obvious to everyone else, but the less I have to think about a setting, the less I have to worry if I pushed the wrong button or not. In the end, all these little details add up.

I do like Lightroom’s implementation of the After Export function. I can see how this could come in handy but I have yet to really try it. From what I can tell, I can essentially invoke a script such as an Automator Workflow, or ActionScript with this functionality. But, this brings me to another point. Where are the Automator Actions? Well, I am sure Adobe will ship a few actions in the near future, but I haven’t heard of any available at the moment.

So, tonight, I hope I am not complaining too much about the minor details. The truth is, it is these little minutia that can make or break a piece of software for me. As they say, the devil is in the details!

Tomorrow morning I am waking up bright and early for a day long trip out to the Atlantic side of the island, where I will be hiking up to the Sari Sari falls. Once I get back I will hopefully have enough time to work up some of the shoot into a gallery you all can look at, before beginning to write up my synopsis of this series. Over all, I have had a great time exploring both of these really amazing programs, and I feel like I have only scratched the surface. So, I wanted to give a big thanks to all of you who have followed along and left your comments. We aren’t finished yet!

According to the Associated Press, BitTorrent Inc will start selling TV shows and renting movies tomorrow. The BitTorrent Entertainment Network will include films from Warner Bros, Paramount, Fox, MGM and Lionsgate. TV shows will include 24 and Punk’d. For $1.99 you can “own” a copy of a TV show. For $3.99 you can “rent” a film. Right now, there’s not much to see over at BitTorrent except the following screen. More as it develops.

I’ve been shooting with the Canon EOS 20D and 30D for quite a while now and I do a lot of sports shooting. While I think these camera bodies are great performers for the money I do have a few features on my wish list… especially for sports shooting. I’ve been wishing for a few more megapixes and more shots per second.

…Well, it looks like Canon have read my mind and are going to release a camera that blows the doors of everything else on the market (IMHO).

The Canon EOS 1D Mark III is a 10.1 MegaPixel camera that shoots at an amazing 10 frames per second with burst up to 110 shots in jpeg mode and 30 shots in RAW mode. Dual DIGIC III Image Processors will offer fine detail, natural color reproduction and high-speed performance. The Mark III features a 3″ LCD screen (WOW!) and a new “Live View” mode where the photographer can compose and shoot directly from the LCD monitor. Live View can also be used remotely, via a computer through the 1D Mark III’s USB connection, or wirelessly or via Ethernet with the optional Wireless File Transmitter WFT-E2A attached.

Start saving your money now, this camera should hit the streets in April of this year and be somewhere just under $4000

For more information Click Here

Until next time,

Keep shooting.

Allen Rockwell
Allen Rockwell Photography

I am officially overwhelmed by the comments I have been receiving. The discussions on the last two posts have been great, and some really great points have been brought up. I hope to answer some of your questions when I have the time, and I have already gotten a number of ideas for future posts based on your feedback.

I was glad to see a that many of you caught on to my approach for evaluating the RAW processing abilities of both products. My methods are by no means scientific, and not meant to draw any real conclusions. I’m really just trying to point out how a software package, and all of its variables can influence the outcome of my work. These things are pretty subjective and always evolving as I learn the software and gain experience using it in the field.

Today I would like to talk about the Web Gallery features of Lightroom and Aperture. I realize I am sort of skipping over two modules in Lightroom, but the Web Gallery feature is something I use quite often in my work, and so it is one apsect I am very interested in exploring.

When I first began using Lightroom I was very excited about its Web module. Mostly, I think I was drawn in by the fact that the Web module in LR offered a number of Flash gallery templates. A few of them were pretty nice looking to boot. But after playing with the Web module in LR for a few hours, I realized something that I’m not sure I can get over. I can’t save a gallery. Ok, let me be clear. I CAN export my gallery, and I can even upload it to an FTP site directly from within LR (nice) but the most I can do to save the work I have done is create a preset. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I can’t find any way to save the gallery after spending the time organizing and ordering the shoot.

In Aperture, every Web Gallery is an item that resides inside an Aperture Project. I can have as many web galleries as I want and they can draw on images from any number of Projects. To me this is a really great idea. Not only can I, at any time, go back and work on an old gallery, I can also export that gallery as part of the Aperture Project so that it will migrate to a second computer, or even to a client who uses Aperture.

Now that I have worked my way through many of the modules in LR I have noticed something inherent about Aperture that I really miss. In LR, I must make adjustments to my images in the Develop module–no exceptions. I think a couple of comments touched on this in the last post, but now I am starting to see some of the drawbacks first hand. One thing I really like about Aperture is the ability to make adjustments to images from pretty much anywhere in the program, including while editing a Web Gallery. With Aperture, all I have to do is hit the H key and I can make adjustments to images right there in the contact sheet of a web gallery. This is very useful for making sure all of my images look balanced when displayed together on the galleries index view. I also really like how I can drag and drop images around the web galleries contact sheet to reorder the shoot. I know I can change the order in LR, but it has to be done by moving the images in the filmstrip along the bottom–a minor detail, but something I noticed.

To be fair, I wish that Aperture had a few more themes to choose from for Web Galleries. Flash output would be pretty nice too, but I do appreciate the simple black template. This theme, with the right metadata, makes a quick and dirty web gallery that I am perfectly happy sending to a client for review.

Yesterday I was supposed to shoot some food shots for a local restaurant, but they weren’t available, so hopefully I will be heading over there to work on it today. So, I ended up taking a walk through Portsmouth again and getting some nice evening light photos of the boats and fisherman, as well as a couple of locals. I produced this gallery in a matter of minutes with Aperture and you can see it online here.

Thanks again for all your great (and lengthy) comments on the last post. I am eager to hear your thoughts on the Web Gallery stuff. What works for you? Which is more appealing? Are Flash based galleries mandatory in your workflow? I want to know!

I have long admired the Loupe tool in Aperture. The first time I ever saw Aperture demonstrated the first thing that caught my eye was the Loupe tool and I was practically drooling when I saw it. As you can see in the image below, it magnifies whatever part of an image you mouse over. And now in the latest version of Aperture (1.5.2) you can use it in “Centered Loupe” mode. This allows one to place the loupe off to the side out of the way and anything you mouse over shows up in the loupe. It’s super cool and you can even use it with the images aligned in a grid pattern (browser mode) to loupe thumbnail images.

When I first starting using it I was disappointed to see that it would slow down after about 5 or 6 images (while louping thumbnails) and I’d have to wait for the image to load into the loupe at 100%. That was a drag.

Before Lightroom the biggest slow down in my workflow was checking images at a 100% for critical sharpness. Now, before you start critiquing my camera holding skills remember I shoot adventure sports - and a lot of the time I am hanging off a 2,000-foot cliff or shooting mountain bikers whizzing by at 40 mph. So it isn’t a guarantee that every image will be critically sharp - most are, but I like to cull out those that aren’t so they never make it to my clients.

With Lightroom the loupe isn’t really a loupe like it is in Aperture. Loupe view in Lightroom zooms the image to 100% just by clicking on the image. And you can move around the image easily by grabbing it and pulling whichever way you want to go. When I first starting using Lightroom I was wishing for a Loupe tool like Aperture, but since I’ve found Lightroom’s Loupe view to be much more useful than the loupe in Aperture.

I found that a key step to using the loupe view in Lightroom was to make sure you render the 1:1 previews - this speeds up the loupe function. Now to check critical sharpness I can just start with the first image in a shoot, go to the 1:1 loupe view and use the arrow keys to cruise through the images. On my G5 tower with 4 GB of RAM I can crank through hundreds of images and check their sharpness in a matter of minutes. Every once in a while Lightroom pauses to take a breath but I am very impressed with how fast it can load the 1:1 previews. And I like the fact that Lightroom shows me a lot more of the image because I can maximize the browser space by clicking off some or all of the panels as I scroll through the images as in the image below.

In reality the Loupe view in Lightroom is more equivalent to the Zoom view in Aperture with one small difference - in Lightroom when you grab the image to maneuver around it works very well - in Aperture it seems to jump all over the place and in my experience it is very hard to center it exactly where you want. Aperture has a little navigator window you can use in zoom view as well but that is even more difficult to use.

So while I still think the Loupe in Aperture is one of the coolest tools in any RAW processing or image editing software applications, for my workflow the Lightroom loupe view works extremely well.

That’s it for now. Feel free to comment and I’ll reply if I get a chance….

Adios, Michael

Welcome to this week’s edition of Friday Napster Freebies. These un-DRMed MP3 files are free for a limited time and can be downloaded from just about any country. Enjoy!

“Within a Mile of Home” by Flogging Molly
This genre-defying septet got its start playing countless gigs at the L.A. bar Molly Malone’s. They’ve been compared to raucous Irish rockers The Pogues and Black 47. Hear them for yourself with this live track, taken from the documentary Whiskey on a Sunday.

“The Strikes” by Nakatomi Plaza
Based in Brooklyn, NY, this punk-rock trio has embraced the DIY ethic for the past eight years, touring and promoting themselves relentlessly. Today’s free download is from their Frog Octopus Wolf EP, a precursor to their upcoming third album, Unsettled.

“The Upper Ten/The Lower Five” by Ghost Stories
After years of playing in different groups, musician Ron Lewis was ready for his own project. The resulting album, Quixoticism, was nearly seven years in the making. Its songs, including today’s free download, were recorded in an empty house on just eight tracks.

“Sultanas de Merkaillo” by Ojos de Brujo
Barcelona’s internationally renowned flamenco collective has expanded their audience by fusing different styles of music, including hip-hop, rock, and reggae/dub. These influences can be heard on their new album, Techari, which includes today’s free download.

“Somewhere Girls” by Secretary Bird
Some may know singer-songwriter Mike Semple from his work with Friends of Dean Martinez and the score to Fast Food Nation. His current band, Secretary Bird, is likely to win him even more fans with this title track to their new album.

“Sweet Weepin’ Jesus” by Kemp Harris
In the tradition of stark, thematically driven albums such as Sam Cooke’s Night Beat, singer-songwriter Kemp Harris’ sophomore release, Edenton, is a journey back to the raw-boned gospel, R&B, and blues of his youth.

“Weapon X” by X-Clan
The legendary hip-hop group is back with a new album after years away from the scene following the death of one of their own. Return From Mecca continues the Clan’s stream-of-conciousness style and puts commercial hip-hop stereotyping on notice.

The many ways to organize photos in Lightroom include not only folders and keywords, which I covered in Part 1 of this post. Take things a step further and try out collections, Quick Collections, and stacks. Here’s a quick guide to what these features are and when to use them:

Collections–A collection is a virtual group that can include any imported photo, regardless of where it’s located or what keywords you’ve assigned it. Collections come in handy for organizing photos by project. Think use, rather than subject matter, when you’re creating a collection. For example, you might want to collect an assortment of unrelated photos to include in a Web Photo Gallery, a contact sheet, or a slideshow you’re creating in another Lightroom module. A library can hold multiple collections, and the same photo can belong to more than one collection.

Quick Collection–A Quick Collection is a one-off, temporary collection. You can have only one Quick Collection at a time. Use it to group items for immediate, short-term use. If you want to preserve a Quick Collection, choose File > Save Quick Collection to save it as a regular collection.

Stacks–A stack is a virtual pile of photos. When photos are piled into a stack, you see only the one at the top. This saves viewing space, and helps keep track of similar shots. Stacks are useful for grouping multiple exposures of the same subject, and for grouping original photos with their virtual edited copies.

Armed with Parts 1 and 2 of this quick guide to Lightroom’s organizing features, you’re ready to go out and get serious about organizing your photos. Let us know how it goes by adding your comment below.

I am a life long Nikon photographer and I believe in using Nikon products whenever possible. I don’t really feel like I’m cheating on Nikon by using Adobe products like Photoshop CS and Photoshop Lightroom though, because Nikon does not have an equivalent product available.

Some photographers may argue that Capture NX is a competing product, but I consider it to be a complimentary product, one that on occasion allows Nikon users to squeeze that important little bit extra, out of their NEF (RAW) image files.

Nikon Capture NX is a very good RAW image file converter (for Nikon NEF (RAW) images only) and has a few image editing capabilities that can not be found in either Photoshop Lightroom or Photoshop CS. The most outstanding feature of Capture NX is what Nikon refers to as their U Point technology which uses Control Points to selectively adjust the size, brightness, contrast, saturation and hue of a particular color or area of an image.

There are basically two ways to use the combined power of Lightroom and Capture NX.

1. Process the NEF image file in Capture NX first, convert the edited file to TIFF and then import into Lightroom.

2. Open the unprocessed NEF image file in Lightroom first and edit in the Lightroom Edit Module, when you come across a situation that is better handled in Capture NX, access the Edit in Capture command in the Photo Menu (you have to select Capture NX as an alternate external Editor first) and edit in Capture NX.

Last week I photographed a large outdoor Buddha statue but unfortunately the sun was so bright and high, that half of the face of the Buddha was in a deep shadow. Never mind I figured it would make a good story for this website.

I opened the unedited NEF file in Lightroom 1.0 but I was not satisfied with the adjustments I could make in the Lightroom Develop Module, so I decided to apply the Edit in Capture command, which made a TIFF copy of the original RAW file and sent the TIFF image to Capture NX (1.1) for editing. After the editing process I Saved (not Save As) the image, which was then automatically picked up by Lightroom and placed in a Stack with the original RAW image file.

TIFF and JPEG files can be adjusted using U Point - Control Points in Nikon Capture NX but the image will in a sense be flattened (to borrow an Adobe Photoshop CS term) when it is saved and can not be re-edited without introducing new Control Points. Nikon NEF (RAW) files can be saved with the previous U Point settings available, the next time you open the file.

The process in Capture NX was fairly straight forward

1. Created a Control Point in the shadow area of the Buddhas face

2. Increased the brightness in that Control Point area

3. Duplicated that Control Point a number of times

4. Placed the Control Points in the areas that you consider to be too dark

5. Adjusted the individual control points for a natural look

By making a number of small Control Point areas I was able to adjust the shadow area without affecting the adjacent highlights.

I made a bonehead mistake yesterday by shooting a series of landscape shots with the white balance set on “custom” from the night before. Fortunately, I shoot in Raw, so I was able to correct the blunder quickly in Aperture.

I begin my path to redemption by selecting the “Daylight” white balance preset that I created in the Adjustments HUD, then applying it to the first image in the series. With the photo still selected, I used Shift-CMD-C to copy my adjustment. Then I selected the other images in the series and used Shift-CMD-V to add the Daylight white balance setting to them.

Within just minutes, I’ve corrected an otherwise disasterous mistake that would have ruined my day back in the “Jpeg/destructive editing” dark years.

Do you ever wish that you could just quickly look through Library’s Grid view for photos of a particular subject at a particular angle… or even just photos of a particular subject? Then you wouldn’t have to go through dozens or hundreds of pictures when you were just looking for a particular type of thing.

Of course, the most common way to take care of that problem is to just drag all the similar pictures into a sequence by “light-tabling” them. To do that, first make sure that you’re in User Order sorting. Then you just click the center of the picture to select it, then drag it next to another similar picture in the grid. The original thumbnail will appear in the new location. To speed things along, you can Cmd/Ctrl + Select any other related pictures you see in that one view of the Grid and drag them next to another of the similar pictures. After repeating that process a few time, you have groups of similar or related pictures that are all side-by-side.

The problem is, you may still have to scroll through several grid screens (or spend a lot of time dragging the film strip back and forth) to find the picture group you’re looking for. To cure that problem, all you have to do is to select any group of related picture and then designate that selection as a stack. The first picture in the selection will be the picture you see in that grid panel. The others will be stacked beneath it. So now you just see one picture representing the whole group, which could be hundreds of pictures.

Here’s all you have to do to get it that way: In the Grid view, follow the instructions in the first paragraph to drag all the photos into the groups that you want to have in each stack.Next, select all the photos and press Cmd/Ctrl + G. All the pictures will be hidden beneath the first picture and you’ll see a small number in the upper right corner of the picture. Then, later, if you want to find a particualr picture, just expand the stack by .

Now any time you want to see all the pictures in the stack, just tap the letter S. You’ll see all the images side-by-side in the grid.

You can also have stacks within stacks. That’s important because Lightroom can be asked to automatically stack images that are variants of the same image, such as multiple “exposures” of a RAW file or files that you’ve done additional processing for in Photoshop. You’ll probably want it to work that way. All you have to do is to include that automatically made stack within the stack you make by subject type. When you open the subject-type stack, you’ll see the individual stack and you can then open them.

One of my favorite added benefits of shooting in RAW format is the ability to set my camera to Black and White and still have the color information preserved. To do this, all I do (on my Canon 20D) is pick the B/W Parameter setting. As long as I am working in RAW format, all I am really doing is “viewing” the picture in B/W on the LCD screen. I’m actually still shooting in color.

This really helps me to visualize what the image would look like if I were shooting in B/W. It helps me to see the differences in tone, and allows me to “think” in black and white. Later, if I decide I really needed a color image, I still have the RAW file and all is well.

Both Aperture and Lightroom (and I suspect a number of other applications) handle the B/W images from my 20D in essentially the same way. When I begin to import the images I see the thumbnails in B/W. Then after a bit of processing time goes by, they all turn to color. I don’t know exactly what is happening here, because, well, I never cared to ask. But, I presume the RAW file’s built in thumbnail is coming up first in B/W, and then Aperture and Lightroom are processing their own thumbnails and ignoring the B/W setting.

To be honest, I’m totally fine with this behavior. If I really did want B/W, all I would need to do would be to change them back to B/W in Aperture or Lightroom. This is where things begin to differ a little in the two apps.

In Aperture, I can convert an image to B/W in a number of ways. There is no obvious “Turn me to B/W” button that I know of, but I know from my experiences a number of easy ways to go grayscale. I can either turn my saturation down to zero, or I can select the Monochrome Mixer option (found in the + menu at the top of the Adjustments Inspector), or I could pick one of the B/W presets such as Sepia Tone. Once I have my first image set to B/W, I can use the Lift and Stamp tools to easily apply the setting to the whole shoot.

In Lightroom getting to this same point is a little more obvious. Select an image, click the Develop Module, and under Treatment, select Grayscale. Then, to apply this setting to the rest of the shoot, just hit Command-A to select the entire set, and hit Sync… at the bottom of the right hand Panel.

I’m going to stop here to make two observations. First, in Lightroom, when I click Grayscale, I get something very close to what I was looking at on the back of my camera. In Aperture, if I hit Monochrome Mixer, I get a pretty flat B/W image. Second, Aperture takes its good sweet time rendering the thumbnails back to B/W on my MacBook Pro. I’m not really sure why this is such an intensive process for Aperture, but it does take some time. What I notice in Lightroom is that there is a good deal of processing going on there as well, but LR seems to be just a little more graceful about it. When I scroll down in Grid View in LR, the color thumbs on the screen quickly convert back to B/W, whereas in Aperture it seems to be converting images with some unknown agenda. At first I thought it was going from the bottom up, but then it seemed to be processing them at random. I’m still not sure what is going on with that.

I told myself I wasn’t going to be doing any speed comparisons here, but I can’t help myself. LR is just faster in this regard, and for those of you who are wondering, I began the week with empty libraries for both Aperture and Lightroom and have added the same number of images to both libraries.

Okay, enough about speed. Lets move on to B/W processing. First I should say, I am not a real pro at making B/W conversions. I have been shown a thing or two by colleagues, and I have made a few B/W prints from digital files, but that’s about it. Color has pretty much dominated my work for the past few years. That said, I do love B/W and have been having a ball today, rediscovering how much fun it is.

So I began by importing an image set that I shot of a small party in my neighborhood into Lightroom. I shot the party with the B/W setting on my 20D (mostly for the fun of showing the pics on the LCD to the guests) and after the color versions showed up in LR I followed the steps to convert them back to B/W that I mentioned above. I also imported the same images into Aperture and applied the Monochrome Mixer to the set using the Lift and Stamp tools.

My goal here was to pick an image I liked and see what I could do with the various controls in B/W. Just like yesterday’s post, I am mostly interested in which program’s controls are more intuitive, and which seem to lead me down the path towards a nice image.

Lets begin with Aperture. First off, the picture I selected turned out to not be from the party at all, but instead a picture of our new puppy on our porch that I shot just before leaving for the party. What is interesting about this picture is that it was shot at ISO 800 for a half second. I just set the camera on the ground and hoped the puppy wouldn’t move too much. The second reason I thought this might make an interesting example is due to the fact that the lighting was all coming from a couple of overhead fluorescent tubes that had been covered in a green gel. So for all practical purposes, the light was already monochromatic. I don’t expect you will find yourselves in a similar situation anytime soon, but, one of the things I really like to work with is odd lighting, and I really enjoy trying to make the best out of a less than ideal circumstance. In fact it was the green lights that got me thinking in black and white to begin with.

In Aperture I have no trouble getting the image to a point where I am happy. I take advantage of the exposure, levels, and highlight and shadow sliders to make the image pop a little more than the original RAW shot. I also added some sharpness, and played around with the Monochrome Mixer. Because the lights were all green, the only slider that had any effect here was the green channel slider. So I bumped it up a little and it seemed to add a little brightness. I tried playing with the noise reduction sliders but I didn’t see too much of a difference, so I left them unchecked. I then cropped the picture a little and I was done.

In Lightroom I had a very similar experience. However, I did have some fun playing with the Curves tool. Also, I saw a fairly positive effect from the Noise reduction sliders.

Top image processed in Aperture, bottom in Lightroom.

After reviewing both shots I see that for whatever reason, I got a slightly (in my opinion) better result from Lightroom. Maybe it had to do with my working in full screen mode with nearly no surround vs. Lightoom where I had a gray surround and a couple of Panels open. I’m really not sure, but I do like the Lightroom version better. Could I replicate the Lightroom version in Aperture? I would think it would be no problem at all.

After I finished playing with the puppy picture I tried converting a color image of a horse to B/W (see the shot at the top of this post). I wanted to try out some of the color mixing capabilities. My results were good, but inconclusive. Both Lightroom and Aperture, in their own unique ways seemed to do the job. I was able to exaggerate the tones in the sky to mimic a red filter simply by adjusting the Blue channel in the color mixers. It seemed to work in both Aperture and Lightroom equally well.

So, that’s about it for tonight. It’s getting pretty late here in the Caribbean, so please excuse any grammar issues this time! Tomorrow, I am doing this restaurant shoot in the afternoon. It will probably involve some lighting setups for food shots, a few basic interior shots, and maybe some environmental portraits. I am just hoping they let me eat the food I shoot, and drink a couple of beers on the house.

Lightroom 1.0 shipped on Monday. Yeah! Now everyone can finally see first-hand the great features I’ve been writing about. Almost equally exciting to me: on Tuesday we finally settled on a cover image for my O’Reilly Lightroom Adventure book. If you knew what we have gone through…

BIDOA, SOMALIA– It is very interesting to observe the process that Dr. James Orbinski, the former head of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of MSF in 1999, goes through in determining whether we travel to Somalia or not.

He was there in 1992-1993, when the country was going through terrible drought, with war and famine taking thousands of lives. It would be good for the film and for him personally if we get to go, but safety is the primary concern. And we all have to agree.

We have very good contacts in Somalia, and we plan to go to Baidoa, about 250km from the war zone in Mogadishu. In the end, the documentary crew following Dr. Orbinski puts our trust in his thorough and meticulous research, and contacts with people on the ground there. When he determined it would be safe for us to charter a plane and go, we all decided to make the trip.

It is not a cheap trip. Chartering a small plane for the two-hour flight from Nairobi is $13k; return. Once on the ground, we would be taken care of by James’s good friend who lives in Baidoa, and has arranged a team of armed guards and accommodation for us.

Our personal armed guards were always with us.

We are only here for three nights, but from the moment we landed on the airstrip and noticed the Ethiopian tanks and troops awaiting us, I knew this would be different from the other locations.

From the moment we drove away in SUV’s with two armed guards in each truck, I admit, I was nervous. Watching the street scenes as we drove to our hotel, Baidoa looked dirt poor, a vibrant town with remnants of bombed out buildings and people dressed in colorful clothes. This is a Muslim country which in some ways looked more like the Middle East then Sub-Saharan Africa.

Baidoa street scenes.

We had a busy schedule from the moment we arrived. We would meet with The Prime Minister and Speaker from the transitional government. We would go to the hospital, one of the most basic I have ever seen, even by African standards. We would visit a variety of places that James Orbinski had been 15 years earlier; schools, the former MSF grounds, burial sites and meet with old friends he had not seen since his last time here.

I brought my MacBook Pro, and our hotel had a generator that was turned on in the evening so I was able to charge my stuff. But the reality was that by the end of the day, we were all quite exhausted, and my tiny, hot room was not a good place to work, so I didn’t.

It didn’t take long for me to get used to traveling with guys with guns, and the people we met were very friendly, and often didn’t mind having their pictures taken, which did surprise me. I had thought a primarily Muslim population would be a little more guarded about photography, but they were not.

The speaker Shiekh Adan Mohamed Nuur “Madobe” (top), and Somalia’s new prime minister, 52-year-old Ali Mohamed Ghedi with bodyguard in background.

This assignment was a fantastic and inspiring journey on so many levels, but it also had its frustrations. Because the main goal here was to make a documentary, the video camera was always front and center and close to the action, which I had to work around. As well, we were on a very tight schedule, which meant that places I would have loved to spend more time, well–it just wasn’t possible.

But that being said, working closely with the team of Director Patrick Reed, Cinematographer John Westhauser, and sound man extrordinaire Ao Loo, taught me much about grace and professionalism under pressure. Dr. James Orbinski’s story is one of an inspiring role model whose courage in helping people in the most difficult and dangerous situations will no doubt inspire others to get involved.

A man suffering from Malaria, lies in hospital in Bidoa.

On the plane on the way back, Dr. James and I took some of the selects and put together a slide show with music that he would use in a lecture in Toronto the night of his return.

What’s great about Aperture is the ability to move the order of images around in multi-screen view, letting James and I storyboard the images in an order that made sense. We then click on Slideshow, click on the pull down menu to “edit”, and look at the vast possibilities Aperture provides when creating a slideshow.

I like to keep it simple, using dissolve, best quality, crossfade–and then choose the song from iTunes and “fit to music”; ready to go. The one big problem with the slideshow function in Aperture, is you can’t save the show as a Quicktime movie like you can in Keynote and other programs. Here’s hoping future versions will remedy this oversight.

A girls school near Baidoa, Somalia

This was my first road trip with Aperture and I have to give it the highest of marks. From ingest to archiving on the road, even with a portable USB2 drive and not Firewire, it performed flawlessly and enabled me to get my work done as I was shooting, saving a lot of post processing time when I came back. I can’t wait to take it out on my next photo adventure.

Look for a review of my book Heroines & Heroes in American Photo Magazine, March/April Issue, @ newsstands now.

The more I use Lightroom, the more I am beginning to love the program. I think I made that same statement when I first started using Aperture about a year ago. Maybe it has something to do with it being the “new toy” in the room, or maybe I just like the look of the two square icons in my dock (LR and Ps). I really can’t say what it is, but one thing is for sure, Lightroom is growing on me.

Today I had a good time reading all the comments from my previous post. I stuck my foot directly in my mouth when I wrote that you can’t create multiple Versions in LR. When someone kindly pointed out to me that it is possible, I realized that I am getting just as much out of this process as my readers are! You really can’t beat that. One of my favorite things when teaching students about photography is that moment when they start to take over and teach me.

So, for today’s post, I thought I would do a little clean-up and add a few comments having to do with the Library module, and then move on to the Develop module. I added some more images to my Library this afternoon and imported the salvaged pictures from my trip to Les Saintes last weekend. As it turned out, I had a few images that I thought were worth looking at, so I am going to be using these for today’s post.

One of the things that has often bothered me about Aperture has been how it handles Metadata once my images are imported. Aperture has some pretty nice tools and a well planned out Metadata panel ( I love the bottom controls for displaying IPTC, EXIF and other info, and the multiple metadata views) but it has never been very intuitive for me when it comes to batch editing metadata.

Now before you all jump all over me and explain to me how to do a batch change or a lift and stamp, let me just say, I know how to do it. I just don’t think it is very intuitive. In other words, every time I want to do a batch change to, lets say, the IPTC City field, I have to think for a second, and remember what I need to do to make it happen. Then I have to reassure myself that what I am about to do is in fact what I am supposed to do, and then do it. If I am using the lift and stamp tool, I need to make sure I uncheck the things I don’t want lifted and or stamped, and if I am using the Batch Change feature, well, I just don’t like having to go through the steps of bringing that option up every time.

With Lightroom, they have dealt with batch metadata changes in a way that makes perfect sense to me. I select a range of images, find the field in the Metadata area, and change the value. Once I hit return or tab, the change is made to all the images I have selected. My only gripe here is that if I hit tab, I don’t get the next field highlighted and ready to edit. Often times I want to batch change metadata on the fly to a range of images, and I want to just be able to tab through the fields. I don’t want to have to open a special dialog box; I just want it to work. I hope I’m not asking too much here!

As I mentioned in a previous post, having EXIF variables available for entry into IPTC fields would make the whole process sing– that and being able to tab to the next field. Okay, that’s it.

Let’s move on to the Develop module. I think this is going to require a couple of posts for discussion. Lightroom’s Develop module, in a nutshell, is awesome! The ability to add presets and have them readily available in the left side panel is a really great thing. I do miss the Aperture style Loop tool, but somehow I think I could learn to live without it. It’s a nifty feature, but a little over-engineered, in my opinion. The whole Snapshots feature (which I have yet to really discover) is a great idea. I have always wanted something like this. It makes me feel like I’m back in the darkroom, making test prints and being able to go back and see if I went in the wrong direction at some point. It can really be a great learning tool if used correctly.

The History and Copy and Paste functions are right where they should be and are reminiscent of how I used to do things in Photoshop. There is a ton of stuff to look at in the Develop module, but it’s pretty clearly marked and easy to find. In the right-hand panel I have everything I could potentially need. I’m still getting used to all the sliders and what can be done with the histogram and curves box, but I can say so far that they are incredible. I am also really digging the Before and After compare tools. They seem to make perfect sense to me so far, and they really do work.

I find when I begin to work on an image I sort of go down the right panel sliders and see what happens. I’m pretty sure this is a bad way to adjust images as the sliders aren’t meant to be used step by step, but so far it has worked pretty well. Usually I start by dragging the Exposure, Recovery, Fill Light (very cool) and Blacks sliders and then I head down the list. In Aperture, I typically have a routine that I follow as well, and I veer off this routine depending on the image at hand. It took me a while to develop my skills in Aperture, and I am sure it will take me some time to do the same in Lightroom.

I must say here that I was brought up on Curves and Levels in Photoshop. My professors used to tell me that everything the sliders can do can be done with Curves alone. I used to believe them until I wanted to do things like Shadow Recovery and Fill Light effects. These surely can be done with Curves, but it takes some serious know-how and patience. So, I am migrating back to using sliders. I mean, there are even sliders right there in the Curves box in Lightroom! Now I have a plethora of ways to manipulate the image–perhaps too many.

I am especially fond of how Adobe did the HSL, Color and Grayscale sliders. I like things to be all in once place and easily navigable. I think Lightroom has nailed it here.

There has been lots of talk around the web about Lightroom Vs. Aperture in terms of RAW processing. I think it is pretty hard to tell which application does a better job. Many say Lightroom creates a more natural feel and something similar to a film look, while Aperture lovers have been impressed with how Apple’s CoreImage processor handles high ISO pics (well, they weren’t at first). The thing is, it can be really tough to do a side-by-side comparison because the controls are all different, and you are really comparing apples to oranges. I think the answer is basically, “whatever works best for you.” So far with Lightroom I have been pretty satisfied with how my images have been developing. But, I must remind you, I am new to this application, so they aren’t perfect yet!

Above you will see a screenshot put together in Photoshop and reduced to fit the format of this blog. Now, I am not really a side-by-side bench testing kind of guy, so they aren’t very scientific. The idea was to go through the typical workflow I use when adjusting an image. I started by manipulating an image from the original RAW file in Lightroom. To be honest with you, I basically just played with the slider controls until I had something I was pleased with. I did this in fullscreen mode on a gray surround. I also looked at it with the Lights Dimmed mode turned on and made some final tweaks.

The image on the right I worked up in Aperture following a similar workflow. I wasn’t trying to make them match but rather, simply trying to end up with a good result after beginning with the original RAW file. I then did screen shots and compared my work. The Aperture version, which I edited in Full Screen mode, is slightly more washed out, but I did leave some detail in the background. It’s hard to see, but it’s there. Overall, I thought they both looked pretty good, and very close, side-by-side.

Tomorrow, I am planning to dive into more detail about the D