To amplify John R's question about creating, say, jpegs from my RAW files: I've watched my way through 2/3rds of the very good tutorial from Reichmann and Schewe at Luminous Landscape, and I haven't seen this discussed yet.
After I get files looking good in Lightroom (which I haven't bought yet), can I create full size, sharpened jpeg versions of a whole folders' worth of images, in a batch-type of operation? Then I could upload the folder to a sharing site. PhotoMechanic and iView MediaPro can only do this with the jpeg that's embedded in the RAW file, which in my 20D Canons is too small. I don't want to shoot RAW+Jpeg in most situations since it seems to slow me down and reduce card capacity.
I love what LR seems to offer in terms of conversion and printing. Can it help me with this task of quickly and easily making alternate versions of many images at once? My base of comparison is photoshop CS which I only know well enough to work laboriously on one image at a time. I insist on RAW's quality and workability, but the workflow is KILLING ME.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
After I get files looking good in Lightroom (which I haven't bought yet), can I create full size, sharpened jpeg versions of a whole folders' worth of images, in a batch-type of operation?
Depends. You can select an entire folder's worth of images (RAW or whatever) and export them in JPEG in one batch operation. No processing will be done on export, however, other than scaling (if you ask it to). It would be nice if Adobe would add a feature that enables a Develop preset to be selected in the Export dialog and applied to each image as it is being exported.
If you need some special "output" processing applied to those images on the way to the web, I think you currerntly may only have a couple options (without turning to third-party tools):
1) Apply it through Photoshop's batch processing upon the JPEGs exported from Lightroom.
2) In Lightroom, make Develop preset that reflects the processing, make virtual copies of all the images you want to export and put them in a collection; apply the preset, and then export. You could then either delete the virtual copies or add some metadata to them to make it easier to distinguish them from the master version within the Library.
Neither are wonderful options. Sometime soon, Adobe is expected to release an SDK for Lightroom. Shortly thereafter, we should start to see plug-ins become available that add special features to Lightroom, and I'm sure export-to-web tools will be amongst them.
If you're on a Mac you might also look into Automator.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
I hope I understand correctly what it is you want to do. Here is some info straight out of the LR help files:
Synchronize settings with multiple photos Whether you are working in the Develop or the Library module, you can copy and paste the Develop settings of the current photo (which is indicated by a thicker white border around the photo in the Filmstrip) to all other selected photos in the Filmstrip.
Shift-click to select the other photos in the Filmstrip that you want to synchronize with the current photo, and then do one of the following:
In the Develop module, click the Sync button, or choose Develop > Sync Settings. Select the settings that you want to copy and click Synchronize.
In the Library module, click the Sync Settings button, or choose Photo > Develop Settings > Sync Settings. Select the settings you want to copy and click Synchronize.
Export photos using presets
Select the photos you want to export. Do any of the following to choose a preset:
Choose File > Export or click the Export button, and then in the Export dialog box, choose from the Presets menu.
In any module, choose File > Export Presets and then choose the preset you want.
Hope this helps. You can also upload to a server directly from LR.
BTW - Version 1.0 processing speed is MUCH faster than the beta's. Looks like they dealt with that issue pretty well.
I've always been pretty comfortable in Photoshop. I admit, I like the way aperture works for sorting and picking, but it has been awfully slow to edit with.
Has anyone given Adobe Lightroom a serious try, and if so, opinions. I have every intention of moving up to CS3 when it is a final release and would be interested to know if Lightroom works better with Photoshop than Aperture.
Thanks.
I have been trying Lightroom for about a week now and I like it so much I went ahead and bought it.
It is much more intuitive then Photoshop, but when I need to move the picture to Photoshop it is very easy, just right click and the win.dow pops up to click.
I think it is a great program and I can see people possibly using it instead of CS3 instead of in addition to it. I don't think the serious pro would do this though.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
We might be put in your category of "serious" pros - we shoot around 250 gigs of image data a month, and now use LR exclusively for all our ingress.
My aim for our external editing staff is for them to never touch any of our initial image selections with Photoshop. Keep everything as a discrete LR database/library for each job and then we just ship the library itself back and forth accessing a duplicate set of the RAW images. We then generate specific output for each job from the returned LR library file on a machine in the main studio.
It has shaved about 50% of the editing time for most of our events. As we pay our editors on a file by file by basis, they have been very happy. Happy employees equal good business. And LR has significantly increased our image consistancy and color quality.
At the risk of starting a flame war - I find that Aperture is not even a consideration for working pros like us. It has no PC version and no direct integration with Photoshop. It's not in the same league for interoperablity and a waste of any pro's time learning it in my view.
It's cool if you want to show off your Mac, but for a pro photographer tool, Lightroom will inevitably become the industry de facto standard for intial RAW development and file management like Photoshop already is for more detailed digital image manipulation.
Put the energy into learning the tool that everone will be using and you will have a marketable skill. Put energy and time into learning an app that is a boutique product and you will not have a marketable skill. We just hired someone soley because she knows LR well over someone who doesnt.
We need common tools that we all know how to use. Like we had in the old dark room days. And then we can get on with the main business of making better photography. Enough nonsense messing about with different software.
My opinionated 50c...
Best to all
Will Henshall
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Thank you William, that was interesting. I am curious, though, when you say that Lightroom works better with photoshop than Aperture. It is unclear to me as to whether they handle files the same way. Will PS take embedded metadata from Lightroom? You still can't do edits in photoshop and then have them be seperate "version copies" in lightroom.
I'm not arguing, just want to know. I don't need PC compatibility. Maybe I should start a lightroom vs. Aperture on the Mac thread. I own both, but as I'm sure you'll agree, the time spent learning the program is far more expensive than the software.
Thanks for the input.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Linear Mode
