sixsixfour

RAM or do you mean HDD space?

guia x

I created a new link HERE. All about post processing so we can leave this to strickly Lightroom.


As long as you keep the directory structure the same as you had it when you imported, I don't see why it would be difficult. I don't know why you would back up your directory structure any differently but I guess everyone has their reasons. Besides, since you have everything going to an .xmp file, all you really need to do is reimport all the files over again should such a disaster ever happen. All the adjustment settings for all the photos will still be there.

srika

One of my concerns as well, and something I don't want to have to worry about ever dealing with. Logical organization of pictures on HD/DVD/etc suits my storage needs quite well. My cup of tea may be your cup of castor oil.

srika

RAM

ChodTheWacko

Assume a reinstall - your drive letters might not be the same anymore.
My latest reinstall didn't even have a C:
Usually this wouldn't be a big deal, but.....

So now you have to check the database xmp to see what the expected drive
letter is? And perhaps reassign a drive if necessary? That's doable, but seems inconvenient. I should do more homework on this - maybe you're supposed to use an import/export for the entire database.

ChodTheWacko

It probably won't be too bad, unless you decide to do something lovely like view all thumbnails at once.

Billiam

Lightroom works on the concept of "libraries." The entire library exists within one folder. Your image files and the XMP sidecars are all in a directory structure within the library folder. I'm pretty sure that by doing it this way all the file location references are kept relative to the top level library directory. That's an assumption on my part though. BTW, the database files are by default located outside of the library directory but you can change their location to whereever you want in preferences.

Billiam

IMO, a pretty useful set of free Lightroom presets here:

http://www.ononesoftware.com/photopresets-wow.php

Unlike a lot of other presets, these deal with only one processing parameter at a time: just white balance, just tone curve, just color changes, etc...

badboy

nice find

You can never have enough presets.

guia x

I saw those preset from lightroomkillertips.com a couple weeks ago but I'm still undecided if I want to download them. I'm kinda anal with neatness and it just seems like it will clutter my preset panel. I don't know how useful they are anyway as I have not had the need for the presets yet except for the grayscale and sepia tones. I watch the tutorials and it seems kinda helpful. Maybe I'll download it and try and get rid of it if I don't like it. I just hope it's easy to install and remove.

Billiam

All the presets from the site I linked are prefixed with "WOW-" so they appear in once contiguous chunk that is very easy to scroll over if you don't want to use them. Removing them, on the other hand, could be a PIA since Lightroom doesn't appear to let you select a range of items in the preset list to perform a task on.

srika

removing them is easy.... just delete this folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\Develop Presets\WOW PhotoPresets

I would expect it to be just as easy on a Mac.

This is also how I move/backup presets.

guia x

Cool. Thanks. I guess I'll try it out. If they are helpful I'll keep them. Otherwise, I'll take them out.

srika

and oh yea - you should do that with LR closed...

Billiam

Thank you sir! On the Mac the path to the WOW folder turns out to be:
[UserDir]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Develop Presets

srika

about the WOW presets.. I can see how they would be good for processing a few pics but damn, for doing a set of 100-200, no, it would take way too long. Easier to work with presets) that do a lot at once and then adjust from there. But I did find some cool presets in there, thx 4 the link.

srika

Im liking the auto WB presets... nice stuff.

srika

no pun intended... but WOW!!! I am REALLY liking the WB presets!! for Billiam..

srika

lemme show you what im so excited about... started out with the original on the left, applied the AWB-Shade preset, upped fill light just a bit, upped Blacks a little, turned down Exposure a tad.. that's it! maybe the Wow presets are not so bad to start off with, after all :P

badboy

I don't know why, but I seem to like the shot to the left better.

I told you my eyes were bad.

Oh by the way, I have found a greater respect for the stuff you shoot. I was at the ny auto show this weekend and the lighting conditions were a pain in the ass.

srika

Don't think that way man. Your eyes are fine. This is where "style" comes in, imo.. overall, I gravitate towards warmer hues... sometimes when not desirable The warmness of the shot on the right is something I've been trying to achieve for a while now, I think all it had to do with was WB... not some magic filter or lighting as I had thought.

srika

cool to hear, lighting can be your best friend or your worst enemy...

badboy

Anyone know what algorithm lightroom uses to resize pictures? I noticed that when I created my web gallery the pictures came out nice and sharp.

badboy

Is there a way in lightroom to import a photo, and have lightroom update the original file? I have a feeling there isn't, since you have to import and export pics.

Billiam

I don't know for certain, but I think it would be a pretty safe bet to say that LR uses the same bicubic sharper and bicubic smoother algorithms from Photoshop for reduction and enlargement resizing.

That sort of goes against the whole "Tao of Lightroom."

srika

So Ive started to leave pictures in LR after Im done working on em. Curious to see if there is any performance degradation. You'll be the first to know.

Billiam

If you decide you don't like leaving everything + the kitchen sink in there, you could always just define individual libraries for each of your shoots and have Lightroom prompt you which one to open at launch.

You'd obviously be keeping multiple databases instead of just one if you go this route. I don't think that's much of a concern though since the "skeleton" of a database seems to be smaller in size than one 5D RAW file.

srika

and im not using RAW...

badboy

don't worry, we're going to you into shape sooner or later...LR behaves so much better with raw files, from what I've seen.

srika

it does... times like this I wish the RAW files were smaller.. something like.. sRAW or something..

badboy

Here is a question for all who use lightroom.

I have two seperate databases (two seperate database files on disk).
I have processed different sets of photos in the two databases.
I would like to have just one database, so I need to bring all the processed items into one database. How do I accomplish this without processing the pictures all over again?

Thanks.

guia x

If you have processed them using separate .xmp files, I think all you have to do is import them again from one database and it will use the .xmp file for each image. So all your adjustments are still intact. I have not done it before but I have imported some photos with .xmp files already made from Photoshop and when I imported them, they still had the adjustments that I made. So I'm not a hundred percent sure. From my understanding, that is what the main purpose of the separate .xmp files are.

srika

Been playing with these for a while over the past 2 days. I've had them since you posted about em and used them here and there but not on a consistent basis. Anyways, WOW! The vignetting presets are really nice - I kept going back to them. Some of the other tonal ones are nice too but I prefer doing most of those manually because I think they really vary picture by picture.

srika

bumping this thread because this is about LR 1.x

I was having a crashing problem when exporting catalogs to archive them. I would choose Export as Catalog, go into the folder, copy and paste the same folder name as the lrcat file (finding that to be logical) - and it would start exporting, and then crash at the end of the first progress bar that comes up. It was pissing me off for a while now, but I just assumed it was an intrinsic bug of some sort. Now, my filenames tended to be of the wordy type, I use the date followed by the event title, and location - and I use the full words. I looked it up at the boards and found others having the same issue - but did not find any answer.

So tonight, I tried something different - I tried using a short, uncomplicated name for the lrcat, that was less than or equal to 8 characters, and no spaces of any kind. No more crashing. Just wanted to share.

PixelHarmony

What OS are you using? I've been using LR 1.4 on Vista x64 and have no hang ups. I'll try to export and let you know what happens on my side.

I guess I archive a funny way but found it simple and effective.

I organize my photos by (Date) - (Event, descriptions) in a windows folder.

ie. 05.07.2008 - Day in the Park

within each folder I create new catalogs with a short descriptor like "park" and this has been relatively hassle free.

I know many people have developed their own systems of cataloging and once it's huge it's hard to switch.

Do you archive per event? monthly? annually? How many photos are you working with?

ChodTheWacko

I do something similar, but my directory name are YYMMDD - eventname
so sorting them sorts them by date.

I haven't had the need to do anymore than that, although I have often considering running through and tagging all my pics so I can easily do stuff like 'find all rainbow pictures'.

As a general rule, though, I can go by date taken, or I remember that a trip was from trip XXX and I can find it easily enough, so far.

- Frank

srika

I don't find it to be funny, sounds logical.

well there you go, this is exactly the "fix" I had found for the crashing issue I was having.

we had a thread about it somewhere... here. I even posted a screenshot of my archive tree.

see above - April was a pretty busy month, I shot about 4k pics at 9 events. I use my laptop for all the processing right now since its my fastest machine with the highest resolution (but that will change in about a week or two, if everything goes as planned - really looking forward to that). I don't have a set schedule for archiving/backing up - usually when my HD space gets around 4-5GB free, I will burn the pics off to multiple DVD copies.

srika

I just looked back at my process in that thread.. it's amazing how much it's changed since I wrote that - aside from the naming convention and the Lightroom exported files, everything else has changed.

Billiam

I've been using a naming convention I learned over at Digital Outback Photo. It doesn't seem like much on the surface but I can imagine it would be a real lifesaver if you had to go hunting for images just by browsing files and folders. Example:

2006_09-21_5D_DouglasPreserve
[Year]_[MMDD]_[Camera]_[Location/Event]