Lightroom 3 beta and AP - winning combo!

[Ploddy]

Just thought I'd let you know...

Lightroom 3 beta now includes the option to limit file size when exporting photos. Couple that with its ability to set max resolution and automatically publish to a web site such as Flickr, and you now have a 1 click solution for posting your photos to AP! Just set it as the default settings in a profile and away you go.

I am just loving this beta and now it has an excellent noise reduction solution, I'll be first in line to purchase when it gets released.

[etherial]

I heard today from Adobe at PMA2010 that LR3 will be released Tuesday (Monday in the US I think, so Tuesday here). It looks very nice too!

[I @ M]

And you have to pay for the privilege?

Nikon software does that and gives you a free hosting site to link from.

[Ploddy]

You process your images with Nikon software?

[maccaroneski]

Ploddy you you make it sound so cheap and wrong.... :)

[virgal_tracy]

Just thought I'd let you know...

Lightroom 3 beta now includes the option to limit file size when exporting photos. Couple that with its ability to set max resolution and automatically publish to a web site such as Flickr, and you now have a 1 click solution for posting your photos to AP! Just set it as the default settings in a profile and away you go.


aperture 3 does all of this also.

[arthurking83]

Lordy!

I just spent the last few hours 'processing' a few images with LR.
(reality was that it spent the last few hours frustrating me by stirring me and my PC in molasses!)

Have to say it's not bad.. but god damned clunky when you're undecided about how you want to process an image.

the 'it's not bad' comment really means that I've taken some time to learn it's incompetencies in it's user interface... such as Ctrl+S... or the idiotic lack of it!? ... what ever happened to an instant save?

some good aspects, and some bad elements.
But overall, I prefer my normal thingydoodle!

basically, if it weren't so expensive, I may have seen it as an option.. but it's too damned expensive!

And any more comments about how much faster it is, and I'll bonk that idiot on the head with my 840mm f/5.6 lens! :rolleyes:

yes... it's dog slow compared to my normal VNX+CNX workflow when multiple files need processing.

yet it's still 'not bad'.

[etherial]

You know I thought it was a dog when I first tried it which was early on, before I knew what I was doing and what it could do. (I'm not suggesting for a minute that you guys don't know what your doing!!!)

I'm not generally one to follow the crowd, I'll make up my own mind; so I went about exploring all sorts of software and went deeply into the Canon stuff among others. I was always a bit anti-adobe as I see them along with Apple as more about the marketing than the product. (just my opinion that I'm sure plenty will disagree with).

Anyway, after learning a lot, I went back to Lightroom and found it amazing. It did just about everything I wanted and more. Sure there are some things that bug me, but it is by far the best fit for my now reasonably (or relatively in my world) settled workflow.

Version 3 addresses some of the things I didn't like about it, like the watermarking, video support, tethered shooting and probably my biggest issue with V2 the noise reduction tool. I'll definitely be upgrading.

But hey, just like with everything else, whatever floats your boat! Lightroom floats mine.

[arthurking83]

You know I thought it was a dog when I first tried it which was early on, before I knew what I was doing and what it could do. (I'm not suggesting for a minute that you guys don't know what your doing!!!)

.....

Version 3 addresses some of the things I didn't like about it, like the watermarking, video support, tethered shooting and probably my biggest issue with V2 the noise reduction tool. I'll definitely be upgrading.

......

LOL! you reckon I know what I'm doing? :confused013

:lol2:

The reason I used LR3 last night on this series of images was for the noise.
Using LR3, I only processed the jpgs(converted from ViewNX), and for some reason it still ran very slow. Every edit step took about 5sec to take effect, and when I switched form one image to the next it'd take 10secs to display the image clearly on my monitors.
It's NR works nice and easy. But I'm about to re-install Neat Image again, so when the LR3 trial ends, it'd be banished from my PC.

Don't get me wrong tho! I kind'a started to get to like it(except for the cost, and a few idiosyncrasies). They really do need to follow a few standard conventions too tho.. like Ctrl+S(save) and Ctrl++ for zooming... etc.
But it ran slower than my usual method of having both ViewNX and CNX, where I browse using VNX, can either edit images using their basic set of adjustments, or select images to sent to CaptureNX for editing with a lot more care.

ps. generally speaking, I don't know what I'm doing, but that shouldn't be a deterrent, huh? :p

[I @ M]

You process your images with Nikon software?

Sure do Chris.

I find that the seamless transition from their free transfer and file allocation program (Nikon Transfer) to their free viewing and raw conversion + basic editing software (View NX) may be all that is needed with some photos. View NX allows me to alter the basic camera parameters such as white balance, exposure compensation and picture control settings as well as further editing of saturation, sharpness etc. etc. Prominent within the control bar of View NX is a 'one click' button that allows me to send single files or a folder of files at a preset web size straight to the Nikon My Picture Town web site which is also free for up to 2 gig of images. From within that site I can organise images into albums, and link particular images to here or even send an email to someone to allow them to view individual images or whole albums privately.

Oh, and did I mention that this all comes at zero cost to you, me and anyone else that wants to use the software and service.

Of course, if I need to perform really really complex editing of a photo that includes some tricky work like cropping :D I then send the photo from View NX to Nikon Capture NX which is their more fully partially featured editing program that one pays for at a reasonably modest cost compared to some programs out there. Capture NX also has a one click feature for sending files direct to My Picture Town in the same way as View NX does.

[campo]

Using LR3, I only processed the jpgs(converted from ViewNX), and for some reason it still ran very slow. Every edit step took about 5sec to take effect, and when I switched form one image to the next it'd take 10secs to display the image clearly on my monitors.

that sounds way slow :( I reckon LR3 is very sensitive to hardware...LR3 was unusable on my 6yr old laptop (celeron processor, 1GB RAM) but on my 4yr old pC (Core Duo Quad processor, 4GB RAM) and my new laptop (i7 processor, 6GB RAM) LR3 flicks between images almost instantly.

[kiwi]

You know the problem AK - you have to remove all that Nikon software from your pc so that LR likes that you have made a decision to be faithfil to it and will unleash its performance, until then it's just a cheap mistress

[Kym]

Resizing... If LR limits the filesize and keeps the pixels dimensions the same it MUST be reducing JPEG compression.
All good, just be aware of that fact.


http://www.ausphotography.net.au/forum/showpost.php?p=561282&postcount=30
There are two main controls for image file size when saving as a JPEG image.

First is the size in Pixels.
I.e. The number of pixels width x height.
Changing the size in Pixels has a secondary effect of changing the file size.
Eg. an image 3000px x 2000px resized to 1000px x 667px will be a smaller file, 6,000,000px
down to 667,000px.

But is the file small enough?

Secondly, the JPEG compression setting.
File size can also be adjusted by setting the JPEG quality (1-100) when you save the image.
The quality is also another way of saying which compression level you want.
The more compressed the image the more detail you may lose.

So to size an image for AP you should set the pixel size you want (typically no more than 1024 on the longest edge)
and adjust the JPEG quality (compression) to get the file size under the 250kB limit.

Some other advanced controls that have a minor effect on the image size are:

Including meta data all, in part or none
Saving baseline or progressive (and how many scans, 3 or 5 etc)
Saving colour profile information (don't bother with sRGB as that's the web default)

Note: You should always make sure the image is saved as an sRGB colour profile for web publishing.

[arthurking83]

You know the problem AK - you have to remove all that Nikon software from your pc so that LR likes that you have made a decision to be faithfil to it and will unleash its performance, until then it's just a cheap mistress

:D

and on a less sarcastic(ie. more serious) note!

Since installing LR3 my PC has slowed somewhat. Just about all applications, including non image software, and so on... have slowed a little bit in opening/processing/refreshing/etc.

My PC system is pretty much new. AMD 955x4, 4g ram @ 1333, a fairly cheapo, slow PCIe graphics card @ 1G ram, I have 5hdd's for various individual operations like storage, OS, cache, backup ..etc. I'm pretty sure that the graphics card may be slowing down the refresh rate of the images being displayed by the editing software.
I'm curious as to whether anyone knows if LR(or any adobe products) use jpg or tiff files to display on screen as they 'work on' the raw file.
I know that CaptureNX definitely uses a tiff file for display purposes, but I think ViewNX displays the embedded jpg file in the RAW file.
So given that CaptureNX uses a tiff file as you edit, you'd expect a slower performance, except when saving the NEF file to TIFF format.. which is instant.. and you have to watch your cache allocation.

another thing I went searching for:

LR takes up 54M of hdd space in it's program file directory. As my PC is now 64bit, it magically installed the 64bit version, with no input from me.

CNX takes up 22M of hdd space and VNX tales up 33M or so.

Also! is there a ProPhoto colourspace option in LR3?.. I can't find it.
Is the PropPhoto colourspace .icm file something I have to download myself?

Not that any of the Nikon software has the option either, not that it may even be important.. just curious.

I can definitely see why people like the program, and it has some good points.
I am going to persevere with it, in a limited manner, till the trial expires at least.

[Ploddy]

Intersting discussion.

I am impressed Nikon provides a basic edit package that is decent - I wouldnt touch Canon's with a 10 foot pole.

It's horses for courses, of course. I've been with LR since 1.0 and have seen it evolve and mature into a decent package, so I am comfortable with my workflow and see each version upgrade and the improvements they bring. So it's heaps easier to like something when they fix all the bad stuff from before.

Not sure why you would want a Ctrl+S function arthur, unless I'm missing something... LR is non-destructive and keeps a full history, so you can move to any point in the edit and export (or create a copy of a file). Likewise, you can take a snapshot of all settings if you dont want to export, and it 'saves' it at that point.

I agree it is very system dependent as to how it performs - quad core, 64bit, Win7 and lots of RAM makes Ploddy a very happy boy.

[arthurking83]

Ctrl+S just for the sake of maintaining some common sense in standardising the save feature as all other (Windows) programs do it.
That way you don't have to remember the Adobe idiosyncratic method(Ctrl-E).

I edit, I may want a version of the image @ x point as a tiff.. Ctrl+Shift+S gives me whatever option I like.. then I may save to web and Ctrl+Shift+S and save to jpg format... all kind'a smooth flowing.

Over the years, I also just happened to learn the workflow process of using Ctrl+S as a save step in every aspect of using a PC, and a few months back when I had troubles with my old PC that was randomly rebooting, I used to constantly use Ctrl+S as a seamless process of ensuring that something that I was doing would not get lost in the reboot process.
With this PC, that's not such an important aspect of the program as the PC is super stable.

One thing I also can't figure out, is how you delete parts of the (edit)history, and maintain other parts.

As far as I'm aware most programs with an edit list allow you to move back and forth from one edited point in time to another. CNX allows you to add remove edit steps at any point in the edit timeline.

eg. say I have 10 edit steps, and I want to remove the 2nd edit, because I prefer the 4th edit step, which is similar but different. Can I remove edit step 2 on it's own?(I haven't found any way to remove edit steps as individual items).
With CNX, I rightclick the edit step and select delete/copy etc...

From another perspective of wanting the edit steps to be both individual and also linked, is that when I make edit steps with CNX, they are compounding... one over the other. With some of the filter effects(I have the Nik filter add-on for CNX) I want to mix'n'match various filters.
So if I add a film effect step, and then a grain effect, and then a skylight filter effect, and then a bi-colour filter effect... etc, etc. Each subsequent effect adds it's touch over the last filter effect, and you can turn them on/off as you please to see how each step is editing the image.
Spo even tho the skylight filter is #3 in a list of 4 edit steps, I can go back to that edit step, and either adjust it in some way, delete it, copy and paste it to the last point in the chain, or change it to a totally different edit process.. as an example, say a tonal contrast edit step or a colour correction edit step. The edit list is hierarchical too. the order in which you make your edits makes a slight difference to the final image too.
I remember with PSCS2(or 3?) that I last had on my old PC, you could enable each edit via a tickbox. I can't see that option in LR3 for each step.

Another thing I have to do as well is fire up the Bamboo Tablet and use it with LR3. I like the way it works with CNX, but I think LR3 will benefit more from it's presence due to the way they each work.
CNX is more point and click(although you do get the brush methodology as well) but as far as I can tell, LR is still more of a brush/paint type program, until they include colour control points by default soon(I think the Nik Viveza add-on is available for LR and Elements as well).