Welcome to Part 3 of Importing and Backing Up Images in Lightroom!

So far in this series we have looked at the process required to organize (Part 1) and caption and filter your images (Part 2) to create a simple and easy to navigate Lightroom catalog.

In this tutorial, Part 3 of the series, we are going to be taking a look at using the Develop Module in Lightroom and the effect that each tool will have on your images.

The Develop Module can be separated into three main sections: Raw Adjustments, Global Adjustments and Localized Adjustments.

The first point I must stress however is that image processing and editing is just one step in the creative process. Don’t ever be fooled into thinking that you can rely on your editing skills to produce great images.

Great images are a combination of exposure, light, composition and capturing that special moment in time. Editing and processing should be seen as a refinement step and never as a rescue step.

Develop Module

The develop module is the editing center of Lightroom. It is accessed by selecting Develop from the menu panel or using the shortcut [D]. The Develop Module can be separated into three main sections: Raw Adjustments, Global Adjustments and Localized Adjustments.

Post-processing is your opportunity to put your stamp on the images you have spent time creating.

Separating them into these three categories makes it easy to work through and should hopefully give you consistent results. I have found that it is easy to spend hours upon hours of your time in the develop module if you do not create a consistent and easy to use processing workflow.

Raw Adjustments

Generally this should be the first step of any workflow when you are working with raw files. It is essentially a preparatory step and can be applied in bulk to many images in one go. RAW files by definition should be flat and lifeless compared to JPEG files when they come straight from the camera.

This is because cameras apply processing presets to JPEG images and not to RAW files. This should allow you greater control over your image processing rather than relying on what the camera thinks is best.

The first step to your RAW workflow is selecting a raw conversion profile. By default you have the ‘Adobe Standard’, however if you click the drop down box you will have a selection dependent upon your file. I have the option of ‘Camera Faithful’, ‘Camera Landscape’, ‘Camera Neutral’, ‘Camera Portrait’ and finally ‘Camera Standard’. I find the best results come from selecting ‘Adobe Standard’, ‘Camera Standard’ or ‘Camera Neutral’.

The landscape/portrait/vivid profiles can have too much contrast and saturation. I prefer to control these parameters individually later on in the workflow.

The only problem I have found when using ‘Adobe Standard’ is that it can often render reds too saturated and sometimes you can lose detail in parts of the images with high red values such as lips, monk’s robes, lanterns etc.

If you use a calibration device such as a colorchecker you can easily create calibrated profiles for your camera so that all your results are reproducible. This is ideal for situations where color accuracy is essential and it helps to remove all the guess work to ensure your colors are spot on.

Editing and processing should be seen as a refinement step and never as a rescue step.

The second step to RAW adjustments is Lens corrections. Lightroom has the ability to correct for both distortion and vignetting. You can set Lightroom to automatically correct this but I find that sometimes distortion can be used to enhance the image.

This is the reason many travel and documentary photographers use wide angle lenses to exaggerate and to add emphasis. I find that correcting vignetting at this stage is a futile exercise as I tend to add a small amount later anyway to help draw the eye into the image, so it seems ridiculous to remove it, and then ­­re-add it later.

Also, setting Lightroom to automatically correct Vignetting will degrade the image as it is forced to up the exposure in the corners, which is likely to increase the noise and artifacts in those areas.

Before & After Perspective Correction

Lightroom also allows you to correct perspective in your images. This can be a problem when using a wide angle lens as unless the lens is perfectly level it can cause a phenomena called converging verticals. See example below

After completing the above steps we then move on to straightening and cropping our images. Cropping allows us to fit the image to whatever aspect ratio we like and straightening is useful for correcting wonky horizons. Cropping can also be used to remove unwanted elements in the image that weren’t apparent at the time of capture.

The final part of the RAW adjustments workflow is adjusting clarity and vibrance. The clarity slider is an extremely powerful tool for adding ‘punch’ to your images. The clarity slider works by increasing or decreasing mid tone contrast.

By increasing clarity you will find that the images look more defined and pop a little more. However, please don’t overdo the clarity slider, it looks terrible!

I very rarely take the clarity slider down into negative values but sometimes it can work on images you wish to smooth a little such as portraits or abstract blurred images.

Vibrance Before & After

 The vibrance slider on the other hand works very similar to the saturation slider.  However unlike the saturation slider, which increases saturation across all colors, the vibrance slider only increases saturation in certain colors. This gives a much more realist result and prevents you from getting horrible and unnatural skin tones.

Global Adjustments

Global adjustments are adjustments that affect the image as a whole. They include sliders such as exposure, white balance, noise reduction, sharpening and contrast. Unlike the RAW adjustments these tend to be more image specific adjustments. The first step for me is to adjust the highlights and shadows to get the histogram covering the entire color range without clipping or blowing any colors.

I then adjust the white balance to ensure that my colors as correct. This can be done using a reference point in the image that you know is neutral or it can be done by eye. Normally you may want to increase or decrease the white balance values from neutral so that the image appears more realistic and pleasing to the eye. Portraits often work best slightly warmer than neutral.

The next step in global adjustments is contrast. Contrast can be controlled in two ways; using the contrast slider or by using the tone curve. The advantage of the tone curve is that you can control the contrast range more easily. Below are a few examples of how you can utilize it to add or remove contrast

I generally finish off with some small amounts of sharpening and a small amount of noise reduction. The sharpening tool should only be used very subtly and you should never try to use it to use it to compensate for a lack of capture sharpness. The key to using the sharpening tool is utilizing the masking slider. By holding down [ALT] (PC) or [OPTION] (Mac) whilst using the slider you can see where the selective sharpening will be applied.

Using the mask prevents adding unnecessary artifacts in areas of smooth tone such as skies.

Noise reduction is also a tool that should be used in moderation. For me personally I am not averse to leaving some noise in my images if it means maintaining sharpness. However the best results are obtained by getting the right combination of luminance, detail and contrast sliders so that you reduce noise as far as possible before you begin to lose huge amounts of detail.

Local Adjustments

The final step in the processing workflow is making local adjustments. These can be done in 2 main ways; adjustment brushes and gradients. They are designed to add or remove emphasis from various elements of the image. The adjustment brush tool ([K] shortcut) can be used to add local adjustments with many different effects.

Nearly all of the global adjustments can be found as local adjustments allowing you to selectively add contrast, increase the exposure of a subject’s eyes or darken the background of an image to add emphasis for example.

The red mask shows the location of the adjustment brush

The second way to produce local adjustments is using the graduated filter tool ([M] Shortcut). The tool works very much in the same way as a real graduated filter as it allows you to increase the effect on part of an image and slowly reduce it across the rest of the image. This is ideal for controlling the exposure of skies in landscape images.

Graduated filter to reduce exposure and increase clarity in the sky

Hopefully by now you should have a basic understanding of how each tool works in relation to your images. As with most parts of photography it is essential that you go away and spend time developing your own style when it comes to using the editing and processing functions.

… image processing and editing is just one step in the creative process.

Post-processing is your opportunity to put your stamp on the images you have spent time creating.

In the final part of the series we will be looking at creating develop presets to allow you to automate corrections over a range of images and then finally we will look at how to export your images from the Lightroom catalog into a web friendly format.

Jacob James – Jacob James Photography

I’ve been shooting jazz concerts for a while now, and lately I’ve been thinking about what makes a concert shot iconic. In many cases, the viewer of  a particular concert photo will have no idea who the artist is, so one way to keep the viewer interested is to express a mood – an atmosphere that is quintessentially jazz.

One way to do that is to go back to the roots of jazz photography and learn from those iconic pictures. Because of the technical constraints of the times, most of these shots are black & white, and what we’d consider underexposed today: large parts of the picture are in the shadows.

With modern digital gear, it doesn’t have to be this way. For a long time I shot for the details and processed to enhance those details even further. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, sometimes this didn’t really convey the atmosphere and feel I was looking for.

… just because I can get a perfectly exposed, and detailed subject by shooting at 3200 ISO or more doesn’t mean I should.

What I’m going to talk about today is an approach that I’ve started to explore which I call ‘embracing the shadows’. Essentially it comes down to this: just because I can get a perfectly exposed – detailed subject by shooting at 3200 ISO or more doesn’t mean I should.

Shadows are part of what makes jazz concerts the experience what they are.

So what I try to do these days – at least for part of my shoot – is to expose so that part of my subject(s) will remain in the shadows. I tend to do this by trial and error and generally expose manually. I’ll open no lower than F/2.8 or F/4 depending on the lens, at ISO 400 or 800 depending on the lighting, and adjust the shutter speed to get the desired shadows.

All photos © Benoît Felten

Once I’ve selected a shot with potential, I’ll complete all of the adjustments required in Lightroom prior to switching to black & white (cropping, eliminating background clutter, etc.).

With that work complete,  I use the XeL Black & White presets to save a lot of time by quickly comparing multiple options. For the shot ‘Thomas in the Shadows’ shown here I created 5 virtual copies and tried 5 different emulations as shown on the screen capture:

• Fuji NP Acros 100,
• Agfa Scala 200,
• Rollei IR 400,
• Ilford Pan F 50+
• Tri-X 1600 Acufine.

I then compared them, looking in detail at how the shadows were falling on the face. That led me to eliminate the Scala and the Rollei which were too bright for what I was after, and the Ilford which was too contrasty.

I then debated a while between the Fuji and the Tri-X befofe finally going with the Fuji.

I often hear that “real” photographers don’t use presets, and I find that assertion baffling.

For this shot I really wanted the face to be in the shadows but still faintly visible. I also wanted the beautiful curve of the bass to stand out: it’s a strong graphical element of the shot.

So I lowered the overall exposure by 0.15 and darkened the shadows by -45. That gave me some really deep blacks without burning the face entirely.

All in all, I probably spent less than 10 minutes processing the shot.

All photos © Benoît Felten

For ‘Trumpeter in the Dark’, I had the same philosophy in mind. I liked the fact that the musician’s face was partially in the shadows and I wanted to keep it that way. The difference with the previous shot was that instead of having a dark area and a light area, the face was dark but speckled with light spots. I needed to retain enough highlights to keep it legible.

Before processing for B&W I had to get rid of a pesky microphone stand on the right, adjacent to the trumpet. So I exported the image to Photoshop, edited out the stand, and then imported the image back in Lightroom as a TIFF.

I then approached things in much the same way as I did for the previous shot:

I tested a number of emulations, some more contrasty than others to find the base I liked. I ended up choosing the Agfa APX 400 emulation.

I liked the tone and contrast levels, but it blew up the highlights so I had to do some fairly radical adjustments to compensate for the hand and hair.

I lowered the overall exposure by -0.5, boosted the highlights by +75 but brought the whites all the way down to -100.

I then brought the blacks down by -45 to maintain a really deep black in the background. I also boosted the eyes a little bit with the adjustment brush and XeL’s Enhance Eye preset, while burning the remaining highlights on the hand with the adjustment brush.

Some of the other interpretations were interesting too, with more detail on the face, but ultimately I decided I liked the sense of mystery and the mood on this version. I wanted to give it a slightly warmer feel though so I applied an XeL B&W Sepia 1 toning to convey that.

Choosing which film to use for one’s shoot is exactly the same mental process as using presets except we now have the flexibility to apply that choice to individual shots.

As I said at the beginning, my goal with these shots was to favor mood over detail, and the option to sample different black & white emulations was a great way to achieve that as it allows you to see beforehand which one best suits the mood that you’re after.

Since creating virtual copies in Lightroom is easy and doesn’t eat any disk space, it’s a really great way of focusing on the version I think will best express what I’m after, and then tweak it as necessary to really get a final shot that rocks.

I often hear that “real” photographers don’t use presets, and I find that assertion baffling. Choosing which film to use for one’s shoot is exactly the same mental process as using presets except we now have the flexibility to apply that choice to individual shots.

Film photographers would then tweak their shots during printing, and just because we use presets doesn’t mean we shouldn’t similarly adjust once we’ve chosen a preset to express exactly what we’re after!

In the Part 1 of this 4 part series, we had an in depth look at how to import your images from your camera into your Lightroom catalog.

We looked at how by applying presets and folder structures we could start to create an easy to navigate image storage solution. In this second part of the series we are going to be looking at how to organize your images once they are into the Lightroom catalog. This is a very personal process and one which will require you to create your own organization structure.

Upon import into the Lightroom catalog there are 4 different ways I find really helpful for organizing my images; Collections, Flags, Ratings and Labels. You may choose to use any combination of the 4 to create an organization system that is intuitive to you. The first way of image organization that we will look at is Collections.

Collections

Collections within Lightroom come in two distinct types; Collections and Smart Collections.

Smart collections are an ever changing type of collection that are based upon a set user designated criteria. Smart Collections can be set to automatically collect images with a single of combination of specific EXIF or IPTC data fields. For example I could create a smart collection with the criteria that City must equal Luang Prabang.

As a travel photographer I prefer to have my smart collections setup to sort by location …

Once created this will then collect all my images that I have added Luang Prabang to the City field of the IPTC data. Collections on the other hand are the same as smart collections except that it is 100% manual. Rather than selecting an IPTC or EXIF field to sort by, you have to drag and drop the images into each collection.

Smart collections have the advantage of automatically sorting the images upon import if you add a metadata preset when you import them. As a travel photographer I prefer to have my smart collections setup to sort by location so that I can easily find images from a specific location or city. However there are a multitude of ways of organising your images and Lightroom allows you to organize by pretty much any combination of criteria.

The most common options would be File Type, Flags, Ratings, Aperture, Lens or even Job Identifier (such as clients name).

How to set up smart collections

1) Right click in the collections pane and select ‘Create Smart Collection

Jacob James – Jacob James Photography

This is the first installment of a 4 part series of blog posts where we will be looking at taking your images through the Lightroom 4 workflow.

In this first part of the series we will be looking at how to use the Import Controls in Lightroom 4 to organize your images and create back-ups.

The most important thing to remember when reading this series of blog posts is that the way in which I take my images through Lightroom. Tailoring the process to your own needs and requirements to make the process more efficient for you is the most important take-away.

File types

Within Lightroom there are 3 main file types you will come across when editing images:

1. RAW (.NEF, .CR2 etc) which tend to be propietry to the brand or individual camera you are shooting with.
2. DNG stands for Digital Negative and it is Adobe’s own open raw format.
3. JPEG files which are what most people will be most familiar with.

Most professional and prosumer photographers (except those shooting super high bulk work like event photographers) will be shooting in RAW format on their camera.

RAW is a lossless format compared to .JPEG which is a lossy compression format. Shooting in RAW allows changes such as white balance to be made latter without image degradation.

The only downside to shooting RAW, and the reason it is not used for bulk photography, is the larger file sizes. In my experience RAW files can be at least 3-4 times the size of their equivalent .JPEG

Unlike .JPEG and RAW files, many people may not be too familiar with .DNG files. The ability to shoot .DNG files varies between cameras and most Nikon and Canon cameras do not have the ability to shoot in .DNG file format. You may ask why would you bother to convert your files into .DNG?

Currently, I tend to store all my images in their native RAW format rather than converting to .DNG however those who do convert upon import argue that because .DNG is an open format and therefore does not require a license, it is more likely to be ‘future-proof’ and who is to say that Canon and Nikon will still be supporting .NEF, .CR2, .CRW etc files in the next few decades?

The main benefit in .DNG files for me as a travel and cultural documentary photographer is the fact that .DNG files have their metadata embedded into the files themselves rather than RAW files who store their metadata in a separate file such as XMP.

This reduces the chance of accidentally deleting, moving, renaming the XMP file and loosing a lot of time consuming work. .DNG files are something I am going to seriously consider in the future and maybe something I will trial in my work this year.

The Import Process

The process outlined below is the method I use when importing images from a memory card. The most important step in the whole process is making a second copy. Backing up images is something that many photographers learn about the hard way, don’t be a fool and make sure you backup your images!

1) Down at the bottom of the right hand side panel in Lightroom you will find two buttons, Import and Export, the Import button is the one that we will be focusing on today. When you click on the Import button you will be greeted by a pop-up window which is the import menu. This is the main window for controlling how you import your images into Lightroom.

2) At top right of the Import Menu window you will see a section headed ‘From’. This is where you choose the location of the files you wish to import into Lightroom. For this post we are looking at importing from a memory card. Therefore you need to select the drive in which you memory card is inserted.

For this example that was my I: drive. When importing I like to have Eject after import clicked so that it tells me when I can safely remove my card.

The process for importing images from a hard drive or a folder on your computer is very similar in the fact that you just click the location of your files in the From section the same as you did with the memory card. The only difference comes later on when selecting whether to move, add, copy or convert the files upon import.

3) Along the top of the Import Menu window you will see that you have 4 options of what to do with the images you are importing. If you wish to convert to .DNG upon import you will need to select Copy as DNG.

Currently, as I don’t convert my images to DNG I select Copy as it allows me to create a copy of my files onto a hard drive. If you are importing images from your computer or from a hard drive you may wish to select Move or Add.

4) The next step is selecting the destination of the copy you are creating of your images. This process is identical to selecting the location of your images. When I am working, whether that is in a different country or at home I always make sure that I have a further two copies of every image before deleting them from the memory card.

The system I employ when working in the field is to use two hard drives, in this case WD MyPassport drives.

One drive is named My Passport and the second drive is named My Passport Back-up‘.

A great feature in Lightroom is the ability to Make a Second Copy To: which allows you to back-up your images to two drives at the same time as importing the files into your LR catalog.

A second thing to consider if how you want LR to render previews. You can chose from:

• Minimal – Very small preview
• Embedded & Sidecar – The existing previews
• Standard – This can be set in Catalog preferences
• 1:1 – 100% previews

I like to go with 1:1 as it is really handy to have them when editing. The only downside is that it takes up more memory on your computer and takes a lot longer on import. However I find that the time taken to import is worth it for the time advantage you get when editing.

5) After you have chosen how you wish to backup your images and render them in your catalog, the next decision you have is how you wish to rename your images. I find that renaming the images later is much better as you can tailor the name to each individual image rather than going for a generic name. Some examples of naming ideas are place names and countries and subjects name and date of shoot.

You can rename them here if you import is of a specific set of images but if you are importing all your images from a trip in one go you may want to rename them later.

6) Apply an import metadata preset is probably the second most import step in the process for me after I have backed up the images. It is a simple way to add copyright, licensing information and contact details to your images automatically upon import.

To create a new present you click in the metadata field and select new from the drop-down menu. You then just have to fill out all the generic information you wish to apply to your images on import. The key to remember is to only tick the ones you wish to change because if you click a field which is empty it will remove all the existing metadata from that field

7) The final step of the import process is to choose how the images will be organized in folders you have chosen for them to be copied to. With this section you can control the folder structure. As I control all my images through Lightroom, I very rarely go into the folder structure and therefore I just leave it organized by year and date.

I do know of some photographers who will create a folder structure based on the location of the shoot and this can be done by selecting Into Subfolder and then typing your own structure system.

Hopefully by now you should have a solid understanding of how to control the import of your images into the Lightroom catalog. The ability to set the automated metadata presets and folder structures, is where Lightroom is worth its weight in gold.

Part two of this series will focus on organization in the lightroom library through the use of Collections, Flags, Ratings and Colors.

Jacob James – Jacob James Photography

Welcome to part 3 of this series on using the Web module in Lightroom 4 to create a serious website.

In Part 1, I showed that the Web module as it’s supplied with Lightroom is simply not capable of doing the job for a professional or serious amateur photographer.

Part 2 I looked at a plugin solution — The Turning Gate’s CE2 system — and I discussed the various parts that make it up and my early experiences of using it.

Here in Part 3, I’m going to depart a bit from my usual style of relating an ‘as it happens’ account, simply because it’s all too complicated and full of backtracking and rethinking to make a coherent story. So this is being written with the benefit of several weeks’ use of the system and is more a collection of good points and not-so-good points, along with a few hints and tips for anyone who’s thinking of going down this route with their own website.

Disclaimer

In the course of this article, I’m going to be saying some things that appear fairly critical of the TTG plugins. I just want to make it clear that most of the perceived ‘problems’ with the system are not Matthew Campagna’s fault, but rather stem from the difficulties that I outlined in Part 1 regarding the suitability of Lightroom’s UI design for this sort of work. Basically, the Lightroom UI does not lend itself well to a good website creation workflow and it’s a huge credit to Matthew that he’s managed to create something that’s as good as it is.

That said, from a purely user point of view, there are — shall we say? — annoyances in the workflow that will crop up and that will cause frustration.

Let’s start by being positive

It works, and it does a great job. Once you’ve got over the learning hump, and things have started to become clear in your mind, it’s (relatively — see below) easy to make the changes you want and get the website of your dreams…ish. I went through several false starts before settling on the final design, but once I’d got that, things progressed really smoothly.

I ought to add that I cheated a bit: after mucking about with various designs, I took a shortcut and used the design that Matthew made for his tutorial articles. I did this partly so that I could get something up and running for the purposes of writing this article. I like the design but I may make something more personal in the future. I’d recommend using the templates in the early stages — maybe practice with a local site — to get used to the system, then go ahead and build your own design in the confidence that you now understand how it works.

So, on to lessons learned, tips, caveats, bugbears and plaudits.

Two, three… or four?

I said in Part 2 that realistically you need two of the plugins (a framework and a gallery) to create a decent website. Well, make that 3, since you’ll almost certainly want the Autoindex plugin to make multi-level galleries (Pages can only handle a single level of folders underneath the home folder).

And then you’ll probably want to embed your blog on the same website, so you’ll need to get the CE2 Theme for WordPress to make it all look nice and consistent.

So: four plugins for a total outlay of $100. Add hosting costs, and that’s about how much your website’s going to cost you, not counting the value of your time in constructing it. If you create more than one website, then the unit cost comes down but really, even for one site, that’s not unreasonable, considering how much a bespoke design could cost.

Read Matthew’s blog

Right, this bit’s important — it’s the most valuable thing you can do when starting out using the TTG plugins. There are about 8 articles at the TTG blog on advanced website creation. Read them. Then read them again. Then bookmark them for future reference — there’s a lot of information in there that will seriously speed up the understanding process.

Get the site framework right

Here we get to one of those bugbears (see ‘Disclaimer’ above). The various plugins share a lot of settings between them (the ‘CE’ part of the name means ‘Common Engine’). This is a good thing, since it makes it a simple matter to keep your look-and-feel consistent across the modules. It’s also a problem: the way Lightroom works means that every bit of your site is a separate Web gallery. These galleries don’t know about each other, they don’t talk to each other — they are independent entities. With a decent-sized site, you could end up with dozens of galleries.

This image shows the Lightroom layout for my site, and I’m already up to 24 Web galleries. I’ve used collections to mimic the basic website structure and numbered names to keep things in the order that I want.

Now imagine that you want to tweak the font, because you’ve decided that you prefer a serif to a sans-serif in the body text. You have to make that change to each gallery separately. Oh, there are a couple of shortcuts to speed it up a bit, but the bottom line is that you have to visit each gallery and make the change — there’s no notion of propagating or auto-updating from a template change. That mean’s that it’s easy to miss one and that leads to annoying inconsistencies.

So I would advise spending a good amount of time with the framework module (CE2 Pages in my case) and getting the look and feel right before moving on to the other modules.

Test on a local server

I’ll say it again: test your site on a local server before uploading to your host. I covered local servers in Part 2, so I won’t go over that, but I will say that the last few weeks have impressed on me even more the need to test locally before going live.

This especially true once you’ve got over the initial learning hump and you wanti to start adding some value to your site using PHP plugins. You really, really don’t want to upload untested PHP code to a live site.

For example, I had a problem when I was trying to add some breadcrumb navigation and my blog disappeared. Still haven’t figured that out. But, since I tested locally, there has been no effect on my real site.

The other advantage to testing locally is that it means that you can ignore the Upload button. This is a seductive mistress, but do not be tempted, it will bite you. For one thing, there appears to be a bug (or a feature) — the destination folder’ is not sticky, and the default isn’t even the standard ‘galleries’ folder. Every time you upload, you’ll have to change that setting, because it doesn’t get preserved with the other settings.

Much better to Export… somewhere local, test, then upload with a decent FTP client. I use Cyberduck, but other clients are available.

Centralize common stuff and use templates

Because of the (enforced) independence of the galleries that make up your site, there are things that will be duplicated unnecessarily — PHP code files, your favicon. I strongly recommend (as does Matthew Campagna) that you pick one location for these files and point to that one place from each web gallery.

This is fairly easily done by making extensive use of templates. Full details are in the tutorial series I referenced above, but what it boils down to is to have a template corresponding to each ‘level’ (i.e. depth in the folder hierarchy) and store the path to the files in that. Then, when you create a new gallery, simply choose the appropriate ‘level’ template.

Two templates differing only in the relative location of common files.

A ‘level 2’ path to PHP plugins

A ‘level 3’ path to PHP plugins.

On the subject of templates; take some time, when first creating one, to fill in as much common information as possible. Ideally, for a gallery template (Highslide, Horizon, etc), you want enough information so that all you have to fill in for each new gallery is the copy text, album title and description.

Having centralised your PHP (and, possibly, JavaScript) files, keep a backup copy of them. The simplest place to put them is in the top-level phplugins folder (it saves editing other files to change the location), but this will get overwritten if you re-export the framework gallery, and all your careful modifications will get lost.

Small things

Those above are my major tips when using this software. There are a few minor things that I noticed as well — not enough, in themselves, to tip the balance, but worth looking out for.

• Some of the social media icons are out of date. It’s a simple matter to get the latest ones from the relevant site and overwrite the existing one (do this in the actual plugin folder, so that you don’t have to remember every time you export).
• There’s what appears to be a bug in the Horizon module such that the space between the photos and the scroll bar expands and contracts with the height of the browser window.

• I said before that there are a lot of settings to keep track of. One down side of this is that, for a while at least, you’ll spend a lot of time trying to find the setting you want to change – until you get used to where they all are.
• Although, in general, you have to request a re-render of the page after making changes, adjusting the order of images in the filmstrip will trigger a re-render every time you move something. This can get irritating, so it’s best to re-order things in the Grid view and then go back to the Web module when you’ve done.

How could things be improved?

Difficult one, this. As I hope has become clear over the last three articles, my opinion is that Lightroom is not a good environment for web site creation. The whole paradigm is wrong, so any attempt to do something along those lines is doomed to compromise. It’s to Matthew Campagna’s credit that he’s done such a good job in producing something that’s usable and mostly effective.

One change that springs to mind immediately would be if the Web Galleries could be made to act like Publish Collections — i.e. if they could be made to update changes only, rather than regenerate entire web site sections. That would cut out a lot of housekeeping work — deleting old images on the server, protecting modified files, remembering which galleries you’ve updated …

I’ve just spotted that there is now a new plugin, called CE2 Publish, which goes some way towards addressing this. At present it only works with the Highslide gallery plugin (so no good for me), but it bodes well for the future.

Some communication would be nice, too — a way of propagating a style modification across all the galleries, so that you don’t get that ‘argh!’ moment when you realise that you really want to change a font, but you’ve got a dozen templates to update.

The bottom line

TTG CE2 is a very good solution for the photographer wanting a professional-looking web site, but it’s not perfect. It rewards research, planning and a methodical approach and it punishes carelessness.

On the whole, I’d thoroughly recommend it if you’re prepared to put in the work required, and you’re methodical enough to remember all the tasks that can’t be easily automated.

Graham Douglas – Grey Dog Photography

We have a huge repository or photography and workflow related links … and we realized it’s high time we started sharing them!

The Best Thing I Ever Did Was Quit Professional Photography

The Definitive Guide To Corporate Event Photography

Introduction to the Tools of Long Exposure Photography

Location Photography: How to Comprehensively Capture a City, Village or Street

An In-Depth Guide to Lighting People

Dealing With Foliage: Green and Yellow Saturation

Exotic Places Right at Your Doorstep

How to Create a Sense of Depth to Your Photos

Quick Tip: Using a Simple Portable Reflector

An Olympic Photographer’s Camera Setup

10 Totally Awesome iPhone Camera Accessories

5 Undeniable Reasons To Take Your Camera Everywhere

5 Tips For Great Outdoor Photography

The Essential Guide to Filters for Digital Cameras

The 5 Levels of the Amateur Photographer – Which Group are You in?

iPhone 5 Camera – 6 Full-Res Sample Photos and Review

How to Check and Clean your Camera’s Sensor Dust

Why It’s Wrong for Photographers to Say ‘Get Closer’

How one photographer is using XeL without having to leave Lightroom to save time and money.

How Understanding Metering Modes will make Exposure Easier

Landscape Photography by Frederick Concha

Making Your Poses Work for You

A Comprehensive Introduction to Focus Stacking

Master the Art of Photographic Composition

How to Shoot Perfect Portraits

Knowing Photoshop’s Interface

Top 10 Reasons You Should be Using Adobe Bridge

Realistic Makeup Application in Photoshop

Smart Ways to Use Smart Objects

Create Light Leaks and Lomo Effects Using Actions in Photoshop

Explore Your History Panel

50 Time Saving Photoshop Actions to Boost Your Images

Photographers – Validation is Overrated

5 Ways Yelp Could Help You Build A Better Photography Studio

What Camera Should I Buy? 2012 Edition

Effects Of Amount Of Light & Exposure On The Photograph

Minimalism – The Art of Less

iPhone 5 Camera Sensor Pitted Against the Canon 5D Mark III

Aspiring pro photographers, Be Honest: Is Your Work Really That Good?

National Geographic Photo of the Day: Catamount Mountain, Adirondacks

Shooting in Raw + JPEG Mode: Why Most of Us Shouldn’t, And How to Set Lightroom Preferences If You Do

Nightclub Photography Tips For Exposure, Light & Presentation

24 Beautiful Dawn images

How To Become a Food Photographer

Some Impressive Examples of Photos with Snow

5 Essential Keys of Amazing Photographs.

|Brandon Oelling – Editor in Chief
X-Equals – image, workflow, technology, business

In Part 1 of this series, I looked at the native Lightroom Web module to see if it was usable as a way of constructing a professional web site. To say that it failed to meet my needs would be something of an understatement – it is, frankly, unworthy of the rest of the application.

This time, I’m going to look into a Web module plugin from The Turning Gate (TTG), which should go much further towards creating a good-looking web site. This part is about my early experiences: choosing, installing and getting to know it. Part 3 is a reflection on my experiences after several weeks of working with the system and trying to set up a real website.

The usual caveat

As before, this is not a how-to guide; it’s a document of my experiences using this software and an account of its usability and fitness for purpose. Some instructional material may accidentally creep in, for which I apologize in advance.

Preparation

TTG plugins cost actual money, so it’s worth checking out what’s on offer and its suitability before forging ahead.

To start with, there’s a lot of choice and it can be a bit bewildering when you first look over the offerings and try to sort out what’s what. Fortunately, there’s a wiki available that, whilst a little bit out of date, is a big help in getting your head around the choices.

Although they’re not presented that way on the main page of the store, the plugins fall into a number of categories, of which the two that interest me are ‘Website Development plugins’ and ‘HTML Image Gallery plugins’.

From the wiki:

Website development plug-ins are used not to create image galleries, but to create the overarching framework in which your galleries will reside. This includes site pages, indexes for organizing your individual image galleries, and even your blog. If you’re building a new site from scratch, these plug-ins should form your foundation, and this is where you should begin.

There’s a hint there: when you first look at the plugin list, you’re tempted to think ‘Hmm, $25. Not a bad price’. Realistically, though, you’re going to need to purchase at least two plugins to construct a viable site.

So, $50-ish. Still not a bad price, but it makes you look more carefully at the individual plugins to ensure you’re getting the right ones. Reading the wiki helps, too, although I would have liked to see a page that really spells out the options and maybe gives some hints on the best combinations for common needs.

The good thing about the TTG plugins is that they all work to a common framework (Common Engine version 2, hence the ‘CE2’ in the names), so they play nicely together and you do get a real sense of being able to mix and match to your specification (and extend later with e-commerce options, should you so wish).

Decisions, decisions

So, I’ve read the documentation and I’ve for a while and then finally settled on two plugins that seem to be the ones I need. The first is TTG CE2 Pages (which I’ll just call Pages from now on) and TTG CE2 Horizon (Horizon).

TTG CE2 Pages

Pages is a framework plugin that provides the starting point for your website. It sets up those slightly-boring-but-necessary peripheral bits like the About and Contact pages. You also get a gallery index page. Note: an index page – it doesn’t create galleries. What it does do is to examine the galleries that you do publish and automatically construct the index page – a neat feature but I just wonder if it’ll have its annoyances, as so many ‘automatic’ things do when they fail to give you that bit of control that you want.

TTG CE2 Horizon

There are several image gallery plugins available. I chose Horizon partly because I quite liked the look of it and partly because the other contender, TTG CE2 Highslide, would have required yet another licence (and associated cost), this time for Torstein Hønsi’s Highslide JS. Yeah, I’m a cheapskate – sue me.

The Horizon gallery is a horizontal-scrolling type gallery that I think looks quite neat (a lot nicer than the standard galleries in Lightroom, anyway).

Commitment

Purchasing and installing the plugins was a completely painless process (if you ignore the actual ‘paying’ part of the process). Put the items in the cart, head off to the checkout, authorize with PayPal and, one email and a download later, they’re on my computer. Installation was simply a matter of unzipping and copying a couple of files (where to is dependent on your OS, but it’s all in the instructions). Restart Lightroom and, bingo!, we’re away.

Oh, f-f-fiddlesticks!

For some years now, I’ve been using a particular naming scheme (I think I got it from this very site) that has served me well. It can be summarized as ‘Date-Custom-Original File Number’.

It turns out, though, that this scheme is not very web-friendly (or, at least, it’s not TTG-friendly), since it uses leading numeric characters. TTG uses the file name to generate certain tags in the code, and these tags can’t start with a numeric character. I could adjust the names on export, but that loses the connection with the original image in Lightroom, so it’s better to have the file names consistent from the outset.

The article in question also contains some other good advice on file naming, so I decided to go ahead and rename all my image files. A daunting task, and one which I doubt I’ll complete any time soon. Lightroom’s renaming facility makes it fairly easy, but you do have to watch out for TIFF (or JPG) files scattered amongst the RAWs. If these have come from the ‘Edit in Photoshop’ command, then they possibly won’t rename correctly, since the trailing ‘-Edit’ on the filename defeats Lightroom’s ability to get the file number. It’s at this point that I wish Lightroom would allow in-place filename editing – for those occasional times when you want to manually adjust a single file name.

Building the framework

There are some pretty clear instructions on initially setting up Pages, so I won’t repeat them here.

Once Pages has done its work, what you get can look pretty daunting:

Small aside: I liked the way it automagically picked up my logo graphic. Presumably because it was there in a LR web gallery when I first created the Pages pages. However it did it, I was quietly impressed. (Later: I think I found out what it does – it notices if you’ve changed the Lightroom identity plate and assumes that is your logo.)

The real ‘arrgh’ moment is when you glance over to the right-hand edge and see how small that scroll bar thumb is – there’s a lot of information to fill in and think about. Fortunately, a substantial proportion of that right-hand column is taken up with good, clear instructions on use. Even so, you really want to read the documentation before diving in.

If you have some images in the filmstrip, Pages will use these to populate the image parts of the generated pages. All the pages are based around image + chunk of text (and an image grid, but more on that later). The instructions (and the wiki) say that you should put the images that you want to use for each page in a specific order, because each page picks its ordinal numbered image. That’s the default, but it looks as if there have been some improvements made, because there is an option in the settings panes for specifying which image to use for each page. You can even re-use the same image on multiple pages.

Anyway, the upshot is that, with a few clicks you’ve got the basics of a pretty good-looking website. And that’s not something to be sniffed at.

Moving on…

The advice given on the TTG wiki is to start at the top of the settings panes and work your way down; and who am I to gainsay the author?

Mind you, I’m a bit of an impatient old goat, and I want to see what this new site looks like in a real web browser so, before getting down to it and tweaking things, I Export… my newly-created web site. This should dump a load of HTML somewhere on my hard disk, which I can then browse in Firefox (other browsers are available).

Except…

Pages dumps PHP files, not HTML, and the browser can’t render PHP without a running PHP server. So, is testing the site locally out of the question? If so, that’s a big downer on the whole process. I’m reluctant to hand my public face over to a piece of software that I’ve hardly been introduced to, and trust it to make me look perfect right out of the gate. I wanna see what it does before I make the site live.

To the web!

I spent a bit of time on Google looking for a way to preview PHP sites locally, and came across a product called MAMP. I later discovered that the TTG wiki does note that Pages generates PHP only, and that it mentions that there are ways to preview your site locally, including WAMP and XAMPP in addition to the previously discovered MAMP. (Note to TTG: make it more prominent, guys!)

I tried out MAMP: it’s simple enough to install (I think MAMP is Mac-only; WAMP is for Windows and XAMPP has multiple OS versions), and it pretty much does what it says on the tin. It would be nice if it didn’t bug you about the Pro version, though. For checking out the website-in-progress, the free version is quite sufficient. (If you don’t want to be bugged, go to your Applications/MAMP Pro folder and run the uninstaller. If you’re like me, you’ll get a ‘privileged action failed’ message and still get bugged.)

Update: I got fed up with MAMP’s nagging and tried XAMPP. One glitch – TTG/Lightroom won’t write to XAMPP’s default site root (and it’s probably not a good idea to bung your stuff there, anyway), so it’s best to configure a virtual host. It sounds scary, but this site (Mac only) contains a step-by-step guide that works (well, it did for me). You can then export to a convenient location and even maintain multiple sites. Windows users should Google ‘xampp virtual host windows’ (or you can click that link and follow the instructions – the locations of the files differ, but the details ought to be the same).

Update updated: then I got tired of XAMPP (can’t remember why, now) and went back to MAMP.

And so here’s a brand-new, untouched-by-human-hand, Pages website exported locally and viewed in a web browser:

So far, so good – this looks much more promising as a viable solution than the plain Web module. There’s still lots to do though – that color scheme has got to go, for a start.

But I see that I’m getting close to my word quota for this episode, so tune to Part 3 for further adventures in the murky world of web site creation.

Graham Douglas – Grey Dog Photography

Just how useful is the Lightroom Web module?

This is the first of a 3 part series on using Lightroom as part of a website creation workflow.

Here in Part 1 I’ll cover how well (or not) the vanilla module fits into creating a real-life website based on my own personal experience.

Part 2 will cover extensions to the Web module (specifically a Turning Gate plugin).

A bit of background

I’m just starting out on the long road to being a professional photographer – at this stage, I’d be happy to rise to the dizzy heights of being merely poorly-paid.

One thing I need to sort out early on is a decent website to showcase my work and give people a reason for hiring me – in other words, one of the goals of the website is to generate clients. To do this, it needs to fulfill certain criteria (in no particular order):

•    Separate categories of work. Someone who’s looking for a wedding photographer doesn’t want to wade through a load of street images to see examples of what I can provide. So, having a number of galleries is a must and keyword searching would be nice (maybe an image can show up under ‘wedding’ and ‘portrait’, for example).
•    Easy navigation. Having decided you want to see my wedding portfolio, it should be obvious how to get there, preferably with a single click.
•    Somewhere to put an artist’s statement on project galleries, so that I can describe the work.
•    A contact page that details all the ways I can be contacted, not just email.
•    Other stuff, including SEO considerations.

Hang on a minute.

Yes, yes, I know that there’s no way the basic Web module is going to handle all that. I have no expectations that it will be in any way sufficient for producing a professional website. What I’m interested in is how far it can go, what are the ways it fails to deliver, and are there improvements that could be made to it to get it to go even further?

The usual caveat, blah, blah, blah

As with my other articles here on X-Equals, this is not a user guide. It’s an account of my experiences, thoughts and ramblings. For a starter course on the Web module, have a look at this article by Matthew Campagna.

Preparation

The hardest part of putting a photographic portfolio together is deciding what goes in and what gets left out. Collections, as ever, come to the rescue: they provide a convenient way of gathering the images I want to present and to sort through them, adding, rejecting, ordering as I want.

To the Web!

So, with some nice collections set up, it’s off to create some galleries. And hit the first problem: I want to create galleries, plural, but the Web module is only really geared to creating a gallery, singular, from any given set of images.

Still, let’s press on: maybe something will crop up.

Over to the left, we see a set of templates for creating our gallery

and up on the top right is a panel called Layout Style.

These panels are obviously the starting point for the gallery, so it’s worth spending a little while browsing the templates to find one that floats your boat.

I don’t really understand the interaction between these two panels, though. I’ll ignore the ‘Airtight’ options in the Layout Style panel – at the risk of sounding dismissive, they’re quite obviously not what I want. If you click on ‘Lightroom Flash Gallery’ it selects ‘Flash Gallery (default)’ in the Template Browser, and if you click on ‘Lightroom HTML Gallery’, it selects ‘HTML Gallery (default)’.

On the other hand, click on a template in the Template Browser, and it shows the relevant style in the Layout Style panel – something which is indicated in the browser itself (the name ends in ‘HTML’ if it’s an HTML template, otherwise it’s Flash) and in the preview pane.

I would expect the Layout Style panel to filter the templates, otherwise there doesn’t really seem a lot of point to it, apart from selecting styles that don’t have templates – but, then, are they really styles?

Moving on, I want my site to be mobile-compatible, so Flash isn’t really an option. That leaves me looking through the HTML templates for something that suits my needs.

There’s one called ‘Pure White – HTML’ that looks good: simple, uncluttered and lets the photos take centre stage. Just a bit of tweaking to get the details right, and we should be good to go.

There are several panels over on the right that I’m not going to go into: they’re covered in full detail elsewhere, and I’m mostly happy with the defaults, anyway.

So let’s just look at the first panel:

Straight away, this tells you something about the limitations of this module – it says ‘Site Info’, ‘Site Title’. It suggests to me that this is it; this is the site, not a part of it, but the whole thing. Oh, I know it says ‘Unsaved Web Gallery’ and ‘Create Saved Web Gallery’ up top there, but everything else belies that.

And then there’s ‘Contact Info’: an email address (or ‘Web link’… ermm, to where?). Seriously? That’s it? What about Twitter and Facebook? How can I point people at my blog’s RSS feed? And then there’s the issue of an ‘About’ page for my artist’s biography, and so on.

This is not looking good. Still, I can create/save different galleries, and I can Export… them to the hard drive, rather than Upload… them to a live site. Maybe I can construct the galleries that I want, export them and then use an HTML editing program to construct a wrapper that pulls them all together…

Whoa just a doggone minute, there. That’s not my job. <McCoy> Dammit, Jim, I’m a photographer, not a web designer. </McCoy>

Yes, I’m sure it could be done, if one had the skill and the inclination, but it all smacks very much of a huge fudge to overcome a serious failing.

Let’s face it.

It is a serious failing. Lightroom is a premier product aimed at professionals and I have to be frank here: the Web module is not up to snuff.

So where does it go wrong? Why is the Web module so inadequate in the context of the most useful program I possess?

In a word: The Filmstrip.

To be fair to Lightroom, it’s not easy to know how to map the filmstrip concept to a hierarchical website design. The rest of Lightroom is based around the idea of flattening out a set of images, wherever they physically sit on your hard drive. The analogy with old-s film is obvious (it’s called the ‘filmstrip’, duh!), but does it have to be extended to every module?

(Slight digression, bear with me.) Several years ago, there was a trend for presenting the UI of some software as a representation of a physical object – TV remotes, telephone handsets, and so on. All very cutesy, but… it’s a computer. Why hamstring its power by limiting it to the capabilities of a simpler device? I once saw a dialler application that allowed you to assign speed dial numbers to the buttons, but had no easy way to get at the other numbers. You could also dial by pressing the buttons, but not by using the keyboard. What gives? That’s pure form over substance.

(Back again.) I’m not suggesting that the filmstrip is in that league of silliness – quite the opposite; I love the filmstrip and use it a lot, but I can’t help but think that there’s some of that UI-by-analogy-with-something-else going on and it’s stifling the abilities of the program by extending into areas that it’s not appropriate to. There’s no equivalent of making a web site in darkroom-and-chemicals photography, so don’t push it. Consistency of UI is one thing, but you also need to know when to change things for the better. As Emerson put it: ‘a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds’.

So what’s the solution?

The filmstrip works great for Library, Develop, Map and so on, but for Web (and also for exporting images) it’s a bit limiting. I want another option. I already have the hierarchy I want in a collection set (or in my physical folder structure) – why can’t I use that information to guide the creation of the image galleries?

It shouldn’t be too difficult to extend the current templates to get extra information from collection or folder names and to construct a hierarchical site from the images contained in them. Yes, it means that there’s a disconnect between the Web module UI and, say, the Develop module UI, but there’s a disconnect between their purposes and workflows as well. It shouldn’t be too hard for the average user to shift paradigms (argh! I used that word – I feel violated) when the end purpose is so different.

The filmstrip works brilliantly when there’s a clear connection with a style of working (Grid view = contact sheets, for example) and I couldn’t live without it in the Develop module, but there is no natural analogy with any aspect of creating a website, so it shouldn’t be a part of that process.

The problem with this solution is, of course, that it still wouldn’t be good enough for constructing a professional website. It would, however, provide much more flexibility for those who just want a basic image gallery that’s divided into sections.

Conclusion

As far as using Lightroom as part of a professional web-creation strategy goes, it’s a non-starter. I’m sorry to say this about a program that I love dearly, but it doesn’t so much fall at the first hurdle as trip up out of the starting blocks.

In part 2, we’ll be looking at a plugin for Lightroom that purports to do the job. Looking at the Turning Gate website, everything seems to be there, so stay tuned to see how I get on.

Graham Douglas – Grey Dog Photography

We’re psyched to launch the XeL Education Center!

If you’re a new XeL Customer, or a prospective customer trying to get a feel for what XeL is, and how it differs from the abundance of free non-professional Presets out there, this is the place!

Simply put, here’s the knowledge bomb on how to take your workflow to the next level with all the power, simplicity, and flexibility that comes with X-Equals XeL – the Professional Standard in Film Emulation and post-processing in Lightroom 4.

Product Overview Video

Michael Gray walks you through the XeL:Color Product along with some sample workflows to get you started!

For the full HD experience, be sure to play the video at full screen!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_fF4LPHyk8

Need help with installation or support in general? We have you covered!

Installation of X-Equals Presets is a snap! … we even have a video that shows you how!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNUfA1Vatug

X-Equals XeL breaks free from the traditional approach to Lightroom presets, and that’s a GOOD thing!

… utilizing a modular approach that allows users to quickly and efficiently create images in a completely non-destructive RAW-based workflow.

How does that differ? … well here you go!

Understand XeL, and how it’s uniquely focused on bringing razor sharp precision to your workflow along with your favorite films:

• Embracing the Shadows with X-Equals XeL
• XeL – Reimagine Lightroom Presets
• XeL: Black & White – Getting the Best Results
• X-Equals XeL – Real World, Kick A** Results

How do we prepare for film emulation, and what you should consider when shooting for post-processing in Lightroom:

• Emulating Film in Lightroom
• Shoot for Success – Expose for Lightroom

Don’t have XeL yet?

Well, come on now! Let’s get you dialed in!

Comments, feedback, etc.

What should we be providing in the XeL Education Center to make sure you’re successful? Drop us a line!

|Brandon Oelling
X-Equals – Click. Download. Smile.

Are you still having trouble?

No problem, If you have any questions or need product support you can email us below.

Dodging and burning (or local exposure adjustment) is one of the fastest ways to improve your images, so it’s no wonder we use it a lot around here. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the books, and can do things like:

• Focus attention on the subject
• Shape and flatter the subject
• Increase dynamic range

We’ve covered the basics of Dodging and Burning before, so let’s jump right into some Lightroom 4 special sauce …

Custom Burning Brush

One of the problems with burning (or selectively darkening) the image is it can look unnatural.  The first step to avoiding this is to shoot for the dodge & burn.  Do this by composing your photograph with high contrast between the subject and the background.

85mm, f2.0

Next, make a custom adjustment brush that lowers exposure, increases contrast and darkens shadows.  These extra adjustments will help create a natural looking gradient in the image.

Use this brush to darken the image where appropriate (in this case the background).  Use the Tool Overlay command O to see the pattern your laying down.

Watch out for “hallowing” or unnatural gradients at the edges of the affected area. Zoom in, and using the erase brush, fine-tune your results until it looks good.

• Left – visible hallowing around dress
• Right – hallowing gone

Custom Dodge Brush

At this point you could be done with the image, but I like to dodge (or brighten) up my subjects so they really pop. Create a custom dodging brush that brings up the exposure, decreases contrast, and sharpens. This brush works especially well on people & skin. Dodge the subject up using the same method as for burning (above).

Check out the final image below and get the goods with a free download of our custom dodge and burn brushes.

Try it for yourself …

• Now download the sample brushes for free.
• Remember we have a kick ass set of XeL:Local Adjustments you can put to work in your workflow immediately!
• Want to learn more about Adjustments brushes and how to install them? Check out this blog post.

Eli Powell – Boulder Wedding Photographer