Thinking about DNG

I guess I need to get out more…or I have too much time on my hands.  Here I am, going through my image library, wondering what happened to my good intentions about using the DNG format for my stored RAW files.

Back in the summer of 2007 I jumped on the Lightroom train and made some significant improvements to the way I managed my image libraries.  Nearly three years later I am working pretty much the same way…with a couple of exceptions.

The biggest thing I haven’t followed through with is the use of the DNG file format.  On paper it really seems like a good idea.  Especially for an information/data/asset management geek like myself.  The three big positive features for me are:

1. Open file format – it doesn’t rely on any single company to ensure I will still be able to read my files in 20 years (anyone remember Kodak photocd format?)

2. No sidecar files – metadata is stored inside the DNG rather than in a separate file.  Personally I think this is a good thing – one less file to delete by accident and a lot less files to backup.

3. File size – in general DNG files are smaller than the manufacturer’s proprietary formats (e.g. CR2 or NEF) due to a better compression algorithm.  This is now becoming more important to me due to higher pixel counts and ever larger RAW files (my trusty old Canon 1D mkIIN RAW files are about 8mb, whereas my new Canon 7D files are about 24mb…).

So it seems that I really should make the change and start converting those files to DNG…

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Lightroom 3 beta 2 resources

Here is a quick list of links to resources about the Lightroom 3 Beta 2…

Jeffrey Friedl’s blog has a quick overview and details on his multitude of plug-ins.

Victoria ‘The Lightroom Queen’ Bampton has her traditional what’s new post.

Rob Sylvan has posted about his favourite features over on Lightroomers.

Ian Lyons has written an extensive post on the new features.

Richard Earney writes about the features he values most.

Sean McCormack has covered the main features on the Lightroom-blog.

John Beardsworth covers his favourites.

Gene McCullagh started his coverage at Lightroom Secrets.

Gilles Theophile has a complete overview in french.

Scott Rouse has his thoughts on the Lightroom Lab.

Official Adobe resources:

The Lightroom 3 Beta 2 release notes.

The Labs Lightroom 3 page.

The Lightroom 3 user forum.

Tom Hogarty’s official announcement.

Lightroom 3 Beta help pages.

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Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta 2 has arrived!

Adobe has announced the release of a second beta of Lightroom 3 (download it here).  This comes five months after the first beta was released and promises a good selection of new features and further improvements in speed and image quality.

Having a  second beta release is a real contrast to Apple’s secretive approach to developing and releasing products (e.g. Aperture 3).  Adobe say that more than 350,000 photographers downloaded the first beta, allowing them to get valuable feedback on the new and improved features.  I think this feedback loop has really benefited the product.

The highlights in this beta release for me are:

• Luminance noise reduction
• Support for managing video files
• Tethered shooting support for Canon and Nikon cameras
• Improvements to the import dialog

Click through for more information on the changes in Adobe Lightroom 3 beta 2 (Lr3B2).

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Before I go on, I should remind you that this is still beta software, released by Adobe to get feedback on the new features and performance of the product.  Make sure you are working with copies of your photos and have a good back-up of any data you work on with Lr3B2.

Noise reduction

Lightroom 2 didn’t have the best reputation for image quality with some of the internet pixel peepers, especially if you pushed the camera beyond it’s ISO comfort zone.

Adobe have been working hard on this and I am very pleased with the new improved noise reduction controls and general step-up in image quality overall.

To test this out Lr3B2, I re-processed one of my Whip-poor-will images.  This was created in near total darkness, using car headlights as the sole source of light.  I pushed my old Canon 1D mkIIN right to its ISO limit at 3200 and was working at shutter speeds of 1/13 second.

Now I know that ISO 3200 is not that extreme on modern bodies, but it really is pushing the limits on my aging 1D mk2N – bare in mind that I try to avoid going over ISO 400 with it!

I ran the image through Lr3B2, fiddling a little with the noise controls and I am amazed at the results!  It significantly cleaned up the high levels of grain in the background whilst retaining good definition in the feathers and ‘hairs’ around the beak.

Although I would prefer to manually and selectively clean up an extreme image like this in Photoshop with the Neat Image plug-in, I can see that my more typical images are not going to need their routine round of noise reduction in Neat Image any more.  Which is excellent news and a step removed from my workflow.

Video files

I know a lot of photographers were not that excited by the inclusion of video in their DSLRs but there are equally a lot who are very excited by this change in technology.  So I imagine there is going to be mixed opinions on this new feature…anyone remember when Flickr introduced video?

I do shoot a little video, not so much in the past couple of years but this is a welcome addition.  As well as ‘traditional’ video, I create a bit of time-lapse, so the big thing for me is that I can now manage final time-lapse video files along side the original photos – yet another simplification of my workflow.

Combine this with Sean McCormack’s timelapse preset, you can create and manage time-lapse video without really having to leave Lightroom.

Tethered image capture

All I can say is – hooray!  Finally I can avoid the rather fragile set-up of running the Canon software and monitoring a directory to import the photos ‘live’ into Lightroom.  I have only played with this briefly with some table-top macro fun but have plans to test this, quite literally, out in the field.  I’ll post more when I have it.

Import Dialog

Adobe have made quite a few changes to the import dialog, most minor but all really improve the ‘experience’.  Most significant for me was the fact that it now waits for you to select a folder before heading off to check for images and remembers where you were last time you imported.

Other improvements

Publish has a couple of tweaks, including allowing you to specify a target file size and support for uploading original video.

One of the bigger changes in develop is updates to the contrast curve.  As well as the original curve controls, Lr3B2 now allows you to alter it at specific points – very much like Photoshop.

Finally, the slightly confusing concept of process versions has been updated.  The biggest change is that the indicator has been moved and is much more prominent in the lower right of the image (rather than on the histogram).

Any more?

Yes there are plenty more changes – I suggest you look through the release notes and read through the extensive coverage that will be published by the Lightroom community over the coming few days.

I’ll also be adding more info over the next few days…

Click here for more on Lightroom 3 Beta

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Lightroom 3 Beta – export to zip

Just a quick post – my ‘Export to Zip’ plug-in designed for version 2.x seems to work just fine in Lightroom 3 Beta. Let me know if you have any problems!

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Lightroom 3 Beta – Save photos to the cloud

One of the new features in Adobe Lightroom 3 beta (Lr3B) is the Publish services.  These provide a new way to ‘export’ images from your catalog, but also keep track on which images have been published where and if they have been changed and need to be re-published.

This also struck me as a great way to get my files easily backed up onto ‘the cloud’.  Click through to find out more.

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Overview of publish services

Before we get all excited about saving our photos online, lets take a quick look at what publish services do. Rather than redo the work myself, I’ll point you at Gene McCullagh’s excellent write-up of the Publish to hard disk: Lightroom 3 Beta Publish Services - Part 1.

What do I mean by ‘the cloud’?

For the purposes of this post, I just mean online storage rather than anything more fancy.  There are a fair few services out there – dropbox, drop.io etc and dedicated online backup solutions such as carbonite, jungle disk etc.

I am going to concentrate on dropbox for this example.

Why?

It is free, and you get a couple of gigabytes storage.  They also keep a months worth of incremental backups of your files for you, so you can go back in time to recover a changed or deleted file.

First step - get Dropbox and set it up

- Go to www.getdropbox.com and create your own account (if you sign up using that link I get extra free space on my account).

- Install dropbox on your computer, following their instructions

- On your desktop, go to My Dropbox (PC) or Dropbox (Mac) and create a new folder called “Lightroom Photos”

- If you login to your account on www.getdropbox.com, you should see this new folder in the files tab

Setup Lightroom 3 Beta

- Open Lightroom Publishing Manager by clicking on setup alongside ‘Hard Drive’ in the Publish Services panel or right click and ‘create another hard drive connection’ if you have already configured the first one

- Create the new hard Drive connection, call it something like ‘Dropbox’ and set the export location to the ‘Lightroom Photos’ folder you created earlier in Dropbox.  You can then set the other options as you require.  For a backup I set the file to be ‘Original’ and stuck with the original filename.

- With these settings saved, you can start to add images you want copied to Dropbox by dragging and dropping them onto the new ‘Lightroom Photos’ folder.

How do they get onto ‘the cloud’?

Once you have some photos in the ‘Lightroom Photos’ folder in Lr3B, you can publish them to dropbox by selecting the folder and clicking the Publish button.

Doing this creates the photos in the ‘Lightroom Photos’ folder in My Dropbox and they will be ‘copied’ to Dropbox on the internet in the background.  This all happens outside of Lightroom, so you can carry on working as normal.

It will take a while for your files to be copied up to Dropbox, depending on how many and how big they are.

What next?

A great feature of the Publish Services is that it keeps track of when you change a file that has been published.  The next time you look in the Lightroom Photos folder, it will list the files that need to be updated.  All you have to do is press Publish again and they will get updated.

Can I automate any of this?

Yes and no. The folders in Publish Services are very similar to collections, so you can create smart folders that automatically populate based on the rules you set.

For example, I use star ratings – 5 stars for my best photos.  By creating a Published Smart Folder that gets all photos that have 5 stars, I can back-up my best photos to online storage with a single mouse click.

However, it is not currently possible to automatically trigger publishing the files…so you have to remember to manually publish the folder.

and finally…

This is only the start of what you can do with Publish services. Dropbox isn’t the only service like this, anything that has a virtual ‘folder’ on your computer can be configured in the same way.

There is also much more you can do with this on the Dropbox side – recover old versions of files, share photos with people etc.

Whilst not an ideal backup solution, it is one easy way of securely saving your most precious files away from your PC.

Click here for more on Lightroom 3 Beta

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