The Lightroom Survival Kit 6 SAMPLE THORSTEN OVERGAARD ebook Extension Course 6th edition, May 2015
11 Foreword 14 Hardware Setup Calibration of Screen Light conditions in the working environment A note on Gamma Screen quality Dimmed laptop screens 26 Printing Printer quality Using a printing house for exhibition prints Inkjet print C- print Lambda print Calibration of printer Are you a printer or a photographer? 36 Colors A note on color names Color space Screen profile Adobe RGB 1998 srgb CMYK What is a color palette? srgb is the most safe choice Color control
43 Lightroom Real- time editing in Lightroom The purpose of Lightroom RAW DNG Camera profile Digital Camera Raw updates Definition of RAW/DNG Where is Lightroom on the computer? The catalog and the data The empty Catalog as your working space Lightroom Library/Editing 60 Setting up Lightroom Catalog Settings Preview Quality Metadata Automatically write changes into XML Backup of Lightroom JPG and RAW files side by side 66 Setting up Workflow Organizing in sequence with event numbers Organizing images on several hard drives
72 Importing images to Lightroom Choosing which location to put the pictures in Create a new folder Setting up Copyright info IPTC Checking files Rendering Previews Deleting the memory card after import 86 Editing pictures in Lightroom Histogram Navigating Zooming in on pictures White Balance Cropping Tilting Black & White Silver Efex Pro Star rating Color marking 2010 Process 2012 Process Adjusting individual colors in HSL Skin colors of Leica M9 vs. M240 Virtual Copy Copy and Paste previous Develop settings Using Presets srgb CMYK What is a color palette? 120 Lightroom Extras Understanding Lightroom Know where your files are Reset Spot Removal Noise Reduction Lens Correction Effects Graduated Filter Adjustment Brush View modes in Lightroom
133 Exporting from Lightroom The actual final product of using Lightroom Exporting images Export settings for web and high- resolution print Storing User Presets Exporting to Facebook, Flickr, SmugMug and Photoshelter Reorganizing folders and images Renaming a folder Moving images Media Pro 1 catalog Spotlight search to find pictures Export as Catalog Warning on Virtual Files Cleaning up Lightroom Remove Previews Remove images 154 Your Archive Your final images JPG or TIFF? Reading DNG/RAW in the future Apple Aperture Apple Photos Backup Cloud backup Apple Time Machine Spotlight
164 Media Pro 1 Digital Asset Management (DAM) Virtual Archive Media Pro Tutorial New Catalog Orientation in Media Pro 1 Projects Catalog Sets Marking with colors Marking with stars Maintaining unique file names Apple Photos 184 Rules for life Never let software think for you Only one original file Finish work Prepare for the unlikely 188 Adobe Photoshop Shadow/Highlight Hue/Saturation Skin tones Brightness/Contrast White Balance in Photoshop More life to an image Dodge and Burn Retouching dirt and dust Adjustment for print
213 Video tutorials Link to video tutorials on Vimeo 215 A final word Thank you! Comments and questions 217 Appendix Workshops How to survive Lightroom My other books Extension Courses Coffee & Leica around the world About Thorsten Overgaard 225 What is Copyright? The right to copy Facebook Instagram Twitter
AMATEURS SIT AND WAIT FOR INSPIRATION, THE REST OF US GET UP AND GO TO WORK. STEPHEN KING
Foreword By Thorsten Overgaard This is my extension course on workflow and how to use a RAW workflow tools as Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop and Media Pro 1. The valuable final product of this course is to set you up with a well- organized workflow that will enable you to get results, work fast and stay organized. It's based on my experiences and what works, boiled down to the minimum. I don't want to teach you what software can do; I want to teach you what you can do. The course is set up as a checklist for you to follow. If you have questions, e- mail me and ask, but else you will simply get the workflow right by using the checklist again and again. Not unlike when a pilot checks an airplane before takeoff.
Your feedback is not mandatory - but I would like to receive it. Feel free to mail me suggestions, questions and comments at thorsten@overgaard.dk Workflow seminar in Malmö, Sweden.
Hardware Setup
Calibration of screen By Thorsten Overgaard The image part with relationship ID rid14 was not found in the file. To calibrate means to set up an instrument (such as a computer screen) with the standards within a given technical field. A screen calibrator is an eye that you mount on the screen, and which gives information to a software application that runs a series of predefined colors on the screen, what the eye sees on the screen. Based on what the eye on the screen reports to the software that it sees, the software can know the differences between the colors sent to the screen and the actual colors displayed on the screen - and based on that difference the software issues a color profile for that specific screen: Telling the computer s graphic screen- card how it should in the future distribute the three main colors (red, green and blue) so that the colors shown on the screen are consistent with the colors in the files The profile the software creates is called ICC- profile which derives from International Color Consortium, an organization established in 1993 by a Xerox, Apple and others with a common purpose to standardize colors on computer equipment.
Screen calibrators cost from $150 and up. The more expensive ones can be used to calibrate printing machines, printers, projectors, etc. Recommended calibrators: X- rite i1display (Pro) or the X- rite ColorMunki Display is the color calibrator I would recommend. Don t overkill it; get one that does the screen and forget about all the other stuff unless you know what you want it for. Light conditions in the working environment Normally you use the calibrator and software set to the easiest, most automatic program where it simply runs itself. This has in fact shown to give the best results - especially these days where most screens don't have any external buttons to establish any settings. Software and the graphic screen card inside the computer control everything. (Continues in the Lightroom Survival Kit 6)
Printing
Printer quality By Thorsten Overgaard For most of us, the final image on the screen is the final one. We never print much of what we do. But some like to make prints and here is my advice on this. At the factory all inkjet- printers are set to perform a calibrated print when using original factory ink and approved paper. In theory most printers don t need any calibration to print correctly. There exist printers with 4-5 ink cartridges and some with 12 ink cartridges to obtain maximum accuracy in color printing. Some large printers come with mat and glossy black ink to be able to produce a traditional looking darkroom black and white print. Other printers (Epson for example) can use special ink tested to stay consistent for 100 years in spite of air, light and sun.
The signed prints I sell online and in galleries, I don t make myself. I use a professional printing house and have my prints made in a light- printing process known as C- Print or Lambda Print. It s photographic paper than can be glossy, matte or with silver in it. I prefer the matte finish that looks like it was made in a darkroom. That s how easy printing is for me: I show up at the printing house and sign my prints, and the printing house even pack and ship them for me! I don't sell homemade prints but often produce prints to my family and others. Therefore I use a cheap 150$- printer such as the Canon Pixma IP 7250 with 5 inkjet cartridges (Cyan/Magenta/Yellow/K (Black) + Large Black), Avery 2496 glossy 180g paper or any other 180g - 300g glossy inkjet photo paper which I can buy in the supermarket for 25$ per 100 sheets. This inexpensive setup allows me to make prints without having to consider if it is worth it. I can print 30 prints to my daughter s school just for the fun of it.
A big printer could be the Canon A3+ printer with original ink ($1,000) and an accompanying daylight box to judge the prints (as the one to the right, $1,200) and paper in the spitzenklasse where a print can easily cost between $2 and $10. As far as I know there are no printers that automatically check calibration, and my experience is that inkjet can run dry and deliver 10-20% less of one color. Inkjet printers not used regularly are the worst: Colors become uneven, but more importantly, the ink can dry out to a degree where you need to replace it. This is a costly thing to do; on large pro printers it's extremely expensive to change the whole set of ink, so if you don't use them every day or every week, you can be almost certain you ll need a set of new cartridges when you want to print.
Are you a printer or a photographer? By Thorsten Overgaard In printing one should consider how much money and knowledge one wants to invest in this area - and what knowledge and prints one could get from professional printing houses for the same cost. (Continues in the Lightroom Survival Kit 6) I had Genesis Imaging in London make this 160 x 110 cm print for me on gloss C- print and laminated onto aluminum board with a gloss surface as protection. I can t even start to imagine how I would do such a print myself. Having prints done by professional printers also solves another delicate problem, which is transport. I get prints made in the cities I have exhibitions so they can deliver the prints to the gallery.
Colors
Color space By Thorsten Overgaard One could easily be confused by screen calibration and choice of color space! But they're two different things: Screen calibration it the creation and use of a screen profile. Color space is the choice of a range of colors (or color palette) to work with, and which is invisible to the user: The srgb color space is a palette of colors; and one that is most widely used by cameras and Windows operating systems. The Adobe RGB 1998 color space is another palette of colors, but with more colors and nuances one can use to obtain more perfection. Obviously, most of us would choose the widest color palette possible, so as to have the widest range of colors at our disposal: The Adobe RGB 1998. For technical reasons it s not that simple. Remember when computer screens were only in black and white? Later we got a few colors, then a palette of 256 colors, and today we have millions. (Continues in the Lightroom Survival Kit 6)
Lightroom
The purpose of Lightroom By Thorsten Overgaard Lightroom translates RAW photo data into color photographs, enabling adjusting of exposure, color, details, cropping and export. Lightroom depends on camera profiles to tell it how to make the best result from each camera model.
Camera profiles are created and maintained by Adobe and are automatically offered for update to Lightroom users via their Digital Camera Raw. Soon after a new camera comes to market, Adobe will offer a profile for that camera and keep improving it with updates. Your computer will usually tell you when there are new updates available. A camera profile for a new camera usually comes some weeks or months after the new camera model has become available. New updated camera profiles may contain better skin colors, more precise red colors, less noise with high ISO, more precise EXIF data, etc.
Definition of RAW/DNG files: RAW files simply mean raw data from the camera. DNG is the same, but is an "Adobe Digital Negative". In both formats the original image remain intact and untouched, with your edits added to the file wither behind or in a file next to: In RAW the program creates a "side car" with the data on edits, usually a.xml file. In DNG the data are included in the file so you only see one file. It s important to understand that you can always return to the original image file. Editing and changes are added to the side car or behind in a separate place. Nothing is ever written over the original file. The purpose of Lightroom is to enable you as a photographer to translate RAW data into photos, select photos, perform corrections and editing, and then export final image files for use in print or web.
Where is Lightroom on the computer? The Lightroom catalog is in the folder.../user/pictures unless you specify you want it another place. And the image files will also go there unless you choose otherwise (and you should; more about that later)..lrcat is the actual catalog..lrdata is the previews and can be quite big if it is an old catalog with many files. You may normally not look that carefully at the size of the.lrdata file, but if you do you will see that it grows quite big very fast: With 20,000 images in Lightroom, the.lrdata alone will be about 125 GB. Even if you deleted the images from the computer or moved them to another catalog, the old catalog will maintain the previews. That s why you want to flush out previews when done with working on the images (I will tell how to do that later). The original pictures you downloaded to Lightroom are in a Folder in your hard drive. They are never in Lightroom. Some people think that if they copy Lightroom to another computer, they also copied the pictures. Not so.
What is a Catalog? By Thorsten Overgaard When you use Microsoft Word, you have the Microsoft Word software in your Applications folder and make a new Word document every time you want to make a document or letter. When you use Adobe Lightroom you have the Adobe Lightroom software in your Applications folder and make only one catalog that you keep adding photos to. You don t make a new catalog for new projects. You only have one catalog. Further: My workflow is that you keep this one Catalog as an empty workspace: You import new photos, edit them, export them and remove them from the computer and Lightroom Catalog so that you maintain an empty Catalog as your workspace. That Catalog has all the settings like you want them so you can get stuff done fast in the same manner.
The Lightroom Catalog in my view must be like a watchmakers desk: Clean and neat, with the tools, loupes and light in their certain places. When the watchmaker gets a new watch, he works on it, assembles it, delivers it and cleans his desk. The hotel manager has a clean desk so it looks pretty and he can help the people he meets with. He just has the telephone, computer and a empty piece of paper. He s ready. A professional kitchen works the same way: It s cleaned every night so it is completely ready and empty for next day. You will understand as you read on how I get things done and clean out my workspace. It s different than the idea of a Catalog than what Adobe promotes, which is to import everything into Lightroom and keep it there.
Importing to Lightroom By Thorsten Overgaard This step A to E is importing the memory card into Lightroom. A) Insert the memory card to import When you insert a memory card into the reader, Lightroom automatically detects that you will do an import and opens the Import dialog box. It will even check if the files have already been imported (and if they are, they are marked as previously imported): On the left side is chosen from where the new files come (usually from a camera card), and in the middle you choose Copy. On the right side you choose where you want the files to end up. (If the window doesn t automatically show up, you have to click Import in the down left corner.)
B) Choosing which location to put the pictures in You create a new folder on the hard drive and in LR by clicking the arrow in the upper right side and then choose Other Destination... You then create a new folder, with the job number (event number) and a title for the images you are importing:
C) Put it in one folder (not by date) Lightroom and other software have the annoying belief that they have to organize everything by date. So you have to actively - once and for all - choose not to do so because you have your own system where you name your own folders and sub folders. So choose "into one folder" and Lightroom will obey so in the future: This way your event folder will contain all photos in one event folder, and not divided into several sub folders. Lightroom remembers this choice Into one folder next time you import. (Continues in the Lightroom Survival Kit 6)
Media Pro 1
Digital Asset Management By Thorsten Overgaard To keep your pictures organized and hand, you may need DAM software (DAM = Digital Asset Management). Many of the DAM software can keep track of PDF files, MP3 files, movies and many other digital things. The DAM software I would recommend is Media Pro 1 from www.phaseone.com. It was originally the iview Media Pro, then it was bought by Microsoft and renamed Microsoft Expression Media, and finally it was bought in 2011 by Phase One and rebadged as Media Pro 1. Virtual archive, not real time The main characteristic of DAM software is that it keeps track of digital assets. The software doesn't move them or alter them; it doesn't tamper with the integrity of your image files. Remember, you have to be in charge of your files. Don t leave it to software to keep you updated or clean out old files or any of that which sounds so nice and easy.
THORSTEN OVERGAARD THE LIGHTROOM SURVIVAL KIT VERSION 6.0 That a catalog is virtual also has the advantage that it works faster because it doesn't actually hold the files, it just know where the files are and can show previews of them. Once you have downloaded a 30- day trial version of Media Pro 1, run the tutorial to get an idea how it works (you can buy a serial number for it later and your trial version will be the actual working program): 2011 2015 by Thorsten Overgaard. All Rights Reserved.
Media Pro 1 tutorial By Thorsten Overgaard This is the Media Pro 1 tutorial: A) Open the image database and choose File à New Catalog. Save that new catalog as for example Main Image Catalog in the Pictures folder on your computer. B) Drag and drop a folder of final JPG files into the catalog window. You will see a small + on green background by the cursor when you drag them. Then drop the folder there. Media Pro 1 creates previews of all the images now. You will see that Media Pro 1 also reads keywords, copyright info, captions, camera data and more from the files. (More in the Lightroom Survival Kit 6)
Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop By Thorsten Overgaard Photoshop has becomes a program less and less used by photographers. The fast workflow of Lightroom where you handle a series of images is faster than a single image at a time in Photoshop. Photoshop is a semi- expensive program to have for the few details you may want to fix. You can sign up for the Adobe Creative Cloud and maybe you can see an advantage in doing a subscription so it includes Photoshop CC (Creative Cloud). It s best of course to make such perfect images that all you need is Lightroom. But in any case, here are some tricks to use in Photoshop. (Continues in the Lightroom Survival Kit 6)
What is Copyright? By Thorsten Overgaard Copyright is often misunderstood, but is rather simple. It s the right to make copies. When you buy a book, music download, a painting or signed photograph, you buy just that. You have not become owner of the work itself, but of a copy. If you have bought a photograph to use in a magazine or in an advertisement, you have bought the right to use it for that purpose. The price is usually set for that specific use (based on size, circulation and the period of use). Buying a copy of a work, or even an original painting, does not make you the owner of the intellectual work itself. The artist and owner of the intellectual work continue to own the right to license the work into further copies. When people say that for example Facebook owns your work when you post it, people who haven t read the conditions misguide them. What you allow most social services like Twitter, Facebook, Leica Fotopark, etc. is that you will not sue them when your work is shared within that social network. If and when for example a newspaper take a photo from your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter account and print it in their newspaper, it is a copyright infringement: You own the work and the fact that you have allowed Facebook to show it within the Facebook.com structure, does not allow anyone to copy your work without asking or paying for it.
In social sharing where you share a link to a post on Facebook, you are sharing the actual Facebook structure (which holds the picture). Deep linking is when a newspaper or other link to the actual image and show it on their page. This it in fact copying your work, even it is the original file on for example your website they show: But they show it as if it was any other photo on their website. Many news media have misunderstood the rules of copyright and think that if they quote Facebook or Twitter as the source, it is ok to take a screen dump, or copy the actual file to their own server and show it on their own website again. But no one is allowed to copy your work other than you who have the copy right (most news media knows but prefer to save money by pretending to be unknowingly of this but will sue you if you copy their newspaper). Copyright on digital download and intellectual property (ideas, patents, poems, etc) is not much different from buying a chair. You can buy a chair and you can let your friends sit in it, but you cannot make a copy of the chair, and you can most certainly not start copying the chair to sell it to third part! Printing this ebook This ebook is your copy. You are allowed to make prints for you own use, and in some countries copyright allow you to make several copies for the household, as well as backing it up. Your friends are free to visit my website and read the hundreds of pages that are there for free. But if you gift them a copy of this ebook, you are in fact liable to pay for the copies. Quoting this ebook You are also allowed to refer to this work and even quote it, but only in limited quotes (quote means to repeat or copy out a group of words from a text or speechs, typically with an indication that one is not the original author). Thorsten Overgaard
The Lightroom Survial Kit The Lightroom Survival Kit is exactly what the name says. A manual and guide how to survive Lightroom: How to make high quality photos without having to sit in front of the computer more than necessary. I want to give you a basic understanding of what it s about, and how to ensure that your images are preserved for the future. See more info online à