Lightroom 3 FAQ

With the release of Lightroom 3 the other day from the folks over at Adobe – I’ve had an influx of several repeating questions.  While I’ve replied to (hopefully) everybody, it’s useful to note those questions and the responses here as well for my first ever:

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Frequently Asked Questions

1.  I tried the tethered capture, but Lightroom does not appear to let me adjust shutter speed, aperture or ISO with my (fill in your camera body type).  Is this model not supported?

Answer:  The tethered capture is only intended as a capture function.  The display shows you the shutter, aperture and ISO, but you cannot make those adjustments on the computer – that must be done at camera.

2.  Will Lightroom 3 upgrade both my catalogs from LR2 and the beta?

Answer: My understanding is that Lightroom 3 will automatically upgrade your LR2 catalog for you.  Once that operation is done, you can then import the catalog from the beta edition to your new catalog in LR3 to bring everything in together.

3.  What if I don’t want Lightroom 3 to upgrade my catalog?  Can I stop it from doing that?

Yes, on first launch you will be prompted to either upgrade your LR2 catalog or to start a new one.

4.  Should I get Lightroom 3 or Cs5 – I can’t afford both.

Answer:  If you are just diving in now, I would recommend starting with Lightroom 3.  It has so many features and the strength and robustness of it really has diminished the need for round trips to Photoshop when you are talking about photography.  Of course if you have serious restoration work, clone work, or need to use features like layers, then Photoshop is a requirement, but I would classify people in this group as graphic artists, not photographers.  If you’re upgrading, both do not have to be done simultaneously.  Go with one (Lightroom) and the other a few months down the road (Cs5).  Or, use the sidebar here to get 30% off the combo pack!

5.  Will there be any contests here on your Flickr Monthly Giveaway Series so I can participate for a copy of Lightroom 3?

No comment! 🙂  In all seriousness, I’d love to, but cannot speak for Adobe – we’ll see what happens in the coming weeks.  Don’t be expecting it, but don’t write it off either! 🙂

Got any of your own questions about Lightroom 3 not covered above?  Feel free to sound off in the comments! Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Lightroom 3 Learning Center!

The news is just out the door from the folks at Adobe, and Kerry Garrison from Camera Dojo asked me to help out with preparing some completely free videos and first look tutorials on how to use everything that Lightroom 3 has to offer.  It’s a pretty kick butt content area, and I’ve covered 3 or 4 of the 12 videos we’ve put out so you can get insights from the both of us.  We’re pretty excited about this new resource that Kerry has set up, so make sure you stop over to Camera Dojo and check it all out.  Kerry even has shared the videos through YouTube too, so you can share the content with others from there too!

We cover everything new in LR3, including:

  • Tethered Shooting
  • Exporting to Video
  • Lens/Perspective Correction
  • Adding Grain
  • Sharpening and Reducing Grain
  • Multi-image Print Layouts
  • Enhanced Watermarking
  • Vignettes
  • The new and improved Import Tool
  • The newly improved and feature rich Develop Module and Pre-sets
  • The features of the Local Adjustment Brush

…and more!  So, stop in, enjoy the tutorials, and let us know what you think – what’d you like?  What do you want to see more of?  Sound off with your own thoughts in the comments on his site and here!  Enjoy the brand new Lightroom 3 Learning Resource Center, and tell your friends!

Five Best Kept Secrets of Photoshop CS5

By now you should know all about the latest and greatest features of Photoshop CS5.  People have been talking until the cows come home about Content Aware Fill, Puppet Warp, and the other “sexy” features of CS5 (and they are pretty awesome, sure).  Heck, you may even know about some of the JDI (just do it) features, but there is still so much under the hood of CS5 that the gurus and pros haven’t even discussed yet.  After taking some time and tinkering around inside CS5, here are five features that I am surprised are not getting more “air time”…I am calling them:

The 5 Best Kept Secrets of Photoshop CS5

1.  Sharing Your Monitor – In Cs5, the feature has been added where you can share your monitor with others so you can show people exactly what you are looking at.  I can totally see this as a feasible solution for clients that are remote to your location, and travel costs need to be kept down.  Even training seminars could be conducted this way…imagine sitting at your computer at work (or home) and watching an instructor teaching you live from their own desktop!  Very cool!

Sharing Your MOnitor

2.  Refine Edge Backgrounds – I know, refine edge has been around for a while, and we are used to seeing the “marching ants” around our selections…but now Adobe has gone and added different backgrounds to help you better make refinements to selections.  The options are the traditional Marching Ants, and several new options like Overlay, Black, White, and Layers (my favorite).  This is a huge time saver when trying to make selections from within a photo!

Refine Edge Backgrounds

3.  Paste in Place – Another godsend!  After making selection refinements and masking off your layer selection, it’s now super easy to take another image from your clipboard and paste it directly into the active document.  Done with a simple keyboard shortcut: Shift+CTRL+V (Shift+Command+V on the Mac)

Paste in Place

4.  Cache Settings – are now adjustable to your own library preferences.  If you have mostly smaller sized images in your library, you can tweak the cache to Tall and Thin to accommodate your particular editing and library needs.  Likewise, if you are used to working with larger files, then you can customize Photoshop to Big and Flat for those purposes as well.

Cache Settings

5.  Stroke Settings – I cannot remember if this was in CS4, primarily because I didn’t have much interest in CS4, but now having used CS5 to a pretty decent degree, I am so glad this is now black instead of read by default, so I am including it here.

stroke

There’s my five “best kept secrets” of Cs5!  It takes some time to kick the tires and check out everything that new programs have to offer, so be sure you download a trial copy from Adobe.  It’s free!  Have you downloaded your trial yet?  What are your favorite “under the hood” features?  Any that you feel aren’t getting enough press or coverage in the photo circles?  Sound off in the comments!  In the meantime, don’t forget to step away from the computer periodically and take pictures! 🙂  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

It's Official – CS5 has been released!

Yup, the day it became available for purchase/download, the trials also became available – a first for Adobe!  I’ve already downloaded it and am starting to play with it for the first time (was not a beta tester).  Suffice to say, it’s pretty slick and yes, as I said yesterday, I am getting the upgrade!  Rather than show you screen shots and pore over the list of new features which has been done ad infinitum, I did a short video of some of the settings I like to adjust on an initial install.  So, here is that video straight from YouTube!

The Easter Egg had some cool trivia too. For instance – does anyone (outside Adobe) know how many babies were born to members of the team during production? WHo is the queen of the tenth floor? Is the wizard still there? If so, where is he now? Neat little nuggets just waiting to be discovered all in CS5!  Got the answers or your own nuggets?  Sound off in the comments! 🙂

Also, a final reminder about the April giveaway – some lucky participant will win an Expo Disc from the folks over at Expo Imaging.  Get your balance-themed photos in before midnight tonight to have a chance at winning!  Here’s the link:  April Giveaway

Adobe CS5 FAQ

Ever since Adobe announced the impending release of the latest Creative Suite 5, there have been many questions circulating in various online communities and outlets.  Although I was not one of the beta testers, I’ve been following the developments rather closely, and have seen a lot of questions repeated over and over.  Many of the answers to these questions I’ve put together from reading various reliable outlets, including Adobe web pages, reading content from Adobe folks blogs, and from the fountain of information available to me as a NAPP member (and if you’re not a NAPP member, you should consider becoming one – it’s probably one of the best deals out there, including educational materials, discounts, and a ton of other member benefits)!

So, without further ado – here’s the most common questions I’ve seen on Adobe Creative Suite 5:

1.  I own  ***** – can I upgrade to CS5?

Pick your product, it doesn’t really matter too much if it’s a single product upgrade (not part of a suite).  If you want to upgrade  to Photoshop, CS5, here’s the list of products that are eligible for the upgrade path to CS5, courtesy of Adobe (I added the product to my shopping cart, and got this list of eligible products and the pricing path (upsell versus an upgrade):

  • Photoshop Elements 6, 7, or 8 on Windows – (upsell = $599)
  • Photoshop Elements 4, 6, or 8 on Mac  – (upsell = $599)
  • Photoshop CS4, CS3, or CS2 (Regular or Extended) – upgrade = $199

2.  What if I purchased CS4 recently – do I have to pay for the upgrade to CS5 now too?

While there is no official “window” from Adobe, all indicators suggest that if you have recently purchased CS4, you may be able to get an upgrade.  Some sites claim the window is between certain dates such as April 12th and August 10th, but I’ve not been able to verify this information independently so the site is not linked here

3.  What about Lightroom – can I upgrade to Cs5 from that since it’s part of the Adobe Photoshop family?

No.  Although there are similarities, Lightroom is a different software path than the Creative Suite, and you cannot upgrade from LR to CS5 anymore than you could upgrade a Dell to a Mac

4.  Speaking of Macs, can I upgrade my Windows software to a Mac equivalent or vice versa?

Adobe does allow for this in what is called a “cross-grade”.  You must sign a release that states you have destroyed the other media, and pay a small fee (I think it’s something like $20) to do this.

5.  What about converting from one Suite of products to another, or converting to a single product?

While I don’t have the space to cover extensive details on the many options, and this is not official Adobe policy (I could not find anything specifically addressing all the possible conversions), I think it’s a safe assumption that you can downgrade from a more expensive suite to a lesser expensive suite or product, but not vice versa.  So, say for instance you had the Master collection.  It is likely that you could downgrade that to a web collection or a design premium.  It is also likely that if you had a suite of products, you could downgrade to a single product within that suite.  However, adding additional products to your existing ownership for free is not likely.  As the old saying goes, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

6.  Are there any discounts available?

Of course there are – and if you are an eligible member of any one of a number of communities, you are eligible for discounts on products from Adobe.  The most common ones I know of include educational discounts, governmental agencies, and NAPP.  The other question that usually arises from the “discount” one is whether you can apply multiple discounts, and the answer here is no…Adobe does restrict you to one discount per purchase, so if you are a NAPP member and also a teacher or college student, you cannot apply both discounts.  Pick the one that gives you the best savings, and be happy to are eligible – many people are not.

7.  So, where do I purchase CS5?

You can’t yet – the announcement that Adobe made was kind of a teaser, to build excitement and to sort of “ramp up” for the eventual release date.  It’s all part of the marketing, hype, and advertising of upcoming products.   Also, keep in mind that Adobe, like any other software developer, has approved channels for distribution.  So, when it does become available, make sure you find a reseller in your area through their partner page.

8.  When will it be available for purchase?

Well, you can pre-order it any time you want.  But if you want an official release date, take a seat with everyone else outside of Adobe headquarters, because that information is not available (that I can find anyway).  There are several indicators that suggest the release will be in early to mid-May based on their history (Adobe usually does product releases on about an 18 month cycle, or ever year and a half) with the Creative Suite of products.

9.  What are the differences in all the packages?

Excellent question!  This is the one that vexes a lot of people, but thankfully, Adobe has put together a comparision page that not only show syou the products that go into each package, but the retail cost of each.  Rather than regurgitate all that information here in some confusing chart, simply bookmark this link:  Adobe Product Comparison Chart

10.  Are you going to upgrade?

Yes I am.  I will probably not be an early adopter, primarily because I have a couple other purchases to make first (hardware, a lens, and some lighting gear), but the advancements in CS5 are probably among the most significant of any version in the last 7 years!  I may also need to upgrade my computers to handle the  processing requirements.

That’s it – the top ten questions I’ve seen (and been asked) about Creative Suite 5!  Got your own questions?  I may not have the answers, but I can either give you my best guess, or pass the question on to someone who may know the answer, so feel free to sound off in the comments.  Also, if I got anything wrong, or if you can shed additional light, all contributions are welcome!

Happy shooting all and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

1:45:57

You may think the subject is a typo or some sort of gibberish, but it’s not – that’s the length of the latest podcast that just went live over at PLM!  Kerry Garrison (of Camera Dojo notoriety)  is fresh back from Hawaii and I am back from a long set of downtime from a pretty yucky head cold, so we decided to join forces and cross-publish!  For our purposes here, consider it LDP #43!  You can grab the feed from LPD or iTunes! Continue reading “1:45:57”

First Lightroom then CS5!

Yesterday Adobe shared the news that they were releasing a second Beta of the upcoming Lightroom 3 – and it’s got a lot of cool new features for us to try out in this public beta, including managing video, point curve, tethered shooting, luminance noise control and much more.  Today, I understand that Adobe has made yet another software announcement:

Creative Suite 5 will launch on April 12th!

Since I just got wind of this late last night, I don’t have a lot of details on the products (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc.) but there are some sneak peek videos over on their launch site, and Adobe is encouraging folks to follow the hashtag #cs5 on Twitter.  Evangelists like Terry White, Julianne Kost, and many more will be talking about various aspects of the suite of products, highlighting some of the snazzier features and functions.  It looks pretty cool so far, and I think I am probably sold for a couple of reasons:

  1. Indesign – As you know, I like to write, and I am putting more and more content out in PDF and eBook form.  The ability of InDesign to assist me in that regard to put together professional looking material and to help with layout is well worth it.
  2. Photoshop – I am still on CS3, and I did not do the upgrade to CS4 knowing that I would probably upgrade every other iteration.  So, now is the time to upgrade.
  3. Business Catalyst – I’d not heard of this, but the improved layout for the CB store sounds appealing by using this software interface rather than hacking through code all the time.  Will want to check this out!
  4. Dreamweaver – An old school coder, I’ve always used text-based editors because I was a “purist” of sorts.  With the development of HTML5, the new features of CSS and XHTML, there’s a lot to get up to speed on, and when I want to just put something out to the web, Dreamweaver is becoming more and more of a consideration.

Here’s the launch page for all the detailed information on the new CS5 Suite:  Have you checked out some of the features of the CS5 suite yet?  What do you like?  Are you going to upgrade or take the plunge?  Sound off in the comments with your thoughts and feedback!

Last but not least – don’t forget that we are in the final week for the Cheetah Quickstand Giveaway – share your photos over on the Flickr Contest Thread!

Lightroom 3 Beta 2

As teased a few hours ago (Mon night – see previous post), Adobe has released a second beta of the forthcoming Lightroom 3.  Since there’s not much out there on it, I figured I’d give it a whirl to share a couple screenshots of what you can expect to see. Here’s the Beta 2, installed on the Mac: Continue reading “Lightroom 3 Beta 2”

Lightroom 3 adds video!

Extra Extra, read all about it!  Adobe has announced the second beta release of Lighroom 3!  For the first time ever that I know of, there is a second round of beta testing for an Adobe product that it has released to the public.  With even more improvements and performance enhancements, the latest release of Lightroom 3 is very exciting!

Probably the most exiting feature is the addition of video management! Now keep in mind, you can’t edit videos in Lightroom (yet), but given the movement of photography and videography toward convergence, this is not surprising.  In fact, as I recall, Tom Hogarty alluded to this when he interviewed on the podcast last year!  Those guys at Adobe are pretty impressive, with R&D having that much lead time!  If only I had caught the innuendo then!  🙂

Here’s the full (unedited) feature set from the Adobe Labs website:

  • Improved performance throughout the application for faster importing and loading of images
  • Native tethered shooting support for select Nikon and Canon DSLR cameras
  • Luminance noise reduction has been added to the previous color noise reduction improvements available in the first public beta for outstanding overall high ISO quality
  • Support for importing and managing video files from DSLR cameras for better overall photographic workflow control
  • Improvements to the import experience in the first beta to reflect public feedback
  • Improved watermarking functionality from the first beta to reflect public feedback

Lightroom 3 beta 2 builds on the enhancements introduced in the first Lightroom 3 beta release:

  • Brand new performance architecture, building for the future of growing image libraries
  • State-of-the-art noise reduction to help you perfect your high ISO shots
  • Watermarking tool that helps you customize and protect your images with ease
  • Portable sharable slideshows with audio—designed to give you more flexibility and impact on how you choose to share your images, you can now save and export your slideshows as videos and include audio
  • Flexible customizable print package creation so your print package layouts are all your own
  • Film grain simulation tool for enhancing your images to look as gritty as you want
  • New import handling designed to make importing streamlined and easy
  • More flexible online publishing options so you can post your images online to certain online photo sharing sites directly from inside Lightroom 3 beta (may require third-party plug-ins)*

For all the details and more info, including the download link (it’s free!), visit: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/

More pano testing…

As I continue with various software programs to test pano quality, I tried another application today, and the results were actually pretty good considering.  I used the native PhotoMerge function from my Photoshop Cs3 Extended, and I must say that as far as panos go, the results are nice.  The native functionality adds a shorter workflow for when you need to clean up minor details (since you are already in PS), and no worrying about control points.  The downside is that you are going to lose a little more in post production cropping simply because Photoshop can’t match all the control points that dedicated panorama programs can.  Nevertheless, it was a fun exercise.

For those of you that read my previous post that had panoramas in it (“The Moment it…Oops”) you’ll notice this is a different picture, and in all fairness, I should note that this had more images in it, and I was using a different lens during capture.  But, when I get down to the nitty gritty and review all the programs side by side, it will be the same image.  This one was from our recent Denver Photo Walk group outing to RMNP that I had talked about last Friday here on the blog.  Thoughts, comments, feedback and critiques are always welcome, and since the blog doesn’t really work well with displaying panoramas, if you click the photo below, you’ll be taken to a full (web size anyway) image where you can see all the details!  Enjoy! 🙂

RMNP Panorama

Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!