Adobe Lightroom 2.3 is now available as a release candidate from the Adobe Labs website here: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Lightroom_2.3

ACR 5.3 is also available from: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Camera_Raw_5.3

The release candidate status it’s one step up from a beta version – it means that it’s been through some testing, but it would benefit from additional testing on a variety of different machines.  It’s your opportunity to catch any bugs before it goes final, but it shouldn’t kill your machine.

New cameras: Nikon D3X, Olympus E-30.

It also fixes the Canon 5D MkII magenta shift on sRAW fileswhich was introduced with the Canon 1.0.7 firmware.

There’s a list of bug fixes in the readme file, but particularly notable are fixes (hopefully!!) for the memory issues that appeared in 2.2 for files with local adjustments.

There are also new languages supported: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, Italian, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish & Swedish.  There’s a little more work to do on the translations yet.

If you find any bugs, the Official Feature Request/Bug Report Form is just here.

Enjoy!

As we said in the last post, Lightroom’s integral backup simply takes a copy of your catalog and places it in dated subfolder, so restoring is a simple matter of opening that backup file.

However let’s exercise a little more caution… you wouldn’t want to risk damaging your last backup, so first, you’ll want to duplicate it and put it back in the right place.

Let’s assume your main catalog is stored at My Documents\My Pictures\Lightroom\Lightroom 2 Catalog.lrcat, and your existing catalog has somehow become corrupted, or you’ve deleted photos accidentally.

By default your backups would be stored at My Documents\My Pictures\Lightroom\Backups\dated folders\Lightroom 2 Catalog.lrcat.

First rename that main catalog, rather than deleting it, just in case you want to go back to it.  We’ll call it ‘Old Catalog.lrcat’ for the moment.

Now go into your last dated backup folder and select the Lightroom 2 Catalog.lrcat file (or whatever your catalog is called).  Copy it (Ctrl-C for Windows, Cmd-C for Mac) and go back to your main catalog folder where your catalog usually lives.  Paste your copy of the backup catalog (Ctrl-V for Windows, Cmd-V for Mac) into that main catalog folder.  Doing that copy/paste has left your backup catalog exactly where it was, but created a copy in the normal location.

Double click on that catalog to open in Lightroom.  If it works correctly, you can now delete ‘Old Catalog.lrcat’, and carry on working.

Lightroom is designed around a database, and all databases are at risk of corruption.  Lightroom’s catalog is no exception.  There are plenty of preventative measures in place, but these things happen.  Backups are absolutely essential.  You’d hate to lose all of your changes!

Hopefully you already have a sensible backup facility in place, but unless your backup system keeps different versions of each file, it’s still worth letting Lightroom’s integral backup run too.  Why?  Because otherwise you could end up accidentally overwriting a good copy of your catalog with a corrupted copy.  If you let Lightroom’s backup run too, then you’ll have uncorrupted copies of your catalog too.

Lightroom’s integral backup simply takes a copy of your catalog and places it in dated subfolder.  We’ll cover how to change the backup location, and how to restore backups, in future posts.

Don’t forget, Lightroom’s backup does NOT back up the photos.  You need to do that yourself.  My personal preference is for File Synchronization software – Vice Versa for Windows or Chronosync for Mac are my favourite.

This one catches all of us out at some time or other…

The white balance is perfect on photo A, so you sync the settings to photo B… but it doesn’t change.  So you try it again… and it still doesn’t change.  Why?

As Shot is the key.  If photo A is set to As Shot white balance, photo B will also be set to As Shot, not the same numerical values.

To solve it, select ‘Custom’ from the white balance dropdown, or shift the values slightly, and THEN sync with photo B, and your numerical values will then be copied.

I’ve had a number of emails in the last couple of days asking if there’s a free update to my version 2 book as Lightroom is now at version 2.2, so let me take this opportunity to clarify…

So far, the Lightroom 2.1 and 2.2 program updates have only fixed bugs and added cameras, and there have been no exciting new features added to add to the book, and the rest of the information is still correct, so there is no update at the moment.

The only main things that have changed:

• The new camera profiles were in beta when the book was written, and are now final.  They’re automatically installed now, but all of the related questions are still correct.
• The resizing algorithm has improved and no longer uses the Lanczos algorithm mentioned in chapter 8, but uses an intelligent bicubic algorithm depending on the original and output sizes.
• CS4 is now out and a dialog has appeared for those still using CS3, which I’ve covered in this blog post: http://www.lightroomqueen.com/blog/2008/12/18/lightroom-22-compatibility-with-cs3/

If Adobe do start adding features, then I will update the version 2 book, and it will be a free update for anyone who already owns it.

An email should go out, but they have a habit of being caught in spam filters.  I’ll also post notification of any updates here on the blog, which you can subscribe to using this link: http://www.lightroomqueen.com/blog/feed/.  If you don’t fancy listening the rest of my ramblings, you can subscribe just to the Book Updates feed using this link: http://www.lightroomqueen.com/blog/category/book-updates/feed/

Obviously version 3 will be a new book, which I’m already busy planning.  If you have any suggestions on improvements, I’d love to hear from you at victoria@victoriabampton.com

Excerpt from Adobe Lightroom 2 – The Missing FAQ

Usually a mismatch in colors is due to either incorrect color profile settings or a corrupted monitor profile.

For example, a ProPhoto RGB photo mistakenly rendered as sRGB will display as desaturated and flat.

This is a ProPhoto RGB photo correctly displayed as ProPhoto RGB:
This is a ProPhoto RGB photo incorrectly displayed as if sRGB:

First, check your color settings.
In Photoshop, go to Edit menu > Color Settings to view this dialog.

The RGB Working Space is your choice, but whichever you choose to use, you are best to set the same in Lightroom’s External Editor preferences and Export dialog. We’ll come to that in a moment.  [Which color space to use is a subject for another post!]

Selecting ‘Preserve Embedded Profiles’ and/or checking the ‘Ask When Opening’ for Profile Mismatches in that same dialog will help prevent any profile mismatches.

‘Preserve Embedded Profiles’ tells Photoshop to use the profile embedded in the file regardless of whether it matches your usual working space. ‘Ask When Opening’ for Profile Mismatches shows you a warning dialog when the embedded profile doesn’t match your usual working space, and asks you what to do.

You also need to set your External Editor settings in the Lightroom Preferences dialog. It is simplest to use the same color space as you have chosen in Photoshop.

You’ll also want to check the color space that you’re using in the Export dialog, and again, choose the same color space for photos you are going to open in Photoshop.

As long as your Photoshop and Lightroom color settings match, or you have Photoshop set to use the embedded profile, your photos should match between both programs.

Other mismatches when the color settings match correctly can also be due to a corrupted monitor profile, which you’ll remember from a previous post.

I’ve just had an email from photography-colleges.org, who have been compiling a list of their top 100 photography blogs.

Whilst not strictly Lightroom, we are all lovers of photography, and there are some interesting websites on this list, including some of my favourite Lightroom blogs.

Take a look at http://www.photography-colleges.org/the-top-100-photography-blogs/