There seems to have been a recent flurry of plug-in releases, with many being real time-savers, and adding great new functionality to Lightroom. Here’s a few of the latest additions for you to explore:

SLR’s with video have quickly become popular, but until now, Lightroom hasn’t had the facility to import or manage those video files along with your photos. Jeffrey Friedl has done a great job of incorporating that into Lightroom, with his Video-Asset Management plug-in.

You’ll also want to explore his many other plug-ins, including uploads to SmugMug, Flickr, ZenFolio, Picasa Web, and Facebook. He’s also the author of my favourite Metadata Wrangler tool, GPS tools, and a few others besides.

Tim Armes, author of the well-known LR2/Mogrify plug-in has also been busy writing, and has released LR2/Tree Exporter, which can replicate your folder structure when exporting. Very neat! LR/Transporter is another of my firm favourites, as well as LR/Enfuse and LR/Blog.

Sean McCormack of Lightroom Blog has been busy with Twitter plug-ins, with export plug-ins for both TweetPhoto and TwitPic.

Many people have asked recently about an FTP export plug-in – if you download the SDK and unzip it, in the Samples folder you’ll find a ready built FTP upload plug-in. Don’t worry, there’s no programming involved! Install just like any other plug-in, and it’ll appear in the dropdown list at the top of the Export dialog, where it currently says ‘Files on Disk’.

There are more plug-ins appearing every day, so keep an eye on Lightroom Exchange for the latest.

It’s true, the watermarking facilities currently in Lightroom 2 are a bit limited. Ok, very limited! But all is not lost… Lightroom plug-in programmer Timothy Armes came to the rescue with the well known LR2/Mogrify plug-in, and LR/Mogrify before that, adding fully configurable presentation options. LR2/Mogrify is donationware, and the trial allows you to process up to 10 images at a time, so you can see how well it works.

At first glance, the LR2/Mogrify interface can looking a little complicated, but that’s just because it’s so powerful. Let’s cover some of the basics that you’ll use when watermarking or signing your images.

The first thing you’ll need to do is install the LR2/Mogrify plug-in. Tim’s written full instructions on his website, so I won’t cover that here. In short, Windows users need to install both ImageMagick and the plug-in, whereas Mac users only need to install the plug-in.

Once LR2/Mogrify is installed correctly, you’ll see the Post-Process Actions section in the lower left corner of the Lightroom Export dialog. LR2/Mogrify can be used in conjunction with any of the other standard export options, such as resizing, sharpening, etc., and before any other export plug-ins.

First of all, let’s look at borders. Click on Borders in the Post-Process Actions and press Insert to add that panel to the Export Options. To add a border, select the width for each edge and the colour – and repeat for additional borders. You can alternative different widths and colours to create more interesting borders, or you can just keep it simple. The results of layering multiple borders can be seen below.

Now how about signing your image? Going back to the Post-Process Actions section and selecting Text Annotation is one option. You can choose the size, font, and positioning of the Text Annotation. You can even use that same Text Annotation section to add the EXIF data about your image using the ‘Add Token’ button to select the information to show.

One thing to be aware of – if nothing seems to be happening with the Text Annotation, try a different font. Mogrify can be a bit fussy about which fonts it will use! If your preferred font isn’t working, you can always use a graphical watermark instead – we’ll come back to those in a moment.

And here’s the result of those combined settings:

But what if you need to overlay a heavier watermark, or you want to add a graphical logo instead? Again, it’s simply a case of selecting the correct Post-Process Action – in this case the ‘Graphical Watermark’ option. You’ll need to have created your watermark image in a pixel editor such as Photoshop, and if you want to include transparency, you’re best off using PSD rather than PNG files, as there are some controls unavailable for PNG resizing.

These are just a few of the options available – have a play, and see what you can come up with. To get you started, I’ve uploaded the Export Templates and watermarks that I’ve used – you’re welcome to download them from here: http://www.lightroomqueen.com/downloads/mogrify-downloads.zip If you unzip the downloaded folder, you’ll find 2 folders inside – ‘Export Templates Mogrify’ and ‘Watermarks’. To install the Export Templates, put the ‘Export Templates Mogrify’ folder inside the Export Presets folder – you can check the location on your system by going to Lightroom’s Preferences dialog, choosing the Presets tab, and pressing the ‘Show Lightroom Presets Folder’ button. Obviously the presets are looking for watermarks and fonts on my system, so you’ll need to update the locations to point to the files on your own computer system.

If you have any problems, drop by www.lightroomforums.net and we’ll talk you through it!

Edit a file in Lightroom using the new local adjustments – the gradient tool or adjustment brush – and then open that file in Photoshop CS2 via Edit in Photoshop or Export…. and if you try to save it as a jpeg, Photoshop will complain with an error message which says “Could not complete your request because of a program error”.  Why?

Ok, it’s a bug… but for once, it’s not a Lightroom bug.  Photoshop CS2 trips up on some perfectly legitimate metadata that Lightroom saves into the files when you’ve used local adjustments.  CS3 and CS4 behave nicely with this metadata, but CS2 is no longer updated and so the bug will never be fixed.  What can you do about it?  You have a few options:

1. Update to CS3 or CS4.
2. Check the ‘minimize embedded metadata’ checkbox in the Lightroom Export dialog, which will strip ALL of the metadata.  It solves the problem, but leaves you short of any metadata in your files.
3. Use Jeffrey’s Metadata Wranger to strip just the problem metadata from the file.  By far the best option!

How to use Jeffrey’s Metadata Wrangler

To use Jeffrey’s Metadata Wrangler export plugin, you’ll first need to download it from: http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/metadata-wrangler and install it using the instructions here: http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/plugin-installation/

Then select the plugin in the lower left of the Export dialog, and you’ll see the additional section appear in the main Export options panel – scroll down if you can’t see it.

The only part you want to remove is the ‘crs’ block marked in red in the screenshot – all of the rest of the data can stay.

Any images exported with the ‘crs’ block removed will quite willingly save as a jpeg even with Photoshop CS2.

Lightroom automatically chooses its own primary External Editor, based on registry entries on Windows and preference files on Mac.  It’ll generally default to the newest version of Photoshop, and if it can’t find Photoshop, it’ll use Photoshop Elements instead. There’s an old TechNote which explains further: http://www.adobe.com/go/kb401629

However, what if you want to use an older version of Photoshop, for example, to use plugins which are unavailable in the latest version?  It’s really simple – open that version of Photoshop yourself.  If Lightroom sees a Photoshop open, it’ll ignore its own preference, and use the open version instead.

Since the Photoshop User magazine came out, I’ve had a number of emails asking about my own workflow for DNG files and backups, so let me run through it quickly.  There is no right or wrong workflow – this is just what works well for me.

I want the best of both worlds – I want smaller file sizes, no sidecars and updated previews on my working drive so I use DNG for my main working files, but maybe one day I might want a proprietary raw file for something, so I keep one of my offline backups as a proprietary raw format.  I want the files to have matching names and folder structure, so converting on import doesn’t work for me, so this is my current workflow:

1. Import with backup turned on – this is a temporary backup, just in case something goes wrong before I finish sorting.
2. Rename files – the proprietary raw files now have the new names
3. Use the OS or File Sync software to copy the images to my offline backup structure.  Export as Original format to the other drive would do the same.  That drive is then disconnected again.
4. Select all in Grid view and go to Library menu > Convert Photo to DNG with ‘delete originals after successful comversion’ turned on swaps my proprietary raw files in the catalog for new DNG files, and removes the proprietary files from the hard drive.
5. That leaves me with DNG files in the catalog, complete with all of the settings that were previously attached to the proprietary raw files.  The proprietary files are safely backed up on my offline drive, with matching file names and a matching folder structure, just in case I ever need one.  Ok, I’ll admit, I’ve never been back to them yet, but you never know! 

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.

Some people are reporting problems burning CD’s or DVD’s from Lightroom since the 2.2 update.

The 64-bit version not burning is a known issue – that’s in the release notes, however some have been having trouble with the 32-bit version.

The solution – uninstalling and reinstalling seems to fix it in most cases, so it’s worth a shot!

There’s some confusion over a dialog box which has reared its head again in Lightroom 2.2. It appears when you try to edit a raw file in CS3 rather than CS4, and warns that you need ACR 5.2 for complete compatibility.

Are Adobe saying that you have to upgrade to CS4 in order to use Lightroom?  No!  So what are they saying?

Render using Lightroom will create a Tiff or PSD file and open that file into Photoshop.

Open Anyway tries to pass the raw data to Photoshop, and ACR opens the file directly into Photoshop without an interim Tiff or PSD file.

So…

CS3, ACR 4.6, and a camera that is supported in ACR 4.6 – you can press either.  At this point in time, the rendering appears to be the same.

CS4, ACR 5.2, and a camera that is supported in ACR 5.2 – you can press either.  They are fully compatible.

However…

CS3, ACR 4.6, and a camera that is NEW since 4.6 – you have to press Render using Lightroom as ACR wouldn’t know what to do with the data.

Once you’ve made your decision, you can check the ‘Don’t Show Again’ checkbox to bypass the dialog in future.

With future versions, the gap between Lightroom’s processing and older ACR versions will widen, and Open Anyway may not be able to process new Develop adjustments that you’ve made in Lightroom, however pressing Render using Lightroom will always create a Tiff or PSD version WITH all of your Develop adjustments rendered correctly, so even then, Adobe aren’t holding you over a barrel.