Automagisk blog

I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for almost everything I do with my images:

• Import files from CF cards
• File renaming and directory building
• Adding metadata and default settings to Nikon NEF files (raw)
• Editing(!)
• Export to TIFF, JPEG, burn DVDs, upload to Flickr, etc

Lightroom can do a lot of things: Have a look at the features. My wokflow is detailed below.

Workflow

My workflow is like this:

1. Connect camera or CF card reader, open up Lightroom import dialog (Cmd-Shift-i).
2. Specify keywords to add, choose default develop setting and some other stuff. I usually just type in a few keywords and re-use the previous settings. Lightroom offers auto-completion for keywords that have been used before.
3. Start the import. With an 8GB card the import takes a few minutes.
4. Lightroom now copies the files to my work drive, an external 500GB drive. Lightroom can also make a copy on a different location at the same time, but I use another backup solution (see below). It is also possible to move the files instead of copying them. I prefer to format my CF cards in the camera, and having a temporary “backup” on the card before formatting it is nice.
5. In the copying process, Lightroom creates directories as I have configured (YYYY/MM/DD) and renames the files as I have configured (YYYYMMDD-HHMM-XXXX.nef, where the four Xs are the internal numbering from the camera – useful if shooting a series or just more than one image in one minute). An image imported right now would be put in the directory “2009/03/25/” and renamed to “20090325-2145-1234.nef”. If I find one of my images somewhere (Flickr, for instance), it is very easy to find it’s “home” directory.
6. Lightroom automatically creates XMP files for each image file, so in case the Lightroom catalog explodes, or I change to a different program (not likely), I have a small XML file for each image, containing all the metadata, editing info, settings, etc.
7. Lightroom then generates the previews, which are the ones I will be working with when I edit. The original files are never changed, and all the work in Lightroom is stored in a “catalog”, which is really just a SQL database containing everything about the images, similar to the XMP data.
8. If I have imported a lot of images, I usually start a backup right after the import completes – see below.
9. To make it easy to browse the directory hierarchy I rename the “DD” directories to “DD <something>”, for instance “25″ to “25 Oslo, skiing”. Lightroom automatically updates the directories when renaming inside Lightroom.
10. I start reviewing, rating, deleting, editing, etc.

Example directory structure

Example directory structure and file names after performing import, and renaming of “day” directories:

• 2008/
• 2009/
  • 01/
  • 02/
  • 03/
  • 04/
    • 24 Example 1/
    • 25 Example 2/
      • 20090325-2143-0001.nef
      • 20090325-2143-0002.nef

Why Lightroom?

In short: Lightroom’s an excellent program for both editing and archiving.

Working in Lightroom is very fast, as the operations are always done on a smaller “work copy” of the image. Changes to one image are easily copied to other images, making editing a series of 150 similar images almost as fast as editing a single image.

Lightroom only stores the operations, so the original is never modified. It’s always possible to undo, or even start from scratch. It’s also possible to store several different versions/edits of each image, using very little space. The keywording, rating, metadata management, “smart” collections, etc makes maintaining an archive very easy and also easy to customize.

I never use Photoshop, because Lightroom is so much faster and more effective (ok, maybe I have used the trial version a few times, but it is extremely rare).

The only negative thing I can say about Lightroom is that Adobe’s pricing policy is ridiculous. Lightroom currently costs 2450 NOK (376 USD) in Norway and 299 USD in the US. This changes based on the exchange rates, and it was a lot worse when I bought my license and the dollar was 7 NOK, not 5. At that time Lightroom cost 490 USD. Guess where I bought my license. Still – the prices in European countries are much higher than in the US, and there is a petition for Adobe to change this. It has been signed by more than 10,000 people: Fair pricing for European Software.

Geotagging

I geotag as much as possible, and I used to have a few more steps in the workflow, before step 1 above:

1. Copy the images to the hard drive, but not into the Lightroom hierarchy
2. Copy the GPX file from my GPS (Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx can automatically create XML files of the logs every day)
3. Use GPSPhotoLinker to add the GPS data to each image file.
4. Start the import workflow, as described above.

Now I have the Nikon GP-1 attached to my camera, so every image is automatically geotagged by the camera. Lightroom automatically reads the geotags, and there is a little button to view an image using Google Maps. I hope Adobe adds more geotag features soon.

See also: Geotagging with Nikon GP-1.

Lightroom plugins

Lightroom has an API for creating plugins, and there is an SDK for developers. My favourite Lightroom plugins are:

• Export Plugin for Flickr: Export directly from Lightroom to Flickr, with excellent control over collections, sets, metadata, permissions, etc. It can also update already uploaded images, and Lightroom keeps track of which images have been uploaded.
• GPS Proximity Search: Allows you to find geoencoded images in your Lightroom catalog that are within some specified distance from a location you choose.

Backup

I use Mac OS X’ built-in rsync for backup. rsync has a lot of options, but my use is very light-weight: I simply create an exact copy of all my directories and images on my Time Capsule. That way I have a complete backup of all my other files on the same drive.

The rsync command I use is to back up all the files and directory from SOURCE (for me, it’s “/Users/cl/images”) to TARGET (for me it’s “/Volumes/TimeCapsule/images/”) is:
rsync -av -e --delete SOURCE TARGET

I also have a backup on a USB-powered external drive that I keep at my parents’ house. I hope I’ll never need that (either).

Color calibration

There’s no point in editing images if the colors are off. I use the PANTONE huey hardware calibrator. Cheap, easy to use and good results.

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