I would guess that most people do not use Color Labels.
They can be useful, as Lightroom allows you to edit and prepare custom color label sets. Color Labels allow you to add an extra level on information say for flagging images to be printed, deleted or archived.

Make sure that the Color Labels are turned on for your thumbnails by checking Show Rating Footer check box in the View / View Options menu.

Once selected you will see the square Color Label icon underneath the thumbnail. Note, you may have to cycle through the thumbnail modes using the J key to see them. Now click on the square icon. A pop up list appears which will allow you to quickly assign a color flag. You can assign a color flag in a number of different ways. Probalby the quickest way is to use the numerical keys, 6 through 9, though for some reason, only the first four color lables have shortcut keys!

If you want to assign your own color labels you can do so using the menu item Metadata / Color Label Set / Edit. This brings up a dialog box which will allow you to define you own set of five labels. The defaut alternative ones are also worth playng with.
Hope this helps.

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Tags: Library Module, Color Labels

Lightroom beta 2 has a Secondary Display mode, which as you would expect, allows you to use two displays - note Lightroom 1.4 does not support dual displays.

I have been playing with the Secondary DIsplay option and have found a really useful configuration for working with Lightroom image Stacks.

Open Lightroom in Library Module mode and bring up a screen full of thumbnails which includes some Stacks.

Set the Secondary Display mode to Survey as shown below.

As long as you are in the Survey Mode you will get a secondary display window which shows all the images in the Stack. This is a fully working Survey window which you use as normal - clicking the X in the bottom right to reject an image. Here is how make this work.

If you click on a Stack thumbnail you will get a single large version of the image which is at the top of the Stack.
Now, click the numbered Stack Icon in the top left of the thumbnail. All the images in the Stack will now be shown on the Secondary Display view.

This setup at last makes Stacks work well in Lightroom.

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Tags: Workflow, Library Module, Dual Screen

I often get asked 'How do I move my Lightroom catalog from one disk to another and keep all of my ratings, edits and keywords'.

An easy way in Lightroom is as follows:

• Open your original Lightroom catalog on the old disk
• Change to the Library Module Grid View
• Make sure you Include Photos from Subfolders which is selected in the Library menu
• Then Select All from the Edit menu to highlight all of the thumbnails in the catalog
• Now choose Export as a Catalog from the File menu

• In the dialog box that appears (shown below), select Include available previews and Export Negative Files

• Set the destination to the Lightroom Pictures folder on your new drive.
• Finally, open the newly exported catalog on the new drive in Lightroom

Note you can also use this method for importing a new catalog - which might be from your Laptop whilst out shooting, to your main Catalog on your home machine.

I Hope this helps ...

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There is a quick and easy way in Lightroom to ensure that you have applied the same keyword, or set of keywords, to a group of images.

An easy way to be sure that all of the images are key-worded correctly is to look for the asterisk (*) symbol following a keyword in the keyword Tag window.

In the example above all of the thumbnails have been selected and a summary of the keywords which have been used is shown in the bottom right Keyword Tags box.

Note that there is an asterisk (*) following all of the keywords except the word Devon.

What this is telling us?

a) all of the images have been tagged with Devon
b) keywords which are followed by an asterisk have been applied to only a selection of the images.

So how do you quickly apply the keywords to the whole selection?

Simple. Just select the asterisk for each keyword that you want to apply. Delete the asterisk and press Return.

This applies the keyword to the whole selection of images.

This is very useful in situations such as when you want to mark a whole set of images as being shot in a specific location.

Let me know if this tip helps you.

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Tags: Keywords, Library Module

If you want to speed up the rating and flagging process try turning on Auto Advance setting in the Photo menu.

Now every time you rate, pick, unpick or set a flag; the current image will be tagged as normal, but the filmstrip will auto advance by one image.

This works in both the Library and the Develop Modules. It also works even if the filmstrip is not visible.

Let me know if this tip helps you.

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Tags: Library Module

If you blend exposures, or shoot multiple shots, prior to making HDR images then determining which are the correct sets of images to blend can get quite confusing. Especially if you have many tens of images in one shoot.

An easy way to identify the sets of images to use is to set Lightrooms View options to show just capture time and exposure bias.

You can further refine this by grouping the images using stacks and capture time. The images are then displayed in groups and you can easily see which images belong together.

The information on the thumbnails, above, allows you to identify and ensure that you include the right exposure biased images.

Try it and see for yourself.

Let me know if this tip helps you.

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Tags: Library Module

I shoot RAW as I want to ensure I can always return to the original untouched version of an image.
This is good practice but there are some good reasons why you may want to shoot both a JPEG and RAW for each image. I set the camera to generate a large (100%) JPEG of the same image.

Why? Because often the JPEG is good enough and I can avoid a lot of post processing.

Imported RAW files alone can lack contrast, and I find it helpful to see a JPEG. This jpeg is the same as the preview that I saw on the back of the camera.
It is very difficult to exactly duplicate the cameras jpeg settings on an imported RAW file. So having the JPEG allows you to match it if you need to.

So what's the Tip?

The default setting in Lightroom is to ignore additional JPEGs which are stored in the same folder as the RAW files. So you will have to import manually unless you select the preference option to

'Treat JPEG files next to raw files as separate photos'.

This approach can use up a lot of space on your storage card but that's the tradeoff for less post processing.

Let me know if this tip helps you.


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Tags: Library Module

At last Lightroom now has a fully functional and working synchronize folders ability. Version 1.1 lacked this and it was very time consuming to have to manually add new images to the folder structure. Now all you have to do is highlight the folder you want to synchronise,.right click and select Synchronise Folder. This can be done at any level within the folder hierarchy.

You get a dialog box after the scan starts which will then allow you to set options. See below.

Once the scan has finished you get an import dialog menu which will allow you to set metadata and key words etc.

Hope this tip helps you.

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Tags: Library Module

The latest Lightroom 1.1 release has a new command to allow you to toggle the inclusion and display of sub folder items. The previous 1.0 version lacked this command and would display the thumbnails from the selected folder plus any sub folders.

It is very useful to be able to exclude subfolder items if you organize your library by folders as you can identify photos that are at the top level and need to be moved to a subfolder.

new Include Photos from subitems option

Whilst not exactly a new feature for an image management program, it is one which was lacking from the 1.0 Lightroom release.

Hope this tip helps you.

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Lightroom shows keywords as sets which can be customized, as in my set of Rivers keywords below.

A quick way to apply one of the keywords in the set to a single image, or selection of images, is to hold down the Alt key. The numbers 1 to 9 will appear in front of each keyword in the set.

Holding down Alt and pressing one of the numbers from 1 to 9 will apply the keyword to whatever images you have selected. Depending on you method of working this can be much quicker than clicking on the individual keyword with the mouse.

Note this only works in the Library module as that is where you enter keywords. Pressing Alt in Develop will let you reset the individual develop tool sliders.

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Lightrooms Virtual copy capability is really powerful. If you want to produce image variations, say a black and white or a toned version, you can do this without duplicating the original file.
Just right click on the thumbnail and select 'Create Virtual Copy'. You can do this from the Photo main menu item as well.

right click on the thumbnail to create virtual copy

The virtual copy is identified with a small page-turn icon in the bottom left hand corner of the thumbnail.
Lightroom is really good at managing virtual copies and will automatically put a new virtual copy into a stack with the original image.

virtual copy with icon

You can now select the virtual copy and edit away whilst keeping your original intact. This is great for making black and whites an other variations.
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Tags: Library Module

Have you wondered what the little plus sign that follows the image count in the folders panel do?

The plus sign is telling you that there are either stacked images or virtual copies in those folders.

Clicking on the plus sign does nothing; but if you navigate to the folder, or sub folder, and expand the stack the image count will change.

Sort of useful to know, but this feature could be improved to automatically show the stacks etc. The stacking functionality of Lightroom is useful but lacks the usability of Apeture at this time. It is one of the features of Aperture that I still miss!

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(Note this tip works on the Mac version of Lightroom only)

It is worth checking to ensure that you turn on the Use Typographic Fractions setting under the in the Interface section of Lightroom's preferences.

What this does is ensure that the the exposure information is shown as an easy to read fraction, which is more usual, rather than 1/125 as below.

Typographic fractions off

Below is the same metadata box with the fractions option turned on.

Typographic fractions on

It's a matter of preference of course, but a but nice to have this option non the less.

Hope you find this useful.

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Thumbnails in Lightroom will show one of three different icons in the bottom right hand corner. The icon shown depends on what has been done to the image.

Lightroom Thumbnail showing Icons in bottom right corner

Icons are added whenever you do any of the following:

• 
  
• Change image using the Develop Module
• 
  
• Crop the image
• 
  
• Add Keywords
  

All very interesting you say, but there is more!

Click the Develop Icon - the Develop Module will open with your image selected and you can fine tune the edit.
Click the Keyword Icon - the Library Module will open with the image selected and the Keyword highlighted in the Keyword editor.
Click the Crop Icon - the Develop Module with the image shown and the last crop edit is displayed.

Note the icons are always shown in the Filmstrip panel and clicking on them from there works as well. This means that you can click an icon no matter which Module you are working in.

Hope you find this useful.

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Lightroom allows you to assign keywords which is great for quickly finding images by simply clicking on the keyword in the "Keyword Tags" section of the left hand Library module.

What you may not be aware of are the "check marks" which appear next to other keyword groups when you select a specific image. In the case below I have selected the single boat image.

Lightroom shows check marks against all the other keyword groups that contain the same boat image.

Keyword Groups containing the same image

Now if you click on any one of the "check marked" keyword groups Lightroom will display the group and also highlight the selected image. See the example below.

Boat image highlighted in checked group

This can be very helpful to check your keyword usage and relevance.

Hope you find this useful.

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Lightroom has a great Metadata browser which allows you to see your images sorted by date. It uses the EXIF "Date Time" field to do this.

The problem occurs when you add files to the Lightroom database which do not have data in this field. i.e if you have scanned a negative or imported a file which has not come from a digital camera. See below there are 245 files in my library with an unknown date.

To the rescue is a feature of lightroom called "Edit Capture Time" which can be used to set the EXIF "Date Time" field to the "File creation date".
The good news is that all you have to do is select all of the photos which have an unknown date - using the Metadata date browser - and then use the "Edit Capture time" command to reset the date on each file to the file creation date.

Select the checkbox to change the file creation date, hit change all, and then all the files will appear in the correct date range in the metadata browser.

Works a treat!

Hope you find this useful.

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It has taken me a while to find a Folder structure in Lightroom which allows me to logically structure and find my photos but now I have it.

My photos are on a separate hard disk called "Photos 2007" and I have three simple top level Folders.

Objects, People and Places.

Lightroom - Three Item Folder Structure

I have found that I can place any of my shoots or individual images into a sub-folder under one of these three headings.

Lightrooms Metadata Browser

Prior to this I had spent a long time structuring my collection by event and date. Date structure is no longer needed as Lightroom has a metadata browser which allows you to quickly select items by date. Events can always be placed into one of the top folders above. Note it does pay to include the date of a shoot as part of the naming convention of sub folders.

Hope you find this useful.

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In Lightroom if you right click on any Folder name you will see a menu option which will allow you to rescan the folder on disk for missing images. This of course assumes you are allowing Lightroom to reference the files and folders on your disk.

The confusing thing is that Lightroom will only check and update folders that have previously been imported. What seems to be happening is that only a check for existing photos in the database, as well as an external link check, is being performed.

Check for Missing Images in Lightroom

If you want to add new subfolders or images that had not been imported previously then you have to use the "Import Photos" command from the File menu.
I would prefer Lightroom just to update and add any images that are in the folder structure. Much as iView MediaPro does.

Hope you find this useful.

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If you are new to Lightroom and you have a large number of images I would suggest that you don't import your whole library straight away. Start by importing just this months images, or the last couple of shoots.

The approach that I have found very useful is to import images by year. I have imported Jan and Feb 2007, applied ratings and metadata, and this way I have been able to explore the Lightroom program without getting bogged down in cataloging.

If you import the whole lot and if you are anything like myself then you will start ranking and rating endless old shots and not get to grips with the functionality of Lightroom.

Don't forget to use the Metadata presets as you import as this can save an huge amount of time by applying keywords, ratings and location information as you do the import.

Let me know if this was useful. Please share your comments here.

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