Ask Tim Grey

Today’s Question: My mentor insists on nailing the white balance in camera. My research says white balance has no effect on raw images. It helps the on-camera viewing, maybe has some impact on the histogram, but bottom line, get the white balance “right” in post. Thoughts, comments?

Tim’s Quick Answer: For raw captures the in-camera white balance setting is merely a metadata value and has no impact on image quality. You can absolutely wait until after the capture to optimize the white balance adjustment.

More Detail: It is obviously a good thing for photographers to want to get their photos perfect in the camera, but this doesn’t need to extend to the white balance setting. There is no impact on image quality when you adjust the white balance during raw processing after the capture.

The in-camera white balance setting translates to a metadata value. As noted in the question, changes to the white balance setting will change the appearance of the image preview on the camera’s LCD display, which in turn can alter the appearance of the histogram. But getting the setting right in camera won’t provide a benefit when it comes to image quality for a raw capture.

Of course, there may be other reasons to want to use an optimal white balance setting in camera, such as to ensure uniformity of color for photos and to minimize the degree to which images need to be adjusted after the capture. But there isn’t a benefit when it comes to image quality.

It is important to note, however, that this only applies to raw captures. If, for example, you use a bad white balance setting for a JPEG capture, that color adjustment alters the pixel values for the image, and can create image quality problems when you need to apply a strong color correction after the capture. But for raw captures you can ignore the white balance setting on the camera unless adjusting it provides you with a workflow advantage.

Today’s Question: I have a new iMac, still in the box, and I’m wondering if you have instructions or tips for doing the set up and transferring Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and Topaz Photo AI along with my external drives from the old iMac to new.

Tim’s Quick Answer: The basic process of migrating Lightroom Classic to a new computer involves transferring the complete catalog folder and photos to the new computer, installing Lightroom Classic and any plug-ins, and transferring your preferences and settings as well.

More Detail: You can start by setting up the new computer and installing Lightroom Classic and any other Adobe Creative Cloud applications you’ll be using. You can get started by following the instructions on this page on the Adobe website:

https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/apps/download-install-apps/creative-cloud-apps/download-creative-cloud-apps.html

Once you have Lightroom Classic up and running on the new computer, transfer your catalog and photos. For example, most photographers have their photos on one or more external hard drives. If the catalog is on the internal hard drive, you could copy the folder containing the catalog to one of your external hard drives, and then move that folder into the Pictures folder on the internal hard drive if you prefer. You can determine the existing location of your catalog on the old computer by going to the General tab of the Catalog Settings dialog and clicking the Show button. Be sure to quit Lightroom Classic before you start, and copy the entire folder that contains the catalog and related files.

The trickiest part of this process is transferring preferences and settings. This isn’t mandatory, but it will ensure that Lightroom Classic is configured the same way on your new computer as on your old. For presets, go to the Presets tab of the Preferences dialog. There you’ll find buttons for “Show Lightroom Develop Presets” and “Show All Other Lightroom Presets”. Clicking each will open a window in your operating system with the applicable folder selected. Copy the entire folder to the same location on the new computer.

To copy Camera Raw settings, transfer the files to the same location on the new computer. On Windows navigate to your username folder and then to AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw. On Macintosh from the Library folder go to Application Support/Adobe/Camera Raw. For Preferences copy the applicable file to the same location on the new computer. On Windows the file can be found by going to your username folder and then navigating to AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Preferences\Lightroom Classic CC 7 Preferences.agprefs”com.adobe.LightroomClassicCC7, and on Macintosh the file is in the Library folder under Preferences / com.adobe.LightroomClassicCC7.plist.

Make sure the photos are on a drive with the same drive letter (Windows) or volume label (Macintosh) as was assigned on the old computer. Then double-click the catalog file (it has a filename extension of .lrcat) in the folder you transferred to the new computer. This will launch Lightroom Classic with the catalog.

You can then install any plug-ins you want to use with Lightroom Classic and continue with your normal workflow.

Today’s Question: I believe you’ve said that the Lightroom Classic catalog shouldn’t be stored in the cloud, but I have my catalog in Dropbox and it seems to work just fine. Is there really a problem storing the catalog in the cloud?

Tim’s Quick Answer: I very strongly recommend that you never store a Lightroom Classic catalog in cloud-based storage. It is incredibly easy to have failed metadata updates and file corruption if you store the catalog in the cloud and access that catalog from more than one computer.

More Detail: As many photographers may already be aware, Lightroom Classic does not support having the catalog stored on a network device. In my experience the primary scenario where this might create frustration is if you want to store your catalog along with photos on a network attached storage (NAS) device. However, Lightroom Classic will not protest if you store your catalog in cloud-based storage. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems with this approach.

In fact, I was able to create metadata problems in less than one minute, and I was able to corrupt the catalog in about five minutes when testing this issue. For example, I opened the same catalog from Dropbox on two different computers, and made different metadata changes the same images. On one computer I assigned red color labels to several images, and on the other computer I assigned blue color labels to the same images. For several minutes I could quit Lightroom Classic on both computers and launch it again, and each computer showed different color labels for the images even though I was ostensibly using the same catalog on both computers.

This type of situation can make it difficult to ensure you’re going to end up with the metadata you were expecting. In my testing, for example, the blue color labels remained assigned to the images on one computer, while on the computer with the red color labels the catalog became corrupted. Lightroom Classic was able to repair the catalog, but after that process completed the red color labels remained.

There were also problems with the previews for images during the testing. Adding to the trouble, at times I couldn’t open the catalog on the second computer even though it had been closed on the first computer, owing to issues with the synchronization of the lock files Lightroom Classic uses to keep track of whether the catalog is already in use when you try to open it.

So, simply put, you should never store the Lightroom Classic catalog in the cloud. It is possible to do so without problems if you’ll only use a single computer (and no other devices at all) to access the catalog files, but in my view, it simply isn’t worth the risk involved when it comes to storing the catalog in the cloud.

Today’s Question: When I assign a star rating to a photo in Lightroom Classic, why doesn’t that star rating show up in Bridge?

Tim’s Quick Answer: By default, metadata updates applied in Lightroom Classic won’t be visible in other applications, though you can change this behavior. However, it is also important to remember not to update metadata in other software if you’re using Lightroom Classic.

More Detail: Lightroom Classic saves metadata first and foremost in the catalog, without updating the source image files. By default, any metadata updates you apply in Lightroom Classic won’t be visible in other applications.

If you want updates to standard metadata fields to be visible in applications outside of Lightroom Classic, you’ll need to change a setting in the Catalog Settings dialog. To get started, go to the Edit menu on Windows or the Lightroom Classic menu on Macintosh and choose Catalog Settings. Go to the Metadata tab in the Catalog Settings dialog and turn on the “Automatically write changes into XMP” checkbox.

With this checkbox turned on, standard metadata updates will be saved both in the Lightroom Classic catalog and in the source image file. For proprietary raw captures those updates will be saved in a sidecar XMP file rather than the original raw file. This allows those updates to be visible in other applications, including Adobe Bridge.

Keep in mind, however, that this option only relates to standard metadata fields, such as star ratings, color labels, keywords, and more. It won’t preserve features that are specific to Lightroom Classic and therefore can only be saved to the catalog, such as collections, virtual copies, or image stacks.

While saving the metadata to the source image files will enable other applications to display the updated metadata, making changes to metadata outside Lightroom Classic will cause a metadata mismatch, and therefore you should only make updates within Lightroom Classic.

Today’s Question: I use star ratings when I initially review in Lightroom Classic to remove rejects and keep desired images. In the past, after adding star ratings, I would filter based on a rating of zero stars. I don’t seem to find an option for no stars on the filter bar. What am I missing?

Tim’s Quick Answer: To set a filter for images that do not have a star rating assigned to them you can set the comparison operator to “Rating is equal to” (=) and then turn off the star selection if applicable.

More Detail: While the interface for setting a filter based on star rating in Lightroom Classic is relatively straightforward, it can be a little confusing when you want to set a filter for images that do not have a star rating assigned, which is the equivalent of zero stars.

To get started, go to the Library Filter bar above the grid view in the Library module. If the Library filter bar isn’t visible you can enable it by choosing View > Show Filter Bar from the menu or by pressing the backslash key (\). Then go to the Attribute tab to find the options for star rating and other attributes.

To the right of the Rating label you’ll see a symbol representing one of the three options, which include “Rating is greater than or equal to”, “Rating is equal to”, or “Rating is less than or equal to”. In this example you would click the symbol to bring up the popup and choose “Rating is equal to”.

Next, you need to make sure that a star rating is not currently selected, which translates to a zero-star rating. When a star rating is selected one or more of the stars to the right of the Rating label will appear white, with the remainder appearing gray. For example, if a three-star rating is selected, three stars will appear white and two will appear gray. Clicking on the rightmost of the white stars will toggle the setting to zero stars.

At that point the images will be filtered so that only those with a zero-star rating in the current folder or collection will be displayed. If needed, you can then set any other metadata attributes based on how you want to filter the images.

Today’s Question: I always wondered if the Camera Raw filter in Photoshop is the same as adjusting in Camera Raw to start with. It seems that Camera Raw would be better as its adjustments are applied directly to the rendered raw file instead of applying to an image layer.

Tim’s Quick Answer: The primary disadvantage of the Camera Raw filter compared to Camera Raw is that not all adjustments found in Camera Raw are available for the filter. There are also some theoretical benefits to applying adjustments as part of the raw processing rather than after, but in most cases these would translate to very modest changes that would not be easy to see.

More Detail: Overall, the adjustments available with Camera Raw versus the Camera Raw filter in Photoshop, although there are some exceptions. Those exceptions are the primary disadvantage of using the Camera Raw filter rather than using Camera Raw, although in most cases the features missing from the Camera Raw filter are available elsewhere in Photoshop.

There are also some potential advantages to using Camera Raw rather than applying adjustments on an image layer in Photoshop, but in most cases these would be very minor and difficult to see in the image. That’s especially true if you’re working with a 16-bit per channel image in Photoshop for the Camera Raw filter. There is also a slight risk of image degradation (especially with 8-bit per channel images) if you apply the Camera Raw filter multiple times to the same image layer.

The features that are available in Camera Raw but not in the Camera Raw filter include crop and rotate tools and the Enhance features, which include Denoise, Super Resolution, and Raw Details. But you can obviously crop and rotate an image using the Crop tool and Transform commands in Photoshop, so the absence of these in the Camera Raw filter isn’t a major issue.

Today’s Question: In the new Assisted Culling feature in Lightroom Classic, there are new categories under the Catalog heading, one which is Missing Photographs. All of those listed as “Missing” in this new section (nearly 150,000) in my catalog are at known locations easily found and have no “?” appearing on the image frame in Library. Can you explain what is this category of Missing Photographs intended to identify?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The “Missing Photographs” collection isn’t new, but there appear to be some issues that cause the exclamation point to not appear for some photos when the Assisted Culling feature has been used.

More Detail: The “Missing Photographs” collection in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module in Lightroom Classic will only appear if the Photo > Find All Missing Photos command has been used. It is not a new feature of Lightroom Classic 15.

Based on my testing, when photos appear in the Missing Photographs collection, they are indeed missing, meaning they can’t be found in the expected folder with the expected filename. However, there appear to be one or more bugs in the new update to Lightroom Classic that cause the exclamation point icons to not show up reliably. This appears to be related to the use of the Assisted Culling Feature.

When you enable Assisted Culling, photos get marked with a green circle with a checkmark if they are identified as Selects, and a red circle with an “X” if they are identified as Rejects. This icon appears in the same location that the exclamation point for a missing photo would appear, causing the exclamation point to not appear for missing photos that also have been marked by the Assisted Culling feature.

Furthermore, my testing shows that even if you turn off the Assisted Culling criteria so that the Select and Reject icons are hidden, the exclamation point icon for missing photos still doesn’t appear. However, you would still see the “Photos is missing” message below the Histogram on the right panel in the Library module.

So, I think it is safe to say that if a photo appears in the Missing Photographs collection in the Catalog section, the source image file truly can’t be found by Lightroom Classic. You just might not see the corresponding exclamation point icon with the image thumbnail due to an apparent bug in Lightroom Classic related to the new Assisted Culling feature.

Today’s Question: With the latest update to Lightroom Classic I’m suddenly seeing a black circle with an exclamation point on a few folders. I had never seen these icons before, and don’t know of any problems with the marked folders. Should I be worried about something?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The new icon you’re referring to indicates that one or more subfolders are missing within the marked folder. The actual missing folders would be marked with a question mark icon, but the new exclamation point icon marks all parent folders for the missing folder to help improve discoverability of this issue.

More Detail: Prior to Lightroom Classic 15, only folders that were actually missing would be marked to indicate that status, with a question mark appearing on the folder icon. One of the problems with this approach was that if a subfolder several layers deep was missing, the chances of discovering that issue might be relatively low since subfolders can be hidden from view by collapsing a parent folder.

With the new update all parent folders for a missing folder will be marked with an exclamation point within a black circle. If you hover your mouse over this icon, you’ll see a tooltip with information about the missing folder(s) contained within the applicable folder. Note that every parent folder will be marked in this way, so depending on how deep your folder structure is you might see multiple folders marked with the exclamation point icon. This is to help ensure that you notice the issue so it can be dealt with promptly.

When a folder is missing it simply means that a folder with the expected name is not found in the expected location. This could mean that you renamed the folder in its current location or that you moved the folder to a different location, for example. After determining where the folder actually is, you can right-click on the missing folder and choose “Find Missing Folder” from the popup menu. Once you’ve reconnected the applicable folder, the alert icons for that folder and parent folders will go away (unless there are still other subfolders missing within a given parent folder, of course).

Today’s Question: Maybe we aren’t supposed to see an image open in Camera Raw from Lightroom Classic, but it does so that about 20% of the time for me. Usually if I close it and go back to Lightroom Classic and try again, it opens correctly.

Tim’s Quick Answer: This suggests that about 20% of the time you’re sending a non-raw image (such as a TIFF or JPEG) to Photoshop from Lightroom Classic, and that you have Camera Raw configured to open these other file types.

More Detail: In a previous answer I explained that if you’re sending a raw capture from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop you won’t see the Camera Raw dialog. If you do see the Camera Raw dialog for a raw capture, it indicates that you opened the raw capture directly in Photoshop or via Adobe Bridge.

However, it is possible for the Camera Raw dialog to appear if you have sent a compatible JPEG or TIFF image from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop and you have support for those file formats enabled in Camera Raw.

In this case I recommend disabling support for non-raw formats in Camera Raw, mostly to avoid confusion. You can always use the Camera Raw filter in Photoshop if you want to access some of the Camera Raw features for non-raw images.

To disable support for non-raw files, go to Camera Raw and click the gear icon at the top-right to bring up the Camera Raw Preferences dialog. In Adobe Bridge you can also go to the Edit menu on Windows or the Adobe Bridge menu on Macintosh and choose Camera Raw Preferences to bring up the dialog. In the Camera Raw Preferences dialog go to the File Handling tab, where I recommend setting the popups in the “File Format Handling” section to the “Disable” setting.

With that support for non-raw image types disabled, compatible JPEG or TIFF images (among other formats) will open directly in Photoshop from Lightroom Classic without bringing up the Camera Raw dialog.