Pixology Magazine March 2024

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The March 2024 issue of Pixology magazine is now available, featuring the following articles:

  • Color Tint for Black and White: Learn how you can easily add a color tint featuring one or more colors to a black and white image.
  • Slideshow Tips: Get tips for creating a great photo slideshow presentation.
  • Workspaces in Bridge: See how you can customize the interface in Adobe Bridge, and save workspaces focused on specific tasks in your workflow.
  • Bean Bag Supports: Learn about options for flexible camera support using a beanbag.
  • Photo Story: Be Prepared: Read the story behind a photo that worked out well despite a complete lack of preparation.

Pixology magazine is included in the GreyLearning Ultimate Bundle, and is also available as a standalone subscription here:

https://www.greylearning.com/courses/pixology-magazine

Transform Tools Moved

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Today’s Question: I seem to be missing all the tools for straightening and perspective distortion. I believe they were under Optics. Where are they now?

Tim’s Quick Answer: In Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom the straightening and geometric adjustments are now found on the “Crop, Rotate, Geometry” panel, under a “Geometry” heading.

More Detail: In a recent update to both Camera Raw and Lightroom, the Transform adjustments were moved from the Optics section of the Edit panel to the updated “Crop, Rotate, Geometry” panel. In addition to the crop and rotation adjustments, there is now a Geometry section that includes the various sliders for transforming an image, along with the Upright controls.

In Lightroom Classic these tools remain primarily in the Transform section of the right panel in the Develop module, though some related adjustments are found with the Crop tool.

Bridge or Lightroom Classic

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Today’s Question: I’m curious to know if your new course on Adobe Bridge is an indication that you use or recommend it over Lightroom Classic?

Tim’s Quick Answer: I am still using Lightroom Classic to manage my photos, but I do think Bridge is a good option for photographers who either don’t feel they would benefit from the catalog in Lightroom Classic or are (understandably) concerned about ending up with problems due to the catalog.

More Detail: I personally prefer the benefits of the catalog in Lightroom Classic, but I also recognize that many photographers have ended up with a mess in their workflow due to not managing that catalog properly. For those who don’t feel they would benefit from the catalog in Lightroom Classic, or are concerned about creating a mess, Adobe Bridge is a good alternative to consider.

In my view there are two key benefits to the catalog in Lightroom Classic. First, you can search across your entire catalog of photos based on a wide variety of metadata criteria virtually instantly. Second, you can browse and manage photos even when the source files aren’t available, such as when an external hard drive containing photos is disconnected.

The risk the catalog introduces is that you’ll end up with photos or folders that Lightroom Classic isn’t able to locate. This only occurs if you make changes outside the catalog. As long as all changes are made within the catalog, there won’t be any such issues.

Because many photographers aren’t interested in using Lightroom Classic, and have not been shy in letting me know, I wanted to make sure that the GreyLearning library included courses to meet the needs of those photographers.

Note that while I use Lightroom Classic to manage my photos, I still use Bridge for other purposes. Bridge is more than just a photo browser, after all, enabling you to browse all file formats that are otherwise supported by Adobe software. I therefore use Bridge to manage my publication files, video and audio recordings, and much more.

If you’d like to get a better understanding of the differences between Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Lightroom Classic, and Adobe Bridge, check out the recording of my webinar presentation on my Tim Grey TV channel on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/live/BwpneG4y0nQ

Unable to Browse Multiple Folders

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Today’s Question: In Adobe Lightroom [not Lightroom Classic] on the Local tab is there a way to browse photos from multiple folders at once? I downloaded photos into folders by day during a three-week trip and need to correct the capture time for the photos from five days of the trip.

Tim’s Quick Answer: On the Local tab in Adobe Lightroom you’re only able to select a single folder at a time, and there isn’t an option to see the contents of subfolders. The easiest solution in this case might be to simply apply the capture time correction individually to each of the five folders.

More Detail: I have to assume that at some point Adobe will update Lightroom to include the option to select multiple folders (as you can do in Lightroom Classic) or to show all photos from all subfolders (as can be done in both Bridge and Lightroom Classic).

If the five folders in question share a common parent folder that doesn’t contain any other folders, you could use Adobe Bridge to update all the photos in one step. Simply select the parent folder and turn on the option on the menu at View > Show Items from Subfolders.

If the folders don’t share a common parent folder, you can create a new collection on the Collections panel and add the photos from the five applicable folders to the collection. Then select all photos in the collection and update the capture time for all of them there.

Note, by the way, that while you can mix and match the use of Bridge and the Local tab in Lightroom, I do not recommend adding Lightroom Classic to the mix. If you’re using Lightroom Classic you should only use Lightroom Classic to manage your photos, and if you’re using something else you should not use Lightroom Classic. That’s because Lightroom Classic involves the use of a catalog, whereas Bridge and the Local tab in Lightroom are browsers that don’t use a catalog.

Deleting JPEG of Raw+JPEG Pairs

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Today’s Question: In my early digital days, I set my cameras to save raw + JPEG. I’ve since stopped that, but my Lightroom Classic catalog contains lots of those pairs. Is there any reason I might need those JPEG files? And can you suggest a way to find and delete those presumed extraneous files?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You more than likely don’t need to keep the JPEG images that were part of a Raw+JPEG pair. However, there isn’t really an easy way to remove them all without manually reviewing the images.

More Detail: In my view you don’t need to retain the JPEG images from Raw+JPEG pairs unless you had applied adjustments in the camera that you want to be able to reference. Those adjustments would not be applied to the raw capture.

Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy way to remove the JPEG images without the risk of accidentally deleting JPEG images that weren’t part of a Raw+JPEG pair.

By default, Lightroom Classic will download the JPEG image for each Raw+JPEG pair, but won’t add the JPEG images to the catalog. If you had kept the “Treat JPEG files next to raw files as separate photos” checkbox turned off on the General tab of the Preferences dialog, the JPEG images will be in the applicable folders but not in the Lightroom Classic catalog.

In this situation you can right-click a folder and choose “Synchronize Folder” from the popup menu. Turn on the “Import new photos” checkbox, and turn off the “Remove missing photos from catalog” and “Scan for metadata updates” checkboxes. There will be a number to the right of the first checkbox if there are actually images in the folder that aren’t in the catalog. Click Synchronize to import those photos. Then go to the “Previous Import” collection in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module, which will contain the images just imported. Under ideal circumstances those will represent only the JPEG images that were excluded based on Raw+JPEG pairs, and can be deleted.

If the JPEG images had originally been imported along with the raw captuers you could sort by filename and scan to confirm that all JPEG images relate to a raw capture. If so, you can set a filter by file type for JPEG images and then select and delete them. I would perform this task one folder at a time, however.

There had been some plugins that purported to find the JPEG images from Raw+JPEG pairs, but the ones I’m familiar with have either not been updated recently or have gotten mixed reviews from photographers.

Over-Sharpened After Camera Raw

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Today’s Question: Where has the Camera Raw preferences option to apply sharpening to preview only gone? I have toggled off Output Sharpening, but it still seems the Camera Raw sharpening is getting applied to the PSD file I save from the RAW. I am also finding lately that images that look nicely sharpened when examined at 100% in Camera Raw look far too over-sharpened when I open the saved PSD file.

Tim’s Quick Answer: The option to apply sharpening only to previews has been removed from Camera Raw. Output Sharpening can be disabled in the Camera Raw Preferences dialog. Keep in mind sharpening can also be applied in the Detail section of the right panel in Camera Raw.

More Detail: The “Apply Sharpening To” option is no longer included in the Camera Raw Preferences dialog, though I don’t have any information on why it was removed. This option previously enabled you to only apply sharpening to the preview image, not to the final image processed by Camera Raw.

If you don’t want output sharpening applied, make sure the Sharpen For checkbox under the Output Sharpening heading on the Workflow tab in Camera Raw Preferences is turned off. This sharpening is never shown in the preview in Camera Raw but does apply to the processed image.

Keep in mind there is also sharpening available in the Detail section of the right panel in Camera Raw. This sharpening will appear in the preview image within Camera Raw.

If an image processed with Camera Raw immediately appears over-sharpened when opened in Photoshop, most likely there had been output sharpening applied in Camera Raw. Since that sharpening does not appear in the Camera Raw preview, having output sharpening enabled would cause the image opened in Photoshop to appear with more sharpening than the preview in Camera Raw.

If you have confirmed that output sharpening is disabled and a raw capture opened via Camera Raw still appears over-sharpened, I would check to make sure you aren’t using any other software or plug-ins that might be applying sharpening to those processed copies of the images.

Download Issues with Bridge

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Today’s Question: Apparently when downloading photos from camera/card with Adobe Bridge the files cannot be renamed using dates in the format YYYY-MM-DD, as all my previous photos are named (and sorted!). Also, I cannot separate Raw photos from JPG’s during the import. Do you see any solution to my wishes?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can most certainly rename photos using Adobe Bridge in a year-month-day format, either during download or later in your workflow. While you can’t automatically separate raw captures from JPEG images during import, you could easily filter the images by file type after the import.

More Detail: Adobe Bridge enables you to rename photos either during the process of downloading using the Photo Downloader feature, or later in your workflow by selecting the images and choosing Tools > Batch Rename from the menu.

If you simply want to use the date and a sequence number for the filename of each photo, and you don’t mind not having dashes between the date values, you can choose the “Shot Date (yyyymmdd)” option from the Rename Files popup. If you want to include other components in the filename structure or want to include dashes in between the year, month, and day values, you can instead choose Advanced Rename from the popup.

In the Advanced Rename dialog you can specify a filename structure that includes the year in four-digit format, a text field including a dash, the month in two-digit format, another dash, and then the day in two-digit format. I used this exact example (with additional text and a sequence number) as the file renaming example in Chapter 2, Lesson 5, on “Renaming Photos” in my video course “Adobe Bridge for Photographers”.

When downloading photos with Photo Downloader in Bridge you’re not able to automatically filter raw versus JPEG captures. However, you could download all photos to the same folder, and then use the File Type option on the Filter panel to filter based on only the raw captures or only the JPEG images. You could us this approach to move all the JPEG images to a subfolder, for example, or otherwise deal with the different file types individually.

You can learn more about using Adobe Bridge to download or rename photos (and much more) with my “Adobe Bridge for Photographers” video course. More details can be found on the GreyLearning website here:

https://www.greylearning.com/courses/adobe-bridge-for-photographers

Course Complete: “Adobe Bridge for Photographers”

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All lessons have been published for my “Adobe Bridge for Photographers” course, which is focused on helping photographers make the most of Adobe Bridge for organizing and sharing their photos.

The course covers the full workflow for organizing and sharing your photos using Adobe Bridge, including tips for creating and managing a folder structure, making use of collections and stacks, keywording photos efficiently, and much more.

You can get all the details about this new course on the GreyLearning website here:

https://www.greylearning.com/courses/adobe-bridge-for-photographers

Export Instead of Save As

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Today’s Question: Many, many years ago I was taught (by you! LOL!) that after working on a 16-bit image in Photoshop, I should first flatten the layers, then use Convert Profile to change the color space from RGB to sRGB before saving the image as a JPEG. I have been doing this for about 25 years! Are the “flatten layers” and “Convert Profile” steps still necessary? Or does choosing Save As do those steps “behind the scenes”?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The “Save As” (or “Save a Copy”) command in Photoshop doesn’t provide an option to convert the image to a different color space. However, if you use the Export command you can accomplish all the steps for creating a derivative copy in what is basically a single step.

More Detail: The Export command in Photoshop can be thought of as an automated way to adjust image settings as part of saving a derivative image. In addition to being able to choose which file format you want to save the new derivative image in, you can adjust settings such as the pixel dimensions and the color space to use. Note that none of the file formats available for the Export feature support layers, so the derivative image you create will always be flattened (without flattening the source image you’re working on, of course).

With the master image open you can get started by choosing File > Export > Export As from the menu. On the right panel of the Export As dialog you can choose the file format (JPEG in this case) that you want to use for the derivative image you’re saving. You can adjust the pixel dimensions in the Image Size section. In the Metadata section choose whether you want to include copyright and contact info in metadata or exclude all metadata. Under Color Space I recommend turning on the “Convert to sRGB” checkbox for images that will be shared digitally, and I always recommend turning on the “Embed Color Profile” checkbox.

After configuring the desired settings, click the Export button, which will bring up the Save As dialog. You can specify a filename and folder location and click the Save button to export the copy of the photo. The new file will be saved in the location you specified and with the settings you configured.

Excluding from Catalog when Exporting

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Today’s Question: I’d like to move a file with Lightroom Classic adjustments to ImagePrint for printing, without having a duplicate TIFF file added to Lightroom Classic every time it is exported.

Tim’s Quick Answer: In this case you want to export the image with the normal export feature rather than sending it directly to other software, and you want to make sure the option to add to the catalog is disabled in the Export dialog.

More Detail: When you send a raw capture to software outside of Lightroom Classic, such as when editing in Photoshop or sending the image to a plug-in using an export preset, a derivative image will be created. In this scenario, the derivative image will always be added to the Lightroom Classic catalog. This can obviously lead to a bit of clutter with numerous derivative images if you’re sending images to other applications somewhat frequently.

To avoid having the derivative image added to the Lightroom Classic catalog, use the regular export feature rather than sending the file directly to another application. For example, don’t use the Photo > Edit In option from the menu, and don’t use the File > Export with Preset command.

Instead, simply click the Export button at the bottom of the left panel in the Library module to initiate the export. In the Export dialog you can configure the settings for the new file that will be created, such as to specify the file format and other details of the image to be created.

To ensure the new derivative image is not added to the Lightroom Classic catalog, make sure that “Add to This Catalog” checkbox in the Export Location section at the top of the Export dialog is turned off. Then export the image, and a file will be created that you can open in the applicable software (such as ImagePrint for printing in this case) without that image having been added to your Lightroom Classic catalog.