Category: Ask Tim Grey

Today’s Question: Please let me know what the term “Thunderbolt” implies in relation to external hard drives.

Tim’s Quick Answer: Thunderbolt is a type of hardware interface that is used on some external hard drives and other devices. In concept a Thunderbolt data connection implies fast speed, but in reality the hard drive itself prevents the maximum theoretical speed to be achieved. In other words, you will typically get about the same transfer speed with Thunderbolt or USB C.

More Detail: Thunderbolt is a hardware interface originally created by Intel in conjunction with Apple, used to connect various hardware devices together, such as to provide a data connection between a computer and an external hard drive. Thunderbolt had been common on Apple computers, but has more recently been somewhat replaced by the latest version of the USB standard.

The latest hardware often makes use of a USB C connector, which is used for both USB and Thunderbolt connections. The latest version of USB provides a theoretical maximum speed of 1.25GB per second, while Thunderbolt 3 offers 5GB per second). However, top drives typically provide maximum throughput speeds of about 500MB per second. In other words, similar performance could be expected with a USB C or Thunderbolt connection because the interface provides higher speeds than the actual storage device can keep up with.

While the latest Thunderbolt interface makes use of a USB C connection, there are differences beyond the maximum potential speeds noted above. For this reason, not all devices will be compatible across all connections.

Also note that many of the external hard drives currently available that offer Thunderbolt are making use of an older version of Thunderbolt. Those drives offer performance closer to what USB is capable of today. But again, in either case the bottleneck for data transfer is generally the hard drive, not the data connection used to connect the drive to the computer.

Ultimately I recommend selecting hard drives with a data connection that suits the ports available on your computer. And I recommend selecting a computer based on your more general needs. I wouldn’t consider Thunderbolt to be a critical factor in selecting a computer or peripheral, considering the excellent performance that is also available with USB connections.

Today’s Question: Maybe this is a bit too much of “reading the tea leaves”, but it has been a topic I’ve been thinking of. Do you think the fact that you address more questions about Lightroom than about Photoshop is an indication that photographers are no longer using Photoshop as much as they used to?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Quite simply, yes. My sense is that photographers are not using Adobe Photoshop anywhere near as much as they used to. That certainly is true for me personally, in part because Lightroom Classic CC has improved so much over the years.

More Detail: Photoshop has certainly been a graphics powerhouse for a number of years. The original release of Photoshop 1.0 was almost 30 years ago (in 1990). In the world of software, that is a very long time indeed.

In the meantime, other software has been released, including more “modern” options such as Lightroom. As many readers know, I am currently using Lightroom Classic CC to manage my overall photography workflow.

Over the years, other software such as Lightroom has improved to provide rather sophisticated tools for optimizing photos. Especially since Lightroom offers image-management tools, it makes sense that photographers using Lightroom to manage their photos would also perform at least their initial optimization adjustments within Lightroom.

In the early days of Lightroom, many photographers would continue sending photos to Photoshop to apply their most significant adjustments. Over time, as Lightroom expanded the range of optimization tools, Photoshop became a less important part of their workflow.

Based on the questions and feedback I get from readers, and the interest I see at various events I speak at, it most certainly appears at least anecdotally that many photographers are using Photoshop much less than they used to.

At this point I am able to apply the vast majority of my adjustments to the vast majority of my photos using only Lightroom Classic CC. It is very rare for me to need to send a photo to Photoshop, and when I do it is generally to take advantage of the superior image-cleanup tools in Photoshop. I expect that if Adobe were to add Content-Aware cleanup technology to Lightroom Classic CC, I would almost never need Photoshop for optimizing my photos.

Today’s Question: When I open Lightroom (or other software such as Word) on my Macintosh, clicking on the green circle in the upper-left corner causes it to open full-screen, using all of the display area. When I open Photoshop and click the green circle it does not completely open to full screen, instead leaving a bit of desktop real estate at the bottom of the screen. Can Photoshop be put in full-screen mode like the other applications?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Photoshop doesn’t support the full-screen mode that is part of the Macintosh operating system. However, Photoshop does include its own variation on a full-screen display.

More Detail: In terms of the full-screen mode in the Macintosh operating system, software developers must add support to their applications if they want to make use of this feature. Adobe has thus far not updated Photoshop to support this Macintosh feature for full screen mode. So, when you click the green button to maximize the window in Photoshop, instead of going full screen the application will simply fill the available space without covering up the menu bar or the dock.

One option to help make the most of the available screen real estate for Photoshop on the Macintosh platform is to have the dock automatically hide and reveal. From the Apple menu (Apple logo) at the far left of the menu bar, choose System Preferences. In the System Preferences dialog choose Dock. Then turn on the “Automatically hide and show the Dock” checkbox. The dock will then disappear from view.

To bring back the dock, simply drag your mouse to the edge of the screen where the dock is docked (the bottom of the screen is the default location). When you maximize Photoshop, for example, it will then take up the space that was previously occupied by the dock.

In addition, Photoshop and Lightroom offer some full screen view modes of their own.

In Photoshop the full screen mode behaves a little bit differently than that available within the Macintosh operating system or Lightroom. Within Photoshop you’ll find the three options on the View > Screen Mode submenu. When you switch to one of the Full Screen options for Photoshop (with or without a menu bar), the title bar for the Photoshop window will disappear. In addition, however, the canvas area (where the image is) will no longer be what is essentially a separate window pane.

In other words, the image will be able to float freely behind the panels. Some users prefer this approach, and others (like me) find it a bit distracting. Note that you can hide the panels in Photoshop by pressing the Tab key on the keyboard. You can also present only the image itself in a full-screen preview by pressing Shift+F on the keyboard. If you prefer to work in the standard window display mode you can choose View > Screen Mode > Standard Screen Mode from the menu.

In Lightroom you can press Shift+F to cycle through three view modes. The first is the window mode that is the default view. The second is full screen with a menu bar at the top of the Lightroom interface. The third is to have Lightroom full screen without the menu bar. This last mode is the one I prefer. Even in full-screen mode in Lightroom you can access the menu at any time by simply sliding your mouse up to the very top of the display.

Today’s Question: I was at a camera club meeting last week and the presenter said we should always use back-button focus because it works differently than half-depressing the shutter release and results in sharper focus. I’ve always seen BBF as simply a convenience not something different technically that gives better results. Am I missing something?

Tim’s Quick Answer: With all cameras I am familiar with, the back-button focus option makes use of the exact same autofocus settings as focusing with the shutter release button, so either will result in the same sharpness for your photos. You decision of which approach to use should be based purely on which method best meets your photographic needs.

More Detail: Back-button focus refers to an option available on many cameras, where you can use a button on the back of the camera to activate autofocus. In other words, this enables you to separate the functions of focusing and capturing the photo. As a general rule, I recommend using back-button focus because it enables you recompose to take a picture without altering the autofocus setting.

If you use back-button focus (and have disabled focus for the shutter release button), I then recommend setting your camera to continuous autofocus. Then, to focus continually you press and hold the button for back-button focus. If you want the equivalent of “one shot” autofocus, you can press the button for back-button autofocus until focus is established, and then release the button to effectively lock the focus setting.

When you release the button for back-button focus with the process outlined above, pressing the shutter release button to check exposure or capture a photo will not cause the focus setting to change.

Of course, you may prefer having autofocus enabled for the shutter release button, and if that works for your needs it is perfectly fine. There is no need to choose one over the other to ensure better autofocus quality, as both will employ the same camera settings and features for establishing autofocus.

Today’s Question: What happens if your Lightroom [Classic CC] catalog gets corrupted and you have web albums synced via collections? Will the web albums stay intact forever?

Tim’s Quick Answer: If your Lightroom Classic CC catalog gets corrupted, your synchronized collections will remain available via the cloud until you create a new catalog and designate that as the catalog to be used for synchronization. Therefore, in general it would be better to recover from a backup catalog than to create a new catalog.

More Detail: When you enable synchronization for collections within Lightroom Classic CC, the images within those collections will be synchronized to Adobe’s Creative Cloud servers. That, in turn, will cause those photos to be available in the Lightroom CC mobile app, via the Lightroom web interface (https://lightroom.adobe.com), or via Lightroom CC (the cloud-based Lightroom).

If your catalog becomes corrupted, that won’t immediately cause the synchronized images to be lost. In theory you could access the synchronized photos indefinitely through the options outlined above.

However, at some point you would likely want to create a new catalog and enable that catalog to be used for cloud-based synchronization. Because only one Lightroom catalog can have synchronization enabled, as soon as you enable that synchronization for the new catalog your cloud-based storage would be updated to only include photos (via collections) that are being synchronized from your new catalog. As part of that process, the photos that had been synchronized to the cloud will be removed.

Because of this issue, if your Lightroom catalog becomes corrupted, it would generally be better to recover from a recent backup of your catalog, rather than creating a completely new catalog.

Today’s Question: Is there a way to create a collection of my photos that I have picked [with a Pick flag in Lightroom Classic CC]?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you could accomplish this by creating a Smart Collection based on Pick flag status, which is effectively the same as a search result across your entire Lightroom Classic CC catalog.

More Detail: Lightroom provides a variety of ways to filter your photos, so you can find just the photos you need when you need them. This is certainly true for Pick (or Reject) flags. You could, for example, go to All Photographs in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module to browse all images in your entire catalog. You could then set a filter for Pick flag using the Library Filter bar or the quick filters available at the top-right of the Filmstrip.

If you want to preserve this set of photos as part of a collection, a Smart Collection is your best option. To create a new Smart Collection, click the plus (+) button to the right of the Collections header on the left panel in the Library module, and choose “Create Smart Collection” from the popup menu.

In the Create Smart Collection dialog, first enter a name for the new collection in the Name field. If you want the new Smart Collection to be included in a Collection Set, turn on the “Inside a Collection Set” checkbox, and choose the applicable set from the popup below.

For the “Match” setting, be sure the popup is set to “all”. Then change the criteria for your Smart Collection in the area that takes up the bottom half of this dialog. In this example you could set the first popup to Pick Flag, the second popup to “is”, and the third popup to “flagged”.

For a Smart Collection that contains all photos that have a Pick flag assigned, only this one row of criteria is required. If there are any other criteria rows you can click the minus (-) button to the right of those rows to remove the additional criteria.

When you have finished configuring the Smart Collection, click the Create button at the bottom-right of the Create Smart Collection dialog. You can then navigate to this new Smart Collection anytime you want to view only the photos in your catalog that have a Pick flag assigned to them.

Note that unlike a standard Collection, you can’t enable cloud synchronization for a Smart Collection. Therefore, the contents of the Smart Collection would only be available within the Lightroom catalog, not via cloud-connected options such as Lightroom CC on a mobile device.

You could also create a standard Collection, and add photos that have a Pick flag to that collection. However, unlike a Smart Collection, a standard collection will not update automatically. So if you want to have quick access to all photos with a Pick flag that will be updated in real time, a Smart Collection provides a solution.

Today’s Question: Are color labels specific to Lightroom or are they standard metadata?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The metadata field used by Lightroom to record color labels is part of the Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) originally created by Adobe. However, there isn’t a standard on what information is put into this field, and so not all software will interpret color labels the same. Furthermore, not all software supports the XMP metadata standard.

More Detail: The color label you can apply to photos in Lightroom is stored in the Label field that is part of the XMP metadata standard. However, not all software applications support this standard, which means not all software will be able to display or update color labels you have added in Lightroom.

Keep in mind that by default Lightroom Classic CC will only save metadata updates to the catalog, not to the photos themselves. If you want the metadata to be included with your photos, you have two options. You can manually save metadata for selected photos by choosing Metadata > Save Metadata to File from the menu. You can also have standard metadata values saved automatically to your image files by turning on the “Automatically write changes into XMP” checkbox on the Metadata tab of the Catalog Settings dialog.

It is also worth noting that there isn’t an established standard for the information that is written to the Label field in metadata for different applications. In fact, Lightroom doesn’t even use the same values as were originally implemented by Adobe Bridge. That means that by default a red color label added in Adobe Bridge would appear as a white color label in Lightroom, and vice versa.

That’s because each of these applications use different words to describe a given color label. For example, while Lightroom uses “Red” as the metadata value for a red color label, in Adobe Bridge a red color label is represented by the word “Select” in metadata.

Due to the issues above, color labels in Lightroom are not as widely supported as other metadata values that are part of the EXIF or IPTC metadata standards. Therefore, I recommend that if you’re going to use color labels, you use them for a secondary purpose, as they may not be available with all imaging software you may choose to use at a later date.

Today’s Question: You addressed the resolution that should be used when resizing a photo for print using the Crop tool. But what resolution should I be using when I’m going to share a photo online or with a digital presentation?

Tim’s Quick Answer: When sharing a photo digitally (rather than printing), the pixel per inch (ppi) resolution is irrelevant. The actual pixel dimensions will determine how large the image is presented through digital means.

More Detail: The topic of pixel per inch (ppi) resolution is one that has long been confusing for many photographers. I think part of the reason this was originally an issue is that many people were under the false impression that Macintosh computers used a display resolution of 72 ppi and Windows computers used a display resolution of 96 ppi.

Today’s displays generally have considerably higher resolutions than the numbers noted above, and there is considerable variability depending on the size of the display and the resolution setting for that display.

The pixel per inch setting for an image doesn’t matter for digital sharing of photos. The pixel dimensions will determine how large the image appears with the specific digital output method you’re using.

For example, if you had a photo sized to about 960 pixels wide will take up half the width of a display that has a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, assuming the image is presented at 100% scale. The ppi resolution set in the metadata for the image would not impact how it is presented.

Having said that, there are some applications that look at the ppi resolution setting for an image even though there is no need to do so. This would affect how large an image is sized when you place it into a document, such as for a slideshow presentation.

So, in general you can leave the ppi resolution setting to any value you’d like for images that will be shared digitally. If you feel better entering a specific value for the resolution field, a setting of 100 ppi will be reasonably close to the typical value for most digital output. But again, for most digital sharing scenarios, that information will be completely ignored.

Today’s Question: As you know, the Crop tool in [Photoshop and] Photoshop Elements allows one to record the desired width and height in inches for an image to be printed. To the right of this is a box for “Resolution.” My question is, how does one determine what that resolution number should be?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The optimal output resolution setting will vary based on the specific output method. However, when printing an image a good starting point for a baseline resolution is 300 pixels per inch (ppi).

More Detail: If you were simply trying to crop an original image to a specific aspect ratio, but you don’t want to resize the image in the process, you should leave the Resolution field for the Crop tool blank. A blank value for Resolution will cause the crop box to fit the aspect ratio you’ve defined, but the image will only be cropped without resizing in terms of the overall dimensions. In other words, you would be trimming pixels out of the image without resizing to a specific output size.

If you are cropping an image to prepare it for printing, then you will want to specify a Resolution value for the Crop tool so the image will actually be resized to the specific intended output. The Resolution is only really a factor when preparing a photo for printing, not for preparing a photo for digital output.

So, the Resolution setting for the Crop tool can be thought of as mostly a tool to use when preparing an image for printing. In general, a resolution of 300 pixels per inch (ppi) works well for most printed output. If you’re using a photo inkjet printer, in most cases you’ll get best results with a resolution of up to 360 ppi, though the specific optimal setting will depend on the printer being used to produce the print.

In general, a resolution of at least 300 ppi will provide excellent results with just about any printer. A higher setting may result in improved print quality depending on the printer being used, although in most cases there won’t be a clear advantage to settings above about 400 ppi.

Today’s Question: In a recent vacation one of my cards got corrupted and wouldn’t be recognized by my camera or computer. I had to buy recovery software and was able to recover the files. However, for 25% of my RAW files Photoshop indicates it can’t recognize the file format. Is there something I can do to open these files?

Tim’s Quick Answer: While it is possible that some of the raw capture files were damaged beyond repair due to the problem with your memory card, there are software tools that can sometimes salvage corrupted raw captures, enabling you to recover the original image.

More Detail: There are two basic types of recovery software that may help you salvage lost images. The first type is software that can recovered files that seem to have been lost due to deletion, formatting of the media, or damage to the media. The second type is software that can actually repair damaged files, provided the damage is not too severe.

If you have accidentally deleted photos from a media card, even by formatting the card in your camera in most cases, the files can still be recovered using special software. If a media card is damaged to some extent, it is still possible that this type of software may be able to recover files that can’t be accessed from the card using normal means.

When this type of recovery fails, it is quite possible that the source files have been corrupted to such an extent that they can’t be recovered. For example, some of the core image data could be missing altogether. In other words, this is a more challenging type of recovery, which can translate into lower success rates.

One software tool that may be able to salvage damaged raw capture files is Stellar Repair for Photos, which you can learn more about on the Stellar website here:

https://www.stellarinfo.com/photo-repair-software.php