Category: Ask Tim Grey

Today’s Question: Under what circumstances do you feel it is a good idea to have multiple catalogs in Lightroom Classic CC?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The only time I think it may be helpful to have your photos divided up among more than one catalog in Lightroom is when there is a need to keep certain photos separated from others. But frankly, even then you could still use a single catalog and divide those photos through other means, such as storing them on different hard drives or using metadata values to identify the various categories of images.

More Detail: It seems that many photographers want to maintain multiple catalogs in Lightroom, or at least the idea seems to make sense early on. Eventually, in my experience many photographers who start out with multiple catalogs realize that this approach adds complexity and potential confusion to their workflow. That is when they decide it would be best to merge their catalogs into a single “master” catalog, which is a decision I am in complete agreement with.

As I mentioned in my answer in yesterday’s Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter, I recommend keeping your image-management workflow as simple as possible. Ideally that means storing all of your photos on a single storage device and using a single Lightroom catalog to manage those photos. This approach means you always know which catalog your photos are in, because it is your only catalog. And it would also mean you know which drive a given photo is on, because it is your only drive.

You can then use the folder structure, keywords, star ratings, and other metadata to identify the various properties of your photos that you can later use to locate any photo you need.

If you’d like to merge multiple Lightroom catalogs, and otherwise cleanup your workflow, you can get a special “New Year’s Resolution” discount on my full bundle of video courses on Lightroom by using this link to get started:

https://www.greylearning.com/bundles/lightroom?coupon=newyear19

Today’s Question: Do you recommend creating a new catalog in Lightroom Classic CC for the new year? I saw this advice, suggesting that it was better to have a separate catalog for each calendar year. Your thoughts?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Absolutely not. My general recommendation is to use a single Lightroom catalog for all of your photos and videos, and I certainly don’t recommend creating a new catalog for each calendar year.

More Detail: I recognize there are situations where a photographer may want (or need) to maintain more than one catalog in Lightroom. However, in my mind those situations represent an exception to what I consider “best practices” in Lightroom.

In general I recommend using a workflow that is as streamlined as possible. When it comes to managing your photos in Lightroom, I feel that having multiple catalogs can be cumbersome and confusing. After all, if you use multiple catalogs and want to find a particular photo, first you need to know which catalog that photo is contained in.

Therefore, I think it makes the most sense to use a single catalog for all photos whenever possible. And if you’re concerned about performance issues, that isn’t a significant issue. My Lightroom catalog currently contains a little less than 400,000 images, and the performance is nearly identical to when I’m working with a small catalog for demonstration purposes.

If you’d like to merge multiple Lightroom catalogs, and otherwise cleanup your workflow, you can get a special “New Year’s Resolution” discount on my full bundle of video courses on Lightroom by using this link to get started:

https://www.greylearning.com/bundles/lightroom?coupon=newyear19

Today’s Question: When I launch Photoshop I’m first seeing a message that suggests it is looking for Lightroom photos. Then I get a message that says, “This service is not available. Please check your network settings.” How do I stop this? I never have photos in anyone’s cloud, and I have no idea of what “network settings” the error message refers to. How do I turn this off so I have just the simplest opening screen?

Tim’s Quick Answer: This message indicates Photoshop is attempting to provide access to photos you have synchronized to the cloud via Lightroom. You can bypass this screen altogether for a simpler startup experience in Photoshop by turning on the “Disable the Home Screen” checkbox on the General tab of the Preferences dialog.

More Detail: With a recent update Adobe added a new “Home Screen” to Photoshop. This provides quick access to existing documents from several sources, as well as options for creating new documents. One of the options for accessing existing photos is “LR Photos”, found toward the top-left of the Home Screen.

When the LR Photos option is selected, Photoshop will display photos that have been synchronized from Lightroom. That could include photos added to synchronized collections in Lightroom Classic CC, or photos imported to Lightroom CC on a computer or mobile device.

If you aren’t making use of synchronization in Lightroom, you could choose the “Home” option at the top-left of the Home Screen. If you don’t want to see the Home Screen at all when you launch Photoshop, you can simply disable it.

To disable the Home Screen start by going to the Photoshop menu on Macintosh or the Edit menu on Windows. Then choose “Preferences” followed by “General”. This will bring up the Preferences dialog with the General tab selected. In the Options section of the General tab, turn on the “Disable the Home Screen” checkbox. Click OK to apply the change, and then quit Photoshop. The next time you launch Photoshop, you’ll see only the actual Photoshop interface, with no images opened and no Home Screen to distract you.

Today’s Question: Is there anyway to make presets [in Lightroom Classic CC] that changes the slider relative to the current setting? For instance, if you have already adjusted a slider value to +30 or +42 or -25 can you make a preset that adds 10 to any of these values, resulting in new values of +40, +52 or -15?

Tim’s Quick Answer: No, the adjustments saved in presets in Lightroom are absolute adjustments rather than relative adjustments. The only way to apply relative adjustments is through the Quick Develop panel in the Library module, and you can’t create presets based on the Quick Develop adjustments.

More Detail: When you save a preset in Lightroom, you are for the most part saving specific adjustment values you want to apply to other images. The only “variable” adjustments would be things like the Auto Settings option, or the “Auto Black & White Mix” option for black and white conversions.

By contrast, the Quick Develop adjustments found on the right panel in the Library module provide the ability to apply relative adjustments. So, for example, if you have already increased the Vibrance adjustment to a value of +5, clicking the single right arrow for Vibrance under Quick Develop would increase that value by five, to an adjustment setting of +10. If you then click the double right arrow for Vibrance in Quick Develop, the value would be further increased by twenty, to an adjustment setting of +30.

However, the relative adjustments found in the Quick Develop section within the Library module can’t be saved as part of a preset. So if you want to apply adjustments relative to existing adjustments, rather than that replace that adjustment, you’ll need to directly use the Quick Develop adjustments rather than using a preset.

Note, by the way, that you can apply relative adjustments to multiple images at the same time with the Quick Develop controls. You just need to select multiple images first, and be in the Grid view (rather than the Loupe view, for example) before adjusting the Quick Develop controls.

Today’s Question: I’ve just bought a new MacBook Pro. The computer display has a new feature called True Tone, which measures the ambient light color and brightness and adjusts the display accordingly. Do you recommend turning this feature off when editing photos in Lightroom and Photoshop?

Tim’s Quick Answer: For evaluating and correcting color I do recommend turning off the True Tone feature, or any other feature that will alter the color or brightness appearance of your display. Instead, to the extent possible I recommend working in a consistent environment that is relatively dark.

More Detail: In theory, a display that automatically adapts to changing lighting conditions is a good thing, ensuring that the display will appear the same to our eyes regardless of how the ambient lighting changes. In reality, this is more complicated than it may seem. Therefore, my recommendation is to try to control the environment to the extent possible, rather than enabling a feature that will cause the appearance of your display to change.

While lighting conditions can absolutely affect our perception of color, it is challenging to change the appearance of a display to correct for perception errors. Therefore, the far more reliable way to ensure you are evaluating an accurate display of an image is to first calibrate your display, and then work in a consistent and relatively dark environment.

In other words, as much as possible you want the view of your photos to be accurate and consistent, without any outside interference. Calibrating your display will help ensure accuracy, and a relatively dark environment will help ensure you are making decisions based exclusively on the actual display and not the surrounding environment.

You can read more about display calibration on the GreyLearning blog here:

A Forgotten Skill Among Photographers?

Today’s Question: Is it necessary to keep all your Lightroom Classic CC backup folders, or just the last five to ten backups?

Tim’s Quick Answer: No, there isn’t a significant reason to retain a large number of backups for your Lightroom Classic CC catalog. I generally recommend retaining several of your most recent backups, as well as one or two backups that are perhaps up to six months old.

More Detail: First, it is very important to note that when you use the backup feature in Lightroom Classic CC, you are only backing up the catalog, not the source photos being managed by Lightroom. So you’ll still need to perform a backup for your photos in addition to the catalog backup.

The catalog backup essentially represents a copy of the actual primary catalog file. If your catalog ever became corrupted, you could replace your corrupted catalog with the most recent backup, and you will have only potentially lost information that was added to the catalog since the time of the most recent backup.

In theory, to recover from a corrupted catalog you only need a single backup. However, it is possible that the backup would still retain some sort of problem that could make that catalog unusable. This is highly unlikely, but out of an abundance of caution I recommend retaining more than one copy of your catalog backup.

Therefore, I recommend retaining your most recent catalog backup, as well as two or three other relatively recent backups. Which you retain will depend in part on how often you update your catalog and how often you backup your catalog.

As an additional precautionary measure, I also recommend retaining a backup that is a bit older. The idea is that if there were some sort of recent issue that caused corruption to your catalog, an older backup would hopefully provide an option for recovery without that corruption.

Of course, restoring from an out-of-date catalog creates a new set of problems, which is part of the reason I also highly recommend enabling the “Automatically write changes into XMP” checkbox on the Metadata tab of the Catalog Settings dialog.

Today’s Question: How can I apply “Auto” to a selected set of photos after import?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can absolutely apply the Auto adjustments to multiple images after import through the use of a preset that includes those auto adjustments, in conjunction with the Quick Develop section of the right panel in the Library module.

More Detail: In an earlier Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter I addressed the use of a preset during import to apply adjustments to all photos being imported, including the Auto adjustment available in the Basic section of the right panel in the Develop module.

In addition to being able to apply presets during import, you can also apply them later in your workflow. For example, after selecting a single image while working in the Develop module, you can click on a preset in the Presets section of the left panel.

If you want to apply the preset to multiple images, that can be done quickly in the Library module. Start by actually selecting the images you want to apply the preset to. Then make sure you are in the Grid view (rather than for example the Loupe view) so you can apply changes to multiple images at the same time.

To actually apply the preset to the selected images, click the Saved Preset popup in the Quick Develop section of the right panel in the Library module, and choose the preset you’d like to apply.

Note that in this example you would want to create a preset that includes the “Auto Settings” option. You also want to be sure you are including only the specific adjustments you want to apply to photos later in your workflow, which may very well only be the Auto Settings adjustment.

To create such a preset, you can first apply sample adjustments to an image in the Develop module. Then click the plus symbol (+) to the right of the Presets heading on the left panel, and choose “Create Preset” from the popup menu that appears.

In the New Develop Preset dialog, you can enter a name the preset in the Preset Name field. Make sure this is a meaningful name so you can choose it by name later. Then click the Check None button at the bottom-left of the dialog. You can then turn on the checkbox for only the adjustments you want included in the preset. In this case, for example, you would want to turn on the Auto Settings checkbox.

You can then click the Create button at the bottom-right of the New Develop Preset dialog, and you’ll be ready to apply that preset to multiple images at any time later in your workflow.

Today’s Question: Do you think using Adobe Bridge along with software like Luminar or Photoshop Elements to do post-processing of RAW images would be feasible and worthwhile? I use the Adobe Photography Plan subscription now.

Tim’s Quick Answer: Adobe Bridge provides a perfectly reasonable solution for managing photos. And software such as Luminar or Photoshop Elements provide tools for processing raw captures. However, I feel that Lightroom Classic CC is a better choice for image management and even initial raw processing, with the use of other software tools potentially providing supplemental benefits.

More Detail: In my mind image management is the most daunting challenge facing photographers. Therefore, which image management software to use is perhaps the most important decision to make in terms of your overall workflow. While I realize many photographers have struggled with Lightroom, I still feel that Lightroom provides a superior image-management solution compared to Adobe Bridge.

Put simply, Adobe Bridge is a browser while Lightroom provides a catalog-based workflow solution. While the catalog in Lightroom is a source of many challenges for photographers, it also provides a variety of advantages. For example, with a catalog it is much faster and easier to search among an entire library of photos, which is a task that can be extremely slow with Adobe Bridge.

Beyond image management, of course you want to consider which software tools will provide the best solution for optimizing your photos. Lightroom provides powerful raw processing that is on par with many other software applications that are available (and that is superior to the raw processing in Photoshop Elements). With the Photography Plan subscription (https://timgrey.me/photoplan) you also have access to Photoshop, which is obviously an incredibly powerful solution.

Other software applications certainly offer a variety of benefits for photo optimization and applying creative effects. However, I don’t feel there is a better solution for managing photos that Lightroom Classic CC. If you’re going to subscribe to the Photography Plan to get access to Lightroom, then I would tend to make use of Photoshop as a primary tool for advanced photo optimization. And then, of course, other software could be looked to for supplemental purposes. For example, I highly recommend Aurora HDR (https://timgrey.me/aurora2019) as a great tool for creating HDR images.

So, I think Lightroom Classic CC represents a good foundation for a photographers workflow. I therefore feel it makes sense for most photographers to consider Lightroom as the central tool in their workflow, adding additional plug-ins and other software to fill gaps that aren’t covered by Lightroom.

Today’s Question: Will a saved selection continued to be saved once Photoshop is turned off for the day and back on the next morning? I ask because when I turn Photoshop back on in a subsequent session I cannot find any of the previously saved selections.

Tim’s Quick Answer: Saved selections will only be saved “permanently” if you are saving them as part of a compatible image file format, such as TIFF or PSD. If you save a selection for an image file that does not support saved selections (such as a JPEG image) then the saved selection will disappear if you close the image without also saving it as a TIFF or PSD file. You can see saved selections by choosing Select > Load Selection from the menu, or by looking at the Channels panel.

More Detail: When you save a selection in Photoshop, such as by using the Select > Save Selection command, the selection may not be saved permanently. Photoshop stores a saved selection as an “alpha channel”, and not all file formats support alpha channels.

So, if you open a JPEG image, save a selection, and then save the image and quit Photoshop, you didn’t actually save the selection. That is because JPEG images (among other image file formats) don’t support alpha channels.

The TIFF and Photoshop PSD file formats do support alpha channels, and therefore are able to preserve your saved selections as part of the file. That means you can save a selection for a TIFF or PSD file, save the updated version of that file, and the next time you open the image in Photoshop you’ll be able to load the selection again.

Note that you can view a list of saved selections by choosing Select > Load Selection from the menu and clicking on the Channel popup. You can also view the alpha channels for the saved selections (which provides a thumbnail view of the mask for the saved selection) by going to the Channels panel (Window > Channels).

Today’s Question: You recommend against allowing or enabling auto-update of Adobe Creative Cloud applications (for valid reasons). If one was so careless as to allow it, is there a way to undo it?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can disable automatic updates for Creative Cloud applications at any time in the Preferences for the Adobe Creative Cloud application.

More Detail: As noted in a previous edition of the Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter, I do recommend disabling automatic application updates, primarily so you can get a sense of whether there are any problems with the update before installing it.

The Adobe Creative Cloud application recently included an update that offers to enable the automatic installation of new versions of applications as soon as that update is available.

If you had previously enabled the automatic-update feature when prompted with a popup, you can still turn that feature off in the Preferences for the Adobe Creative Cloud application.

First, click on the icon for the Creative Cloud application on the taskbar (Windows) or menu bar (Macintosh). Then click the icon with three dots arranged vertically, which you will find at the top-right of the Creative Cloud application window. Choose Preferences from the popup menu, and click on the “Creative Cloud” tab.

At the bottom of the Creative Cloud tab in Preferences you will find an “Enable auto-update” checkbox. You can then click the “back” button at the top-left of the Creative Cloud window to leave the Preferences screen. With the “Enable auto-update” checkbox turned off, updates will not be installed until you click the “Update” button on the Apps tab of the Creative Cloud application.