Category: Ask Tim Grey

Today’s Question: I frequently shoot photos of my grandkids’ sporting events. After I select the ones I want to share with family, I try to rearrange them in order of tasks: batting, fielding, scoring, etc. But Lightroom Classic pops up with a message saying I can’t reorder them. How can I reorder their sequence?

Tim’s Quick Answer: In order to arrange photos into a custom sort order in Lightroom Classic you need to either be browsing a single folder or a “normal” collection (rather than a smart collection).

More Detail: In Lightroom Classic it is possible to arrange photos into a custom sort order by simply dragging the thumbnails for your photos around within the grid view display. You can even then switch to a different sort order (such as capture time), and then switch back to your custom sort order using the Sort popup on the toolbar below the grid view display.

However, the custom sort order is only available if you are browsing a single folder or a normal collection. So, if you have selected more than one folder to browse, you won’t be able to drag your photos around into a custom sort order. Similarly, if you are browsing a smart collection rather than a normal collection you won’t be able to arrange into a custom sort order.

Therefore, to deal with a situation where you’re not able to arrange the photos into a custom sort order in Lightroom Classic I recommend creating a collection for the applicable photos. You can then arrange the photos within that collection in any order you’d like.

Today’s Question: You mentioned that you have gone entirely to using a laptop. Could you share some words of wisdom in calibrating a laptop?

Tim’s Quick Answer: A laptop display can be calibrated and profiled in the same way you would otherwise calibrate a standalone display. I highly recommend using a package that employs a colorimeter device for this purpose, such as the X-Rite i1Display Studio (http://timgrey.me/i1display).

More Detail: I highly recommend calibrating any display you will use for evaluating your photos, to ensure the most accurate results when printing or otherwise sharing your photos. This is true whether the display is a standalone monitor or a display integrated into a laptop.

There are a variety of software-only calibration tools, but these don’t actually measure the light being emitted by your monitor display. To get the most accurate display, a colorimeter is needed to measure the brightness and color accuracy of your display. That information is then used to create a profile that corrects the output for your display.

One great option for calibrating your monitor display is to use the X-Rite i1Display Studio (http://timgrey.me/i1display). This is what I use to calibrate the display on my MacBook Pro display, and it provides accurate tone and color for evaluating my images.

If you don’t calibrate your display, the images you see on that display may be inaccurate in terms of color, and will almost certainly be inaccurate in terms of tonality. This is the primary reason that photographers often end up with prints that are too dark. Put simply, they are evaluating an image on a display that is too bright, and therefore darkening the photo to the point that they are not happy with their prints.

So, just as you would for any monitor display, it is important to calibrate and profile your laptop’s display, whether like me you are using a laptop as your only computer, or you are simply using the laptop when you’re away from your desktop computer.

Today’s Question: I have a folder in Lightroom Classic that contains photos from different locations. How do I go about breaking these photos into meaningful locations?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You could split up these photos by making new subfolders and then dragging and dropping the photos to the applicable subfolder. Just make sure that all of this work is done within Lightroom Classic, not through the operating system or other software.

More Detail: In Lightroom Classic you can create new subfolders within an existing folder, or create a new folder in any available storage location. In this case it may be most helpful to create subfolders to contain the various photos currently contained within a single folder.

Start by navigating to the folder you want to re-organize within the Folders list on the left panel in the Library module. Then click the plus symbol (+) to the right of the Folders heading and choose “Add Subfolder” from the popup menu. In the dialog that appears, enter a name for the new subfolder. Note that if you had already selected photos you want to place within this new subfolder you can turn on the “Included selected photos” checkbox. Click Create and the new subfolder will be created. Repeat this process for as many subfolders as you need, being sure to go back to the parent folder each time before creating a new subfolder.

You can now drag-and-drop photos from the parent folder into the applicable subfolder. If there is a range of photos you want to move, you can click on the first image and then hold the Shift key on the keyboard and click on the last image in the series. If you want to toggle the selection of photos that are not in a single sequence you can hold the Ctrl key on Windows or the Command key on Macintosh while clicking on the photo you want to select or deselect. Then drag-and-drop any of the selected photos to the new subfolder. In the confirmation dialog that appears click the Move button, and the photos will be moved.

Repeat this process as needed to move photos into subfolders. Note, by the way, that you could also create the new folders in a different location, such as to have the new folders on the same level as the original folder. But again, be sure that you perform this work in Lightroom Classic, so that the catalog will reflect the changes you’ve made. It is worth noting that the changes to folder structure you make within Lightroom Classic will indeed be reflected on your hard drive, not just in your catalog.

Today’s Question: I’m now up to over 530,000 images and so have moved from 4TB to 8TB external drives to house my images, both active and back-up. Anything you can offer regarding reliability, performance, or anything else between 4TB & 8TB? Just wondering if I might be safer and/or better off spreading over more 4TB rather than using the 8TB.

Tim’s Quick Answer: There are quite a few variables that affect hard drive performance and reliability, but in general I would say that storage capacity is not a significant factor to consider. I would opt for the larger capacity hard drive for convenience, all other things being equal.

More Detail: When choosing a hard drive, the two primary concerns are performance and reliability (after having chosen the required storage capacity). Performance is not too difficult to get information about. Reliability is a bit trickier to consider.

In concept determining the performance of a hard should be relatively easy. In reality, getting this information can be rather difficult. If at all possible, I recommend tracking down the sustained transfer rate for the drive. Admittedly, many different software tools for testing sustained transfer rate differ in how they perform the test. If possible, I therefore recommend finding independent test results from a single source comparing various drives. I’ve long used PC Magazine’s reviews to try to obtain this performance data, starting here for reviews and more:

https://www.pcmag.com/categories/hard-drives

For reliability, you could track down the mean time between failure (MTBF) information that is sometimes available from hard drive manufacturers. It can also be helpful to look into reliability data from third-party sources. For example, while it doesn’t cover a wide range of hard drive brands, I find the stats provided by Backblaze to be interesting, especially in the context of seeing how different manufacturers perform in terms of hard drive reliability. You can find the 2019 annual stats from Backblaze here:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2019

The references above are just a starting point, of course. But in the context of today’s question, the bottom line is that I would choose hard drive capacity based on storage needs, and then choose a specific drive based on performance and reliability data to the extent that is possible.

Today’s Question: I continue to see references to luminosity masks and I am confused. Are there distinct advantages to using luminosity masks [in Adobe Photoshop] versus what can be accomplished readily with other software?

Tim’s Quick Answer: A luminosity mask is simply a layer mask (or selection) that is based on brightness levels in an image. These enable you to target adjustments to only the highlights or shadows in an image, for example. I highly recommend using the Color Range command rather than the various shortcuts that are often what I find most photographers are referring to as luminosity masks.

More Detail: Most often, when I hear photographers talking about luminosity masks, they are referencing techniques where selections are created somewhat automatically based on the brightest or darkest pixels in an image. These approaches are interesting, but I find the Color Range command in Photoshop to be far more flexible for this purpose.

A luminosity mask is most helpful when you want to apply an adjustment to all of the brightest areas of a photo or all of the darkest areas. The Color Range command makes it easy to create a selection of those areas with control over the specific range of tonal values being selected. You can even create a selection based on middle tone values rather than highlights or shadows.

To get started, open an image and choose Select > Color Range from the menu. In the Select popup at the top of the Color Range dialog choose the option that suits the area of the image you want to select, which for luminosity would mean choosing either Highlights, Midtones, or Shadows.

Once you have selected an option you will see a Range control. For Highlights or Shadows this enables you to define the cutoff between what is a highlight versus a shadow for purposes of the luminosity-based selection. For Midtones you will have two sliders that enable you to define the range of tonal values to be selected.

You can also fine-tune the Fuzziness slider to expand or contract the selection relative to similar tonal values. When you’re finished click the OK button to create the selection. That selection can then be used as the basis of a targeted adjustment for specific areas of the photo based on the luminance values.

Today’s Question: For someone without a GPS-enabled camera (Nikon D500), is there a smartphone app you would recommend? Are there free programs for someone who would not be doing large volumes? Or even though there is significant battery drain would you recommend a camera mounted devise? Any other thoughts on the subject?

Tim’s Quick Answer: I am currently using (and would certainly recommend) the GPS Tracks app for iPhone users (https://apple.co/34BvBPQ). I’m not as familiar with Android smartphones, but do have one and have used GPS Logger for Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.basicairdata.graziano.gpslogger), and found it to work very well.

More Detail: If your camera is not equipped with a GPS receiver, I find that recording a track log using a smartphone app is a great solution. I’ve generally been able to record track logs of nearly a full day with a smartphone app. By using your smartphone for this purpose rather than a GPS accessory for your camera, you will prevent the additional battery drain for your camera caused by such an accessory.

For iPhone users, I recommend the GPS Tracks app, which you can find in the Apple App Store here:

https://apple.co/34BvBPQ

For Android users, the app I’ve used with good results is GPS Logger, which can be found here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.basicairdata.graziano.gpslogger

With a GPS track log app such as those mentioned above, you can record a log of your position and movement during a photography outing. When you’re finished recording the track log, you can download a GPX file that contains the track log data. I find it easiest to use the app to email the file as an attachment.

That GPX file can then be synchronized with your photos to add location information to the photos based on the data recorded in the track log. For example, I use the Map module in Lightroom Classic to load the track log, and then synchronize that track log with the photos captured during the time I was recording the log.

Naturally, if you’re using a camera with a built-in GPS receiver the process of adding location metadata to your photos can be completely automatic. Of course, even with such a camera you may prefer to record a track log to prevent the additional battery drain caused by the GPS antenna on your camera.

Today’s Question: What is the difference between JPEG 2000 and JPEG, and which would you suggest using? I accidentally saved a photo as a JP2 (JPEG 2000) and couldn’t open it in some programs to look at them. I found out what I had done and saved them as JPEG and was able to open the saved photos.

Tim’s Quick Answer: JPEG 2000 is a file format that was originally intended to replace the JPEG file format, with both having been developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group. For a variety of reasons, including intellectual property concerns, the JPEG 2000 format has not achieved broad adoption.

More Detail: The JPEG 2000 file format that employs an image compression algorithm that provides a variety of improvements over the original JPEG standard that was created in 1992. Among other things, the JPEG 2000 file format provides the option of lossless compression, meaning the image quality is not degraded with this compression option. By comparison, the original JPEG format always involves lossy compression, where some image quality degradation will occur even at high quality settings.

While the JPEG 2000 standard represents a number of improvements over the original JPEG standard, there were a variety of intellectual property concerns that resulted in slow adoption of the format. With many software applications not supporting JPEG 2000, naturally many users (including photographers) were not eager to adopt the format.

Adobe Photoshop supports the JPEG 2000 format, but Lightroom Classic does not. In addition, some web browsers do not support JPEG 2000. Due to the lack of broad support for the JPEG 2000 format, I don’t generally recommend using it.

In addition to saving the original capture and any high-quality derivative images, if you were looking to archive copies of photos with a smaller file size, I suggest using the PNG (Portable Network Graphics) format, which is now widely supported and enables you to save files without the lossy compression of the JPEG file format.

Today’s Question: You said that it was possible to view photos synchronized from Lightroom Classic from any computer using Lightroom in a web browser. How do you do that?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can view photos from all collections synchronized via Lightroom Classic on your computer by signing in with your Adobe Creative Cloud account after pointing your web browser here:

https://lightroom.adobe.com/

More Detail: Adobe Lightroom has developed from being an application to a complete ecosystem for managing your photos. While much of this ecosystem revolves around the “cloud” version of the Lightroom desktop application, you can also make use of the cloud synchronization features with Lightroom Classic.

As mentioned in yesterday’s edition of the Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter, you can synchronize photos from Lightroom Classic using a collection. Start by adding the photos you’d like to synchronize to a collection in Lightroom Classic. Then make sure synchronization is enabled for the collection.

When synchronization is enabled for a collection, you’ll see a double-headed arrow icon that (to me at least) resembles a lightning bolt. If synchronization is not enabled, when you hover the mouse pointer over the collection, you’ll see an empty box to the left of the collection name. Click that box, and synchronization will be enabled.

After synchronization is complete, you can view your photos from any version of Lightroom, including Lightroom in a web browser. Simply sign in with your Adobe Creative Cloud account to get started, after pointing your web browser here:

https://lightroom.adobe.com/

Once you are signed in, you’ll see an interface that is very similar to the mobile version of Lightroom that you might already be using on a smartphone or tablet. There you’ll find the collections you synchronized from Lightroom Classic, containing all of the photos from those collections.

Today’s Question: I have been using Lightroom Classic for a number of years and have created new collections with some regularity. However, it seems I almost never return to the collections unless I am creating one. How and when should I be using collections?

Tim’s Quick Answer: To me collections in Lightroom Classic are first and foremost a method of organizing photos beyond the folder structure on your hard drive. In general, I recommend using collections for specific projects, or for synchronizing photos to other devices for sharing. I think it is also important that just because collections are available in Lightroom Classic doesn’t mean you necessarily need to create collections all that often.

More Detail: Collections in Lightroom Classic can most certainly be a helpful feature. However, I think it is worth keeping in mind that just because a feature exists in a software application doesn’t mean you should necessarily make use of that feature. If collections are helpful, by all means put them to use. If you don’t find a need for them, that’s perfectly fine too.

Most photographers develop a folder structure to help them keep their photos organized. The folder structure you establish on your hard drive is reflected within Lightroom Classic, and of course when you make changes to your folder structure within Lightroom Classic those changes are reflected on your hard drive.

Sometimes, however, you may find that you want to organize photos beyond the folder structure. Perhaps you want to put together a slideshow of photos from a single trip. Those photos are likely all in the same folder, so a collection wouldn’t necessarily provide a significant advantage. However, if you want to create a calendar featuring photos from a wide variety of folders, a collection could be very helpful.

In addition, in Lightroom Classic you synchronize selected photos to the Creative Cloud (and thus to other devices such as a smartphone) through the use of collections. If you add photos to a collection for which synchronization has been enabled, those photos can be viewed and shared using the mobile version of Lightroom on a smartphone or tablet, or from virtually any computer using Lightroom through a web browser.

So, collections can be useful for various projects, or just for organizing your photos beyond the folder structure. But creating a large number of collections without necessarily having a need for those collections will increase the amount of clutter and confusion in your workflow.

Today’s Question: Your post [which referenced using a laptop computer exclusively without using a desktop computer] piqued my interest regarding doing away with using a desktop. I can’t imagine doing all the work I do on a laptop and am curious if you wouldn’t mind sharing the rationale or just give the advantages of laptop over desktop, at least for you.

Tim’s Quick Answer: My original rationale for abandoning a desktop computer was quite simple. I got to the point that I was traveling so much that I wouldn’t have access to a desktop computer that remained at home while I was away. In the approximately ten years since I started only using a laptop computer, I’ve never missed having a desktop computer.

More Detail: Before the current pandemic caused my travels for the year to be canceled, I was scheduled to be traveling for almost ten months of this year. If I had a desktop computer sitting at home, I would hardly ever be able to use it.

Around ten years or so ago, as my travels were starting to get more extensive, I originally had a desktop computer at home that I could remotely access with an Internet connection. However, if something went wrong with my desktop computer, I might lose remote access for the remainder of a trip. That could prove problematic.

So, I opted to make a laptop the only computer I use. Not only does that mean I don’t have to manage a desktop computer at home, but it also means I never have to swap data between computers. I have access to my core applications and data anywhere I go as long as I bring my laptop. And I typically have my photos and other data with me as well, as long as I’ve brought my external hard drives.

Even though I haven’t traveled in the past six months due to the pandemic, I still find it advantageous to use a laptop computer exclusively. This setup makes my work more flexible, with the ability to switch locations at any time, take my laptop with me, and still have everything I need.

To be sure, you can potentially get faster performance with a typical desktop computer compared to most laptop computers. There are certainly times when I wish my laptop was as fast as the top desktop computer. I also wish I could have more internal storage on my laptop, so I wasn’t as dependent on external hard drives. But on balance, I’m happier using a laptop, and can’t imagine ever getting another desktop computer.