Ask Tim Grey

Today’s Question: I’ve noticed that some of my photos have a white color label in Lightroom Classic, rather than the actual colors I assign to mark photos for workflow tasks. What is a white color label if there’s no way to assign white as a color label?

Tim’s Quick Answer: When a photo appears in Lightroom Classic with a white color label rather than one of the available colors for labels, that is an indication that the value in metadata does not match the current definitions for the color labels.

More Detail: When you assign a color label to an image, you’re not actually assigning a color, but rather adding text to the Label field in metadata. Because of this issue, it is possible to have color labels assigned to images that don’t match the applicable definitions of color labels. In Lightroom Classic, an image with a color label assignment that doesn’t match the current definitions will appear with a white color label.

You can review or modify the color label assignments in Lightroom Classic by going to the menu while in the Library module and choosing Metadata > Color Label Set > Edit. It is worth noting that Lightroom Classic and Adobe Bridge use different definitions for the color labels, so for example if you had assigned color labels in Bridge prior to importing photos into Lightroom Classic, there would be a mismatch for those images if you hadn’t changed the definitions of color labels.

By default, Lightroom Classic adds the name of the color to the Label field when you assign a color label to an image, such as “Red” for a red color label. With Bridge the red color label results in the word “Select” being added to the Label field.

I recommend keeping the default color label definitions in Lightroom Classic since they are logical. You can then update the metadata for images with Label values that don’t match those definitions.

For example, you can navigate to the All Photographs collection in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module to browse all photos, and then choose the Metadata tab on the Library Filter bar. Set one of the columns to “Label”, and select one of the non-standard values from the list. For example, if you have “Select” as an option based on assigning a red color label in Bridge, you could select that from the list to view only those images.

Once you’ve set a filter for images that have a non-matching color label assignment, select all photos by choosing Edit > Select All from the menu, and then assign the correct color label. For example, in this case you could go to the menu and choose Photo > Set Color Label > Red.

Because the color label feature is really a method for displaying an image attribute based on the text added to metadata, in this case for the Label field, it is important to ensure you’re using a consistent workflow for updating the Label field based on the color label definitions in Lightroom Classic. Fortunately, if you have images with values in the Label field that don’t match the color label definitions, you can select those images and assign the correct color label to update the text in the Label field and therefore cause the appropriate label color to appear for the images.

Today’s Question: When using the Remove tool in Photoshop, when I paint to remove a dust spot it is not removed immediately. Instead, if I keep painting on additional dust spots the color overlay appears, and then I have to click the checkmark button to apply the cleanup. Is there a way to remove each dust spot as I paint on it, like the other cleanup tools behave?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can have each brush stroke apply cleanup immediately by turning on the “Remove after each stroke” checkbox on the Options bar before you start painting in the image with the Remove tool.

More Detail: The Remove tool in Photoshop includes an option to either remove a blemish every time you paint with the tool, or to allow you to paint over multiple areas and then apply the cleanup all at once. This is controlled by the “Remove after each stroke” checkbox.

If you have the checkbox turned on, each time you paint with the Remove tool the area you painted will be cleaned up, similar to how many of the other image cleanup tools in Photoshop behave. If you turn off the checkbox, you can paint in multiple areas to define where you want cleanup to apply, whether that is to create one relatively large area or multiple smaller areas around the image, for example.

If you have turned off the “Remove after each stroke” checkbox, once you’ve painted on all areas you want to apply cleanup to you can click the Apply button (the checkmark icon) on the Options bar to apply cleanup to the areas you’ve painted based on the other settings on the Options bar.

In general, I prefer to have the cleanup applied after each brush stroke, so I can evaluate the results along the way and undo or otherwise refine the result as needed. However, in some cases you may find it preferable to not apply the cleanup for each brush stroke, such as when you need to use multiple brush strokes to define a shape for a relatively large area that you want to apply cleanup to.

Today’s Question: Your answer about exporting video mentioned editing the video, but video isn’t supported in the Develop module. How is it possible to edit video in Lightroom Classic?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can edit video in Lightroom Classic by trimming the video, applying adjustments with Quick Develop in the Library module, or applying a saved preset with limited options for the adjustments that are supported.

More Detail: While support for video in Lightroom Classic isn’t exactly robust overall, there are enough features that make Lightroom Classic useful for managing videos alongside still photos for the photographer who is primarily focused on still photography.

The first way you can edit videos in Lightroom Classic is to trim the video, removing portions at the beginning and end of the video. This can be done by clicking the gear icon on the playback controls below the video preview in the Library module to bring up the trim controls. You can then drag the trim handles inward from the left and right sides to trim the video as desired.

You can also adjust the overall appearance of the video, though the controls available for video are limited. The primary way you can apply adjustments is with the controls in the Quick Develop section of the right panel in the Library module. Note that not all controls there will be available, because they are not supported for video.

Another option is to apply a Develop preset to the video, which can be done by selecting the preset from the Saved Preset popup in the Quick Develop section. Note, however, that only supported adjustment options will actually be applied. This does make it possible, however, to apply a wider range of adjustments than is possible with Quick Develop.

The adjustments supported for video that you can include in a preset applied to a video are: the Auto adjustment, White Balance, Exposure, Blacks, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Vibrance, Tone Curve, Treatment (color versus black and white), Color Grading, Process Version, and Calibration.

Today’s Question: When I export videos from Lightroom Classic, such as to include in a photo slideshow, I have to choose an option for Video Format. Which option should I use?

Tim’s Quick Answer: If you haven’t edited the video in Lightroom Classic, and you know the current video format is supported by the software you’ll be using, I would choose “Original, unedited file”. If you have edited the video or are concerned about compatibility, I would choose “H.264”.

More Detail: In general, if there isn’t a particular need to render a video to a new format, I suggest simply keeping the video in the format it was captured in. This would involve choosing the “Original, unedited file” option from the Video Format popup in the Video section of the Export dialog.

If you have edited the video in Lightroom Classic, you need to render to a new format to include your edits in the exported video. In that case you can choose between DPX and H.264. Both are perfectly fine, but H.264 is more widely supported so I consider it a “safer” option.

Note that rendering a new video will take more time than simply copying the source video file. That won’t be a significant issue for relatively short videos and modest resolutions, but could be quite time-consuming for high-resolution videos that are relatively long.

Note, by the way, that depending on which software you’re using for your photo slideshow, you may be able to apply at least basic edits and trims to the video with that software. If so, there’s no need to edit in Lightroom Classic if you haven’t already.

Today’s Question: I use Photoshop a lot and frequently enough get the metadata mismatch error in Lightroom Classic. When is it best to use “overwrite settings” or “import settings from disk” [when resolving these metadata mismatches]?

Tim’s Quick Answer: I recommend avoiding these metadata mismatches by making sure to send images from Lightroom Classic directly to Photoshop rather than opening a raw capture in Photoshop via Camera Raw. Otherwise, choosing the appropriate option depends on where you made the latest changes and whether you want to keep them.

More Detail: If you’re getting a metadata mismatch error in Lightroom Classic after opening an image in Photoshop, that most likely means that you opened a raw image directly in Photoshop rather than sending the image from Lightroom Classic, thus triggering Camera Raw to update the metadata for the image based on the adjustment settings.

If you open a raw capture in Photoshop, either directly or using Adobe Bridge for example, that raw capture will be opened in Camera Raw as an intermediate step. Even if you don’t make any changes to the adjustment settings in Camera Raw, the XMP sidecar file for the raw capture will be updated to reflect the settings for Camera Raw. That, in turn, will cause a metadata mismatch in Lightroom Classic, since the adjustment settings are stored in metadata.

In this case, if you want to update the adjustments in the Develop module to match what you used in Camera Raw, you can use the “Import Settings from Disk” option for resolving the metadata mismatch. If you want the settings in Lightroom Classic to replace the settings in the XMP file on the hard drive, you can choose the “Overwrite Settings” option. These options can be accessed by clicking the icon with three lines and an upward-pointing arrow at the top-right of the image thumbnail in the grid view, which is the indication of a metadata mismatch.

To avoid this issue in the first place, rather than opening a raw capture in Photoshop and then saving the result as a new file, you can send an image directly from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop. Simply select the image, and from the menu choose Photo > Edit In > Edit in Adobe Photoshop. When you’re done working in Lightroom Classic, simply save the image and close it, and it will appear alongside the original image in your Lightroom Classic catalog.

Today’s Question: I have about one hundred photos in a Lightroom Classic catalog on one computer, and I want to move all the images into my main Lightroom Classic catalog on another computer. How can I go about this without losing any of my work?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Assuming these are two separate catalogs with no duplication in terms of the images involved, you can simply merge the smaller catalog into your main catalog using the “Import from Another Catalog” command.

More Detail: The first step in merging catalogs across two computers is to get the catalog and photos that you want to merge into your primary catalog available on the computer where that primary catalog is stored. If you had already been working with the smaller catalog and the related photos on an external hard drive, you can simply connect that external hard drive to your primary computer. Otherwise, you’ll need to transfer the files, which can be done with the help of the “Export as Catalog” command.

Start by going to the “All Photographs” collection in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module. Select the “None” option on the Library filter bar so all images are shown and then choose Edit > None from the menu so no image is selected. Then go to the menu and choose File > Export as Catalog. In the “Export as Catalog” dialog navigate to an external hard drive that has enough space for both the catalog and photos. In the “Save As” field enter a meaningful name. Make sure the “Export negative files” checkbox is turned on, so photos will be copied along with the catalog. I also recommend turning on the “Include available previews” checkbox. Click the “Export Catalog” button to initiate the process.

Once the export is complete, connect the external hard drive to the primary computer, and open your primary catalog in Lightroom Classic. Then go to the menu and choose File > Import from Another Catalog. Navigate to the folder on the external hard drive that contains the exported catalog, select the catalog (it has a filename extension of .lrcat), and click the Choose button. Make sure the “All Folders” checkbox is turned on so all images will be imported. From the File Handling popup choose “Add new photos to catalog without moving”. Click the Import button to start the merge.

Since this process will have imported the images where they are, they’ll appear under a separate heading for the external hard drive in the Folders section of the left panel in the Library module. You can then drag the applicable folders to the top-level storage location for your primary storage that contains all your other images, so all photos will be consolidated.

By following this process, you’ll have consolidated your photos into a single catalog, while preserving absolutely all the work you had done in the second catalog.

Today’s Question: I have about 220,000 images in my Lightroom Classic catalog. The previews file is getting quite large at over 1.1 TB. I’ve tried removing 1:1 previews but that did not decrease the size much. In a recent video you mentioned having over 400,000 images. How do you manage the size of the previews file?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can manage the size of the previews file in Lightroom Classic by not building 1:1 previews if you don’t need them, configuring the preview settings so they don’t consume as much space, discarding previews for images you aren’t as likely to browse, and even discarding all previews and starting over with different settings and a more selective approach.

More Detail: The previews file associated with the catalog in Lightroom Classic contains standard (approximately display size) and 1:1 (full resolution) preview images for the photos in your catalog. This serves as a cache that improves performance when browsing your photos, but the previews file can also consumer considerable storage space.

First off, one thing to keep in mind is that it is possible to simply delete the Previews file (it has the same base filename as the catalog but with “Previews” appended to the name, and with a filename extension of .lrdata). Doing so will quickly free up considerable hard drive space, but of course it also means your browsing experience will be slower because previews will need to be built on the fly as you browse images for the first time. But this can be a great way to do a bit of a reset, especially if you have the time to let Lightroom Classic build previews for your most important photos.

Also, you can configure the previews so they consume less space. Changing the settings combined with discarding the previews enables you to clear up the space and then not consume as much space moving forward. In the Catalog Settings dialog you can specify how long 1:1 previews are preserved. On the Previews tab you can set the “Automatically Discard 1:1 Previews” popup to “After One Day” or “After One Week”, rather than the default of “After 30 Days”. Note that 1:1 previews are only needed when you zoom into an image, but not in the Develop module where the preview is based on the source image rather than the previews cache.

You can also adjust the size and quality for standard previews in the Catalog Settings dialog. I recommend choosing the size option from the “Standard Preview Size” popup that is closest to the horizontal pixel dimension for your monitor display. This is based on the setting you’re using in your operating system, not the physical resolution of your display. For example, if you’re using a 4K display set to 1920×1080 resolution, I recommend using the “2048 pixels” option rather than Auto, as the latter would cause larger previews than are necessary to be built. You can also choose Low rather than Medium from the “Preview Quality” popup if you want to further reduce the space required for previews at the expense of preview quality.

In addition to the above, you can choose to discard previews for selected photos. This could be helpful if, for example, you store key photos on one hard drive and less important photos on another drive. You could select all photos on the less important drive and from the menu choose Library > Previews, then select “Discard 1:1 Previews” if you only want to discard the larger 1:1 previews, or “Discard Standard and 1:1 Previews (which is a relatively new command) if you want to discard all previews for the selected images.

Note that if you have discarded all previews, for example, you can then select photos you want to be able to browse more quickly, and then build previews for them by choosing Library > Previews > Build Standard Previews from the menu. This process can take a bit of time depending on how many photos you’ve selected, but after that process is complete your browsing experience will be much faster for the photos you’ve built previews for.

Today’s Question: As a follow-up to your answer about color spaces, if the limiting factor is the image bit depth, why not just use a higher bit depth?

Tim’s Quick Answer: To truly leverage a higher bit depth to achieve the benefits of a larger range of colors, you would need to start with higher bit depth in the original capture. In other words, until and unless cameras offer higher bit depth at the sensor level, there’s little benefit to working in a higher bit depth.

More Detail: When optimizing photos, in many respects you are limited by the quality of the data you started with, which in the context of digital photography means the quality of the original image capture. For example, one of the reasons I strongly advocate for the use of raw capture rather than JPEG capture is to avoid the image quality degradation caused by lossy JPEG compression.

As noted in yesterday’s answer, bit depth determines how many possible color values an image can contain. For example, and 8-bit per channel image can contain almost 16.8 million colors, while a 16-bit per channel image can contain more than 281 trillion possible color values.

However, converting an 8-bit per channel image to 16-bit per channel won’t change the number of colors actually present in the image. Applying adjustments may increase the total number of colors represented, but doing so will never get you to the same point you would have been had you started with high-bit data to begin with.

Similarly, today’s cameras primarily process image data at 12-bit, 14-bit, or in a relatively small number of cases 16-bit per channel. Therefore, converting a raw capture to 32-bit per channel won’t provide any significant benefit in terms of expanding the existing data in the image. In addition, doubling the bit depth will double the base file size.

Furthermore, there isn’t much support for bit depths above 16-bit per channel in most imaging software. When 32-bit per channel is supported, such as in Photoshop, it is primarily focused on enabling the editing of high dynamic range (HDR) images, and many of the editing features are not supported above 16-bit per channel.

Today’s Question: You’ve talked about choosing a color space for editing our photos, but why do we need to choose a color space in the first place? Couldn’t we all just use a single space that includes all colors?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Because the number of colors available in an image is limited by the bit depth of the image, it can be advantageous to choose a color space that is well-suited to how an image will ultimately be shared.

More Detail: A color space defines the range of colors that will be available in an image. It would therefore be reasonable to assume we could just use a color space that includes the entire range of the visible spectrum, so that any color capable of being seen with normal human vision would be available for our images.

However, images are limited in the total number of colors they can contain, based on the bit depth of the image. For example, 8-bit per channel images can contain almost 16.8 million colors, and 16-bit per channel images can contain more than 281 trillion colors. So, particularly for 8-bit per channel images, it can be important to choose a color space carefully, especially if strong adjustments might be applied to an image.

Because of these issues, color spaces have been created with specific purposes in mind. For example, the sRGB color space was created to encompass the range of colors that could be displayed on a typical monitor based on the available hardware at the time. However, for various types of print output a different color space makes sense because of the different colors that can be reproduced with different types of printers and print media.

It is also important to keep in mind that simply choosing the largest available color space is often not a good idea. For example, the ProPhoto RGB color space is huge, going beyond the visible spectrum, which makes it sound like a great choice. However, with such a large color space it is very easy to create posterization (the loss of smooth gradations) in an image with strong adjustments on an 8-bit per channel image.

If you’re working with 16-bit per channel images, it is relatively safe to always work in a very large color space such as ProPhoto RGB. However, for 8-bit per channel images I recommend opting for a smaller color space such as sRGB or Adobe RGB.

Today’s Question: I’ve been getting a popup window telling me that an Adobe application (it doesn’t tell me which one) is not genuine and will be disabled if I don’t buy a license. But I have a Creative Cloud subscription! How can this issue be resolved?

Tim’s Quick Answer: If one or more of the Adobe applications you have installed gets flagged as non-genuine when you do have a valid Creative Cloud subscription, you can use the Creative Cloud Cleaner tool to resolve the issue.

More Detail: Full disclosure: today’s question was not from a reader, but from myself! I ran into a (very frustrating) experience last week where several of the Adobe applications I have installed were flagged as non-genuine, and I got repeated threats that the applications would be disabled soon.

A button in the alert leads to a page offering you the opportunity to buy Adobe software, but without any real information on how to resolve the issue when the software you have installed is genuine.

So, I spent (wasted) some time in a chat with Adobe customer support. They were able to provide a list of which applications were considered non-genuine on my computer. As you can imagine, the applications in question had been installed using Adobe’s Creative Cloud application, through the account that I pay for that includes the full suite of Adobe applications.

Despite having installed the applications in the usual (and legitimate) way, they were somehow flagged as being non-genuine. Customer support was not able to provide any information on how the applications could have been flagged when they were legitimate.

While customer support was able to provide a solution, that solution involved using their Creative Cloud Cleaner tool, which requires uninstalling all Adobe Creative Cloud applications. That meant I then had to spend (waste) considerable time installing multiple Adobe applications again.

The only saving grace was that I did not lose my preferences or other settings as part of this process. But I don’t appreciate the inconvenience when I’ve only used Adobe’s Creative Cloud application to install legitimate applications as part of a subscription that I pay for (no, I don’t get a free Creative Cloud account from Adobe).

It is obviously frustrating to have had to put the time into resolving this issue. It is also frustrating that customer support couldn’t provide any information on what might have caused this issue. So, if any Adobe employees reading this know what happened, I’d love to know so I can perhaps make sure this issue is never repeated in the future!