Month: December 2017

Today’s Question: I am the photographer for a local volunteer fire department. I usually keep my camera bag in my truck year-round as I felt it was better to keep the camera at the temperature it would be working in rather than a warm (cool) house then quickly to a cold (hot) outdoor temperature. I haven’t had any real condensation issues, but I am not certain that some may have occurred which will haunt me later. What is your advice for people who need this ready access to extreme temperature changes?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Keeping the camera in a warmer environment close to the ambient working conditions can help prevent fogging up of the lens caused by taking a relatively cold lens into a relatively warm and humid environment. However, if this means storing the camera in a humid environment, I would suggest taking measures to avoid having the camera exposed to relatively high humidity for extended periods of time.

More Detail: In terms of the immediate issue of capturing photos, taking a camera from a relatively cool environment to a hot and humid environment can cause the lens to fog. Merely wiping the lens with a lens cloth will only provide a temporary solution, as the lens will then continue to fog up until it has warmed up to closer to the ambient air temperature.

For example, when I am teaching onboard a cruise ship in a tropical environment such as the Caribbean, my camera is kept in an air-conditioned room. If I see something that warrants capturing photos, I can grab my camera and head outside. However, because the lens will be relatively cold at that point, the front element will immediately fog up. If I wait about five minutes, the lens will warm up closer to the ambient air temperature, and the fogging goes away with no additional intervention required.

In this type of situation, you can avoid the fogging by keeping the camera stored somewhere where it will remain at about the ambient temperature. That could be an area of a vehicle, provided the camera won’t be exposed to extreme heat in this case. If the camera is already at about the ambient temperature, you would not see condensation as you do when taking a cool camera into a warm and humid environment.

However, there may be some concern of relatively long-term exposure to humidity, which have the potential to create problems for the camera. Therefore, I would suggest taking steps to keep the camera dry while at the same time keeping the camera at about the ambient temperature. For example, you could put the camera in a plastic bag that can be sealed, and include a desiccant in the bag with the camera. This will help ensure the humidity is relatively low in the bag, helping to keep the camera in conditions that are well within the operating limits recommended by the manufacturer.

Today’s Question: Is it possible to test [the new] Adobe Lightroom CC without losing Lightroom Classic CC?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can test Lightroom CC without disturbing Lightroom Classic. I do, however, recommend only working with a test set of photos for this purpose.

More Detail: The new cloud-based Lightroom CC provides online synchronization of all of the original image files within your library, which is a key feature that many photographers may find intriguing. Of course, there are still key features that are not available within Lightroom CC, which means it may be too soon for some photographers to adopt this new software.

The best way to get a sense of whether Lightroom CC might work for you is to take advantage of the free trial for this new software. But, of course, you don’t want to create any problems for your Lightroom Classic catalog when you are performing this testing.

Lightroom CC will have its own library that is separate of the Lightroom Classic catalog. Note, however, that synchronization with Lightroom CC requires that you first disable synchronization with Lightroom Classic. That means if you later decide that Lightroom CC is not for you that you’ll need to re-enable synchronization in Lightroom Classic, and that all folders you had enabled for synchronization will need to be re-synchronized. Other than that, as long as you work with duplicate images, there aren’t any risks associated with testing Lightroom CC.

I do recommend exporting copies of a variety of your photos from Lightroom Classic, using the “Original” option for the Image Format popup in the File Settings section of the Export dialog. You can then add the images in that folder into the Lightroom CC library for testing purposes. When you’re finished testing, you could simply delete all of those photos since they are just copies of your “real” originals.

Provided you work with duplicate copies of specific photos in Lightroom CC, and don’t import any of the actual source photos that are being managed by Lightroom Classic, you can have both applications installed on your computer so you can determine which provides the best solution for your workflow.

You can view a webinar presentation that talked about Lightroom CC versus Lightroom Classic on my “Tim Grey TV” channel on YouTube here:

https://youtu.be/Os0-QNG1wjw

And don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can receive future updates with new videos!

Today’s Question: In your answer about using an action in Photoshop to add a watermark to an image you said it was possible to apply the action to multiple images at once using a batch process. How do you initiate that batch processing?

Tim’s Quick Answer: My recommendation is to start with Adobe Bridge, selecting the photos you want to process with an action and then choosing Tools > Photoshop > Batch from the menu to get started batch processing the images.

More Detail: The first step is to use Adobe Bridge to select the photos you want to batch process with an action in Photoshop. You can make use of all of the various features in Bridge for this purpose, such as applying filters to narrow the range of images you’re viewing, and then selecting only the images you actually want to process.

Once you’ve selected the images you want to process, you can go to the menu in Adobe Bridge and choose Tools > Photoshop > Batch. This will cause Photoshop to be launched if it wasn’t already running, and the Batch dialog will appear.

Because you selected the images for processing using Adobe Bridge, the source of images to process will already be selected. You can then select the set (folder) that contains the action you want to use from the Set popup, and then the specific action from the Action popup.

You can then choose how you want to save the images from the Destination popup. Note that when you’ll be using an action for batch processing, it is generally necessary (or at least helpful) to include a Save As command as part of the action, so that step in the action can determine the settings for saving the images as part of the batch processing.

As a general rule I recommend using the Folder option from the Destination popup, because this will cause additional copies of the source images to be saved in a new location. In other words, the source images will remain unaltered, with new copies created as part of the batch processing.

After choosing the Folder option, you will want to turn on the “Override Action ‘Save As’ Commands”. In other words, for batch processing with an action you’ll generally want to include a Save As step to define how the images should be saved, but then you’ll need to override that step so that the images are saved individually in the location you specify in the Batch dialog, rather than in the location and with the filename that is included as part of the original action you recorded.

There are other options that may be applicable to some workflows, but in general the above process will work for most scenarios. Once you have defined the settings for batch processing, you can click the OK button to initiate processing of the images you selected in Adobe Bridge, using the selected action created within Photoshop.

Note that it is possible to initiate batch processing directly from within Photoshop as well. You can get started by choosing File > Automate > Batch from the menu. The challenge is that with this approach you either need to process a full folder of images, or to open all of the images first. In other words, the advantage of initiating this process with Adobe Bridge is that you’re able to filter and select photos from any source and then process only the selected images.

Today’s Question: Can you expand on the last paragraph of the November 29th newsletter?:

<<Note that if you had enabled the option to save metadata out to the actual image files, this process would effectively recover the majority of the metadata that had been included in your Lightroom catalog, including all of the adjustments you had applied to your photos.>>

Tim’s Quick Answer: There is an option in the Catalog Settings dialog in Lightroom that enables you to have metadata updates saved automatically to the actual image files on your hard drive. This can help minimize the risk of data loss in the event the Lightroom catalog becomes corrupted, or if you decide to no longer use Lightroom in your workflow.

More Detail: I recommend turning on the “Automatically write changes into XMP” checkbox in the Catalog Settings dialog in Lightroom. You can find this dialog on the Lightroom menu on the Macintosh version, or on the Edit menu on the Windows version. The checkbox is located on the Metadata tab within the Catalog Settings dialog.

With this option turned on, all standard metadata values (such as star ratings and keywords) will be saved to the actual image files on your hard drive as soon as you apply those updates in Lightroom (or the next time those photos are available if you’re working with photos that are offline). In addition to standard metadata, the settings for your Develop module adjustments are included.

It is important to note that not all updates you apply in Lightroom will be saved to your image files when you enable this option. Features that are essentially Lightroom-specific, with no standard metadata field associated with them, will not be saved to the files. So Pick and Reject flags, membership in Collections, the History states found in the Develop module, and Virtual Copies will not be backed up with this feature.

Note, by the way, that for raw captures the updates will be saved to an XMP sidecar file alongside the original capture. Other supported image formats (such as DNG, JPEG, and TIFF) will have metadata updates saved to the files themselves.

And yes, when you enable this option, Lightroom will go back and save all prior metadata updates for your existing images.

If for any reason you lose your Lightroom catalog, you could create a new catalog and import all of the photos from your hard drive. With the metadata saved to your actual image files, all of that information will then be included in that new Lightroom catalog.

Just note, as indicated above, that features based on Lightroom-specific features would have been lost in this scenario, meaning it would generally be preferred to recover from a backup Lightroom catalog as compared to depending on the saved metadata. But, if you don’t tend to make use of the features that can’t be saved to metadata, this wouldn’t be a significant concern.

Today’s Question: Would you tell me how I can place a watermark on my images as an action [in Photoshop]?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The basic process here involves recording an action that includes (among other steps) the task of adding a text layer with your particular watermark text onto the image, and then playing that action for all other images you want to watermark in the same way (perhaps with batch processing).

More Detail: The first step is to open an image that you can use as a reference for creating your action. After opening such an image, I recommend creating a duplicate copy for purposes of creating your action. You can do so by choosing Image > Duplicate from the menu, and then clicking the OK button in the Duplicate Image dialog.

Next, choose Window > Actions to bring up the Actions panel. If needed you can create a new folder for this action (and others) by clicking the “Create New Set” button (the folder icon) at the bottom of the Actions panel, typing a name, and clicking OK.

To start creating the action, click on the “Create New Action” button (the blank sheet of paper icon) at the bottom of the Actions panel. In the New Action dialog you can enter a name for the action (such as “Watermark”), confirm which Set (folder) you want to include the action in, and assign a keyboard shortcut if you’d like for faster access to playing the action for other images. Then click the Record button to start recording the steps in your action.

You can then perform the tasks you want to include as part of the action. For example, I would probably include a step to flatten the image, so you can more easily align the watermark with the Background image layer. So, you could choose Layer > Flatten Image for example to flatten the current image.

Next, choose the Type tool and click in the image to start typing text, selecting the text if you’d like to change attributes such as the font and size. When you’re finished you can click the Commit button (the checkmark icon) on the Options bar.

To align the text within the image (which in turn will ensure the text is in the same position for horizontal versus vertical images, for example) you’ll want to first select the text and Background layer. Since the text layer will currently be active (since you just created it) you can simply hold the Shift key on the keyboard and click the thumbnail for the Background image layer to select both layers.

Now you can choose the Move tool from the toolbox, and then click the applicable alignment buttons on the Options bar. For example, you might click the “Align Right Edges” button and then the “Align Bottom Edges” button to align the text to the bottom-right corner of the image. I would then suggestion holding the Shift key on the keyboard while pressing the up arrow button followed by the left arrow button (in this example) to move the text layer a short distance away from the absolute corner of the photo.

If you will be using the action for batch processing, you’ll generally want to include a step for saving the resulting image as the final step within your action. This will define the file format and options to be used for saving the image, which can then be used as part of the basis of batch processing. If you won’t be batch processing, you may not want to include a Save command as part of the action, but this depends of course on the specific details of your workflow.

When you’re finished performing the steps you want to include in the action, click the “Stop Recording” button (the square icon) at the bottom of the Actions panel. You can then open another image, select the action from the Actions panel, and click the Play button (the right-pointing triangle icon) to play the action for the current image. Or you could initiate a batch process for the action from Adobe Bridge.

Note that this type of approach involves setting the text for your watermark at a particular point size. As a result, the action will only work well if the images you’re preparing for output with a watermark are of approximately the same overall pixel dimensions.

Today’s Question: I accidentally changed the capture time in metadata for a bunch of photographs in Lightroom and they no longer depict the correct time of capture for the photograph (don’t ask me how or why I did such a silly thing). Is there a way for me to change the date metadata back to the original correct date/time of capture?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The option to correct the capture time for photos in Lightroom is not something you can undo. Therefore, your only option is to apply an additional correction to compensate for the degree of error introduced by your first correction.

More Detail: When you adjust the capture time for photos in Lightroom, it is not possible to undo that task. Therefore, it is important to make sure you have established the correct settings for the capture time adjustment before committing the change.

However, there is still a way to resolve a situation where you’ve applied the wrong correction. You can simply select the same photos and apply an adjustment to compensate for the error.

Let’s assume, for example, that you originally adjusted the capture time by adding three hours to the existing capture time. You then realize that you should have only added two hours to the capture time. You can’t undo the original change, but you can correct the issue by subtracting one hour from the capture time for those same photos.

The key is to determine the new correction that is required. As long as you can determine the “new” error in the capture time, however, you can correct that capture time discrepancy by simply using the “Edit Capture Time” command (found on the Metadata menu in Lightroom) once again.