Month: February 2022

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Pixology Magazine February 2022

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The February 2022 issue of Pixology magazine is now available, featuring the following articles:

  • Photoshop’s Best Kept Secret
    Learn why the Camera Raw filter may just be the best kept secret in Photoshop.
  • Folder Filtering
    Discover the various ways you can filter photos in Lightroom Classic by identifying favorite folders, adding color labels to folders, or performing a text search.
  • Sun or Moon Size
    Get tips for planning for photos that include the sun or moon, including understanding how to anticipate how large the sun or moon will appear in the frame.
  • Instant Panoramas
    Learn why most of my panoramic captures are now captured with a smartphone rather than a “real” camera.
  • Photo Story: Smartphone on the Street
    While a recent photo experiment ended up getting cut short, it still provided some great smartphone photo opportunities, as explained in this story behind a photo.

Pixology magazine is included in the GreyLearning Ultimate Bundle, and is also available as a standalone subscription here:

https://www.greylearning.com/courses/pixology-magazine

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New Catalog After Failure?

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Today’s Question: I had a complete hard drive crash and had to replace the hard drive in my laptop, my photography computer. I was able to retrieve the data (via Carbonite). I am replacing the whole computer. Do I start a new Lightroom Classic catalog, or somehow copy and use the one from before the crash?

Tim’s Quick Answer: I strongly recommend recovering from the backup of your most recent Lightroom Classic catalog, rather than starting over with a new catalog, in order to preserve all of the information about your photos.

More Detail: When starting off with a new computer (or even just a new hard drive) I recommend transferring your existing Lightroom Classic catalog to that new computer or drive, rather than creating a new catalog. The only reason I would create a new catalog is if the previous catalog had been corrupted and I didn’t have a good recent backup.

If you have turned on the “Automatically write changes into XMP” checkbox on the Metadata tab of the Catalog Settings dialog in Lightroom Classic, the metadata fields represented by established metadata standards will be preserved alongside the original photos. That would include things like star ratings, keywords, and even the adjustments from the Develop module.

However, there are a variety of features that are only included in the catalog, and that would be lost if you started over with a new catalog. That includes collections, virtual copies, the History list in the Develop module, pick and reject flags, and more.

Therefore, if at all possible I highly recommend recovering from a catalog backup rather than starting with a fresh catalog. Having said that, if for some reason it was necessary to start with a new catalog you could import all existing photos into that catalog using the “Add” option. If you had the XMP option enabled, the majority of metadata for your photos would come along with those photos as part of the import process.

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Camera Raw Mismatch

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Today’s Question: Is there any way to make the Camera Raw Filter in Photoshop automatically mirror the way I have things set up in Lightroom? Everything is there, but it’s often in a different place or has a different look. I would like it if opening the Camera Raw filter in Photoshop was virtually indistinguishable from Lightroom.

Tim’s Quick Answer: Unfortunately, no, it is not possible to change the Camera Raw interface match Lightroom Classic, as it is designed by Adobe to match the interface for the cloud-based version of Lightroom.

More Detail: I often explain that Camera Raw and the Develop module in Lightroom Classic are “the same”, meaning that feature all the exact same adjustments that are compatible with each other. For example, if you had processed a raw capture in Lightroom Classic and exported with the “Original” option for the Image Format, you would end up with a copy of the source raw capture and an XMP “sidecar” file that contained metadata including the Develop module adjustments. If you then opened that raw capture via Camera Raw in Photoshop, the image would look exactly as you had adjusted it in Lightroom Classic.

However, while the adjustments are the same for Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic, the interface is quite different between the two. That is because the interface for the cloud-based version of Lightroom is different from Lightroom Classic, and Camera Raw in Photoshop is designed to match the cloud-based version of Lightroom.

I’ll admit that Adobe seems incredibly determined to confuse photographers when it comes to the entire Lightroom ecosystem, and it is certainly frustrating that this confusion exists. But despite these issues, I do consider Lightroom Classic to be the better choice for most photographers compared to the cloud-based version of Lightroom.

The Camera Raw filter in Photoshop, by the way, is the focus of an article in the current February 2022 issue of Pixology magazine. Pixology magazine is included in the GreyLearning Ultimate Bundle (http://timgrey.me/atg99bundle), but is also available as a standalone subscription here:

https://www.greylearning.com/courses/pixology-magazine