Author: Tim Grey

Today’s Question: I’m intrigued by the PhotoPills app you’ve referred to for planning photos featuring the moon or sun. In your experience, how accurate is the planning in terms of being able to precisely determine what the moon or sun will align with at the horizon?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The PhotoPills app is surprisingly accurate when it comes to planning for the specific position of the sun or moon. That is especially true when it comes to dealing with terrain. Dealing with man-made objects such as buildings.

More Detail: PhotoPills includes extensive detail about the position of the sun and moon, so you can plan for the specific timing and direction for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset. This enables you to determine, for example, the specific direction you will need to look to see the moon rise over the horizon.

That information can then be used to plan for an optimal location from which to photograph the sun or moon, so you can include a specific object within the frame along with the sun or moon. The map in the Planner pill within PhotoPills makes this possible, including satellite photo maps and terrain maps, among other options.

Of course, dealing with the height of objects that appear in the frame adds a layer of complexity. For example, even if the sunrise is at 6:00am, that doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily start seeing the sun at that time. If there is a mountain range in between you and the horizon, for example, you’ll need to take the elevation of the mountain range into account. This is relatively easy to accomplish with the geodetics feature in the Planner, so you can determine when the sun will rise high enough to get above the mountain range, for example.

The PhotoPills map doesn’t include information on the heights of buildings and other man-made objects, but you can still work around these issues by either looking up or estimating the height of such objects, and otherwise dealing with those objects in much the same way that you would deal with terrain.

These various topics are covered in my comprehensive video course on PhotoPills, which I encourage you to view before setting about the task of planning a photo with the app. You can get all the details of my “Photo Planning with PhotoPills” course with a discount included automatically by using this link to get started:

https://timgrey.me/pills19

Today’s Question: Have you seen the new tablets from Xencelabs, and had a chance to test them? If so, how do you think they stack up to the tablets from other manufacturers?

Tim’s Quick Answer: I have indeed tested out the tablets from Xencelabs and am very impressed. I’m using the medium size bundle (https://timgrey.me/tabletbundle), which includes the Quick Keys remote featuring a series of buttons and a dial that can be programmed for fast access to commonly used features.

More Detail: A tablet can be tremendously helpful for a variety of tasks, because it enables you to use a pen as an input device rather than a mouse, for example. A tablet can be especially helpful for photographers who are using Photoshop to optimize their images. To some extent a tablet can also be helpful in the context of Lightroom Classic, especially in conjunction with the Adjustment Brush for applying targeted adjustments.

The way I generally describe the benefit of a tablet is to suggest that you try to sign your name with a mouse, and then try to perform the same task with a pen on a tablet. You simply have better tactile control when using a pen rather than a mouse.

For tasks like dodging and burning, tracing along the edge of an object to define a selection, or painting in targeted adjustments, a tablet can be invaluable.

I’ve been using the Xencelabs medium tablet bundle and have been very impressed. The quality and accuracy of the tablet is excellent. The bundle also includes a Quick Keys remote, which I find very helpful. I typically use the dial control to adjust brush size, for example, with the other buttons providing the equivalent of keyboard shortcuts for commonly used tasks.

For me personally the tablet doesn’t completely replace a mouse, in part because I’ve gotten so used to using a mouse for other tasks over the years. But for tasks that involve any degree of drawing, a tablet is invaluable. The Xencelabs tablet medium bundle is now a fixture in my digital darkroom, and you can learn more about it here:

https://timgrey.me/tabletbundle

Today’s Question: Over the years I have developed a very strong keyword system, with many levels of nested keywords. When I am doing backups of the Lightroom Classic catalog, does the keyword file also get backed up?

Tim’s Quick Answer: When you back up the Lightroom Classic catalog the keywords are included as part of that backup. However, you may prefer to periodically create a discrete backup of just your keyword structure in addition to the catalog backup.

More Detail: While a backup of your Lightroom Classic catalog will include all the metadata assigned to your photos in the context of the catalog, that catalog backup still depends upon Lightroom Classic. In other words, the only way to make use of a backup catalog is to open that catalog with Lightroom Classic.

If you’d like to preserve your keyword structure beyond the scope of Lightroom Classic, and also make it possible to import those keywords into another catalog at any time, you can export your keywords from Lightroom Classic.

In Lightroom Classic you can go to the Library module and then from the menu choose Metadata > Export Keywords. In the dialog that appears navigate to the location where you would like to save your keyword backup, give the backup a name, and click the Save button.

The exported keywords will be stored in a text file that preserves all keywords represented by your Lightroom Classic catalog, including keyword hierarchies. You can later import that keyword list into a Lightroom Classic catalog with the Metadata > Import Keywords command on the menu.

Today’s Question: For some time now whenever I’m using a brush tool in Photoshop the paint stroke lags way behind my mouse cursor. I assumed this would get fixed in an update, but the problem remains. Do you know if there is a way to resolve this issue?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The behavior you describe is a result of the Smoothing setting for the brush (on the Options bar in Photoshop) being set rather high. You can use a lower value for this setting to avoid the lag between the brush and your mouse cursor but note that your brush strokes won’t appear quite as smooth then.

More Detail: The Brush tool (and the related Pencil tool) include a Smoothing setting, which enables you to have Photoshop smooth out your brush strokes. For example, if you draw a basic “S” shape with the Brush tool you’ll likely find that the curves of the “S” don’t have perfectly smooth curves. Instead, you will probably see that there are minor bumps along the curve, depending on how smooth a hand you have.

For photographers who are using the Brush tool for things like dodging and burning, modifying a layer mask, and other tasks that involve general painting without necessarily needing perfectly smooth curves for each brush stroke, a high value for Smoothing is probably not going to provide much benefit. More to the point, a high value can cause a frustrating lag between the mouse cursor you’re painting with and the actual brush stroke that appears in your image in Photoshop.

Therefore, for photographers I recommend using a very low value for Smoothing, perhaps as low as 0% (which is what I use) but probably not higher than about 10% or so. This will minimize the behavior of Smoothing, so the brush strokes will follow your mouse cursor more closely.

Today’s Question: I have used Lightroom Classic for years and have never checked the box to “automatically write changes into XMP” in the Metadata settings. I have over a hundred thousand photos. If I check this box, will all photos be subjected to this change? How long will it take? Will it affect my cloud backup?

Tim’s Quick Answer: When you turn on the “Automatically write changes into XMP” checkbox it will apply to all photos in your catalog and will work in the background. It won’t take very much time, and the files are quite small so it won’t have a significant impact on your backup.

More Detail: I recommend turning on the “Automatically write changes into XMP” checkbox, which can be found on the Metadata tab of the Catalog Settings dialog in Lightroom Classic. The checkbox is off by default, but I consider it advantageous to have the option turned on.

The primary reason I prefer to have this option enabled is that it provides a backup of your key metadata that you can recover from in the event of a corrupted catalog, for example. It also provides a degree of cross-application compatibility, such as enabling you to view key metadata values with other software such as Adobe Bridge.

When you turn this option on, Lightroom Classic will start updating all existing images in the background. In my experience even with a large number of photos the process takes less than thirty minutes. You can quit Lightroom Classic and the process will resume the next time you launch Lightroom Classic again.

The size of the XMP sidecar files for raw captures (or the increase in file size for other image types) is quite small, so updating a backup also won’t require significant additional space or time.

In other words, as far as I’m concerned there’s really no reason to leave this option turned off, and I recommend turning it on.

Today’s Question: I understand that using the electronic shutter on mirrorless cameras can extend the life of the mechanical shutter. But one of the problems with the electronic shutter is that for moving objects, they are likely to be distorted, which won’t happen when using the mechanical shutter. For static images where nothing is moving, is there any reason not to prefer the electronic shutter over the mechanical shutter?

Tim’s Quick Answer: In addition to using the mechanical shutter rather than the electronic shutter when photographing a moving subject, you may want to use the mechanical shutter when photographing under artificial light to avoid potential banding in the photo.

More Detail: Many mirrorless cameras include both an electronic and mechanical shutter, enabling you to choose which shutter is used at any time.

The electronic shutter provides the advantage of being completely silent, and in many cases also enables you to use faster shutter speeds than would be possible with the mechanical shutter. Favoring the electronic shutter can also help extend the life of the mechanical shutter mechanism.

However, because most cameras use a rolling sensor, where data is read line by line rather than all at once, using the electronic shutter when there is movement in the frame can lead to distortion. For example, you may have seen photos where the propeller blades of an airplane appear to be bent because of a rolling shutter. In addition, with some types of artificial lighting you can get a banded appearance in the photo due to flickering of the light that is not necessarily visible to the naked eye.

For situations where there is little or no motion in the frame, the electronic shutter will generally be best. Of course, at times you may need to use the electronic shutter to achieve a faster shutter speed than is possible with the mechanical shutter. In other cases you may choose to use the electronic shutter in order to allow for silent photography, even if there is a risk of some distortion.

If you’ll be photographing under artificial lighting you may want to opt for the mechanical shutter to ensure you don’t get banding in the photos or be sure to carefully check a test photo first to confirm that the lighting in question won’t result in this issue.

Today’s Question: I want to utilize an unused 4TB external drive to give some relief to my main 6TB drive. How exactly can this be accomplished, within Lightroom Classic, without creating any problems? I want to maintain the same folder structure for the photos that will reside on the new external drive. How best to distinguish between the old and the new drive? How best to avoid the “dreaded” question marks?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can transfer photo and folders to a new external hard drive quite easily by first creating a new folder on the new hard drive and then dragging and dropping to that drive. The key being to make sure all this work is done within Lightroom Classic.

More Detail: One of the reasons that I find photographers get confused about moving photos from an existing hard drive to a new hard drive is that Lightroom Classic doesn’t show the new hard drive in the Folders section of the left panel in the Library module. That’s because Lightroom Classic only displays hard drives that actually contain photos being managed within the catalog.

When you want to make a new hard drive available within Lightroom Classic so you can move existing photos to that new drive, you first need to create a new folder on the drive. To do so, click on the plus (+) icon to the right of the Folders heading on the left panel in the Library module and choose “Add Folder” (not “Add Subfolder”) from the popup menu.

In the dialog that appears, navigate to the new hard drive you want to make available within Lightroom Classic. Then click the “New Folder” button at the bottom of the dialog and enter a name for the new folder. Since this will be a top-level folder in the context of your photos in Lightroom Classic, I suggest using a somewhat generic name such as “Photos”. If you want to designate that this storage location is something of an archive for overflow photos you could call the folder “Photo Archive”, for example. Click the Choose button to close the dialog after creating your new folder.

At this point the new folder you created will appear on the Folders list on the left panel in Lightroom Classic, under a heading representing the new hard drive. You can then drag-and-drop folders from the existing hard drive to the new folder on the new hard drive. You can also create other new folders on the new hard drive, such as to then move a subset of photos from a folder on the existing drive to a folder with the same (or similar) name on the new drive.

By virtue of doing all this work in Lightroom Classic, none of the photos or folders will go missing in the context of the catalog. And, of course, all of the changes you make in this way within Lightroom Classic will be reflected on the actual hard drive and through your operating system.

Today’s Question: I enjoyed your article on “Understanding ISO” in the November issue of Pixology. I had seen a video that suggested higher ISO settings don’t actually cause noise. What is your take on that idea?

Tim’s Quick Answer: With most cameras a higher ISO setting will result in more noise in the final image. The video in question focused on the fact that underexposure leads to noise, suggesting that the ISO setting played no role at all. But the ISO setting does impact noise levels.

More Detail: I often see photographers using semantics to try to make a claim that seems to contradict established knowledge in photography. This generally seems focused more on getting viewers to watch a video rather than on truly helping them understand an issue.

When you raise the ISO setting on a camera in order to maintain the same exposure you need to either use a faster shutter speed or use a smaller lens aperture. In other words, at a higher ISO setting you are capturing an image that is underexposed and then brightening the image through amplification.

It is true that underexposing an image will result in more noise. It is also true that amplification will result in more noise. But the fact of the matter is, increasing the ISO setting will increase noise levels with most cameras (a small number of cameras are ISO invariant, which mostly means they have excellent noise performance overall).

In addition, it is worth noting that using the ISO setting to increase the overall exposure is better than underexposing an image without raising the ISO setting. That is because in-camera amplification of the signal recorded by the image sensor results in less noise that post-capture brightening of the image.

So, raising the ISO setting will increase noise levels for most cameras in most circumstances. But generally speaking, the benefit of raising the ISO setting is greater than the risk of noise, in terms of being able to ensure a fast enough shutter speed to avoid motion blur or not having enough depth of field.

You can learn more about the ISO setting as it relates to exposure in the November 2021 issue of Pixology magazine. If you’re not already a subscriber, you can learn more about Pixology on the GreyLearning website here:

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

Today’s Question: I installed the Lightroom Classic upgrade yesterday. I then decided to revert to the previous version for now until users have more time to test it. I reloaded the old version and worked through reconnecting to my old catalog. It worked, but I might have just got lucky. Can you how to revert to old version? Thanks as always.

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can revert to an earlier version of Lightroom Classic by installing the previous version and then opening the version of your catalog from before the update to the new version. Just be sure that you don’t make any changes to the updated catalog before reverting to your previous catalog.

More Detail: When you install a “major” upgrade to Lightroom Classic that requires an update to the catalog file structure, the existing catalog will remain untouched, and a new copy of that catalog will be upgraded to the new version. This provides a way for you to revert to the previous version if you decide you don’t want to start using the new version yet.

While the old and new catalog will be retained as separate catalogs in this scenario, the new version of Lightroom Classic will actually replace the previous version. Therefore, the first thing you’ll need to do is install the previous version.

To install an older version of a Creative Cloud application, go to the Creative Cloud app, which is where you install updates. Choose “All Apps” from the top of the menu on the left side of the Creative Cloud dialog. Locate the application you want to revert (Lightroom Classic in this case) and click the button with three dots to the far right of that application to bring up a popup menu. Choose “Other Versions” from that popup menu.

In the dialog that appears you can then click the Install button for the most recent version before the current version. In this case that would involve installing Lightroom Classic version 10.4.

Once Lightroom Classic has been “updated” to the previous version you can navigate to the folder that contained your original catalog before the upgrade. Find the catalog file, which has a filename extension of “.lrcat”. Double-click on that file, and Lightroom Classic will launch with that catalog, and you can continue working as you had been before the update.

Also, note that today marks twenty years since I sent out the very first edition of the Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter. You can get information about an eBook I’ve published to commemorate this milestone (with options to pay to show your support or get the eBook for free) on the GreyLearning website here:

https://www.greylearning.com/courses/ask-tim-grey-20-years