Category: Ask Tim Grey

Today’s Question: I recently exported files from Lightroom to the JPEG format using Adobe RGB as my color space. When I view the JPEGs on the same screen using Windows Viewer (Windows 7) the colors are different especially if I use the slide show option. It is even worse if I export with the ProPhoto RGB color space, but it seems better with sRGB. I thought sRGB had fewer color choices yet it seems to give better results. My intent was to email photos to family with possible printing. Any suggestions?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The issue here is actually how the color values in the photo are being interpreted, not the overall color gamut available with the different color spaces. Due to a lack of color management in this type of scenario, the sRGB color space is actually your best option, and you’ll want to be sure to embed the profile in the images as well.

More Detail: In the absence of proper color management, the color values in a photo will simply be interpreted based on the current display profile established within the operating system. That could be a generic profile for the display, a custom profile you’ve built using a display calibration package, or perhaps the sRGB color space.

In other words, either the software you’re using is ignoring the actual definition of the colors within the photo, or you didn’t embed the color profile and so the software doesn’t know how to interpret the colors. In either case, the display profile will be used to interpret the color values, which could produce wildly inaccurate results.

The sRGB color space is closer to the typical color gamut of a monitor display compared to the Adobe RGB and ProPhoto RGB color spaces. As a result, when the color values in the photo are not interpreted based on the correct profile, you will likely see more accurate (and more pleasing) colors if the image had been converted to sRGB.

I recommend always converting photos to the sRGB color space when they will be presented on a monitor display or with a digital projector. I also recommend embedding the profile in the image so that the colors can be presented accurately if the software being used to present the images supports color management. But the sRGB color space also generally provides a good result when the color values can’t be interpreted accurately, by virtue of the sRGB color space employing color definitions that are reasonably close to the display capabilities of most monitors and digital projectors.

Today’s Question: I went to correct the capture time for a batch of photos captured after forgetting to change the time on my camera. But Lightroom tells me that I can’t undo this adjustment. If I make a mistake in correcting the time for these photos, am I just out of luck?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You won’t be out of luck. While you can’t simply undo the change in capture time once it has been applied, you can apply an additional adjustment to correct the time for your photos.

More Detail: For example, let’s assume a situation where you travel from New York to Europe, but you forget to change the time on your camera upon arrival. You can use Lightroom (among other software tools) to correct the capture time for your photos. In most cases the simple time zone adjustment option will work well.

In this example, let’s assume that you needed to shift the capture time for the photos by six hours, but you accidentally added eight hours to the capture time instead. Once you’ve actually applied that capture time correction in Lightroom, you can’t simply use the Undo command to take a step backward and start over.

However, you can simply apply an additional adjustment to compensate. So in this example after applying a correction that added eight hours to the capture time for each photo, you could simply apply a second correction that subtracted two hours from the capture time for the same photos. The net difference would be an increase of six hours for the capture time for all of the photos.

It is worth noting that by default Lightroom will only apply these changes to the capture time within the catalog, so the metadata for the image files on your hard drive won’t actually be updated. If you want to save those changes to the actual photos you’ll need to enable two settings within the Catalog Settings dialog.

You can find the Catalog Settings dialog on the Lightroom menu on the Macintosh version or on the Edit menu on the Windows version. On the Metadata tab you’ll find two checkboxes that you’ll need to turn on if you want Lightroom to save capture time changes to the actual files on your hard drive. Those are the “Write date or time changes into proprietary raw files” and “Automatically write changes into XMP”.

Today’s Question: As you mentioned, most inkjet printers use a print resolution of around 360 ppi [pixels per inch]. I always set my output resolution at 360 ppi with good results.  However the specs for my printer, a Canon Pixma MP610 state a print resolution of 600 x 600 for mono and 9600 x 2400 for color. So what am I missing? Is the true resolution (from a photo printing standpoint) different from the manufacturers stated output resolution?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The confusion here relates to the pixel resolution of the image compared to the number of ink droplets put down on paper by the printer. Put simply, multiple droplets of ink are required to produce a single pixel from your photo when printing an image.

More Detail: A typical printer that makes use of the 360 pixel per inch output resolution I’ve referred to in prior editions of the Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter. However, more than one droplet of ink is required to reproduce each pixel in the original image. For example, with a printer that employs seven different ink colors, if one droplet of ink were used for each pixel in the image, you could only have seven total possible color values in the image.

Instead, printers use tiny droplets of ink and combine multiple droplets to reproduce each (also very small) pixel in the image you’re printing. In many cases the individual droplets of ink also vary in size based on the specific color being reproduced for a given pixel in the printed image.

As noted in today’s question, printer manufacturers generally present the number of droplets the printer can place in a linear inch when referring to the resolution of the printer, rather than referencing the underlying pixel per inch resolution that would be optimal for the source image you are printing.

The resolution based on the number of droplets of ink does provide a relative indication of potential image quality and potential color range that the printer can reproduce. So in general a higher value is beneficial, up to a point. But you don’t need to use that resolution based on ink droplets when preparing your photo for printing. Most printers today, for example, render your image data at a resolution of somewhere between about 300 pixels per inch and 720 pixels per inch. That differs from typical ink droplet resolutions of around 1,440 to around 3,000 or more droplets of ink.

The primary source of confusion, of course, is that both the number of pixels in the source image and the number of droplets of ink used to reproduce pixels on paper are described in terms of pixels per inch. But in these two cases the definition of “pixels” actually differs.

Today’s Question: Is there a way to make a dashed rectangle in Photoshop? I’m trying to create a coupon graphic for an end-of-year discount on the sale of my photographic prints.

Tim’s Quick Answer: It is actually very easy to create a rectangle comprised of a dashed line rather than a solid line. With the Rectangle tool you can specify a dashed line, and adjust the other attributes that can be applied when you click-and-drag to draw the actual rectangle.

More Detail: The Rectangle tool in Photoshop can be found down near the bottom of the toolbox, just above the Hand tool. After selecting the Rectangle tool you can adjust the settings for the rectangle you want to create using the controls on the Options bar.

In this case one of the key settings is the shape of the stroke, which is the outline for the rectangle you’ll create. There is a popup control to the right of the color and size settings for the stroke on the Options bar, and on that popup you’ll find a dashed option (as well as a dotted option and the default solid line setting).

If you want an “empty” rectangle that only has a dashed border, you can set the Fill color popup to the “non” option, which appears as a white box with a red slash through it. Then set the Stroke popup to the desired color for the dashed line. The thickness of the dashed line can be set with the popup to the right of the stroke color setting.

Make sure that the popup toward the far left of the Options bar is set to Shape (rather than Path or Pixels). Then click and drag within the image from one corner of the desired rectangle to the opposite corner. You can use the Transform commands as needed to alter the shape of your rectangle after creating it. And because you used the Shape option, you can always adjust the settings on the Options bar for the Shape layer you’ve created even after drawing the rectangle.

Today’s Question: Is there a way to save a color for easy reference in Photoshop? I use a specific color for my watermark in Photoshop, and right now I have to remember the RGB values in order to make sure I can always reproduce the same color.

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can indeed save a specific color by creating a swatch for that color in Photoshop. You can then use that color swatch to select the saved color anytime you need it.

More Detail: If you have already brought up the Color Picker dialog to select your color, you can save that color by clicking the “Add to Swatches” button. You can also save a color swatch directly through the Swatches panel, which can be brought up by choosing Window > Swatches from the menu.

If you are using the Swatches panel to save a color swatch, first set the foreground color (at the bottom of the toolbox) to the desired color. Then click the “Create New Swatch” button (the blank sheet of paper icon at the bottom of the Swatches panel) to create a new color swatch.

Whether you’ve initiated the process from the Color Picker dialog or the Swatches panel, the Color Swatch Name dialog will appear. You can type a meaningful name in the Name field, so that you’ll be able to easily identify the color later. You can also turn on the “Add to my current library” checkbox, so that the color swatch will be saved in your Creative Cloud Library. This enables you to access the same saved colors in various Creative Cloud applications.

Once you’ve saved a color swatch, you can access the saved color at any time by simply clicking on the applicable color swatch on the Swatches panel.

Today’s Question: I was using the technique you described in the “Color Tinting in Photoshop” article in Pixology magazine. When choosing a color in the Color Picker, I noticed the “Only Web Colors” checkbox. When I turned it on, the number of colors available was dramatically reduced. Do I need to use this option if I will share my photo on the web?

Tim’s Quick Answer: No, there’s no need to reduce the number of available colors using the “Only Web Colors” option. This setting is very much outdated, and would cause you to unnecessarily reduce the available colors in your photo to only 216 colors rather than the more than 16.7 million possible colors you could otherwise use for a photo you’ll share online.

More Detail: The “Only Web Colors” option in the Color Picker dialog in Photoshop relates to the notion of “web safe colors”. In the early days of the Internet, many computer displays were limited to around 256 possible color values. The list of web safe colors was created as a way to make sure that any color you used in a graphic or web page could be accurately displayed by (hopefully) all website visitors.

Today’s computer displays are far more capable, able to reproduce a full range of 8-bit per channel colors (more than 16.7 million color values), and in some cases many more than that. Therefore, the notion of limiting yourself to the web safe colors is an antiquated concept today, and one that you can completely ignore.

So, whether you’re applying a color tinting effect to a photo, adding text, or otherwise selecting a specific color in Photoshop, feel free to use any available color even if you’ll be sharing that image on the web.

Today’s Question: I have edited photos in Lightroom. I have selected some to be added to a collection so I can look at them as a group. If I continue editing a photo in the collection do those edits transfer to the original photo in the original folder? If I edit the original in the original folder, do those edits transfer to the photo in the collection?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The behavior here would depend on whether you added the images to the collection as virtual copies, or as simple references to the source image. Adjustments applied to virtual copies will not be reflected in the original source image, and changes to the original source image will not be reflected in the virtual copies.

More Detail: If you simply drag-and-drop photos from a folder into a collection, you are simply creating a reference to the original photo within the collection. In other words, in this case you can think of the collection as being something of a “saved search” for specific images. If you make changes to such images in a collection, the original source image will be updated to reflect those changes, because the image in the collection is simply a reference to the original photo.

If you create a collection after selecting images you want to include in the collection, you have the option in the Create Collection dialog to make new virtual copies for these images. In addition, you could of course create virtual copies on your own and then drag those virtual copies (rather than the original source images) into the collection. If you use virtual copies within a collection, then the changes you apply to the virtual copies will not be reflected in the original source photo, and adjustments applied to the original source photo will not be applied to the virtual copies.

You can tell whether a specific image is a virtual copy in a few ways. First, the thumbnails for virtual copies will show a visual of a turned up corner at the bottom-left of the thumbnail, whereas the original source image does not have this indication. In addition, the file information shown above the thumbnails on the Filmstrip on the bottom panel will show the word “Copy” along with a copy number for a virtual copy you have selected. The original image will show the filename without the “Copy” text after it.

Based on these options, you can choose whether you want the photos you add to a collection to match the original source photo, or if you want a different version of the photo. The answer here depends in part, of course, on your intent for creating the collection in the first place. But based on your specific needs, you can choose whether you want photos in collections and their related source images in a folder to retain all changes you apply, or to represent different versions of specific images.

Today’s Question: I just started getting an error message in Lightroom indicating that my catalog is over 4GB and I need to use a third party utility to extract my catalog backup. I have plenty of hard drive space and have no need to do anything exotic. Need I worry about anything? I don’t understand the explanation linked to under “Learn More.”

Tim’s Quick Answer: The error you’re seeing relates to an issue with ZIP files over 4GB in size on the Macintosh operating system. The error is not a major issue, as there are a variety of tools that enable you to extract files from a ZIP file that is over 4GB in size.

More Detail: The basic issue here relates to some limitations with certain operating systems related to ZIP files (or files in general) over 4GB in size. The built-in support for ZIP files on the Macintosh platform does not extend to ZIP files over 4GB in size, in some cases reporting such ZIP files as being corrupted. As a workaround, you can use a third-party tool (rather than the operating system itself) to extract a backup of a catalog that exceeds 4GB. For example, StuffIt Expander (http://my.smithmicro.com/stuffit-file-compression-software.html) provides broader compatibility for extracting compressed files.

Of course, this is only an issue when you need to actually restore your catalog from a backup. Hopefully that will never be an issue for any photographer. But when it does become necessary to restore from a backup, if your catalog backup is over 4GB in size you may need to use a third-party utility to extract the backup.

This file size issue is not a concern for most Windows users, and frankly it isn’t a major concern for Macintosh users. In this case it would be perfectly reasonable to turn on the “Don’t show again” checkbox in the alert dialog regarding the large catalog size, so that you won’t see this message in the future.

Today’s Question: Still another follow-up question [regarding background color when evaluating photos, covered recently in the Ask Tim Grey eNewsletter]. Is it better to use a neutral gray as background in PowerPoint or ProShow? Do the same principles apply to the view of a slide show? I have always used a black background.

Tim’s Quick Answer: Actually, for a digital slideshow presentation I highly recommend using a black background for the photos, in order to help the photos stand out better.

More Detail: When evaluating a photo for the purpose of applying adjustments to that photo, I recommend using a background that will help ensure you are making the most accurate evaluation possible for the photo. That generally means using a neutral gray background with about a 50% luminance value.

When presenting images as part of a digital slideshow, I recommend using a black background. At least in theory, this translates into no visible illumination of the screen around the photo. In actual fact this generally means just minimal light in those areas. But the point is that this will enable the photo to stand out as much as possible.

Keep in mind that at least in theory, a digital slideshow is being presented in a darkened room. That means the focus of the viewer will only be on the selected photos in the slideshow, and their eyes will adjust in terms of overall exposure based on those images.

Regardless, my preference for projected photos (or those presented on any digital display) is generally to have them surrounded by black, so there is nothing competing with the photos themselves. Of course, in a situation where the images presented in the slideshow need to be critically evaluated, you may prefer to have a middle gray background surrounding the photos. But generally speaking I think it is fair that for a digital slideshow the emphasis is on making the images stand out and look their best, rather than a technically accurate evaluation of the photos.

It is worth noting, by the way, that in some cases the presentation may be about more than the photos. In other words, in some cases you may want a more creative presentation that goes beyond a simple black background. But when your priority is an emphasis on the photos in the slideshow, my feeling is that a black background is best.

Today’s Question: I just can’t get a color from the color swatch in the Graduated Filter to enter the gradient area on the image. With Exposure set at different slider levels to the left, the sky remains dark. I try to put some reasonable blue in and there is no change at all. Any thoughts?

Tim’s Quick Answer: I suspect in this case you are probably either using a color value that is too close to the underlying area of the image, or that your other adjustments (such as Exposure) are overpowering the color effect. I would try moderating the other adjustments, and then select a strong color (such as a very saturated red) to test out the behavior of the Color adjustment.

More Detail: The Color option that is available for the Graduated Filter, the Radial Filter, and the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom’s Develop module (as well as Adobe Camera Raw) enables you to essentially add a color tint into a specific area of a photo. So, for example, you could add a nice blue tint to into an otherwise dreary sky.

To select a color, simply click on the color swatch (the rectangle) to the right of the Color label and choose a color from the popup. That color will then appear in the image based on the current targeted adjustment, depending on which tool you’re currently working with.

If the color you select is very similar to the underlying color in the image, or if the color is very subtle (of low saturation, for example) then the change may not be easy to see within the photo. To get a sense of how this adjustment works, I recommend first selecting a highly saturated color that differs from the color in the area of the image you’re applying the adjustment to.

Once you’ve refined the definition of the area you want to affect within the image, you can modify the other adjustments you want to apply, and fine-tune the color selection for the Color adjustment. Along the way, you may notice that applying strong adjustments (such as with Exposure) may mask the color so that it can’t be seen very easily.

Of course, in many cases you may want a relatively subtle color for the Color adjustment, so that the result blends in to the surrounding image in a pleasing way. But by starting with an exaggerated color and refining from there, you’ll get a better sense of what is possible with this adjustment.