Category: Ask Tim Grey

Today’s Question: I upgraded from Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 6. When I review old photos from Lightroom 2 in Lightroom 6 in the Develop module, under the heading “Tone” I still see the headings from Lightroom 2, such as Exposure, Recovery, Fill Light and Blacks. With new photos that went directly into Lightroom 6 the “Tone” section in the Develop module shows Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks. How do I get the new adjustments for the photos from Lightroom 2?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The issue here is simply that the photos processed with an older version of Lightroom are therefore set to an older “Process Version”. Simply updating the Process Version to the “2012 (Current)” option, either in the Camera Calibration section of the right panel in the Develop module or using the “lightning bolt” icon shown below the Histogram for the affected images.

More Detail: Among the other new features that get added to Lightroom over time, there are of course changes in the Develop module. In some cases that involves new adjustments, or changes in which specific adjustments are available.

For example, as noted in today’s question, within the Basic section of the Develop module older versions of Lightroom included controls for “Exposure, Recovery, Fill Light, and Blacks (along with Brightness and Contrast), while the latest Process Version includes Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, and Blacks.

Switching between the available adjustment controls simply involves changing the Process Version. For example, in the Camera Calibration section at the bottom of the right panel in the Develop module you’ll find the Process popup. From this popup you can choose the “2012 (Current)” option, which as of the latest release is the current Process Version.

You can also use a shortcut found below the Histogram, which provides the additional benefit of enabling you to adjust all images on the Filmstrip with a single step. When you have selected a photo that is set to an older Process Version, you’ll see a “lightning bolt” icon at the bottom of the Histogram panel at the top of the right panel.

If you click on that “lightning bolt” icon a dialog will appear, offering to update the Process Version for only the current photo, or for all photos on the Filmstrip. In addition there is a checkbox you can turn on the “Before & After” view so you can compare the results for your photos.

It is worth noting that changing the Process Version for a photo can cause the overall appearance of that photo to change, since the underlying adjustments have changed. In most cases I’ve found that the variations are quite modest, but that won’t always be the case. Therefore, it is worth performing at least a quick review after changing the Process Version for some of your photos, in order to ensure you’re happy with the results.

Today’s Question: In yesterday’s email you mentioned that even the gold DVDs don’t provide a real long-term storage solution for photos. What storage media do you recommend for true long-term storage?

Tim’s Quick Answer: I think the short answer here is that I don’t recommend any single storage solution for long-time storage that might get “ignored” for extended periods of time. For the time being I recommend hard drive storage (and particularly flash-based drives) as a good solution, but even these require ongoing review and a certain degree of maintenance.

More Detail: One of the great things about digital photography (and digital technology in general) is that it is relatively easy to create copies of our important photos (and other data). Even better, those backup copies can be an exact copy of the original, with no degradation at all. That was not possible with film-based photography.

Of course, digital photo storage also adds a certain degree of complexity, with a need to update your storage over time. We obviously need to consider overall storage capacity over time, for example, with the photos we’re actively managing. But for many photographers there is a degree of archival storage involved as well, with photos put onto a storage device separate from their primary “active” storage.

When you are actively using a particular storage device, you will naturally maintain a degree of awareness about when it might be time to replace that device in terms of compatibility, storage capacity, and performance. For example, I can recall backing up my photos on floppy disks that held 1.44 megabytes of data, and it didn’t take long before getting to the point that it was incredibly obvious that a better solution was necessary.

The greatest risk in my mind relates to more “archival” storage that gets ignored for extended periods of time. I’ve been hearing from an increasing number of photographers lately, for example, who have been pulling out old CD’s and DVD’s and finding that they can’t be read. The key is to periodically review what type of storage you have, and to consider whether an upgrade is necessary.

It is also important to not simply ignore your storage devices. Traditional hard drives with spinning platters can seize up if left unused for extended periods of time, for example. By periodically reviewing what you’re using for storage and what types of (perhaps better) solutions are currently available you’ll help ensure you won’t ever run into a situation where you’re not able to access archived digital photos.

And as many photographers have pointed out whenever I bring up this subject, it isn’t a bad idea to make extra archival copies of your photos in the form of beautiful prints produced with archival inks!

Today’s Question: I have discs I archived photos on years ago using Roxio Easy CD & DVD Creator 6. I recently attempted to copy some of these photos to my computer using Adobe Lightroom only to find I am not able to since my PC using Windows 10 does not apparently recognize the discs. Is there any way I can safely read and copy the files?

Tim’s Quick Answer: There seems to be a somewhat widespread issue related to Windows 10 not recognizing CD and DVD discs. In the short term I would suggest trying to access the discs on a computer with an older version of Windows (or a computer running the Macintosh operating system).

More Detail: A relatively large number of users have reported difficulty reading CD and DVD media with Windows 10. It seems there are some unresolved issues with certain combinations of hardware and software as it relates to optical media in Windows 10. However, it is important to keep in mind that there is a possibility that the discs themselves have become damaged.

The first thing I would do is to attempt to copy the files from the discs using another computer. I would use either a computer running the Macintosh operating system or an older version of the Windows operating system in order to work around the apparent issues with Windows 10.

If you aren’t able to get access the files on the discs using a different computer and operating system, I would examine the physical condition of the discs. If the bottom of the disc is scratched or otherwise damaged, that can prevent the disc from being read or cause corruption issues for files read from the media. There are methods for cleaning the discs with a mild abrasive in order to smooth out the bottom side of the disc, which is where the actual data is read.

It is also possible that if these are older discs that the reflective layer or the dye layer that actually records data have started to degrade. If that is the case, the discs are likely not going to be readable by any drive. Even with the media that employed a gold reflective layer, the data won’t last forever as there are other elements (the dye layer and the acetate layers, for example) that can degrade over time, especially if not stored under optimal environmental conditions.

HP has actually put together a rather good troubleshooting guide that addresses many of the more common potential causes of a Windows computer not being able to read from a CD/DVD drive, so you also might explore some of the potential solutions listed on their website here:

 

http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03280768

Today’s Question: When I use my photos in wildlife surveys I need to count the animal subjects in the frame. Can you recommend a way of performing this count in Photoshop? When there are more than a few subjects I find that I often lose track of which I’ve already counted.

Tim’s Quick Answer: Actually, there is a tool in Photoshop CC specifically designed for counting subjects within a photo. It is called the Count tool, and it can be found “hidden” below the Eyedropper tool on the toolbox.

More Detail: The Count tool was originally included in Photoshop Extended, and is now available in Photoshop CC. To access the Count tool you can click and hold your mouse (or simply right-click) on the button for the Eyedropper tool on the toolbox. This will bring up a flyout menu where you can select the Count tool.

With the Count tool active you can simply click within the photo on each subject you want to count. I recommend increasing the values for both the Marker Size and the Label Size so that you can better see the actual marks when you click on each subject. You can also adjust the color by clicking the color swatch to the left of the Marker Size setting on the Options bar, in order to bring up the Color Picker to select a color that will be clearly visible on the current photo.

As you click on each subject in the photo, a marker will appear with a numeric label that increments with each click. In addition (and perhaps more importantly) there is a Count value on the Options bar that shows you the current count total. So you can simply navigate around the photo clicking on each subject, until you’ve clicked to add a marker to every subject that appears in the photo. The total count will be shown toward the far left of the Options bar.

When you’re finished counting the subjects in the current photo, you can click the Clear button to remove all of the markers if you’d like.

Today’s Question: Is converting photos to the sRGB color space the same as embedding the profile in the image. If so, how do you do that?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Converting the image causes changes in the RGB color values based on the definitions in the destination profile. Embedding a profile ensures that software supporting color management will understand how to interpret the color values in the image. These can be two separate processes, although in Lightroom they are combined into a single process.

More Detail: In Lightroom the process of converting an image to a specific profile is accomplished during the export process, and therefore involves both converting and embedding in a single step. In the Export dialog you simply choose an option from the Color Space popup in the File Settings section, and the images you export will be converted to the selected profile and that profile will be embedded in the resulting files.

In Photoshop the process generally involves two steps. First you can convert an image to any desired profile with the Convert to Profile dialog, which can be accessed by choosing Edit > Convert to Profile from the menu. To embed the current profile in a saved image you can turn on the “Embed Color Profile” checkbox in the Save As dialog.

Today’s Question: I add text information to my photos in Photoshop when preparing the images to include in a slideshow. This often includes several text elements, and I’d like to align them all. Is there a way to automate this task rather than just moving each text layer pixel by pixel until they all align?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The Move tool actually includes several options for aligning layers. You can select all of the text layers you want to align, make sure the Move tool is active, and then click the applicable button on the Options bar to align the selected layers.

More Detail: If you are aligning text layers I recommend that you also ensure that the alignment of the text itself is set based on how you will align the layers. This will ensure that if you edit the text later, you won’t alter the alignment of your text layers. So, for example, if you will align the text layers on their right edges you will want to use the right-align setting for each of the text layers.

To select multiple layers on the Layers panel you can click on the first layer you want to select and then hold the Shift key and click on the last layer you want to select. You can also toggle the selection of an individual layer on or off by holding the Ctrl key on Windows or the Command key on Macintosh while clicking on the name of the layer. When using the Ctrl/Command key to toggle the selection of individual layers, just be sure not to click on the thumbnail for the layer, as that will cause a selection to be loaded for the layer within the image.

Once the layers you want to align have been selected on the Layers panel, you can align them automatically using a set of options available with the Move tool. Select the Move tool from the toolbox (or by pressing “V” on the keyboard) and then click on the applicable alignment button from among the six options on the Options bar.

The first three alignment buttons on the Options bar relate to vertical alignment, enabling you to align the selected layers on their top edge, their vertical center, or their bottom edge. The last three alignment buttons enable you to align the selected layers on their left edges, their horizontal centers, or their right edges.

Once the selected layers are aligned with each other, you can continue using the Move tool to adjust the position of all of the selected layers. And provided you have set the text alignment to match the layer alignment, if you modify the text for any of the aligned text layers the updated text will remain properly aligned.

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.