Category: Ask Tim Grey

Today’s Question: If in Lightroom Classic I send an image to ‘Edit in Photoshop’, then edit and ‘Save’, the edited image lands nicely in the same located from which I sent the original. If, however, I send two images from Lightroom to Photoshop, layer them into a single image, and edit, I get no ‘Save’ option, but must ‘Save As’. How do I get the finished image to save to the location of one of the original images in Lightroom Classic?

Tim’s Quick Answer: In this case the solution is to use the “Open as Layers in Photoshop” command rather than the “Edit in Photoshop” command. That will create the layered document for you, which will then save in the manner you are accustomed to when sending a single image to Photoshop.

More Detail: When you send an image from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop, it is best to simply use the “Save” command (not “Save As”) to save the resulting derivative image file, to help ensure that image is correctly included in your Lightroom Classic catalog. To address the issue of creating a composite image with photos being managed in Lightroom Classic, it is best to use the “Open as Layers in Photoshop” command, which is intended for this purpose.

The first step is to select the images in Lightroom Classic that you want to assemble into a layered document in Photoshop. Note that the first image you select will be the default for the filename of the final layered document. After selecting multiple images in Lightroom Classic, you can also click on the thumbnail for the image you want to be used for the filename of the composite image. By default, the word “Edit” will be appended to that filename, but you can change this setting in Preferences.

Next, go to the menu bar and choose Photo > Edit In > Open as Layers in Photoshop. The selected images will then be loaded into Photoshop in a single document, with each image on a separate layer on the Layers panel. Each image will have a layer name matching its filename. You can then add layer masks or otherwise modify the layered document. When you’re all done, choose File > Save followed by File > Close from the menu, and the finished result can be found alongside the selected original image in your Lightroom Classic catalog.

Today’s Question: Watching your recent presentation at B&H Photo on mistakes to avoid in Lightroom Classic, you mentioned that we should use keywords for each photo. Can I create a Smart Collection of photos without keywords? Then I can add keywords as needed.

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can indeed create a smart collection in Lightroom Classic that automatically includes all photos that do not have any keywords. As you then add keywords to the photos in that smart collection, the photos that have keywords added will automatically be removed from the smart collection.

More Detail: Keywords can certainly be very helpful both for locating particular photos and reminding yourself of some of the details of a photo, such as the name of a subject that appears in the photo.

If you want to make sure that all photos have at least some keywords assigned to them, you can create a smart collection for this purpose.

Start by clicking the plus (+) button to the right of the Collections heading on the left panel in the Library module and choose “Create Smart Collection” from the popup. In the dialog that appears enter a meaningful name, such as “No Keywords”. You can also choose to put the new smart collection into a collection set if you’d like.

You can then click the left-most popup on the first row of criteria in the large box within the dialog and choose Other Metadata > Keywords from the popup. From the second popup choose “are empty”. If you want to add additional criteria, you can click the plus (+) symbol to the far right of the first row of criteria. Add as many rows of criteria as needed to suit your needs.

Note that if you have created more than one row of criteria, you’ll want to check the value for the “Match” popup. In most cases you would probably want to choose the “all” option, but this depends on how you are specifying your criteria. Click the Create button to create your smart collection.

At this point, that smart collection will be listed in the Collections list, and you can go to that collection to see all images that meet the criteria you specified, which in this case would include photos that do not have any keywords assigned to them.

Today’s Question: At a seminar you showed us how to remove the colored “haze” caused by a reed or leaf in the foreground when photographing a subject farther away. It had to do with changing just the color without effecting the image underneath. Can’t find it in my notes. Can you help me out?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The technique you’re referring to involves painting in Photoshop using the Brush tool, using a color sampled from the image itself, onto a new image layer that is set to the Color blend mode.

More Detail: There are a variety of situations where you may want to correct the color in a photo without altering the texture or tonality. For example, if there is an object just in front of the lens when you are photographing a scene, you may end up with a color wash in part of the photo. This would cause only the color to be “contaminated”, with the underlying texture of the scene unaffected. There are, of course, other scenarios where you want to change the color of an area without affecting the tonality.

The first step is to create a new image layer for this purpose. So, make sure you have selected the top image layer on the Layers panel in Photoshop. That may very well be the Background image layer if you haven’t added any other image layers yet. Then click the “Create a New Layer” button at the bottom of the Layers panel. This is the button with a plus symbol inside a square, which used to be a blank sheet of paper icon in older versions of Photoshop.

After creating the new layer, you can double-click the name of the layer to rename the layer if you’d like. Then click the popup at the top-left of the Layers panel that shows the default value of “Normal”, and choose “Color” from the popup list.

Next, select the Brush tool. On the Options bar, click the brush settings popup (the third button from the left) and set the Hardness value to 0%. Hold the Alt key on Windows or the Option key on Macintosh and click in an area of the photo that has a good color to replace the color contamination area. Then paint over the area where you want to fix the color. You may need to sample various colors for your correction, especially if the color contamination appears over a relatively large area that should have variations in color.

When painting with a color selected from the image, only the color will be altered in the areas you paint, because the blend mode is set to Color. In other words, the underlying texture will remain, but the color will be corrected.

Today’s Question: My Lightroom Classic image files (about 63,000 of them) and are located on a 3TB external hard drive that is almost six years old. I would like to move them to a new 6TB drive. It would be easy to drag and drop the images from one drive to the other. I know, however, that it is better if I move the images within Lightroom Classic. What is the best way to do this?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You could actually work either inside Lightroom Classic for this hard drive upgrade, or by using hard drive synchronization software outside Lightroom Classic as long as you’re careful about the workflow.

More Detail: If you work within Lightroom Classic, you would be moving photos from one hard drive to another. That means it is especially important to make sure you have a complete backup of your photos before you get started.

After creating that backup, you could then connect the new larger hard drive to the computer. Within Lightroom Classic you can then click the “plus” (+) button to the right of the Folders heading on the left panel in the Library module. From the popup that appears, choose Add Folder. Then navigate to the new hard drive and click the New Folder button. Type a name (such as “Photos”) for that new folder and click Choose.

The new empty folder will then appear on the Folders list under a heading for the new hard drive. You can then select folders from the “old” drive and drag-and-drop them to the “new” drive. I recommend working with a handful of folders at a time for this process, because if something goes wrong along the way it can be a little challenging to clean up the files that are left behind.

Another option is to use hard drive synchronization software for the task of copying photos from the “old” drive to the “new” drive. This approach can be easier, because the synchronization software will take care of all of the work involved in transferring all of the folders and photos to the new drive.

I use a software application called GoodSync (http://timgrey.me/greybackup) for my synchronization-based backups. The same software can be used to duplicate folders and photos for a hard drive “upgrade”. Be sure to select the “old” hard drive as the source of the one-way synchronization when creating the backup job, and the “new” hard drive as the destination. You want to be sure the folder structure is created on the new drive exactly as it appears on the old drive. For example, you do not want to copy the folders from the old drive into an “extra” top-level folder on the new drive.

After the synchronization backup is complete, the new hard drive will represent a perfect match of the old drive, except for the “name” of the drive. To resolve this, disconnect the old drive, and then change the drive letter (Windows) or the Volume Label (Macintosh) for the new drive to exactly match the old drive.

At this point you can launch Lightroom Classic, and all of your photos will be available as usual, just on a new hard drive. That is because the path (drive “name” and folder structure) for all of your photos will be a perfect match to what they were before upgrading to a larger hard drive.

Today’s Question: Would you discuss the differences between printing in Lightroom Classic and printing in Photoshop? I would be especially interested in differences in image quality.

Tim’s Quick Answer: In Lightroom Classic it is considerably easy to prepare to print one or more photos with excellent results. However, Photoshop provides a higher degree of control, especially when it comes to sharpening photos for print.

More Detail: A basic workflow for printing a photo involves resizing the image for the printed output, sharpening the image, and printing with appropriate color management settings to ensure the most accurate print possible.

Lightroom Classic makes this workflow quite easy. You can use a template to get started in preparing the image for the intended print size, including creating layouts with more than one image on the page. You can then fine-tune the settings for the print. Resizing the image is essentially handled automatically, and there are a pair of simple settings for sharpening. You can then select the appropriate color management and printer settings, and you can expect a print of high quality.

In Photoshop the workflow is a little more complicated. You need to resize the image to the appropriate dimensions and flatten the image (or preferably a copy of the image) so sharpening can be applied evenly to the full image evenly. For example, you wouldn’t want to apply sharpening to the Background image layer and not apply that same sharpening to an image cleanup layer. You can then print the image, again with appropriate color management and printer settings.

The workflow in Photoshop isn’t especially complicated, but it certainly isn’t a straightforward as printing from Lightroom Classic. However, I typically prefer to print from Photoshop because of the additional control you can exercise over sharpening the photo.

In Lightroom Classic you select Low, Standard, or High for the sharpening amount, and then choose whether you are printing to matte or glossy paper. This is obviously very simple, and the results are actually very good. However, you can exercise greater control over the sharpening in Photoshop. Admittedly, applying optimal sharpening in Photoshop requires more skill and experience than sharpening in Lightroom Classic, but the control can be helpful in terms of achieving the best results for a print.

Today’s Question: Would you please describe the difference between a background layer and normal layer [in Adobe Photoshop] and when it is advantageous to use one over the other?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The “Background” image layer in Photoshop is simply a “normal” image layer is set to “Background” status. What that primarily translates to is that the Background image layer is locked so that certain changes can’t be applied to the Background layer. This is aimed at preserving (to some extent) the contents of the Background image layer.

More Detail: In Photoshop it is possible to have multiple image layers in a single document. That might represent a composite panorama, for example, where the multiple layers represent the several frames that have been assembled into the panoramic image. Those layers could also represent a composite image, such as when an object is added to an underlying photo, or you might use a separate image layer for image cleanup work, painting pixels to cover up blemishes in the image below.

The “Background” image layer in Photoshop generally represents the original image before adjustments have been applied. But in reality, “Background” is simply a status for an image layer in Photoshop. One of the key attributes of a Background image layer is that it can’t be transformed or moved, unless you first convert the Background layer to a normal layer. This helps protect the “original” version of the image, since you can perform your work on separate image or adjustment layers without altering the Background layer.

You can convert a Background image layer to a normal (non-locked) layer by choosing Layer > New > Layer from Background on the menu. You can also convert a normal image layer to a Background image layer by selecting the layer on the layers panel and choosing Layer > New > Background from Layer on the menu.

In general, I recommend simply leaving the Background image layer alone. That way you can preserve the “original” appearance of the image. Adjustments and other effects can then be applied by adding adjustment layers or other image layers as needed to achieve the desired result.

In other words, if you need to use a layer for a task in Photoshop, it will be a normal layer rather than a Background image layer. If you need to perform a task that requires you to work directly on pixels (such as with many filters) you may need to create a copy of the Background layer for this purpose. For many other tasks (such as most image cleanup work) you can simply use a new empty image layer for that work.

Today’s Question: I always use the same card in my camera (not a choice, just lazy). Should it be rotated with other cards for longer life and less chance of failure, or does it matter?

Tim’s Quick Answer: I wouldn’t worry about rotating among several cards, as long as you replace your cards periodically and don’t ignore any signs of possible corruption.

More Detail: Media card are generally very dependable. If they are going to fail, they will most likely either fail very early on due to a manufacturing defect, or fail when they reach the end of their useful life. Rotating among cards won’t provide much benefit, other than the fact that it means it will take longer to get to the end of the useful life for a given card.

When I refer to the end of a cards useful life, that generally means reaching the maximum number of write operations for the memory of the card. That generally translates into 100,000 write cycles or more. However, that doesn’t quite convey how long it would take (on average) for a card to fail. That is because media cards use strategies such as wear leveling to help balance out the use of the memory blocks on the card and help extend the overall life of the card.

In other words, as long as you don’t happen to get a card that fails early, odds are you’ll replace a card long before it would otherwise fail. That might be because you want more capacity, you need a different card type for a new camera, you lost a card, or any other reason. The point is, in general media cards will last a long time, and switching between various cards won’t provide any significant benefit in terms of the potential of a given card to fail early.

Today’s Question: Suppose I photograph a painting with the intent of making a print of it that is as faithful as possible to the original. Assuming I have a good, calibrated monitor and good printer with a good profile for the paper I use, can I get a good result if I simply place an 18% gray card in the camera view and use Photoshop to make it look like the original card?

Tim’s Quick Answer: This is actually a good example of a scenario where using a product such as the ColorChecker Passport (https://timgrey.me/colorchecker) from X-Rite to create a custom profile for your camera based on the conditions under which you are photographing the painting.

More Detail: While photographers generally want the colors in their photos to be “accurate”, we also want to exercise a bit of creative interpretation. So we might warm up an image more than the scene really appeared, or boost the saturation a little bit.

In some cases though, such as with product photography or when reproducing a painting or other artwork, you often want the colors in the final photo to be as close to a perfect reflection of the original as possible. In other words, you want to have a photo with accurate colors that appears as though the scene had been illuminated by perfectly white light (with no color cast).

In this type of situation there are a variety of approaches you could take to help ensure more accurate colors. As noted in the question, you could include a gray card in the frame and then adjust the colors so that gray card appears perfectly neutral gray.

You could also use a custom white balance setting in the camera, which is a somewhat automated approach to the use of a gray card for a post-processing adjustment. In effect, the gray card is neutralized in the camera rather than after the capture.

An even better option in terms of color accuracy is to use a product such as the ColorChecker Passport from X-Rite Photo (https://timgrey.me/colorchecker). The ColorChecker Passport includes a variety of color swatches (including gray) that you can photograph under the same lighting conditions as the subject you’ll photograph. You can then photograph the subject with the same camera settings.

After the photo shoot, you can use the photo of the ColorChecker Passport to build a custom profile for that specific photo shoot. The profile can then be applied to the photos, to help ensure the most accurate colors possible.

You can get more details about the ColorChecker Passport here:

https://timgrey.me/colorchecker

Today’s Question: I am working in Lightroom Classic. Sometimes my Lightroom screen will–all of a sudden and randomly–only show my pictures. My panels and filmstrip are gone (black area). What am I hitting and what do I need to do to get them back? Currently I quit and reopen to get them back.

Tim’s Quick Answer: It sounds like you are inadvertently entering “Lights Out” view in Lightroom Classic. You can toggle between the dimmed mode, full Lights Out mode, and normal mode, by pressing the letter “L” on the keyboard.

More Detail: The “Lights Out” view in Lightroom Classic can certainly be helpful in terms of enabling you to focus exclusively on an image (or multiple images) without the distraction of the overall Lightroom Classic interface. Of course, if you’re accidentally entering Lights Out view it can be a bit disconcerting.

You can access the Lights Out view options on the Window menu on the menu bar in Lightroom Classic. Simply choose Window > Lights Out, and then select either Lights Off (for a black interface so you only see your photos), Lights Dim (so the interface is dimmed so it is not very visible, but the photos appear normally), or Lights On (so you see the full normal interface along with your photos).

You can also press the letter “L” on the keyboard to cycle through these three Lights Out views. The first time you press “L” the interface will be dimmed, with the photos appearing normally. The second time you press “L” the interface will be blacked out, and the third time you press “L” you’ll return to the normal view mode.

The Lights Out view is especially helpful when you are in the Loupe view, so you can focus more attention on the single image you’re browsing. But of course, you may also find this view option helpful even in the grid view display, so you can review a set of thumbnails without distraction.

Most importantly, of course, is to understand that this view option exists, so that if you accidentally press the “L” key on the keyboard, you’ll know why the Lightroom Classic interface got dimmed or hidden.

Today’s Question: When I resize an image in Photoshop, the math doesn’t seem to add up. For example, with pixel dimensions of 5472×3648 in the Image Size dialog Photoshop shows “114.2M”, which I assume refers to megapixels. But the actual number of megapixels is about 20. What is the 114 number based on?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The “114.2M” value in this example refers to the estimated file size in megabytes for the image, not megapixels. In addition, the estimated file size will often not be accurate, depending on how you save the image.

More Detail: The Image Size command in Photoshop enables you to change the actual pixel dimensions of an image, so that you can resize an image for specific output. This is helpful, for example, when you want to print an image at a specific size.

The “M” value shown at the top-center of the Image Size dialog stands for “megabytes”, and represents the estimated file size for the image when you save it at the current size. However, there are a variety of factors that affect the file size, which can cause the number shown in the Image Size dialog to be quite inaccurate.

Think of the file size estimate in the Image Size dialog to be based on saving the current image as a TIFF file with no layers, and with no compression applied. If you save an image in this way, the file size shown in the Image Size dialog will be quite accurate.

If you save the image as a JPEG, the file size will be considerably smaller because of the lossy compression applied, with the actual file size depending on the pixel dimensions, the image quality setting used for the JPEG compression, and the complexity of the image itself.

If you save the file as a TIFF with a significant number of layers (especially image layers) and without any compression applied, the file size may be significantly larger than the estimate in the Image Size dialog.

Therefore, in many cases the file size estimate shown in the Image Size dialog is not especially useful. If you are familiar with file size as it relates to the potential output size in the context of a flattened TIFF image with no compression applied, the value may be somewhat useful. But in general I recommend ignoring the value shown, other than as a very rough guide to how much space the file might require when saved to your hard drive.