Ask Tim Grey

Today’s Question: Do you need to use any specific separation between words for keywords in Lightroom Classic, such as a comma or quotation marks? If not wouldn’t “New” and “Mexico” show up, rather than just “New Mexico”?

Tim’s Quick Answer: As long as you choose the option to separate keywords with commas rather than spaces in Lightroom Classic, you can indeed be able to search for “New Mexico” with the search results excluding images that only include “New” or “Mexico”, without the full “New Mexico” keyword.

More Detail: In Lightroom Classic you can choose whether you want to separate individual keywords with commas or spaces. I highly recommend using the option to separate keywords with commas, so you can include spaces in keywords.

First, you’ll want to make sure that you have enabled the option to separate keywords by commas rather than spaces. Start by going to the menu and choosing Edit > Preferences on Windows, or Lightroom Classic > Preferences on Macintosh. Go to the Interface tab and find the “Separate keywords using” popup in the Keyword Entry section. Select “Commas” (rather than “Spaces”) from that popup and close the Preferences dialog.

To perform a text search based on keywords that include spaces, you can use the “Contains Words” option for the search. On the Library Filter bar in the Library module, select the Text tab. Set the first popup to “Keywords”, and the second popup to “Contains Words”. You can then enter a keyword that includes a space in the search field, and only photos with that complete keyword will appear in the search results.

So, for example, if you had various photos with keywords of “New Mexico”, “New York”, and “Mexico”, when you search for “New Mexico” as outlined above, the images with “New Mexico” as a keyword would be included in the search results, but those with only “Mexico” or “New York” would not be included in those results.

Today’s Question: You mentioned that the Lightroom Classic catalog should be stored on “an internal or external hard drive”. But is there a reason you should make a choice between an internal drive versus an external drive for that catalog?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You should generally store your catalog on an internal hard drive if you want to maximize performance in Lightroom Classic, and you should store your catalog on an external hard drive if you want to be able to work with your catalog on more than one computer by moving the hard drive to the computer you currently want to work with.

More Detail: The most important thing to keep in mind in terms of where you store your Lightroom Classic catalog is that it should not be stored on a network storage location. That recommendation extends to cloud-based storage options, such as Dropbox. While it may be possible to have Lightroom Classic access the catalog with this type of connection, I highly recommend against this practice, due to the risk of corruption of the catalog.

Instead, you should store the catalog on a local hard drive. That leaves a decision between an internal versus external hard drive.

Generally speaking, storing the catalog on an internal hard drive will provide the best performance for Lightroom Classic, so this is the preferred approach. However, if you want to be able to work with your catalog on more than one computer, storing the catalog on an internal hard drive creates a challenge.

If the priority is to be able to work with your Lightroom Classic catalog on more than one computer, you can store the catalog on an external hard drive. In general that would mean storing the catalog on the same external hard drive you use to store your photos.

With the catalog on an external hard drive, you can easily switch between computers by connecting the drive to the computer you want to use. Assuming you have Lightroom Classic installed on that computer, you can then open the catalog from the external hard drive, enabling you to work normally with the same catalog across more than one computer.

Note that if your photos are also stored on that external hard drive, you’ll need to make sure that the path to the drive remains the same on each computer. That means assigning the same drive letter to the hard drive on each computer for Windows users, or making sure that the volume label remains the same for the hard drive for Macintosh users.

Today’s Question: I am a Lightroom user and have recently set up a Raid 1 Synology NAS [Network Attached Storage] system for my photographs. I want to work off of the NAS in Lightroom. How can I go about using Lightroom with a NAS?

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can use network attached storage (NAS) for storing your photos being managed by Lightroom Classic, but you should not store your Lightroom Classic catalog on that NAS storage device.

More Detail: As photographers we obviously need to store our digital photos. That generally takes the form of a storage device such as a hard drive, which might be a drive that is installed inside your computer or an external hard drive that you connect with a data cable such as a USB connection.

Another storage option is network attached storage (NAS), which you can think of as being an external hard drive where the data connection is via a network rather than via a direct data connection. In actual fact, a NAS device generally includes multiple hard drives that are strung together to create a high-capacity storage capability.

For all intents and purposes, you can think of a NAS device as being the same thing in general concept as an external hard drive. The key difference is that because the storage is connected via a network connection rather than via a direct data connection, multiple users on the same network can access the data on the NAS device at the same time.

Because NAS operates on a network environment, it is not supported for storage of your Lightroom Classic catalog. Among other things, having your Lightroom Classic catalog stored on a network means that there is the potential for more than one user to access the catalog at the same time, which would create a problem for that catalog.

So, you can store your photos on any storage device accessible from your computer. However, you should only store your catalog on a storage device directly connected to your computer, such as an internal or external hard drive.

Today’s Question: You mentioned [during the recent GreyLearning Virtual Photo Conference] that you had to upgrade your computer due to the failure of your previous MacBook Pro. I was wondering why you chose the Apple M1 chip versus a similar Mac with an Intel processor? I have been told that there are programs that will not work with the M1.

Tim’s Quick Answer: The primary reason I opted for a computer with the new Apple M1 chip was improved performance. I also wanted to test out the new chip so I could report back to my readers. Fortunately, compatibility issues have been virtually non-existent.

More Detail: When the new Apple computers featuring the Apple M1 chip were announced, I was intrigued but had no intention of buying a new computer. I figured I would just go to an Apple Store to do some testing of the new computers so I could report back on them and wait a while before I actually upgraded my computer.

Then my computer started failing, so I didn’t have much choice but to buy a new computer. There were options available with both the Apple M1 processor as well as the Intel processor. I was skeptical about making a change, in particular because of concerns about compatibility.

I did some side-by-side testing, however, and was impressed (perhaps even shocked) at how much better the performance was with the M1-based MacBook Pro compared to the Intel-based computer. I decided it was worth the risk of compatibility issues in order to get better performance and to be able to report back on my experience with the new processor.

I was a little surprised that I faced virtually no compatibility issues at all. Applications that do not support the new M1 chip natively can be run in a compatibility mode, and many applications (including most from Adobe) have been updated to natively support the M1 processor.

The only issue I’ve run into is that with the new M1-native version of Adobe applications the plug-ins that have not yet been updated to support the M1 processor will not work. If they are able to run standalone rather than only as a plug-in, that will provide a solution. Otherwise, you would need to keep an older version of the host application (such as Photoshop) installed in order to make use of plug-ins that have not yet been updated.

Overall I am extremely pleased with the performance of my MacBook Pro with the M1 processor, and am even a little grateful that my prior computer was starting to fail, since that forced me to upgrade a bit earlier than I otherwise would have.

Today’s Question: It seems that the standard color space is Adobe RGB. But if the vast majority of my photos are printed by a lab that will only accept images in the sRGB color space, it seems to me that I should synchronize the color spaces on my camera, monitor, and software to sRGB. But if I do, how much do I lose when viewing images on a monitor or projecting them to a plasma or LCD TV?

Tim’s Quick Answer: If most of your printed output is generated with a workflow that revolves around sRGB, it is perfectly reasonable to standardize your overall workflow on the sRGB color space, with very little risk of losing significant color or detail in your photos.

More Detail: The sRGB color space is often referred to as being a “small” color space, when in fact it is simply smaller than the other commonly used color spaces of Adobe RGB and ProPhoto RGB. The sRGB color space is still perfectly adequate for printing photos and is especially well-suited to images being displayed electronically, such as on a monitor or digital projector.

There’s no need to set your camera to the sRGB color space if you are shooting in raw (as I highly recommend doing). You can, however, set the in-camera color space to sRGB to get a bit of a more accurate preview of the image based on the sRGB color space.

In Lightroom Classic you don’t have control over the color space being used within Lightroom Classic, as a variation on ProPhoto RGB is always used in the background. When sending images to Photoshop you could certainly use the sRGB color space.

My personal preference in this type of workflow would be to use the ProPhoto RGB color space in Photoshop. Then use sRGB whenever you are exporting photos to be printed by the printer, or for digital sharing.

There’s no inherent benefit to using the sRGB color space through your full workflow, as color management in your workflow will ensure you are getting an accurate preview of the colors in your images. So, my recommendation in general is to use a larger color space for editing, and then the appropriate color space when preparing photos for specific output. That said, there’s certainly not any significant risk in converting photos to the sRGB color space when they will ultimately be printed or otherwise shared using that color space.

Today’s Question: Years ago, I thought it would be easy to give up the XMP sidecar [files associated with my proprietary raw captures] and started converting my raw files to DNG as part of my workflow. Am I losing something by doing this?

Tim’s Quick Answer: When converting to DNG you will retain your source capture data and the metadata you’ve added. You may, however, be giving up some proprietary metadata from your camera, and creating a minor issue with your backup efficiency.

More Detail: While you won’t lose any actual image data when converting a proprietary raw capture to the Adobe DNG (Digital Negative) file format, you may lose some proprietary metadata from the original capture. This would relate to special features of your camera that result in custom metadata being added, and that require software from your camera manufacturer to make use of.

For example, one of my cameras has a built-in dust removal feature. When I enable this option, the camera records data about dust on the sensor at the time of capture and embeds that information in the private metadata for the photo. Other software such as Photoshop and Lightroom are not able to make use of this information. Instead, you would need to use the software from the camera manufacturer to make use of that proprietary metadata, such as in this case to automatically remove dust spots from the image.

If you convert that proprietary raw capture to the Adobe DNG file format, you will likely lose any proprietary metadata. I say “likely” because there is an option to embed the original raw capture in the DNG file, but to me that would eliminate much of the benefit of converting to DNG, since the file size would be about double what it otherwise would be.

With metadata stored in the DNG file rather than an XMP “sidecar” file associated with a proprietary raw capture, your backup workflow may be affected as well. When you apply metadata updates, your backup software may need to copy the entire relatively large file for each DNG file you updated, rather than only needing to back up a small XMP file for each proprietary raw capture that you updated, since in the latter context the proprietary raw capture file would not have been updated.

So, overall, I would say that I still prefer to retain the original proprietary raw captures from my camera rather than converting to the Adobe DNG file format. That said, if you prefer to convert you aren’t risking the loss of too much information that would be of concern.

Today’s Question: Years ago, I thought it would be easy to give up the XMP sidecar [files associated with my proprietary raw captures] and started converting my raw files to DNG as part of my workflow. Am I losing something by doing this?

Tim’s Quick Answer: When converting to DNG you will retain your source capture data and the metadata you’ve added. You may, however, be giving up some proprietary metadata from your camera, and creating a minor issue with your backup efficiency.

More Detail: While you won’t lose any actual image data when converting a proprietary raw capture to the Adobe DNG (Digital Negative) file format, you may lose some proprietary metadata from the original capture. This would relate to special features of your camera that result in custom metadata being added, and that require software from your camera manufacturer to make use of.

For example, one of my cameras has a built-in dust removal feature. When I enable this option, the camera records data about dust on the sensor at the time of capture and embeds that information in the private metadata for the photo. Other software such as Photoshop and Lightroom are not able to make use of this information. Instead, you would need to use the software from the camera manufacturer to make use of that proprietary metadata, such as in this case to automatically remove dust spots from the image.

If you convert that proprietary raw capture to the Adobe DNG file format, you will likely lose any proprietary metadata. I say “likely” because there is an option to embed the original raw capture in the DNG file, but to me that would eliminate much of the benefit of converting to DNG, since the file size would be about double what it otherwise would be.

With metadata stored in the DNG file rather than an XMP “sidecar” file associated with a proprietary raw capture, your backup workflow may be affected as well. When you apply metadata updates, your backup software may need to copy the entire relatively large file for each DNG file you updated, rather than only needing to back up a small XMP file for each proprietary raw capture that you updated, since in the latter context the proprietary raw capture file would not have been updated.

So, overall, I would say that I still prefer to retain the original proprietary raw captures from my camera rather than converting to the Adobe DNG file format. That said, if you prefer to convert you aren’t risking the loss of too much information that would be of concern.

Today’s Question: Is it possible to sync keywords across an entire folder of images, all at once, in Lightroom Classic? It seems when I try it only applies to one photo even though all are selected.

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can indeed assign keywords to multiple selected photos all at once in Lightroom Classic by making sure you are in the grid view (not the loupe view).

More Detail: The issue you’re running into is what I refer to as the “Loupe View Snafu”. When you are in the loupe view in Lightroom Classic by default you are only working with a single image, even with multiple images selected. In other words, if you select many images but are in the loupe view, when you add a keyword only the image shown in the loupe view display will actually have the keyword added. The other selected photos will not be updated.

If you have multiple photos selected while in the grid view display, metadata updates such as keywords will apply to all of the selected photos. Therefore, I recommend making sure you are in the grid view when you select multiple photos and want to apply the same metadata updates to all of the selected photos.

You can also synchronize metadata across multiple images using the Sync Metadata button at the bottom of the right panel in the Library module. But in general I find it easiest to simply make sure you are in the grid view display with multiple photos selected when you want to update metadata for those selected photos.

Today’s Question: I’ve tried using the “Skin Tones” option for the Color Range selection in Photoshop, and most of the time I don’t get very good results. Am I doing something wrong, or is there some trick to using this feature?

Tim’s Quick Answer: In general, I don’t find that the “Skin Tones” option for the Color Range command in Photoshop provides very good results, though turning on the “Detect Faces” feature and fine-tuning the Fuzziness value can help improve the selection.

More Detail: There are quite a few selection tools in Photoshop that provide excellent results with a streamlined workflow. In my experience, however, the option to select skin tones in photos in a relatively automated way does not work very well.

I find that many photographers are surprised that it is even reasonable to expect Photoshop to be able to automatically identify skin tones in a photo. However, this is often feasible because in many cases skin tones will fall into a predictable range of color values.

However, I am rarely able to get a good initial selection using the “Skin Tones” option for the Color Range command. Quite often the skin tones are only partially selected, and other areas of the image with similar ranges of color values also get included in the selection.

The first step within the Color Range dialog (found on the menu at Select > Color Range) is to choose the “Skin Tones” option from the Select popup at the top of the dialog. This will provide an initial selection of skin tones based on an analysis of the image. I recommend turning on the “Detect Faces” checkbox, which in most cases will improve the selection for skin tones within the photo.

Fine-tuning the Fuzziness setting can also help. I typically find that the initial Color Range selection for skin tones does not include enough of the overall skin tone areas within the photo, and so increasing the value for Fuzziness will expand that selection. However, you can also reduce the value for Fuzziness if you need to restrict the range of color values that are being selected in order to reduce the selection size.

Keep in mind that the Skin Tones option for the Color Range selection command really is focused on selecting skin tones, not just faces or people. That said, I do find that this selection option provides very mixed results, and so I generally resort to the “Sampled Colors” option for the Color Range command, or to the use of other selection tools such as the Quick Selection tool.

Today’s Question: The in-camera light meter tries to take everything middle gray so if you take a picture of a white wall in auto mode the wall will appear gray, not white. So you would have to overexpose by 2-3 stops to get the wall white as it should be. What happens when you meter with a external light meter such as Sekonic. The same?

Tim’s Quick Answer: A hand-held light meter provides the same basic function as the meter in your camera, though the specifics of how you deal with the information provided will vary depending on the type of meter.

More Detail: An exposure meter enables you to measure the light level illuminating a scene and determine appropriate camera settings that will ensure a good exposure for that scene. The general way these light meters are described is that they are trying to determine the average light level illuminating the scene and determine an exposure that will ensure that a middle gray card in the scene will appear as middle gray in the final exposure.

Of course, you can meter off something other than a middle gray card, which means your metered exposure won’t necessarily provide an optimal final exposure. For example, if you meter off snow on a bright sunny day, the meter will attempt to set an exposure where the snow will appear gray. You’ll generally need to compensate by increasing the exposure by about two stops to ensure the snow will appear white rather than gray.

There are some differences with accessory versus in-camera light meters in terms of the options available. In general, both will offer options for the size of the area being metered, such as spot metering versus evaluating a larger area of the scene. In addition, handheld meters (unlike in-camera meters) may offer the ability to measure incident light rather than reflected light.

In other words, with some handheld exposure meters you can position the meter in the area where the subject you’re photographing is located and therefore illuminated by the light, to measure the light actually reaching the subject. Other meters, including those in the camera, will measure light reflected by the scene rather than being emitted toward the scene.

The overall concept, however, is the same in terms of a light meter only measuring light based on the settings you’ve established and the method for that measurement. Regardless of the type of meter being used, you will generally need to consider how you may need to compensate for the meter reading you obtain. This is less true for an incident meter, since an incident meter is actually measuring how much light is reaching the subject as opposed to measuring how that light is reflected off the subject. But some degree you’ll need to compensate for the meter reading regardless of the particulars.

Most photographers will be able to get by perfectly well with their in-camera exposure meter, taking into account how you may need to compensate for the area of the scene you’re metering off of. In some cases, however, it can be helpful to use a handheld meter, and especially an incident meter, such as when photographing a subject that is illuminated by a series of strobes rather than natural light.