Ask Tim Grey

Today’s Question: I want to enter a photo contest that asks for 5MB image saved as a JPEG, at 300 ppi resolution. Isn’t this a strange setting? I have the photo as a 5MB TIFF now, but can’t seem to get it over to the JPEG without losing the 5MB!

Tim’s Quick Answer: The settings you’ve provided are indeed strange, and in large part completely useless for this purpose. I would suggest first saving the image at the original pixel dimensions as a JPEG image at a Quality setting of 80 if you are using Lightroom or 8 if you are using Photoshop. Unless you’re working with a photo with extreme resolution, this will produce a file of under 5MB that you can submit for the contest.

More Detail: It amazes me how often I see submission guidelines for images that don’t provide an adequate amount of information, and that make it clear that the person writing the guidelines doesn’t know much about resolution. In many cases the primary motivation seems to be to ensure that the submitted image files aren’t too large, in an effort to prevent an overload of the server (or an excessive cost for online storage).

The 5MB size is most certainly an upper limit intended to prevent huge image files from being submitted. But with a JPEG file there is always compression applied, so the chances of ending up with a file over 5MB are pretty slim. Even at the maximum Quality setting for a JPEG image, you would need to have pixel dimensions of around 5,000 or so pixels on the long side to produce an image file of around 5MB. Plus, there’s no real advantage to that file size in this context.

Instead I would submit images at either full resolution or a bit smaller if you’re concerned about producing a file that is too large. For a photo contest I generally want to have an image that is large enough to be evaluated effectively, enabling the judge to zoom in on the image, for example.

Frankly, I would ignore the pixel per inch resolution altogether in this case. This setting only applies when the photo is being printed, so it isn’t critical for an online photo contest submission.

Of course, it perhaps goes without saying that it is a good idea to confirm that the photo contest is being run by a reputable organization, and to check the submission guidelines carefully. If you have any doubts about these issues it may not be worthwhile to submit your photos for the contest, especially if you are sending relatively high-resolution image files.

Today’s Question: I have adopted your Auto White Balance approach and in most cases I am pleased with my results. I do occasionally have issues and want clarification of the Lightroom white balance dropper. Should I set it on something that I think is close to 18% gray or should I set it on a white patch in the image? One of my most difficult issues are images of my grandson who has an olive complexion, especially in the winter. I struggle to find a white balance that satisfies me or his mother (my daughter).

Tim’s Quick Answer: The core function of the White Balance Selector tool (the eyedropper) in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw is to adjust the values for Temp and Tint so that the pixel you click on in the image becomes neutral gray. As such, you generally want to click on an area of the photo that should be perfectly neutral when using this tool. But of course in the real world things are a little more complicated than that.

More Detail: If your scene includes an object or area that should be absolutely neutral gray without any color cast, then you can use the White Balance Selector to quickly neutralize the overall color in your photo. Simply choose the White Balance Selector and click on the area of the photo that would be perfectly neutral. Note that the area you click on can be of any tonal value from black all the way to white. When we say “neutral gray” in this context we simply mean a shade of gray of any tonality.

Of course, in many photographic situations we don’t actually want a gray object to appear gray. Very often, for example, we specifically seek out early morning or late afternoon light in pursuit of the color cast provided by that light. During “golden hour” an object that would appear perfectly neutral gray under white lighting should most certainly not appear gray in our final image.

What to do? There are a couple of approaches I can recommend.

First, it is worth noting that having a neutral starting point can be very helpful, even if that starting point doesn’t match your final intent for the image. You could, for example, position a gray card in the frame under the same lighting as your key subject, and use that gray card as the basis of a white balance adjustment.

For situations where it isn’t practical to use a gray card during your photography, you can instead click on an area of the photo that you feel should most likely appear as a neutral gray. For a portrait this could include the white of the eye, for example. In a landscape a cloud will often provide a good area to click on.

Of course, once you’ve clicked on an area of the photo that was actually gray, you’ll likely want to apply a correction to add a bit of color to the image. If you photograph a scene under late afternoon light and employ this gray card approach, for example, you’ll then want to adjust the Temp slider toward yellow to add back the golden light.

This brings us to the real challenge of the situation. If we want to retain the color influence of the light illuminating a scene, how do we achieve accurate color without losing that color influence? This is the challenging part.

What I recommend is that you develop your eye for accurate color. Start by calibrating your monitor display to make sure the display is accurate. Then skip the White Balance Selector tool or the preset options and go right to the Temp and Tint sliders. Drag through the extremes, and gradually “settle down” the slider movement as you zero in on optimal appearance for the image. With practice this will become easier (I promise!).

Note that it can also be very helpful to apply an exaggerated increase to the Saturation value for the image while you’re working, so you can more easily see the colors that are present in the photo.

As an aside, there are specific techniques for targeting accurate skin tones in photos of people. But again, keep in mind that the color of an object is not necessarily the color we want in our final photo, such as with situations where part of the reason we captured the image was the color of the light illuminating the scene. Therefore, targeting “accurate” RGB values for specific skin tones photographed in the middle of the day won’t work well for photos captured during “golden hour”.

In other words, at the end of the day your best approach is generally going to be to use your eyes to evaluate the color for each individual photo. There are “shortcuts” to helping you get a neutral starting point that can be helpful, but ultimately the best results will come from practicing the art of fine-tuning the color in your photos.

Today’s Question: When I’m trying to decide how to crop a photo in Lightroom, I’m looking for an easy way to decide if I want it 8×10, or 8×12, etc. I’ve been using the crop tool and then setting a custom crop setting then going back and looking at the photo, but it seems like there should be an easier, faster way.

Tim’s Quick Answer: It sounds like the “Crop Guide Overlays” feature in Lightroom will provide a good solution for what you’re looking for. You can choose the aspect ratios you want to compare in the Choose Aspect Ratios checkbox, and then enable the crop overlay so you can compare different aspect ratios at one time simply by adjusting the crop.

More Detail: To get started, go to the Develop module and select the Crop tool using the button below the Histogram display on the right panel (or by pressing “R” on the keyboard). Then choose Tools > Crop Guide Overlay > Choose Aspect Ratios from the menu. This will bring up the Choose Aspect Ratios dialog, where you can turn on the checkbox for the specific aspect ratios you’d like to compare. Then click OK to close the Choose Aspect Ratios dialog.

Next, choose Tools > Crop Guide Overlay > Aspect Ratios from the menu. This will cause this option to be activated, as indicated by a checkmark icon to the left of this menu option. However, initially nothing will seem to have changed for the image.

To actually see the crop tool overlay and therefore compare different crop aspect ratios, you simply need to drag one of the edges or corners of the crop box on the image. When you have the mouse button down, in addition to the outer crop boundary you will see an overlay indicating the various aspect ratios you selected. This enables you to get a reasonable preview of different aspect ratios for the crop in real time.

One minor challenge with this feature is that a certain amount of translation is required if you are seeking to preview specific print sizes. For example, there isn’t an overlay option for “8×12”. Instead there is an option for “2×3 4×6”, which of course reflects the same aspect ratio as an 8×12 crop.

If the crop tool overlay causes you to decide on a particular crop aspect ratio, you can then select that aspect ratio for the Crop tool and apply the desired crop to your photo.

Today’s Question: In Tim Grey TV Episode 23 (https://youtu.be/qZ3HDJmOuVs) you mentioned you set your white balance to Sunny. When using a neutral density filter do you always set your white balance for the conditions or do you use auto white balance often?

Tim’s Quick Answer: In this specific example, I was actually only using a white balance preset in order to test the relative behavior of different neutral density filters. In most cases I tend to employ the “Auto” setting for white balance provided I am capturing photos in the RAW capture mode.

More Detail: When testing gear for a particular behavior, it is important to isolate as many variables as possible. In the episode of Tim Grey TV referenced I was testing a couple of neutral density filters to get a sense of just how much variability there was in the neutrality of different filters. Therefore, I wanted all camera settings “locked in” to fixed settings, so that the only variable was the actual filter being attached to the lens.

Under normal circumstances (with or without the use of a neutral density filter), my personal preference is to simply employ the “Auto” setting for white balance when shooting RAW. This is based in large part on the fact that the white balance setting doesn’t actually affect capture data when you are using the RAW capture mode.

It is important to keep in mind, of course, that by using Auto white balance you are introducing potential variability in the appearance of one photo to the next. You are also potentially creating additional work for yourself in post-processing. Of course, it is worth noting that it is also very easy to synchronize the white balance setting (and other adjustments) for multiple photos at once with software tools such as Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom.

That said, in general I find that I don’t find that I need to synchronize the white balance setting for multiple photos all that often. I also prefer to fine-tune the overall white balance adjustments for my photos after the capture almost without exception. Based on my preferred workflow, choosing a particular white balance setting in the camera wouldn’t provide any real benefit, unless I was lucky enough to guess the perfect setting for every photo.

Today’s Question: I generally make basic adjustments in Lightroom, such as Whites, Blacks, Highlights and Clarity. I then take the image into Photoshop where I make additional adjustments such as Tonal Contrast using Nik plug-ins, which I’ve used for years and love. Is making adjustments like that in both Lightroom and Photoshop (using 16-bit images) likely to have an adverse effect on the image quality? To my eye they look better and I haven’t noticed any gapping in the histogram.

Tim’s Quick Answer: The approach you describe will not cause any significant degradation in image quality. There is a theoretical disadvantage to applying multiple passes of adjustments to an image, but as long as those adjustments are relatively modest and you are working with a 16-bit per channel image, there won’t be a visible degradation in image quality.

More Detail: The core issue here is that adjustments can cause a certain degree of image degradation. Obviously the adjustment is aimed at improving the overall appearance of the image, but some degradation will occur. For example, many adjustments will reduce the smoothness of transitions of tone and color in an image. Increasing contrast or saturation will tend to have the strongest impact in this regard.

When you use multiple adjustment steps rather than a single step, there can be a compounding effect, where the final image has degraded more than if the final result had been achieved with fewer adjustments. So, for example, if you can produce the same final appearance in the photo with one adjustment rather than three, the image will exhibit better quality.

It is important to keep in mind that the differences here are generally going to be extremely minor, unless the adjustments are especially strong. In other words, with typical adjustments you wouldn’t be able to see a visual difference between two versions of an image processed with more versus fewer adjustments. It would require very detailed analysis to find any variation in pixel values under typical circumstances.

In addition, keep in mind that in many cases when you are applying adjustments in multiple steps, you aren’t actually having the same cumulative degradation in image quality. For example, in Lightroom all of the adjustments you apply don’t really alter pixel values until you export or otherwise share the photo. In other words, no matter how many times you move an individual slider in Lightroom’s Develop module, the result is as though you only moved the slider once to its final decision.

Especially when you are making use of specialized tools (such as a plug-in as described in today’s question), I wouldn’t hesitate at all to employ multiple adjustment tools in my workflow. When using a 16-bit per channel workflow, you don’t need to have any real concern about image degradation using a workflow such as this. That said, for 8-bit per channel images, these concerns can be very real indeed, especially for black and white photos.

Today’s Question: Does your recommendation to only use “Save” (not “Save As”) for images sent from Lightroom to Photoshop apply even if you want to keep the Photoshop-modified file as a separate version?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes. When you send a photo from Lightroom to Photoshop, you are already creating a derivative image file. Therefore, you don’t need to use the “Save As” command to create a new file. Lightroom will have already created that new file for you.

More Detail: When you send a RAW capture to Photoshop from Lightroom, a new image file will be created for you automatically. In the Preferences dialog you can go to the External Editing tab and choose whether you want that new file to be a Photoshop PSD file or a TIFF file, by choosing the preferred option from the “File Format” popup.

The fact that this image file is being created for you as part of this process is the reason you don’t need to use the “Save As” command in Photoshop. In effect, Photoshop already knows where to save the file and what the filename should be, because the file was already created by Lightroom and is simply being opened by Photoshop.

If you are working with a non-RAW capture, Lightroom will give you the choice of creating a new copy of the image, or opening the “original” version of the selected file. By choosing to create a new copy, you will likewise have a derivative image, and can still use the “Save” rather than “Save As” command in Photoshop.

The bottom line is that when you are using Lightroom to manage your photos, you want to initiate all tasks from within Lightroom. If you want an additional version of a photo that will be worked on in Photoshop, the creation of that additional version should be initiated in Lightroom.

Today’s Question: With the latest update to the mobile version of Lightroom, you can download RAW captures to your mobile device. That potentially means it would be possible to travel without a laptop, but does this really provide a reliable workflow for photography using RAW captures?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The latest update to the mobile version of Lightroom does indeed enable a RAW capture workflow while traveling without a laptop. To me, the key considerations to think about here are overall storage capacity and a good backup solution.

More Detail: First off, let’s consider overall storage capacity for downloading your RAW captures. The internal storage is somewhat limited with most mobile devices capable of running the mobile version of Lightroom. While there are mobile devices that provide up to around 256GB of storage, I find that many photographers are still using mobile devices limited to something closer to 64GB of storage. The key question is, will you have enough available storage space on your device to download the number of photos you capture on a typical trip?

External storage devices can obviously provide a degree of help here. If you connect an external hard drive to your mobile device, for example, you can solve your storage limitations very easily. But then you need to consider how much benefit you’re really getting from using a mobile device compared to a small laptop computer. Adding external storage drives may eliminate much of the benefit you would otherwise derive. Keep in mind, however, that some mobile devices enable you to expand capacity by inserting storage cards, rather than by connecting an external storage device.

I think it is also worthwhile to consider what your actual space savings (in terms of overall hardware) will be compared to the utility of the hardware you’re bringing along. While things are changing fast on this front, a laptop will generally be capable of better performance than a mobile device. In addition, if you’re bringing along external storage, a wireless keyboard, and other accessories, the mobile device might not save you all that much space compared to a small laptop.

It is also important to think about backing up your photos during your travels. In theory using Lightroom mobile solves this problem for you, because your captures will be synchronized to your desktop computer back at home using the Adobe Creative Cloud. However, if you have limited (or non-existent) Internet access, this may not provide an adequate solution. Once again, supplemental storage devices can be employed in many cases. You might also consider bringing along enough storage cards for your camera that you never need to reformat them. With this approach you can keep your backup copies of photos on your storage cards, with the copies downloaded via Lightroom mobile representing the new “master” versions of your photos.

The bottom line is that the latest updates to the mobile version of Lightroom most certainly improve the potential for an efficient workflow while traveling that doesn’t require you to bring a laptop computer with you. Instead, a smaller and lighter mobile device can provide the workflow solution you need while photographing on the go.

Today’s Question: I am a wedding photographer and, along with my other photographers, sometimes take as many as 2000 pictures at a wedding. Of course, I upload these into Lightroom as soon as I get back to the studio (along with backing them up on two external hard drives). Downloading 2000 RAW picture into Lightroom takes a long time, but if I also convert them to DNGs, it takes a very long time. I realize that DNGs are smaller files and will save me space but is there any advantage or disadvantage to working with camera RAW images versus working on DNG images? I am tempted to just upload the camera RAW images and not convert them to DNGs to save time.

Tim’s Quick Answer: Personally, I would favor the use of the original RAW captures rather than converting to Adobe DNG, especially in a situation where you need to be able to work as quickly as possible.

More Detail: To be sure, as a general rule you can expect a RAW capture converted to an Adobe DNG file to have a file size that is around 20% smaller than the original RAW file. Your specific results may vary, but in general the DNG file will be smaller than the original RAW capture due to compression. And it should be noted that the compression used for those DNG images does not degrade image quality in any way.

It should be noted that there is not an issue with processing DNG versus RAW captures in the Develop module in Lightroom (or in Adobe Camera Raw). Overall image quality will be preserved with the conversion from a proprietary RAW capture to the Adobe DNG format.

Of course, as noted in today’s question, additional time is required to create a DNG image based on each original RAW capture, which adds additional time to your overall workflow. That additional time can be significant, especially when you are trying to hurry to get photos to clients.

There is another reason that I prefer to retain the original RAW captures rather than convert to DNG, related to how metadata is stored. I prefer to turn on the option on the Metadata tab in the Catalog Settings dialog in Lightroom to “Automatically write changes into XMP”. This causes key metadata values (such as star ratings and keywords) to be saved out to the original image file, or to an XMP “sidecar” file in the case of proprietary RAW captures.

Some photographers prefer to convert their RAW captures to the DNG file format for exactly this reason. They prefer not to have an XMP “sidecar” file for every RAW capture for which they’ve applied any standard metadata updates. With a DNG image, the metadata updates are added to the actual DNG file, without the need for a sidecar file.

My issue with this relates to my use of a synchronization-based backup solution. In short, each time I backup my photos I’m really just updating the existing backup based on which files have changed. In the case of a metadata update, the updated XMP file will be significantly smaller than the updated DNG file. So by not converting to DNG I’m also saving time with my backup workflow.

There are certainly some advantages to the Adobe DNG format as compared to proprietary RAW capture formats. But on balance my preference is to retain the original RAW captures, and to not convert my captures to DNG.

Today’s Question: For reasons that are beyond me I find certain photos in Lightroom (often ones I have worked on in Photoshop and saved back to Lightroom) have been grayed out and I have no idea how to recover the file. Lightroom tells me the file is missing. Can you help?

Tim’s Quick Answer: I have found that the most common cause for missing photos in this specific scenario is that the “Save As” command was used in Photoshop. Instead, when you send a photo from Lightroom to Photoshop you want to only use the “Save” command, then close the image and return to Lightroom.

More Detail: The issue I describe here is clearly somewhat intermittent, and I’ve only been able to reproduce it a handful of times. However, I’ve seen enough photographers run into this that it is clear to me that it is an issue.

As a general rule, the most important step you can take to avoid having missing images in Lightroom is to make sure that all tasks you perform with your photos are initiated from within Lightroom. Whether you’re updating metadata, getting photos reorganized, optimizing the appearance of a photo, or anything else, that task should always start inside of Lightroom. Otherwise, the catalog will get confused as to the location of some of the photos being managed within the catalog.

As noted above, it is also important to make sure that when you send a photo from Lightroom to Photoshop (using the Edit In command found on the Photo menu), that you don’t use the Save As command within Photoshop. Instead, when you’re finished working in Photoshop, simply choose File > Save from the menu, followed by File > Close. This should ensure that the updated photo will always still be included within your Lightroom catalog, and will never appear to be “missing” from within that catalog.

Today’s Question: For monochrome images ready to print, will any shade of gray ever be out of gamut? If not, do various rendering intent settings actually do anything at all, or will all produce the same print?

Tim’s Quick Answer: No, the gamut warning won’t be useful for black and white prints, at least for any normal printer. Put simply, all shades of gray will be considered to be within the gamut of any normal printer.

More Detail: When it comes to producing a print, the overall color and tonal values in your print are essentially “mapped” based on the behavior of the current printer, ink, and paper combination. White in the image will be translated to the color of the paper (meaning no ink will be applied), and black in the image will be translated to the darkest value the printer is able to reproduce.

All of the shades of gray in between are therefore going to be within the capabilities of the printer, since they fall somewhere between black and white and don’t require any color. You will generally only find that colors fall out of gamut when they are very highly saturated, so that the color goes beyond the saturation level of the inks being used to produce the print.