Digital Outback Photo
- Photography using Digital SLRs

The Art of Raw Conversion #031

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom™ 1.0

Lightroom FAQ

Mac & PC

review diary by Uwe Steinmueller

 

Part 1: Intro

Part 2: Library

Part 3: Develop

Part 4: Other Features

Part 5: DOP Lightroom 1.0 FAQ (this page)

 

 
 

Topics

 
We hope this page will grow over time to a very useful Lightroom resource.
 

Lightroom 1.0: FAQ

Batch Processing

Question

How can I process RAW files in batch?

Answer

  • First tune the settings in Lightroom for all the files you want to process
  • Select the files you want to convert in batch
  • Use the "Export" function to process all these files in the background

  • You can convert to
    • JPEG
    • TIFF
    • PSD
    • DNG

Batch processing in Lightroom is extremely powerful in conjunction with Photoshop Droplets. All files can be postprocessed by Photoshop Droplets which allow very complex postprocessing during batch.

Lightroom even allows to save Export presets:


Deletion Workflow

Question

Please explain me how do I delete pictures in LR. I am still using RSP for inspecting and deleting because i don't understand how to delete them in LR. (from disc) RSP had a very nice system to do that, deleting in two steps. If you bring and import 500 photos, selecting and deleting is the most important first step, and in LR it seems difficult.

Answer

We agree he deletion workflow is very important. Fortunately it is as easy in LR as in RSP. Actually we described it in our Lightroom review (Library).

Here are essentially the needed steps:

  • While inspecting photos mark the deletion candidates as Rejected (just hit the key "X")
  • Filter to only view the photos that have been Rejected
  • Inspect carefully these deletion candidates to avoid mistakes
  • Use the menu entry Photo->Delete Rejected Photos.."
  • Now you have 3 options:
    • Remove: Only remove from the LR library and not on disk
    • Delete: Remove (see above) and also move the files to the system waste basket. Means delete the file from the original folder.
    • Cancel: do nothing

Lightroom, Bridge, Photoshop & LightZone

Question

"You've listed LightZone and Lightroom as two of your most-used tools. Do you use Lightroom for editing your images? Or do you depend on its organizational tools as well? I'm curious, because if I only use PhotoShop and LightZone for editing, why should I bother with Lightroom instead of Bridge (esp. the new beta of CS3)?"

Answer

A good RAW organizer needs to include a good RAW converter. Why this? Only if you have the many tools of today's RAW converters available you can make critical decisions about:

  • Rejected images
  • Keepers
  • Images to spend more work on

This includes many functions:

  • 100% rendered views
  • Comparing 2up
  • Stacking images (grouping)

So here is the final answer:

We do all our first steps now in Lightroom:

  • Import from card
  • Adding metadata
  • Initial inspection
  • Comparing images at 100%
  • Even preparing some images to be ready for printing

Most selective editing is performed in LightZone:

  • First rate B&W
  • Selective editing
  • Using the excellent Zonemapper to tune tonality

Some operations are reserved for Photoshop CS3:

  • Perspective corrections
  • Lens corrections
  • Some excellent Photoshop plugins we use
  • Printing

Bridge remains as our adhoc browser for images we do not store in Lightroom.

 


 

Read about the other parts of Lightroom

Part 1: Intro

Part 2: Library

Part 3: Develop

Part 4: Other Features

Part 5: DOP Lightroom 1.0 FAQ (this page)

 

 

 

 

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