Lightroom Tips and Tricks
Labels: Lightroom
Labels: Lightroom
| Canon | EOS 40D |
| Fuji | FinePix IS-1 |
| Leaf | Aptus 17 |
| Leaf | Aptus 54s |
| Leaf | Aptus 75s |
| Olympus | EVOLT E-510 |
| Panasonic | DMC-FZ18 |
| Pentax | K100D Super |
| Phase One | P 20 + |
| Phase One | P 21 + |
| Phase One | P 25 + |
| Phase One | P 30 + |
| Phase One | P 45 + |
| Sony | Alpha 700 |
Labels: Lightroom, Paypal Shopping Cart, Web, Workflow
Labels: Controlled Vocabulary, IPTC, Keywording, Keywords, Lightroom, Workflow, XMP
So it really looks like it will works...hurrah!
Well, I have to give Kudos to the Lightroom engineers. I imported the PhotoMechanic version of the CVKC in less than 9 seconds (I used a stopwatch). This was on a new MacBook Pro, so it's a different machine than before. I did have to change the file from the ".utf8" extension to a text file. Just to be safe I opened the file in TextWrangler and resaved as with Mac line breaks, and unicode UTF-8
no BOM encoding first.
I imported a 4 gig card with about 2.29 gigs of images (from my recent trip to Italy) and it took about 5:46 minutes to import.
The new Lightroom is able to distinguish between regular keywords, (solid white triangle to left if there are subcategories), excluded category headers (triangle to left is a series of dots, ie not solid), and synonyms.It took virtually no time at all to actually assign the keywords, even within the 11,000 terms in the current CVKC. However, I'm either confusing LightRoom with another application, or they have changed how you locate the keywords within the tags. The only way I could find within the left side Keywords tag panel was to reveal the lower levels by clicking on the arrow to the left of the term.
I thought there used to be a search function at the top, but if so it's now gone.
There is a new tool (or at least I think it's new) called the "spraycan" which can be used to apply keywords. When you choose this tool, there is a pull down that allows you to select keywords (or labels, flags, ratings, rotations, or other forms of metadata... none of which I tested at this time). If you choose Keywords, then you CAN type in a word here and it seems to find it within the hierarchy.
I found this much easier than having to remember which region Rome is located within (it's Lazio BTW), or where another keyword is located within the hierarchy.
I'll make the converted file part of a new Lightroom download and get that up on the download page in the next day, after I write up instructions for how to install and apply keywords.
I've not had time to test any of the other improvements, and/or possible addition of DAM features, so that will have to wait for a more thorough review. However, the Adobe Lightroom engineers do seem to have listened and made some remarkable improvements in a very short time.
Labels: Controlled Vocabulary, IPTC, Keywording, Keywords, Lightroom, Workflow, XMP
Labels: Lightroom, Paypal Shopping Cart, Web
Labels: Lightroom, Paypal Shopping Cart, Web, Workflow
3. Edit the transformer.xslt file:
near the top you will find a section that looks like this:
<!-- paypal Settings -->
<xsl:variable name="PayPalAccount">You@there.com</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="ReturnScreen">www.test.com</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="CancelScreen">www.test.com</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="CurrencyCode">GBP</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="CurrencySymbol">£</xsl:variable>
<!-- Individual Sale Items -->
<xsl:variable name="Item1Description">10"x20" Print</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item1CodeNo">100</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item1Price">150</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item2Description">11"x22" Print</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item2CodeNo">101</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item2Price">155</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item3Description">10"x20" Print framed</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item3CodeNo">102</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item3Price">150</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item4Description">11"x22" Print framed</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item4CodeNo">103</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="Item4Price">155</xsl:variable>
You need to change the values between <> and <> on each line to reflect your settings.
The Settings:
| Setting | Current Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| PayPalAccount | You@there.com | Your paypal account ID |
| ReturnScreen | www.test.com | URL to return to after a succesful purchase |
| CancelScreen | www.test.com | URL to return to after the user has pressed cancel |
| CurrencySymbol | £ | Currency symbol in HTML (£ = &pound;, $ = $ € = €) |
| CurrencyCode | GBP | Currency code (GBP = pounds, USD = dollars, etc ) |
| Item1Description | 10"x20" Print | Description of first item type you sell |
| Item1CodeNo | 100 | A code number for this item if you have one |
| Item1Price | 150 | Price for item 1 |
| Item2Description | 11"x22" Print | Description of second item type you sell |
| Item2CodeNo | 101 | A code number for this item if you have one |
| Item2Price | 155 | Price for item 2 |
| Item3Description | 10"x20" Print framed | Description of third item type you sell |
| Item3CodeNo | 102 | A code number for this item if you have one |
| Item3Price | 150 | Price for item 3 |
| Item4Description | 11"x22" Print framed | Description of fourth item type you sell |
| Item4CodeNo | 103 | A code number for this item if you have one |
| Item4Price | 155 | Price for item 4 |
Having made all the changes, save the file.
As I said it's not perfect yet but hopefully it will give those of you who wish to dabble, something to dabble with.
Labels: Lightroom, Paypal Shopping Cart, Web, Workflow
1. There ain't much documentation out there.
For a flagship product like Lightroom Adobe seem to have been particularly tardy in providing the documentation as to how to create your own web galleries. The entire total of what I have found is this:Check you have a Web Galleries folder (by default you don't) so you will need to create it:
Download the demo template from here: lightroom_wpg_example.zip
Unzip the file into the web galleries folder you just created.
3. Create your own web Gallery
Copy the example folder in Web Galleries and give it a new name.Now open the galleryMaker.xml file and edit the values in the <galleryInfo> section to describe your template (unless you change these values Lightroom won’t detect your new template):
Original version <galleryInfo>
<amg ver="0.5" />
<thumbnail path="preview.jpg" />
<galleryName>Demo Template</galleryName>
<galleryDescription></galleryDescription>
<gallerVersion ver="1.0" />
<livePreview enabled="yes" />
<creator company="Adobe Systems, Inc." designer="Adobe Lightroom Engineering" />
<category>Web photo gallery</category>
<identifier>com.adobe.wpg.demo1t</identifier>
<ag:galleryType>HTML</ag:galleryType>
<ag:maximumGallerySize>20</ag:maximumGallerySize>
</galleryInfo>My Version
<galleryInfo>
<amg ver="0.5" />
<thumbnail path="preview.jpg" />
<galleryName>PayPal Template</galleryName>
<galleryDescription></galleryDescription>
<gallerVersion ver="1.0" />
<livePreview enabled="yes" />
<creator company="www.shepherdpics.com" />
<category>Web photo gallery</category>
<identifier>com.shepherdpics.wpg.paypal</identifier>
<ag:galleryType>HTML</ag:galleryType>
<ag:maximumGallerySize>20</ag:maximumGallerySize>
</galleryInfo>Start Lightroom and you should now see your new template in the available list.
Once again close Lightroom.Edit the GalleryMaker.xml file to Generate the output sizes you need.For my templates I wanted both thumbnails & large images so I changed the <sizes> section from this:
<sizes>
<size height="130" name="thumb" width="130" />
</sizes>
<sizes>
<size height="130" name="thumb" width="130" />
<size height="500" name="full" width="500" />
</sizes>Though you might want loads of options - like this:
<sizes>
<size name="thumb" width="160" height="120" />
<size name="small" width="640" height="480" />
<size name="medium" width="880" height="660" />
<size name="large" width="1024" height="768" />
<size name="video" width="400" height="300" fps="30">
</sizes>Open Lightroom and Export the web gallery to a new directory. If you open this directory you should see contents similar to this:

In the main directory are the index.html and individual html documents for each image. The thumbnail images have been created in the images/thumb directory and the larger images are in images/full.
The transformer.xslt file is an XSLT template that you use to transform the XML in source.xml into XHTML files. If you didn't understand that last sentence you are in for quite a rough ride and it might be worth looking through some tutorials on XSLT now.
Some things I have learnt about the transformer.xslt file are:Next blog I will be posting my first go at integrating Paypal and Lightroom Web-Galleries. This will include example download files for you to use.
I hope this posting has been of use, please feel free to add a comment if this has helped you or if you have discovered anymore information.
Once you have entered a few base keywords then pressing enter will cause a bit of a wait if you have a large keyword list. Actually unless you are running Lightroom on a Cray super-computer now would be a good time to put the kettle on.


Labels: Controlled Vocabulary, IPTC, Keywording, Keywords, Lightroom, Workflow, XMP





Labels: Controlled Vocabulary, IPTC, Keywording, Keywords, Lightroom, Workflow, XMP
As part of my current workflow I have Downloader Pro set up so that every time I download from a card it prompts me for keywords. I usually enter the location and the event only, all the shots downloaded from that card are then tagged with that information (also known as metadata). This makes image retrieval significantly easier, as generally I am looking for a person or a place. The advantage over a structured file system is that you can have multiple keywords whereas the file can only be in one place.
Files are actually stored by date and type in a Year/Month/Day/Type directory structure where type is either raw,tiff or webready.
My initial thoughts about Adobe Lightroom is that it may actually remove the need to store different versions of the same file due to its sophisticated print options & stacks, more playing may confirm this. The Keywording facilities of Lightroom seem reasonably comprehensive so far..which is nice.
The image download system on Lightroom is highly configurable and (almost) meets my needs and could possibly make Downloader Pro redundant.
I am not completely happy with the workflow Lightroom seems to want me to work with though. It seems to be based around a single library and I prefer my current setup of a "working" and an "archive" library. Though it is early days yet so maybe I will find a way to implement this structure within Lightroom.
