Lately I have been getting a lot questions on the subject of integrating an external image editor, such as Adobe Photoshop CS3 (or Nikon Capture NX) into the Lightroom workflow. I usually use the following workflow. 1. Select an image...

Lightroom has made it easier than ever to pull detail from drab images. I had a series of images shot with an older digital camera that, until now, weren't worth the work required to enhance them. Lightroom changes all that.

Occassionally you will want to go through all your photos, group them together and place them where you can find them for a special purpose (such as content for a coffee table book, portfolio, or fine-art exhibit). Furthermore, once I've...

I received a GPS device last year for Christmas and I’ll admit I have become a bit overly geeky about tagging everything I can with location information - including my photos. Still, leveraging the built-in GPS support from my camera...

The histogram panel in Lightroom is a jewel that you should keep your eye on at all times while developing your photo (hence why Adobe made it possible to “dock” it in place while the other modules in the...

The latest batch of digital SLRs on the market are fitted for the most part with 14-bit sensors. There have been a few websites out there running tests on the difference between 14-bit and 12-bit capture. And while some have...

When I wrote last week's post I did not realize that there were so many different opinions, on which is the best way to prepare your files before Importing them into Lightroom and how strongly some people felt about their...

I am currently working in a country where color is often a large part of my intended composition and message. Often the dynamic and color ranges are so great;thanks to bright colors in the lifestyle and bright sunlight that they...

Ever since its arrival, my team and I have become big fans of Adobe’s Digital Negative (DNG) file format. Unlike proprietary formats (Nikon NEF, Canon CR2/CRW, etc.), we prefer a format that is openly documented, and supported by Adobe. We’ll...

Just about everyone agrees that some form of soft-proofing would be a good addition to Lightroom. But, how it's implemented can make all the difference in the world between useful and afterthought.

One of the common threads of the comments to my recent set of posts about the challenges of keeping a large library and backing it up—both on this blog and in person—was the question of why should one keep so...

I recently purchased the new Nikon D300 for an assignment in Patagonia covering an adventure race. I have read so many good things about the D300 that I figured it would soon supercede my Nikon D2x. And well, I was...

I am usually pretty good about organizing my images into logical folders and subfolders before importing them into Lightroom, but for the last couple of months I have been fighting a recurring flu and other related ailments and the logical...

After importing a batch of photos into Lightroom, I’ve recently—for better or for worse—formed the habit of not formatting the memory card until well after the photos are in my catalog and they’ve been backed up to an external...

I do all of my downloading and initial processing in Lightroom, but before I can do that, I have to be able to download the images from my camera’s memory cards. Over the weekend, I took a day off to...

As a workflow consultant, I get a backstage pass to analyze and dissect what our clients are doing to streamline and perfect their workflows. What amazes me time and time again is how small inefficiencies add up to make processing...

A few days ago, fellow Inside Lightroom blogger Michael Clark talked about his use of 1:1 Previews to speed up his Lightroom workflow. At the risk of sounding off with a "me too!" post, I fully agree. For the last...

As I mentioned in my last week's blog posting, I have just recently returned to my home base in Thailand from a trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia, the home of the Angkor Archaeological Park. The most famous temple in the...

If you have been reading my blog posts this past year then you have heard me say quite a few times that building 1:1 previews in Lightroom will help speed up the editing process drastically. I say that because it...

Lightroom is a great application, especially for a version 1.x release. But, it's interesting to see what you come up with when you think about new features you'd like to see.

James Duncan Davidson’s last post, Copyright and Metadata, expounded on Lightroom’s ability to painlessly embed the creator (& copyright) information in your photos (both within the master—or sidecar—files and exported copies). I just want to touch upon one other beneficial...

Just about a year ago I wrote a blog for Inside Lightroom that suggested considering using Light Craft's LightZone to further enhance the power of Lightroom with a non-destructive editing tool that could also do regional adjustments. You can pass...

In my previous post: Plugins to Piglets, we explored some unique ways to extend Lightroom’s plugin architecture to automate the online delivery and post-processing of any select number of images. This week we’re going to dig deeper into the flickr...

One of the essential uses of metadata for photographic images is to indicate who owns the image and how to get in touch with them. After all, if you publish your images on the web they're going to be distributed...

In every workshop I've taught since the dawn of digital, one of the things I have told my students is that to get the best quality images you have to know how you are going to process your images to...

Virtual files are a great way to experiment with different develop settings without taking up disk space or changing the original file.

If you are a regular reader of these blogs, you must be wondering what has happened to my weekly entries in the last month or so. I have actually had every intention of writing and publishing them, but a series...