Lightroom: Catalog Backup

It is important to not only have multiple copies of your digital photos but if you are using Lightroom to manage and edit your picture collection you should backup this database catalog as well. The catalog holds all of your edits and organization of your pictures. Don’t be caught with your catalog becoming corrupt and not having a backup to fall back on.

I take the few minutes every time I close a Lightroom session to backup my current updates. Having a corrupt catalog is pretty rare but it happens. This simple procedure will keep you from wanting to slit your wrists if corruption error shows its ugly face.

There is a button that you can hit called Repair Catalog if this occurs but it doesn’t always work. So, don’t take the chance and backup.

If you don’t have a backup, you’ve lost all your edits. All your organization. All your star ratings, pick flags, photo books you created, collections — everything — you are starting over from scratch with Lightroom. I don’t want that to happen to you, and the fix is easy — all you have to do is not totally ignore the dialog below that appears when you quit Lightroom.

NOTE: These backups will be saved into a folder named “Backups” and that folder will be in the same folder where your current Lightroom catalog lives on your computer.

This was a tip from Scott Kelby, lightroomkillertips.com that I thought was important enough to reiterate.

Great Lightroom Tip from Scott Kelby

I keep thinking about purchasing a memory card with a built in GPS chip to be able to automatically geotag my photos when taking them since my camera doesn’t have a built in GPS so the suggestion is made to pull out your phone that has built in GPS and quickly take a photo from the same location that you are shooting. Then you can come back at a later time and apply that map location to your other images. See this link for more information.

GoPro Karma drone is available again

When this first came out I was very interested in it because not only was it by the company that I trusted their camera systems for the ruggedness and high-quality imaging, but the pricing to the in the ballpark of what I was going to spend. The fact that it came in a nice protective travel case made it even more appealing. Especially if I decided to keep it available in the back of my vehicle for spur of the moment photo shoots.

However, the product has had some problems with the battery latch which caused GoPro to recall its newly released Karma drone. On Feb 1st it posted that it was again available for purchase with the fixed battery latch cover.

I tend to wait a long time to see how things settle in before jumping on them. So I will wait to see if the changes in this product work and if any new revisions to the Karma finally put me over the edge to fork over some money. It looks interesting though and I'm getting closer to opening up that wallet.

Update on Saturday, February 11, 2017 at 8:00AM by Bob Appleby

I liked the idea of this unit but I haven't flown one myself. Here is an article that tilts me even further from ever purchasing one of these units. http://www.diyphotography.net/2017-karma-reviews-coming-second-worst-drone-ive-ever-flown/

How do you backup your photos?

Almost everyone these days take pictures with some form of digital photographic device whether it is your phone, digital camera or your own personal Drone . Unlike the old days when you had your negatives and  prints to fall back on today a cyber attack or drive failure can wipe out your entire photo library.

Suzy Pratt wrote an article for Digital Photography School discussing the methods you might consider in protecting your photographs. Rule of thumb for backups, have at least three copies (the original, and two backups) with the backups on different storage media and at least on copy of premise. Falling this basic rule will help to prevent the heartache of losing everything from either a hardware failure or from a dreaded cyber attack.

I have my photos backed up locally on two drives in my computer, a USB drive a take offsite and most of photos go up into the cloud to SmugMug for safekeeping as well as making them available to family and friends. I’d also love to hear from you about how you protect your digital memories.

Amazon entering the online print business

There are several different printing services available online that you can use to print photos, photo books and placing your photos into other formats. If your member of the Amazon Prime, you already have unlimited storage space for all your digital photography images so obviously this is a natural progression of service that Amazon would like to be able to provide you. Especially since, that customers in the US are expected to spend $2 billion or more for online photo printing services this year reported by market research firm IBISWorld.

It appears that Amazon is using a company called S&D Print as the actual printing arm of the service. You go to sign up you'll be presented with the following screen. When you accept the service you are linking your Amazon pay account with the S&D Print account.While this service is just starting out, which is apparent by the limited number of options that you have to choose from, their photo printing prices seem to be in line but the book pricing was to be a little exorbitant.

I have used Shutterfly in the past it was always very happy with the results and they have a large number of options, not only for printing photographs and photobooks, but putting your favorite photos on many types of objects and formats.

Companies like Shutterfly have a big lead on Amazon in this category and it will take Amazon a lot of effort to catch up but Amazon has all the right tools in place to be able to eventually create a viable product that people want to use. However, given a choice between Shutterfly and Amazon Print, right now I am firmly implanted with using the former rather than the latter.

USB Tethering

It has been a long time since I have written anything about photography equipment which is funny since I still consider photography as one of my main hobbies. Today I ran into an article posted in the Verge describing a USB Tethering system to boost signal strength between your computer and your camera. You can add additional lengths of cable for a total of 65 feet. Other additional support products include a battery and power injector to increase the signal strength even more making a much more reliable connection especially at the longer cable lengths.

TetherTools is a great place to purchase or learn more about this product and the options they suggest. In fact they have a whole line of products to support your camera to computer tethering needs. You can purchase product individually but they have a great kit with:

• (1) Tether Table Aero Traveler
• (1) TetherPro Cable 15'
• (1) JerkStopper Tethering Kit with Camera Support & Clip-on for the Aero
• (1) Non-Slip ProPad for the Tether Table Aero Traveler
• (1) SecureStrap
• (1) Aero XDC External Drive Compartment
• (1) StrapMoore
• (1) Tether Tools Cable Organization Case (Standard)

All for just $379.00, not to bad. You will need to add your own tripods though.

Google I/O: Google Photos

Built on these three key concepts:

• Home for your Photos and Videos - a safe and private place to store all of your photos and videos that is avaialble on any device
• Help you organize and access this media - the concept is to make an app that helps you organize and access your media so that you spend more time making more memories not on organizing old ones.
• Make it easy to share this media - sharing should be easy and simple. Receiving this information should be easy to access and use it on the other end.

Google Photos is available now from your iOS, Android or Web enabled platform. It provides free unlimited photo and video storage of compressed images up to 16 GB for photos and videos at 1080p. A lot of time was spent showing the automatic organization capabilities based upon time, facial recognition, and geolocation.

One of the demos showed the ability to pull out a baseball photo array by just typing in the work baseball. They continued on to demonstrate how you can easily select the group of photos and share them simply by holding down on the first image and dragging to the last image to select, and create a share link that you can send off to a friend or family member that they can have access to those photos. The recipient of that shared link had total access to those images and can do whatever they wanted with them on their own device.

One of things to remember is that all of photos that were being accessed or online and came up instantly as though they were on the device that you are working with. Was very quick and made a compelling reason to consider Google Photos as a great place to store all your photos and videos.

I am anxious to see how well and if this service will work with Adobe's LightRoom and if this will be a viable service to use as a secondary source for storing all of your images.

Adobe Photoshop Touch slated for replacement

This is Adobe’s advanced photo editor for iPad and Android tablets. Touch will still continue to work as long as it’s downloaded and installed, but no more updates will be produced and it is no longer for sale.

New prototype apps that Adobe is showing appear to be able to provide editing functions approaching workstation speeds.Adobe has provided a video that also shows off options like selective object removal, color swapping, and image warping.

CNet reported that unlike the $10 Touch, upcoming software should be free, but demand a Creative Cloud subscription to sync files with Photoshop CC on the desktop, or the rest of the CC suite.

It is nice to see that programs is this area are progressing. I will be interested to see how well they work on older iPad equipment and Android devices.

New Shopping Cart

I have added a new website to the ones I am managing. This one has been a work in progress because I needed to create the product before I had something to put on it.

I have been an avid photographer for many years and I have finally gotten around to making some of my favorite pictures available to people for purchase in the form of note cards. I am very impressed with how well they turned out and I am able to make them available at a very reasonable $19.95 apiece. Take a look at what I have made available and if you have a favorite picture that you would like to turn into note cards I would be more than happy to put that together for you as well. There are 22 different sets being offered now and I am planning on adding another twenty or so soon. Take a look at www.applebyartstudios.com.

Use SmugMug’s tutorial library to get the most out of your subscription

If you have been reading my blogs for a while you know that I use SmugMug as my preferred method of sharing photographs with my family and friends. This is something that I have done for a number of years and have probably not taken advantage of all of the features and benefits that this service offers.

This morning I ran across a post from SmugMug listing a few of the free tutorials that they offer subscribers to learn how to take advantage of their services. If you haven’t gone through them then you will want to spend a little time doing so. Most of us take the shortest route to using products, hoping that our intuition and intelligence is enough to muddle our way though their use. So here is a simple and enjoyable way to make your experience better with this service. Make the most of it!

Here is a list of some of the tutorial subjects that are available:

How to Add a Contact Form (1:59)

How to Edit the Navigation Menu (2:09)

How to Add Content Blocks (2:08)

Advanced Photo Editing with PicMonkey (2:26)

Organizing for a Family Photo Website (3:57)

Organizing for a Pro Photog Website (3:59)

How to Set a Custom Right-Click Protection Message (1:21)

5 Settings to Protect Your Photos (3:11)

The World Premiere of SmugMug Films

New feature in announced from SmugMug called SmugMug Films. This is going to be available on YouTube and will have its own channel that you can subscribe to and is a film series that “will take you behind the lens with the world’s most exciting photographers.”

It is not meant to be an educational how to but I can’t imagine that you won’t walk away with some knowledge of how they did it and how you might learn how to do it.

SmugMug is hoping that we will be inspired to pick up our own camera and get out there and create some masterpieces of our own.

Watch Preview Now

SmugFolio for SmugMug now SmugMug for Android

The creator of SmugFolio has been hired by SmugMug and his original program is being renamed to SmugMug for Android. If you are already running SmugFolio for SmugMug your App will automatically be updated and become SmugMug’s official Android App!

"SmugFolio for SmugMug" will be renamed to "SmugMug for Android" and it'll have a new snazzy icon. The new app will be free to download. For those of you who own SmugFolio, you'll automatically receive the update via the Google Play market. It will be the same app you know and love with a few changes:

· You'll now be able to browse other SmugMug user accounts without needing to log into the app. This is a great way to give friends and family easy access to your public galleries on their phones and tablets.

· The app has been made more secure by switching to OAuth for the login. This change will require you to re-login once you have updated to the new app. After you login, your photos will still be available in the app as they were before. You will not need to download them again.

· To make the app more secure and to prepare for some exciting future enhancements, the updated app will now require Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) or above. Those using Android 2.x or earlier can still use SmugFolio, but you will not be updated to the new app. This is not an easy decision, but it is necessary to move the app forward.

SmugMug has a motto that "Your Photos Look Better Here", and I plan to keep that motto true on Android. I hope you've enjoyed using SmugFolio over the years, and I hope you enjoy the new app even more.

Dropbox Upgrade includes Photo Albums Now!

So if you have allowing Dropbox to upload your pictures from your devices to your storage area then you are probably accumulating a lot of pictures there now. If you want to find a group of images around a theme you can now associate them with an Album. This will help facilitate showing them off when you want family or friends to see just a specific group of images. It would appear that each image can only be associated with one album at a time. Which is too bad.

This is a good start but hopefully they will keep working on it to give us some more capabilities.

iPhoto: Do I need another Photo Edit Program?

Yesterday I had a client request come to my attention to be able to take client images that his business acquires and wanted a controlled method for showing those images to his clients. He had is image taking system on an XP machine and he had an iPad that he wanted to use to display the images side by side to his clients. He also wanted to be able to label them so that it would be to see which image was which. Sort of a Before and After shot.

It took me a little while going through the multitude of photo APPs that I have on my tablet until I found in a Google search that Apple’s own iPhoto App would do this for me. It allows me to display pictures not only at the same time, side by side, but I can also put together a Journal that allows me to display them with other information as well.

There are four (4) basic display tabs available to you. If you imported you images as albums (directory folders) they will grouped in their folders. You can also tag the pictures as either Flagged or Favorites and that will add them into Folders marked as Tagged and Favorites. If you edit a picture it will be moved from it’s original folder into an Edited Folder. I don’t think there is a limit to the number of folders that you can have so make as many as makes sense to you.

You pictures are also flagged as to whether you Synced them through iTunes or imported them from your camera card. There is a folder listed as Imported as well. The second viewing tab displays all of your photos. They are not separated at all so you will have to scroll through all of your pictures to find the one you want if this is the view you are in. If you have a lot of pictures this view could be cumbersome.

The third view tab is for events.In my case the events that occurred on my tablet were all imports. On all of the folders you can pick a single picture to represent the picture group.

The fourth tab represents Journals that you can create using your pictures and other tools for displaying your pictures in a picture book with background information. You have different gadgets you can add to the pages that help you to document your images. Your Journals can only be shared with iCloud, iTunes or send it to you iPad screen as a slide show.

All in All this is a pretty nice little program. At $5.99 it is a little pricey for an iPad app but it is probably worth it for simple slide shows, and editing.The photo editing is pretty simplistic but sometimes that is all you need.

Need Help with LR4? Try a tutorial…

I really liked George Jardine’s Lightroom 4 Video Workshop. I enjoy George’s approach to training you on more than just how to use LR4 but from the beginning, talks to you about what you should need to know about LR4’s file structure and what you should consider when storing your pictures and where you are going to structure you catalog/library. He goes into great depths describing this and I have restructured my picture file storage to mimic his suggestions. It has worked well for me when I have gone on vacation and taken my library with me to make it easier to update process new pictures.

This new series is available to view in both flash and HTML5 formats. The second was helpful to me because I like to watch these videos using my iPad and so far it is working very well. The complete series costs $24.95 for 16 videos and over 6 hours of online video education. He has a easy to listen voice and when you watch each section you will definitely come away with a deeper understanding of the new Lightroom 4 program.

Here are the video titles:

1   The Library Structure Overview   –  14:45
2   The Lightroom Catalog Overview   –  7:43
3   The Lightroom User Interface   –  21:32
4   The Pro Workflow Overview   –  37:02
5   The Lightroom Import Dialog   –  17:31
6   The Library Module – Part 1   –  27:51
7   The Library Module – Part 2   –  42:21
8   The Keywording Panels   –  19:31
9   The Metadata Panel   –  27:52
10  File Renaming   –  22:06
11   Editing Methods in Lightroom 4   –  34:19
12   The Lightroom Filter Bar   –  14:36
13   Collections & Virtual Copies   –   24:38  (Check out the free sample movie, here.)
14   The Export Dialog & Publish Services   –  35:46
15   The Lightroom to Photoshop Workflow   –  17:09 (NOTE! This tutorial movie will be updated shortly!)
16   Photo Library Backup Strategies   –  22:00

Take a look at his blog post for more information if you are interested in this product. I really like his presentation style and recommend adding this tutorial series to your collection if you are really series about learning LR4’s photo library, workflow and asset management functions. He has more detail on the develop modules based on LR3, hopefully he will update these soon as well.

PHOTOGRAPHER’S i Magazine

I just finished reading my first made for iPad magazine and was totally entranced by the interaction with media formats that made full use of all audio, video still images and slide shows. The magazine I chose is called Photographers i and besides showing off beautiful images it provided articles that drew you into the featured photographers world, talked about their techniques and projects and keyed on specific technical details that help you to improve your own photography as well.

This is a great example of the benefit of electronic texts over paper with the ability to use the best style of presentation (words, static pictures, slide shows, audio or video) to present the information in the article. If you can find a magazine on a subject that you enjoy, it is worth taking a look to see if they have taken advantage of the new media style. The limits of printed material can finally be surpassed in this new form and provide you with many hours of entertainment and an expanded learning experience.

It is available as a subscription on both iPad and Android devices. I absolutely recommend this magazine.

Posting at Photoshopsupport.com–Lightroom 4 Video Tutorials

Here are 5 free videos from the course Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4: New Features Workshop, taught by world renowned photographer and author Mikkel Aaland. Use coupon code LR20 for an instant 20% discount if you decide to purchase the full series. (You can download a free 30-day Photoshop Lightroom 4 trial version.)
Overview of New Features — New Models
Lightroom 4 has added two new modules, Book and Map, and in this video you'll get an overview of their features.
Using the Map Module — Working with Non-Geotagged Photos
Most cameras don't automatically add GPS data to an image, but that doesn't mean you can't take advantage of Lightroom's Map module. In this video you'll see how to manually add GPS data directly from a Google map.
New Develop Module Features — RGB Curves
Curves in Lightroom just got even more powerful by enabling you to control individual red, green, and blue channels. In this video you'll get an example of how these channels work.
Soft Proofing — Soft Proofing with a Custom Profile
In Lightroom 4 you have the option to soft proof an image using a custom profile, and this video will show you how.
Video Editing — Setting a Poster Frame
Want to select another static image to represent your video in the Library module? This video will show you how to select a new poster frame that does just that.
About The Course
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 includes some extremely powerful new features. In this workshop photographer and author Mikkel Aaland shows you what's new and how to put these new features to work.
You’ll learn about the new process version and how it improves the way images are processed in Lightroom, as well as changes to the Develop module’s Basic pane, which now offers much more intuitive controls.
You’ll also be introduced to the new modules in Lightroom 4, the Map and Book modules, which make it easy to sort your photos by location and create great photo books, respectively. Other new features covered here include soft proofing, upgraded video editing capabilities, and many more.

Adobe Photoshop Touch for the iPad Released

Adobe finally comes though for your iPad devices to provide a Photoshop app designed specifically for tablets. Combine images, apply professional effects, share results with friends and family through sites like Facebook, and more – all from the convenience of your iPad.

• Use popular Photoshop features designed for the tablet such as layers, selection tools, adjustments, and filters to create mind-blowing images.
• Use your iPad camera to fill an area on a layer with the unique camera fill feature.
• Select part of an image to extract by scribbling with the Scribble Selection tool. With Refine Edge, use your fingertip to capture even hard-to-select image elements, like hair, with ease.
• Search and acquire images with the integrated Google Image Search.
• Share images on Facebook and view comments right within the app.
• Browse an inspirational gallery for the styles and results you'd like to achieve. Then follow step-by-step tutorials to easily learn techniques the pros use for great-looking results.
• Use AirPrint for wireless printing of Photoshop Touch projects.
• Upload projects to Adobe Creative Cloud* and open layered files from Adobe Photoshop Touch in Photoshop CS5.
• Maximum image resolution: 1600 x 1600 pixels

This is Adobe’s first iteration of this app on the iPad and hopefully new enhancements will be coming quickly to allow for larger file sizes (images) and more features. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

Photoshop Touch is actually part of a family of six tablet apps. So along with Photoshop Touch, there's Collage, Debut, Ideas, Kuler and Proto. As Adobe describes it, Photoshop Touch will let users combine photos, edit photos, apply filters and other effects and poke with layers. Collage is where you drop images, drawings, text into a 'mood board', Debut shows off your pshop files, Ideas is a vector based tool for drawing, Kuler generates color themes and Proto is made for developers.

Lytro Camera allows you to take your shot and focus later…

The Lytro camera has new technology that allows you to take your photo without worrying about the focus of your shot. Called the Lytro Field Camera, this device is based on the ability to allow consumers to adjust the focus on their phtos after they have already taken the shot. It works like this: Rather than focusing on a single plane or object, the camera captures the entire light field of the scene, recording the color, luminosity, and vector direction of every ray of light.

Armed with this multidimensional data, the camera can use computational algorithms to calculate what the image would look like if it had been focused at different distances. The result is what Lytro calls “living pictures” that can be refocused on the fly, after the fact. (The best way to grasp the concept is to take a look at Lytro’s Living Picture Gallery and start clicking on the images in different spots to refocus them.)

Turning Light into Living Pictures

Lytro camera capabilities will include:

• Shoot now, focus later. People will no longer be disappointed by a picture that turns out focused on the wrong subject, such as the wall instead of a child’s smile. Lytro pictures can be flawlessly focused to one’s liking – days, weeks, even years after they’re taken.
• Unparalleled speed: Since the camera doesn’t focus before a photo is taken, people will no longer miss important moments due to the conventional delay of the lens autofocusing as you press the shutter button.
• Living pictures. Lytro creates interactive, living pictures that will engage and delight those who experience them online via social media networks, mobile phones, blogs, etc. Viewers can immerse themselves in a living picture to discover and focus in on new details by simply clicking on different parts of a picture. No software download is required.
• Low-light sensitivity. By using all of the available light in a scene, light field cameras can capture better pictures in remarkably low light environments without use of a flash.
• Immersive 3D. Using the full light field, Lytro cameras provide an immersive 3D picture that goes beyond the conventional stereo 3D by, for example, controlling the perspective view of a scene.

The initial press release from back in June, though buzz-worthy, was met with plenty of skepticism (including a bit of my own), but now that there’s a real product that’s accessible to consumers (though steeply priced), they’ve got my attention. First there’s the design: Rather than modeling the device on the expectations of a traditional camera (or any existing camera, for that matter), the designers at Lytro built the light field camera with simplicity and ease of use in mind. The camera uses a bright f/2.0, 8x optical zoom lens, and at just 1.61×1.61×4.41 inches in dimension and 8 ounces in weight, it looks more like a kaleidoscope or portable slide viewer than a camera. There are no mode dials to speak of — in fact, controls consist of just two buttons (power and shutter), a touch-activated zoom slider, plus the 1.46-inch touchscreen LCD viewfinder. Second, because the camera depends on computational processing to achieve focus at different points on the image, rather than a complex set of lenses, it doesn’t have the auto-focus mechanisms that slow down most digital cameras. This means no shutter lag (or, more accurately, auto-focus lag) to speak of and of course, less weight and complexity to the construction of the camera. Third, by capturing all available light in a scene with its f/2.0 lens, the Lytro camera inherently performs well in low light without a flash. Janice Chen – Digital Cameras & Camcorders

Lytro believes that this new technology will make conventional digital cameras obsolete. Only time will tell.

The first Lytro camera will be available for purchase online later this year. For a demonstration of living pictures, visit the Lytro Picture Gallery www.lytro.com/picture_gallery. To reserve a camera, visit Lytro.com.

For additional commentary on Lytro’s innovations, visit Ben Horowitz’s blog: http://bhorowitz.com/2011/06/21/lytro-and-the-magic-camera/

Note: It'll ship in two versions: the $399 8GB flavor can hold 350 pictures, and comes in graphite or blue, followed by a $499 16GB model, which sports an electric-red finish and stores up to 750 images. You can pre-order now but don’t expect deliver until early 2012.

Lightroom Video – Everything I Know About the Adjustment Brush

I have been following Matt Kloskowski for years and he is very well known in the Photoshop/Lightroom community for his books and videos on using these products. Here is a recently published video discussing some of the secrets he is exposing using Lightroom 3’s Adjustment Brush.

Here is the link to his video: Lightroom Video – Everything I Know About the Adjustment Brush