Re-photo

By now I think most of the photographers I know – or at least those who can care more about image quality than speed – have become Lightroom users. There are of course alternatives, and in the past I’ve used several of them, including Capture One and the software from Nikon and Fuji for their own cameras, as well as other independent alternatives.

For sheer speed, important to many press photographers, I’m told that nothing beats Photo Mechanic, and if I were wanting to file images from location I’d probably install this on my Ultrabook.

There are minor differences between the results from different raw conversion software, but all of them do a very acceptable job, and the differences between their renderings seem unimportant except to pixel peepers.

Lightroom appeals to me because of its workflow and versatility, and it also helps that it comes together with Photoshop on a reasonably priced subscription. Like many others I was worried about the Adobe scheme when it was introduced, but I am now converted, especially since Adobe seems to be keeping its promises and also continuing to develop both products.

For me Lightroom does have one weak link, in that it is very slow for the initial editing of the large number of images I usually take in a day’s work. The review of images within the Import dialogue works for a small number of pictures, but slows to almost a complete halt when applied to sensible numbers.

My workaround for this is FastPictureViewer Pro, software that does exactly what it promises. It reads the images from my USB 3 card reader at least as fast as I can view them on screen; after an initial load time of perhaps 10 seconds there is no waiting as I go through the pictures, pressing K for those I want to keep which it copies immediately to my ‘input’ folder.

On the web page they suggest that using Lightroom on a batch of 1000 images with a fast computer takes around 1 hr 10 minutes, while doing the initial edit with FPV and then only importing the selected images cuts this to around 20 minutes. On my system I think the time-saving is perhaps a little greater.

But although many friends have Lightroom, I don’t think many of them have really appreciated or explored what it could really do for them.   It has grown into a fairly complex programme, though basically still much simpler and more intuitive than Photoshop.

I spent a long time going through the various excellent tutorials available on the Adobe site – and a long time searching for answers to various problems in the online resources there, which I feel are not well presented. You can of course buy books telling you how to use it, and I have one, but these become out of date almost as soon as published as a new and improved version appears. Mine had some useful tips for Lightroom 2, but five years or so on, Lightroom is now at version 5, with 6 surely not long away.  But there were some good tips, particularly about workflow which still apply.

Thanks to PetaPixel for alerting me to the video 10 Tips for Optimizing Your Photos with Lightroom: A Primer on Basic Techniques, a lengthy presentation by photography instructor Tim Grey.

And it is lengthy, and I would have preferred a much more business-like presentation which would have cut the length by at least an hour, but it does give a good introduction to the basics of working with an image in the Develop module at the heart of the software. As someone who started at the beginning with version 1 (then somewhat of a disappointment compared to the software Adobe bought out) there wasn’t a great deal that was new to me, and perhaps Gray’s approach may be better for those coming across the programme for the first time. But there were a few little things that I learnt. Though what seemed like ten minutes to tell us it was a good idea to check the ‘Remove chromatic aberration’ box seemed excessive. And is there any reason ever to leave that box unchecked?

Of course, we all work slightly differently as photographers, and there was some advice that wouldn’t work for me. Perhaps because I often have to work rapidly, unlike him I often have a need to adjust the exposure slider, and I have a more aggressive approach to luminance noise reduction than him. But he does make the effect of some of the many sliders in the develop module clear, and in particular things like the difference between ‘saturation‘ and ‘vibrance‘. Though I was sorry when talking about that luminance module he failed to mention at all the functions of the contrast and detail sliders.

Perhaps more significant was the lack of any discussion about sharpening (unless I went to sleep at some point?) Other people tell me that Fuji X-Trans files render better with a 100% detail setting in sharpening. I think a similar high detail setting in the luminance noise dialogue also helps.

If you watch the video, use the link supplied by PetaPixel to the B&H site for whom the video was made, and make it full screen so you can see fairly clearly the quite detailed settings on the right of the Lightroom screen.

I’ve never been to B&H, but have often referred to its on-line catalogue for information and did once buy a camera from them, a long time ago. It arrived quickly and well packed with all the documentation in order, and at some saving to me because of the dollar/pound rate at the time, and because US prices for the Konica Hexar were rather lower. In the UK it was overpriced by the importer and was very hard to find in the shops, and what was perhaps the truly iconic ‘street’ camera was a rare beast indeed here.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2015 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Photo Issues, Reviews etc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.