A Hogarty Lightroom Podcast Interview

What, no picture?  I know; you're all digital photographers and you like to see marvelous landscapes.  But podcasts are audio, not visual!  So I'm going to revert from audio to storytelling.

Tom Hogarty, Adobe Product Manager for Lightroom, Camera Raw, and DNG, gave an interesting interview in a recent podcast.  Three photography experts at PhotoNetCast.com discussed various aspects of Lightroom with Tom for over an hour.  In that hour, Hogarty expressed many viewpoints concerning Lightroom.  Among the questioner’s highlights:
Why did you guys design Lightroom? 
Lightroom represents the best parts of a digital photographer’s environment.  We added catalogs, we store previews, and we let you work on the catalog even when full images are not on that particular computer.
Are there advantages to DNG files?
DNG (Digital Negative) files have two advantages.  Near-term - lossless compression can make the file smaller.  You don't need sidecar files; metadata is saved in the DNG.  You can update the preview in the DNG to show processing changes.  You may also prevent proprietary formats from dying.
What's the purpose of the DNG Editor?
Many photographers see the cameras LCD image and like it.  Raw files can initially look flat.  The LCD image is JPEG.  So we developed camera calibration profiles to let you modify DNG images.  The LR 2.2 release this month contains the final release of these camera profiles.
In podcast E163 (120808), the NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) guys, Scott Kelby, Matt Kloskowski, and Dave Cross recently discussed noise reduction.  Essentially, they suggest external plug-ins are more powerful than noise reduction in Photoshop products.  BTW, NAPP provides a two week window for free video download of tips and tricks for Photoshop users.
Now, back to Hogarty; What are plans for better noise reduction in Lightroom?
While Tom won't speculate on future releases, he did indicate noise reduction  has been strongly requested and Adobe listens carefully.

While I list some highlights, your interests may vary.  I suggest you download and listen to the podcast; I'm sure that during the hour interview, you'll find many things which interest you.  If you right-click on the Audio MP3 download button, choosing Save Target lets you download an MP3 file which you can hear via iTunes at your leisure.

Rave – Quick Workflow and Support

I’ve begun reading Scott Rouse of TheLightroomLab regularly. Scott’s with Rock Mountain School of Photography, writes a great blog, and likes to create clear, visual tutorials directly related to easing Lightgroom workflows. Best of all, Scott will respond directly to email, offer suggestions, and add to your learning curve.
So, what’s this particular rave about?
As you see from this picture Scott created, there is a simple way to quickly flag and process digital images in Lightroom. I suggest you download this workflow, then study it. Scott shows you some really neat tricks.

But, beyond that, Troy Gaul (Adobe) also chimed in with additional comments about shortcuts which help you move around in Lightroom. Here’s what Troy said,
“One other keyboard shortcut worth knowing: in Lightroom 2, we changed the “tilde” key (in the top-left corner of US keyboards) to toggle the pick flag on or off.
The benefit is that this key is easier to reach than the P and U keys in the middle of the keyboard, and it can go both ways. When refining photos from a shoot, you can quickly use it to toggle the flag on to make your picks, and then go through the picks (with a filter) and toggle the flag back off for the ones that you decide you don’t want to keep, all using the same key.
To mark something as a Reject, you still have to use the X key (X, for what it’s worth, was selected because rejecting a photo is similar to “crossing it out”). On QWERTY keyboards it also falls near the left side of the keyboard.
Troy Gaul - Adobe engineer - Dec 9 - TheLightroomLab Comments”

Way to go, Scott! Thanks for both doing the heavy work and getting this extra tip from Troy. Troy, thanks for really getting involved!
Moving around in Lightroom with shortcuts is an important part of developing quick workflow…

Books on My Mind, Again...

Seems like there's always something I don't know!
I'm amidst the final edit for some Christmas books for my Grand Girls.  Oops, good thing I'm editing; forgot an entire page and photograph.  But that's just my travail at good writing.
This morning, I'm looking at Photoshop Insider by Scott Kelby.  Scott's recent vacation blog has created a lot of excited response.  So he decided to put up videos for Aperture, Lightroom 2, and CS4 and show photographers how to make books.  Sure enough, Scott came up with a whole new way to make a fine art book from Lightroom using Mpix.  Take a look!

You can get to a big version from Lightroom on YouTube (the one above is to show you what Scott did – not download).