Tag Archives: adobe

Lightroom, Video and Capture Times

Getting the new camera has resulted in discovering a new quirk in the way that files are handled. I have been capturing video on the camera and, when it is imported to Lightroom, the video is showing a different capture time to the stills around it. The offset is eight hours which is the difference between the US West Coast and UTC. I was wondering whether this was an issue with Lightroom so checked in with some forums on that topic. I got feedback about the way that files record capture time for files and the suggestion that it was down to the way Canon write the capture time in a format different from that in the standards.

I then starting communicating with Canon and they said there was nothing wrong with their format and that the software I was using, i.e. Lightroom, was the one at fault. It seems everyone considers this someone else’s fault. Not much help to me of course. In the meantime, I have to remember to go to the edit capture time function in Lightroom when I import the files if there is any video included. I usually remember but not always. If anyone has a good suggestion, please let me know.

Fisheye Correction in Lightroom

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I have a pretty well defined routine for importing and processing my images in Adobe Lightroom. I have presets for importing images that put them in the right folders, apply copyright information and apply development presets. I can then edit from there as I go. One of the settings I have set as a default is the application of the lens correction settings. This setting deals with any natural vignette in the lens as well as some distortion. Occasionally this can be tricky if you have something close to the edge of a wide lens and it gets slightly chopped by the correction.

I discovered a more extreme version of this while processing some shots from the Lick Observatory. I had taken my 8-15mm fisheye zoom with me as I thought there might be some use for it in the telescope buildings. It turned out to be a good thing to have. When I first had the lens, Adobe had not created a profile for the lens so the shots came in uncorrected with the fisheye look I expected. More recently, Adobe have created a profile for this lens. It was added in one of the updates and, since I don’t use the lens all of the time, I hadn’t noticed.

When I was going through the shots, I noticed the wide shots had some strange distortion at the edges. I was perplexed by this and also wondered where the circular fisheye shots were because I was sure I had taken some. Only then did I realize that these were those shots and the corrections were being applied. Here are some examples of the before and after with the correction to give you a idea of what the transformation is. A pretty dramatic change. I might make use of this sometimes but I shall also have to remember switching this off when shots with this lens are involved.

Lightroom Furor Missing the Point?

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Adobe recently updated Lightroom and introduced a new version of the import dialog. This move caused consternation in the online photo world and they are currently planning to revert back to the previous version. So much of the focus was on lost functionality in the new version. I have struggled to see how bad the losses were. Everything I needed before was in the revised dialog and from what I can see, the bits that went away were not exactly game changers. Of course, different people have different uses so it might matter to them.

What I am surprised about is that far less attention is being given to the fact the new release is horribly buggy. The new import dialog is a prime example. You have the import presets as before but if you change to a new preset, the location that is shown for where the files will be copied is the previous one. If you click to change it, you see that the correct folder for the new preset has been selected. It actually sends them where it is supposed to but it shows a different location. This is annoying but not impossible. The import dialog presets have been buggy for as long as I can recall with certain elements impossible to get rid of once selected.

Overall, the program is a lot less reliable. I have had develop screens lock up when it gets tired with a blue block replacing the image in question. If I leave it open long enough, it locks up completely. Sometimes, when I go to the Open Recent tab, the arrow appears but no recent catalogs are on display.

So, while everyone has been getting really messaged up about the import dialog, I am not that bothered. I think they should have been focusing on how Adobe released an update to Lightroom that seems to have a ton of problems with doing the basic stuff it is supposed to do. That seems far more worrying to me.

Blog Image Upload Using WP/LR Sync

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Providing a review on something you haven’t had a lot of use of doesn’t seem like a good plan. This is something I have been using for a while and, now I have had a bit of time with it, I thought I would share what it is like. Uploading images to the blog is obviously a big part of the preparation of posts since, at the end of the day, this is primarily a photographic blog. When I first started out, I would create the images I wanted and then upload them manually. That was time consuming but was soon superseded by an alternative.

I started using the LR/Blog plugin to Lightroom. This would create a version of the file including any formatting, borders and conversion to the right color space and would then upload it to the blog. This worked okay for a long time but it had one significant limitation. If I tried to upload too many shots at once, it would fail and then lock me out of the blog for a while. I started searching for an alternative when my efforts to solve this problem went nowhere fast.

If you Google this topic, almost everything brings you to LR/Blog. However, recently I came across WP/LR Sync. It is a Lightroom plug in that makes use of the Publish services in Lightroom. Rather than uploading the images one time, you add the files to a collection that is then published to your blog. If you change the image, you can have the online version amended in sync with the original. If you go to http://apps.meow.fr/wplr-sync/ you can read more about it.

I decided to give this a go. However, in the guidance, Jordy provides a piece of information for people like me who have problems uploading lots of images. Apparently, my hosting service treats too many upload attempts in a short time as an attack and you get locked out. This was what was happening before. WP/LR Sync has a field that allows a small time delay between images which, if set just long enough, will prevent you getting treated as an attack. Something like this would also cure my LR/Blog issues I guess but that ship has sailed.

I am very happy with the new plug in. It works well and allows the same edits of the image before uploading as before. A benefit is that, if you drag images to the sync collection and they were already in there, you don’t end up with duplication on the blog. The one you previously uploaded is there. You just might have to scroll down a bit to try and find it. If you want to have a go with this add on to Lightroom, visit http://apps.meow.fr/wplr-sync/ and check it out.

Haze Filter

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The Creative Cloud version of Lightroom drops new features in to the software when the updates are installed. This is a nice thing to have happen but, unless you are paying attention, you might not be aware of some of the new features. It took me a while after the last update to learn that a new filter had been added that was designed to take haze out of images. This is a great idea. I have experimented with trying to remove the effect of haze in shots before but, because the effect varies by distance, it can be quite tricky to get something that doesn’t look totally wrong.

I have not played with the filter a lot but I did decide to try it out on a shot I took at Crater Lake a few years back. Wildfires had resulted in smoke in the air which meant the usual clear view across the lake was obscured. I thought I would see how the filter worked out. Above are the before and after shots. It is an improvement but obviously isn’t going to rescue a totally messed up shot. I did try a more aggressive setting but that looked wrong itself so this was the one I went with. We shall see if this has other uses for me over time.

Clever Feature of Lightroom CC

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This one is something that I can attribute to the Kelby media juggernaut. I did not discover this myself but, if you are a user of Lightroom CC and use either the HDR or the panorama functions, this could be of interest. One of my issues with them was that they took a while to bring up a preview. Once you had got this, the processing would work in the background.

It turns out, if you don’t need to tweak the settings and are happy with what you used previously, you can hold Shift and Ctrl and press either M for panorama or H for HDR and it will launch right into processing the whole thing in the background. You can set multiple versions off if you wish and they will all get to work out of sight while you do something else. While my feelings on the outcome of the processing are not universally great and I covered this in some previous posts, it does a reasonable job most of the time and this is an even better feature that is well concealed!

Experiences with Lightroom CC

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I have discussed some of the new functions of Lightroom CC here and here. Aside from those changes, how have things been with the program overall? To be honest, I am a bit underwhelmed by the new version. There have been a few minor functionality upgrades but nothing huge. I do like the ability to add images to a collection when importing them since that has saved a step for me. However, the presets do not seem happy remembering which collection it is so that is rather buggy. Many of the bugs in the previous version also exist so, if they have really recoded a lot, they have still reused a lot of the code.

The new version also seems to have a fair few bugs of its own. The crop tool seems to have developed some new quirks that result in it deciding you have finished selecting the area a short while after you actually do so, if you have moved the cursor away, you get some very odd effects. I still can’t get it to stop trying to create a backup copy of my files when I import new images. Nothing new was added for video which I think is daft. They give you the capability to import video and even trim and edit clips. However, with Photoshop having the ability to be a basic video editor (and now my default), there is no way to connect videos in Lightroom with Photoshop in the same way as you do for stills. That baffles me.

The big benefit is in processing speed. My workflow involves rendering 100% views to speed me through the culling process. The new version certainly renders them a lot faster. I did have to upgrade my graphics cards though. My vintage cards did not have the necessary version of OpenGL to let Lightroom take advantage of them. It also has lens profiles for two of my lenses that were not in the previous version which is nice to have.

Overall, I am okay but a bit underwhelmed. Since I pay for the subscription, I am paying for it but it does have the feel of being free so I am less concerned even if I can understand the truth. What I am hoping for is a bit more frequency in fixes to deal with the bugs and maybe bring some extra capabilities.

HDR Within Lightroom

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The changes in Lightroom CC that included the Photomerge also included a change to the processing of HDR images. Again, the functionality has been brought within Lightroom rather than requiring the move out to Photoshop and the output file is again a DNG file. This means a smaller file than the 32 bit TIF that I was previously getting. A while back I wrote about some of the odd experiences I was having with moving these high bit depth files between Photoshop and Lightroom so a new workflow is of interest.

According to some of the publicity at the time of roll out, the new processing approach does not require as many images to work with. I have been shooting five images for HDR to date. They say that only a couple are necessary. I have tried carrying out the processing with five and with two and there doesn’t appear to be an obvious difference in the output. There is a benefit in the time taken to process the images though so this does appear to be a good improvement.

You can either let the output be automatically toned using the normal Lightroom processing functions or do it yourself. I let it have a go at first but have not liked the choices it made so have reverted to carrying out the toning myself. It is not a time consuming process so seems worthwhile to me. While I felt that Photomerge was not as capable as using Photoshop, in to case I think it is a better solution and this will be part of my workflow. Now to reset the camera to shoot fewer bracketed images!

Lightroom’s New Panorama Feature

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Lightroom CC comes with a number of new features. High on the list is the new panorama feature. Previously, if you wanted to stitch a panorama, you would select the shots in Lightroom, make sure you had them synced up for any exposure edits and white balance corrections and then send them to Photoshop. Photoshop had a Photomerge function that you could use or you could open them as layers in a document and carry the merge out yourself with a bit more control. This was the approach I used and I wrote about the technique here a while back.

The new Photomerge in Lightroom CC is designed to do without Photoshop. It takes your original files and then makes a new DNG file which is the stitched panorama but, as a RAW format, it still allows you to edit the image using the normal editing tools. I had to give this a go so, how well does it work?

The answer is a mixed one. In many cases, it works just fine. It stitches together the shot nicely and you can go on your way. While the initial preview process takes up a little time, the processing of the final stitch is done in the background so you can get on with something else – something I find very handy. However, it does have some shortcomings.

First, it doesn’t always find the way to stitch the shots. I have had a couple of times when it couldn’t work out the alignment. When I tried the same shots in Photoshop, they worked just fine. Not sure why these didn’t work but the algorithms must have some limitations. Next, it doesn’t always deal well with curvy edges. I have had a couple of stitches that I tried where the aircraft fuselage, although a smooth curve, ended up with some kinks at the area where the stitch took place. Photoshop never caused me trouble with these either. Big panos also seem to make it unhappy with some very odd alignments being chosen (after a long time processing) so they may have to stay in Photoshop for now.

The last problem is cropping. You have the option to have the whole stitch or to have it crop in automatically (or you could crop manually afterwards). Cropping pulls you in to the shot more aggressively to get rid of any blank pixels. You can fix this by shooting a lot wider to have more to work with. However, having been used to being able to fill odd little gaps using Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop, not being able to do so in Lightroom is a limitation. I can, of course, open the file in Photoshop and do just that. However, if I do so, I might as well use Photoshop to do the merge in the first place.

Overall, it is pretty good. I suspect there will be some tweaks behind the scenes as CC gets updated progressively so I might not even know that Adobe have fixed some of the issues. The Fill issue will be more obvious though. I shall probably keep using it unless I feel the Photoshop is merited and it is a good addition but I hope they take it further so I don’t have to consider Photoshop in the future. We shall see because the new update of Photoshop is out and includes Content Aware Fill of the gaps in panos which might be enough to sway me back.

SFO Night Time Lapse Take 2

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Last summer my friend Paul had been across and we had hatched a plan to shot some time lapse and night streak shots of SFO from a hill that overlooks the airport. The plan seemed like a good one but it was thwarted by two things. First, there was some cloud in the area which obscured some fo the view. Second, it doesn’t get dark until late in the summer and Paul was on UK time so was pretty worn out by the time we could do anything.

Instead, we concluded that a second attempt would be made when he was over during the winter. So it was that we found ourselves back up on the hill. We had come well prepared this time with sturdy tripods and good cable releases. The only thing I had forgotten was the chairs since you have a lot of time to hang around on a dark hillside taking shots like this. I took a long sequence of shots that would be edited into the time lapse. When I got home, some quick work in LRTimelapse and the video was together as you can see below. I also decided to see how well the sequence would blend together to get a streak image. I have never tried to work with quite so many layers in Photoshop before. It certainly struggled with it but it did work. Unfortunately, there must have been some very slight movement on the tripod because the ground lights did not exactly align which made for a blurry foreground when using the Lighten blend mode. To counter this, I duplicated one of the base layers and masked that back in to give the ground a clearer image. The blended version is the one at the top of the post.