Tag Archives: editing

LRTimelapse

I have previously written about some time-lapse software that I use based on a recommendation from my friend Jo Hunter. I used this software for a while before the creator, Gunther Wegner, updated it to a new version and deactivated the version I had. I was a bit miffed by this but I was able to continue using the export settings from his application within Lightroom but with me having to manually manage the file cropping. All transition and smoothing capability was lost but I could still make a basic time-lapse.

Sadly, the latest versions of Lightroom have done away with that as well and now I couldn’t even render the video. Therefore, I decided to take a look at the latest version of his software. It is now on version 3 so I have skipped a version en route to this place. I had shot a few sequences recently and wanted to be able to manage them properly so decided to come back and have another go with his application.

There have been some improvements in tidying up the software so the workflow is a bit better. There is still a certain amount of effort as you switch back and forth with Lightroom. You have to put all of the images into a single folder while working on them. This means a modification to my storage strategy but it isn’t difficult to manage in Lightroom and, when you are done, you can revert the images to their original locations and still render the video output. It might be nicer if he gave you a more flexible approach to selecting files but this is not a hardship.

It has changed a little from what I am used to since now it starts out analyzing the files before you have created keyframes. Once this is done, you save the xmp files out and reload them in Lightroom. Define your keyframes and make any edits to them that you want and save xmp again. Back to LRTimelpase to load the changes and now it does its smoothing very quickly. Save xmp again and back to Lightroom and now there is an Export setting along with all of the other export options. No going to the Slideshow module any more.

The results are pretty good. The new export functionality actually generates a sequence of still images which it stores. You then head back into LRTimelapse where you have a series of options for rendering a video sequence from those stills. You can have it automatically delete the stills when it is done or keep them and render again using different output options. This is pretty flexible although it means you have to pay attention to what you have used so you don’t end up with a ton of stored intermediate images. The video output looks good. I am not using the product commercially so do not have the full commercial license. That will allow output in 4K formats. I only wanted 1080p HD format for my purposes. It is a little interesting that 4K is automatically assumed to be commercial use. With people able to record 4K on GoPros these days and 4K TVs showing up, I suspect this is going to be a more mainstream format before too long. Maybe it will be in the personal use license of future versions of LRTimelapse. We shall see.

Was it worth the upgrade? Yes. Not least because I wanted to have the capability back that I had lost when Lightroom changed its output but, even so, I have found the new version to be quite a bit more friendly to work with. I think it will encourage me to work on a few more projects.

Changing My Approach to Panoramas

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Ever since Adobe got their act together with the Photomerge function in Photoshop, it has been my default for creating panoramas. Previous versions were a little unreliable but they cracked it a few versions back and I have not changed my approach since. However, a recent bit of YouTube exploring has changed that again. Russell Brown had a series of videos on making panoramas from aerial shots and, while I was watching them because they were aerials, the stuff he came up with on stitching panos was actually more useful to me.

Instead of using Photomerge, he uses the same functionality of Photoshop but in individual steps. The technique involves opening all of the shots as layers in a single file (something you can do straight from Lightroom which maintains the re-import linkage that I like about Photomerge). Then you select all layers and use Edit>Auto Align Layers. This gives you the same options as Photomerge. Apparently, according to Russell, if you have a series of shots where you have rotated position but are looking horizontally, Spherical works best. If you are looking up or down, use Circular.

The result can be quite distorted if you use Circular but it will all get better soon. If you aren’t happy, you can undo the step which is a lot easier than starting from scratch which is what you would have to do in Photomerge. Once the alignment is done, Edit>Auto Blend Layers while take care of the rest of the stitching and blend everything together nicely. It defaults to a Panorama blending option.

With the blend done, flatten the layers and open Filters>Adaptive Wide Angle. This will default to a panorama setting and, if you have the distorted output from the Circular settings, now you will suddenly see everything come back to what it should be. You can tweak this filter to get verticals and horizontals aligned as you wish and then you end up with a good pano output. Some cropping and filling of blank areas with Content-Aware fill and the job is done. I shall be taking this approach for all my panos from now on. If you don’t use this approach already, you might want to give it a try.

Also, you can go to the original source on this and check out Russell’s videos on YouTube.

Changed Workflow

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I have changed my approach to editing my pictures quite a bit recently. This has served two purposes. The first is to make better use of my storage requirements and the second is to focus more quickly on the better images. Sadly, this has highlighted to me how I have actually missed out on some of my better work in days gone by. Not a happy lesson to learn but a valuable one.

I never used to delete images since storage was not a problem. I did occasionally find images that newer RAW processors could do something with. However, to be honest that was a rare occasion and, even then, I wasn’t likely to have an outlet for that image. However, by not getting rid of stuff, I really cluttered up what I had. Moreover, I would scan through and find images I liked the look of and mark them as favorites. When I would come back to them later, I would find they were a bit flawed – not sharp enough usually being the problem. What was worse was that I would search based on ratings and so wouldn’t bring up the next shot which actually might have been almost identical but sharper!

Consequently, I had a workflow that hid the good shots and encouraged me to pick the wrong examples by mistake. I have now changed all of this. Part of this is driven by trying to keep storage requirements under control. I have been shooting a lot of rotor-craft and getting good rotor blur requires low shutter speeds which often means shooting lots of frames to get a few sharp ones. When you are being buffeted by the down-wash, no amount of good technique is going to be enough! I do generally shoot more these days anyway so I have a lot to work through.

The first thing after downloading is to generate 100% previews of all images. I can then set up Lightroom with one side as the full image and the other has the 100% view. This way I can determine sharpness of the shot at the same time as seeing whether the overall image is okay, i.e. no poles across the shot or noses cut off! I have copied a process I saw demonstrated online where I assign a job descriptor in Lightroom and then set up smart collections for that job of Picks, Not Rejects and Rejects. I have also started separating out video clips to another smart collection. By reviewing the Not Rejects folder, anything rejected gets automatically removed so it thins out as I go.

This certainly brings the numbers down but not always as dramatically as I would like. I suppose I should be pleased that I am not shooting such a low percentage! Once I have done this, I can now trust that the shots that are left are all considered usable. Then I can go through again and weed out the obvious duplicates by picking the best of a given type. This will really help to thin things out. The other thing I will do (which I also tend to start as I get further through the first review) is culling those that are just not interesting. I have come to the realization, far too late, that only the best shots are ever going to see a use somewhere (and most of them won’t either). Therefore, a relatively uninteresting shot that is sharp and well composed might as well go in the trash unless it has something unique about it. Most don’t!

This has resulted in me thinning down the shoot far more rapidly. The review also includes marking as Picks those I particularly like. Hopefully, this will make it a lot simpler to get to the good stuff in due course. Now I am also gradually following the same process for the large selection of previous images. Maybe I won’t have to upgrade my hard drives for quite a while with all of this space I am freeing up and the reduced rate at which I am filling space.

One footnote to all of this. My NAS runs a backup of everything every night. When images get deleted, they will be gone from the backup the following night. However, before anything is deleted, it is all backed up to Blu Ray discs. That way, nothing is truly gone forever. However, it would require some serious effort to go back to those discs to find something that is deleted since they are gone from the Lightroom catalog. However, they are easy to backup so why not?