Letting Lightroom regain her dignity

I have not been able to find out exactly why lightrooms started forgetting things, particularly distressing was her forgetting collections. I knew she was a high maintenance mistress and I had been routinely backing up her catalogue but it would seem the problem occurred in bits and pieces, just a few collections here, then a collection or two at another time. This hasn’t stopped me using lightroom but I am careful to use just a smaller catalogue of recent photos I wish to post process at the moment and no memory losses so far.

There where almost 100 backups so going back through everything looked like a nightmare. Transferring collections is possible (you have to export them as a catalogue) but it does involve exporting the images in the collection and the last thing I wanted was having to alter existing the folders and files, or generate a lot of duplicates. I had also got very used to using AfterShot Pro to write sidecar files as a way to transfer metadata and ratings. I had also worked out that the collections (or albums) could also be written into the metadata, using something like the ~alb (for album) prefix in your metadata. This are then easy enough to find or filter in your photo manager and can be used to “re-find” the desired collection (album).

So I haven’t tried to rebuild a full catalogue of all my archived photos, what I have done is progressively worked through the backup (with the catalogue running from an external backpack location and then use lightroom to write a suitable ~alb collection name  tag to the photos in that collection into the metadata, creating a xmp sidecar file for the photos involved.  Ok that is taking time but I think storing the collections in a way that can be shared around the software packages I use (the one that can read the metadata in xmp files) is a worthwhile step. Reloading the photos into lightroom is now just on an ad-hoc basis. It will still take me a few months of occasional work to recover all my collection organization but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

For new photos I really like the OnOne Perfect Photo Browser. version 9.5 now supports Albums and it is a simple task to transfer these into lightroom collections. More importantly I only load those photos in the collection into lightroom. Naturally I also make sure I add the ~alb codes into my metadata before doing this transfer.

The days of trusting lightroom to look after my entire collect are over but I am still glad to let her beautiful develop tools enhance my work.

The Trial ...that slipped away

My eye issues interrupted my trial of OnOne's Photo Perfect Suite 9, the only photo I got to process in earnest was this one, to submit to PhotoFriday's theme last week. Somewhat ironically I ended up using just the tools/features I have come to like from version 8.5. Such is Life. I did notice the big improvement in the browser speed.

So Suite 9 is a serious contender to run in the browser mode before importing into lightroom, to add metadata, select and star the best and cull the duds. Unfortunately I didn't get to play with the smart photo edits (which supposedly lets you revisit past edits)

Original: imageo.withknown.com/2014/the-trial-that-slipped-away

A Bit of Nostalgia

My trial of Perfect Photo Suite 9 had not been progressing well, I was running up against an 1018 error which relates to Open/GL 2 support and the graphics card. My Toshiba laptop having two graphics cards an standard intel and the Higher performing Nvidia GeForce but alas I was only seeing the intel driver and the 1018 error of a warning about Open/GL support. A fair bit of research and asking the right question to OnOne support has got me through this serious "trial" of my patience. 

Anyway I noticed that amongst the presets in Suite 9 is a comprehensive set of slide film emulating filters. Slide film was great it bought a true luminescence to photos, particularly landscapes, but at the same time it was very demanding, even half a stop out and you could "blow the highlights" or a stop under exposed and you would have gloom. However in between was a magic place full of rich colour.

Original: imageo.withknown.com/2014/a-bit-of-nostalgia

Perfect Photo Suite 9 is out and a giveaway

I've become quiet a fan of Perfect Photo as an ad-in to Lightroom, it plays nicely with the Adobe Lightroom environment and it brings layers and masking, The new version 9 (there is a trial version available) is out now and promises a fast smooth browser experience (ie you don't have to wait for ages while lightroom does her thing) if you want to do a quick review, culling and edits, also the smart photo option which allows you to reuse and change previous edits seems real winners.

Speaking of winners Scott Davenport, an OnOne Instructor and fellow The Patch Community member on google+ is generously giving away 7 copies of the new Perfect Photo Suite 9, all you need to do is sign up to his great email newsletter and blog about his giveaway blog post. Its as easy as this.