My digital workflow always moves towards simplification whenever possible. Taking thousands of photos a year, and needing to move them from a flat, RAW state, to a processed version ready for a stock photography sale takes time. If there is one lesson universal to age, it is that time takes on a more premium value. At this stage in the capture and post production process of a digital file, great leaps and bounds have been made in both camera sensors and post production software.

The image below is a good candidate to illustrate my approach in shooting a landscape whose end state requires taking Lightroom experience into the field. Any experienced landscape photographer knows that “sky control” is a fundamental factor for balancing tonality in an image. In the days of film, we all used split graduated neutral density filters, and applied the necessary style to the end of the lens given the demands of the scene. While these are still of value today, I use them quite infrequently. This is so because the quality of low ISO digital files and the local adjustments possible in Lightroom make the post production process fairly simple, and rather dramatic.

In this scene, I exposed for the sky as the dramatic clouds whirled over the McKinley river bar in Denali park. The colorful tundra in the foreground, is rendered nearly black. However, with a split grad filter in Lightroom applied (approximately 2.5 stops), the foreground comes to life. This degree of exposure change does introduce some noise in the shadows, but with noise reduction and a slight grain value applied, it resolves nicely.

One could have applied that 2 stop split grad in the field, but there is not always time, and conditions are not always conducive to doing so. When dynamic clouds are involved in a landscape scene, my experience tells me to shoot and shoot fast because the clouds change quickly and the once pleasing light play on the land can vanish in no time.

Original RAW capture, with the exposure made for the highlights in the clouds, rendering the foreground nearly black.

The same scene with approximately 2.5 stops of exposure correction to the foreground with a split grad in LR. Canon 5D Mark II, 24-105mm f/4L IS, (24mm), 1/125 sec @ f/11, ISO 100.

Male King Eider duck

Male king eider duck. Canon 1D Mark IV, 500mm f/4L IS w/2x, 1/320 sec @ f/8, ISO 200.

Earlier in the week I posted a photo of a male king eider duck that I took at midnight in Alaska ‘s arctic, under cloudy skies. In contrast, I wanted to share a photo of the same species, but under completely different lighting conditions.  I took this picture at 12 noon, about 12 hours later than the other frame (and not much sleep in between), and while I do not consider that an optimum time for shooting due to hot light and heavy contrast, this worked out o.k. Photographing a subject with white areas in mid day sunlight can be tricky, due to the tendency to blow out the bright highlights. My general approach to a subject in these conditions is to shoot in manual mode, find an exposure that does not overexpose the whites, use as low of an ISO as possible and then be super careful on the focus. The low ISO helps when it comes time to boost the shadows in Lightroom, which are fairly underexposed due to highlight preservation.

I’ve included a screen shot below that shows the initial capture, and the red highlight reveals a tiny bit of blown out area which was recoverable in the RAW post processing.

Initial screen capture exposure before corrections. The red spot reve

It might appear like I cranked the saturation in post production, but I really did not. Below is the final processing. I boosted the individual channels of blue and aqua saturation a little bit, but the brightness and fill light brought the color to life in the bird’s face. I also added a brightness brush to the bird’s face to bring in the eye a little bit.

Final adjustments in Lightroom

It is also worth noting that I took this shot with Canon’s new 2x converter on the 500mm, on a 1D Mark IV that equals 1,300mm! It is amazingly sharp, and this tight compression let me make the simplicity of composition and use of positive and negative space that I think makes the image pleasing. It also provides a creamy, blurry background, with a slight pattern.

In addition, the bird raised its neck slightly for a few exposures, which make for a regal posture, as opposed to a more squatty, compressed look. I’ve got a few king eider photos posted on my website, but will have more added soon.

FONT SIZE

Thanks to Jeffrey’s Lightroom Configuration Manager, I was able to tweak/customize the size of the fonts along with the size of the metadata panel width. The online configure panel lets you designate the preferred font size for each specific meta data area and then it generates at .txt file that your put in the appropriately directory as described in the directions. (One note about that, if you are using Windows and you are supposed to put the file in the EN folder (for English), but can’t find it in the directory, just make a folder titled EN and then drop in the file).

SPELLCHECKING

I don’t know about you but I end up with many spelling errors in my Headlines, Titles, and Caption fields, and I use a bit of a work around at this point to correct that. (I know MAC has an OS based spellchecker but Windows does not at this time offer that–Come on Lightroom 4, bring us spell checking!).

What I do is export a text file of the Caption and Headline information from Media Expressions, a hideously bad program no longer supported by Microsoft but it does offer text exports in a pretty good fashion. (this is the only thing I do with that program now). Then I open that file in Word and run spell check on it. When I come across a misspelled word, I search for that word in the LR metadata text search field, and make the corrections in the necessary file(s). You can export a .txt file from Lightroom using a plugin from Photographer’s Toolbox, but it also requires the export of the image itself, and that can take a long time if you are dealing with many files. For now, my method is acceptable, although a little cumbersome. At least the images that will appear on my new website will be free of many, but perhaps not all, embarrassing spelling errors!

If anyone uses another method for this, please share.

Through the process of converting from film to digital, there was a slow development of programs that handled the processing of RAW files. As software developed, the potential for extracting the maximum quality from a RAW file became more easily, and more quickly achieved. I remember dragging the temperature slider in the early version of RAW Canon’s processing program and then waiting for the little spinning icon to resolve a new look. Glad those days are gone.

Today, the process, although not simple, is amazing and relatively easy to use. What has developed along side the photographer’s time in the field is the corresponding understanding of what any given scene can look like with the post production process applied. This is important, since it allows the photographer to really push the boundaries, but still maintain good image quality.

This is true across the board, but certainly evident when photographing the aurora borealis. I’ve frequently received the question about how to process RAW files taken of the aurora, so I’d like to briefly address that here. As a precursor to that however, I’d recommend reading an article I wrote on photographing the northern lights with a digital camera. I moved it from my website to this blog for easier interaction with the readers. The first step is properly setting up your camera with a variety of settings, which I have addressed in that article. The second step is taking that RAW exposure into Lightroom for post production processing.

I shoot in auto white balance mode, not that it matters that much, since this is generally tweaked a little anyway, but it is a good starting point.

Below is an image I took last week, which is pretty good right out of the camera, although a bit warm overall, and kind of flat.

I usually begin from top to bottom in the LR development panel:

• Color Temp: in this case I cooled it slightly from 5450 to 5268
• Tint: This is one of the few times in nature photography that I use the Tint slider. Since green and magenta are two of the most common colors in the aurora displays, you can experiment by a combined use of tint/temperature to achieve the proper look. In this case, I increased tint from 74 to 80.
• Brightness: This affects the midtones and I decreased it from 50 to 20
• Contrast: This will give some punch into the image and I moved it from 25 to 80
• Clarity: A slight amount of 11 adds a little edge definition. Use it gently.
• Vibrance: I prefer this over saturation, almost always with aurora, and a little bit. In this case +9
• Lens Corrections: If you have the LR3, you can take advantage of the Lens Corrections and apply the proper profile correction for your lens which will deal with chromatic aberration and vignetting automatically. However, I find that the auto vignette often needs a little reduction, especially with aurora as the images appear to have over-brightened corners. In some cases, the dark corners can give more focus on the visual shape of the aurora. It just depends on the subject and content of the image. In this case, I reduced vignetting to 93.
• Detail and Noise Reduction: This is a big one, since aurora images are usually taken at high ISO. This frame, taken at 800 ISO, has some noise and grain after all of the above tweaks, especially in the corner areas. There are a number of noise reduction programs out there, but I prefer to keep my images in LR, and work from the digital file so I use LR’s built in Noise Reduction. This involves two settings, for the two respective types of noise: Luminance and Chromatic (or color). In this case I moved the default 50 color to 68 and the Luminance from 0 to 44. You can see the difference below. The application of these values will vary considerably from image to image, so don’t use this as a standard. If the image looks too mushy and smooth, you can try adding in a little grain which is found in the Effects tab.

No color or luminance noise reduction applied

After luminance and color noise reduction

These is more to say on the subject, but that is a little introduction to using LR to process a RAW northern lights photo.

Original capture in RAW before LR adjustments. Canon 1Ds Mark III, 24mm f/1.4L II, 5 sec @ f/1.4, ISO 800.

After processing in LR as noted in the above listed adjustments

In the previous post I briefly discussed the general workspace and method I use to edit a folder of images in Lightroom. I began with 3,700 pictures from a shoot in Denali park, and after my first round of edits, followed by a second pass, I narrowed it down to 368 keepers. That’s about 10%, but this final number will vary greatly in relation to the type of subjects photographed. Wildlife and motion imagery often generates more frames, compared to landscape work. Additionally, what is chosen as a keeper will be based on the destination purpose, i.e., prints, stock, wedding, etc.

So what to do next with these 368 photos? Not to sound too much like a broken record, but one really needs to think this process through to the end product, so the necessary amount of work is done appropriately to the RAW file. What is not done can be as important as what is done, since a lot of time can be spent working on images.

If at all possible, I greatly avoid the need to generate a tiff. First of all, this is possible because of LR’s excellent development processes, and secondly, the algorithms and processing options for a RAW file are continually being updated. To employ them at a later time, one needs to then start over with the RAW file if a tiff has been made. All of that to say that you should do all you can in LR before making the final judgment on whether or not to make a tiff. And knowing LR can in the end save you time.

Since my website sales portal will be offering instant purchase, the pictures must be clean and well processed to meet professional standards for fine art prints and stock imagery. And, this needs to be done ahead of time now, and not just at the point of sale. So the following represents my successive workflow.

Set up your view options in both Grid and Loupe View

This probably belongs in the previous post, but if you have not done it yet, now is a good time: Click “Ctrl J” to open the view options dialog box. You have two environments in which to control what sort of badges and information is displayed on the image. I recommend making the compact cells and expanded cells to show different information on the thumbnails and you can toggle between these views by hitting the “J” key when in grid mode. The same can be done for the two “info” options in loupe view. You can toggle between them by hitting the “I” key. I like to set up my loupe info to include exposure/ISO/lens settings. But you can play around to see what best suits your inquiring mind.

Set view options by clicking "Ctrl J"

Spot Removal: “Q” shortcut key

Sorry to start with this annoying task. If you are not preparing files for print or press reproduction, skip this one!

This is done as a first pass on the entire folder. It is done first because it seems that using the spot removal tool in LR can be somewhat slowed down if there is an abundance of other brush and filter applications applied first. This is a hideously tedious job and unfortunately, the synchronization of spot removal from one image to another is seldom effective due to variations in the sky such as clouds, etc. Sometimes it works, but not often in my experience. Removing spots will encourage you to keep your sensor clean. If you own a Canon 5D Mark II, you might consider this dust shield option.

A time saving tip when using the spot removal tool: Size the brush properly by using the wheel on your mouse, (I almost always use the “heal” option) then click on the spot and drag the brush to a proper location in one motion. If you just click on the spot and release, LR will automatically select an adjacent area to sample from. But, I’ve found its not that smart in the choice process.

If you’re end goal is to make a web-presentable image only, I would not employ spot removal unless there are distracting and noticeable spots on a photo.

GLOBAL CHANGES

Step #1: Upgrade to the New LR3 Process

(This only needs to be done on older images imported with LR Version 2) You will see a little exclamation point in the bottom right when you go the development tab on a photo. Click that to upgrade, and select upgrade all images.

Step #2: Apply “Lens Corrections” to the entire folder.

(make sure your LR version is up to date with the latest lens profiles. While the lens profile list is not comprehensive, it is continually being updated)

This will take care of vignetting, chromatic aberration, and optical distortion. Select an image, go to develop mode, click the Enable Profile Corrections box. Then with that image selected in the grid mode, select the rest of the images and Synchronize settings. When the dialogue box comes up, click the check none button, and then only check the box for syncing the Lens Corrections. Then click Synchronize and you are done.

Check only the "Lens Corrections" box

You will learn if any of your lenses require any additional vignette control subsequent to the auto feature. If this is necessary, you can search for all images taken with that lens via the meta data search option in the “Library filter”, and select/apply that corrective setting to one image and then syncing it to all the others. You can activate this filter by going to View/Show Filter Bar, if it is not already visible. Then select Metadata, then in the Lens column, pick the proper lens (make sure all images are selected before filtering). For example, I find that the Canon 24-105 lens profile needs a slight decrease in the amount of vignetting applied by the profile, so I pull it down in the Vignetting slider below the Make/Model/Profile.

Step #3: Apply Noise reduction as necessary per ISO

If you know that there was a series of images shot at a high ISO that may be candidates for a greater degree of noise reduction, you can select these by using the Library filter in the same fashion as mentioned above. Click Metadata, then mouse over one of the columns and on the right side you will see a little list icon. Click on that and select add column. Once the column is added click on the word “None” and a drop down menu will appear allowing you to select a number of fields. Select ISO and you will then be able to select all images taken per specific ISO. Select those images and apply your “noise reduction” as necessary. I often apply a little more NR to photos that I shoot at 800 or 1000 ISO, and on images that will receive a large amount of shadow recovery (or fill). In the example below, I shot 51 images at 800 ISO.

Use the Library Filter to create a custom column for specific metadata

Following these global settings that can be batch applied, it is time to go into each image individually and begin the process of what I call grading, or processing but I do not call it editing. Editing in my terminology refers to the decision to keep or delete an image. There are a number of presets that can be purchased which include variations of customized settings in the develop module. Some people find these useful, but I have chosen to work through the various grading attributes in the develop module individually as it best suits my preference.

Based on my last post and some interest in the process of applying split grads in LR3, I decided to show a simple illustration of that process with this landscape photo that I took in Polychrome Pass, late one night in August.

A video might be better to explain all this, but there is some advantage to seeing all the pictures as well.

To exposures about two stops apart. One exposed for the foreground, one exposed for the sky

The above illustration shows two different exposures of the same scene. They are approximately two stops apart. One is exposed for the foreground and one for the sky. Both are a little extreme, so I used an exposure in the middle, exposed to the right for shadow potential maximized, see below.

Exposed to the right just with a slight highlight warning in the sky.

I chose to use this image, with just a slight highlight blink which is recoverable through exposure and recover sliders in LR3. The anticipated post production application is two split grads, one for the sky and one for the foreground. See this development below.

Slight exposure correction and application of split grad for sky

To start with I made a slight decrease in overall exposure and applied a split grad filter with the brightness reduced to about -50

Application of split grad for the foreground

I then added another split grad in reverse proportion for the foreground (note the little dots that show the angle of the split grad. The black dot means that grad is active and the space between the two lines is the region of the gradation. The longer the space, the softer the gradation.)

Final tweaks of contrast, vibrance, clarity, etc., along with a few dust stamps.

After that, I applied a few other changes: contrast +8, vibrance +10, clarity +15, along with some overall recovery, fill and exposure/brightness tweak. Then the camera lens profile correction was added along with a few dust spots stamped out. And there you have the finished product.

Polychrome pass, Denali National Park, Alaska. Canon 5D Mark III, 16-35mm f/2.8L, 0.4 sec @ f/16, ISO 100

Final extra tweaked version

And if you really want to art out the scene, you could go a few steps further. This is all a matter of preference and I prefer to stay more true to the scene, but by adding two more split grads in variation to the sky, warming the color temperature a bit, and adding a little more vibrance and saturation to the warm colors, you end up with this.

Sky control is fundamental to landscape photography. The term refers to ways in which a photographer manages the disparity in exposure values between the sky (which is often bright) and the foreground (which is often dark). The “balancing” is necessary because film can’t record the full range of tonal value (dynamic range) that the human eye is able to distinguish.  Filters called split-graduated neutral density filters, are used to help balance these differences. I used them frequently when I shot film, but in shooting digital, I’ve found they are often not needed. If you use these filters I’m not saying to get rid of them completely, since there are times when they can still be used, but I’d like to show a few examples of when I would have previously used them, but chose not too, and ended up with a very pleasing looking image without them.

Since the edge of a split grad ND filter is straight, they work best when an edge in your scene is equally straight.  I shoot mostly in Alaska and with all the mountain and glacier scenery most of my compositions lacked that necessary feature. I found it often ineffective using  the split grad ND filter.

Today, getting by without one is largely due to the excellent noise-free low ISO of digital camera sensors, and the option to apply a digital split grad filter in a RAW processing software like Lightroom. I’ll use 3 examples from my recent trip to South America, since it is a current subject. Two of the examples below are reasonable candidates for the old physical split grad ND filter, since the demarcation line in exposure difference is pretty straight. The last one however, of Machu Picchu, would present some problems.

South Plaza Island sunset, Galapagos Islands. Canon 5D Mark II, 17-40mm f/4L (17mm) 1/60 sec @ f/9, ISO 200. Using and ISO of 100 would have been best but 200 held up pretty well. Why didn't I use ISO 100? Well, I was in a rush due to a number of factors, and I forgot.

I prefer to shoot landscapes with the camera in manual mode so I can carefully tweak the exposure to a slightly overexposed state, yet recoverable within the RAW processing software. I do this in order to maximize detail in the shadowed areas. It is ideal to shoot at a low ISO, and with my camera’s that is usually ISO 100. In Lightroom, if you click on the little white triangles at the top corners of the histogram in develop mode, it activates the highlight and shadow warnings. The red color represents highlights that need to be recovered (they would be blinking on the back of your camera LCD, and are depicted in the histogram as touching the right hand wall. The blue represents shadows that are black and lacking detail, and are touching the left hand wall of the histogram. You will soon learn to ignore your camera LCD monitor and pay attention to your histogram. And you will also learn what can be restored through basic exposure adjustments.

It is important to remember to view your image at 100% often, and check your edges, especially when using the recovery and fill light sliders.

This screen capture represents slight tweaks that let you control the highlights and shadows of your file. You can see with a few minor adjustments, the highlights and shadows are appropriately recovered. Nothing is touching the wall in the histogram now.

Finished file which shows all the develop attributes applied.

After that, the application of digital split graduated filters within Lightroom, in conjunction with some specific burning and dodging using the brush tool,  contrast, clarity and vibrance, the image comes to life. Note that I did not use the saturation slider.

Espanola Island, Galapagos Islands just before sunset. Canon 5D Mark II, 24-105mm f/4L, (24mm), 1/8 sec @ f/16, ISO 200. Maybe some day I'll get my horizons straight! Our group was moving on and I had to grab this shot pretty quickly.

Because the sky is slightly overexposed in this image it looks washed out and featureless. Again, you have to ignore your camera LCD monitor and trust that you can recover the detail in post production. Reducing the brightness in the sky will bring back the color and clouds.

Split graduated ND filter applied to both the sky and the foreground.

This screen captures represents all the adjustments made to balance the image. I used a split grad in the sky to reduce brightness, and a reversed split grad on the foreground to increase brightness.

100% crop of the image to show the shadow and highlight integrity even after significant adjustment.

At the time of the image capture, I prefer to push the exposure as far to the “bright” side as possible, as this gives the greatest ability to recover the shadow areas without introducing noise or posterization. It’s a style of shooting called “expose right”, which proves useful in situations like this. To show how well both the shadows and highlights held up with the adjustments applied to this image,  I’ve included this 100% crop of the center of the frame which shows smoothness in the shadows, even after significant fill light adjustment.

Machu Picchu, Peru, Canon 5D Mark II, 24-105mm (24mm), 1/80 sec @ f/10, ISO 100. I took care in this scene to not overexpose the sky since I wanted all the detail in the clouds, which were rapidly moving and dissipating.

In this scene of Machu Picchu, the center mountain precludes the easy use of a split grad filter, even in Lightroom, so I used the brush tool which enabled me to create the filter in the shape that corresponds with the landscape.

Highlights and shadows have been adjusted.

A few basic adjustments correct the exposure and balance the brights and darks of the histogram. In images which require a fair amount of  post production exposure adjustment, it is all the more important to begin with sharp lenses, and have your depth of field appropriately set. Blurry edges, either due to poor lens quality, slightly out of focus, or chromatic aberration, will enhance any edge oddities when stepping hard on the Fill light, or other adjustments in Lightroom.

The final image reflects both Split grad ND and localized brush filters, in conjunction with the other develop attributes in Lightroom. I preferred a little vibrance over saturation in this scene.

Once the overall exposure is balanced, then its time for tweaking contrast, clarity, and vibrance, etc., to meet your desired result. There is usually some back and forth tweaking with overall exposure and brightness, once localized brushes or split grad filters are applied.

The degree of exposure balance achieved within just one photo is amazing. Of course, you can always blend two or more different images, but that gets more complicated when there are moving objects in your frame, and the workflow is a bit different, since a .psd or .tif file will need to be generated and worked on in Photoshop. I like the clean and simple method of one file, whenever possible. When absolutely necessary there is the option to blend images or enter the world of HDR.

At this point I use RAW files almost exclusively as master files, the exceptions are for blending multiple images or stitching panoramas. I use a two stage process:

1. A general processing effort aimed at making the file look excellent on my website–at this stage it is not necessary to stamp out every piece of dust, correct chromatic aberration, etc.
2. “Perfecting” the file happens when the image sells as a stock photo or art print. This lets me capitalize on the newest and latest RAW file processing techniques and algorithms available at the time the image leaves my office. Read more about my digital workflow here.

I use Photoshop infrequently these days, and often for correcting lens distortion–something not fixable in the current version of Lightroom. I shoot with zoom lenses often because I like the flexibility they afford in composition. They are often notorious for various types of lens distortion and chromatic aberation.  The ability to fix this on a RAW file has been on my wish list for a while, and I’m excited to learn that Lightroom 3 will offer this very useful feature. I’ll be able to correct for things like pin cushion, barrel distortion, and other optical nuisance within the RAW working environment! . Watch Tom Hogarty, Adobe Systems Product Manager, in this short demo of the upcoming Lens Correction feature that will be part of Lightroom 3 and Camera Raw 6.

These new lens correction tools, in conjunction with the existing ability to maximize dynamic range from one single RAW file in Lightroom, will make it an even more powerful tool in effective, creative and efficient RAW file management. The latter three reasons are why I think every digital photographer should use it, or it’s equivalent in some other platform. Next post I’ll discuss a technique I use to maximize the dynamic range of a single image, avoiding the need for an in-the-field, split graduated neutral density filter.

Some hate sitting at a computer working on images, which is a dislike I can understand in the context of time, and the value of time. However, it is this very aspect that completes the circle for me, and affords an additional layer of artistic expression to any given image. Do you think Ansel Adams would give his negative to someone and say here, go make a print for me? It is the creative element of photography that lures me and excites me. I enjoy the natural world and being thoroughly immersed in it, but it is the desire for creativity that keeps me inspired. The universal art of my youth keeps leaking out.

The fast, localized image adjustments, in a simple format made me a convert to Lightroom. While similar artistic effects could be applied in Photoshop, the process was far more complex, time consuming and data intensive. This image of a rearticulated whale skeleton was made on an overcast and very moody day, lending to the somber reality of what happened to the Blue whale during the commercial whaling era. (For an interesting read on the subject of whaling, I’d recommend Ahab’s Trade: The Saga of South Seas Whaling.)

The earth’s largest mammal, at a population of nearly 300,000 animals in pre-whaling days was reduced to 1,000-2,000 prior to controls placed on the whaling industry in the 1960′s. Wow! That is hard to believe.  In my “grading” process to this image (See my previous post for some RAW work flow terminology) I tried to convey a sense of retrospective peril, through shadow and contrast.

Below are examples of the original capture and my brush painting local adjustments in Lightroom (that would be similar to the dodging and burning in the darkroom days). Other “global” adjustments (as noted at the bottom), are applied along the way but the brush strokes are easily seen by the red mask. The brushed areas can include any of the following adjustments: exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, clarity, sharpness or color. Of course, you won’t know the individual combinations but you at least get the idea.

So, below is the original capture as a RAW file without any adjustments. Rearticulated whale skeleton, Port Lockroy, Wiencke Island, Antarctica. Canon 5D Mark II, 16-35mm f/2.8L, 1/80 sec., @ f/13, ISO 200

Original capture, no Lightroom adjustments, exposed to the right and looks a little washed out.

Add a little sky control by decreasing brightness

Accents existing light areas

Further darkening of the clouds

Darkening of existing shadowed areas

Overall darkening of the skeleton

Specific toning down of the brights areas of the skeleton

List of additional “Global” adjustments in Lightroom:

Temperature: warmed from 5450 to 6208
Brightness: +59 (default 50)
Contrast: +54 (default 25)
Vibrance: +17 (default 0)
Saturation: +18 (default 0)
Red Chromatic Abberation: -12
Graduated filters: 2 (local adjustments)
Brushes: 6 (local adjustments)

The final version and I added the other one right below for easier comparison.

After Lightroom adjustments.

Before Lightroom

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom grid view

Adobe introduced a digital photo workflow program a while back called Lightroom. Since v1.0, it has improved considerably and although v2.6 has room for improvements, it remains my software of choice for grading digital imagery (FYI, a beta version of Lightroom 3 is available for download. I’ve been experimenting with it a little and look forward to its full release perhaps in April of 2010).  My current Lightroom database is about 45,000 images, and my main complaint against Lightroom is that it lacks the speed to navigate through that many files. Lightroom 3 is purported to address that issue in particular. But in spite of that, Lightroom is amazingly powerful, digital darkroom tool. I rarely open Photoshop much anymore, save for blended images or panorama stitching.

If you are like me, and tend to settle into a habit of working with a program and in so doing fail to tap into its full resources, this is a provocation to learn some of the shortcut keys to reduce your mouse clicks and boost the speed of your grading. I know that some people prefer a mouse over the keyboard, and in some cases, that works best. But I have two 30 inch monitors, and that is a lot of screen real estate to travel over with a mouse. I find that a blend of mouse and keyboard shortcuts works best. An entire list is of keyboard shortcuts is available at Adobe, additionally, they are listed next to each function in the top drop down menus. But too many at one time equals none in the memory bank. Every one’s workflow is a little bit different but here are few that are critical to my workflow and they save me a lot of time:

WHILE IN GRID MODE

• B–Add to Quick Collection
• D–Open file in Develop Mode
• E–Enter Loupe view
• Ctrl + G–Group into stack
• R–Open image in Develop Crop Mode
• Space Bar–Enter Loupe View

WHILE IN DEVELOP MODE

• E–Enter Loupe view
• G–Enter Grid Mode
• K–Activates Brush Tool
• M–Activates Gradient Tool
• N–Activates Stamp Tool ~When viewing at 100%, space bar toggles hand tool and stamp tool
• Space Bar–While held down shows image at 100%

OTHER

• Tab–Show/Hide the side panels
• Shift + Tab–Hide/Show all the panels
• L–Cycle Lights Out modes
• 1-5–Star Rating
• 6-9–Set Color Label

There are a few websites out there devoted to lightroom tips, I’d recommend checking them out:

1. PhotoShop Lightroom Killer Tips
2. The Lightroom Lab