Importing Photos into Lightroom

Importing Photos into Lightroom

If you're a Photoshop user just starting to use Lightroom, one of the first differences you'll run into is the fact that Lightroom is built around a database while Photoshop is not. In order to do anything with a photo in Lightroom, you first have to import it into a Lightroom catalog. It's here that your Lightroom workflow has to start.

Photoshop and Adobe Bridge can navigate to any folder on your computer as well as those accessible on your local network. If you can get at an image file through your operating system, you can open it in Photoshop and Bridge. Not so with Lightroom.

The architecture of Lightroom is built around the concept of "modules," with each module serving a different function. When you open the program, you can see them listed across the top of the screen as Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print and Web. It's from the Library module that you can import new photos. If you go into any other than Library, you'll find that the only images you have access to are those that have already been imported.

When you install Lightroom, it will create a catalog for you, but can create a new one if you feel a need to later by going to the File >> New Catalog dialog and giving your new catalog a name. There's also File >> Open Catalog if you have more than one and you need to switch between them. You can only have one catalog active at a time and switching forces you to close and reopen Lightroom, so most users simply put everything in a single catalog.

A brand new catalog is a rather uninteresting thing since it's just an empty container. You have to import images to it before you can do much. To begin the process, click in the "Import..." button in the lower left of the Library module, or use File >> Import Photos to get to the same place. You can also just drag a folder full of images onto the open Library window. Once you've already imported some images, you can also select "Import to this Folder..." from the right click context menu of any existing folder in the "Folders" section of the Library module. You can even tell Lightroom to automatically import your images by turning on File >> Auto Import >> Enable Auto Import. If you enable auto-import you'll want to also go to File >> Auto Import >> Auto Import Settings to specify which folder you want Lightroom to monitor and other default settings.

The basic Import dialog is straightforward enough with guided steps listed across the top. You can also click on the small downward arrow in the lower left to expand this small window to a full screen version. Both versions are basically the same, but the full screen window lets you see the individual images available for import so you can pick and choose, and also provides additional options. I'll talk mainly about the full window dialog here but either way, there are some basic steps necessary to import images. First, select a source, then select an action, and then a destination. When you choose the source, there's a checkbox to automatically include any subfolders. Above the previews in the full dialog you'll find a filter option to either see "All Images" or just "New Images." Obviously there will only be a difference between these two if you importing additional images from a folder you have previously imported from.

Importing an image into Lightroom doesn't necessarily make a copy of the original files. The dialog gives you a choice. "Add" keeps the photos in their original location and merely adds a reference to them to your Lightroom catalog. "Copy" leaves the original files alone, but makes a copy in the selected destination folder. "Move" copies your imported images to a folder you specify and deletes the originals. "Copy as DNG" is the same as "Copy" but converts your original camera raw files to Adobe's DNG raw format. With the action set to "Add" the destination automatically shows as "My Catalog." With another action selected you'll need to tell Lightroom where to copy or move the images you import. If you are importing directly from a USB attached camera your only choices will be Copy and Copy as DNG.

Which action you choose depends on how you want to manage your files. If you copy your image files to a directory structure where you want to store them before importing them into Lightroom, you should stick with "Add." If you want Lightroom to handle this for you, choose one of the other options. If you enable auto-import, you'll probably want to go with "Move" so the monitored folder gets cleared.

If you want to take a closer look at your source images before importing them, you can increase the preview size with the Thumbnails slider in the lower right. If that's not enough, you can also utilize the Loupe view using the icon in the lower left corner. By default, all images Lightroom finds in your source folder will be selected for import. If you decide you don't want to import any, just uncheck the box next to them.

That covers the basics, but before you actually begin the Import process, you should make sure a few other options are set the way you want them. You can tell Lightroom to look for duplicates and not import any that it determines you already have. The import process will consider files as duplicates if they have the same original filename, the same file size, and the same capture date and time in the EXIF metadata. If you are copying or moving, you'll be given the option to create a one-time backup of the imported files, a good idea just in case something unexpected happens. As a performance tradeoff, there are also options for telling Lightroom how it should render initial preview thumbnails. "Minimal" previews will immediately make use of the smallest camera preview present in each image and is generally a good choice. "Embedded and Sidecar" will use the largest available camera preview which will take longer but could result in a better preview. "Standard" tells Lightroom to immediately start rendering previews equivalent to what you would see in the Fit zoom level of the Loupe tool. "1:1" displays previews that are full sized images using actual image pixels. Preview jpegs embedded by cameras generally aren't color managed but should be sufficient in most cases. Regardless of your choice, Lightroom will start rendering standard previews via a background process. There's also robust support for renaming your imported images if you desire.

During Import, you can automatically apply a Develop setting preset. Since Lightroom is non-destructive, this will become merely the starting point for your future work in the Develop module. It doesn't actually alter your source images so if applying a preset during import gets you closer to where you ultimately want to end up, it can be a big time saver with no loss of quality in the final result. You can also apply a metadata preset to add copyright and other data you want to include in all of your imported images. I have a standard preset with copyright, contact information and so on. If all the images you are importing should share common keywords, you can add them during import as well.

When you've ready, click on the "Import" button in the lower right, or click on "Cancel" if you change your mind about importing. When you click on "Import," you'll start to see your images show up in the Library module as a progress bar moves its way along in the upper left. If you have a number of folders to import, you'll have to import them one at a time, or else organize them ahead of time so that all are under a single parent folder and use it as your Import dialog source. You can only have one Import task running at a time.

After you've spent some time setting all the Import options the way you want them, you can save these choices as a preset so you can more easily use them next time. Even the small Import dialog gives you access to select an Import options preset.

The Import dialog is incredibly flexible and feature rich. To fully master them, you might consider creating a "test" catalog and import images to it in a number of ways. After you've spent some time experimenting, you'll be in a better position to set up your real catalog and begin importing images to it.

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Lightroom 3 Noise Reduction

Lightroom 3 Noise Reduction

Modern digital cameras have much less of a problem with noise than models sold even a few years ago. But with a long enough exposure or high enough ISO all cameras will eventually succumb. Here's how to deal with digital noise in Adobe Lightroom.

Up until the late beta releases of version 3, the tools available to deal with noise in Lightroom were limited indeed. Back in the days of Lightroom 2, it used to be necessary to open images in Photoshop to deal with noise reduction. Third party filters such as Noise Ninja and Neat Image used to require Photoshop as a host application to work their magic. A standalone version of Noise Ninja added a Lightroom plug-in to open work on images without Photoshop, but one still needed to spend money to buy the standalone version. There just weren't any other good tools out there to get rid of noise. Thankfully, Lightroom 3 changed all that.

Noise reduction is a complicated problem. How do you tell what is in fact "noise?" One image's noise could well look like another images fine grained detail. Determining what is supposed to be there and what is not isn't a simple thing to at all. Every software filter I know of that is designed to remove noise unavoidably removes some wanted detail as well. And Lightroom is no different.

You'll find Lightroom's controls for Noise Reduction under Detail in the right panel group, directly below the controls for Sharpening. There are five sliders for noise reduction split into two groups, Luminance and Color. By default, the main slider for both Luminance and Color are set to zero which effectively disables the impact of the other sliders so they will appear grayed out. As soon as you raise the level of either main slider, the other controls in that group for noise reduction will kick in and you can adjust them as well. As with sharpening, you can monitor the results of your adjustments both on the main image display area as well as the zoom preview at the top of the Detail panel.

Luminance noise is made up of pixels of varying brightness, but that all more or less have the right color. Color noise has basically the correct brightness, but has varying color or hue. Luminance noise is far more common, but the noise you encounter may have components of both luminance and color to deal with. Let's look at both types in turn.

In addition to the main Luminance slider, there are two others in this group labeled Detail and Contrast that control how luminance noise is processed. Once you raise the value of the Luminance slider itself, you'll find that Detail starts at 50. As a quick and dirty default, that might be good but I'd prefer it if it started at zero and I'd recommend that you set it there before choosing an appropriate value for the Luminance slider itself. Don't worry. You can always come back to Detail later.

As I mentioned, removing noise has the side effect of unavoidably removing some detail as well. The purpose of the Detail slider is to limit that loss by defining a threshold for what truly is noise, and what should be kept as not noise. With the Detail slider pushed all the way down to zero, raise the Luminance slider until the appearance of noise disappears or drops to an acceptable level. You'll want to have the image zoomed in to see the effects clearly. As you increase the Luminance value, you will probably notice a slight softening of image detail as well. To restore it, slowly raise the Detail slider until the noise starts to make itself apparent again. If the image is noisy enough, there's a tradeoff you'll have to make between getting rid of luminance noise and preserving detail. Tweak these two sliders until you are satisfied you have the best result you can get.

The third slider for controlling Luminance noise is labeled Contrast. Since luminance noise is defined by varying brightness, excessive noise reduction can result in a slight loss of contrast. You can use this Contrast slider to restore it. Contrast restoration defaults to zero which is fine for most images. Generally, only very noisy photos require so much reduction that you need to worry about Contrast.

After optimizing the sliders that control luminance noise, it's time to turn your attention to Color noise. The controls are similar are similar to those for luminance, but there are only two sliders, the main one, and one for Detail. As with before, Detail defaults to 50, but is disabled until you raise the value of the main Color slider. And as with Luminance, my preference is to set Detail back down to zero before adjusting the main Color slider. This will let you better see what effect each slider actually has. Raise the value of the Color slider until the noise is diminished, then raise Detail to bring back any lost detail. If you raise Detail too far, the rainbow speckles of color noise will become noticeable again. Set it just right and you can optimize the appearance of fine color edges without sacrificing the reduction of color noise.

It's hard to do justice to demonstrating noise reduction when limited to modest sized web jpeg images. What I've done though is to provide zoomed in views of one section of the flower image shown above. You can see a description underneath each image. The images below are zoomed in to 400%, far beyond what you will probably use to work on images, but enough to make the effects of the noise adjustments more visible.

Third party noise filters such as Noise Ninja may still do a better job in some cases than Lightroom can, but Lightroom may just win out in others. For most images Lightroom 3 is more than up to the job and keeping with a Lightroom only workflow simplifies things greatly.

I would have given anything to have noise reduction software this capable back when I was shooting with a Nikon D100, my first digital SLR. It's ironic that Lightroom has made noise reduction this easy at a time when the need for sophisticated noise reduction has decreased so much, but I'm still glad I can do it when I need to. Thanks Adobe!

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More on Sharpening in Adobe Lightroom 3

More on Sharpening in Adobe Lightroom 3

In the theory of sharpening, the process can be broken down into three phases: capture sharpening, creative sharpening, and output sharpening. Last week I covered sharpening in the Develop module which is the primary tool for sharpening and can handle all three phases, but Lightroom also has dedicated tools for sharpening in the Import dialog of the Library module for capture sharpening, as well as in the Print and Web modules for output sharpening.

Sharpening During Import

Import sharpening

Print sharpening

Web sharpening

Digital image capture is an inherently lossy process. Reality has to be forced to fit within the confines of your pixels and how they see the world. And since each photosite on your camera's sensor only sees one primary color rather than all three there is even more loss. Fully two-thirds of your eventual image has to be guessed, or "interpolated" based on data that was captured. If a given photosite is sensitive to red light, the green and blue values that will be used to render that pixel have to be approximated from neighboring pixels. The algorithms used to do this are quite sophisticated, but still involve a lot of guess work, even if these could be legitimately described as educated guesses. Capture sharpening aims to restore some of the softness caused by inherent limitations of this technology.

To get new images into the Library module in Lightroom, you have to import them. When you do, the dialog gives you the opportunity to apply a set of pre-saved Develop settings. These settings can include color correction, black and white conversion, adding film grain, vignetting, or just about anything you might want. If Lightroom doesn't come with a preset to do what you want you can save new presets. In my opinion, most of these sorts of edits are better made directly in the Develop module, but one type of change worth considering during import is sharpening. Specifically, I'm referring to capture sharpening.

Lightroom comes with two presets for sharpening: "Sharpening ? Narrow Edges (Scenics)" and "Sharpening ? Wide Edges (Faces)." In an unusual twist, these names are actually fairly descriptive. If you are importing a batch of images (such as scenics) that contains a lot of detail you want to render clearly, choose the former. If you have a batch of images (such as facial portraits) that should clearly show major edges but might yield unflattering results if every imperfection shows, choose the latter. If over time you don't find either of these to your liking tweak one or the other and save it as your own Develop preset.

Regardless of how you sharpen a batch of images during import, keep in mind that Lightroom never actually changes your actual image data. Whatever choices you make at this stage remain freely editable later on when you optimize each image in the Develop module. Think of sharpening during import as a time saver to get you in the ballpark. You're not locked into anything.

Sharpening in the Print and Web Modules

After you spend time making an image look its best in the Develop module, you have to print it or export it to some format that allows you to share it with others. Unfortunately, both of these are inherently lossy processes, just like image capture. There is a degree of softening that happens during printing or saving a file to jpeg or other similar formats. Output sharpening aims to mitigate this loss, and Lightroom helps you do this with tools provided in both the Print and Web modules.

Sharpening in the Print module takes a different approach from the way sharpening works in Develop. Gone are the sliders for such abstract variables as "Amount" and "Detail." In their place are settings for Media Type as "Glossy" or "Matte" and whether you want "Low," "Standard," or "High" sharpening. Together with the selected Print Resolution in pixels per inch, Lightroom can then use these choices to calculate the sharpening needed. Note that your choice of paper type here is independent from the paper type selection in your printer driver, but generally both should be set the same. If you select "Draft Mode Printing" print sharpening is disabled.

One thing that is missing from Print module sharpening is the ability to preview what you will end up with. It would be nice if Adobe provided a window to see how your choices will affect the results, but this would be difficult since so much depends on your particular printer and paper choices. You will need to figure out what works best for your own needs. One way to do this would be to put together a test file that represents the variety of what you normally print and print it with various choices. You can use one of the print package templates to easily print a selection of images at the same time. After printing, you can set the resulting pages side by side for comparison in detail.

Lightroom also lets you "print" to a jpeg file via the "Print To:" drop-down box at the top of the Print Job settings. Media Type isn't relevant in this case so Lightroom disables that selection.

Sharpening in the Web module is even simpler. Under Output Settings, all you get is a dropdown selection for "Low," "Standard," or "High." Lightroom handles the rest for you.

Keep in mind that you don't have to apply any sharpening in Print or Web. In fact, if you sharpen in the Develop module with your target output media in mind, you probably don't want to duplicate that in Print or Web. The choice of what you use is up to you.

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Lightroom Panel Tips and Tricks

Lightroom Panel Tips and Tricks

The user interface in Adobe Lightroom is made up of panels that are highly configurable for various needs. Sometimes they seem to configure themselves accidentally too. Here are some tips and tricks to help you understand how they work.

The basics of panels are fairly straightforward. Individual panels are arranged into groups, one on the left and one on the right hand side of the screen. There's also the Module Picker across the top and the Filmstrip along the bottom. The display of each of these four main groupings can be turned on and off individually to provide more screen real estate for your actual image and what you are working on. To do so, go to Window >> Panels and check or uncheck the last four options for "Show Module Picker (F5)," "Show Filmstrip (F6)," "Show Left Modules Panel (F7)," or "Show Right Modules Panel (F8)" as desired. After you've done it this way a few times though, you will probably learn the keyboard shortcut equivalents for each. Press the F5 key and the Modules Picker will disappear. Press it again and it's back. The function key shortcuts for the others work the same way. Having one of these panels mysteriously disappear and not knowing how to get it back again is a problem experienced at some point by most new Lightroom users. Hit the wrong key on the keyboard in an application with this many keyboard shortcuts and there's no telling what might happen.

To hide both side panels, you can use Window >> Panels >> Toggle Side Panels, or simply hit the Tab key. Indeed, this is one of the easiest ways to accidentally lose your panels and be in a position where you need to find them again if you're a new user. There's also Window >> Panels >> Toggle All Panels, or its keyboard equivalent Shift-Tab to hide or show all four main panel groups.

Within the left and right modules panels are the controls for the various tools built into Lightroom. Even with that much space devoted to them, not everything will be visible unless you have a very large monitor. Window >> Panels will also give you access to hiding any or all of these including the Navigator, Histogram and other individual screen components. There are keyboard shortcuts for each but most aren't likely to be hit accidentally so I won't go into details here.

Each individual side group panel has a header where the title for that tool appears. If you click on the header of an open panel, that panel will be closed so that all that will show is the header with no actual controls beneath it. Click on the header again and the panel will expand back open. It's not necessary to click on the triangle icon to the right of the title to do this; you can click anywhere on the panel header. If you hold down the Control key (Command key on Mac OS) while clicking all the panels in that group will be closed or open as determined by the state of the one you click on. Control-click on one that's open and it will close along with everything else on that side of your screen.

If you right-click on the header for an individual tool panel you'll get a context menu giving you the ability to completely remove each of the panels in that group (left or right) if you don't or rarely need specific tools. Simply uncheck a module and it will vanish, header and all. To get it back again, just turn on the checkmark next to it on this same context menu. There's also "Show All" and "Hide All" to do the same thing for everything in that group all at once. Yes, "Hide All" will indeed leave you with a completely empty but still visible panel group. The Navigator on the left will remain as will the Histogram on the right since they are controlled separately but everything else will be gone. Right-click on the gaping blank space that remains and you'll thankfully still get the same menu so you get your panels back. At the bottom of the same menu are options for "Expand All" and "Collapse All" to let you keep the panel headers but collapse all of their contents.

On the outermost edge of both side panel groups you'll find a vertical strip with a small triangle icon. Click on this stripe with your mouse and the corresponding panel group will be hidden the same as if you had hit F7 or F8. If you hold down the Alt key (Option key on Mac OS) while clicking on this vertical stripe, you'll get a context menu with even more options. "Manual" is the way things start out. Panels only change visibility when you click on the vertical strip with the show/hide triangle icon. Selecting "Auto Hide" will hide the panel when you move your mouse away from it. "Auto Hide and Show" will do the same but will also cause the panel to automatically reappear when you move your mouse back over the show/hide control strip so you don't have to click on it. "Auto Hide and Show" appears to be the default option but in fact this is not the case. By default, showing and hiding the side panels is set to Manual yet the checkbox curiously shows in the wrong place until you have adjusted this yourself. There's also "Sync With Opposite Panel" which will cause Lightroom to use the same behavior to both left and right module group panels.

You can set the same automatic hide and show behavior with the top and bottom panels (the Module Picker and Filmstrip) using similar hide/show icon strips on the very top and bottom of the Lightroom application window.

You can also make the left and right panel groups wider or narrower by clicking on their inner edge (the divider closest to the main central image display area) with your mouse and dragging as needed. Combining options, you can drag the side panels as wide as needed but set them to auto hide so they get out of your way when you aren't using them.

It's also possible to temporarily get rid of the menu bar in Lightroom by switching to full screen mode via Window >> Screen Mode >> Full Screen. Together with the ability to hide the four main panel groups when not needed you can really get down to business and avoid clutter when working on an image. By pressing the "F" key by itself you can toggle full screen mode on and off. This is another way that new users sometimes inadvertently find themselves needing advice like what I'm covering here. As I said, press the wrong key in an application with this many keyboard shortcuts and there's no telling what might happen.

There's also a small toolbar strip directly below the main image area in the Develop module that can be gotten rid of either on purpose or accidentally by pressing the "T" key. Press it once and this toolbar will disappear. Press it again and it's back.

Another way to get rid of panel clutter in Lightroom is to use the "Lights Out" mode via the choices under Window >> Lights Out. You can dim everything other than the image you are working on, or blacken everything else out completely. The easiest way to cycle through these modes, and yet another keyboard accident waiting to get new users into trouble, is by pressing the "L" key on the keyboard. Press it once and the panels dim. Press it again and they go completely black. Press "L" one more time and things are back where you started as visible. Edit >> Preferences >> Interface gives you the ability to control just how dimmed "dim" is and what color Lights Out leaves you with. By default, the screen will go black but you can change it to other shades of gray or even white if you prefer. Sorry, no neon green.

There are even more ways to customize the Lightroom interface that I'll cover next week.

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Sharpening in Adobe Lightroom 3

Sharpening in Adobe Lightroom 3

I've written a number of articles on how best to sharpen images in Adobe Photoshop but Lightroom can do an outstanding job of sharpening as well. If you're used to sharpening in Photoshop, the technique is similar in Lightroom, but much better. Here's the basic rundown.

First, as with all things in Lightroom, sharpening is processed non-destructively. It never actually changes the underlying pixels of your image. Everything it does exists solely as a list of instructions to be applied on-the-fly to your image preview. These instructions are stored along with all your other adjustments when you save your image. When you open it next time, everything is right where you left it. All your adjustments look like they are part of your image, but the really aren't. If you subsequently make more changes, nothing has been lost or degraded as a result of your earlier choices. You can tweak things as much as you want until you are satisfied, with no more loss than if you had made those same choices in the beginning. None of those edits actually get baked into your image until you print it or export it from Lightroom.

It's also worth pointing out that sharpening in Lightroom only ever affects the luminance channel of the image, not the color. As such, problems of fringing and color shifts are far less likely than when working in RGB mode in Photoshop.

Before you start sharpening, open your image in the Develop module and create a virtual copy by right clicking on the image in the main window and selecting "create virtual copy." This will let you use View >> "Before / After" to easily see the net effect of your sharpening. Making a virtual copy isn't required, but it can be helpful and there's little reason not to. Lightroom virtual copies don't take any real space since they exist just as a second set of adjustment instructions rather than a second copy of the image pixels themselves. Remember, Lightroom never changes your actual image pixels.

The controls for Sharpening in Lightroom are located in the Detail panel of the Develop module. The interface looks straightforward enough. At the top of the section is a small detail zoom preview window. Underneath that you'll find four sliders. But before you just start pushing those sliders around, let's take a look at what each of these does.

By default, the zoom preview shows you a 1:1 view but the scale can be changed in much the same way as the main image view window. If you click on it with your left mouse button, the zoom will toggle between this close-up view and an overall view of your image. Click again and it goes back to the zoom view. If instead you right mouse click the zoom preview you can change to close-up to be a full 2:1 view. This larger-than-life view can lead to a mistaken impression of what your image looks like unless you are careful so I'd suggest leaving the zoom preview at the standard 1:1 view for most situations.

Amount

Radius

Detail

Masking

What I generally do is to set the zoom preview to 1:1 and adjust the main Develop view panel to 1:2. The fifty-percent view, or 1:2, works well to gauge the degree of sharpening and the 1:1 zoom preview helps check detail areas when needed. With this configuration, checking the overall view of the image requires just a single mouse click on the main image to toggle it to the "fit" view so you can see the whole thing. Click again and I'm back to the 1:2 view.

To move the zoom window around the image, either click on it and drag, or click on the small cross-hairs icon to the upper left of the zoom preview and then move your cursor over the main image. As you do, the zoom preview will track your mouse movements. Clicking on the main image will end the tracking and lock the zoom preview where you clicked.

There's also a down-arrow icon to the upper right of the zoom preview that will let you collapse the Detail panel to get rid of the zoom preview, although I honestly don't know why you would want to do that.

Now on to the sliders.

As befits its position as the topmost slider in the Sharpening dialog, the Amount slider controls the overall amount of sharpening to be applied and is likely the one that will have the greatest affect on the appearance of the image you are working on. The farther to the right you position it the more affect it will have. If the Amount slider is left at its default value of zero, none of the other sliders can be used and will appear grayed out. You can take this as a clue that you are intended to use the Amount slider first when sharpening.

If you hold down the Alt key (Option key on Mac OS) as you move the Amount slider you can temporarily view your image purely as grayscale. In full color, your eye can easily be fooled into thinking your image is sharper than it is if the subject has a strong color contrast compared to the background. Sharpening works by adjusting contrast along edges and working in grayscale makes it easier to accurately gauge contrast. Don't worry — as soon as you release the Alt key the color will return.

The Radius slider determines how close to detected edges detail needs to be to be included in the sharpening affect. It also helps determine just where those edges are. As you move the slider further to the right Lightroom will find ever more details in your image that qualify as edges.

Just as with the Amount slider, you can hold down the Alt (Option) key while adjust the Radius slider to gain insight into how your changes will affect the image. When you do, the image will turn to a grayscale version but this time the view will be based just on the edges that Lightroom finds. Where no edges are detected the image will appear as featureless medium-toned gray. Edges will stand out as increased contrast areas in that field of gray. The view will be familiar if you have ever made use of the high-pass sharpening technique in Photoshop. Generally, you should move the slider until only major edges start to appear in the zoom preview but this will vary somewhat based on what sort of detail you want to emphasize. Remember, all your adjustments here are lossless so you can feel comfortable playing with the sliders to optimize your results for the particular image you are working on.

The Detail slider functions similarly to the Radius slider but looks only at fine detail rather than at all edges. You can safely set the Detail slider to a higher value if the Radius slider is set lower, and vice versa. The two work hand in hand. If both are set too high, watch out. If you want to accentuate only major edges, set the Radius high and the Detail low. If you are working on an image with fine detail that you want to see clearly, set the Radius more moderately and raise the Detail slider. Holding down the Alt (Option) key works the same way for the Detail slider as it does for Amount.

The Masking slider is a welcome addition to Lightroom that makes it easy to limit your sharpening to edges and keep areas that don't need sharpening unchanged. There's nothing more frustrating than sharpening digital noise that may happen to exist in what is supposed to be a clear blue sky. Masking lets you avoid this. If you are familiar with edge sharpening techniques in Photoshop, you probably already understand the intent of the Masking slider. As you move the slider to the right, only areas that truly should be considered edges will be affected with everything else masked out. If you hold down the Alt (Option) key while adjusting Masking you can see the traditional grayscale display of the mask. Areas that are black will be blocked completely from the affects of sharpening. Areas that aren't will be affected proportionally to how bright they appear in the mask display. With the slider all the way down at zero, the sharpening will be applied equally across the image. With it moved all the way up to 100 only the most obvious of edges will qualify. With the Mask slider set appropriately for an image you can more safely boost the values of the other sliders without fear of halos and other artifacts.

I really like the way Lightroom implements sharpening. Sharpening has long been problematic in Photoshop due both from a lack of good tools as well as the fact that the process is inherently destructive in Photoshop since it requires actual pixels to be modified. And since it works only on the luminance channel it is generally much easier to sharpen in Lightroom than in Photoshop without fear of ending up with something that ends up looking like you sharpened it.

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More Lightroom Panel Tips and Tricks

More Lightroom Panel Tips and Tricks

The panels of Adobe Lightroom can be customized and configured in quite a few ways, some obvious and some less so, some useful some just simply for fun. I covered the basics last week, now it's time for some of the more "interesting" panel tips and tricks.

Font Size
You can change the font size used in Lightroom's panels to either "Small" or "Large" using a dropdown in the Edit >> Preferences >> Interface dialog. The default is to let Lightroom decide which is best based on your monitor resolution. You have to exit out of Lightroom and restart the program for the change to take effect.

Pinstripes
Go to Edit >> Preferences >> Interface. Not only can you change the shade of gray here that Lightroom will use as the fill color behind whatever is displayed in the main image area as well as the secondary display window, you can fill the area with a very fine pinstripe pattern. An odd touch to be sure, but I am unclear as to what use it actually serves. Indeed, if your monitor has a high enough resolution, the stripes that make up the pinstripe pattern are themselves barely perceptible with the result appearing nearly as just another shade of gray. Still, it's thoughtful of Adobe to provide a touch of class like this.

Panel End Marks
Here's another touch of elegant class that Adobe added to the Lightroom user interface for some unknown reason. Take a look at either side panel group and scroll all the way to the bottom. What you will find is a flourish curlycue thingy that looks like it belongs more at the top of a Roman column than it does in a photo editing program. One might cynically assume that Adobe placed these at the ends of the panel groups so even the most inexperienced users would know when they were at the bottom and stop dragging on the scroll bar handles. I just know there had to have been a more practical reason, I just can't come up with it.

Anyway, since they are there and we're on the subject of tips and tricks for Lightroom's panels, why not change them to something other than the default so you can show that you have even more class than Adobe's engineers? No problem. Either go back to the Edit >> Preferences >> Interface panel and try out some of the entries in the End Marks dropdown list, or right click on the current end mark at the bottom of a panel and do likewise. Here you will find a variety of ornaments, flourishes, and clip art to choose from. Whatever you pick will replace both left and right panel group end marks.

After you work your way to the end of the available choices you'll run into the "Go to Panel End Marks Folder" that will display an empty folder on your hard drive. Since you've just looked at a selection of end marks you might have been expecting the folder to filled with the files used to render what youv'e just seen but the built-in end marks live elsewhere. But if you put your own file here you can indeed use it as an additional end mark choice.

Adobe doesn't do a very good job of describing how to make your own end marks, but the process is actually quite straightforward. Indeed, just about any image you put in this folder will add itself to the End Marks dropdown list and will indeed display at the bottom of both panel groups if you select it. But before you go hog wild, you might consider what would actually work. Your artwork should be about the same size as the default samples as anything too big could cause problems. And while you can use a color image, I'd recommend sticking with grayscale if you want your new end mark to look like it belongs as part of the Lightroom user interface. The width of your creation should be no bigger than about 150 pixels, with 100 pixels probably being the maximum practical height. I created a PNG image with a transparent background from the Earthbound Light logo and added it to my Panel End Marks folder and it actually looks quite smart at the bottom of my Lightroom panel marks. There may be no practical reason for doing this, but it was fun and I like it.

Oh, the irony that it takes Photoshop to create a new Lightroom panel end mark. You can't feasibly do so in Lightroom.

So there you have it: a roundup of some of the less common tricks and tips for Lightroom panels. If you have your own favorite, let me know and if I like it, I'll add it here.

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Cropping and Rotating Images in Adobe Lightroom

Cropping and Rotating Images in Adobe Lightroom

Even though everything in Lightroom is nondestructive, you aren't limited to just basic tonal corrections and contrast. While there are limits to what you can do, they lie far beyond just this. I've written already about sharpening in Lightroom, but you can also do such tasks as cropping an image or straightening a horizon. There are some great choices in how Adobe implemented this, but there are also some awkward ones.

First, Lightroom is a modular program with different modules designed to handle different kinds of tasks generally associated with different phases of working on an image. There's the Library module for importing and organizing images, the Develop module for doing the heavy lifting of optimizing the appearance of selected images, and the Slideshow, Print and Web modules for sharing the results of those optimizations via different media. Everything I'm going to describe here is part of the Develop module.

To crop an image, open it in the Develop module and click on the Crop Overlay tool in the toolbar. In the standard window configuration, you'll find it as the far left icon in the first row underneath the histogram. Lightroom lets users reconfigure panels quite a bit so you may have moved things around in your copy. It looks like a dashed white rectangle. When you click on it, the image you are working on will be outlined with a thin white border with somewhat thicker adjustment handles on each corner and in the middle of each side. The area to be cropped is what is defined by this border so by default your entire image is selected. You can select a smaller area either by grabbing the adjustment handles and dragging them inward as needed, or by clicking with your mouse anywhere on the image and dragging to open up a new selection border replacing the current one. Either way, you can fine tune your crop selection until you are satisfied by means of the adjustment handles. You can also click and drag on the overlay with your mouse to reposition things, but rather than moving the selection border over the image, this will move the image itself underneath the stationary selection border. To me this seems somewhat counterintuitive as it requires you to drag to the right in order to reposition the selection border closer to the left hand side of the image and so on. You must drag in the opposite direction than it seems (at least to me) like you should since you are not moving what (at least to me) you think you will be moving. Remember, even though you must click inside the selection border to do this, the image moves, not the crop border.

Everything outside your selection will appear slightly dimmed. So far as I am aware, you can't control the degree of dimming as is possible with the Crop tool in Photoshop. You might be tempted to think the Dim Level for the Lights Out mode on the Interface tab of the Lightroom Preferences would affect this but it doesn't. While I'd love to be able to darken the color somewhat, the opacity Lightroom does use is still quite workable. Note that the Navigator image will show the cropped version even before the crop has been completed so you can see the image without the distraction of what lies outside the selection this way too.

You may be pleased to find that Lightroom provides a grid overlay on your crop area. This can help you recompose your image, aligning things with the rule of thirds or other preferred divisions of the frame such as the Golden Ratio made famous by the ancient Greeks and medieval painters. To change to the overlay, choose Tools >> Crop Guide Overlay from the menus. There's also a selection for Tool Overlay on the bar underneath the image when the Crop Overlay tool is active. Hitting the letter "o" on your keyboard will cycle through the overlays. You can turn the overlay off completely via Tools >> Tool Overlay >> Never Show. Curiously, hitting the "o" key will still cycle through even if set to Never Show. If you do, you will find your menu will change to "Always Show."

The Crop Overlay tool also has tool options that normally appear in the toolbar directly below the bar with the icon for Crop Overlay when the tool is active. Here you can lock the selection to a standard aspect ratio and control other options. There's also a "Lock" icon that when clicked on will tell Lightroom to keep the current aspect ratio no matter how else you manipulate things with the Crop Overlay tool.

There's an apparent bug in the aspect ratio crop capability of Lightroom that you will at some point run into. While the Aspect ratio choice in the Crop Overlay options allows you to enter any ratio you want, there's no way to tell it to rotate that crop relative to the image. It always aligns the same direction the image does in terms of portrait versus landscape orientation. To elaborate, entering a custom crop aspect ratio of 3 x 10 will have the same effect as entering 10 x 3. Rather than one giving you a wider image and the other one a tall one, both will do the identical thing for any given image. Hopefully Adobe will fix this at some point.

There is a way to trick the aspect selection in the Crop Overlay tool into changing the orientation it thinks you want by dragging the handles in a specific way. The method works by taking advantage of the fact that the overlay will resize itself to stay within the image as you drag any of its corners. Once the overlay is small enough, you can reposition it and convince it to "flip" orientations by employing an odd sequence of mouse gestures. First, grab the upper left corner adjustment handle. Drag it into the center of the image. The crop selection will shrink to accommodate. With your mouse still held down, drag that handle to the left hand edge of the frame. As you do, the now smaller crop selection overlay will magically turn itself ninety degrees. Presto. You're basically drawing a "V"-like motion with your mouse cursor. Weird, but it does work. You may need to try this trick yourself to really understand it. Matt Kloskowski has a video on Adobe's site that shows him doing it. He doesn't really describe the aspect orientation flip, he just does it while talking about cropping in general, so watch closely. Note that this orientation "flip" can also occur if the aspect ratio is locked. So while the Lock icon will keep the same aspect ratio, it won't necessarily keep the same orientation.

Once you get the crop you desire, just hit the Enter key or click on the "Done" button on the bar below the image and the crop will be executed. Given that Lightroom is indeed fully nondestructive, while you may now only see the portion you selected to crop, rest assured that the entire original image is still there. All you have done is to tell Lightroom you don't want to see what lies outside your crop. Think of this as being at least somewhat like changing the Canvas size in Photoshop. You can select the Crop Overlay tool again to see the entire image again and adjust your crop if desired. There's also a "Reset" button at the bottom of the Crop Overlay options that will remove a previous crop entirely.

The Crop Overlay tool can also be used to rotate an image. With the tool active, click just outside any of the corner adjustment handles and drag in a rotating motion and the image will spin with the selection outline remaining stationary. I like the way Adobe implemented this feature. The Crop tool in Photoshop turns the selection boundary with the image standing still, forcing you to turn your head to see what things look like. Lightroom thankfully rotates the image and keeps the selection still so you don't end up with a crick in your neck after rotating a few images. There's also a slider in Lightroom with an accompanying numeric input box for the rotation angle in the Crop Overlay options area that works the same way.

An even better way to straighten an image in Lightroom though is to use the Straighten tool found in the Crop Overlay options area. It looks somewhat like a small carpenter's level and can be found just to the left of the rotation Angle slider. If you click on the Straighten tool and then drag over your image to draw a line the image will be rotated to make that line horizontal or vertical (whichever is closer) when you let go of the mouse. If you hold down the Alt key (Option key on OS X) Lightroom will kindly display a grid overlay aligned with your Straighten line to help you make sure you have the angle as you want it.

This article wouldn't be complete without mention of one more rotation option that doesn't entail the Crop Overlay tool at all. From the menu you can use Photo >> Rotate Left (CCW) or Rotate Right (CW) to easily rotate the image by ninety degrees in the selected direction.

Again, no matter what you do in terms of cropping or rotating your images in Lightroom, the underlying image data remains unchanged so feel free to experiment.

Update 6/27/2011 - Wow. Loyal reader CB wrote in to let me know something I never knew. Turns out you can quite easily change the orientation of the crop selection box by simply pressing the "x" key on the keyboard. What could be easier? Many thanks!

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