Memos From The Digital Darkroom

My favorite thing about my iPad is the ability to show my photography no matter where I am. Photos look great on the iPad and I can load as many albums as I like so that I have a huge variety to show. The usual process for creating and adding these albums is to use Apple’s iPhoto. However, like many photographers, I use Lightroom for my image cataloging and don’t have any need for iPhoto. Fortunately, it’s quite easy to setup Lightroom and an iPad to quickly create photo albums. To do so you simply specify a specific folder for iTunes to access and then create a special export preset in Lightroom to populate the folder with your favorite images.

Follow the steps below to see how easy it is to begin sharing your photos on your iPad.

Step 1. Plug your iPad into your computer and locate it in iTunes. Click on the Photos button at the top right to load the Sync Photos options, as shown in figure 1. Notice that by default the iPad is setup to sync from iPhoto.

Figure 1: Choose Photos from the selections at the top.

Step 2: Click on the Sync Photos from menu and select Choose folder, as shown in figure 2.

Figure 2: Select Choose folder to create a special folder for iPad albums.

Step 3: When the Choose Photos Folder Location dialog box opens, navigate to your Pictures folder and use the New Folder button to create a new folder named iPad Photos, as shown in Figure 3. Then click the Choose button to close the dialog box.

Figure 3: Select Choose folder to create a special folder for iPad albums.

Now that the iPad knows where to look for photos, it’s time to setup Lightroom to give it something to find. One of the best ways to do this is to make a collection in Lightroom for each of the albums you want to add to the iPad. Then use Lightroom’s Export dialog to create a custom export preset to export the photos into the iPad Photos folder you just created.

Continue with Step 4 below to setup Lightroom:

Step 4: Open Lightroom go to the Library module. Click on the Export button to open the Export dialog.

Step 5: Choose the For E-Mail preset under the Lightroom Presets at the top of the Preset panel on the left (circled in figure 4). This loads settings into the panels on the right which are used as a starting point. Now you can fine tune those settings to configure them for your needs.

Step 6: Go to the Export Location section at the top and click on the Export To menu to open a drop-down menu. Choose Specific folder, as shown in figure 4. Then click on the Choose button to navigate to the iPad Photos folder that you added to the Pictures folder in Step 3.

Figure 4:Use the Export To menu to find the iPad Photos foler you created in Step 3.

Step 7: Select the Put in Subfolder option but don’t type anything into the text box just yet because you’re setting up a custom preset. You’ll add the names of the albums here when you export them later.

Step 8: Go down to the Image Sizing area to set the sizing for the photos. Choose Long Edge from the drop-down menu and then enter a value of 1024 into the text box to the left of pixels, as shown in figure 5. This way if the photo is vertical, it will be 1024 pixels high, which is a perfect fit for the iPad’s longest dimension. If it’s a horizontal, it will be 1024 pixels wide. In both cases the other dimension falls into proportion with the original proportions of the photo.

Figure 5: Change the Image Sizing to 1024 pixels on the long edge.

Now it’s time to save these settings as a preset so that you don’t have to bother with them again. Continue with Step 9 to add a new preset.

Step 9: Click on the Add button at the bottom left of the Export dialog box. When the New Preset dialog box opens, type iPad Photos into the Preset Name text box. Then click Create to complete the process. Now your new preset is located in the User Presets section of the Preset panel on the left. Choose Cancel at the bottom right of the Export dialog to close it.

Step 10: Now all of the pieces are in place. To export an album of photos to your iPad, select a group of photos in Lightroom and export them using your iPad Photos export preset. Be sure to type a subfolder name into the text box in the Export Location section of the Export dialog. This is the exact name that is used by the iPad to name its albums. If you forget to add text to this box, the photos are dropped directly into the iPad Photos folder and won’t be visible in the iPad albums.

Step 11: Go to iTunes and sync your iPad. When the sync is complete the iPad updates its albums in the Photos section.  To add or remove photos from an album simply re-export the new selection of photos from Lightroom and then sync the iPad. To remove an album from the iPad, simply use Finder (Mac) or Explorer (Windows) to remove the folder from the iPad Photos folder on your computer and then sync the iPad.

That’s all there is to it. After the initial setup, adding photo albums to your iPad takes only a few moments.

Note: Simplify the process is to use collections in Lightroom to keep track of your albums. Simply create a collection for each set of album photos. That way you can change the contents of an album by modifying the collection and re-exporting the photos.

Earlier this week I was helping a Portland commercial photographer rebuild her Lightroom catalog when I learned something new. Something that anyone using Flags as a rating system in Lightroom should know. Before I get to that, let me tell you what happened.

A Crash Raises a Question

Because of a series of computer mishaps, my client was forced to completely rebuild her Lightroom catalog from scratch. Fortunately, she had set the Catalog Settings Metadata preference on her previous catalog to record metadata changes with XMP sidecar files. This was an advantage because it meant that most of the work she’d done on her 50,000+ files could be recovered because it was stored in XMP files rather than the original catalog, which was now corrupted beyond repair.

When the files were added back to the catalog everything was looking good until she realized that none of the photos had flags on them. Flags, like rating stars and colored labels, are used to rank images so that you know which are the winners and which are the losers. My client was using flags to indicate which files were were the ones her clients had ordered. Unfortunately, without the flags it was difficult for her to recover this information.

Lesson Learned

After poking around a bit I found that flags are intended to be used in a slightly different way than labels and stars. Flags are meant to be used in a “local” manner. This means that if you apply a Pick flag to a photo and then add that photo to a collection, the flag is removed from the version of it in the collection. Even though the photo in the collection is simply a virtual representation of the original and they linked in most every other way, the flagging information is only applied in the folder or collection where it was added. The intention is to provide a flexible rating system that can be used independently. For example, if you have the same photo in more than one collection, you can flag it in some instances, while not flagging it in others. In the case of labels and stars, adding or removing one from a photo in a collection has the same effect on the original and the photo in other collections.

I knew that information such as individual Develop history steps and collections aren’t stored in XMP metadata, but I’d never realized that flags aren’t either. Part of this is because I personally don’t use flags. I prefer using colored labels and stars for my rating system because they offer a wider range of ranking with 5 stars and 5 colored labels. Additionally - though using flags can sometimes be a bit faster than using labels and stars, it’s easy to make a mistake and delete some files unintentionally. When using labels and stars, the deletion process is more intentional, giving the user the opportunity to pay attention to what’s about to happen.

The main point here is that if you use flags, do so with the knowledge that they’re intended to be used locally. Knowing this opens the door to a flexible rating system and prevents you from needing to sort out a mess if a catastrophe strikes your Lightroom catalog.

Two separate clients recently contacted me regarding unusual problems they were experiencing. Though one person was having a problem with Lightroom and the other with Photoshop, it turns out both problems had the same solution. Here’s the story:

The first client had recently purchased a new computer, installed Lightroom 3 onto it, and then transferred her catalog to that system. While working in Lightroom she began to experience erratic behavior. The main issues were that selected images would randomly change to different images and panels would mysteriously scroll up or down. This client was planning to reinstall Lightroom to see if the problem would clear up.

The second client had a completely different, though related problem. She to had recently purchased a new computer and installed Photoshop CS3 onto it. Her problem was a very unusual one. When using the Width and Height text boxes with the Crop tool, the numbers in one of the boxes would randomly change after she entered a specific value. For example, she would enter 5 inches in the Width box and 7 inches in the Height box. Almost immediately the Height value would jump to a random number, like 42.7 or 13.2.

This client spent a considerable amount of time on the phone with Adobe customer service getting passed around before she called me. She told me that the only advice Adobe support gave her was the suggestion that the version of Photoshop she installed was too old for her computer. I knew this wasn’t even close to true because I’ve seen PS CS3 on computers like hers. However, the type of computer she was using was the clue to solving her problem.

Photo courtesy of Apple

The new computers both of these clients purchased were 27″ iMacs. It wasn’t really the computers that were causing the problem. It was one of the peripherals that comes with them: the Magic Mouse. I have a couple of Apple Magic mice and I think they’re very cool. However, the scrolling area on top of the mice is very sensitive. It’s driven me to curse more than once when working on a large PowerPoint presentation. Even the gentlest touch of the mouse can send the slides careening like symbols on a slot machine. When this happened, which was too often, it was necessary for me to retrace my steps and remember which slide I was on when they went flying. (I can’t imagine what it would be like to work on a spreadsheet with one of these mice!)

The scrolling sensitivity is what caused my clients their problems. The second client who was experiencing problems with the Crop values found that barely touching her mouse was often enough to cause the values in the active box to scroll randomly. Both clients switched to different mice and are now happy. In both cases what they thought was a complex software problem turned out to be a simple hardware problem.

Photo courtesy of Apple

On a personal note: Though I really like using a Magic Mouse with my laptop (and was willing to endure this sensitivity issue) both of my Magic Mice were relegated to obscurity in an office drawer when I discovered Apple’s Magic Trackpad. This input device is as cool or cooler than the Magic Mouse and supports even more finger gestures. More importantly,  it doesn’t suffer from the random scrolling issue.

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(Guest Blog by Gary Wilson)
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