Ann-alog, a Pixel Remix, where Ann Torrence blogs about photographing for a book on U.S. Highway 89, the greatest road trip route in America. Photography tips, locations, trip reports, and real life.

Five camera calibration settings compared (hi res available in my Flickr stream

When I was making the master Highway 89 image files, I downloaded some new camera profiles that Adobe released for their Camera Raw functionality. Once I got familiar with them, using them completely upgraded my Raw conversion workflow.

First, download and install profiles from Adobe Labs. One install will make the functionality available in both Lightroom and Photoshop. The Camera Calibration panel in both software packages will list several options in the "Camera profile" pull down menu. (The Adobe Labs instructions has a screen shot).

Before, I followed the normal Raw conversion workflow: begin with the first slider in the basic adjustment panel and work downward, so that each effect cascades in the order the software engineers intended. What I do now is cycle through the various choices in the Camera Calibration tab first. As the example above shows, even the color balance can be dramatically altered by the selected camera profile. Often, I can get very close to my intended final image just by choosing the right profile. Then I go back to the sliders to adjust white balance, exposure, clarity, saturation and so on.

Even though much of the Highway 89 book was landscape photography, I almost never used the Camera Landscape setting, finding it just too saturated and contrasty. Oddly, the Camera Portrait setting often works well for outdoor scenes.

In both Photoshop (I'm still using CS3) and Lightroom, the Camera profile menu options change slightly depending on the camera body that made the file being processed. The D2X files begin with the ACR 4.4 option, while the D700 files start with ACR 4.6. The example above was made in Photoshop using a file made with my D2X, a grain elevator in Wilsall, Montana.

Now that I am using Lightroom to ingest my files and do my Raw conversions, I discovered that I like the ACR 4.6 profile for the D700 files much better than the Adobe Standard profile, which is what Lightroom defaults to. I set my Lightroom preferences so that all my D700 files open in the Develop module with the ACR 4.6 profile selected. Ian Lyons has a short tutorial on how to set up different Lightroom defaults for each cameras, including the ACR camera profile.

When I started using the camera profiles, I liked the results so much that I ended up remastering most of my 2007 and 2008 Highway 89 images for the book. Now that I use it all the time, this one simple tool has dramatically sped up my workflow, and combined with the rest of the ACR tools, gives me even more control on my final outputs. It's too bad the functionality is buried so deep in the ACR panels, because it really should be the first step in any Raw conversion workflow. Here's hoping the Adobe engineers move it to the top of the stack in the upcoming versions of Lightroom and Photoshop.

Warming up at the Riverton, UT rodeo

I chose Lightroom as my cataloging tool when I fully committed myself to a full-scale Digital Asset Management workflow. Now that I have my system set up, backed up and in use, it's interesting to see how my workflow has changed.

Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument

The DAM project moves forward, one DVD at a time. I've burned all of 2008 in the new system, and about 50% of 2009. Two more hard drives and a "toaster" (my description) to swap the drives. With the motley collection of drives I have on hand, I think I am set to move forward.

The 3-2-1 concept has always made abundant sense: 3 copies of my data, on 2 different media and 1 off-site copy. Hard drives do fail, but I'd rank that risk below several others: theft of my DROBO or accidental erasure of overwriting (operator error-let's keep it real), to name two. Macs aren't prone to viruses, but data corruption is still another issue. And when things go wrong in my world, they tend to replicate far beyond the original fault. A binder of DVDs isn't going to walk out of the house, and I can't overwrite the DVDs, so making them adds another level of protection in addition to my hard drive copies.

My previous workflows made the back-up process a project in itself. I hadn't developed an intake system that worked to keep my files and drives up-to-date and synced as I collected new files. The key is going to be downloading straight into Lightroom, systematically putting new files into straight into folders limited to DVD-sized chunks and trusting my catalog to find files, instead of my old method of hunting down stuff based on memory of what was in named file folders. Gaining trust in LR depends on my ability to rapidly and efficiently add metadata to all those files.

I am NOT going to attempt to completely keyword all my files to stock sales standards. I'd never get it done, and my system would fail. I did a five hour test last week where I added titles, location and a few keywords to batches of files. I was able to get through about 3,000 images, getting faster as I developed my keyword lists and Lightroom skills.

I am enjoying (and getting distracted by) revisiting some of my old images, the ones I liked but didn't make it into the U. S. Highway 89 book. The two flights with Adriel Heisey are some of my best memories of doing this work, and I could only include one image. I'm also seeing how much Adobe's Camera RAW engine has been improved since I shot some of this stuff (as have my chops).

All good, and I'm investing time now for the long haul. It's worht it-there are plenty more pictures I need to make.

Hood ornament, from last Saturday's PhotowalkingUtah Lensbaby Photowalk

Whenever I finish a big project, the next thing that happens is picking up the pieces, cleaning up the disarray that accumulated during the intense effort to reach completion. One thing I kept putting off throughout the Cathedral and Highway 89 book projects was to get my Digital Asset Management act together: back-ups, keywording, etc. Since completion, I really have no more excuses and a great need to try to get additional use out of my investment in images. To get started right, I decided to read some of the experts on DAM rather than inventing my own process. Just before the last Photowalking Utah clinic, my request for the library copy of Digital Asset Management by Peter Krogh was fulfilled, and I started reading it that very night.

It won't come as any surprise that, once I decided to get serious about it, I have been going after this project with some level of obsession commitment. When I discovered that the last time I burned a DVD was March 2008, made a hard drive back-up (when I filled my last LaCie, about June 2009), I got very scared.

The principles in Krogh's book aren't that different from David Allen's GTD, and one thing I learned from Allen was to do a complete stand-down and get the reorganized system up and running so I could trust it. For me, it means shifting away from Adobe Bridge as my folder-based browser, despite the fact that (cue whining) I know where everything is (sort of), to a catalog-managed archive using keywords and metadata in Adobe Lightroom that will grow with me even as my memory starts to overflow with photo opps.

I decided to go back to January 2008, and put all my files into DVD sized "buckets," rename the files to a rational scheme (torrence_yyyymmdd_camera-sequence#.ext), and import all the files into Lightroom. I kept the files in their subfolders, which are labeled by date and location, but breaking the subfolders into chunks that fit onto DVDs. 2008 was the biggest year for the Highway 89 project: I shot 77 DVD-sized chunks that year. Once I the 2008 files sorted into buckets, I paused, started burning DVDs (#58 is in the burner as I type), and copied the LR database to my laptop to start keywording while the desktop machine burns DVDs. It seems my desktop Mac resents almost any competing application, and I got tired of wasting DVDs, so it is a (very expensive) dedicated DVD burner most of the day during this stand-down.

Krogh has an elaborate ingestion process for copying files from camera chip through a "working storage" unit, into various folders to mark its progress through a metadata and keywording workflow, ultimately to an archive, but I'm having a hard time deciding which RAW files are archive vs working, so I'm going to dump my chips straight to DVD-sized folders, do the file renaming, and burn them right away as I accumulate a full "bucket" and use meta-meta-data to track what stages my files are in (as Eric Scouten described in his workflow).

I learned a time-expensive lesson yesterday: if I want full-sized previews in LR on my laptop, it would be best to do them as I import files, not 18,000 of them at once, which took about 16 hours to generate. That put the DVD burning behind schedule! But the adding titles, captions and rudimentary keywording is taking far less time than I thought. I'm doing enough so I can find stuff, although not good enough for stock sales. I entered metadata for over 2,000 images this afternoon. I can always refine later, so long as I can find stuff to begin with. And the full-sized previews I need to remember what's what are take up expensive hard-drive space: the catalog of 18,000 images if over 44 GB. I'll be purging those previews as soon as the keyworded version of the database is transferred back to the desktop machine (and backed up!)

As I have been reading, one workflow advantage that I am looking forward to using is the collections tool in Lightroom. My RAW files are pretty tidy, but my derivative files (PSDs, JPGs, CMYKs and rest of the alphabet) are not. I am declaring, and in some cases blending and recreating one primary file each finalized image that will live in a special directory. Print-sized, sharpened, web-versions will all be exported from Lightroom to a separate folder, and the master file can populate as many collections as needed. But no more time spent sorting through various versions to figure out which one is the true primary file. I'm many DVDs and hard drives away from that level of paradise, but I can see the steps to take to get me there. If only I could burn DVDs any faster, I'd be there already.

A JPG and unprocessed RAW file saved on the D70 chip

I was asked if I shot my digital files in RAW or JPG, and how to explain the power of RAW files to a beginner. I remember when I first got my D70 and looked at the RAW files. I thought they looked pretty crummy compared the JPGs. But I knew the "pros" were shooting RAW and I wanted to figure out what I was missing. So I went to work.

Ducky, Blue & yellow #2

I predicted that the Lightroom project would devolve into a horrendous sequence of upgrade mission-creep, and I was right. It's not Adobe's fault, by any means, but the getting ready to start has been incredibly time-consuming:

• Order the new LaCie Double Triple 1TB storage.
• Consolidate my camera downloads onto the 1TB from the various places I had stowed them while deciding what to buy.
• Discover the 1TB unit will not communicate through its 800 FW port. Ask LaCie to ship replacement first, they ignore/decline, but send SRO promptly.
• Tediously back up the 1TB to some LaCie bricks - 400 FW to USB is very slow.
• Make some DVDs for extra insurance.
• Send 1TB to LaCie.
• Take G5 in for runaway fan, instability, random instances of powering down during processor-heavy activity (read: open ACR file in DNGConverter and Photoshop). Diagnosis is not the fan; the G5 needs a new motherboard and/or logic board. Verify and accelerate daily back-ups while limping along temporarily.
• Copy all the files back to the replacement 1TB from the bricks. More tedium.
• Install LR 1.4.1 upgrade, which has been issued, retracted, reissued during this timeframe. Upgrade went smoothly.
• Create new catalog. Trivial.
• Import my starting list of keywords from Excel-generated tab-delimited list. I listed about 400 keywords before I decided that I had a workable structure. At this point, I think it will be easier to add new ones in Lightroom. Uploading keywords was straightforward.*
• Relabel the top-level keyword hierarchy words to begin with special characters for forced sorting.

So there it sits. Between now and Thursday, I probably won't actually do much importing of folders and keywording. Anyway, it might be a good idea to let some early adopters work through any potential kinks in 1.4.1.

In the meantime, as I was doing all the copying between drives and hunting stuff down for the Moab Photo Symposium, I found today's picture.

*For what it might be worth, here is my starting list of keywords in an Excel file. The logic is strictly matched to my own typical mental search pattern. Feedback always welcome, especially in the next few days, before I get fully committed to this list.

Links to previous posts on cataloing my archive with Lightroom: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Lupine above the Big Sur coastline (Canon G9, Lightroom 1.3, Photoshop CS3)

Adobe retracted Lightroom update 1.4, discussed in this official Lightroom Journal post. Users are not happy, and whoever signed off on that release is not enjoying Lightroom's helpful Rule #5 (Enjoy!) today. (Find the other four rules in the Lightroom Help menu.)

Honestly, Rule # 5a should be back-up regularly and especially before letting any software self-install its own upgrades. I try not to do any upgrades while I'm in the middle of any project, no matter how the new features might tempt. Why risk distraction and dismemberment of functional resources? I ask "Can I afford a disruption if this goes bad?" before I accept the upgrade-the timing is my choice, my responsibility. Just because the software instructs me to install an upgrade doesn't mean I am compelled to do so.

I actually feel sorry for the developers - they aren't dodging shots from the users on their blog. I'm also glad I waited to let the dust settle on the upgrade before I installed it. Now I do nothing right now, except get back to work on my keyword list.

Ferris Wheel on Balboa Peninsula, Southern California (Canon G9, interpreted with Adobe Lighroom)

Here I am on my third post, and I'm still in the planning stages of my Lightroom implementation. Whew! At this point, I am compiling a hierarchical list of my own keywords in an Excel spreadsheet. Yesterday I described how Lightroom behaved when I tried to upload my own keyword list with non-standard characters like é and §, but I left off without explaining why it matters.

Links to Part 1 and Part 2.

Part 4 added 27 April 2008

Maple leaf, Zion National Park (Canon G9, interpreted with Adobe Lighroom)

It seems I struck a chord with my rant yesterday, so I will carry on with Part 2 of my adventures with Adobe Lightroom.

Link to yesterday's Part 1 and Part 3.

Part 4 added 27 April 2008

Maple leaf on red rock, Zion National Park (Canon G9, raw file interpreted in Adobe Lightroom)

For almost two weeks, I have been toiling away with exploring Adobe Lightroom. I have accomplished a few actual tasks with it, like opening RAW files from the G9, like the one above, but mostly I have been studying the software, and planning/prepping for the big task ahead.