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Catalog and Metadata Settings

Lesson 13 from: Post-Processing for Outdoor and Travel Photographers

Ben Willmore

Catalog and Metadata Settings

Lesson 13 from: Post-Processing for Outdoor and Travel Photographers

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

13. Catalog and Metadata Settings

Lesson Info

Catalog and Metadata Settings

all right so if I had more than one image selected at the time that I ended up processing my pictures then you're going to find that all the images are adjusted if I'm have that auto sync setting turned on and so here's another panorama here and let's see what would happen had I not had that turned on and how do you decide to do it later let's say that I take maybe this image and I go to the develop module and I don't realize at the time that I process it that it's part of a panorama it can happen if you don't mark all your sequences and deal with that well I can come in here and in this case his eyes and up needing to be brighter I can bring up shadows but in reality it's I would need to be dealt with with the adjustment brush which is something we'll talk about tomorrow where I could actually paint into his eyes I might want to bring down the highlights a little bit for this foreground area make some of the texture in the uh for come out with clarity it's not too much they look a lit...

tle dirty if I get too high and make the image a little more colorful with vibrance that's where the color really comes out it's not too much where it looks artificial and then adjust white mounts why balances the overall color kind of biased of the image does it feel yellowish your bluish and if the image feels like it has too much of one particular color I might need to come in here and warm it up a little bit or cool it down and this is where if I happened to use the white balance reference that y belle card in the field I would have something I could click on with white balance eyedropper tomorrow I'll show you how to end up using the white balance eyedropper and what we'll end up doing is dealing with multiple light sources sometimes especially when I'm traveling will end up shooting and they'll be streetlights in a scene there will be one particular color the lights inside a house will be a different color and then we might have some moonlight or some other light source and we need to make them all look good and using just the slaughters it's not enough if we have mixed light sources so we'll end up getting into that I'm gonna also make sure I have a little bit of black in this image so go to the black slider I'll hold down the option key to see if there is any black and there's not so I'll bring it down and get the little bit of black and fine tune it now if I go back to the grid view by typing g I only had one image selected in this case and it's part of a panorama I really wish I could have had the other images selected and I had auto sync turn on so they'd all get changed but I didn't think of that at the time and sometimes that just happens so how can I now get the settings from this image on all the others well there's a couple different methods and let's take a look out the first is I could press the right mouse button on top of this image when I do that there's a choice called developed settings anytime you find that called develop settings it means whatever you did in the developed module so your adjustments and let's look at what's in the menu first there's reset and reset would mean let's clear off any settings I've done let's bring it back as if we've never touched the image before do you remember when we were in the developed module there's a button on the bottom right called reset and if you clicked it it brought you back to the original picture is if you've never adjusted it so that would end up doing it uh getting rid of all our settings well what we need to do in this particular case is copy the settings we have the settings on the image that I currently have selected copy um in here it says exactly which settings would you like to copy all chip check here check all so copies everything that I've done in the time I wouldn't want to do this it's a pse faras check all is let's say that I used the adjustment brush and I came in and painted just on his eyes on lee brightened up a very selective area it's only going to be found in that one photograph well then I wouldn't want to copy all of the studies I would turn off this one checkbox called local adjustments and that would mean adjustments that have painted into localized areas would be ignored but in this case I haven't painted any end so it doesn't matter so I just copied those settings then I could select the other images I can right click on any one of them it doesn't matter which one in the same little side menu there's paste in that would get it on to all the other images do you see him slowly update choose undo the other way I could have done it instead of copying and pasting yes if I had all of those images selected and the image that has been adjusted was mohr selected or the most selected it's what they call it you can tell that it's the only one that's been adjusted because it's got the little icon on it the others don't then when I right click on the image go to develop settings there's a choice it's just called sync settings which in general means make them consistent and you get the same dialogue box and in this case you could think of was just a one step process instead of having to copy and then paste in this case it's doing that in one step but it does the same end result so the reason why you might want to use copy paste versus sink settings is it might be that it's not a panorama is something where maybe on this particular image I have a particular treatment that I've applied to it maybe vignette ing were something else that darkens the edges I want a copy just that setting and then I want to go through all sorts of pictures and all different folders that looked nothing like that and just apply it across them khun paste into one folder on a particular image and then browse my images seymour paste onto another I would only use sink settings if I have something like a panorama and I forgot to select him all at once because then I'm only doing it one time for this particular siri's so we have sync settings in copy and paste the end result is very similar it just depends if you want to paste them on all sorts of different files where you might be switching between folders in pacing again switch to another folder and paste again then copy and paste makes more sense also in this menu you're going to find any pre sets that you've made so if you have a pre set way of converting the black and white or anything you like to apply you can very quickly apply any preset by simply right clicking on any image in choosing develop settings right now let me show you how these changes that we make to our images are not destructive to your image and how we could determine where they're stored if I go to the light room menu there are two areas where you have preferences there's the normal preferences in catalog preferences the normal preferences affect all of light room regardless of what catalog you have opened and you can switch between different catalogs I have one catalog for iphone photos different catalog for mine real camera photos uh that type of thing so the preferences settings would affect all catalogues you open and the catalog settings would only affect this particular one so let's see what kind of settings can we find in here here a catalogue settings this is turning how often you might back it up that all depends how frequently you process images with that but this is going to have light room prompt you each time you quit it will end up prompting you each week you can do it once a day whatever you want it all depends on how comfortable you feel beyond lose work that is so far olga's faras your adjustments go you have file handling which determines how bigger your previews with the catalog that I work with in the field I make it for my standard preview sizes are not that big because this screen that I work on my laptop is not as big as what I work on at home usually you want to make your standard sized previews about the same size as the screen that you work on and not a dramatic amount larger foam at home they're working on a big screen the highest settings usually going to be more useful uh here's where you choose if you wanted to discard those huge previews the full size ones you want to discard him after a day a week or a month because they're going to make your previous file huge and usually I only use them for a few minutes to check critical focus and so you could have them throw away after a day that would make it so your previous file never stays overly big but in here there's one setting that can be uh important for some things and that isthe one not going to cover everything that's here but one that you want to think about and it's called automatically right changes into ex mp whenever we make a change to an image in light room it just writes down some text to say you moved the slider to a different value and it just writes it down it doesn't actually permanently change your picture it just remembers where'd you move the setting too and we can store that information in a couple different places when this is turned off it's saved on ly in the light room database you know that one file we created when we went up to the file menu chose new and I created a catalogue well in that catalog file would be all my adjustments for all of my pictures if I turn this check box on it's gonna also record them somewhere else I'll turn that check box on it's called automatically right changes to ex mp and now any time I make a change to my image go to the develop module in this case do that not only does it save the change that I've made into the light room catalog file it also saves it onto my hard drive right next to the picture itself and let me show you what that looks like I'm going to go view this image on my hard drive and I can do that by right clicking on it there's a choice called showing finder the finder is what the mac calls its main operating system it would say something like show and explorer if it was on windows because they be windows explorer this particular one I was working on a smart preview and not the actual file itself I'll have to find one of those that we important to do this with okay I'll make a change to this image instead I'm going to do is move two sliders I'll bring up shadows and I'll bring up clarity let's go back to our great and let's see how it saved them it's saved them into the light room catalog but because I turned on that one preference if I right click on this image and say show and find her and I look on lee this file in this folder has an extra little file with it do you see here is the raw file it self and then there's the spare one they have the exact same file name the only difference is the ending si dot ex mp that little bitty file is a text file the file size if I look on the right side is tiny okay in fact it's actually smaller than that most of the time it's that you're operating system has a minimum number it can create for file sizes and you can usually create something smaller than about eight k so I'm gonna take that file and I'm going to drag it to my desktop I got to get light room out of its full screen mode so I could do that one moment if you ever have it where you can't see the menu bar and light room you can't get to your desktop easily in certain images certain ways but I'm gonna take that and I'm going to drag it to my desktop to put a copy there darn it put it over here then I'm going to make another change to my picture I'm just going to come down here and I'm going to adjust my black slider and then I'm gonna go view that image again in this little file it's here I should've updated because I made additional change I'm going to make another copy of it to my desktop so I have two versions that'll tell me if there's one already there and I'll say keep both all right let's go look at my desktop here we have two files this is what we originally had when I just did the image I had adjusted to sliders total and this is what we ended up having after I moved in additional slider I want to show you that the changes that light room make it just text so let's compare those two files I have an app that can compare textiles and we'll see how this stuff is oh tell me it's gonna work good if I dragged the two files to this program we'll see how it records the information in exactly what changed and I'll show you why these little ex mp files I can be useful all right if you look at the text on the left side of my screen this is the actual contents of that little eight k file it looks like a lot of gibberish and a lot of technical junk that you wouldn't care about which most of it isthe so you never look in these but it is just text and if you look at some of these settings let's just scroll down a little bit till I get down to here look at what some of these air called exposure set to zero contrast set to zero highlights is set to zero the one flight er it's comparing these two documents by the way the area highlighted in red is the only area where there's differences between the two documents here in the original you see blacks was set to zero and all it did when I made the change is it changed that little file to say negative fifty one because that's what I did to the blacks so if I compare these two files on ly the areas that are in red have changed so what is it the modification date changed we don't care about that up here some sort of idea that's overly technical change that's like a a way to check to see if this file's been corrupt but the actual plane tax the blacks changed and then some other texts are what's known as check some data but in general the only part in here that makes any sense is just the plain text description of what has changed in the image so why don't I show you that because what it means is these little files contain the actual adjustment that we applied within light room and so if when I back up my files I back up that little bitty ex mp file I just backed up the adjustment with the file so what this means is if I choose to save my settings as ex mp files it means I'm going to get tiny little extra files within my folder but those little files will allow me to update any backups that I have even if those backups are multiple drives and it gives me a spare backup beyond the light room catalog the light room catalog can become corrupt on occasion in unless you have good backup of it I like having an extra layer of backup so what I would suggest you do if you want extra layer of backup you should do the following you don't remember any of the stuff I just mentioned your showed you in the five just go to the light room menu choose catalog settings in catalog settings under the choice called metadata there is a choice right here called automatically right changes to ex mp what that means is back up the little bitty changes I've made to my picture back them up onto my hard drive they show his extra little files and also doing that is going to make it so I can keep backups on other hard drives up to date I'll show you that tomorrow the other thing that doing that does is it makes it so that now this image the adjustments of applied to it can be used in other adobe programs if you happen to browse this image in bridge open it through camera when light rooms not running it will have the adjustment attached to it bridge will make it look just like it does here in light room adobe cameron will come in with the exact same adjustments we had here in light room and it will be able to handle it so it's a personal choice if you want to turn on that setting but I find it gives me an extra level of backup when it comes to my settings and you will see tomorrow how I use that to keep other hard drives that contained backup files up to date in a way that I think gives me mohr security than just backing up my light room catalog because otherwise every single adjust you've made all your pictures are contained only one spot and that's in a light room catalog if that's gets corrupt and you don't have a very recent backup of it you just lost all your adjustments he applied to the images since your last catalog back up but like I say we'll discuss that more tomorrow but when you are saving your changes light room it is just like text it just happens to be there was a bunch of other technical junk in the same file that is the reason why most the time you don't need to look at them but it's nice to know that they work that way any questions about those little ex mps just one from brett ese that I think I know the answer teo so we'll light room move all of these ex mp files when you move files in light room toe other folders yes they will it knows to move them along the same thing is true if you move things within bridge bridge is smart enough to know about them in also ifyou've ever adjusted raw files in bridge it automatically creates those ex mp files for you but it doesn't show them instead and bridge it simply shows an icon to tell you they exist there's a little round icon that is somewhat similar it serves the same function is this little icon here in that that icon means that if you're working on a raw file there's an ex mp file sitting in the same folder when you import images that have been a judge with camera into light room if those files exist light room reads them in picks up the adjustments and that's one thing a lot of people have asked about which is what if I didn't use light room for a while instead I used photoshopped in bridge and camera the stuff that comes with that and I want to get into this what do I do I have all these images adjusted well if they're raw files and you go and look in the folders you'll find that if you've adjusted them with bridge they'll be that little except people light woman we will read it right we'll pick up on the adjustments you complied with camera and it will look exactly the same in light room and that was actually question that photo shop girl asks so how is the ex mp different in light room compared to digital file shooting raw that has an ex mp sidecar attached to it well it contains light room specific information or I should say adobe specific information because that info can be read both from camera which is part of photo shop or light room some cameras might also deliver an ex mp file and that would just be a way for it to include extra data about the picture in light room could just add to it because it's just a text file it can add some extra entries in it but if you ever then see those ex mp files on your hard drive I don't delete him because those are the actual settings that are applied to your picture well that's the question that ruddy paws just asked if you delete the ex mp file do you lose the changes that you've made to that file you can lose the changes that are in there unless you also haven't said where if it's putting them in the database it came back him up there but if I come in here and delete that file the little adjustment icon can go away especially if you're if you ever work with bridging in kamerad that's completely the case in light room it can also save some of them into the database also known as the cat that is great all right so we are close to the end of the day here if you've got something you want covered maybe five minutes we could keep going or we could and now it's up to you uh let's take a look here look good uh one other thing we should cover because it's something we didn't do it take about five minutes to do and that is when you import your pictures remember we just clicked the import button I mentioned that I created a template in with the temple it allowed me to do is have photoshopped or not photoshopped light room named my files nicely remember we had a little renamed template I called it use this one always in what it ended up doing is making it so that all we need to do to rename my files is typing a shoot name just calls creative live and it would automatically put the date of the beginning whatever I taped him for shoot name and the number of my files remember we did that well there's one other type of of template that end up creating that I always apply when importing my pictures and so we might as well cover it now because it's only takes about five minutes or so and that is in here there is a choice called applied during import plain here in import and here we have two general settings one is called develop settings this will list all of your presets so if you want to import all of your images and haven't looked black and white well if you created a preset that is for black and white you could choose it here and it would automatically apply when you're importing the pictures but below that is the one we need to create it's a meditative preset metadata preset I'll click here and I'll show you the precept that I have set up in here uh show you how they're made but here you can create a new one or you can edit one that already exists but I usually have mindset to this one that says cooperate two thousand fourteen and what this is going to do is whenever I import my pictures it's gonna automatically take them is being copyrighted and it's going to take my name is the creator and it's going to put my website address within the picture not words visible but where if somebody knows toe look for cooperate information they'll be able to find out how to contact me and so here's how you create when you go to the side menu usually would choose new to create a brand new one if you've never made one before I'm gonna choose edit just to show you what's contained within the one that's already made here this comes up and in this case there's a check box here called copyright and I can type in first off if I choose copyrighted this is going to cause whenever this image is open into photo shop to have a copyright symbol appear in the title bar at the very top we're toasting the name of the file he'll have a copyright symbol a lot of people don't notice it's there but it is there a show it's copyrighted and here I can type in the copyright message I would like to attach to the image and then here you have a rights usage term some photographers will choose to try to get their photos out in the world and used for a lot of things if that's something you want to do is allow people to use your images but not for commercial purposes you know so like texaco is not going to suddenly use it in an advertisement or forward or something then look into a website it's called creative commons creative commons is where there is a lot of contract terms that you can just say this is licensed under creative commons in the particular version of it and somebody go up on there on the creative commons website to read the exact terms because you can have creative commons of with retribution I think it is where they have toa liz esther website if they use it and not for commercial purposes and things like that so if you want to have a lot of people use your images look into that website called creative commons I'm just going to put in here all right server reserved then it's useful tohave a special page in your website that's usually hidden to the general public just cause you don't want it to be blatant on your page but it could be a a sight that people can go too if they want to look up how can I license this picture from you so my website is digital mastery dot com and that I could do a forward slash and let's say I want to set up a page called copyright work may be a page called licensing that kind of thing then this is going to be attached to the image and if somebody were to receive this image they can view this information in photo shop or in bridge or in a lot of other programs that could display metadata and at least I'm gonna have this tag so I'm gonna click done here so that I could do this if you go through some of these other fields there's also an area where you can put in an address say that to me and say yes okay so now once I've created that pre set then I just choose to preset name right here and it's sticky meaning it remember the settings and so every time I open you know import images in the light room will always be take with mike operate information and therefore if I ever give somebody else one of these files let's say export it within light room there's a choice of include copyright info and it will make it so they could easily figure out how to contact me the license that picture or who at least created it so it's one step you can use but you should do more than that you should also register your image is s o that that's if somebody does use your image without permission you can get higher penalties from them if you take them to court but that's something I can't do within light room so it's not something we'll get into here so that is the other kind of priest said I choose I choose it here it will be sticky so it'll always be there the only time I set it to none is importing somebody else's pictures I don't want their pictures tagged with my copyright otherwise I could get in trouble for that if I give it to somebody else and they assume something

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Handbook
Bonus Packet
Post Processing Practice Files

Ratings and Reviews

Photoracer
 

After catching parts of each of the three days, I knew that I would need to have access to this wealth of information. What is great about the program is the ability to stop and go back over something that is not fully understood...and be able to do that until confident enough to move on. I saw no "fluff" in the course, just great information imparted with a style that is makes it easy to understand. CreativeLive scored a big hit with this course! The bonus material is SO valuable, especially the presets. That saves an enormous amount of time for me. My appreciation of the power behind the software is becoming ever clearer. Thanks, Ben, for another outstanding presentation!

Shannon Beelman Photography
 

Ben has been amazing! He is a wealth of information on organizing images as well as great tips to make your travel images pop just a little more. I came into this class feeling like I had a good handle on lightroom and have come out with a better understanding of the power of the software to make artistic life easier. He covers tips, tricks and little known options that help make workflow smother. I have sat here watching as much of the free broadcast as I can and in this last week I have gotten control over years of images in my lightroom. This is one I know I will be buying soon.

johninblackhawk
 

Great class! Somehow, it was enjoyable not having Ben default to "curves for everything"! I don't think the title for this course did it justice, tho. This class was 90% Light Room and 10% Photoshop. I was very happy to discover that dynamic and equally as happy to purchase this course! If you are new to Light Room, this class is a MUST. Creative Live offers several LR classes but this is the one to own. Ben is working on his new book about Light Room Mastery - can't wait! In the meanwhile, I'll be watching Ben's thorough approach to LR in this video. So, don't let the title throw you a curve ball, if you are new to Light Room or a seasoned user, there's plenty of great information - delivered as only Ben can! Thanks CL for this great class!

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