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Have a 1TB USB hard drive for backup (is primary now, about to buy a faster drive to use as primary and relegate the USB one to backup). Current computer is an early 2011 MBP, so it has Thunderbolt but no USB 3.0. I've got ~650GB of photos, have not used Lightroom before so I'm a little unsure with how all this stuff with catalogs, etc works. Originally, I was about to buy a 1TB Thunderbolt drive. It'll be significantly faster than my present USB 2.0 drive, but apparently the Thunderbolt speed will effectively be limited to what I'd get with USB 3.0, due to the 5400rpm drive inside. Because of that, I was thinking of buying something like a 128 or 256GB SSD and slapping that in a Thunderbolt enclosure, and using it to work on current projects, and move it to the USB hard drive (and the USB hard drive backup) when I'm done and have uploaded them or whatever. Then it occurred to me that it'd probably make more sense to just use my Macbook's hard drive for that purpose, which is a humble 320GB, 5400rpm... so might as well upgrade that to an SSD (not only would I be getting speed gains when accessing the files I'm working on, but also from the OS/LR itself being on a faster drive, right?). I figure I'd buy a 256GB SSD for the Macbook, work with the files on that, and just another 2.5" USB 3.0 external for moving stuff to after I'm done with it (with the present one I have as the backup). Does that make sense given how Lightroom works, or am I setting myself up for some headaches as far as the catalog stuff goes? From what I understand, as long as I point LR towards the new folder, everything should follow/work fine afterwards, right? Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 09:47 on Oct 18, 2013 |
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Oct 18, 2013 09:42
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I do the split SSD/HDD thing and it ~~=owns+~ Import to SSD, gently caress with it until bored, move everything to hdd. In the evening everything gets backed up.
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Oct 18, 2013 14:22
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evil_bunnY posted:I do the split SSD/HDD thing and it ~~=owns+~
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Oct 19, 2013 06:20
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I've driven myself up the wall trying to bring this one back from the dead. After about an hour, I'm throwing it out to the experts. If anyone's home and bored, I would LOVE to see/learn from your final curves salvaging this. God help me by mattphilpott, on Flickr Here's a correctly balanced one for reference, I just can't seem to get the first one looking natural.  Better by mattphilpott, on Flickr E: Or if you have opinions on the one I think is right, have at me. Learning, etc. Huxley fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Oct 20, 2013 |
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Oct 20, 2013 01:07
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Huxley posted:
The second one looks fine to me. Did you have the white balance set to tungsten or something for the first one? Star War Sex Parrot posted:I use a 256GB/4TB Fusion Disk and it owns even more. evil_bunnY posted:I do the split SSD/HDD thing and it ~~=owns+~ Sweet, thanks! I put in the order for a 256GB SSD and another 1GB external last night... to my surprise, it was actually cheaper in Japan than the US (for goddamn once)  Once I get everything set up, it'll be time to start processing stuff. Anyone got any links to favorite (free) presets I can download and fool around with? Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Oct 20, 2013 |
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Oct 20, 2013 02:06
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Does the nex do a raw format? If so, and you're shooting jpegs, don't do that, raw files will let you set the white balance later. Try using the color balance tool before doing your curves. The 'correct' one below looks pretty brown to me.
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Oct 20, 2013 02:07
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Huxley posted:I've driven myself up the wall trying to bring this one back from the dead. After about an hour, I'm throwing it out to the experts. If anyone's home and bored, I would LOVE to see/learn from your final curves salvaging this.
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Oct 20, 2013 02:10
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As close as I could get to the second one:
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Oct 20, 2013 02:17
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This is as natural as I could get the skin tones with a quick edit in Lightroom. I think your second one is a bit warm.
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Oct 20, 2013 02:43
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You guys are wizards. Thank you. I was bouncing a flash off the ceiling and wasn't sure which WB setting for that, and guessed incorrectly. I figured it out better on the second try, it just turned out that the best picture was the first one. The NEX does shoot RAW, but I've put it off because I don't have a way to edit Sony RAW files at home. I have full PS at work, but only have the Canon pack-in software from a previous camera at the house. I guess it's time to go ahead and invest in Lightroom. What was your basic process here? Is it really just experience+fiddling, or starting with droppers as a first step or something? Every time I pulled the blue down far enough everything else seemed to go too wacky in response. I guess the yellows coming up as the blue goes out?
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Oct 20, 2013 04:15
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Lightroom is totally worth it, I wouldn't even bother taking photos without it. My adjustments were: Temp: +40 Tint: +10 Exposure: -0.7 Highlights: -24 Whites: +38 Blacks: -14 Clarity: -3 Saturation adjustments: Red: -30 Orange: +7 Green: -20 Aqua: -100 Blue: -100 Magenta: -15 If you shoot RAW you have much better control. Also try bouncing the flash off a wall rather than the ceiling for a more natural look.
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Oct 20, 2013 04:50
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Oct 20, 2013 07:36
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Dunno how great it is, but if you buy a print copy of Advanced Photoshop 115 apparently you get a copy of DXO Optics Pro 6 software. http://www.dxo.com/intl/photography/dxo-optics-pro
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Oct 31, 2013 18:23
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LR4 recently started acting funny for me, has anyone else seen this or did I change a setting somehow? In the Library module, when using grid view, when I click on an individual photo in the center panel it now automatically switches to loupe view when in the past it would stay in grid view. It's driving me nuts having to keep changing back to grid view every time.
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Nov 9, 2013 15:41
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I used a TV displaying a solid green image to green screen my baby into a pumpkin patch.  I did my best to match the direction and light in the foreground with the light in the background image I planned to use. There are a few errors I wasn't able to correct for:
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Nov 10, 2013 05:12
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You did a good job of blending the photos but the saturation/exposure hurts my eyes.
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Nov 10, 2013 05:15
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mr. mephistopheles posted:You did a good job of blending the photos but the saturation/exposure hurts my eyes. Yeah, actually, I agree. I think I will fix that now. Thanks.
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Nov 10, 2013 05:16
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Public Service Announcement: back up your LR catalogue to a second drive, or preferably, another machine. I got some random file system corruption issue last Thursday that just couldn't be solved, so spent Friday night reinstalling windows and then everything else. Even though I could retrieve my LR catalogue from the drive (and the cat backups), they were all corrupted and LR couldn't repair them. All photos were backed up to my fileserver, plus a 3.5" HD sitting in my safe dep box, but the only external backup of my catalogue was ancient (since I don't really use /users for anything, I never bothered archiving it). Does anyone just use xmp sidecars? Because that would have totally saved me.
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Nov 11, 2013 00:31
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We do complete backups?
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Nov 11, 2013 00:51
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Alternative option, don't ignore that weekly backup dialog that LR harasses you with.. it writes a duplicate of your catalog file to the hard drive. 
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Nov 11, 2013 01:35
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xzzy posted:Alternative option, don't ignore that weekly backup dialog that LR harasses you with.. it writes a duplicate of your catalog file to the hard drive. That's the problem - I was doing those, but (by default) they were to the same drive (the main system SSD) and the primary catalogue, so when everything went bad the ~10gb of backup catalogues were all useless. Hence the warning to not be bad at things like me  evil_bunnY posted:We do complete backups? That's what smart people do. Dumb people look at the time it would take to reprocess everything without a final TIFF and get depressed. On the bright side, it's an excuse to go back and fix some of the terrible edits you did 5 years ago when you first started shooting RAW. SLIDERS TO THE RIGHT and tinted grad filters just doesn't seem as cool anymore. BrosephofArimathea fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Nov 11, 2013 |
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Nov 11, 2013 01:43
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Oh, I guess I misunderstood how completely your filesystem had failed. I use rsync to distribute my photos between four different hard drives to hopefully avoid that problem.
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Nov 11, 2013 01:45
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 _DSC4719 by Stingray of Doom, on Flickr So I have this photo here taken with a nifty fifty, and the perspective seems kinda wonky with the back building. I guess it was an angle to the other buildings or something. Photoshop has a lot of powerful tools to fix perspective to make whole photo more symmetrical, but I am not well versed in them. Any tips?
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Nov 13, 2013 06:51
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Putrid Grin posted:
With lightroom or photoshop, you just want to use the lens correction tool. I always try to rotate first to get a center line straight up and down, cause that will make the correction easier, then play with the vertical correction, and then horizontal if it needs it (not so often). Here you can see the settings I used. *edit* if inserted file does not work* http://www.poopinmymouth.com/net/sa/persp.gif poopinmymouth fucked around with this message at 10:59 on Nov 13, 2013 |
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Nov 13, 2013 10:51
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Pff, manual adjustments. Upright will fix that image for you automatically. in photoshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TKRAmoZ2co in lightroom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4-V2hLgf7Q
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Nov 13, 2013 14:03
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For someone new to Lightroom (and photography), what book(s) would be recommended to get started? The one recommended in the OP (The Creative Digital Darkroom) says it's for intermediate and advanced photographers, and also is from 2008. Is there anything specific for LR 5 that might be a good starting point, like say, this, which seems very well reviewed on Amazon?
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Nov 14, 2013 03:34
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McCoy Pauley posted:For someone new to Lightroom (and photography), what book(s) would be recommended to get started? The one recommended in the OP (The Creative Digital Darkroom) says it's for intermediate and advanced photographers, and also is from 2008. Is there anything specific for LR 5 that might be a good starting point, like say, this, which seems very well reviewed on Amazon? Have you considered a month subscription to Lynda.com? Their tutorials are pretty great and they also have other related photography courses that you could watch.
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Nov 14, 2013 04:13
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daspope posted:Have you considered a month subscription to Lynda.com? Their tutorials are pretty great and they also have other related photography courses that you could watch. I had not, but thanks, I'll check that out. I suppose my question assumes a book is a good place to start learning LR5. But if there are better options, I'd certainly be interested to check them out.
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Nov 14, 2013 04:18
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Haven't used Lynda.com, but videos I think would be the way to go. All the different panels on the left, right, and bottom of the screen can be kinda overwhelming at first, and contextual changes certainly don't help with the acclimation. Plus, with video, you can watch as the teacher applies an effect and see how it changes the picture in real time. If you're new to photography in general, learning what the different effects are (dodging and burning, clarity, hue/luminance/saturation, etc.) is just as important as learning how to achieve or manipulate those effects in Lightroom.
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Nov 14, 2013 04:21
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Lynda is good if you've got a job that pays for it, but you can find all the same poo poo in YouTube for free with a little looking.
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Nov 14, 2013 06:03
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The only thing to remember about LR is that at its core it's just a database sitting next to your files. Choose a file structure early. Link the shortcut you use to the catalog, not Lightroom (to prevent adding to the wrong catalog) Backup to a place that isn't in your house (online backup is $5 a month). Add at least basic tags, they'll make it much easier to find stuff later.
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Nov 14, 2013 11:22
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I put all of my files in a single catalog that I never back up ever because I am a If I lose all of my photos I will just take more.
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Nov 14, 2013 11:58
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evil_bunnY posted:
Have an off-site backup to recommend?
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Nov 14, 2013 18:24
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triplexpac posted:Have an off-site backup to recommend? I use crash plan. It's dirt cheap and unlimited. I back up my PC to my ~home server~, and crash plan backs that up.
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Nov 14, 2013 18:58
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Mom wanted a photo of her kids/spouses and grandkids. House was too small for a nice shot and had a 3 week newborn so couldn't stand outside all night. Wasn't prepped so I put two cars with their headlights on and a speedlight on the camera to help fill out. Still didn't turn out well, my mom actually took the picture, too dark and headlights had a definite hotspot. Increasing exposure really brought out the hotspot on our waists. Tried evening that out and photoshopped my nephew's face from another shot where he actually looked at the camera.  Might have went a bit too far in bringing up the exposure, but I think it was salvaged ok, all things considered. 
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Nov 14, 2013 20:09
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Mightaswell posted:I use crash plan. It's dirt cheap and unlimited. I back up my PC to my ~home server~, and crash plan backs that up. All of the bootcuts. ALL OF THEM evil_bunnY fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 22:02
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evil_bunnY posted:I do the same. I've done a few restores and everything does take forever, but at least it works. Ha, the print I got for her is a 12x24 so the crop is a bit better there.
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Nov 14, 2013 22:37
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McCoy Pauley posted:For someone new to Lightroom (and photography), what book(s) would be recommended to get started? Martin Evening's books are always the answer to the 'what book for the photoshops/lightrooms' http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Photosh...=martin+evening http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Photosh...=martin+evening Kelby's books are generally good, but really basic (like 'what's a mouse, grampa?!' level) and he constantly injects painful 'humour' which you have to wade through. BrosephofArimathea fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Nov 15, 2013 |
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Nov 15, 2013 01:39
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Thanks all for the advice on videos and books for LR5. Now that I was getting ready to pull the trigger on a copy of LR5, I've seen that Adobe is offering a deal on a Creative Cloud plan where you get access to LR5 and Photoshop CC (plus some other stuff) for $10/month, if you sign up for a year. $120 over the year for LR5, plus Photoshop CC access, sounds pretty good in comparison to $150 for a onetime purchase of LR5. The only hesitation I have is that being a novice to LR, and not having used full blown Photoshop in about 10 years, how much use would I really get out of Photoshop CC? I'm willing to dismiss that hesitation and figure this could be a good opportunity to learn Photoshop CC, and maybe as I learn LR I'd find myself wanting to use tools in Photoshop. And for the price the whole package just seems pretty attractive. Is there anything I'm missing that might suggest that for somebody starting out it'd be better just to make a one-time purchase of LR5 rather than opt for this subscription?
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Nov 24, 2013 17:46
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The more I learn in Lightroom, the less I've been using Photoshop. My workflow used to be straight from Camera Raw to PS6 but now I just come straight into LR5 and only use PS for resizing.
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Nov 24, 2013 18:24
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