Adobe Lightroom 2

In my previous post on Digital Asset Management, I briefly outlined some of the entry level contenders for DAM software such as Google Picasa and Adobe Photoshop Elements. In the rest of this series, I will look at some of the heavy weights, the professional asset management systems. I will start with the one I use most —  Adobe Lightroom. Not sure if this is a good idea as I it is the product that I am most intimate with, knowing its strengths and weaknesses. Let’s get started…

Adobe Lightroom is now the elephant in the room of DAM software. As John Nack (of Adobe) revealed a short while back, Adobe Lightroom pretty much owns the professional market, beating it’s next nearest competitor, Apple Aperture, by a considerable margin. I have been using it since the very early beta’s (and Pixmantic RawShooter before that, which Adobe bought to kick start Adobe Lightroom), and hopefully, am somewhat qualified to give you a non-professionals opinion.

Library / Catalog Tools:

This is the module of Lightroom where I spend 85%+ of my time. I am slowly working through my back catalog of images, and suffering from OCD as I do, I insist on all images being correctly located, named, tagged, etc. Lightroom is very strong here, having the ability to apply extensive keyword tag hierarchies to images. A strong file renaming engine, along with virtual collections (and collections of collections), and numerous methods of catagorizing images (by colour label, by star rating, and by Pick/Reject) are available. Apples’ Aperture was the first major DAM product to be announced in my memory, but immediately there was a lot of critism regarding it’s approach to asset management; namely migrating all managed images INTO it’s database, removing all external access. While this had it’s merits, Adobe chose to go another way, winning lots of friends in the process, allowing the Lightroom user to:

• Reference the image file from it’s existing location
• Manage the image file by copying it to a managed location, still on the file system and accessible from other tools (I will touch on this again at a later date).
• Manage the image file by moving it to a managed location.
• Manage the image file by converting it to Adobe’s open DNG RAW standard, and moving it to a managed location.

Image Editing:

The second major module with Adobe Lightroom is the develop module, which is where the real fun starts. Here is where you apply image adjustments such as exposure, white balance, contrast, saturation, and a host of other modifications. Version 1.0 of Lightroom restricted these adjustments to the whole of the image, requiring the use of Photoshop for more targeted adjustments such as removing blemishes, or other distractions. Thankfully with version 2, Adobe introduced the adjustment brush and other specific pixel level adjustment tools. Now you can remove spots and blemishes, smooth skin, whiten eyes and teeth, apply graduated filters as well as adjust other settings relating to the entire image. You still need Adobe Photoshop in order to perform more advanced adjustments such as panoramas, collages, HDR, or other major image surgery. I would recommend Martin Evenings’ book if you want to get best value out of the Develop module though…

Altering white balance in Adobe Lightroom

Exports / Sharing:

In some respects this is where Adobe Lightroom has lost ground on the competition, especially Apple Aperture. Out of the box, Lightroom can export images to disk, and to CDROM (not on 64 bit windows), as well as having modules to govern printing, creation of a web gallery, and a slideshow. Doesn’t sound to bad… but Facebook, Flickr, and other online resources are now becoming major marketing tools for photographers, and exporting directly to these locations is a capability now offered by some competitors. Another major gap was the ability to export to a Photo Book creation service. This capability may feel a little consumer orientated, but again, it is offered by Apple Aperture.  Yes, export plugins are available, and I use them myself; they are very capable, but the lack of a native ability to export to the major hosting sites feels like an omission.

The X Factor:

What do I mean by the X Factor? Basically, why would I buy this over a competing product when, on paper,  the competing product is more capable. And for Adobe Lightroom, the X Factor is this… community. Lightroom has a massive community around it, producing tutorials, presets, blogs, reviews, reports, etc. When you are getting started with a product as advanced as Lightroom, that really helps and can’t be overlooked.

Details:

• Link: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/
• Cost: US$ 229
• Platforms: Windows, Mac OSX
• Buy: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

Building foundations — the hard way!

When I started this blog, the web was alight with talk of WordPress, Blogger, and other “blogging platforms”. I eventually chose WordPress as I was blown away by all the varied and artistic themes that were available for it. Also WordPress is extremely extendable through plugins for embedding YouTube movies, photo’s from Flickr and a host of other things. Before you even start blogging, it is important to build a solid foundation for your WordPress Blog. Here are 11 plugins to help with that…

Security

Above all else, you need to ensure the security of your blog. While you may think that it will never happen to you, or that you have little to lose by blog spam, theft, or defacement, it is best not to test those assumptions. Especially when it is so easy with these two plugins:

• WordPress Automatic Upgrade — All software has bugs which can result in major security vulnerabilities. WordPress is no exception. As bugs are discovered and fixed, new versions are released which include these fixes. This plugin greatly simplifies the process of backing up your database and WordPress files, downloading the latest software and installing it and reactivating everything. Plus, updating frequently is easier and saves a lot of heartache over less frequent major upgrade jumps.
• WP Security Scan — For many people, buying hosting and installing WordPress is one of their first encounters with Unix, and Unix security. I am in the lucky position of knowing a little about UNIX, but even for me this plugin is very helpful. It runs a series of checks to ensure that your copy of WordPress, and supporting software (PHP, MySQL) are up2date, and that the permissions on your website directory are appropriate.
• Akismet — This plugin is so popular, and commonplace, it should nearly be part of WordPress at this stage. It’s job is to intercept blog spam. While it may not be as critical as the other two plugins mentioned, it is still in my opinion, an important security function to prevent defacement of your blog with spam.

Backup

Possibly tied in first place for importance is backing up your data. Time after time I have read about people losing their blog content (primarily through disputes / disagreement with their hosting companies, it must be said). The best backups are inclusive (i.e. backup everything, excluding what you don’t need rather than exclude everything, backing up what you need), automated, and off site. As most WordPress content is stored in MySQL database, backing that up is most important, though a monthly full backup of your site directories etc. is not a bad idea either.

• WP-DBManager — There are several plugins dealing with database backup. I like this one as it has the ability to email you the database backup on a schedule (as I use Google Apps for my domain, I have a separate email account set up to receive all backups). And it also adds database tuning!

Statistics

So you are up in running, your blog is secure, and if a disaster were to happen, you have backups to get you back up and running. Now before you open the floodgates to the masses, you might want to know who your visitors are, where they came from, and what they are reading on your blog:

• Google Analytics for WordPress — Google Analytics has become the big daddy of the website statistics world. It’s free, simple to use, and extremely comprehensive in the information it captures. You need a Google Account (NOTE: this is different to a Gmail or a Google Apps account, but you can use your login details from those to set one up. As an added bonus, it also works for Google AdSense), and once it is set up, you are given a piece of JavaScript code to include in all your blog postings, pages, etc. This plugin simplifies this last piece if the puzzle.
• WordPress.com Stats — Sometimes, you just want a simple “summary” of your blog statistics. Well, this is the plugin for you. It places a number of attractive graphs, and stats in your WordPress dashboard.

Search Engine Optimization

Not getting many hits? Let’s be honest with ourselves, it is highly likely we will never make our living as bloggers, but it would be nice to get a little more traffic. Welcome to the science of Search Engine Optimisation or SEO, which has only 258 million hits on Google! I wasn’t even aware of it until I started this blog. Wikipedia defines SEO as:

…is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords.

Basically, it is the process of forming your blog URLs, naming and describing your posts, adding tags, and structuring your site to maximise the chances of good search results. I know people work for years to get to the top in Google, and while I am not there yet with my blog, I am getting closer…

• All in One SEO Pack — This plugin adds some form elements to the “write post” page, allowing you to easily enter search engine friendly descriptions, tags and summaries to your heart’s content!
• Google XML Sitemaps — When Google and other search engines come c®a(w)lling, if you have a properly formatted map of your posts and blog in XML, they will be all the happier. This plugin automatically generates this file for you.
• ShareThis — This plugin isn’t strictly an SEO plugin, but it does help bring traffic to your site. The only plugin here which visually alters your post, it allows visitors to easily submit content they like to Digg.com, Reddit.com, or other social linking sites.

Advertising

Now that you are getting the odd visitor, time to make the site pay. As I mentioned already, I doubt I will retire on the takings, but even if you cover your hosting costs, it all helps!

• AdSense Manager — A lot of people are still very hostile to advertising, finding them intrusive. With much of the web now financed by advertising as long as it is tastefully done, I have no major issue with it. And some times I actually see things which interest me. Google AdSense opened up web advertising to the masses, and the ads they serve up are typically relevant and not too intrusive. This plugin allows you to place ads in a WordPress widget, and in posts. If I had one complaint about this plugin, it is that the drop down box for placing ads in posts is only available in the HTML view.

Caching

Unlike traditional html based websites, WordPress is not just a bunch of static files. Rather it is an application, employing PHP to generate dynamic web pages from data in a MySQL database. This allows a very rich and dynamic web site, but each page does take a little time to generate. Under normal load, this is not an issue, but if you get a flood of visitors it could wipe you out. That is where caching comes in…

• WP Super Cache — There are a number of WordPress caching plugins, but some require loading the PHP engine to serve the static content. This plugin gets around this. Added bonus — developed in Ireland!!

Just as a last little side note on domains — it drives me absolutely nuts when a company advertises their “.co.uk” address to Irish customers. We are not part of the UK, I do not want to pay Sterling, I don’t have a bloody PostCode, and the bloody cheek of marketing to me and then informing me that you don’t bloody deliver to “Eire” (Fuck off Amazon!).

So where do I register…