| Moderated by: chrisbet, | Page: 1 2   |
|
|||||||
| Catalog Apps revisited... - Page 1 | |
Rating: 
|
| Author | Post |
|---|
| Posted: Wed Jul 31st, 2013 23:20 |
|
1st Post |
TomOC
|
Well I definitely have to thank Rich Whetton for bringing me around to this. All the talk about capture one, which uses either catalogs or a "sessions" file handling methodology, I've come full circle and I'm now taking a second look at light room. I purchased capture one, and I don't regret it. It does about 80% of what Photoshop does; the other 20% it does differently sometimes better sometimes not, and it does a few things that Photoshop does not do. According to many of the users of capture one, the catalog system is new and not yet completely stable, particularly for large catalogs. The sessions method seems really silly to me, and creates all sorts of folders and records that I just don't need. My answer was going to be try both methods and just delete the catalogs or sessions, flatten the files of images I'm printing, save them the way I always do, and I've got a new raw converter that (particularly for the Fuji files) is a little bit better than ACR. As I played with capture one using small catalogs I got comfortable with that idea. I then thought back to some of the things that Rich said about using light room and it working so closely with Photoshop. That has me taking a whole new look at light room. I really love the way it does some things – they still fill a little uncomfortable compared to I customize Photoshop shortcuts and actions and plug-ins. I'm at the point now where I have a couple of semi-intelligent questions for Rich and you other light room users: 1- since I want to have the same information on both my laptop and iMac (at least for my current months shooting, the solution I've come up with is to save the catalog in my dropbox folder. My thought is that at the end of the month when I move the month folder to my external hard drive for archiving, I move the catalog along with it. Does this sound reasonable? Are there any pitfalls to starring in dropbox, or moving later to the hard drive? 2- I still don' t have a good enough feel for LR vs PS to frame this question correctly, but here goes...what does PS do that LR does not? When do you HAVE to hand off the image file to PS? Is there a list somewhere of what PS does that LR doesn't and vice versa? and which one does which better? At the end of the day, after watching a couple of hours of Adobe TV on LR, I feel like...hey, doesn't this replace PS? Does it? It seems a little less straight forward but it actually has some features (like simple way to make printer templates) that are complicated to set up but will be long run timesavers. If I can get confident that I can live with catalogs, I will spend the time to learn all this... so what do you think? thanks, tom ... an old dog but not totally unwilling to learn new tricks 
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Thu Aug 1st, 2013 04:01 |
|
2nd Post |
jk
|
Q1. I use LR5 as my catalog DAM. I put the catalog on the drive where all the images live. So if I use LR to access local file the I just make a new catalog which I can delete easily. The main catalog on the networked drive is accessible from all machines. I copy all new folders of files onto the network drive as soon as I download from the camera. If i wan to sync I just sync the xmp files which are tiny. This way if I edit in PS, LR, but not Bibble/ASP or Capture One then I have all my changes and especially any metadata changes. in fact some metadata changes om CO, PS, LR and Bibble5/ASP are all freely exchanged for EXIF changes or catalogs. The latest version 7.1.3 of CO allows sharing of catalogs with LR but it is still very new and since I dont use the CO catalogs only sessions. Q2 So much more - Actions, proper layer editing. That is more than enough to stop me using LR except for trivial edits if at all. Woof, woof.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Thu Aug 1st, 2013 12:20 |
|
3rd Post |
TomOC
|
I guess I just have to use it for a while to see what it does to my DAM system. I use Media Pro for archiving my catalogs - none of the other apps work so well or manage as many files in a catalog. That said, what I also need is a smaller subset of images - maybe the last 3 months worth located and synced on my laptop and iMac and the catalog somewhere like Dropbox so I can access them at home or away. I THINK the dropbox solution will work...still not positive. As to the layer issue, I have a copy of Perfect Photo Suite, which includes Perfect Layers (not used on Photoshop) which gives LR all the layer goodness of PS plus a little. As for Actions...I have quite a few, but it looks like many can be recreated in LR as presets? Or not... Oh well... This insane project is taking mountains of time Where will it all end? Probably with a grudging subscription to PS? Not so much just for ACR, more perhaps to save the accumulated working knowledge of PS - but it has exposed me to some of the advantages of CO7 and LR... I just don't completely see the path for integrating them peacefully ...
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Thu Aug 1st, 2013 16:39 |
|
4th Post |
jk
|
I have a copy of Perfect Layers for Lightroom but in truth it is easier to just open the image in PS and save the final edit as a JPG/TIFF.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Wed Aug 7th, 2013 06:22 |
|
5th Post |
richw
|
Tom, Q1 - there is functionality in Lightroom for Synchronising a catalogue between a PC and laptop. I have never used it but I believe it came in about version 3, because a lot of photographers were screaming for it. I'll see if I can find a tutorial for it, I believe there is one in lightroomkillertips.com. Q2 - everything that is in ACR is in Lightroom but no more without purchasing plugins. ACR can do a hell of a lot now, local adjustments with the brush and other tools, most photo-fixing type adjustments are possible but fine work, compositing etc need photoshop. There are however a lot of third party plugins that extend this functionality. As well as the layers plug in JK mentioned, Nik software do a lot including Silver Effects and HDR which look good, I might try them out when extra funds are available, but for now generally if it needs that bit extra I use Photoshop. I always go back to Lightroom for printing, creating Jpgs or TIFFs, or web galleries. Not tried books yet but intend to fairly soon.
|
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Wed Aug 7th, 2013 14:02 |
|
6th Post |
TomOC
|
Rich- I've spent a lot of time in the last two weeks trying to get my head around both CO7 and LR. I have come to the conclusion for now, at least, that co7 does a little more, but does not integrate nearly as well with 3P plugins. I've spent enough time with LR (finally - I bought LR4 because of the book module...and was disappointed that it did not do the one thing I queried adobe on and they said it would do...custom end flaps . Now that I've spent some time and watch a whole number of tutorials, I see why photographers like it so much. I can see where you would still go to PS from time to time, but it is so hard to come back from PS (why is it easier to get from LR to PS, adobe?) that I think you would work harder to try to do all your work in LR. Certainly printing is better! And the OnOne plugins work directly and much faster than in PS.I have a catalog solution that I think will work - keeping the LR catalog in Dropbox. The worry of corrupting and screwing it up still lies just below the surface for me, but so long as I remember to sync everything before working in LR, I'm going to be fine. Over time I'll find a solution to what I do with all the catalogs (I'm thinking now of one for each year) and where I will put older ones etc., but I've decided that if I lose them, no harm no foul...the raw files still exists and I keep a separate file for each image I actually print - non-destructive be damned, I flatten all of these printed files and save them full sized either as a .psd or .tif. So if the catalogs wind up gone/corrupted, I probably won't really lose much that I care about. Thanks for your encouragement and help in this...
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Wed Aug 7th, 2013 14:07 |
|
7th Post |
TomOC
|
jk wrote:I have a copy of Perfect Layers for Lightroom but in truth it is easier to just open the image in PS and save the final edit as a JPG/TIFF. You're probably right about that, JK. But the problem I see is that it is easy to get from LR to PS but no so easy to return... I really like the print module in LR - easy to make presets to use for different types of prints and different printers. If I was doing a project with lots of layers that I was moving in and out of the files, there is no doubt that PS is the only way to go. Other than that, I'm finding little I can't do in LR once I learn how... Surprised to be admitting this - and the catalogs may still drive me away - but I'm very pleasantly surprised by the LR goodness . It definitely needs some tweaking for the guy who wants to just bring in one file from somewhere and edit it!!! We'll see. LR is clearly a good alternative to paying monthly taxes to adobe.
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Thu Aug 8th, 2013 06:42 |
|
8th Post |
richw
|
TomOC wrote:Rich- Tom, the move back to Lightroom should be pretty seamless as well. If you go to External File Editing in Lightroom preferences and tick Stack with original I find this works pretty well. I open all my documents by default as 16 bit PSD files also set up in preferences. Open into Photoshop from Lightroom, do your edits and just click save. Close the file in photoshop. If you switch back to Lightroom it should now be showing the image you just edited in Photoshop, which should be placed next to the orginal file in the catalogue. If I want it somewhere else I now move it in Lightroom which maintains the Catalogue integrity.
|
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Thu Aug 8th, 2013 12:11 |
|
9th Post |
TomOC
|
Thanks, Rich. I never save in PS - in fact I changed the ⌘+S short cut to SaveAs That was just what I needed to know to get PS and LR working together - now I have to remember (no small change) never to save to my "printed" folder from PS so I have all the files in my catalog...mmmmm???? Making progress...watched about 6 tutorials over breakfast this week Cheers, Tom
____________________ Tom O'Connell -Lots of people talk to animals.... Not very many listen, though.... That's the problem. Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| Posted: Thu Aug 8th, 2013 18:30 |
|
10th Post |
jk
|
TomOC wrote: I never save in PS - in fact I changed the ⌘+S short cut to SaveAs That was just what I needed to know to get PS and LR working together - now I have to remember (no small change) never to save to my "printed" folder from PS so I have all the files in my catalog... Tom If you right click on any existing folder in your catalog structure and do a Synchronise then it adds any new file automatically.
____________________ Still learning after all these years! https://nikondslr.uk/gallery_view.php?user=2&folderid=none |
||||||||
|
| |||||||||
| This is topic ID = 673 Current time is 03:28 | Page: 1 2 | |
| Nikon DSLR Forums > The Image Processing and Editing Forums > Software for Image Processing > Photoshop and Lightroom Image Editing - Tips and tricks > Catalog Apps revisited... | Top | |
Users viewing this topic |
||
Current theme is Modern editor
| A small amount of member data is captured and held in an attempt to reduce spammers and to manage users. This site also uses cookies to ensure ease of use. In order to comply with new DPR regulations you are required to agree/disagree with this process. If you do not agree then please email the Admins using info@nikondslr.uk Thank you. |
Hosted by Octarine Services
UltraBB 1.173 Copyright © 2008-2025 Data 1 Systems
Page processed in 0.0601 seconds (65% database + 35% PHP). 83 queries executed.
UltraBB 1.173 Copyright © 2008-2025 Data 1 Systems
Page processed in 0.0601 seconds (65% database + 35% PHP). 83 queries executed.