How to do a selective darkening of part of a photo in Lightroom?

Question

I have a photo that has quite a distracting corner: if you divide it by the rule of thirds it's bit less than half of the bottom right corner.

Can I use Lightroom to darken that corner? I don't know; maybe with something like a gradient from black to transparent?

Asked by Marius Butuc

Answer

The feature you're looking for is the Adjustment Brush. With that, you would select:

• the amount of exposure, plus or minus
• the size of the brush, in pixels
• the feather, which controls the hardness of the edge,
• the flow, which controls the rate at which the adjustment is applied
• the density, which controls the strength of the adjustment (transparency)

Adobe Press has an article on doing this in Lightroom 3, but it will translate to other versions as well as Adobe Camera Raw for those of using Photoshop instead.

Answered by John Cavan

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How do I move Picks from a Collection to a Folder in Lightroom 3?

Question

On one of the rare occasions I've used Lightroom Collections, I found myself wanting to transfer the Pick/Reject info from the Collection back to the main Folder the photos are in. Picks are Collection-local, and there doesn't seem to be a built-in way of doing it. The best I could come up with is using a tag or coloured flag (which are global) as a temporary marker, allowing me to edit the Picks in the Folder. Is there a better way?

Asked by frumious

Answer

Temporarily tagging them is probably the best move. I've hit this same frustration before and that's how I moved on.

Answered by Jordan H.

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Lightroom - how to move Picks from a Collection to a Folder

Question

On one of the rare occasions I've used Lightroom Collections, I found myself wanting to transfer the Pick/Reject info from the Collection back to the main Folder the photos are in. Picks are Collection-local, and there doesn't seem to be a built-in way of doing it. The best I could come up with is using a tag or coloured flag (which are global) as a temporary marker, allowing me to edit the Picks in the Folder. Is there a better way?

Asked by frumious

Answer

Temporarily tagging them is probably the best move. I've hit this same frustration before and that's how I moved on.

Answered by Jordan H.

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How to reset Lightroom's library?

Question

In Adobe Lightroom 3, how can I reset the library? That is, I want to remove all photos from the library.

Asked by Wavy Crab

Answer

The catalog is an *.lrcat file. If you delete it will be gone. The next time you start Lightroom tell you it cannot find the catalog and will create a new one.

There is also usually a folder called Backups next to it which contains backups of your catalog. You will also find a folder called *.previews.lrdata which is a cache which you can delete anytime, even if you do not delete the catalog. That contains previews which are created as needed.

Answered by Itai

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Is there anything to watch out for when upgrading Lightroom 3 to 4?

Question

If I decided to take the plunge and upgrade from LR3 to LR4, does LR4 manage the migration of my catalogs for me automatically, when opening it for first time? Are there any things that break or that you wish you'd been aware of before upgrading? Obviously the safest thing to do is to take a backup of my catalogs before upgrading, but it'd be good to know if there are any "gotchas".

Asked by ninesided

Answer

There is a bug in Lightroom 4 that can cause you to lose your point tone curve settings in existing images, as detailed here. This is a serious bug, if you use point curves. There are other relatively minor issues detailed at that link as well.

The behavior of Pick/Reject flags changes in Lightroom 4. Now when you flag an image, the flag is global, instead of per-collection. This can be surprising if you depend on per-collection flags.

Otherwise, I don't think there are serious issues. As you say, make backups. Your images that you've already processed will still be PV2010 (the Lightroom 3 process version) in Lightroom 4. You have to specifically upgrade them to PV2012 if you want to try the new process, because there's usually some degree of fine-tuning required. If you don't upgrade the process, they should remain identical to they way they were in Lightroom 3.

Answered by coneslayer

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How to properly archive Lightroom

Question

We've got 4 catalogs running on our production computer (Families, Weddings, Fashion, Personal). All of these catalogs contain images that we want to retain long term.

When our hard drive filled up, I moved all the original "raw" images over to our NAS (network attached storage) in order to free up space.

When we went back into the catalogs, we saw a "ghosted" folder of those pictures, since the raws were missing. Later, we needed to recover on of those images, and since it was on the NAS, all of the LR edits were lost.

I need a way to archive the images to the NAS, delete them from the primary computer, and still retain all of the Lightroom edits in case we need to recover the images.

What is the right way to achieve this?

Answer

The easy way: Use LR to move them.

1. Add the NAS folder to the folder list
2. Open the local folder in the library view
3. drag the images from the local folder to the NAS folder.

Note that this will lose the undo stack!

The better way: move them in the OS, then tell LR where you moved them to.

1. Quit LR
2. Do the move as you did, best to move the entire folder
3. Restart LR
4. in the Folder view you'll see the folder is greyed out with a question mark, right click on that folder and choose "find missing folder"
5. Navigate to the NAS and select the same root folder
6. wait.

Note that this is the way I highly encourage you to do it. And you will not loose your edits this way, or your undo stack. (At least I haven't, and I do that all the time.)

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Is it possible to sync title and description from Flickr to Lightroom?

Question

I wonder if I can sync metadata such as title and description from Flickr to LR without using any third party software, just with built in Flickr Plugin. If so, how can I do it?

Answer

This is not possible in LR 3.6 unfortunately.

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How to delete JPG files, but only if the matching RAW file exists?

Question

My early (Canon G2) photos are all JPG, but when I got my Nikon D90 I initially shot in JPG, then switched to RAW+JPG, and now I would like to switch to RAW only.

I have literally thousands of photos on my HDD. The photos are in sub-directories (by date) under a single directory called Import.

I am about to import all these photos into Lightroom 3.0, however, I would like to delete all the JPG files, but only where there is already a corresponding RAW file (ie. I no longer want to keep JPG and RAW versions of the same file).

If I can do this easily within Lightroom (after importing everything, including the duplicate JPG files) that would be great. It would also be OK if there were an easy way to do this before importing the files (but hopefully this wouldn't involve having to visit every directory looking for filenames with both JPG and NEF extensions).

Does anybody know of a way to do this (in Lightroom, or with some tool/script in Windows)?

Answer

In your command prompt, go to the folder and run this:

for /f "delims==" %r in ('dir /b *.nef') do del "%~dpr%~nr.jpg" 2> nul

Basically, it goes through the current folder, runs through the .NEF files, and deletes the JPG if present. It ignores any errors if the JPG is not there.

If you want subfolders, include "/s" (without quotes) in the dir command.

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How do I turn off lens correction in Lightroom 3?

Question

I'm trying to improve Lightroom performance on my Mac and have read that turning off Lens Correction can help the "Loading" times in the develop module.

I really don't care about lens correction and shoot "lomo", so how do I turn off this feature in Lightroom 3?

Answer

When in Develop, there is a Lens Correction panel. Within this panel you can turn profile lens correction on or off using the Enable Profile Corrections checkbox

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Can I import pictures into Lightroom and retain my existing folder structure?

Question

I already have 30k pictures ordered in the following format: YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD. I would like to continue this format instead of going through and renaming all my folders (besides, I like this layout). Is there any way to add to the items in the date format drop down to include my own format?

Answer

Short answer: Yes you absolutely can add your own date format to the drop down list. Within your Lightroom program folder, go to the "Resources" folder and create a folder called "en." Then, create a file called "TranslatedStrings.txt."

In that file, write the following line (including the quotes): "$$$/AgImportDialog/ShootArrangement_1/Template=%Y/%m/%Y-%m-%d"

If you're having trouble saving the file because of permissions, try creating the file on your desktop and then copying it into the "Resources\en" folder.

Longer answer: TranslatedStrings.txt is essentially a method to localize Lightroom for different languages, for example by rewriting the menu in another language. However, it also allows you to "hack" parts of Lightroom and personalize it. Adding some custom values to this to the date format dropdown menu is one option. You can also use it to customize the shortcut keys for various tools/actions in Lightroom.

The line "$$$/AgImportDialog/ShootArrangement_1/Template" specifies the value that we're replacing. You can use any number from 1 to 13 at the end of "ShootArrangement" and that will alter the position of the template in the dropdown menu.

The string at the end "%Y/%m/%Y-%m-%d" defines the actual date format. There are a number of different values you can use, and you can find a full list here. For example %b will give you the three letter abbreviation for a month.

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Where does Lightroom keep the original raw file?

Question

Yesterday I realized that for the last import I did with Lightroom I don't have the original RAW files from the camera's SD. In the memory card I have only the RAW file and when I import them in Lightroom it converts in JPEG and save them to the library.

There are any particularly options for keeping the original RAW during the import?

update Sorry....I'm a fool! Someone changes my settings and I didn't realize that I was shooting in jpeg. I double checked and yes, it's only JPG!:( sorry for the wasting of time

Answer

Lightroom always keeps the RAW file. It does not convert on import, it converts on Export. Your files will be in your designated LR import folder. Note that there can be more than one of these if you like.

So to find out where your last photos went, you can simply open Lightroom and click "Import". One of the gotcha's of Lightroom is that it imports wherever you last told it to. So simply click on 'Import' and see where it is going to put the files. This will be the place it put them last time. In LR3, this is the top right hand of the UI, where is says "to".

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Is there any way to disable 'Library' feature in Lightroom 3?

Question

Is there any way to disable 'Library' feature in Lightroom 3? I don't need it and i do not want to waste my free space on it.

Answer

What features of Lightroom do you want to use then? The library is essential to the workflow of as it is where the images to be worked on are represented.

Full sized images are not stored in the library catalog file, so it is not very large in relation to them. For example the library files from a catalog with 3023 files is only 43MB after flagging and editing.

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Lightroom 3 library feature

Question

Is there any way to disable 'Library' feature in Lightroom 3? I don't need it and i do not want to waste my free space on it.

Answer

What features of Lightroom do you want to use then? The library is essential to the workflow of as it is where the images to be worked on are represented.

Full sized images are not stored in the library catalog file, so it is not very large in relation to them. For example the library files from a catalog with 3023 files is only 43MB after flagging and editing.

Check more discussion of this question.