Your Lightroom Classic Tips and Tricks...

[Only RF]

Thanks for the replies guys, @Only RF , there is nothing in the Earth that can convince me to use a Catalogue/Library or whatever anyone wants to call it. I do not keep my RAW files and I know that many will jump to kill me for that but, hey, I'm a hobbyist and once I edit my photos and save them as JPG I'm happy enough with them. May be for a Pro all those concepts of catalogues and saving RAWs make a lot of sense but they are not for me, at least at this point of my life. To be honest, I'm extremely happy that I found a way to use LrC keeping the catalogue empty.

@Only RF I really appreciate the fact that you went the extra mile showing me what the Catalogue system is all about. I really do. Thanks!

@PKM-UK sorry, like you said, we both agree that everyone has it's own workflow and if it works for that person there is nothing wrong with that. I worked as Database developer and Administrator for over two decades and probably that's one of the facts and reasons why I do not want to deal with catalogues. I was trying to simplify the whole "Denoise" workflow. Like you depending on the noise I play around with the Denoise method to use. Right now when I comeback from a taking pictures I pass everything through DxO and later if I still some more "denoising" I add more with Topaz. Since I use DxO and LrC I'm using more Topaz Sharpening. Thanks for sharing your Work flow. You always learn from others' experiences.

NP. Replies not always just for the person asking as you never know who else may get something out of it. Just in case others are reading this you can't use LrC without importing files. It won't see them in the OS, etc folder structures.

 

[Only RF]

Good video, one problem that I have is that even using a CR3 file, the Denoise AI is not enabled. Why is that?

I'm not sure. What is yours showing? This is mine.

 

[Only RF]

Example of the file size with LrC 13. Using LrC 12 that DNG would have been around 200 MB.

 

[Archibald]

Frank, I think you made a good move to go with LrC.

I have used Lightroom for many years and tend to think of it as easy software. But that is now, and it was different in the past. When I think about it, it took me a long time (years) to get comfortable with it.

Back in the early years, Lr was a cataloging app. It was to help you keep track of your pics and organize them. Photoshop was for editing, Lightroom was a cataloguing database. I had no use for the cataloging, so had little interest in Lightroom. But I did have a look at it and found it had simple editing tools. You could quickly change the exposure, crop, etc. and zoom 100%. It made it the best culling program. I started to use it for that, comparing similar shots, fixing the view to enable better A-B comparisons, and deleting all but the selected pics. I ignored the cataloging function.

I did my editing in Paintshop Pro and Irfanview, not in Lr.

Then as the different Lightroom versions were issued over the years, the editing tools were greatly enhanced. I started to use Lr more and more for editing. I still shunned the cataloging. Finally I found myself relying almost totally on editing in Lr.

And little by little I also started to do cataloging. I had tens of thousands of photos. I needed a way to find things back. At first it was simple, to separate family photos and nature photography and other broad categories. But it got more involved with time. It took a lot of effort to set up initially but now is easy to maintain. Somewhat easy. Lol.

It's been many years and I am pretty good (and fast) at editing in LrC. But I am STILL discovering things I didn't know about Lightroom. It is a very complicated piece of software. So obviously it will take time to learn and find your way in it, and everybody will find different work methods that are useful to them.

 

[ctitanic]

Ok, I found how to get Denoise AI enabled, I'll to experiment now with this option! I'm a happy camper.

 

[ctitanic]

Example of the file size with LrC 13. Using LrC 12 that DNG would have been around 200 MB.

View attachment 22237

I just keep the jpg after editing and I keep them less than 20MB. Yes, DNG files are super big.

 

[PKM-UK]

Thanks for the replies guys, @Only RF , there is nothing in the Earth that can convince me to use a Catalogue/Library or whatever anyone wants to call it. I do not keep my RAW files and I know that many will jump to kill me for that but, hey, I'm a hobbyist and once I edit my photos and save them as JPG I'm happy enough with them. May be for a Pro all those concepts of catalogues and saving RAWs make a lot of sense but they are not for me, at least at this point of my life. To be honest, I'm extremely happy that I found a way to use LrC keeping the catalogue empty.

@Only RF I really appreciate the fact that you went the extra mile showing me what the Catalogue system is all about. I really do. Thanks!

@PKM-UK sorry, like you said, we both agree that everyone has it's own workflow and if it works for that person there is nothing wrong with that. I worked as Database developer and Administrator for over two decades and probably that's one of the facts and reasons why I do not want to deal with catalogues. I was trying to simplify the whole "Denoise" workflow. Like you depending on the noise I play around with the Denoise method to use. Right now when I comeback from a taking pictures I pass everything through DxO and later if I still some more "denoising" I add more with Topaz. Since I use DxO and LrC I'm using more Topaz Sharpening. Thanks for sharing your Work flow. You always learn from others' experiences.

Hi Frank,

Another thought/ option is that if you don’t want, or need, the catalogue features of LrC possibly consider using Photoshop instead - you‘d still be able to use plugins and you’ll gain access to things like layers, neural filters and blend modes, plus more advanced healing tools (by far), while still having the camera raw filter to your edit images with (it has identical editing features to LrC).

Also have a look at Bridge (which I don’t use, but I think it’s an image orientated file browser - as opposed to being a ‘catalogue’).

Phil

 

[ctitanic]

Hi Frank,

Another thought/ option is that if you don’t want, or need, the catalogue features of LrC possibly consider using Photoshop instead - you‘d still be able to use plugins and you’ll gain access to things like layers, neural filters and blend modes, plus more advanced healing tools (by far), while still having the camera raw filter to your edit images with (it has identical editing features to LrC).

Also have a look at Bridge (which I don’t use, but I think it’s an image orientated file browser - as opposed to being a ‘catalogue’).

Phil

Hi Phil, PaintShop Pro is very similar to Photoshop. What I'm liking from LrC is the simplicity yet power of the editing tools. Specially masks. In almost 10 years using PaintShop Pro I think that I have used layers only few times. I'm trying to get most of the stuff done in the camera and post editing just to make it look even better but I'm against tweaking pictures to the extreme (like using AI to generate stuff, etc). LrC is doing basically what I need and if I need something deeper I still have PaintShop Pro, Luminar AI and Luminar 4. BTW, Luminar is special for Sky replacement and other tricks. I also have Radiant which allows you to apply presets, eyes enhancements, etc. Luminar allows you to even replace the eye colors, with simple clicks.

 

[ACEkin]

Example of the file size with LrC 13. Using LrC 12 that DNG would have been around 200 MB.

View attachment 22237

I am having a related problem, I think. Adobe seems to have changed the DNG compression, resulting in files I cannot view outside the Adobe ecosystem. I tried Windows File Explorer, FastStone, and XnViewer image viewers and none could display anything meaningful. My only DNG files, thankfully, are those that I merge into panoramas. Everything else is in their native formats.

 

[Only RF]

I am having a related problem, I think. Adobe seems to have changed the DNG compression, resulting in files I cannot view outside the Adobe ecosystem. I tried Windows File Explorer, FastStone, and XnViewer image viewers and none could display anything meaningful. My only DNG files, thankfully, are those that I merge into panoramas. Everything else is in their native formats.

They went from JPEG to JPEG XL compression. I'll have to check that out.

JPEG - JPEG XL

jpeg.org

From the Lightroom Queen's site

This is a little slower, but the quality is just as good, and the space savings are huge. This also affects files produced by the Enhance tool (Classic & Desktop), as well Merge to HDR and Panorama (Classic only… Desktop to follow), resulting in much smaller file sizes.