Dave Hartley

Recently, my wife was using Capture NX (1.3.3) to process a Nikon NEF file. After modifying various parameters, she did a “File -> Open with…” to export the file into Photoshop. This will render the file as a TIFF and automatically pass it to Photoshop. Normally this works fine, but this time, when Photoshop opened, instead of showing the image, the Adobe Camera RAW window popped up. This should not have happened. Somehow, the Adobe preferences had got screwed up (from my experience, corruption of Adobe preferences can randomly occur). To resolve this issue, open Adobe Bridge CS3, go to the Bridge CS3 menu and select “Camera RAW Preferences…”. At the bottom you will see JPEG and TIFF Handling. If these boxes are ticked, then Photoshop will use Adobe Camera RAW when you select a JPEG or TIFF file. In our case, these preferences were somehow enabled, and hence when we exported from Capture NX to Photoshop, it automatically went through Adobe Camera RAW. To prevent, this, simply ensure these boxes are un-checked.

When buying electronics or digital cameras etc, you usally get asked whether you want to purchase an extended warrenty. Normally I don’t bother with these but when I bought my Apple Macbook Pro over a year ago, I decided to get the AppleCare protection plan as the laptop used the new LED backlit displays and I erred on the cautious with the new technology.

In April this year, I had the screen replaced as I had a few stuck pixels. Yesterday, I went to boot up my Mac and had the unfortunate experience of seeing it fail to switch on, not even the startup “bong”. I could hear the disk being accessed, but had a black screen and no sync on my external monitor.  This was about fourteen months after the date of purchase, and hence for the normal warrenty of twelve months, I would’ve been out of luck. As I had the AppleCare, I was able to call up the phone support (normal phone support is only 90 days!) and went through a bunch of procedures to try to get the machine back to life. None of these were sucessfull, although we were at least able to get the startup “bong” but no life on the displays. So, we booked an appointment at the Genius Bar. Unfortunetaly they couldn’t fix it either as it looks like it needs a new motherboard. Hopefully, I’ll get a fixed computer within a week. I’m sure glad that I decided to buy the extended warrenty this time.

I’ve previously written about the problem I was having when selecting a number of images and hitting command-return for an instant slideshow. With Lightroom 2.0 the images were being displayed in random order which was really frustrating and different to what I was expecting (Lightroom 1.4.1 did not do this). Well, whilst drinking a beer, I looked at the slidehow settings and guess what? The default behavior is to use a random order for playback! That’s not very clever; why not have the order set to sequential by default? To fix this, go into the Slideshow module and in the Playback panel, remove the tick from the Random Order option. After doing this, my instant slideshows are back to being in sequential order.

There seems to be a major bug in the Lightroom dual monitor support. with the primary screen in loupe view and the secondary screen in either loupe view or grid view, the application will produce the infamous spinning ball. Occasionally, this will fix itself after a minute or so, but more often than not, a force quit is required. In all cases, the Lightroom cpu load is ~98%. This is running on a Macbook Pro, 2.4GHz, 4G ram and 10.5.4. The bottom line is dual monitor support is not stable.

Update: since I was having problems with dual monitor mode, I went back to using just the one. I’ve had one hang using normal loupe view whilst doing simple reject editing on folders. I’ve also seen the system hang for a minute or two whilst it Lightroom thinks about things.

Previously, when processing my raw files, I would look at the image and depending upon whether there was a predominance of red or blue I would pick either Nikon Capture NX (for reds) or Adobe Lightroom (for blues). The color of the reds I was obtaining using Adobe Raw converters was always below par, whereas the Nikon Capture NX software would give me the vibrant reds I was expecting.

With the release of Lightoom 2.0, Adobe has also introduced beta versions of it’s new camera profiles. These can be downloaded from the Adobe Labs website. Now, when I use the develop module, I can go to the camera calibration panel and select the camera profile . This mimics the various color modes that Nikon Capture NX supports. The images below show a Ring-necked Pheasant that was taken at sunrise; hence, I had some beautiful golden light. On the left hand side is the standard conversion in Lightroom using ACR 3.1; the reds and browns are really poor. The middle uses the new camera calibration with the camera profile set to D2X Mode 3 beta 1; the reds and browns are much more vibrant. Finally, the right hand image shows the output from Nikon Capture NX; this has great reds and browns. You can click on the image to get a larger view

With the new camera profiles, I’m not sure whether I need to go to Nikon Capture NX anymore, as now I can get great reds directly from Lightroom. This will greatly ease my work flow.

Images of icebergs in the Scotia Sea and the Antarctic Peninsula are now online. You can access them through my Galleries page or directly via this link.

Looks like I hit another bug in Lightroom 2.0, this time with keywording.

I had a set of 12 images in a collection. I selected all twelve and applied a keyword to them (eg. “AAAAA”). Then I hit command-L to switch off the catalog filters. I then went to the Keyword list panel and confirmed that the number of images with the keyword was indeed 12. I then clicked on the right arrow for the keyword “AAAAA”.

This should result in the filter bar popping up and I would expect to see my twelve images. Instead I only saw six and the Library Filter keyword for “AAAAA” has the number six by it. If I go to each individual file in its folder and check the keyword tags I correctly see the keyword “AAAAA” for each of them. The Catalog has “All Photographs” selected, so it is not as if I am only searching a subset of my catalog. If I go to the folder(s) where the files are located and individually remove and then re-add the keyword, I see the image I just “keyword-fixed” pop up in the filter search. So, it seems to me there is a bug when applying keywords to images in a collection. That is pretty scary!

Note that the images are not stacked so we can discount that. To clarify what I mean by this, suppose you have an image in the catalog which has a raw file and a photoshop file. The two images are stacked and contain the keyword “BBB”. In this case, the keyword panel will say “2″ next to the keyword “BBB” and when you click the right arrow, you will see the images stacked with the filter saying “1″ (as the image is stacked). This seems to be the current behavior of Lightroom.

I’d be interested to know if anyone else has seen this problem.

Images of the wildlife at Palo Alto Baylands are now online. The images can be accessed via the Galleries page or via this link.

In Library mode, grid view, use command-click to select a number of images that you want to put into an instant slide show. For example, if you have four pictures, select pictures 1, 2 and 4. Then do command-return for the instant slide show. All four images are displayed, not the ones you selected. This is quite a basic bug and you wonder how the software ever got through quality control.

My advice is to wait for the next point release before upgrading. I broke my own rule with respect to buying software when it has just been released as I was getting frustrated with the clunky key-wording & search functionality offered in 1.4.1.

Update (one more bug):

I just found another bug. When in Library mode, grid view, I was applying a metadata preset by selecting all images (123 images). I applied the preset but with all images selected, the preset says “None”. If I select a single image, it indicates the correct preset name. I found that if I select up to 25 images, the correct preset name is shown, but as soon as I select a 26th image, the preset indicates “None”. If I just select the 26th image, it correctly indicates the preset name.

I upgraded my 1.4.1 release of Lightroom to the new version 2.0 last night. Today was the first day that I really got to play with it. Somethings I like, some I don’t; I’ll post a blog on my initial thoughts after I’ve played around with it some more.

One thing I have noticed is that it’s given me the spinning ball of death on my Mac twice tonight (please read the full post as I’m updating whenever I get a hang). Both times, I was in the develop module. The first time I was using the dust spot removal tool and had just typed “N’ to come out of the tool… spinning ball hang. The second time, I had used the graduated filter tool, went to the saturation control and pressed down arrow key twice … spinning ball hang. Both times the cpu was at 99% and I had to do a force quit. This is on a 2.4HGz MacbookPro, 4G ram and 10.5.4.

Luckily my catalog was ok after each force quit, and it’s a reminder to ensure that you backup your catalog just in case.

Update: I just had another spinning ball. Again in the develop module; this time I was in the Detail -> Chromatic Aberration panel and had just hit the up arrow key + shift twice on the Red/Cyan adjustment. Again, Lightroom not responding and cpu load is 90% with a force quit required.

Update: Another spinning ball. In the Library module, Lightroom was in grid view and generating thumbnails in a set of folders (over 4000 images in about ten folders). I selected one image and pressed ‘E’ to go into loupe view… hang, spinning ball. CPU load was zero, Lightroom was not responding, and I had to do a force quit.

Update: Another spinning ball. Dual monitor mode. Loupe view on monitor 1, grid on monitor 2. Hit X to flag a photo as reject… hand and had to force quit. CPU load for Lightroom was 98%.

Update: Another spinning ball in dual monitor mode. This can occur when we have loupe/grid view on the different monitors and also when both are in loupe view. Sometimes, the spinning ball comes back to life after several minutes but sometimes it locks up and force quit is required.

Update: Another spinning ball. In develop mode using the gradient tool. I had just made an adjustment to the clarity and got the infamous spinning ball, Lightroom was not responding with cpu of 24%. To make matters worse, I took a snapshot screen grab of the activity monitor showing the Lightroom hang and then pasted it into a new Photoshop file … my whole computer froze up requiring a hard reboot.

Update: Another one. In loupe view, I was zoomed in and hit X to mark as a reject… spinning ball, 98% cpu and force quite required.