Publishers of technology books, eBooks, and videos for creative people

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Book

 

How To Use This Site

Movies

Presets and Templates

Images

Questions & Comments

PDFs

Geotaging with PhotoLinker for Mac
The Map module in Lighroom 4 has most the controls you need for editing and managing GPS data. It is possible to import a GPS tracklog via the Toolbar and adjust for any time shifts that occur between the camera set time and current time, but this isn’t always so easy to calculate. For the most part I think Lightroom users will be able to work around such limitations and the merging of GPS data and shot files will become easier once you are disciplined in the maintaining of accurate time settings on your cameras. Prior to the introduction of the Map module I was reliant on third party programs to embed the GPS metadata. The instructions in this PDF are mostly redundant now, but Macintosh users might find the advanced controls found in the Photolinker are still worth exploring as an alternative way to geotag their images.

The Lightroom RGB space
Lightroom uses its own special internal RGB space when calculating image adjustments and another special type of RGB viewing space when it renders the images in the Develop module. This PDF goes into detail about why these RGB spaces have been designed the way they are and how they provide better editing and viewing when working in the Develop module.

Lightroom vs. Photoshop curves
Lightroom curves and Photoshop curves adjustments are not quite the same. When you use Photoshop to apply a contrast boosting curve you may see some hue shifts taking place. The Lightroom Tone Curve adjustment is specifically designed so that you shouldn’t see any changes in color when making a Tone Curve adjustment.

Merging two catalogs into one
The most effective way to work in Lightroom is to keep all your files stored in the one catalog. However, there may be valid reasons why you might wish to keep some of your photos archived in separate catalogs. This PDF shows how you might go about merging two catalogs into one and export the edit settings in a merged catalog back to the original catalogs.

Publishing photos via Photoshop.com
Using the Publish Services panel in Lightroom you can easily publish photos to sites like Flickr and Facebook. Although not part of the regular Lightroom install, it is also possible to publish photos to the Photoshop.com publishing service.

Process 2003/2010 image editing
The introduction of Process Version 2012 in Lightroom 4 means that when Process 2012 is applied to an image the Basic panel and localized adjustment controls are now completely different. I believe that Lightroom users will probably want to use this new method of processing from now on. However, it is still possible to apply Process 2003 or 2010 style adjustments to the photos in your catalog. In order to cover this method of operation fully, I have supplied the Process 2003/2010 instructions that were previously published in the Lightroom 3 book as a separate PDF.

Tethered shooting with the Canon EOS Utility
The contents of this PDF were originally included before Lightroom gained the ability to shoot in tethered mode. I have kept these instructions available in order to show an alternative approach to shooting tethered in Lightroom, one that can be adapted perhaps for working with other types of camera import programs.

Why soft proofing may not always work
Soft proofing is an important new feature in Lightroom 4. While it is great that we now have the ability to preview a print or color space change output, it does help to have a basic kind of understanding of how soft proofing is meant to work and how the limitations of the equipment you use may cause soft proofing to appear not to work as expected.