- Choosing What You See in Loupe View
- Choosing What You See in Grid View
- Make Working with Panels Faster & Easier
- Using Two Monitors with Lightroom
- Choosing What the Filmstrip Displays
- Adding Your Studio's Name or Logo for a Custom Look
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Adding Your Studio’s Name or Logo for a Custom Look
The first time I saw Lightroom, one of the features that really struck me as different was the ability to replace the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom logo (that appears in the upper-left corner of the interface) with either the name of your studio or your studio’s logo. I have to say, when you’re doing client presentations, it does add a nice custom look to the program (as if Adobe designed Lightroom just for you), but beyond that, the ability to create an Identity Plate goes farther than just giving Lightroom a custom look (but we’ll start here, with the custom look).
Step One:
First, just so we have a frame of reference, here’s a zoomed-in view of the top-left corner of Lightroom’s interface, so you can clearly see the logo we’re going to replace starting in Step Two. Now, you can either replace Lightroom’s logo using text (and you can even have the text of the modules in the taskbar on the top right match), or you can replace the logo with a graphic of your logo (we’ll look at how to do both).
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Step Two:
Go under the Lightroom menu (the Edit menu on a PC) and choose Identity Plate Setup to bring up the Identity Plate Editor (shown here). By default, the name you registered your software in shows up highlighted in the large black text field in the middle of the dialog. To have your name replace the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 logo seen above, turn on the Enable Identity Plate checkbox at the top left of the dialog. If you don’t want your name as your Identity Plate, just type in whatever you’d like (the name of your company, studio, etc.), then while the type is still highlighted, choose a font, font style (bold, italic, condensed, etc.), and font size from the pop-up menus (directly below the text field).
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Step Three:
If you want to change only part of your text (for example, if you wanted to change the font of one of the words, or the font size or color of a word), just highlight the word you want to adjust before making the change. To change the color, click on the little square color swatch to the right of the Font Size pop-up menu (it’s shown circled here). This brings up the Colors panel (you’re seeing the Macintosh Colors panel here; the Windows Color panel will look somewhat different, but don’t let that freak you out. Aw, what the heck—go ahead and freak out!). Just choose the color you want your selected text to be, then close the Colors panel.
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Step Four:
If you like the way your custom Identity Plate looks, you definitely should save it, because creating an Identity Plate does more than just replace the current Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 logo—you can add your new custom Identity Plate text (or logo) to any slide show, web gallery, or final print by choosing it from the Identity Plate pop-up menu in all three modules (see, you were dismissing it when you just thought it was a taskbar, feel good feature). To save your custom Identity Plate, from the Enable Identity Plate pop-up menu, choose Save As (as shown here). Give your Identity Plate a descriptive name, click OK, and now it’s saved. From here on out, it will appear in the handy Identity Plate pop-up menu, where you can get that same custom text, font, and color with just one click.
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Step Five:
Once you click the OK button, your new Identity Plate text replaces the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 logo that was in the upper-left corner (as shown here).
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Step Six:
If you want to use a graphic (like your company’s logo) instead, just go to the Identity Plate Editor again, but this time, click on the radio button for Use a Graphical Identity Plate (as shown here), instead of Use a Styled Text Identity Plate. Next, click on the Locate File button (found above the Hide/Show Details button near the lower-left corner) and find your logo file. You can put your logo on a black background so it blends in with the Lightroom background, or you can make your background transparent in Photoshop, and save the file in PNG format (which keeps the transparency intact). Now click the Choose button to make that graphic your Identity Plate.
Note: To keep the top and bottom of your graphic from clipping off, make sure your graphic isn’t taller than 57 pixels.
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Step Seven:
When you click OK, the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 logo (or your custom text—whichever was up there last) is replaced by the new graphic file of your logo (as shown here). If you like your new graphical logo file in Lightroom, don’t forget to save this custom Identity Plate by choosing Save As from the Enable Identity Plate pop-up menu at the top of the dialog.
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Step Eight:
If you decide, at some point, that you’d like the original Lightroom logo back instead, just go back to the Identity Plate Editor and turn off the Enable Identity Plate check box (as shown here). Remember, we’ll do more with one of your new Identity Plates later in the book when we cover the modules that can use it.
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Lightroom Killer Tips > >
Spacebar Loupe Tricks
If you want to see your currently selected photo zoomed in to Loupe view, just press the Spacebar. Once it’s zoomed in like that, press the Spacebar again, and it zooms in to whatever magnification (zoom factor) you chose last in the Navigator panel’s header (by default, it zooms to 1:1, but if you click on a different zoom factor, it will toggle back and forth between the view you were in first and the zoom factor you clicked on). Once zoomed in, you can move around your image by just clicking-and-dragging on it.
Hiding the Render Messages
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If you chose Minimal or Embedded & Sidecar in the Render Previews pop-up menu in the Import window, Lightroom is only going to render higher-resolution previews when you look at a larger view, and while it’s rendering these higher-res previews, it displays a little “Loading” message. You’ll see these messages a lot, and if they get on your nerves, you can turn them off by pressing Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) and, in the View Options dialog that appears, click on the Loupe View tab (up top), then in that section, turn off the checkbox for Show Message When Loading or Rendering Photos.
Opening All Panels at Once
If you want every panel expanded in a particular side panel, just Right-click on any panel’s header, then choose Expand All from the pop-up menu.
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Jump to a 100% View
Any time you want to quickly see your image at a 100% full-size view, just press the letter Z on your keyboard.
Changing Where Lightroom Zooms
When you click to zoom in on a photo, Lightroom magnifies the photo, but if you want the area that you clicked on to appear centered on the screen, press Command-, (comma; PC: Ctrl-,) to bring up Lightroom’s Preferences dialog, then click on the Interface tab, and at the bottom, turn on the checkbox for Zoom Clicked Point to Center.
Give Your Labels Names
You can change the default names Lightroom uses for its Color Label feature from the standard names of Red, Blue, Green, etc. (for example, you might want to name your Green label “Approved,” and your Yellow label “Awaiting Client Approval,” and so on). You do this by going under the Metadata menu, under Color Label Set, and choosing Edit to bring up the Edit Color Label Set dialog. Now, type in your new names (right over the old names). The numbers to the right of the first four color labels are the keyboard shortcuts for applying those labels (Purple doesn’t have a shortcut). When you’re done, choose Save Current Settings as New Preset, from the Preset pop-up menu at the top of the dialog, and give your preset a name. Now, when you apply a label, onscreen you’ll see “Approved” or “In Proofing” or whatever you choose (plus, the Set Color Label submenu [found under the Photo menu] updates to show your new names).
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How to Link Your Panels So They Close Simultaneously
If you set your side panels to Manual (you show and hide them by clicking on the little gray triangles), you can set them up to where if you close one side, the other side closes, too (or if you close the top, the bottom closes, too). To do this, Right-click on one of those little gray triangles, and from the pop-up menu that appears, choose Sync With Opposite Panel.
You Can Change Those Little Ornaments Under the Last Panel
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Ya know that little flourish thingy at the bottom of the last panel in the left and right side Panels areas that lets you know you’re at the last panel? Well, it’s called an end mark and, luckily, you can change it to one of the other built-in graphics (which are much cooler) or add your own. To pick a different end mark, just Right-click on the current end mark, and then from the pop-up menu, under Panel End Mark, pick any one of the other choices (I like Tattoo, Atom, and Yin Yang). You can also create your own custom end marks (make sure they’re on a transparent background, and saved in PNG format), then choose Go to Panel End Marks Folder from the Panel End Mark submenu. This is the folder you’ll drop them in and where you’ll choose them from.
Hiding Modules You Don’t Use
If there are some modules that you don’t use at all (maybe you don’t use the Web or Slideshow modules), you can actually hide those modules from view (after all, if you don’t use ‘em, why should you have to see them everyday, right?). Just Right-click directly on any of the module names (Develop, for example) and a pop-up menu will appear. By default, they’ve all got a checkmark beside them, because they’re all visible. So, just chose whichever one you want hidden and it’s out of sight.
Want to hide another module? Do the same thing, again.
See Common Attributes
If you want to see if your image is flagged or has a star rating, there’s a Common Attributes feature in the view pop-up menu (just Right-click at the top of a thumbnail cell), and if you choose it as one of your view criteria, it’ll show those along the top of the image cell.
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Changing Lightroom’s Background Color
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You can change that medium gray background color that appears behind your photos by Right-clicking anywhere on that gray area, and from the pop-up menu that appears, you can choose different background colors and/or a pinstripe texture.
Delete Old Backups to Save Big Space
I usually back up my Lightroom catalog once a day (when I’m done for the day and am closing Lightroom; see Chapter 2 for more on this). The problem is that after a while, you’ve got a lot of backup copies—and before long you’ve got months of old, outdated copies taking up space on your hard drive (I really only need one or two backup copies. After all, I’m not going to choose a backup from three months ago). So, go to your Lightroom folder from time to time and delete those outdated backups.
The Secret Identity Plate Text Formatting Trick
It’s surprisingly hard to format text inside the Identity Plate Editor window, especially if you want multiple lines of text (of course, the fact that you can have multiple lines of text is a tip unto itself). But, there’s a better way: Create your text somewhere else that has nice typographic controls, then select and copy your text into memory. Then come back to the Identity Plate Editor and paste that already formatted text right into it, and it will maintain your font and layout attributes.
New Collection Badge
Lightroom has a thumbnail badge (it looks like two overlapping rectangles), which, if you see it at the bottom-right corner of a thumbnail, lets you know the image is in a collection. Click on it, and a list of collections that photo appears within shows up, and you can click on any one to jump directly to that collection.
