Lightroom and Photoshop: The Peanut Butter and Jelly of your digital workflow!

"Do you use Lightroom or Photoshop?"

I still hear this question all the time and it drives me crazy!!

The question was never there in my opinion.

How did it come to be that people felt they had to choose one or the other? These two powerful tools were meant to be used together in harmony. Sweet and Salty, Ying and Yang and ...oh yes...Peanut Butter and Jelly

I think this all started back when the awesome editing power of LR first came into light. People thought that PS was being challenged for it’s roll as the big Kahuna. Maybe because of this people felt like they had to choose sides, either Photoshop or Lightroom. I think somehow the purpose of these programs has been blurred. Not sure who’s fault it was…it just happened. Never the less, it is there and I see it and hear it all too often. The mindset must change in my opinion or else everyone will be missing the boat!

So lets stop putting these two into the same old “Nikon/Canon”, “PC/Mac” aurguments.

Is LR and awesome editing tool? Yes, absolutely. Does it replace PS. Without a doubt, NO. Now this is not to say that LR doesn’t have powerful editing capabilities and that it hasn’t greatly reduced my time spent in PS, because it does and it has. My ability to locally and globally edit and adjust LARGE amounts of images has skyrocketed while my time spent doing so has decreased dramatically. What LR brought to the table in addition to this is the ability to infinetly group, create multiple variations of, web publish, print, search and keyword images like never before. All this while keeping them organized! Spending less time in PS does not mean that it’s necessity has diminished. The beauty of this relationship is that when I do need to call in the power of PS, LR is the perfect launching point to go there and back again seamlessly. As soon as you save your file in PS, you jump back into LR and there it is: accessible, catalogued and even further editable within LR. What else can you ask for!?

Photoshop is, has been, and will continue to be (as far as I can see anyway) the go to program for major image modifications and element swap out. Not to mention all of the capabilities it gives to graphic artists and animators.

So lets look at some of the major issues people from both camps that I think are holding them back.

From Camp Photoshop:
A lot of people born into PS have a hard time getting there head around importing images into the LR catalogue. From a Photoshop users standpoint one has to think of it as the same task of copying your image files onto the computer itself. You can’t edit your files in PS without putting them on your computer, right? Importing into the catalogue in fact replaces the step of copying the files onto your system. Some people don't realize that importing into Lightroom and copying the images onto your system is done in one step at the exact the same time. As far as not “seeing” your files once you have start to edit them within LR…you just have to start thinking of the LR as you Explorer window or Bridge.

From Camp Lightroom:
Photoshop has been, is and will continue to be the most intricate program for image editing in the world. You have to know that and accept that as soon as you step in the door. So here is my analogy for you if intend to tackle PS. If your wife sends you to the grocery store with a growling stomache and $500 bucks in your pocket…the options are endless. However, if she sends you there with the list "milk and eggs" and gives you $5, your in, your out, end of story. The point to my analogy here is to know what types of things you need to do in PS, learn it, and use it. Get in and Get out. Going in to a program like PS without an understanding of what you need to do is a death trap. Go online and watch a few tutorials or get a book. It is so easy to find online tutorials these days…use them!

So in closing, the decision to use Photoshop or Lightroom is NOT a decision at all. I could not imagine having one without the other…Peanut Butter and Jelly!

Lightroom 2.6 Networking Version!

Sounds too good to be true?

Well...we have it!


This topic now updated for 2011



In our small home Network, Gail and I always had an issue with me keeping the Lightroom Cat files local to my system. Granted I do 95% of the initial editing so it made sense, but the issue always came up when she needed to re-export files or modify 1 or 2 more images for the customer. Previously this meant she had to interupt what I was doing (as I was the only one that could access actual files) and/or kick me off of my work station. This is the plight of many LR users and I think everyone would agree this is the last big step Adobe needs to take with LR. I think Adobe knows this and I will be interested to see what they have up their sleeve when it happens.


OK, I am sure the folks at Adobe might not give it their blessings, but here is a work around I saw online on “Team Louish”. I ran this by our computer tech (who just happens to be the best in the world by the way) he gave it his blesssing and so this is what we've done.


Some quick things to note...

The system we did this on is a Windows XP Pro 32 bit, though with some minor differences, this should work very similarly on most Windows systems.
The article where I first saw this also talks about the ability to do this on a Mac, but you are on your own there.
Please note that anything you do to your system is YOUR responsibility. This is why I handed to our experienced tech.





Though he does tell us that the workings behind this don't pose any serious system issues, I have yet to test "Crossing the Streams"(a little "old school" Ghostbusters terminology) in LR with a test cataolouge. By that I mean, accessing a DB from two different locations simultaneously. I see this as the only real danger here. Worst case scenario you can corrupt the test Cat file.

All the more power to the nightly back-ups! (see previous blog entries)

This will work for a folder and/or drive on another networked workstation (as in our case)or for an entire NAS (network attached storage device).


So here it is...

These DOS commands in the BAT below file are how my tech tells me they used to mount/connect to drives back in the DOS days. He also said that he thinks Adobe overlooked this “back door” given that they have not allowed Networking as an option publicly thus far. Never the less I have seen a few people online that also say they have done this and have not had an issue with it.

On the PC hosting the cat file...
If you do plan access a drive on or external hard drive connected to another computer, it must be first shared under the properties tabs and also check "Allow users to change my files" otherwise Lightroom will fail to open from the remote system.





















On the REMOTE PC that will be accessing the networked cat files...
From the remote system from which you would like to access LR Cat files from, start by making a text file in Note Pad and name it “Start.bat”. I think it can be named anything, just has to be a “.bat” file. Name it as something you will recognize (i.e. mapdrives.bat).

So once you have created the “.bat” file, you then you need to get the actual network address for your NAS or main workstation (where the Cat files are local) from that remote workstation (.i.e . “ \\d63rgzc1\drobo (I)” where in our case d63rgzc1 is my system address on the network and “drobo (I)” is the drive as seen on my workstation). (If you are mapping a drive on another computer, this can usually be found on the computer name tab of My Computer Properties.)








Using those addresses create a command line in the .bat file for the each drive(s) you would like to access on your NAS that has your cat files (might be only one in your case).
Note: In my particular case, we had to use the quotes because there were physical spaces in the share names in all my shared drive names. If the drive(s) were named something without spaces no quotes would have been needed below.









So for us, we had 3 different locations on my PC (including a Drobo connected directly to my system) that we wanted mapped to show as local on Gail’s system as local so she could access it with LR on here system.

As an example the “subst k” command tells the workstation to substitute/create “k” as a local drive letter on that PC which points to "\\d63rgzc1\drobo-2 (K)" which is on my system.

Once you are done with that, save the “.bat” file (“Start.bat” file in our case) in the “All Users” folder of that workstation (see below).











Then you want to create a shortcut of this file (right click, create shortcut) and place it in the “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup” folder as seen below. This will now run upon system start-up. In this case (below) we renamed the shortcut “Map Drobo Drive” just so we know not to scrub by accident thinking it was malicious. This is again is just a shortcut that points to the Start.bat file renamed for better recognition.








After which that drive(s) might start showing up as they did for us as disconnected network drive (below). Don’t let that worry you just continue. We were told not to worry about names though looking at it now, I think you can right click here and just rename it to something less alarming. Again if you test this from one station first you will know whether you can or can’t (tell me if you do = .)












We were not to worried about names though looking at it now, I think you can right click and rename it. Again if you test this from one station you will know (then tell me if you do = )

After that when you are in Lightroom and trying to open a file on the Network, make SURE that you are pointing to the correct drive. Notice (below)how these drives now show up under “My Computer" and NOT “My Network Places”. NICE!!!




















You should be good to go from there.

Batta Bing BETA BOOM!! Lightroom Beta 3 !!

Lightroom 3 Beta with...drum roll please...WATERMARKING ON EXPORT.










After finishing up a few cartwheels around the office and rounding up the last few verses of "Alleluia Alleluia" I could hardly wipe the smile from my face.

A simple little interface that gives us exactly what we have been dreaming about.


You can select standard text or pull in your own logo, scale it up or down, designate location and opacity.

This will go on ALL our image export once we are running L3 fully.

I am also hearing whispers of networkability (the kind that you don’t need to computer hack to get it to work). That will bring on a few more cartwheels for sure!!


Adobe overhauled the import module. It scared me at first as I could quickly tell that I was not in Kansas anymore.

Everything is still there, just arranged differently. There are some advanced capabilities here too.







When you click the for previews in the import window, it starts to look more like you are in Lightroom verses in the Import window.

Another sweet feature is the Custom Picture Package in the Print module….











Are you seeing this? It is no mistake. You can drag and drop different pictures from the lower preview bar and then drop them in and resize, overlap, send forward, send back… It is starting to flirt with the makings of a collage builder right inside Lightroom!

Can not wait until the full version comes out.

Man I am so glad I jumped on the program at Beta 1! It ROCKS.

I have said it before and I will say it again and you can quote me on this one …

“Lightroom is the best thing to happen to photographers since the dawn of digital photography itself!”