I have gone back and forth on recommending conversion to my students, and in my own workflow  — not because I don’t trust Adobe’s conversion, but because I just have never seen it as mission-critical.  While I could see some advantages, they just haven’t been that compelling to me, and converting to DNG does make the Import process take a lot longer.  (At this point I do convert, but I don’t feel strongly about it.)

Though still not mission-critical, Lightroom 4 is introducing some new advantages, to make Lightroom performance faster with DNG’s than with proprietary raw files, and to allow lossy compression.

Here is a great article from C-Net: Adobe Offering New Reasons to Get DNG Religion, on  what’s new, and on the advantages and shortcomings of DNG.

Do you convert now? Will you with Lightroom 4? Do comment with any thoughts.

Here’s a tip I picked up from Victoria Bampton (aka the Lightroom Queen) quite a while back:

• Open the crop tool, and set your proportions, if needed.
• Turn on Lights Out mode, with the shortcut L. Typing L once will dim the background; typing it again will black out the background.  Drag on the crop edges or corners to make your crop. In Lights Out mode, you will not see what is outside the boundaries of the crop.

• When you are happy with it, type L a third time to restore the background.
• As usual, put the crop tool away by clicking back on it or hitting Enter/Return.

Enjoy!

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In this two day hands-on workshop, learn the fundamentals of Lightroom, concentrating on the Library and Develop modules where you manage, edit and enhance your images. With hands-on practice, learn how to organize, backup, manage, edit, fix and enhance your images, and the basics of working through large shoots efficiently with collections, presets, and synchronized settings. Learn how to move back and forth between Lightroom and Photoshop, and finally, to create jpeg and other copies of your images to share with others.

Click here for details and to register.

1. You’re working with a photo or folder in Lightroom, but need to go out and view it in Windows Explorer or Mac Finder. Lightroom can get you there – Right-Click (Ctl-Click on a one button mouse) on the photo or folder, and choose Show in Explorer/Finder. Lightroom will launch an Explorer or Finder window, with the photo or folder selected.
2. In Lightroom, you finally found the photo you have been looking for, by scrolling through your catalog or doing a filter. But where does this photo live — what folder is it in?  Lightroom can get you there.  Right-Click on your photo (Ctl-Click on a one button mouse), and choose Go to Folder in Library.  Lightroom will jump to that folder in the Folders panel.
3. If instead of going to the folder, you want to jump to a collection the photo is in, choose Go to Collections, and choose the collection from the list. (There won’t be a list if the photo isn’t in any collections).

Photo Right-Click Options

Enjoy!

The dialog below will show you how many new photos it found, if any, and give you the option to import them.  I recommend checking Show import dialog before importing, so that you can be sure that you really do want to import them.

In the Import dialog, uncheck any photos you don’t want to import, choose Add in the top center to add to the catalog without copying or moving, and then click Import in the bottom right.

Lightroom will also look for missing photos (with question marks) in your catalog. I don’t recommend checking the box to remove them using this process — it is much better to go through them in the Library Module and decide if you want to remove them or find them.

Scan for metadata updates is independent of the new photos process. This looks for any changes to your files that other programs, like Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw, have made. You can check it if you work with other programs and want to see if your files are up to date.

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Wondering what the Lightroom 4 Beta looks like and/or how to use the new features successfully?

I still have some spots left in this FREE 90 minute webinar, Saturday January 28 at 10:00 a.m. PST (6:00 PM GMT.)  This is my last one on the Beta!

Register here:

If you can’t attend, you will find a recording of an earlier one here: Lightroom 4 Beta Recorded Webinar.

I will have much more to say for beginners on this topic, but for those already using soft proofing in the Lightroom 4 Beta, I wanted to show you two ways to display the original next to the proof as you work on the proof. (Thank you to Mike for the question that prompted my idea for this post.)

With Soft Proofing checked in the toolbar below your photo, as you make your first Develop adjustment, you will be asked to either make the original the proof, or to make a proof copy.

1. If you prefer to make your output / proof adjustments on the original, choose Make this a Proof.  Then to see both versions side by side, type Y to view Before and After side by side.  Next you will change the definition of “Before”: in the History panel, right-click on the History step that immediately proceeds your first proof adjustment (or the top step if you haven’t made any yet),and choose “Copy History Step Settings to Before”.

2. If you prefer to have a separate proof copy, you will choose Make a Proof Copy.  Normally you can’t view two different photos (or a photo and it’s virtual copy) side by side with Before/After, but for soft-proofing, the Lightroom team has brilliantly built this in. (I didn’t know this at first so I had posted a work-around, but I have updated this post with the direct way.) Simply make sure you have your proof copy selected in the filmstrip, go to Before/After (Y), and in the toolbar below the photos, choose “Master Photo” from the Before dropdown.

With either method, only the proof will change as you work.

Finally, no need to go to Photoshop for soft proofing!

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• You have to crop a photo, perhaps because it isn’t straight or you applied lens corrections, but the crop cuts out something you really need?
• Something in your photo is right on the edge of the photo, and needs to be moved up a bit?
• You need to fix two things that are really close to each other, and the spot removal tool won’t let you?

If so, you will want to watch my 5 minute video here showing some cool tips for using the Lightroom spot removal tool.  They won’t always work, but when they do they are quite handy. These tips apply to all version of Lightroom, and to Camera Raw as well.

I find that the more I challenge the spot removal tool, the more I discover that it can do for me.  Yes, it still has its limits, but it is much more powerful than it initially appears!

Related Content:

Video on the fundamentals of using the spot removal tool (with some advanced tips, too)  from Lightroom Fundamentals and Beyond: A Workshop on DVD in which I teach the fundamentals of using the spot removal tool (as well as some advanced tips).
Putting One Spot Removal Fix on Top of Another
The Difference between Heal and Clone in the Spot Removal Tool

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Occasionally I hear about some presets that I just have to check out, including X-Equals XeL Black and White Toolkit of over 300 presets. They are designed to emulate the look of 54 classic black and white films, as well as 4 antiquated processes, and the workflow ingeniously follows the traditional black and white darkroom workflow (as I understand it — truth be told, I only had a couple months of film/darkroom experience):

1. Simulate black and white capture:

• Choose your film type from 54 choices (with a set of presets for each, covering black and white mix, tone and grain)
• Choose your color filter or color mix

2. Simulate darkroom work:

• Choose your paper contrast grade
• Adjust your contrast (with “curve kicks”)
• Dodge and burn (with graduated filters)
• Solarize / special effects
• Toning  (Sepia, Selenium, and 5 more)

The toolkit  also has a cool set of presets to reproduce four antiquated processes ( Tintypes, Daguerrotypes, Cyanotypes and Ambrotypes).

For people with extensive film experience, these presets allow you to replicate films and processes that you know and love.  For people like me with little or no film experience, it allows us to achieve looks that we wouldn’t have known to create otherwise.  And for everyone, it can help you to get much closer to a great black and white with just a handful of clicks using just the Presets panel. Here are some samples, where I just applied Xel presets, without further fine-tuning:

When I first downloaded this set of over 300 presets and started playing without reading the directions, they overwhelmed me quickly.  However, once I read the directions and realized that the idea is to use groups of presets, and that they are ordered into a carefully thought-out workflow, I was able to work much more effectively, and really enjoy the creative process. Nevertheless, there are a lot of choices, and particularly for those of us without film experience, it can take time to experiment and learn what film types and other choices we like.  To me this process of learning what I like is great for late-night creative exploration, and I enjoy it.

As with any presets, I think you should apply and then fine-tune your develop settings to taste.  They are a great starting point, and may be true to the film type used, but some photos will simply look better with some fine-tuning (this is not a flaw of the presets). For example, in the Ilford Pan 50 example above, my  next steps would be to use the B&W panel to further darken the sky, and back off a bit on Clarity. This is where presets can get you started, but are not a substitute for understanding the rest of the Develop module!

In the end, I really like this set of presets and am happy to recommend it, because

• It exposes me to many more creative possibilities for my black and whites. I particularly like the antiquated processes and more grainy films, as they really push the envelope for me.
• The workflow is very well thought out.
• The presets clearly have been tested on a wide variety of images, and were built on measured film responses.
• They have been carefully designed to only affect what they need to affect — so they don’t wipe out adjustments you have already made unless they really need to in order to achieve the look.
• It is a great value, at only $19.99 (current website price – may change)