This week we are learning more about Lightroom, specifically, how to crop, straighten and begin editing our raw files. I am enjoying learning how to use this program and not finding it as daunting as I had anticipated. It seems so far to be a very intelligent piece of software.
I have edited a few of my own raw images here and included the before and after shots for comparison.
This week in Digital Imaging, we were introduced to the Adobe Lightroom software and were asked to create a catalog to import and organise our images.
I chose to create a couple of different catalogs as I had quite a few personal images mixed up with my study images. I found the process to create the catalog and import the images easy at first but my first roadblock was trying to figure out why my raw files would not come over in the import.
After thinking on this for a little while I remembered that they were saved as a proprietary NEF, Nikon specific file. I opened the NEF raw files in Adobe Bridge, Used the filter to bring up only the raw images and not the JPEGS, selected all images and opened in camera raw. Once in camera raw, I again slected all images and saved them as the DNG file. From there I was able to easily import them into Lighroom.
I will be doing a bit more research to see if there is a function within Lightroom to convert the NEF files to DNG at the time of import so as to save having to go through two other programs first.
My Lightroom catalogs are easily accessible from the “My Pictures” destination on my PC. I have them all stored in one main folder titled ” Lightroom Catalogs”.
I especially liked the ability to create a metadata preset that can be applied to all of the images at time of import and found this function easy to use and set up.
Finally, my images were imported into Lightroom.
This week we learned about digital asset management aka DAM. Backing up own images and work is something that is often overlooked by many people. That is, until they suffer a catastrophic hardware failure at some stage in their life. If I know anything about computers, it’s never a matter of if they fail but when.
As aspiring professional photographers, a bullet proof back-up is essential. One can only imagine how gut wrenching it would be to lose client files, especially those that can never be re-captured such as those taken from a wedding shoot.
A 3-2-1 backup system involves having three copies of your work saved, including your master copy or source files. Two copies kept locally but on separate media devices, for example: one copy saved locally on your computer internal drive (space allowing) and the second copy saved to a separate removable hard drive. If your internal drive does not allow for storage of large RAW files then the first two copies of your back up can be removable hard drives as long as they are two completely separate drives.
The third copy of your files should be on yet another separate device but one that is stored offsite. This gives yet another layer of protection should the unthinkable happen such as fire, flood or zombie apocalypse.
At present, my 3-2-1 back up system comprises of master files saved to my desktop hard drive, although I suspect in the near future I may have to expand to a larger drive.
Secondly, I back up a copy of this work to a removeable hard drive. The one I currently use is a 6TB WD My Book external drive. At the time of writing this, my external drive was on vacation at my work place to do a somewhat overdue backup of the work computer ( naughty naughty), although it usually resides at home.
The final stage of my back up system is to save all of my files to the cloud. I use cloud storage with Dropbox. For a smallish monthly fee, I have unlimited storage space, the ability to access my files from anywhere with an internet connection and can share links to my files with other people at my leisure.
I was interested to learn about RAID systems as an option to add to my back-up system and also liked the idea of a camera body with dual card slots to protect against corrupted SD cards. Definitely two options I will be exploring further when funds allow.
This week in module 1 of digital imaging i learned some of the basic functions of Adobe camera raw and Adobe bridge. The Adobe suite of photo editing software is very new to me and due to time constraints due to work, I have not ventured too far into editing the photos in the above gallery. However, I am happy with my progress in learning how to open the raw files and convert them to JPEG format for use on my blog. I am looking forward to becoming more proficient with the different functions of the editing software as the course progresses.
For the second part of our weekly activities, I had to adjust my work space to make it more ergonomic. As I am moving house in the next few weeks, my current work space is the dining room table. I tidied up some of the clutter, adjusted the positioning of my keyboard and mouse to a more comfortable distance and changed the height of my chair.
Amber Lyons Photography 