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[Podcast]
[5 Learn CS5]
[with Your Host]
[Terry White]
Hello and welcome to another episode
of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast.
My name is Terry White, and in this episode
we're going to take a look at a or actually
answer a misconception about Light Room.
I talked to a lot of Bridge users
that maybe even own Light Room and just
haven't started using it or can't get their head around it
because they think Light Room is doing something weird to their photos,
and they're just so used to the way
everything's in a folder and how Bridge
can see what's in the folder.
Well, we're going to talk about that and help some of
those users transition from Bridge to Light Room that want to,
and just for the users that are not using
Light Room because they don't understand
what it's really doing with the photos.
We'll address that as well.
So, let's go ahead and dive right in.
I'm going to give you a very basic example.
Here I have a folder on my hard drive called Classic Cars.
It is not in Light Room.
As a matter of fact, it's not even in my
internal main drive; it's in a
second partition of that drive, in a folder
called Dental Files and a folder called photos and a folder called
Classic Cars, that's where I put it.
Now whether I put it there using just a
drag and drop from the memory card reader or
whether I use the photo down-loader in Bridge,
the bottom line is those photos are in a folder,
no matter how you got them there.
Now, they're there so how would I look at them in Bridge?
Well, in Bridge, this is what people are used to.
They're used to it being so easy
that they can just drag the folder
right on top of the Bridge icon, and
Bridge will then display those images, and this is what Bridge does.
This is what makes it so easy for people that want to use Bridge.
Now of course I can hit command R on the Mac or control R in Windows,
and I can get right into camera raw,
and start working with the raw file.
I can start just doing things that I would like to
do with the photos such as renaming it.
We talked about that before in Bridge because
all these cool useful things you can do in
Bridge, and that's what Bridge is really for.
It's not just for photos; it's for all of your files
to be able to do these quick easy previews,
full screen by hitting the space bar,
all the above, great!
Now, let's quit Bridge.
So I'm no longer in Bridge, I just quit it.
Now I'm back to the finder, back to that same
folder of images.
Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to launch Light Room,
and Light Room opened up to my last catalog,
and I'm going to start from scratch.
I'm going to create a brand new catalog.
Now, this is one of the extra steps
that you do in Light Room.
I like to create catalogs based on
the type of photography I do, so
I have a landscapes catalog.
I have a portraits catalog.
I have a travel catalog; I have a
just think of these as just ways of organizing
multiple photos that are similar.
So, for example, let's create a new catalog.
We'll create a new catalog, and
we'll call it classic, Classic Cars catalog.
That way we'll know which ones which, and
we can put it anywhere we want.
It doesn't have to be in the same location, doesn't even have to be on the same drive.
You can put this catalog wherever you want to be able to access it from.
So, I'll just put it in the standard default location
which is the pictures folder in my main user account.
Okay, so now Light Room will temporary close,
open back up and now we're in that Classic Cars catalog.
So, so far so good.
We did this one extra step and
you have to remember where are the photos?
.They're where they always were.
They're back here
in the operating system on that drive
just sitting there.
Okay, so now I want Light Room to see them.
Now in Bridge I just simply drug
the folder on top of the Bridge icon,
and it opened the folder in Bridge.
Well, I wonder if I can do the same thing with Light Room?
Let's give it a try.
So, let's take that same folder,
drag it onto the Light Room,
and look at what happens.
It does it.
It just comes up and says, "Okay,
you apparently want to import these photos,"
and I think that's what throws people
is the word "import."
You want to import these photos into your current catalog.
Now, again, that throws people because
in Bridge there is no importing.
Bridge just simply looks at what's in that folder.
However, in Light Room, I need Light Room's catalog to see that folder.
Now I can do that a couple of different ways.
Since the photos are already on my drive,
here's the big catch; here's the big thing,
all I have to do is add them.
I'm not going to move them, copy them,
make any duplicates, put them in
any weird place, have Light Room do
anything abnormal to them,
just let Light Room know where they are.
Now that's the obvious choice if the photos
are already on your drive which is my case.
I've already copied them from my memory card onto the hard drive.
Now if they were still on a memory card
or still on a camera,
then I would probably either do a copy as DNG
or just a copy.
Now the difference here is
if they were J-pegs, I would just do a copy.
If they were camera raw, I like to do the copy as DNG
because it kills two birds with one stone.
It copies the images off the card, and it copies them into
a non-proprietary format called DNG
which is an open standard.
I don't lose any of my raw editing capabilities,
but I get them in as DNG.
So, I can do it either and by the way,
you can do that conversion after the fact.
You don't have to do it during the import.
So, whether you do a copy off the memory card or a copy,
think of this as your photo down loader in Bridge.
Getting the images off the card into a folder.
What's this going to do?
Get the images off the memory card,
into a folder and add them to Light Room at the same time.
So, since they're already on the drive,
in a folder, all I have to do is the add.
Now if I don't do anything else,
it will just add them and show them to me,
but if I want to do more I can.
I can, for example, apply what you would call camera-raw settings.
I would call Light Room preset or developed settings.
These pre-sets allow me to adjust the photos as they come in.
I chose none; don't do anything,
Just bring them in.
I could also choose a meta data template, and
again, I created one called Terry White copywrite.
This allows me to go in and specify things like
you know, copywrited by Terry White, city, state, so forth and so on.
Again, I don't have to do that,
but it saves me time by adding that meta data to the images as they come in.
Lastly, if they are any key words that I want to do like cars,
classic, Detroit, then I can go ahead and add those as well,
and again, I don't have to do any of this.
This is optional, but it's like one of those things
where, "Well, if I'm going to do it later, why not do it now and have it done upon import?"
So, now I'll go ahead and click import,
and Light Room now sees the images,
just like Bridge saw the images.
Where are the images?
Where they always were and still are in the same folder.
They didn't get moved.
They didn't get copied.
They didn't get put in some weird place.
Light Room has seen them in the same exact
folder that Bridge sees them in
and it brings them in now
with the key words that I told it to add
and all the other things.
So, can I, here let's bring this back up,
can I see that in loop view?
Yes, hit the letter E.
Can I get rid of the bars on the side?
Hit the tab key.
Can I go to full screen?
Hit the letter F.
I can do the same kind of things to see my images nice and big.
I can do the same kind of camera-raw adjustments in the develop module.
I can do all the same things and many more things in Light Room
than I can in Bridge because
Light Room also gives me slide show
capabilities, printing capabilities, web capabilities,
and several export and publishing options.
So Light Room, again, for photographers
but people that are trying to make that switch
but just can't get their head around it,
it's no simpler than
just simply creating that catalog or
using an existing catalog
if you already have one that you like and
adding the images if they're already on your drive or copying them
from your memory card or camera.
So, that's it; there's no mystery.
There's no, you know, hidden thing.
It's not doing something weird to the photos,
no more weirder than what Bridge would do,
and the photos, best of all, are wherever you want them to be.
So, if you like your photos on an external drive,
if you like them on a file sever,
wherever you like the photos to be,
put them there and add them into Light Room,
or copy them using Light Room off your memory card
and it will add them into Light Room at the same time.
So that's it for this quick episode
of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast; again,
just kind of solving one of those mysteries
for people trying to make the switch from Bridge to Light Room.
Where are my photos?
And, again, the reference here of a catalog,
the catalog is the document
that Light Room uses to show you those photos.
So, if I go to another folder and add some more classic cars or other cars,
they would be here in Light Room.
I would be able to see both sets of cars at the same time, but
if we look over here on folders, in this area,
this is where that folder of five photos really is.
It's telling you what drive it's on, what the folder is, any sub folders,
how much space is even left on the drive, which is kind of nice,
and no mystery, that's where they are.
Okay, so that's it.
Again, thanks for watching.
Hope that solves or cures one of the mysteries
of "Where's my photos when I put them in Light Room?"
And, again, Light Room is just pointing to them.
Now one last little tip, the reason I,
one of many reasons, but one of the biggest reasons I like Light Room over Bridge
is because now if I take that folder away,
unplug that drive that they're on or whatever,
I'd still be able to open Light Room and see these images.
I just wouldn't be able to edit them because
this is a database of what the image information is.
The images are still in that folder,
but Light Room will still be able to see them,
whereas Bridge would not, so that's just
one reason why I would prefer to use Light Room over Bridge for my photography.
Take care; have a good one.
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