Have you ever had trouble reading a PDF file on an iOS device such as an iPad? A PDF file that was emailed to me wouldn’t open on iPhone or iPad, and not even the file name showed up correctly. The file opened normally on my computer, so I knew the PDF file wasn’t completely corrupted. While it’s still a mystery why the PDF file didn’t work on iOS, in the end I did fix the problem. Here’s how.
I didn’t have access to the original document, so I couldn’t export the PDF file again from the source. I had to try and fix it on my side. I started by opening it in Adobe Acrobat X Pro, where I tried choosing File > Save As > PDF to write out a new copy of the file. After that didn’t work, I tried Reduced Size PDF on the same submenu. That didn’t work either. It didn’t help to open the PDF file in Apple Preview and choose File > Save As.
At this point I was stumped. Knowing that the file worked fine on a computer, I was still convinced that there had to be a way to fix it.
I next used Acrobat Pro X to save it to PDF-X/1A, a standard for high-end prepress. This time it failed even to convert, which turned out to be a good thing because it showed me an error message that suggested I run it through the Preflight feature using the Convert to sRGB preflight profile. Now that’s a great idea I should have thought of sooner, since the purpose of a preflight feature is to catch file problems before they cost time and money later down the line.
In Acrobat X Pro, Preflight is buried in the Print Production panel in the Tools pane on the right side of the Acrobat workspace. I selected Convert to sRGB, and then clicked the Analyze and Fix button.
That worked! The next time I transferred the PDF file to iPad, it was perfectly readable.
In the end, my troubleshooting guess was correct: Find something that can rewrite the PDF file radically enough to change whatever was causing the error, even without knowing the exact error.
Of course, not everyone has Acrobat Pro and it is not cheap, but if you have access to Adobe Creative Suite, it includes Acrobat Pro and so you have it (though not in Adobe CS Production Premium). Keep Acrobat Pro in mind if you run into problems like this one.
While Apple Preview on a Mac doesn’t have the variety of production tools available in Acrobat Pro, there is another way to do something similar: Open ColorSync Utility, choose File > Open and open the PDF file, and then choose Create Generic PDFX-3 from the Filter pop-up menu at the bottom of the document window. I did not try that in my case, though, since I had already fixed mine.
What might have caused the problem? I may never know for sure, but based on what fixed it, I’d guess that there was a problem with at least one of the color images in the PDF file. It looked like it had been created in Word with maps pasted from Windows screen shots. Maybe there were indexed-color BMP or GIF images in it. While that should not have been a problem, what we do know is that the Convert to sRGB preflight profile did fix the problem.
While this solution solved my problem, it may not fix every problem with reading PDF files on iOS devices. If it doesn’t solve your issue, I hope that describing a successful troubleshooting process helps point you in the right direction. Good luck!
If you’ve always managed photos in folders on your computer desktop, you may feel a bit disoriented when working in applications such as Lightroom, Aperture, or iPhoto that seem to impose their own organization on your images. In this article, I’ll first talk about how to find your photos on your computer even when they’re organized differently in a photo application, and I’ll also talk about why spending your time on the desktop may not be the best or fastest way for a photographer to find images.
Reveal the location of your photo files in many applications
Some people are wary of photo managers such as Lightroom, Aperture, and iPhoto because those programs have a reputation for taking the photos you’ve stored in folders and re-organizing them, sometimes in some “hidden” location on your hard drive. First off, that behavior is optional in Lightroom and Aperture, so you do have the option of having the software leave your photos where you’ve already stored them. And even if you do let the software reorganize your photos, you have ways of finding out exactly where a photo is stored.
The Show/Reveal command
In Mac OS X and Windows, many applications have a Show… or Reveal… command, which is extremely useful for photographers and creatives. It takes you to the folder where the selected item’s file is actually stored in the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer desktop—even if it’s in a hidden folder. The command is worded differently in various programs, but once you know the most common ways it’s worded you can usually find the command in whatever program you’re using. For example, in iPhoto and Adobe Bridge (Mac) the command is Reveal in Finder, and in Lightroom (Mac) and Aperture it’s called Show in Finder. In Windows, look for “Show/Reveal in Explorer” (the Windows Explorer desktop).
Let’s walk through an example. Suppose you’re looking at an image in Lightroom and you want to use it in another program, like attaching it to an email. You need to get to the actual photo file. But where is it? Simply choose Photo > Show in Finder, and Lightroom instantly pops open the Mac folder where the photo file lives. Now you can import that photo file into your email message.
Lightroom actually gives you three ways to reveal the disk location of a file:
Choose Photo > Show in Finder (Mac) or Photo > Show in Explorer (Windows)
Right-click the image and choose Show in Finder (Mac) or Show in Explorer (Windows)
Press Command+R (Mac) or Ctrl+R (Windows), which are the keyboard shortcuts listed next to the command in the main menu
Right-clicking a photo in Lightroom and choosing Show in Finder…
…goes straight to the actual photo file in its folder on the desktop.
How does this help you get the file to the other program? It turns out, on the Mac at least, that when you’ve got an Open/Save/Import/Export file browser dialog box open (such as when attaching an email or uploading to a web site), you can drop file or folder icons on it and that will instantly take the dialog box to the folder containing the icon you dropped. So just drop a file from the desktop onto a program’s file browser dialog box and you’re there, no folder-digging required.
Here are a few examples of where to find Show/Reveal commands in various applications.
Application
Command (Mac)
Lightroom
Photo > Show in Finder
Aperture
File > Show in Finder (apparently won’t work with managed masters)
iPhoto
File > Reveal in Finder > Modified File, Original File
InDesign
Links panel menu > Reveal in Finder, Reveal in Bridge, Reveal in MiniBridge
Picasa
File > Show in Finder
Windows: If you’re looking for the commands in Windows, in the table simply replace “Finder” with “Explorer”.
Do it faster: In all of those examples except iPhoto, you can right-click an image to get the same command. This is faster and more direct than going to the menu bar. And as in the Lightroom example, keep an eye out for keyboard shortcuts if you work faster with the keyboard than the mouse.
Direct drag and drop: Skip the desktop step too
In the Lightroom example above, it’s not even necessary to go through the desktop. Many applications, especially on the Mac, support direct drag-and-drop of photo files between applications. For example, you can drag a file directly from the Library view in Lightroom or iPhoto to that email message in the example earlier, or to an Adobe InDesign layout or Microsoft Word document. This saves you a lot of export/import steps.
Of course, the image must be in a format the receiving application can take. For example, InDesign and web site programs don’t take camera raw files. When you export a JPEG or TIFF version of a raw file for other software, turn on the Add To This Catalog option in the Export dialog box in Lightroom, so you can drag the finished export from Lightroom straight to the other application, never having to see your desktop.
In professional workflows, this only works well when you’re dragging an icon that represents an entire file. Don’t drag just one layer or a selection of pixels from Photoshop to InDesign. The reason is that you want to preserve the link to the file on disk, which you won’t get if you drag just a piece of a file. (Mac tip: In a document window, dragging the title bar’s document icon drags the entire file.)
Obi-Wan waves his hand and says, “You don’t need to see file paths.”
Experienced computer users often expect to get the location of a file by looking for a file path—a URL-like string of text that lists the folders containing a file—and they sometimes dislike a program for not having a quick way to show a path. What I hope I’ve shown above is that by using modern file reveal and drag-and-drop techniques, you can instantly locate source files and transfer them to other programs without needing to know the entire path, and without having to waste time digging down through folders. Instead, you jump directly to the file, which is often all you really wanted in the first place.
At times, you might really need to see the exact path to a file in Lightroom. Hover the pointer over a folder in the Folder panel in the Library module and the path appears in a yellow pop-up window. If you’re on the Mac and you need that path written out in text, just drop the photo into a window in the Terminal utility, or use a utility like FinderPath.
Why do applications like Lightroom and Aperture emphasize their own interface over the traditional folder hierarchy? Because looking for photos by folder limits you to file names, folder names, and file dates. A major reason to use 21st century photo managers is that you can search more precisely and quickly using the metadata embedded inside photos, such as the keyword, location, camera body, lens type, focal length, and more. Combined with sophisticated smart filters and collections that transcend the folder hierarchy, you can work with large photo libraries much more efficiently than if you were limited to folders. By the way, this is also the point of using metadata-driven media applications such as iTunes. It drives the old guard crazy to not see folders, but once you understand the concept of metadata-driven organization, you find yourself in a much better world. Take advantage of the visually-oriented file management shortcuts in today’s advanced graphics software, and you can save tons of time.
A couple of iPhoto file-finding tips
You might have noticed that iPhoto has two reveal commands: a command to reveal the original, and a command to reveal the edited version. That’s because iPhoto always makes a copy of a photo you edit, leaving the original unchanged.
The reason there are separate commands for the original and edited versions is that they might be stored in different folders. There’s an iPhoto preference called “Copy items to the iPhoto Library” (iPhoto preferences, Advanced tab), and if you turn it off, files are no longer copied deep into the iPhoto Library, but are left where you put them. iPhoto then links to that file.
Turning off that preference is how you can keep your original photos exactly where you want and use them in iPhoto, but turning it off still won’t stop iPhoto from storing all edited versions in the iPhoto Library. There’s no way to prevent that, and it makes the Reveal…Original File command necessary and useful.
A lot has happened in the Photoshop universe since I published Real World Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers, so get caught up by joining me for a free CreativeEdge webcast on October 19, 2011. In addition to talking about some of the latest developments in Photoshop land, I’ll show you some of my favorite performance and productivity tips to help you get the most out of Photoshop CS5 and Adobe Camera Raw, including features that I feel have been overlooked and under-appreciated. I’ll also talk about Photoshop and social media, and protecting your images online.
That’s Thursday, October 19, 2011 at 10 a.m. Pacific time. Be sure to register by clicking the link below or the banner above. See you there!
In an earlier post, I put together a quick-and-dirty Flash-based slide show of photographs from Il Palio in Siena, Italy just to give you an idea of what kind of work came out of that trip. But I didn’t want to leave it at that. I wanted to convey a more complete sense of what it felt like to be in Siena during Il Palio, so I created this two-minute video focused on the atmosphere of the Palio.
Note: If you view this video full screen (which you really should), be sure to change the resolution at the bottom of the full-screen view to 720p or the highest resolution your internet speed can handle.
I think of this video as like a movie preview trailer for this personal photo project, generating interest and setting expectations for the larger project in progress. The video helps communicate why I went there, as well as the tone of the place, time, and culture.
And I’m happy with it. Read on if you’re interested in the decisions I made and things I learned while planning, capturing, organizing, and editing the media for this piece.
Putting it together
While researching the Palio, it was clear that still images would communicate only a slice of the complete experience. I got interested in bringing back a more complete representation of the event than a silent wall of pictures or a book. As I am primarily a still photographer, this multimedia project was a bit of an experiment for me. But it’s nothing new in photojournalism, where multimedia slide shows have become common on news web sites.
Planning and capturing
While it’s free to stand inside the track at Il Palio, it’s also a free-for-all. Even if you’re fortunate enough to get to the fence, there are still other arms creeping into your frame, as you see in the video. The photojournalists sitting on the track have better views…as long as they can avoid being trampled.
I thought about shooting a significant amount of HD video at the track, but the more I researched what I would need in order to do it well, I backed off from that idea. I wanted to travel very light because the crowd would be tightly packed, it would be hot, I would have no crew, and in the chaos, consistently finding enough good video angles on the action was not a sure thing.
Instead, I decided to shoot stills as I always have, but record audio at the same time, and use all that to create a video. I was still open to shooting actual video clips, but only if the conditions were favorable. And that’s what I ended up doing, as you see by the proportions of stills to motion in the video. If you’re serious about getting better-than-YouTube video during the race itself, either get a press pass so you can be on the track in front of everybody else, or pay the several hundred Euros for a prime seat in the bleachers.
I wanted the slide show soundtrack to consist completely of sounds captured on location, instead of dropping in some random background music. To do that right, I brought a Zoom H4N stereo digital audio recorder because I wanted better audio than the cameras’ built-in mics could provide. I left the recorder running in an outside pocket of my bag while shooting stills, and that worked well. Not being an audio guy, though, I sometimes forgot to watch the recording levels, so there’s a fair amount of clipping in the video above, and some other audio was too distorted to use. But there was no question that the H4N’s hardware and X/Y stereo mics gave me much better audio than the cameras could have.
When I was able to get right up to the fence during the less crowded test races, I put the H4N in the outer pocket of my shoulder bag and slid that through the fence. That got its stereo mics as close as possible to the track sounds while sort of shielding them from the random chatter around me. In the black bag, the recorder is somewhat stealthy with its black windscreen (which I secured with gaffer’s tape, because it comes off much too easily).
The Pause button would sometimes get hit when the mic was jostled in a crowd, and that would stop the recording unintentionally. You can prevent this by using the Hold switch on the H4N.
Organizing
I brought my laptop on the trip and imported my camera cards into it using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. I kept the H4N files in their own folder because Lightroom doesn’t import standalone audio files. After importing the laptop Lightroom catalog into the main catalog on my studio desktop computer, I filtered the catalog to show just videos, and dragged all of those straight into the Project window of an Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 project.
Although the full size of the video displayed here is 1280 by 720 pixels, I usually exported the stills at their original resolution because animating (panning) the images requires making them bigger than the frame. I wanted to make sure there were enough pixels to keep them looking sharp in a 1080p version of the video. If I had a vertical still and planned to animate it only vertically, I exported it at 1920 pixels wide, because it simply didn’t need any more width for 1080p video.
I set up the Target Collection feature of Lightroom so that when I saw an image I wanted to use in the video, I could press one key to kick that image into the stills collection for the video. I then dragged those stills from Lightroom directly into the Premiere Pro project window, dropping them into their own folder that I named “Stills”. In Premiere Pro, Stills were animated using keyframes with motion that was typically eased in and out, a subtle edit that improves the feel of the presentation considerably.
After listening to the audio files and giving them more descriptive filenames, such as “snare drum flag practice,” I dragged those from the desktop into their own folder named “Audio” in the Premiere Pro project. I tried to enter metadata for the videos but Adobe Bridge kept giving me write errors. I’ve since read that I should try purging the Bridge cache for that folder, but I haven’t tried that yet.
At this point, all the assets I might use for the video were in Premiere Pro. I planned to use that one Premiere Pro project for all motion content related to Il Palio, because I could create multiple sequences inside the project while drawing from the same master pool of assets.
Editing
While a visually oriented person (which I am) might normally sequence the visuals first, I decided that the emotional impact of the audio was so strong that it should be the backbone of the presentation, so using Adobe Premiere Pro, I laid down the audio before choosing any photos. I also wanted to limit the video to about two minutes, so by editing the audio first I locked the length of the sequence. After assembling the sound, I finally started experimenting with the sequence of the still images by laying them out on a video track, edited to follow the rhythm of the audio. I then looked through the few good video clips I had, and in some places I decided to replace one or more stills with a video clip.
After the sequence was roughed out, it was all about fine-tuning the edits. While I’m not a professional video or audio editor, I know some of the techniques that save a lot of time, such as rolling, ripple, and slip edits. I also found myself tuning crossfade times to relax or tighten the pace as needed. Some audio needed more touching up than Premiere Pro could perform, but it’s easy to pop open a clip straight into Adobe Audition for more serious edits.
Premiere Pro CS5.5 performed surprisingly well with native DSLR footage on my 5-year-old Mac Pro—I never had to transcode, and I rarely stop to render previews. Just throw everything in and start editing. However, if I added effects, to keep the clips playing back with minimal stuttering I had to drop the playback resolution to 1/4.
For more details
I’m not going into any more detail here because this post is long enough already. But I’m happy to answer any questions you might have. Just ask ‘em in the comments!
I just returned from a trip to photograph the centuries-old Palio di Siena horse race and festival, which is held every summer in Siena, Italy. While tourists tend to show up just for the final race, that’s only the conclusion of days of test races, processions, feasts, blessings in churches, and other colorful pageantry and ritual that have always been part of Il Palio. We arrived earlier in the week so that we could take it all in, and this was definitely the right way to do it because we could see how the traditions that make up the Palio come together to form a dramatic final event.
In the final race of Il Palio (The Prize), there is no money to win, only first place counts, and there are no stopwatches. If you win, you take the trophy banner that represents Il Palio for that race, and more importantly, you bring your contrada (neighborhood) extreme prestige and serious bragging rights over the other 16 contrade until the next race. In Siena, that’s worth so much that each contrada enshrines every one of its Palio victories for all time.
I wanted to find a photo workshop this year, and when I was invited to photograph the Palio I realized it would be like creating our own workshop. And it kind of turned out that way, with such a rich cultural background to explore. Here’s a preview sampler of my images from Siena (requires Flash):
Keep in mind that these images are works in progress, so what you see in this slide show may not represent the images in their final form. In fact, just as with each exhibition, I ended up editing each image’s appearance to make them all appear consistent with each other, within the format of this small slide show. For example, many are cropped much more tightly than they would be on a large wall print.
I’ll soon be telling stories with the images through photo essays, prints, blog posts, and other content. While I’m working on all that, I’ll continue to roll out more digital media/Mac tips over the coming weeks.
Many thanks to my friend Céline for inviting me to the Palio, an event she has photographed for several years; and for providing all kinds of valuable assistance, advice, and background information about Il Palio.
If you’ve got a fast Internet connection, a recent Mac, and US$29, what’s stopping you from downloading the just-released 10.7 Lion upgrade to Mac OS X? For many people, what stops them is being unsure whether the software they have is still going to work. Below is a summary of various reports I’ve run into around the web.
For an in-depth analysis of Lion itself, including less obvious changes Apple made under the hood, see the Lion review by John Siracusa at Ars Technica—as excellent and detailed as his reviews typically are. And Macworld has published an article about various kinds of incompatibilities you might run into with Lion, including the end of support for PowerPC applications which I talk about at the end of this article.
Adobe applications
As far as Adobe software such as Photoshop, the Creative Suite, and Lightroom, you can read a page that Adobe has published listing the problems they know about: Known Issues with Adobe products on Mac OS 10.7 Lion
Anecdotally, the word is that Photoshop seems to work fine (except for droplets) as far back as CS3, the first Intel-native version. For Lightroom, the Adobe page above states that Lightroom 2.7 and later are verified to work on Lion.
Full screen mode: People are asking about support for Lion full screen mode in apps such as Photoshop. On his Twitter feed (see tweet 1 and tweet 2), @dhowe (Director of Photoshop Engineering David Howe) explained that in Lion, full screen mode is like putting a document in its own Space. This has some important implications. In the full screen mode that Photoshop has used for years, you can press the Mac standard Command+` keyboard shortcut to switch between open documents, but in Lion full screen mode, you can’t. I tried this out in a few of Apple’s own apps such as Safari, and it’s true. I did find that in apps that support Lion full screen mode, you can switch between documents if you use the Control+arrow key shortcut which is also used to switch Spaces; in other words, Lion seems to lose the traditional distinction between switching Spaces and documents. For some this might be confusing, others may see this as simpler. Also, I can’t find an Apple keyboard shortcut for Lion full screen mode, while Photoshop provides a full-screen keyboard shortcut you can customize. (Update: Many Lion apps use Ctrl+Cmd+F to enter and exit Lion full screen, and some apps will exit full screen with the Esc key. You can customize the shortcut using the Mac OS X Keyboard system preference, but because it’s system-wide, some apps may use a conflicting shortcut.)
There are reports that the Apple implementation of full screen is not ideal even with Apple’s own Aperture, where if you have multiple monitors, you only get to use Aperture on one of your monitors, while the others get the blank Lion “gray linen” backdrop. Similarly, in Safari full screen mode, browser windows only get to live on one monitor, even if you try to drag them to another (it snaps back). Apple Preview and QuickTime Player at least let me maintain palettes on my second monitor while in full screen mode, but documents still only get to appear on one monitor. Even Macworld has similar complaints about Lion full screen mode. It increasingly looks like what Apple really means by “full screen” is “full single screen,” as in an iOS-style presentation.
Given all that, I don’t have a problem with Adobe holding back on Lion full screen support until Apple brings the feature up a couple notches, so that at least we don’t lose the features we have with the Adobe full screen mode.
Flash Player: There were some early reports that hardware acceleration for Flash is disabled in Lion. This is not true; it was based on a test with a late beta version of OS X. In the actual shipping version of Lion, Flash hardware acceleration works fine.
Other applications
Some other compatibility notes I’ve seen:
Photography Bay has their own nice roundup of application compatibility under Lion. That’s also where I learned that Nikon software support for the new Mac system will be as poor as it always has been in the past, especially if you own a Nikon film scanner. I run my Nikon CoolScan with Vuescan, which is always kept current for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.
You might have noticed that some companies are just now starting to test with Lion. Some people are always surprised by this, but the fact is, a lot of companies only want to spend their limited resources testing with the final shipping version. More than one company has been burned by testing with pre-release software, announcing that everything is fine on the day the final version ships, but then getting customer complaints that the software actually doesn’t work…because something changed in the final version. The Flash misunderstanding above is one example of how having a prerelease copy didn’t accurately represent the final version. Many companies just want to test once, at the end.
Note that there’s a distinction between whether an application will run, and whether it’s going to take full advantage of all of Lion’s features, such as full screen mode, automatic saving and versions. Expect most software to require an update at some point so that you can get the most out of Lion. Some Adobe Mac apps have already had features that are just now coming to OS X (full screen modes in Photoshop and Lightroom, auto-save in Premiere Pro, resize windows from any edge, etc.), so they’ll have to work out how to transition them into the Apple versions of those features, if that’s what they decide to do.
Old PowerPC applications
Because Lion only runs software made for Intel CPUs, software that runs only on a PowerPC CPU (such as a G4 or G5) will not run in Lion. Some color calibration software falls under this category. If you’re not sure if you still have any PowerPC software, while you’re still in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard open System Profiler; you can get there by clicking the Apple menu and choosing About This Mac, then clicking More Info. Then in the left panel click Applications, and in the right panel sort the list by Kind. Anything listed as PowerPC or Classic won’t run in Lion; if you still need those applications you’ll want to find updated versions of them.
In my case, the X-Rite Eye-One Match software for my monitor calibrator, shown above, is just one of many PowerPC applications that won’t work in Lion. Some of the others are AppleScripts I need to recompile, others are firmware updates and really old apps I never got rid of (the Glider Pro game, Sync apps for my old PalmPilot). The System Profiler test isn’t conclusive; as with many major system upgrade, some applications may have their own specific issues with Lion even if they meet the basic requirements for compatibility. Those applications will need to be updated by their developers.
In this post I tell you why you see your photo metadata in Facebook, how it got there from your computer, how to control that in future uploads, and how to change or remove the metadata you see next to a photo on Facebook.
Why are you seeing photo metadata in Facebook?
Until recently, when you uploaded a photo to Facebook, all of its EXIF and IPTC metadata was ignored. You’d lose any details you had already entered in your photo editor or digital asset manager, such as the caption, the copyright notice, and keywords such as names of people.
Fortunately, Facebook has improved how it treats image metadata, and it’s now slightly friendlier to content owners like you and me. If you filled in a photo’s caption before uploading, Facebook now displays that as its default Description for the photo, so you don’t have to enter the caption again. Facebook now pulls in the Copyright field too. It adds the copyright information to the end of the Description, which is a little strange. No other image metadata is recognized that I know of so far. (Update: After I wrote this post, I found out that if there is text in a photo’s Title field, Facebook takes that too, and inserts it at the beginning of the caption.)
In the example below, I entered text into the Description (caption) and Copyright fields in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom before uploading the image to Facebook. The example shows how the photo and its metadata appear in the Edit Album view in Facebook immediately after uploading. (The example shown is from a basic export-and-upload; I haven’t tried this yet with the Facebook Publish Service in Lightroom. Also, metadata display doesn’t seem to work with photos you post on your wall, only to albums.)
Given the controversies about Facebook and content ownership, the prominence that Facebook now gives to the original embedded copyright notice is encouraging, particularly when taken together with Facebook’s revised Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (“You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook…”). It would be nice, though, if Facebook handled copyright information as other photo-sharing sites do, by displaying the copyright notice in its own area instead of hanging it off the caption.
Be aware that even though Facebook copies the caption and copyright information into the Description, Facebook still strips all that metadata from the image itself—you can’t recover that info by downloading the image you uploaded. Put another way, if someone clicks the Download link for a photo you uploaded to Facebook, the image Facebook provides will have none of the metadata you originally uploaded, even if that information is seen next to the photo on Facebook. After Facebook brings in the image and its metadata, it keeps the image and displays the caption and copyright, but still throws out the actual metadata. If you’re concerned about keeping copyright information attached to your photos even after being downloaded from Facebook, you may want to add a visible watermark to your photos.
If you don’t want to display the copyright notice in the Facebook caption field (maybe you already watermarked the image itself, or they’re just personal snapshots where a copyright notice in every caption seems excessively formal), you can edit the album right after uploading it to Facebook and the caption field of every uploaded photo; or you can remove unwanted metadata before you upload, as described below.
Where do you enter a copyright notice and description/caption on a computer?
Today’s professional photo organizing programs let you embed a wide range of descriptive information into files. While this might not be important if you’re a casual user, image metadata is increasingly crucial if you’re a professional photographer, for quickly locating images and protecting your intellectual property.
In Photoshop, choose File > File Info to inspect and alter the metadata for an image.
File Info is not the best way to edit metadata for multiple images, because you have to edit each image individually. For bulk changes, it’s much easier to browse to the images in Adobe Bridge (which comes with Photoshop), select multiple images, and enter your metadata using the Metadata panel. That will update all selected images instantly. In Lightroom, use the Metadata panel in the Library module.
Lightroom and Adobe Photo Downloader (which comes with Photoshop and is launched from Bridge) also lets you set a default metadata preset to apply to images as they come in from the card in the first place. By automatically setting metadata fields your way as you import images from any card, you can greatly reduce the amount of time you need to bulk-edit the metadata later.
How can you stop Facebook from displaying metadata embedded in photos?
Facebook doesn’t seem to have any options that control how photo metadata is read in, so if you don’t want certain metadata to show up on Facebook with your photos, you’ll have to strip the unwanted metadata from the photos before you upload them to Facebook.
Some cameras insert something in the caption of every photo. The classic example is that there are thousands of photos across the Internet that have an automatic caption saying “OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA”. If your camera is always adding information you’d like to change, first try editing it in the camera. For example, many cameras have a menu setting that lets you enter the name of the creator (you) or a copyright notice. If you can’t change metadata added by the camera, you can use a program like Lightroom or Bridge to edit the metadata fields. You can also use them to make a preset that empties fields you want to prevent from being uploaded to a web site like Facebook. Of course, it’s best to do this to the JPEG copies you exported for upload to Facebook, not to originals where you want to keep all the metadata you meticulously entered.
Lightroom has a convenient option called Minimize Embedded Metadata, which is a checkbox in the File > Export dialog box. If you select this option, Lightroom will keep your copyright metadata in the exported photos, but strip all the rest of the metadata, which is useful if you would rather not share the caption, title, EXIF shot data, names of people, etc. On the other hand, if you entered a caption for a photo and it isn’t showing up on Facebook, you’ll want to make sure Minimized Embedded Metadata is turned off.
How can you remove the metadata already uploaded with a Facebook photo?
As I mentioned earlier, photos displayed on Facebook seem to have metadata removed from the photo file itself; it’s just displayed in the Facebook description (caption) field. So while there’s nothing left to remove in the photo file, you can edit whatever Facebook displays in the photo’s description.
A lot of people don’t know how to do that because there’s nothing labeled “description” on a single Facebook photo, so here’s how. To edit a Facebook description for a single photo, click the Edit text below a photo (where it says “Like • Comment • Edit • Share”). That opens the field where you can change or remove the description, tags, and location. When you’re done, click the Save button.
If you use the controls that Facebook provides for editing an entire album, you can edit descriptions of all photos on a single page, as I mentioned earlier.
Note: Thanks to your comments, I revised this article to cover more about how to control photo metadata on Facebook.
Concerts and other stage performances are often lit by colored gels or LEDs that change quickly. Even auto white balance won’t know what to do as the lighting pattern changes and goes to extremes, such as deep blue or red. Faces can appear as as one solid color with no detail, as in the first picture below.
Fortunately, raw format brings us a nice surprise here. I shot the following raw image during the American tour of the French retro-synthpop band Yelle, and at first glance it looks like the faces are nothing but blue blobs. Happily, it turns out that shifting the white balance value in a raw processor (I used Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3) reveals dramatically more detail; it’s like a completely different picture.
Raw format, white balance As Shot: Faces are blank
Raw format, white balance adjusted…and details are magically revealed
What I think is going on is that they were in the blue light’s shadow but the warmer red light was at a better angle for their faces. Warming up the white balance de-emphasized blue and dug more red out of the raw file, so that the red light became the primary light source. If I’m right, it means this trick works only if at least one of the differently colored light sources is at an angle that’s favorable to the subject.
This technique doesn’t work at all with the JPEG version of the image shown below, because the RGB color values are already baked into the file. You can no longer get more red, you can only lose blue, so shifting the white balance of the JPEG image doesn’t reveal any useful new details.
JPEG version also starting from As Shot white balance: Adjusting WB doesn't help
In a situation where white balance holds steady or changes slowly, you might be able to achieve the same quality in JPEG format by doing a custom white balance in camera. However, in an environment like a concert or even a wedding where the light and the action change so quickly, there’s simply no time to rebalance, so shooting raw is the only way to get the most out of your images later.
You might notice that for the JPEG format image, the WB scale is centered at zero and adjusted positive and negative to that. It’s a relative adjustment instead of the absolute color temperature value that’s available in raw, because for a JPEG image, the original white balance is now baked permanently into the image, providing less flexibility when editing. That’s a big reason I shoot in raw format. I even prefer pocket cameras that record in raw format (like the Panasonic DMC-LX3 I used to take this photo), so that I can rescue images like this one when needed.
What if you’re shooting with a camera that records only in JPEG format, or with a video camera? You’re stuck with what the camera gives you. The best white balance setting will depend on the white balance of the stage lights before colored gels are put on them. Older incandescent lights may be closer to tungsten white balance, while some LED lights may be balanced closer to daylight. You’ll have to try some test shots using the daylight or tungsten white balance presets, and see which setting produces more appealing images. Or, if you’re able to light up a white surface with pure white stage lights, you can try setting a custom white balance off of that.
The updates are mostly about support for new cameras, such as the Fuji FinePix X100. The Lightroom update also fixes a few bugs including a JPEG export bug that while quite rare, is very serious if you happen to come across it.
As usual, you can read the release notes and download the installers from
It’s been a busy week over at Adobe, with the release of Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 and a free update to Adobe Photoshop CS5 12.0.4. There are lots of places on the web where you can read about specific new features, so here I’ve got a more customer-oriented take on these updates.
Adobe Creative Suite 5.5
Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 is a paid upgrade, and yet it isn’t CS6, so you’ll naturally ask whether you need it. You’ll probably be happiest with the CS5.5 feature set if you want to more easily integrate the latest technologies and formats into your workflow, such as HD video from the newest digital cinema and DSLR cameras; or if you’ve wanted more efficient ways to create, preview, and publish ebooks and other content for tablets and smartphones using Adobe InDesign, Adobe Flash, or Dreamweaver. It’s primarily because of these fast-moving new technologies and delivery media that Adobe felt a .5 release was warranted. If your day-to-day work is not so cutting-edge, you may have less of an need to upgrade.
If you edit video, the upgrade may be well worth it. Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium gets quite a boost, with enhancements like expanded GPU support and dual-system sound in Adobe Premiere Pro, fast 64-bit Adobe Media Encoder with an efficient new UI and customizable presets, a first-ever Mac version of Adobe Audition pro audio software, and the advanced Warp Stabilizer in After Effects for steadying shaky handheld footage. (If it sounds like I’m more familiar with Production Premium here, it’s because I was involved in producing some of the launch content about its new features.)
If you haven’t upgraded to CS5 yet, you do get a pretty long list of new features when you put CS5 and CS.5 together. You can see handy lists of CS5.5 new features versus CS5, CS4, and CS3 on the Adobe Creative Suite web page (pick a suite, then click Features).
Adobe also announced a move to 24-month major upgrade cycles with a minor .5 upgrade halfway between those. While cynics will say that more frequent upgrades is a way for Adobe to charge customers more often, the increased frequency can be a good thing overall. Shorter cycles actually make it easier to skip upgrades since you know the next one’s just another 12 months down the road, yet if you find yourself in a situation where new client requirements or business needs require new capabilities, you’ll likely get them sooner than with a longer upgrade cycle. It’s like when a train starts running more often: You’re not going to ride them all, but when you do need one, you won’t have to wait as long.
The version of Photoshop that ships with Creative Suite 5.5 is numbered 12.1, which is the same as 12.0.4 except that it also works with the new subscription licensing that Adobe announced along with Creative Suite CS5.5. (Note that there is no Photoshop CS5.5.)
To get the update, start Photoshop CS5 and choose Help > Updates. If you prefer to download the standalone installer or want to read the release notes, go to:
Because Adobe tends to provide Camera Raw plug-in updates only for the current major version of Photoshop, some users have expressed concerns about whether a paid upgrade is needed to continue getting free Camera Raw updates. Because the current major version of Photoshop remains Photoshop CS5, your free Camera Raw updates will continue, presumably until CS6.
Great intro video about the new Soft Proofing feature in the Lightroom 4 public beta, by Andrew Rodney: http://t.co/YFKFBGzh1 week ago
Eve Arnold, first female member of Magnum photo collective, passed away this week at 99 (1912-2011). BBC slideshow: http://t.co/DJ2cu8hp2 weeks ago
Lightroom tip: To delete a photo from disk, do it in a folder. If you delete a photo in a collection, it's only removed from the collection. 3 weeks ago
If you’ve got a fast Internet connection, a recent Mac, and US$29, what’s stopping you from downloading the just-released 10.7 Lion upgrade to Mac OS X? For many people, what stops them is being unsure whether the software they have is still going to work. Below is a summary of various reports I’ve run into around the web.
