[Rogertmac]

EXIF is information embedded within your image file that identifies the camera used, lens used, aperture, focal length, ISO, and other parameters used for a particular photo. DR is dynamic Range.

In regard to Lightroom, you can download a 30 day free trial from the Adobe Website. Gimp would be great as well for editing. It is a free tool and is essentially a one stop shop for your photo edits except you do not have a storage library.

You need to convert the Raw file to a more standard JPEG or PNG for upload and viewing on the web.

Why almost nobody here mentions the Pentax Utilities 4 for editing, is it too bad? GIMP or Photoshop are better than it? As I´m starting to understand, I must have a program for editing my photos (GIMP, Photoshop, P.U.4, etc) and another to organize them isn´t it? As I understand so far, Lightroom is not proper for editing, right? And how about Picasa, what does it specifically do?
I´m really lost between the dozens of programs avaiable!
Thanks

[jatrax]

I will start thinking on this investment.

Lightrrom is used by many and it works well for photographers because it was designed from the ground up as a photo archiving and retrieval system. Yes, it 'develops' RAW files, can do minor editing and so on but at its core the main function is to catalog your photos. It is a program that provides a digital workflow. But there are other alternatives. The point I was trying to make is that unless you make the effort to organize your photos from the start you will have an unmanageable mess and not be able to find anything. Here are a couple of ideas:

1) Shoot in jpeg, upload the photos to your hard drive and store them in a specific folder scheme. Use something that makes sense to you. Like everything from a shoot in a folder or whatever. I use Lightroom to upload from the camera and copy the originals to a folder structure by date. So all pictures taken yesterday are in the \\Photos\2011\2011-12-17 folder. Each image file is renamed to include the date and time in the name so they sort properly. Before I got Lightroom I used a free program called Stamp 2.8 to do the upload and rename the files. I have digital images in a folder structure going back to 1981, though some of the early ones are scans of film.

2) There is an open source alternative to Lightroom: www.digikam.org I know nothing about it, just saw a reference to it the other day. Looks like it only runs on Linux and I'm not sure how mature it is but for free you might want to take a look.

3) Picasa 2 is also supposed to be good and free. Again I am not familiar but others here use it and like it.

Most folks who use Lightroom also have an external editor, you may or may not need one. I use Lightroom for 90% of my work and then either Photoshop Elements or GIMP to do the 10% I cannot do in Lightroom. It really depends on what your needs are, what is the purpose of your photography? If family photos then putting them in properly marked folders might be good enough but who will know what that photo is 20 years from now? Properly keywording them, by identifying people and location will allow the photo to be used after you are gone. If they are not keyworded chances are they will be of no use to anyone. There are many free program that allow you to keyword and title images.

I store the RAW files in folders indexed by Lightroom and only export to jpeg when needed. So when I need prints for photocards I can export using a Lightroom pre-set customized for 4x6 prints. When I need 6mp jpegs for stock photography sites then I use the pre-set for that. Takes time to work out the pre-sets but after that it works quick and consistent.

[jolepp]

Lightroom combines organizing and post processing / editing in a very convenient way. Most anything (and then some) you'd usually want to do can be done in Lightroom, Photoshop or Gimp can do still more, but they are 'only' editors.

[jatrax]

Why almost nobody here mentions the Pentax Utilities 4 for editing, is it too bad? GIMP or Photoshop are better than it? As I´m starting to understand, I must have a program for editing my photos (GIMP, Photoshop, P.U.4, etc) and another to organize them isn´t it? As I understand so far, Lightroom is not proper for editing, right? And how about Picasa, what does it specifically do?

The Pentax Utilities do work for developing RAW and minor editing. But I found the user interface to be crude and difficult (for me) to learn. Tried it once or twice and gave up.

Lightroom is both a cataloging program, RAW developer and can do nearly all of the editing you would want. For most photographers it will do 100% of any possible editing you need. One advantage of Lightroom is that it has a large user base and looking forward a good chance it will be around for many years. The worst thing I can imagine is to invest the time and effort learning and building a huge photo catalog in a program and then having the program developer go away.

There are many editors: Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, GIMP, Picasa and probably dozens of others. GIMP is free and works fine. Elements is not too expensive and integrates well with Lightroom which is why I use it, Photoshop is way too expensive and is over-kill for photography. But I would not get too worried about an editor, you will know when you need it and I don't think you are there just yet. Just focus on learning the camera, figuring out your workflow and how you will store those pictures. After that it is one step at a time. There is a HUGE learning curve and if you try to do it all at once I guarantee you will get frustrated.

I went from film to point & shoot digital and only came back to dslrs when the k-x came out. The quality of my photographs declined dramatically with the k-x, so much so that I really considered giving up and going back to the P&S camera. But it was all learning curve and once I figured out the basics the image quality started to go back up. Now I take some decent photos and am looking forward to the day I take a good one.

[jatrax]

One thing I forgot to mention about Lightroom: it is only a catalog, the actual image files still need to be stored, and backed up properly, the images are not 'in' lightroom they are cataloged by Lightroom. There is an option in Lightroom to write meta-data info (keywords, title, etc) to the file or just keep it in the Lightroom catalog. I always write the meta-data to the actual file. That way everything is in the image file and if Lightroom dies or the catalog file gets corrupted or I want to send someone the jpeg with the information intact it is there and they can read the EXIF and see who is in the photo without having to use Lightroom. Just like writing the names of people and the date on old prints so your grand-kids will know who was in the picture.

My wife is into genealogy and she gets really frustrated finding an old photo of family and no one alive can remember who is in the picture. She is in the process of scanning all of her old family photos (some going back to the 1930's) and then visiting elderly relatives to try and identify who is in the image and then recording that in the EXIF of the scans.

[cats_five]

If you think back to film days, you used one film outdoors regardless of the lighting conditions. It gave you a fairly neutral result in the middle of the day, the result was a bit blue in the shadows, and in early morning and late evening you got a very warm result. Your film was intended to produce a neutral result and I think was balanced to a colour temperature of 5500K or thereabouts.

You camera on auto white balance attempts to produce a neutral result in any lighting, so if you manually set it to 5500K for those sunset shots you should get a lot more warmth.

WRT exposure, I use Av which is in effect semi-automatic - I set the ISO and aperture, it sets the shutter speed, and it works just as well for me with my K7 as it did back in my ME Super days. However the big advantage of the K7 (and your K5) is that you can have the preview show you where the image is over- (red) or under-exposed (yellow). Check the preview, check if you have yellow or red, and given you are shooting RAW+ you should be able to get a decent image later.

[Rogertmac]

One thing I forgot to mention about Lightroom: it is only a catalog, the actual image files still need to be stored, and backed up properly, the images are not 'in' lightroom they are cataloged by Lightroom. There is an option in Lightroom to write meta-data info (keywords, title, etc) to the file or just keep it in the Lightroom catalog. I always write the meta-data to the actual file. That way everything is in the image file and if Lightroom dies or the catalog file gets corrupted or I want to send someone the jpeg with the information intact it is there and they can read the EXIF and see who is in the photo without having to use Lightroom. Just like writing the names of people and the date on old prints so your grand-kids will know who was in the picture.

My wife is into genealogy and she gets really frustrated finding an old photo of family and no one alive can remember who is in the picture. She is in the process of scanning all of her old family photos (some going back to the 1930's) and then visiting elderly relatives to try and identify who is in the image and then recording that in the EXIF of the scans.

Jatrax,
Does Lightroom (or Picasa 3) have an option that automatically separates the jpegs from the raw photos in any given folder? I mean, one can automatically create a new folder w/ just one tipe of arquive? As I took all of my K5 photos on raw+, all of my folders have consecutive jpeg and raw photos w/ the same number. I realize it´s better if one can save folders containing only the raw arquives, isn´t it? When editing the photos this seems to be an advantage too, as one can open a folder containing only raws and edit one by one. How about after editing? Do you delete the raw file after creating the final JPEG image? I mean, it is advisable to make backups of the original raw arquive, the post processed JPEG photo or both?
Another doubt: when one makes any modification or delete a photo using Lightroom (or Picasa),it will be modified or deleted at the original folder, or it will be preserved "at the origin" and be altered/deleted only at the "catalog" created by the program?
I think this is my first great decision: which program to use? I guess this is quite like a camera sistem, Pentax, Nikon, Canon, etc, once one have started w/ one brand it will become difficult (and expensive) to change for another system. In the case of photo managers the "expensive" means it will become extremely difficult once one have thousands of photos stored, to change for another manager and do all of work manually again. I think i it is a decision that must be made right now in my case while I still have few digital photos.
Thanks again

[IIGQ4U]

Nice shot!

The "underexposing the sky" thing can easily be solved by metering properly, as your FL gets wider, the need to properly meter gets more critical.

Always remember this -> All Automatic Metering With Digital Cameras Suck!!!

Remembering that will help in improving your photog 10-fold...





-

Thanks!

I shot this photo in manual at a 12mm focal length. I achieved the desired result.

I guess I don't exactly understand your comment.

[IIGQ4U]

Why almost nobody here mentions the Pentax Utilities 4 for editing, is it too bad? GIMP or Photoshop are better than it? As I´m starting to understand, I must have a program for editing my photos (GIMP, Photoshop, P.U.4, etc) and another to organize them isn´t it? As I understand so far, Lightroom is not proper for editing, right? And how about Picasa, what does it specifically do?
I´m really lost between the dozens of programs avaiable!
Thanks

Hi,

I never touched the includes discs. I actually do not use Lightroom and use Apple's Aperture 3. I also use Pixelmator (Great User Interface) or Photoshop, as well as other programs to more quickly achieve a desired effect.

I am not sure whether or not you use a Mac, but if you do, you may want to seriously consider Aperture 3 as it is only $80 from the Mac App Store.

My best advise would be to start small. You will eventually figure out what you want from your photos and whether or not additional software will be required.

[Philoslothical]

There's an alternative program here that looks promising: Bibble Labs - Professional Photo Workflow Software

Single license for one system is $100. They have versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

[Rogertmac]

Here are some examples of the "lack of reds" in some photos I took:
1> This was a REALLY beautifull sunset, w/ an overal redish cast in the sky. The result was extremely disapointing... I didn´t even wanted to look for better angles or better composition, because the camera simply refused to register the wonderful red sky I was seeing.



2> If I remember well, after the decption, I tried (in a completely wrong way, I know) to set a manual WB that could bring some of the red colors of the sky to the photo: Even greater deception! The photo got an overall artificial red tint and the sky continued w/o the wonderfull contrasts of red/orange colors I was seeing.


3> Another example: I remember this place well. These letters were very red, and the green plants inside the window were very green. The place looked beautifull, but the photo was, again, very frustating.

[Rogertmac]

There's an alternative program here that looks promising: Bibble Labs - Professional Photo Workflow Software

Single license for one system is $100. They have versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Greetings Philoslothical,
Do you know of anybody that have experience w/ this program and could make some comments? I liked the price! Almost 6 times cheaper than Lightroom! (I don´t know about you guys there, but at Adobe´s brazilian store, the Lightroom costs US$ 582!!!).
And how about Picasa 3, fellows? Anyone use it and have a good (or bad) experience w/ it ?
For economical matters I would prefer to use Picasa 3 since it is free, but, if it has any serious flaw or doesn´t work so well, I´ll prefer to wait and then buy the Lightroom or even this Bibble Labs 5 you indicated.
One thing I already know: I really need to decide which program to start with.
Thanks

[IIGQ4U]

Are you spot metering the sky? The first image looks a bit cold and it appears that you lost some detail in the sky. I believe spot metering would help a great deal for this photo.

This appears more to be a metering issue than anything else.

[Philoslothical]

Do you know of anybody that have experience w/ this program and could make some comments?

I've only started to experiment with it, just a couple days ago. It seems very nice so far, but I would greatly miss my Photoshop plugins. Still, the trial is free, try it out. It's probably one of the best available for people who use Linux, too.

[Rogertmac]

Guys,
One more tip please:
I was just checking the BH and Amazon´s sites and found (in shock!) that the program costs US$ 190 there in USA!!! Here in my 5th World Country, Adobe charges Almost US$600 for it!!!!
As I have relatives living there, I could simply order the program at BH (As I did w/ my K5) and ask anyone there to bring it to me! (My cousin is coming in January!)
Does anybody knows about any kind of area restriction for such program, like Blurays or DVDs? I mean, if I buy the Lightroom there in USA I will be able to use it here in Brazil w/o any problem? Will I have any trouble w/ future updates?
Any hint will be extremely welcome! For US$ 190 I think Lightroom will be the perfect solution to me: only one program to learn! And from what all you said, I think Lightroom can do 99% of what a person w/ my "digital skill" (NONE!) will need for a long time!