Inspiring

Question

I wwant to export my finished photos as a catalogue

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
April 18, 2021
10 replies
3259 views

I would like to export my finished photos as a catalogue how can I do that. There are many thousands of them and exporting them in any other way would be confusing. I do not wish to export the raw data nor by means of Lightroom as it is expressly intended for a general audience. I would appreciate guidance

Thanks

Sockit

This topic has been closed for replies.

Todd Shaner

Legend

Most cameras will shoot sRGB JPEG file by default. You can manually set it to shoot the wider gamut Adobe RGB JPEGs, but setting it to shoot raw file format (RW2) provides the full camera sensor bit depth and color gamut.

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sockitAuthor

Inspiring

Todd Some time ago when I was asking about how to deal with negatives and face recognition, you suggested that I should ask around in the Lab Neg Pro forum and asked me to report back.. So here is the situation. There is no solution except for exporting the photos as positive and then reimporting them.I couldn't get any advice about whether this could be done on a batch basis nor advice on the file structure to be used. I therefore just gave up as I was afraid of ruining what I have already done. However since then with your suggestion, I have been working on organising the metadata and with superb help from Wobert and Michael who painstakingly adviced me on the Who What Where and When set up and other thing.I am now moving slowly with that. However I have found that having a list of interesting individuals in the photos I have found it very simple to go through images based on developed negatives and using the "draw face region" tool can easily plug in the names in the usual way, and find that they are then in the database and are also displayed when I go back at a later time. Thus I hope that I can then just manage without the image recognition feature.

That seems to be a satisfactory work around for me at the most basic level

Thanks

Sockit

Todd Shaner

Legend

Thanks for reporting back on the NLP forum results. It sounds like you have a workable solution staying within LrC for your metadata tagging.

Todd Shaner

Legend

"I am agonising over the possibility of re doing the earlier attempts as I was learning as I went along and didn't understand the terrible gamut of jpeg."

As long as there's no highlight clipping an sRGB JPEG color negative capture file should be close to the quality obtainable with the raw file. The dynamic range is pretty small, but the color gamut may be more than sRGB. If you're happy with the NLP rendering from the JPEG captures a reshoot with raw capture may not be much better. You can try a raw capture test on a few of the files and compare the NLP results to the JPEG captures.

"My big problem with adding face recognition is if I have to treat the images individually rather than being able to process them in batch form without losing the order and file structure."

Concerning Face Recognition and adding other metadata I suggest psoting this question on the NLP forum at the below link. Please let us know what you find out, which will help other NLP users who land here.

https://forums.negativelabpro.com/

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sockitAuthor

Inspiring

Todd that is very interesting. I was completely unaware of sRGBJpeg. Do you think that it is likely that my Panasonc GH4 would use that automatically. That would greatly reduce the necessity to repeat all of my earlier work.

I will go to the NLP forum and ask around as I am a member

Thanks

Sockit

Todd Shaner

Legend

It appears you are capturing the negative film using a Panasonic DMC camera. However, it looks like you also have the camera set to JPEG output. You should be using raw RW2 file format. Either way the camera captured film image files will only show the Negative Lab Pro (NLP) eidits from inside LrC because it uses non-destructive editing. Those edits are saved in the LrC catalog file and only applied to exported files or Edit in PS files. You will need to export the original NLP edited files to JPEG or TIFF file format and then run face recognition on just those files.You can do this by exporitng them to a separate subfolder or by exporting them to the same folder as the orginal files and using the filter bar to show just the exported JPEG image files. Then use Face Recognition set to 'Only Find Faces As-Needed' mode with those files manually selected. There may be some other "tricks," but I don't use face recognition so the wrong person to ask.

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sockitAuthor

Inspiring

Todd You are correct. I am using the Panasonic GH4 as I wanted to take 4K videos, and thought that the resolution of the camera would be sufficient for converting 35 mm negatives. When I first started I was not using Neg Lab Pro and was just reversing the slopes of the Red Blue and Green curves. I was also using Jpeg. I have subesquently used the Neg Lab Pro and Raw for the process with much improved results. I am agonising over the possibility of re doing the earlier attempts as I was learning as I went along and didn't understand the terrible gamut of jpeg. I doubt that I have the time or resources for more than a token effort.

My big problem with adding face recognition is if I have to treat the images individually rather than being able to process them in batch form without losing the order and file structure. which is how the other metadata will need to be loaded. I have many thousands of images of this sort now converted and filed in Lightroom

Thanks for your kind interest and help

Terence

Todd Shaner

Legend

"I have now found that using LabNegPro while excellent leaves negatives on the folder that contains all of the images."

I'm not familiar with Negative Lab Pro, but watched the below video for a few minutes. It mentions that Negative Lab Pro is completely "non-destructive" meaning that it works directly with the raw file and no conversion to TIFF file is required. So I am at a loss as to what these "nagatives" are that you are seeing in the raw file capture folder. Please explain in more detail. Thank you.

https://www.negativelabpro.com/

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sockitAuthor

Inspiring

Todd I am not very good at describing the problem.

Here is a view of how the developed negatives appear in lightoom

Here is a view of how they appear on my hard drive

The face recognition system cannot work with these negatives. So the work around is to export these photos from lightroom wich will export the positive image, then reimport them to light room which puts the positive in place of the negative... At least that is what I think happens. I have not as yet tried it. Then the facial recognition system will work and the negatives are then lost. I think I might have to confine all of this to the negative files on my hard drive.

Graham.

Todd Shaner

Legend

I've beeen using LrC since version 1.0 in 2007 and Photoshop version 3.0 in 1994. Both had far fewer features then they do today so my learning "ramp-up" was much easier. Like I said there's a lot here to wrap your head around and it will take some time. The Lightroom Queen books should help a lot. Use them as a reference guide when you run across something like soft proofing that's difficult to use. As Jao mentions it's something most people never even need to use.

You can download a LrC shortcut guide here: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/keyboard-shortcuts/

Remember Lightroom Rule #5: Enjoy!

Circa 2009

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sockitAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks Todd. While you are here can I ask you a quick question. I have now found that using LabNegPro while excellent leaves negatives on the folder that contains all of the images. That fouls up the face recognition system. Thus to use face recognition it is necessary to export the images and then reimport.them. This is a real pain if you need to do it each time. you work on a photo. However if I exported big rafts of my catalogue in their file structure.Would I then be able to import them back into light room and preserve the original file structure? Should I restrict that just to the negatives which is more difficult?Would it matter if I had mixed files of each type?

As I have arranged my folder by year, I could just export and reimport each year one by one ie up to 3000 images at a time and be ready to do face recognition.

Thanks

Sockit.

Todd Shaner

Legend

Glad to hear that! the Lightroom Queen's website has a lot of good resources and its own forum. Many of the Adobe Lightroom forum members post and contribute on both sites. Feel free to do so as well. You may also find the Photoshop Family forum helpful as it includes Lightroom and is monitored by Adobe staff. Enjoy!

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/

https://feedback.photoshop.com/

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sockitAuthor

Inspiring

Can I ask you an additional question. I remember what you said about using sRBGJpg but have not yet found it, however somehow have switched lightroom so that it is displaying all of my photos as Adobe RGB, Perceptual. I have no idea how to get back and to find the format that I need. . I am in the process of working out a classification system for my photos. However I have found that there is a problem with Lightroom when trying to identify faces in photos that have been developed from negatives. It just presents the undeveloped negative and then does not seem able to find similar faces which are also negatives even though they are adjacent in the folder. It just stops. I am wondering if it works with a mixed bunch which I have. ( 30% of my images are negatives which I have developed with negative lab pro)

I hope I am not doing the wrong thing by continuing the conversation in this way

Thanks

Sockit.

Per Berntsen

Community Expert

I remember what you said about using sRBGJpg but have not yet found it

You set the color space for exported files under File settings in the Export dialog.

See screenshot posted by @Todd Shaner above.

displaying all of my photos as Adobe RGB, Perceptual

You have Soft proofing enabled. To disable it, press S, or uncheck it in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen.

If you can't see the toolbar, press T.

Soft proofing is mainly used to preview how an image will print, using a printing profile.

Todd Shaner

Legend

Glad to help and please let us know how you make out. I have a special interest in LrC file sharing alternatives because it can only sync reduced size smart previews (2560 long edge) to the Cloud. In addition users viewing shared LR Web albums can only see certain metadata. Keywords used to be visible, but Adobe removed that capability. You can only see the Caption, Title, Camera Info, and Lens Info fields, but none of the other metadata fields. This severely limits its usefulness.

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sockitAuthor

Inspiring

I have just taken a quick look at the book you recommended it is extremely interesting and well written. I will enjoy reading it. Thanks for that great tip it is well worth the investment.

Sockit

Todd Shaner

Legend

"Another question I have for you is whether the software will allow me to put sound or text with the files?"

You can do this using the LrC Slideshow module to create a video file with text and sound, but it has limitations and very few "frills." There are other better slideshow apps you can use to create slideshow videos (google), but give it a try with LrC.

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sockitAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks.. I will try that out too. I will order those books first and do a bit of reading

Sockit

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

Hi @sockit , Aha. A QNAP NAS probably. In that case I would highly recommend exporting the images to jpegs indeed. Just make sure that the quality setting is higher than about 85 and you use the sRGB color space. This makes the images indistinguishable from the originals even if they were raw but way smaller. The sRGB color space is the most compatible standard (It is the same as the HDTV color standard). JPEG is more than good enough if you are not going to do any further heavy editing of the images and they are meant for display and printing. So for this it sounds like you really don't need anything better and you should stay with what is most compatible.

If the QNAP NAS is anything like my synology, you can run a photo service on it. You simply import all the jpeg images into it and it will catalog them for you based on the metadata embedded in the files. You will then be able to access the images through a webpage running on the NAS or through an app on mobile devices. Indeed all you do is export all images to a big folder and import those images on the QNAP NAS through its photo app interface. It appears QNAP uses this software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yhAfUXh5jc

Todd Shaner

Legend

Just make sure that the quality setting is higher than about 85 and you use the sRGB color space. This makes the images indistinguishable from the originals even if they were raw but way smaller.
By @Jao vdL

Jeffrey Friedl did an exhaustive analysis of Lightrom Export Quality Settings and determined a setting of 75 (70-76 range) produces results that are "visibly" as good as the highest setting 100 (93-100 range). Using a setting of 80 (77-84 range) provides a step better quality just to be safe, while providing file size 1/2 to 1/3 of the maximum 100 setting. This helps to reduce the required disk space and download/upload time required.

http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/jpeg-quality

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sockitAuthor

Inspiring

Todd I have just replied to JAO and I want to thank you too for your great help. I knew nothing about sRGB and this is essential in this final stage.. There is so much detail in lightroom that is not at all obvious about the great images it produces. I am will work over all of this before blundering forward as I usually do.

Thanks

Sockit

Todd Shaner

Legend

I do not wish to export the raw data nor by means of Lightroom as it is expressly intended for a general audience. I would appreciate guidance

Export as Catalog requires the user to have the same version of LrC you are using to see the image files. Please provide more details as to EXACTLY what you are trying to do. The more details the better!

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sockitAuthor

Inspiring

Hi Todd Thanks for your reply. That is what I seemed to have been finding as it wants to export the original files.

What I am seeking is simply to have a repository of photos that can be reviewed remotely. Becausee of the number it seems advisable to have them classified in some order eg by year which is how I have them in light room. Thus I now I suppose need to find how I can export them from light room in their finished state so that another programme can easily classify and store them. The obvious issue is what options do I have for the choice of programs that would do that. The users want something simple to use as they will not be used often as it will be more of an archive. I have one additional problem in that the computer they will be stored on runs on Linux. I hope I have not boxed myself in.

I really apologise for giving you this extra load but you asked for more detail.

sockit

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

The answer to this greatly depends on the software they're using on the linux machine. If they are using some sort of cataloguing software that reads file metadata (hopefully!), all you should do is export all your images to high enough quality sRGB jpegs and sent them a big folder of files. The cataloguing software will read the metadata and be able to sort by year, date, keyword, camera, etc. If they are not using any software to catalog that reads metadata , tell them to (I hear lots of good stuff about Lightroom alternative darktable that runs on linux and other OS's but here is a list that looks good: https://itsfoss.com/linux-photo-management-software/ ) as it is just too much of a pain to organize in any other way. Organizing in folders is not a good idea.

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