B. Young

Lightroom Tip: Uploading to a web service

2007-04-16T03:04:23Z

Lightroom has excellent Flash web gallery generation and built-in FTP upload capabilities, but if you use one of the many web services that are out there you may be wondering how to get your photos on the web. Up until last week i was wondering the same thing. Luckily, there is a solution, which came by way of Tom Hogarty, PM for Lightroom.

The solution is to add an uploader executable into the Export Actions folder. Most of the major services (Flickr, Smugmug, etc) have client uploader mechanisms.

I personally use Smugmug and i found a client uploader which worked like a charm. Here's the steps:

1) Place your executable uploader into C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\Export Actions

NOTE: i created an alias from my original location and pasted into the export actions folder.

(sorry, don't know what the path is on Mac)

2) In LR, select the images you want to upload

3) File > Export Photos

4) Select an existing preset that outouts in to web file sizes (I already had an Export For Web preset that i used previously)

5) In the post processing popup should now be a shortcut to the uploader exe - select it

6) Go back up to the preset popup Save As New Preset - give it a name

7) Now when you click Export it will generate the files and add them to the uploader application ready for upload.

I scrum, you scrum, we all scrum

2007-04-10T05:06:23Z

Agile project management at Adobe is not a new concept. Many product teams have used agile-like development models for many years now. The After Effects team, for instance, introduced an incremental development model a few years ago which was accepted by other Adobe products as an alternative to the traditional Waterfall model.

Scrum, on the other hand, is a relatively new buzzword that is spreading throughout the company and yielding some positive results.

What are the principle of Scrum?

Scrum is an agile process to manage and control development work.
Scrum is a wrapper for existing engineering practices.
Scrum is a team-based approach to iteratively, incrementally develop systems and products when requirements are rapidly changing
Scrum is a process that controls the chaos of conflicting interests and needs.
Scrum is a way to improve communications and maximize co-operation.
Scrum is a way to detect and cause the removal of anything that gets in the way of developing and delivering products.
Scrum is a way to maximize productivity.
Scrum is scalable from single projects to entire organizations. Scrum has controlled and organized development and implementation for multiple interrelated products and projects with over a thousand developers and implementers.
Scrum is a way for everyone to feel good about their job, their contributions, and that they have done the very best they possibly could.

For me, the biggest win over other methodologies is the face-to-face communication, delivered by 15 minute status meetings each day. Weekly meetings are too in-frequent to track progress of projects. By that time the world has already changed and you're working on old stuff. Well, okay, perhaps not but sometimes it does feel like that :)

If you want to learn more about scrum, here's one book that comes recommended..

Lightroom Training

2007-04-06T04:38:15Z

I've been using Lightroom frequently for about 3 months now and thought i knew the product fairly well until i started watching Chris Orwig's Training DVD from Lynda.com.

In the 5.5 hours of play time, I've learned a great deal and it's definetely helped me to work my way through LR a lot quicker and more efficiently.

If you've been using Photoshop for years (as I have), you may be tempted to think you don't need training (RTFM syndrome), but believe me it's worth the time. Lightroom is a completely different beast from Photoshop (and Bridge) and after the training you'll really appreciate the functionality that LR has to offer. I do!

Here is a link for two books that Chris recommends for Lightroom on his website.

NAPP's Photoshop User Magazine also now includes Darkroom, a supplemental magazine which focuses purely on Lightroom features.

Adobe demos 3.1GB image at Photoshop World

2007-04-04T23:25:08Z

At Photoshop World 2007 in Boston, Adobe vice president of product development Dave Story spoke about the future of Photoshop while showing off a 3.1 GB photo of Boston taken from the city’s Prudential Center, a 52-story skyscraper. Provided by xRex, a studio that offers large-scale panoramic images, the 3.1 GB photo was composed of hundreds of individual 16 MP images that were stitched together. This multi-billion pixel image then allows users to zoom into the scene in a three-dimensional way to retrieve details. “You can read a license plate from the top of the Pru,” said Story.

Google Fight

2007-03-17T04:01:15Z

i found this interesting site when comparing different programming languages: http://www.googlefight.com

You can type two words to fight against each other and it tracks the total number of results each word has had (i assume they use the Google APIs to do this)

Let's see, how well is Lightroom doing versus Aperture?

LR = 1.54M results, Aperture = 1.66M results (oh well, we're catching up)

How about Adobe versus Apple?

Adobe = 206M results, Apple = 284 M results

Adobe versus Microsoft?

Adobe = 206M results, Microsoft = 562 M results

Adobe versus Google?

Adobe = 206M results, Google = 831 M results (well, they do own the search after all)

Okay, we must get more results than somebody. We can always pick on Larry Ellison...

Adobe versus Oracle?

Adobe = 206M results, Oracle = 139 M results

Here's a fun one, pdf versus doc:

pdf = 1.31G results, doc = 263 M results

Wow, that's twice the number of "microsoft" results!

Here's an internal compare: Flash versus Photoshop

Flash = 483M results, Photoshop = 109M results

I'm sure most people have seen Google Trends already, which is a very similar tool. Speaking of which, it appears that Moscow, Russia is eagerly awaiting Photoshop CS3....

Gates on the daily show

2007-02-01T04:56:57Z

Here is a humorous interview with Gates as he promotes Vista on the daily show. Jon teases a few points on security by asking questions like "What was your pets name when you were young"? Funny. And what does F12 do anyhow? Hmm, good point Jon...i think you got Bill with that one.

My first post

2007-01-27T06:50:13Z

As i find out how to start my first external Adobe blog, i have to admit that using Adobe Contribute (a former Macromedia product) for the first time is a fitting way to begin. Since the merger a year ago there has been a huge amount of progress on where we are as a single company and what exciting possibilities are coming in the future. And what's better than getting more cool products to play with!

The most impressive ex-Macromedia product I like is Adobe Flex 2.0, which i have been tinkering with recently. As a development platform, it is extremely easy to learn and fast to develop a variety of applications (or RIAs). The good news is Flash/Flex is now incorporated in Photoshop CS3 Beta and you can execute Javascript commands via Actionscript. The possibilities are endless for 3rd party developers who want the power of Photoshop and Javascript, but require a flexible UI that is very fast to implement. John Nack posted a Flash Inside Photoshop blog a few weeks ago with a downloadable sample to try in the beta. It will be interesting to see what ideas the scripting community come up with in the coming weeks and months.

(Some personal background: i've been at Adobe for 8.5 years, and have worked on a variety of products, but i've been on Photoshop for a large part of that time - now on my second stint :) )