Here’s a few tips on backing up Lightroom catalogs. It’s reprinted from a post I made on a photo message board.
I must have missed the discussion about backing up Lightroom Catalogs. Why isn’t Time Machine a good method?
The problem occurs if the catalog is backed up while still open. If the database (the .lrcat file) is changed during the backup, then it may produce a corrupt backup. You would not know unless you tried to restore from the backup.
Apple may have fixed this – they did for Aperture, as I understand it. The fix involves not backing up the database while it’s open.
Even if that’ s fixed, however, there could still be problems for people, depending on how you use the program. Perhaps you leave Lightroom open most of the time, and there is limited opportunity to do the backup in the background.
The best method for backing up Lightroom has a few components.
I have just returned from the ASMP’s Strictly Business 3 conference, and several people have asked me to report on the worthiness of the event. I can say with real enthusiasm that it would be quite helpful for professional photographers of any level. Whether you are just starting out or have an established business, there is a lot to benefit from.
In some ways the event was mis-branded. It’s not just a continuation of the earlier SB1 and SB2 events, because that’s not what our industry needs. We are facing huge changes, and the conference is really geared to helping photographers understand and survive the seismic changes we are currenly undergoing. Details after the jump.
This short movie (3:34) shows how the View Options in Expression Media can be used to help sort between different versions of image files. You have the choice of lots of different metadata to show under a thumbnail, such as file size, pixel dimensions, color space and modification dates.
When you couple that with the “Sort” command, it’s easy to find the version of the file you are looking for.
Recently, I answered a question about how to use AVCHD files from a consumer video camera on a Mac. It can be really frustrating since these files are not native to the Mac. If you have the Leopard or Snow Leopard operating system and you use iMovie or Final Cut or Adobe Premier Pro, you can read the files natively.
But what about playing them with Quicktime, or cataloging with Expression Media? In these cases, you need to do some kind of conversion of the files. There are two basic ways to do it – transcode or rewrap.
When you transcode, you take the bundle of JPEGs that make up the movie and you actually remake them. This is a destructive process that degrades the image as the individual frame images are remade. (That’s an oversimplification, but you get the point).
In general, whenever you transcode, you want to keep the original as well as the converted files. Not only is transcoding destructive, but there is the possibility of some kind of transcoding error, where frames might get dropped, or some other glitch introduced to the sequence. This means you’ll be really increasing the storage needs, since you’ll need to save (and backup) both the original and the transcoded versions.
When you rewrap, you are basically taking all the JPEGs inside the movie file and putting a new wrapper around them (kind of like what a DNG does with raw file data). Since the individual images for each frame are not remade, there is no loss of visual quality. This also greatly reduces the possibility of any kind of dropped frames, etc.
Clipwrap ($50) can turn those pesky AVCHD files into quicktime-native files quickly and easily. If it reports a successful wrap, you’re pretty safe in tossing the original files. (Of course, to be safest, you’d want to watch the entire clip before tossing the original.)
Thanks to Richard Harrington who first talked me through this issue when I was dealing with my own camera.
In The DAM Book, I outline a very useful add-on to Photoshop – Dr. Brown’s Captionmaker. (Script available free here.) I helped Russell make this script, and find it to be very useful. Shown below is an image that it creates. The script makes a frame around the image, pull metadata and drops it into the frame, can resize, convert to sRGB, run an action, and more.
Note that the CpationMaker does not yet work for CS5, but Russell said he would (hopefully) add it. Currently it is available for CS2, CS3, and CS4.
In this case, I typed the free text “Dr. Brown in Las Vegas” into the box, and had it pull the file name and insert it, and I also told it to put my credit on the image. Here’s a picture of the interface.
When I updated my Mac OS to 10.6, I lost the use of my trusty Laserwriter 8500, since Snow Leopard does not support the AppleTalk protocol that I’ve been using with the printer. That’s a real shame, since the 8500 is a real workhorse, and at a good price. I’ve printed more than 36,000 pages on the printer and I’m only on my third (I think) toner cartridge. The printers themselves can be bought used for as little as $100.
The 8500 is a great document printer. It’s made to handle the work of an entire floor of office cubicles, and can even handle large paper (11×17). It can connect directly to an Ethernet network.
Fortunately, updating the printer to work with Snow Leopard was possible, athough I did have to dig out some old hardware. Here are the steps.
Here’s the last post about the new Camera Scanning content on dpBestflow. Richard Anderson outlined how he used the process to digitize 20 years of work for Center Stage in Baltimore. Richard outlines the strategy behind the project, and then Matthew takes you through the workflow. To see the whole page, click here.
In this movie for dpBestflow, we further examine camera scan workflow for black and white film. This workflow outlines the optimization of a single image, including custom use of the curve, dust removal, local corrections, and more. You can go to the whole page here.
The movie linked below is from the dpBestflow.org website describing the camera scanning process. In this movie, the several types of hardware that you can use for the process are outlined, along with considerations about how to set up and work with them.
These include a bench system, rail system, bellows system, lens-attached system, and copystand system.
