B/W and Colour

[Dierk]

I guess, those of us  preparing photos in b/w leave the colour space RGB, which turns into a problem if you think to use xMedia's [mean] Colour panel to find them quickly. Unless I've overlooked something vital, the only way to quickly find all your b/w images is by creating a keyword 'b/w'.

[peterkrogh]

Dierk,
I guess that's about it.  In Lightroom a Treatment tag is made, but it's not readable by EM unfortunately.
IT's probably not too hard to go through even a very large collection looking for all B&W and make the keyword, especially if you are on a big monitor.
Peter

[roberte]

Hi Dierk,

I use a Catalog Set.

I had hoped the Sample Color may have picked it up, but alas no. In fact the Sample Color is acting weird now I look at its search results, grouping all sorts of disparate image colours.

-- Robert.

[Dierk]

The Sample Colour feature never really worked for me. The trouble is, it just averages all the colours in a photo based upon RGB [or CMYK] numbers. These colour spaces are a highly abstract way of defining colours in the first place, averaging them out will inevitably lead to unusable results, as we rarely have images with one dominant colour value defined in our respective colour space. Most digital photography books even recommend - wrongly in my opinion - to go for an evenly distributed histogram reaching from left end to right end, that is, a non-slanted Poisson or Gauss distribution. Which, BTW, would give us a sample colour of 128, 128, 128.

B/W, as is often the case, is a perfect example to see the differences between what computers see and what we see. Usually I use it and it's counterpart the monochrome monitor [especially the good old orange or green ones] to talk about the intricacies of colour management*. To have xMedia's Sample Colour panel work as expected with b/w, that is giving us an easy way to find them by simply hitting non-colour colours [black, white and grey aren't colours] we would have to convert our files from RGB to greyscale - a colour space to have really fun with!** I did not try that, yet, and most probably won't in the near future; could well be xMedia still averages them out using RGB values.

As for the Catalogue Set ... Yes, do that, too, but found them to be less robust than keywords. I've had three major catalogue catastrophes over the past 9 months, always when I had just done quite some work. Always before a back-up could be done, that is, often enough right in the middle of xMedia saving the catalogue. For reasons completely beyond me later on, when I imported annotations from the files, very old catalogue sets came back - they are haunting me - while current ones were lost. Wouldn't be so striking if it weren't for the fact that I export any change in keywording to the files immediately, and the files in question [usually all] showed annotations definitely done after the old cs had been deleted, new ons created and written back.

All in all the current catalogue format and handling of xMedia isn't quite as robust as it should be [e.g. an automated back-up feature should be included, with a definable numbering scheme].



*In short: only sensible in a fully controlled environment, where colour appearance doesn't come into play at all.
**If you are a masochist.

[johnbeardy]

I also don't find the sample colour feature at all reliable. They seem to have been a bit too clever for their own good, when a simple analysis of the thumbnail should suffice. It's such a great idea though!

While I do a lot of b&w, I don't actually distinguish it in the catalogue or in the file name. That's partly because I always try to keep my b&w work non-destructive - ie smart object raw files, and any retouching done on pixel layers which remain in colour and lie below one or more b&w adjustment layers. If I want a colour version of the image, it's easy to eliminate the b&w elements.

That said, if I had to make a distinction, I would use a custom field as it's more controllable than a catalogue set.

John

[roberte]

Hi,

I had hoped Color Sample to pick up just the greyscale B&W tones. Color Sample did work in a previous incarnation of iView. The only time I used it was working with a stylist shooting food. It quickly, and reasonably accurately, grouped all like-coloured themes from previous jobs.

A Custom Field makes more sense. I used Sets/Keywords which just happen to be easier to map to Lightroom Hierarchical keywords.

-- Robert.

[peterkrogh]

Dierk,
There is a bug in metadata export, where the checkboxes for catalog sets and custom fields are wired backwards, if memory serves.  If you don't check all the boxes, the maybe the catalog sets are not being written to the file.
Peter

[Dierk]

If it is only that I'd be happy ... Unfortunately metadata export via Convert Image never really worked for custom fields, GPS and one or two other things. Works only for standard fields [essentially EXIF and IPTC with a few exceptions]. I'll check all the boxes from now on, probably helps.

[peterkrogh]

Dierk,
I recently set up someone's computer for EM, and the Custom fields did export. (I used Beardsworth's Bridge Plug-in to check in Bridge).

JUst tried in on a JPEG with Custom Fields on Mac, and the custom field did embed in the new image.

GPS is a known issue, and does not embed. (Bummer).

I have not run across the behavior you describe.
Peter