John Beardsworth's Lightroom plug-ins....

[johnbeardy]

After a gestation that would have done an elephant proud, I've finally released a couple of plug-ins for LR2 or 3. Search Replace Transfer looks for and replaces text in metadata fields, can copy from one field to another, and can import custom fields from iView/EM. The other Locktastic detects whether files are read-only - ie have been tagged in camera - and marks them with a red label.

I'm looking for other ideas too.

John

[R. Neil Haugen]

Thanks, John! The first one especially looks SO useful to me!

Neil

[MikeBaynes]

John,

   You mentioned that you are looking for ideas for additional plugins.  I just came across a "problem" in which I must have inadvertently changed the rating of an image down from 3-stars to 1-star.  It must have been an extra mouse click in the wrong place that I didn't notice.  It made me realize that Lightroom should have some sort of "write-protect" feature that allows me to lock an image in the database once I've finished with it, so I can't inadvertently change it.  Sort of protecting me from myself.  Would something like that be possible to implement in a plug-in?

Just an off the wall thought, maybe.

Thanks,
   -Mike

[johnbeardy]

Mike

There's no way to lock images. The best that could be done is to copy ratings to a hidden field, and provide a way to copy them back, maybe comparing the modified time. Another idea is to use the Publish code - Jeffrey Friedl uses it to prevent you deleting a file, so maybe that could be the route.

Currently on the stocks is a list view plug-in. It should appear on my site in a week of so.

John

[MikeBaynes]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Too bad!  It feels like something that should have been included in LR from the beginning.  I guess the best thing for me is to learn where I shouldn't ckick. 

   -Mike

[peterkrogh]

Mike,
I agree that can be a problem.  We just found that over here for a shoot - all images had been selected and given 2 stars.

In Expression Media, I protect against this by assigning both the color and star rating for a particular rating.
You could hijack keywords for that - make a keyword for 1 star and add to all 1 star images.
If you have a large library with well-rated images, I'd suggest preserving that information somewhere.

Of course, I also suggest the backup feature in Lightroom so that you have a rollback version for just these occurrences.
Peter

[johnbeardy]

Another new plug-in has just been released - Syncomatic. This is similar to one I did for iView and copies metadata between files with the same name but differing extensions. So you can use it to update TIF or JPEG derivatives with the metadata from the raw file from which they were created.

Next on the stocks in a list view plug-in.

John

[ScottBuckel]

John - just curious do the files have to have exactly the same name with a different extension?  I am curious as I sometimes create several derivatives of a raw file and include other info indicating things like a BW conversion, or something like that.  So would the data from Buckel_100707_1234.dng have the date synced with Buckel_100707_1234_BW.psd?  If not, would it be possible to do something like that?

Thanks,

Scott

[johnbeardy]

Scott

They currently do have to have the same name, but adding something like your BW or -edit should be possible. I'll have a think.

John

[ScottBuckel]

Thanks John!  I hope your think works out well for me. ;-)  Your search replace transfer has done a great job for me replacing misspelled keywords and correct a few other errors rather easily for me.

Scott

[johnbeardy]

I don't see why it shouldn't be possible.....

I'm actually working on Search & Replace 1.21. For LR3 users, it now has more access to keywords, so you can use it to copy location to keywords for example. I may also add a list view window (a spin off from the list view plug-in).

John

[johnbeardy]

Syncomatic 1.21 now syncs metadata of files with -edit or other suffixes. I'm working on making it sync into images in closed stacks too.

John

[johnhoward]

Does Syncomatic 1.21 still require them to have the same names? I really like the Search and Replace feature. The list view really speeds things up a bit.

-John H

[johnbeardy]

Same names, or with a consistent pattern - so 1234.tif and 1234-edit.jpg. Alternatively it matches within stacks.

John

[johnbeardy]

I just released another plug-in ListView which displays metadata in columns and has handy text file export features.

John