I’m not a huge fan of HDR images; most of the time they look obviously over processed though when they’re well executed and the processing is understated they come off very nicely. I think the trick to good HDRs is to use the larger capture range simply as a mechanism to get enough data to put together a lower noise image with slightly better shadow detail. Perhaps I’m just a traditionalist, but I think it’s best to think of HDRs as split ND filters without be forced to have a straight line for the split.

Camera Setup

A while back, I wrote an article on the way I setup my camera when shooting HDRs and multiple exposure images.

Sizing your brackets is something of a question. Some reputable sources suggest the bracket size (i.e. how many stops between exposures) depends on the camera. That’s probably the ideal solution. That said, I’ve never seen a difference between 1 stop and 2 stops on my 40D, so I don’t use that. When I’m shooting HDRs, I set the bracket size based on how much I need to go under to get the brightest highlight detail I back. In other words, if I think I need to shoot 2 stops under to keep the sky from completely blowing, I use a 2 EV bracket. Remember, I want dark things to be dark in the final image, just not black, so massively overexposing them isn’t helpful to me.

With respect to focus, one thing is important; focus must not change between exposures. Where to focus is another problem, even with a lot of depth of field choosing whether to focusing at infinity, the hyperfocal point and even on a subject are complex enough to warrant an article on their own. Even when I have lots of depth of field, I still tend to focus on the most important subject.

Processing

For me all processing starts with importing into Lightroom. For HDRs, I don’t do any processing to them beyond the import defaults. From there, it’s off to Photoshop.

Photoshop is what I use to do HDRs; I don’t really do enough to justify buying special purpose software for it. If you’re coming from Lightroom via the merge to HDR edit in option, you should be at the Merge to HDR window, if not, you’ll want to load your images and merge them to HDR. I do this in 32-bit mode and then do the HDR tone mapping by switching the image to 16-bit (or 8-bit) color as a separate step. This gives me an opportunity to set an undo point if I need to go back and fix something in the tone-mapping step.

In the case of this image, the tone mapping was done using the Local Adaption method. After that’s done, it’s just a matter of tweaking the image to get the desired look.

For this, I created a selection of the top half of the image, and feathered it by about 100 pixels. This has the effect of creating a graduated split filter, but in mask form, so I can do just about anything I want in the two halves.

To the top-half of the image, I applied a curves adjustment that darkened the mid-tones and darks to bring out some cloud detail. To the bottom-half of the image, I applied a curves layer to slightly brighten the mid-tones and darks and a warming photo filter to make the rocks less blue.

While I may have been able to do these adjustments when doing the HDR tone mapping, I find that this gives me a bit more control. In addition, in my experience, you just have to play with the adjustments; there are no set rules for what to do.

In the right circumstances an HDR can be the best solution to dealing with huge dynamic range scenes especially when there is an irregular border between the brightest and darkest areas rendering traditional split neutral density filters useless.

When I installed Lightroom 3 over my installation of Lightroom 3 Beta, I ended up with a couple of extraneous entries in my the Autoplay list in Windows 7. I don’t know why they weren’t removed considering the rest of the beta was removed, but that’s just how

A quick Google search for removing Autoplay handlers in Windows 7 turned up two locations in the registry:

1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ AutoplayHandlers \ Handlers \ <handler>
2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ AutoplayHandlers \ EventHandlers \ <EventName>

These apply to Windows 7 and the specific Autoplay Handler for a 64-bit system is Lightroom3BetaAutoPlayHandler64, I assume for a 32-bit install of Lightroom 3 Beta that the last 2 numbers would be 32 instead but I don’t have any 32-bit installed of LR3 Beta to check with.

Indeed there was an entry in the first location named Lightroom3BetaAutoPlayHandler64 and multiple references to it in the second location under MixedContentOnArrival, ShowPicturesOnArrival, and UnknownContentOnArrival. Deleting these, however, did not remove the now broken entry from the Autoplay window when inserting a media card.

Further searching in the registry turned up 2 more locations where this key existed. The essayist way to find them is to search for Lightroom2BetaAutoPlayHandler64.

One set of keys is in Handlers and EventHandlers under HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ AutoplayHandlers. The others are likely in either the default user or any other users under HKEY_USERS. Searching is still the best way to find them. Removing the entries from any other place they pop up should clear out the extranious entry in the Autoplay dialog that pops up when you insert a media card.

I don’t understand why I ended up with both global and user specific instances of the Lightroom 3 Beta Autoplay handler, or why the uninstallation of Lightroom 3 Beta 2 didn’t remove them even though the rest of the application was removed, but there you go.

Like CS4 and CS3 before it, Photoshop CS5 comes in two flavors extended and regular. The difference is more than a few features and a partly sum of money; $150 if you’re upgrading, $300 for a new license. What Adobe doesn’t make clear, at least I can’t find anything on it, is the difference in features between Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 extended.

Photoshop CS5 Features

Unfortunately, this is as good of a chart as I can come up with based on what I can find on Adobe’s website. If you notice a correction or omission, drop me a line in the comments and I’ll update the chart.

Upgrades: Pricing and Eligibility

Fortunately, Adobe is still providing a wide verity of upgrade paths at various price points.

Upgrading to Photoshop CS5 Extended will cost either $349 or $899 depending on what version you’re upgrading. Users of Photoshop and Photoshop Extended starting with CS2 will pay $349. Users of Photoshop Elements (6, 7 or 8 on Windows; 4, 6, or 8 on Mac OS) will pay $899.

Upgrading to Photoshop CS5 will cost either $199 or $599 depending on whether you’re upgrading a previous version of Photoshop ($199) or a previous version of Photoshop Elements ($599).

Safety shift has existed in some form as far back as the original EOS 1D. Its options have changed slightly over the years and though varying cameras but the intent is the same. The function, unfortunately, is somewhat cryptically labeled, potentially leading many to skip over enabling what can be a rather useful function.

Safety Shift Mode 1: Tv/Av

Safety shift mode one applies to all Canon cameras except the D30, D60, and Rebels (EOS ##0D and EOS 1000D). The manual describes it as follows.

1: Enable (Tv/Av)

This works in shutter-priority AE (Tv) and aperture-priority AE (Av) modes. If the subject’s brightness changes suddenly and the current shutter or aperture becomes unsuitable, the shutter or aperture is shifted automatically to obtain a suitable exposure.

From reading that, one might assume that enabling safety shift isn’t necessarily a good idea. The implication is that even in one of the priority modes the camera will be constantly overriding your shutter and aperture settings as the “exposure changes”.

The reality is that Safety Shift only kicks in when your metered exposure exceeds the limits of one of the camera’s ranges.

In Av mode, Tv/Av Safety Shift works something like this; suppose the camera is set to f/2.8 and the metered shutter speed is 1/16000^th of a second, 1 stop faster than the maximum shutter speed the camera can support. Without safety shift, the image will be 1 stop over exposed. With safety shift, the camera will automatically stop the lens down 1 stop so you’re shooting at 1/8000^th at f/4 and the image will be properly exposed. On the flip side, an exposure of 60s @ f/22 would prompt the camera to open the aperture 1 stop to get an exposure of 30s @ f/16.

In Tv mode, the Tv/Av Safety Shift behaves the same way only changing the shutter speed instead. For a required exposure of f/1.4 at 1/250^th with a lens that can only open up to f/2.8, Safety Shift would cause the camera to drop the shutter speed to 1/60^th to insure a proper exposure. Alternatively, an exposure that required an aperture smaller than the lens could produce would result in shortening the shutter speed until the exposure was correct.

What exposure is shifted?

Safety shift uses the meter to determine the exposure. However, exposure compensation settings are factored into the exposure before the safety shift is applied. Therefore, if one is shooting a high-key scene with +2 stops of exposure compensation set, the compensated exposure will be the base exposure and the Safety Shifted exposure will be equivalent to the compensated exposure.

Safety Shift Mode 2: ISO

Canon’s EOS 1 series bodies since the Mark 3s have a second Safety Shift mode to adjust the ISO instead of the aperture or shutter speed. The manual entry for mode 2 reads:

2: Enable (ISO Speed)

This works in Program AE, shutter-priority AE, and aperture priority AE modes. When the subject’s brightness changes erratically and the correct auto exposure cannot be obtained, the camera will change the ISO speed within 100-3200 automatically to obtain the correct exposure.

Like mode 1, mode 2 only alters the exposure once the shutter speed or aperture has reached the limits of what the lens or camera can do. In addition, like Tv/Av mode 2 factors in the exposure compensation that is set when correcting the exposure.

Faking Auto ISO on a EOS-1D(s) Mk. 3 or newer

Auto ISO is either handy or completely useless, depending on the implementation and photographer. Nikon’s implementation is arguably one of the best. In starts with allowing the photographer to set their preferred ISO, from there the photographer can configure a minimum shutter speed and a maximum ISO for the camera to use.

In other words, a camera could be configured so that the shutter speed won’t drop below 1/60^th and the ISO won’t be set above ISO 800.

If you aren’t providing at least that much, the implementation borders on worthless.

Fortunately, the EOS 1 series bodies don’t provide an auto ISO implementation as such at all. However, mode 2 (ISO) Safety Shift combined with the built in shutter speed limitations (Custom function I-12) can be used to mimic Nikon’s auto ISO to some degree; you can’t register a lowest shutter speed faster than 1/60^th and you can’t stop the camera for shifting outside of the registered ISO limits (Custom Function 1-3).

However, even with those limitations this “fake” implementation of auto ISO provides more control than Canon’s auto ISO as implemented on any other Canon camera.

In my experience, Safety Shift, especially the ISO shift on 3^rd generation EOS-1 bodies, provides the latitude to be able to quickly capture a fleeting moment without having to worrying about overexposing an image because the camera couldn’t reach a high enough shutter speed or narrow enough aperture. Moreover, coupled with the ability to limit the lowest shutter speed to something approaching a generally hand-holdable speed (1/60^th) you have a rather good, if slightly more complex to configure auto-ISO system.

I realize the technique I’m about to describe is a hack and very much a huge edge case. The reasons to drive multiple flashes in a half RF half optical setup like I’m about to describe is becoming vanishingly small.

The first time I tried wireless flash triggers, they were unreliable and that was being kind. Whether it was RF noise from the flash or some strange sync issue, they were so unreliable for me it wasn’t worth trying to use them. It didn’t take me long to get a pair of LPA Design’s PocketWizard Plus 2s. When I finally got around to adding a second flash, the radio trigger market was poised to go TTL; Radio Popper had their first TTL system out already and Pocket Wizard wasn’t far behind. Instead of springing for another Plus 2, I elected to save the money and wait for Pocket Wizard’s TTL system whenever that came out. It was out of that necessity and experimentation that I figured out how to get working completely wireless two light setup with only 1 pair of radio triggers.

Required Materials

• A Canon Speedlite capable of being used as a ETTL Master flash (i.e. 550Ex, 580Ex, 580Ex II, ST-E2, etc.)
• 1 or more Speedlites that can be slaved under Canon’s ETTL wireless system.
• A pair of radio triggers (or a PC Cord)
• A basic PC-cord to hot-shoe adapter

What you need. (Shown: 580ex II master, 430EX Slave, Hotshoe to mini-phone for master, 2 RF triggers.)

The Setup

Mount the master flash in the PC-cord hot shoe adapter and connect the adapter to the RF receiver (or the camera via a long PC cable). Set the master flash to wireless master mode.

Canon 580Ex II in master mode on light stand connected to Pocket Wizard Plus 2 via hot shoe adapter.

Set the remote flashes to slave mode the same as you would if you were using an on camera master. Place them where you want them.

What Works, What Doesn’t, and What are the Limitations

First off, TTL does not work. This is not a TTL setup.

Remote manual power control and stroboscopic mode do work, so long as the master supports them. A 580Ex II will drive any other slave-able Canon flash in stroboscopic mode.

The largest limitation is in sync speed. I found on my EOS 40D that I was limited to about 1/160^th instead of 1/250^th. Using the master to control the power of the remotes hits the sync speed even harder. The best sync speed in this configuration is reached when the master flash is set to group a, with no ratios and the slaves control their own power levels.

Conclusion

With the availability of more reliable cheap wireless triggers, this technique isn’t very useful any more. It’s made even more redundant by the availability of very good RF TTL triggers like Pocket Wizards’s ControlTL system and Radio Popper’s X system. In short, it’s probably not worth bothering with this unless you’re in a pinch and don’t have any other backups available. I certainly don’t use this any more.

I’ve previously written about my frustrations with calibrating my camera’s auto focus system. Frankly, I hate it. It’s finicky, time consuming and requires a great deal of precision to setup and execute properly. In addition, most targets aren’t large enough to test at actual working distances so there isn’t any guarantee that the results are going to be good for normal photography anyway. The worst part is that the whole system is largely open to interpretation.

However, there has been a solution all along. It just seems that nobody had really thought of it until recently. The solution comes from the ability to remotely control a tethered camera’s focus while looking at the live view image on the computer. Even better, there is now software that automates the process and that software is the AF Calibrator feature in Helicon Remote, part of Helicon Soft’s Helicaon Focus.

What Helicon Remote’s AF Calibrator does is use the camera’s built and its own contrast detection algorithms to determine what the sharpest focus setting is without having the user guess. Even better, it does this automatically and the result isn’t a hard to interpret picture but an actual setting for your camera. Further, because this approach doesn’t require reading a ruler off towards the edge of the frame, precise alignment and target design is much less important and setup is a snap.

A Quick Review of Traditional Method and its Problems

Let’s, quickly look at what you need to perform AF calibrations the old way.

1. Place your camera on a tripod and the test target on a flat surface.
2. Carefully align the camera and target.
3. Focus the lens to infinity and then let the camera autofocus on the target and take an exposure
4. Change the AF Microadjust setting and repeat step 3.
5. After all, of the focus step images have been made load them into an image-processing program and evaluate which one places the focus in the right place.

It doesn’t take doing this more than once to realize that it’s a pain and quite problematic if not done extremely carefully. For starters, the target, scale and film plane must be aligned with a high level of precision. This is necessary since the scale is shifted away from the target.

Further, the target can’t be anything that’s handy; it must be specially designed strictly for focus testing. It also has to have specific design features, like a high-contrast focus point sounded by no other detail.

On top of that, very few AF calibration targets are suitable for use at normal working distances. Canon, for example, recommends that all AF tests be done at 50x the lens’s focal length. If you’re testing a 70mm lens, that works out to 12 feet. A 200mm lens requires more than 32 feet between the camera and target.

Finally, you must manually step though each setting (for most cameras that’s 40 images from -20 to +20) manually refocusing the camera to infinity between each shot and letting the AF system refocus.

At 15' with a 70mm lens (even on a 1.3 crop body) this test chart is almost completely useless. Not only isn't there enough room insure that the camera will lock on the target bar, but the scale is smaller than an f/2.8 lens's depth of field.

All told setting up and shooting an AF test, using a paper target can take a couple of hours or more for a single lens. Even commercial solutions designed for focus testing only improves upon that slightly. Moreover, the results are dependent on the photographer’s ability to interpret what he’s looking at accurately.

The Live-view Method

Almost all of the problems with the traditional technique can be solved quite easily if we can insure that the focus point and measurement point are the same. Unfortunately, doing this precludes easy interpretation of the target by the photographer. Fortunately, this type of measurement is something that can be done readily by a computer. In fact, it’s how contrast detection auto focus systems, like those in point and shoot cameras, work. Additionally, since the focus settings on many cameras can be controlled remotely when they are tethered to a computer, the whole process can be automated in software.

In the broad strokes, for “live view” focus testing you:

1. Place the camera on a tripod and align the camera and target. The two planes should be close to parallel but ultimate precision isn’t necessary.
2. Using the center AF point, focus on the target by half pressing the shutter release.
3. Connect the camera to your computer and fire up your remote control software.
4. Using the smallest AF shift amount move the focus forward and backward while keeping track of how many times you click the button in either direction.
5. Observe the sharpness of the image each time you change the focus. The number of button clicks that made the sharpest image will be the value you enter into the camera’s AF adjustment setting.

This works well for a number of reasons. First, since this method focuses and measures at the same point, any errors induced by misalignment are negligible at best. Even better, there is no guesswork involved in coming up what adjustment to use. This is because the smallest step that the camera can shift focus is the same size as an AF micro adjustment step. Finally, since there is no need for a specialized target, the procedure can be done at normal working distances where it will better reflect the real world.

The only hurdle is judging the sharpest image, and this is where the computer takes over. Helicon Software’s Helicon Remote presents us with, as far as I can tell the first solution to computer aided AF calibration.

Live View Focus Testing in Helicon Remote

As I’ve said, Helicon Remote simplifies the process of Focus Calibration significantly since it eliminates the need to determine which image is the sharpest.

Setup for focus testing is as follows.

1. Attach your target on a vertical surface like a wall or door. In this case the target only needs to be a high-contrast dot or line, in fact the less there is for the computer to process the better.
2. Make sure the target is well lit with continuous lights and the more light the better. Since this system uses live view and doesn’t actually take photographs, a flash won’t work. Also, the more light available the less noise there will be and this in turn will makes test more accurate.
3. Place the camera on a tripod approximately 50 times the focal length away from the target. I use the focal length (in mm) divided by 5 or 6—whichever is easier to do in my head—in feet since it’s easy and close enough.
4. Align the camera and target. I do this by leveling the camera with a hot-shoe level then adjusting the height of the tripod so that the lens and target are vertically aligned. Finally insure that the camera is roughly straight out from the target (having wood or tile floors with the joint lines running perpendicular to the wall is handy for this, otherwise eyeballing it will get you close enough).
5. Hook the camera’s USB connection up to a USB cable (but don’t plug the other end into your computer). What you want to avoid is plugging in a cable at the camera during the test.
6. Focus the lens to infinity and half-press the shutter release to allow the AF system to lock on to the target, make sure the AF lock indicator has come on.
7. Start Helicon Remote and plug the USB cable into your computer.
8. In Helicon Remote, click the AF Calibrator button on the toolbar along the top.
9. Follow the steps in the AF Calibrator dialog.

Conclusions

I’m much happier with this method for AF adjustments than I have been with any other method I’ve tried so far. However, I haven’t yet used it enough to really gain an unshakable confidence with it. In the tests I’ve done so far, the results from Helicon Remote coincide fairly well with what I’ve found from other methods.

The biggest benefit here is the speed and ease of interpretation. With the old way, it would take me up to 30 minutes or more to insure the test was. Even with my best testing procedure, it still took quite a bit of time to insure everything was aligned properly. With this method, I can have the target and camera setup, aligned and ready to test in about 5 minutes. After that, the tests take about 30 seconds per run. In the time it took to get good results out of the old method, I can now triple check a lens at all major focal lengths.

Additionally, the Helicon Remote AF test goes far beyond what can be set in camera, +/- 60 points versus +/- 20 points for almost all cameras, so it can be used to determine if a new lens is out of spec.

Kleptoparasitism, literally parasitism though theft, the behavior of stealing food from other animals is a well known behavior in Bald Eagles and well documented when the larger eagles range overlaps that of the smaller Osprey.

A Bald Eagle pursues a Osprey inorder to steal its fish. The two birds enguaged in a battle of aerial acrobatics in the brief encounter before the Osprey was forced to drop the fish.

However, I had never seen the behavior in Bald Eagles first hand, until now. I have witnessed it on many occasions in gulls, almost comedically pursuing pelicans which never seems to work out for the gull. However this instance is quite different; an Osprey lacks a throat pouch to protect it’s food and can’t simply sit on the water and swallow its prey. This is a strictly aerial dance and the looser goes away hungry at best.

The actual pursuit is eerily reminiscent of accounts of World War 1 dog fights. Essentially the two birds entered a series of turns each trying to out turn the other. However, unlike a dogfight, the eagle didn’t need to kill or even directly attack, and risk injury from, the Osprey. The rules were simple:

The Osprey needed to out turn the Eagle forcing it to overshoot. That allows the Osprey to cover some distance before being forced into the turning battle again. Ultimately, if the Osprey is lucky, it makes the eagle fly far enough that continuing the pursuit becomes undesirable and the eagle breaks off.

The eagle’s position is much simpler; make the Osprey continue evading until it’s too tired to continue with the fish. That difference in strategy makes this a battle that heavily favors the hunter. It needn’t concern itself with actually attacking the target and risking injury, only harassing it long enough that it must abandon the food.

The following gallery shows a Bald Eagle pursuing an Osprey for it’s fish. In today’s chase, the eagle came away victorious with the fish, which it caught in mid air as well.

First off, let me say I’m not an astrophotographer, I don’t even play one on TV. Heck, I don’t even own a telescope. In fact if you’re a serious astrophotographer this is probably not for you.

On a lark I thought I’d point one of my faster lenses towards the heavens and see what I could get. Much to my surprise, I got more than I thought I would, even with only a meager 150mm lens.

Before I go any further, let me explain a little bit about the conditions here. I live in the middle of the South Florida tri-county urban sprawl, according to light pollution maps from Clear Dark Sky.com this is an 80 mile long by 18 mile wide swath of Bortle class-9 light pollution. The Bortle scale definition of Class 9 skies is below.

Sky is brilliantly lit with many stars forming constellations invisible and many weaker constellations invisible; aside from Pleiades, no Messier object is visible to the naked eye; only objects to provide fairly pleasant views are the Moon, the Planets, and a few of the brightest star clusters.

With the naked eye, I can generally make out magnitude 3-4 stars a pair of 8×50 binoculars helps a little but not much. Digital capture tends to get me a lot more , I can image stars as faint as magnitude 7.5 even on less than fantastic nights.

What to Shoot?

The Moon

The moon is obvious. It’s bright enough that it takes actual cloud cover to obscure it (use the sunny-11 rule (1/ISO, f/11) as a starting point) and large enough that you can get some detail with reasonably priced lenses in the 300-400mm.

The image above is cropped form the a shot made with a 400mm lens on an EOS-1D Mark 3. A crop camera is even better (i.e. Canon’s Rebels or x0D series or Nikon’s D300) thanks to the higher density sensors and longer effective focal length. I have images made with a Canon 70-300 IS on a 40D that don’t look much different than the one above.

Though nice, and with enough shots one could piece together a nice moon phase chart (a project I’ve been meaning to work on actually), the moon gets old rather quickly.

Planets

The planets are typically the next brightest thing in the sky. Though with out a telescope or a very long lens–which generally brings us back to needing a tracking mount–you don’t get much more than points of light and of all the planets. Jupiter is a notable exception and worth taking a stab at at least.

The images below were cropped from a single frames taken with a 150mm f/2.8 lens (left) and a 400mm f/5.6 lens (right) over two nights. Both exposures were a half second long with the lens wide open (f/2.8 on the left, f/5.6 on the right) at ISO 400.

You don’t get much detail, but you can watch orbits of the Jovian moons progress over time, which is marginally more interesting than looking at our moon. (Click the images to see larger versions.)

What about the other planets?

I haven’t tried imaging much more than Jupiter directly yet.

Venus, though bright lacks a moon removing a lot of appeal when you can’t resolve more than just a point of light. Most of the images I’ve made that have Venus in it have been sunsets where Venus shows up as a bright dot in the sky.

Mars, though it has moons, is very small and not that bright and it’s moons are very dim and relatively close.

I doubt Saturn will work very well at all, though. I won’t get a chance to try until January, then again the seeing will be better then too. Saturn itself is bright enough (mag ~1.4) to be imaged but it’s moons aren’t very bright (mag 9.6 max). Further the great distance to Saturn means  and the moons will be very close to the planet and I likely don’t have enough magnification to do anything about that.

Something else entirely

The last thing I’ve turned my camera towards is star clusters. Notably the Pleiades. However, with the amount of light pollution, none of the nebulae are visible, so they simply become a bunch of stars.

However, the stars themselves are readily visible and with digital capture and stacking, you can extract quite a few that aren’t visible with the naked eye.

Given the local conditions, I have never seen any of the Messier objects other than M45 (the Pleiades).

]]> http://www.pointsinfocus.com/2009/10/a-shot-in-the-dark-pointing-my-camera-skyward-at-night/feed/ 0 http://www.pointsinfocus.com/2009/10/lightroom-presets-and-defaults-development-defaults/ http://www.pointsinfocus.com/2009/10/lightroom-presets-and-defaults-development-defaults/#comments Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:36:28 +0000 V. J. Franke http://www.pointsinfocus.com/?p=2543
Development defaults are the way Lightroom applies baseline development settings to an image on import or reset. Defaults are the best way to apply common settings that apply to all images from a specific camera, like sharpening and noise reduction, and not for creative styling or effects. Unlike presets, development defaults change every development setting ...]]>

Development defaults are the way Lightroom applies baseline development settings to an image on import or reset. Defaults are the best way to apply common settings that apply to all images from a specific camera, like sharpening and noise reduction, and not for creative styling or effects.

Unlike presets, development defaults change every development setting except white balance when they are applied. This means they can’t be used to selectively change the way an image looks.

Customization

The selection of development defaults can be customized, beyond the basic camera model, to allow more fine tuned control over their application.

These options are:

• ISO setting
• Camera serial number

In addition to user created development defaults, there is a global default that Lightroom uses when it can’t find a user created default for the selected options. This default can’t be customized.

Defaults can be customized though the Preferences Dialogbox.

How Lightroom Chooses the Default to Apply

The selection criteria Lightroom uses is simple. Lightroom looks for a default that exactly matches the settings (model, ISO and/or serial number) it’s asked to use or it applies the global default.

This can be annoying since you must save specific defaults for all combinations of ISO and serial number (if you use serial numbers) for your camera(s). If you use 1/3 or 1/2 stop ISOs that means you’ll be saving many nearly identical defaults.

In the case of an EOS 1D Mark 3, from ISO 50 to ISO 6400 in 1/3 stops increments that’s 18 defaults to create and save.

Creating and Updating Defaults

Defaults can only be created or updated in the Development Module. Further, updating a saved default is no different than creating a new one. There is only one procedure.

1. Choose an image that meets the criteria you’ve chosen for your defaults. For example, if you’ve selected to use ISO specific defaults, choose an image from the camera and ISO you want to save a default for.
2. Set the sliders the way you want them. The settings should be good in general not necessarily good for every image from your camera. Remember, these settings should be your starting point for processing an image not the ending point.
3. Next, save the settings. To do this, hold the alt-key (option on Mac) and click the button that now reads “Set Default…” (This use to be the reset button).
   

   By holding alt (option on Mac) the reset button becomes the Set Default button.

4. Finally, you will be prompted with a warning you that the changes cannot be undone. Click “Update to Current Settings” to save the default.
   

   The "Set Default Develop Settings" Dialog box: Clicking "Update to Current Settings" will create or update a development default. Clicking, "Restore Adobe Default Settings" will rest the default.

Tips

What I like to do is create a series of images of a generic scene at each combination of settings I need. Something like an X-Rite Color Check card makes a good target. Since I only narrow my defaults to ISO; that means creating an image at each ISO setting for each camera model I have.

I keep my defaults out of my normal Lightroom image organization. After import, I move them to a sub folder named for the camera in a folder called defaults. This way I have a set of known images that I only ever make my “default” adjustments and I can easily find them.

Resetting Defaults

There are two ways to reset defaults.

To globally reset all defaults, there is the “Reset all default Develop Settings” button in the “Presets” tab of the Preferences dialog. This will remove all saved defaults from the system. From this point forward, images will use the global default when imported or reset.

To reset a specific default only, you click the button “Restore Adobe Default Settings” in the same dialog box that came up when you create a custom default.

Presets and Defaults are two mechanisms Lightroom provides that can lead to an increase in efficiency. They each provide a similar functionality by allowing you to save develop settings but do so in a very different ways.

Differences Between Presets and Defaults

Defaults and presets do similar things, that is, apply basic development settings to an image. However, the similarity stops there.

Defaults are the settings Lightroom applies automatically to every file on import or when you reset it. They change every development setting except white balance. Further, development defaults always apply to a specific camera model. However, they can be made more specific beyond that.

Presets are saved settings that can be applied at any time in develop (or even form the library module) as well as at import. They differ from defaults in a number of ways. First, they can be applied to any file on import regardless of the camera or settings it was created with. In addition, the settings they change can be limited so they can be used for creative effects.

When to Use Each

Like most things, there is no absolute rule about how presets and defaults should be used. However, they do things differently and that makes them more or less suitable for different tasks.

Defaults have the advantage of being specific to a camera or ISO setting. Because of that they can be used to apply specific levels of noise reduction and sharpening to different cameras or at different ISOs.

Presets on the other hand can be applied to any image; either as its being imported or later on. While they can certainly be used to set and reset baseline settings they can’t be tied to the “Reset” button in develop. Presets are best used to provide artistic effects or a consistent feel to images during processing.

In practice, I use defaults to set sharpening and noise reduction only and presets to apply more commonly used creative effects.

Creating Presets

Presets are created in the Development Module by left clicking the plus icon on the preset pallet. When you do so you’re presented with a dialog box that asks you for several pieces of information:

• A name – this should be something that makes sense based on what the preset does (i.e. old B&W photo for a preset that simulates and old photo)
• A folder – this is how Lightroom organizes the presets in the preset pallet.
• What settings to save

When you’re done, click Create to save the preset and add it to the Presets panel in the Develop Module as well as the Develop Settings context menu in the Library Module.

Updating Presets

After you’ve created a preset, you can change the settings the preset applies by updating the preset.

You do this by right clicking on the name of the preset you want to update in the preset panel and selecting Update Preset from the context menu. Again, you will be promoted with a dialog box asking you which settings you want the preset to apply.

Applying Presets

Presets can be applied in a number of ways, the three most common are:

• Presets Panel in Develop
• Development Settings context menu in Library
• At import

The first two methods are straightforward; clicking on a preset will apply the preset to the currently selected image.

Applying a preset on import, can be a useful feature, however, there are a few gotchas with respect to the import dialog. This is especially the case if you’re trying to setup the preset ahead of time.

1. Settings changed in the Import dialog box are saved between imports. That means, if you set a preset to do a fancy effect on one import, it will remain set on the next import too.
2. The Import dialog only saves the settings if you close it by clicking Import. This means if you open it, make some changes, then click cancel to leave the box the change won’t be saved.

Applying Presets on Import

To apply a preset on import at the time you’re importing images:

1. Open the Import dialog
2. Change the Development Settings field in the Information to Apply section
3. Import the images by clicking import. Easy as pie.

Changing the Development Settings (presets) box (highlighted in yellow) will set a preset to be applied on import.

However, if you’re trying to set or unset a preset with out importing any images you have a few more hoops to jump though.

First is getting the import dialog to open.

Lightroom requires you to feed it images to get to the import dialog. The easiest way to do this is to stick a flash card in the computer with some images on it. Alternatively, you can open a single image from somewhere on your computer using Import Photos from Disk.

Once the Import dialog box is open:

1. Make sure the Show Preview check box is checked (highlighted in red)
2. Click the Uncheck All button (highlighted in yellow)
3. Change the Develop Settings and click Import.

This will save the develop setting and not import any extra pictures you’ll have to delete.

Key areas for changing import settings with out importing extra images are Show Previews (red) and Uncheck All (yellow).