I've just released a new plugin for Adobe Lightroom, Video-Asset Management, allowing a modicum of video management from within Lightroom.

I spent much of the last several weeks working on a custom-metadata plugin that looked to be really great, until I ran into a Lightroom bug that totally killed the project (and my spirits).
Then, I had a moment of inspiration where I relized that in this age where more and more cameras and cell phones are offering video capabilities, it would be really useful to manage those videos from within Lightroom, along side the images from the same event. This moment of inspiration [...]
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Just to continue on the string of tech/geek posts I've had lately, a quick addendum to yesterday's “Programming in the Stone Age: SHA-1 and HMAC-SHA1 in Pure Lua”, I've also published my Twitter OAuth Authentication Routines in Lua, for Lightroom Plugins in case anyone has use for it.
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For the last month or so I've been working on a new Lightroom plugin that allows one to edit metadata-viewer presets (that is, to adjust to their liking the list of photo-info items that Lightroom displays; an in-Lightroom version of the web-based preset editor that I built a couple of years ago).
What the plugin does is simple, but building the UI (user interaction) has proven to be the most difficult among all the plugins I've done, by far. It's been driving me batty.
So, I'm shoving it out as a beta before it drives me completely crazy. Here it is, long name and all: Jeffrey's [...]
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(IMAGE: Almost That Time of Year Again)

So, I've still got my cold, although it's finally starting to get better. Hence, fairly light posts lately, and this one is no exception. It's a collection of photos from the same April 5th stroll last year that produced Cherry-Blossom Full Bloom Hits Kyoto and Cherry-Blossom Joie de Vivre in Kyoto, as well as the “darker-side” post, The Hanami was Nice, But.... It was a fruitful day, so here are a few more pictures that will serve as a Cherry-Blossom Preview.
(IMAGE: Hustle and Bustle) out for a stroll among the sakura
(IMAGE: Looking Forward) to pictures this year without [...]
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I do a lot of Lightroom-related development. I don't get paid for it, but I'm a geek and I really enjoy it.
In case you're familiar with Lightroom, but not with what I've provided, here's a bit about what I've done...
First, I built and released my Lightroom Metadata Viewer Preset Builder, which allows you to create a custom metadata view so that you see just the items you want about each photo. Building it took weeks of intensive research, coding, testing, and tweaking. I didn't need this myself (I knew how to build templates by hand), but I spent so much energy on it because [...]
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Well, the Lightroom plugin that I released yesterday was mostly a waste of time, but a commenter reminded me that I still hadn't written a “Run Any Command” plugin for Lightroom 2, to compliment the piglet of the same name that I released for Lightroom 1 just over a year ago.
So, I put my nose to the grindstone and pounded this out today:

Like the preview-cache image-extraction plugin that I release yesterday, I have no need for this myself, but this is one that I know at least one person will appreciate.

I'm sure I'll eventually add the ability to [...]
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Well, if anyone needed convincing just how much of an idiot I am, here it is....

I spent half my time last week being sick with a cold, and the other half working on a new plugin for Lightroom that I knew I'd never use myself, nor would it be of any interest to most people.
This plugin allows you to extract as individual JPG files the internal preview images that Lightroom makes for a catalog. If you don't have your original image files handy (because you've deleted them, or you forgot to bring the drive that contains them with them) and you need something, [...]
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(IMAGE: First Photo of the Evening) facing due west
This evening we had perhaps the most stunning sunset I have ever seen.
Sadly, I saw it from the photographically-unappealing vantage of the fifth-floor walkway in my condo, but at least I got to see it. When I first caught a glimpse, I literally sprinted for the elevator, and the photo above is the first I snapped when I got up there.
(IMAGE: Unrealistic) it was actually more amazing than this facing south-west
(By the way, that's Kyoto Tower in the lower left, seen previously on my blog here, here, here, and here)
Some sunsets have a mesmerizing mix of [...]
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The screenshot above shows how I geoencoded the images in yesterday's post about a train and boat ride.
Introduction
Today I'm releasing a beta version of a new plugin for Adobe Lightroom, “Jeffrey's GPS Support”, that adds support for Geoencoding photos from within Lightroom. There are more features yet to add, but it's already polished enough for daily use, offering even the ability to geoencode speed and bearing.
Sadly, Lightroom does not allow for a plugin to easily update the “real” per-image GPS information in the Lightroom database, but this plugin takes an approach that should allow geoencoding to be seamless for many. The plugin itself [...]
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(IMAGE: Funky PuriPuri-chan)
This evening, I've been testing some new code in my Lightroom export plugin for SmugMug that deals with replacing images already uploaded to SmugMug. In order to be able to quickly see whether a new image has replaced an old one, I would first go into Lightroom's develop module and slam some random slider to its hilt, making a wildly different result that, once uploaded, I could easily ascertain was different from the old one.
After things were working and I pushed out the new version of the plugin, I paused to actually look at the image my random testing had left me [...]
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I'm releasing today a plugin for Adobe Lightroom 2.0 or later that allows you to perform a proximity search based on the locations geoencoded into your images. This adds to my stable of Lightroom plugins listed on my Lightroom Goodies page, and is the second that's not a vanilla “export to...” plugin (the other being my Metadata Wrangler).
I started writing this the other day after wanting to illustrate my Perfect Weather for a Snooze on a Park Bench post, but couldn't find among the 30,000 images in my library some of the Anthony-swinging pictures that I knew I had. Thinking about how to find them, I [...]
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By far the most popular goodies for Adobe Lightroom that I've published are my export plugins, for Zenfolio, SmugMug, Flickr, Picasa Web, and Facebook. I don't use any of these services to host my own photos (I generally publish what I want here on my blog and in my photostreams), but I do use a unique aspect of Zenfolio – their hierarchical gallery system – as a cheap and convenient way to back up my photos. It also allows my wife convenient access to all my photos without her having to learn Lightroom.
As I describe on My Photo and Blog-Writing Workflow, I keep all my photos on my local machine in a set [...]
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Adobe has posted a release candidate of Lightroom 2.1 for those Lightroom 2.0 owners who wish to try it. The update has no new functionality (except support for some new cameras), but does include a host of bug fixes and speedup improvements (all listed on the page I linked to). If you're being bit by one of the bugs, you'll probably want to upgrade.
The “release candidate” status means that Adobe believes it's ready for use, but it's not an update that's pushed to everyone automatically; you have to download it manually. After the Lightroom 1.4 booboos, Adobe is stepping more prudently with this release.
Eventually, Adobe [...]
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(IMAGE: Pure Fun) ( slightly stylized )
Today we visited a most excellent playground in Ravenna, a town four miles north, and among the resulting photos was one of Anthony gleefully enjoying a spin on a suspended tire. I liked the picture, but thought that a more punchy treatment would suit it better. I've occasionally liked the results of a “Dave Hill look” treatment (described here, and another example here), and what you see above is the result.
This time, though, I took advantage of a new feature of Lightroom 2 to soften it up, and take off the edge that the normal Dave Hill result.

Adobe has just released Version 2 of its Lightroom photo-workflow application: Adobe's Lightroom 2 page Adobe announcement (long!) What's New in 2.0 (a very long list from Victoria Bampton) My Lightroom Goodies Page
In conjunction, I am releasing export plugins that I've been working on solidly for the last six months: Export Plugin for Zenfolio Export Plugin for SmugMug Export Plugin for Flickr Export Plugin for Picasa Web Export Plugin for Facebook
The Facebook plugin is new for Lightroom 2 (and still very “beta”), while the others are totally rewritten versions of the plugins I had for Lightroom 1. (If you are currently a user of one of my Lightroom 1 [...]
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(IMAGE: A new way to caption in my Lightroom plugins)
Photo metadata has evolved a mix of seemingly comparable ways to label a photo. Lightroom allows you to enter a “Title”, a “Caption”, and a “Headline”, among others, so which should you use when you upload your images to an online photo-hosting service? That depends, of course, on how what fields you've entered into Lightroom, what you've entered into them, and your goal for the label.
My plugins for Adobe Lightroom that allow you to export photos to online photo-hosting services (for:  Zenfolio  ·  SmugMug  ·  Flickr  ·  Picasa Web ) allow for a simple selection from among the [...]
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Santa Ponsa from Sean McCormack on Vimeo. Timelapse Panning Video one hour compressed down to 12 seconds  ·  no sound by Sean McCormack ( larger high-def version is here )
At right is a short timelapse video (12 seconds, no sound) that Lightroom expert Sean McCormack made from the collection of 300 images he ended up with after setting his camera up on a tripod and having it take a shot every 10 seconds for 50 minutes.
To see the high-resolution version, go here and look for the “four arrows” icon at the lower-right of the video. Click that to put the video into full-screen [...]
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Adobe has re-released the troubled Lightroom 1.4 now as a (hopefully) untroubled Lightroom 1.4.1. Links are here.
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(IMAGE: Adobe Lightroom 2.0 beta) Screenshot showing some new features in action (in this case, selective-area desaturation and a post-crop vignette)
I like to post right away when there's a new release of Adobe Lightroom, but alas, I've been on vacation for the last few days, and I was at the car-rental return at the Amami Ooshima Island airport when Lightroom 2.0 beta was released earlier this afternoon.
The 2.0 beta has a lot of exciting new features you can read about elsewhere (links below), but the ones I'm most excited about are localized corrections (you can “paint” exposure, saturation, tint, etc.) and multi-monitor / multi-window support. [...]
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Update April 11th, 2008 Lightroom 1.4.1 has now been released to address the problems discussed below. Download links are here.
Yikes, it seems that 1.4 has a bug: the “time taken” is set to midnight in copies of the file that are exported. The Lightroom database and the original files maintain the correct time, but when you export a copy (e.g. to upload somewhere), the time is reset to midnight.
This is most unfortunate. I don't know whether I can work around it in the plugins. Until this is resolved, I'd recommend staying with 1.3 unless the benifits of 1.4 are worth it for you.
Drat.
For [...]
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