Pascal Photography Studio

Publish to Facebook with Adobe Lightroom 3.2

This is the last post on “publishing to Facebook” I promises, at least for the next few weeks, unless I suddenly get the urge to do a “Publish to Facebook with the iPhone” post.

To my surprise shortly after Adobe released Lightroom 3.0.1 comes 3.2 and this is more than bug fixes, under the hood enhancements and Camera Raw 6.2 Update too, built in is a Facebook publisher place under Publish Services along with the trusted Flickr and new SmugMug services, they must have been spooked by Apple’s Aperture 3.

So how hard is it to use? Well it literally takes 2 minutes to setup and you are ready to go, see bellow. Click on “Set up…”, authorize LR on Facebook with your login, pick a default Album, a few other settings and you are done.

Click to enlarge

to create a new album is just as easy, right click on the Facebook button, select “Create Collection…”, drop in the photos you want to upload then right click the newly created collection and select “Publish Now” and LR will do the rest.

Now what if you do not have Adobe Lightroom 3? There is a plug-in available from Jeffrey Friedl, you can find it here. He has a few more plug-ins so have a look around.

By the way you can download the update / trial for Adobe Lightroom 3.2 for Windows from here.

The quick way to publish to Facebook with Windows Live Essential

For those that are as lazy as I am there are easier ways to upload photos to Facebook or any other social sites. If you happen to have Microsoft Windows XP or greater and do not have Windows Live Essential yet download it now!

The important part of Windows Live Essential in this case is the Photo Gallery once configured it will allow you to upload your photos to Facebook in a second without having to worry about resizing and installing Java on you machine and so on. And if you realy adventurous have a look at the beta, not covered here.

So now that you have the Windows live Photo Gallery installed, what now? Open it and let it index your Image folder, it may take a while so prepare a tea for yourself.

Now comes the harder part, close Windows live Photo Gallery. Head over to http://liveuploadfacebook.codeplex.com/ download it and install it.

Open Windows live Photo Gallery, go to Publish –> More Services –> LiveUpload to Facebook in the menu, follow the instructions and voila, you are ready.

Enjoy the uploading…

Geotagging photos

This is the follow up from my previous post on geotagging.

I had scheduled some time during the weekend, an entire day to be honest, to do some photography and try to geotag… First, the weather was not on my site, cloudy and threats of rain but this did not stop me. Batteries charged, GPS tracking on, backpack ready and off we went, more about the places we visited in the next few days. Even if the photos were not great my geotagging experiment would yield results.

There are a few issues with geotagging that one needs to be aware of:

• Synchronise the Camera’s Time with your GPS!!! I cannot stress that enough.
• Keep the GPS on tracking all times.
• Make sure the GPS is always on you, I forgot it in the car once and it skews the locations.

That will allow you to have all the necessary data to enable you to go the geotagging  when you get back to your computer.

After the photos are downloaded to your computer the possess is rather simple, download the track data from your GPS to your computer, I used Easy GPS for that task, it is free, supports wide array of GPS units and works well. I would advise to save the GPX file in the same folder as the photos, it will make it easy to find it later.

Next comes the synchronisation of the photos and the location stamping, for that I used GPicSync. GPicSync is very straight forward and supports Jpeg pictures and main RAW files format as well as being free. How to geotag? Select the GPX file, select the picture folder and let it go it’s job. Beware of the time it takes, I did a full 8GB of photos, about 350 RAW and JEPG (700 files) in about 1 hour, it is a slow possess. Also remember to set the UTC Offset and I set the time difference to 600 because I was in a few buildings.

The catch, if you have downloaded the photos using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2, you will have to refresh the metadata after the geotagging process.

The conclusion is that my Gramin eTrex C will now be a permanent feature in my camera bag, the geotagging process is simple enough to warrant it.

And now for something completely different… Geotagging

So I lie a little, it’s still about photography.

I have a conundrum, when I do have the chance of doing some photography for fun I am usually nowhere near home and to be honest with you when I get home I have little time to do post-processing and no time to geotag. You would of noticed that I try to give a location in all my photographs.

So here is my solution:

1. Use a BIG monitor, 22inch +
2. Use Adode Photoshop Lightroom 2
   I am sold, that is it. It is the best photography related software I came across for the PC, MAC guys sorry I do not have a MAC so I cannot try Apple’s Aperture. From sorting, tagging to adjusting and publishing, it does 95% of what I need. Adobe, you should include a stitching utility though, really. 
3. When sorting if it does not catch your eye in the first 5 seconds, forget it.
4. Use a preset workflow when importing.
5. Geotag your photographs using a GPS to record location.

And here is the catch, to use a GPS to geotag you need a GPS capable of either creating a trail (track) or that knows when you shoot. I had a look at on camera solutions, expensive to tell you the truth. I would rather spend the money to a new wide-angle lens.

But wait, I own a Garmin Vista C, sure it’s not new but it works and it tracks movement! It might not be as glamorous as a Jobo but at least I do not need to have further expenses, I found some good resources on line to take the GPX file and auto geotag my photos. And I am going to try it this week-end.

I thing to remember when going it this way, synchronise the Camera’s time to the GPS!

Further on my experiences soon.

Some post-processing comparisons

I am by no means a post-processing master, I have only started to do post-processing in the last few months an found it more then necessary on most images I take, not that the photo is bad. Post-processing allows to add so much more vibrance to photos, some may call it cheating, I used to, I do not believe it anymore.

For example take this photo (all photos have been resized to 600×400 pixels):

No post-processing

High Pass Sharpening with Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2

Post-processed with Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 all automatic, maybe a little too sharp

Post-processed with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.4 all automatic

Tone-mapped with High Dynamic Range in Photomatix Pro 3.2 using 3 photos.

Exposure Fusion with Photomatix Pro 3.2 using 3 photos.

Personally the Exposure Fusion and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 are my favourite, however for Exposure Fusion as for High Dynamic Range  it takes at least 2 identical photos at different exposure like HDR to achieve any results, that means using a tripod and ideally taking 3 to 7 photos at different exposure to get the best results and I will need to buy Photomatix Pro 3 as i am only running the trial at this time, see the watermarks?

I would also love to use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 but the premium is preventing me right now, the demo is great though, I love it.

I still have so much to learn from post-processing, next thing you know I’ll be using Photoshop