How to Display Your File Names and Much More Over Your Photos in Lightroom Classic CC
Lightroom Classic CC is a fantastic application for cataloging photos, but because this feature is turned off by default, many people don’t realize that you can display important information about each photo, video or other image file in the Library Module just above each photo. To do that, we need to select the View Options menu item. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial for the process:
1. To access the Library View Options dialog box (shown below), choose View>View Options under the top menu. Then check Show Grid Extras and select Expanded Cells from the dropdown menu to add any four criteria from a large selection of options (Compact cells can hold up to two items).
The View Options dialog box with the settings I use most often in Adobe Photoshop Classic CC
2. There are a number of other options you can also choose, such as how strong a tint to apply to cells if you’ve chosen a color label for them, but the most important options to edit in my opinion can be found under Expanded Cell Options. There, you can select from many different choices, including the File Name, Extension (JPG, TIFF, RAW files, etc), Rating, and even camera EXIF data, such as Shutter Speed and ISO. You can see some of the options I commonly use in the screenshot. I also like to check Show Rating Footer with Include Color Label and Include Rotation Buttons selected, so that I can quickly see how many stars (or which label) I’ve assigned specific images.
EXTRA SUPER SECRET TIP!
Did you know that you can also right click (Control Click on Mac OS) on any of the criteria above any photo to change what’s displayed? I always look for time-saving tips like this!
I hope that this tip has been very helpful.
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UPCOMING LIGHTROOM WORKSHOP
I’m really looking forward to returning to the NJ Media Center in Berkeley Heights, NJ on Sunday, October 14, 2018 to teach the following full-day workshop on Lightroom editing and printing. I’m offering a 1 hr 45 minute follow-up one-on-one consultation (a $300+ value) for those who register by Friday, 10/5/2018.
Mastering Fine-Art Printing with Lightroom w/ Andrew Darlow
Date: Sun. 10/14/2018
Investment: $167 + $30 Materials fee (Total: $197)
Lightroom Classic CC offers many powerful features, but without a good foundation and understanding of its tools, it’s easy to get frustrated. In this full day lecture and hands-on workshop, I will focus on helping you get the most from your images from start to finish.
Here’s what one participant had to say about a similar workshop: “I’m a full-frame DSLR camera user and I have a considerable amount of experience with Photoshop. However, I didn’t know how to organize my photographs properly, and I was getting frustrated trying to edit my photos inside of Lightroom. The full-day workshop had a lot of information, but it was very well presented, in an easy to follow way. Andrew is extremely professional and he managed a very diverse group, keeping everyone happy and on-course, which is not easy. I picked up a lot of editing tips and shortcuts that would have been much more time consuming for me to research online on my own.” – Branch Watkins
View the Workshop PDF and Register Today!
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P.S. I also welcome you to join any of our three Meetup Groups if you would like to be invited to attend events like photo walks, workshops, etc. in the future.
https://www.meetup.com/nj-shore-shooters/
https://www.meetup.com/NY-NJ-Photoshoot-Club/
Excire Search: A Groundbreaking Search and Auto Keyword Tool for Lightroom – Hands-On Review
For the past 15 years or so I’ve been helping people organize, backup and print their photographs. And the one thing that has been a challenge for almost everyone (including me!) is keywording. It’s just not a lot of fun (for most people) to go through thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of images and videos and assign appropriate keywords to them. But keywording images and videos can pay huge dividends in the long run because having a collection with good keywords means that you can more easily find images for personal projects, client work and stock photography licensing.
Face recognition inside of Lightroom and other programs has helped quite a bit, but it’s far from perfect. And of course, not every photo has a recognizable person in it, so we have been faced with a problem in need of a solution. Until now.
The solution I’m referring to is a Lightroom Classic CC plug-in called Excire Search. And it does more than just automatically create keywords.
What it Does
Excire Search works via a Lightroom plug-in to “initialize” or look through your image collection one image at a time so that it can then use the image information to both create keywords and allow for creative searches by keyword or even via a sample image uploaded from your computer. It can initialize 10,000-20,000 images per hour (according to the software’s developer), but it depends on your system and whether you have already created Smart Previews. I didn’t time the process exactly, but Excire Search Pro initialized just over 400,000 images in my catalog on a MacBook Pro over a period of 4-6 days (I stopped the process a few times to take my computer with me, and I had very few Smart Previews in my catalog before starting the process). While it was initializing, I was still able to work on my computer and inside Lightroom. You can run a new initialization at any time, and it will quickly recognize which photos have already been initialized.
In case you’d like a quick look at how good the automatic keywording can be, I was very impressed by what the software came up with for one of my photos that included hot air balloons (click on the image to see the keywords much larger):
Getting Started
Installing the Excire Search Plug-in, setting preferences and starting the initialization process takes just a few minutes, but it can be a bit confusing. After downloading the plug-in (it’s available for Mac and Windows), I would recommend viewing the following videos for step-by-step instructions. I’ve also included a screen shot of the main settings below:
Caption: I chose to use the Fast initialization option because of the size of my catalog, but you might choose to uncheck that box if you make a lot of edits (especially if you convert a lot of images to black and white without first making Virtual Copies). Because I don’t use many stacks (stacks are very useful if you shoot a lot of panoramas in sections or multi-image HDRs), I unchecked the third box. And because I have generated a lot of Smart Previews over the years, I chose to “Prefer” them when initializing because the makers of the application say that can speed up the initialization process.
As you can see in the above video, searching by example photo is like magic! You just choose an image from your library (or an external image), then navigate to Library>Plug-in Extras>Search by Example Photo (or choose one of the other two Search by Example Photo options). Choosing Search by Example Photo with Previous will use the Previous Settings, such as how many results to display and whether to reference the example photo’s content or color. You can also search by Keyword or for Faces. In case you are wondering what “Update Photos” means (it’s the last item on the list under Excire Search), if you make large color or density changes (or convert images to black and white), you may want to choose the photos on which you made those edits and select “Update Photos.” The Excire Search engine will then look at those photos again and create new keywords.
The Faces dialog box is so incredible to me. You can choose from a wide variety of different criteria, including the number of faces, an age range, male/female, and even whether or not people are smiling. I’ve included a screen shot below, and in my testing, it was extremely good at showing me images that closely matched what I requested (click on the image below to see the dialog box much larger). That being said, it was better at distinguishing between male and female faces for adults compared with children, which is very understandable (even the iPhone X’s face detection is less accurate with children’s faces compared with adult faces).
Pricing, Language and Availability (Plus a Special Offer for Our Readers)
Excire Search is available in two configurations: Excire Search (US $69) and Excire Search Pro (US $119). The plug-ins are identical except for the fact that Excire Search Pro draws from a larger group of keywords (about 500 vs. 125), and it also offers the ability to transfer keywords (individually or in bulk) that it creates into the Keyword List inside of a Lightroom catalog. For my workflow, the ability to transfer keywords is essential, so I am using Excire Search Pro.
Currently, the software is available in English and German. If you’d like to test out Excire Search or Excire Search Pro, visit this page for a free, fully functional 15 day trial. Also, if you decide to purchase Excire Search Pro, the company created a special 10% discount code for my readers: Just enter “AndrewPro10” (no quotes) at checkout.
I also noticed this text from the company’s site re: giving back: “A small portion of every purchased Excire Search download will be held in a special fund for support to a variety of nonprofits in the United States market. We’ll be developing our own Giving Back Advisory Board who will help us decide each year on a different charity needing more support.”
Conclusion
It’s difficult to express how happy I am with Excire Search Pro. It was like someone out there was listening to my prayers. (turns out it was a lot of very smart engineers!). I was told that the company is always doing research and working on how they can improve the software, and I look forward to seeing how it develops over time.
Related Articles
One of the best things about the internet and blogs is that I can reference other articles about Excire Search that I found useful. One review of Excire search that’s at the top of my list is by Bryan Esler that appeared on the excellent photo website: photofocus.com. You can read his review here. I’ve also had the honor of having a number of my articles published on the site over the years. There’s also a comprehensive article by the people who make Excire Search on the topic of speed and accuracy with different technologies that automatically generate keywords. You can find that article here.
If you’d like to test out Excire Search or Excire Search Pro, visit this page for a free, fully functional 15 day trial. And if you like it and decide to purchase the plug-in, there’s a special 10% discount code for our readers: Just enter “AndrewPro10” (no quotes) at checkout.
(Full Disclosure: Apart from being provided a license code for Excire Search Pro, I was not compensated in any way for writing this article. Please note that this article may contain affiliate links to the Excire Search website, which means that I may be compensated if a purchase is made after clicking through or by using a promo code. If you would prefer not to use my links, just visit your favorite search engine and type in: “Excire Search.”
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How to Protect Any Camera LCD for about $10
Hello! I’ve recently begun to send out a weekly photo tips newsletter (you can sign up here to start receiving it). One of the recent tips that I shared was: Use Glass LCD Protectors on all of your LCD screens.
This may be one of those “I wish I had done that” tips for you. If you look at all of your camera LCD screens (the part on the back that displays video and/or stills), and if you see any scratches on any of them, you almost definitely could have avoided them by using a thin, self-adhesive glass LCD protector. That being said, I’ve been amazed at how the appearance thin scratches get reduced dramatically when I put an LCD protector on. To find them online, just search on your favorite camera store’s website or other retailer for “Glass Protective Screen Guard,” or “Glass Screen Protector,” or “Glass LCD Screen Protector” and your specific camera name. Cost will be about $5-30 each. I recommend buying two (they often come in packs of two), and try to work in a dust-free location. Also, keep the screen on by pressing the play button before you apply it so that you can more easily align it properly.
I would also remove the lens and place a body cap on the camera so that it’s easier to work on a flat surface. If at first you don’t succeed placing it properly, try, try again! I like to line it up on the left side of the lcd and carefully place it without touching the sticky part. In the video below, the person applying the glass cover shows how you can use the two alignment stickers. It may or may not be helpful on camera LCDs if your glass covers come with the stickers, but it’s worth trying.
My small Panasonic DMC-LX5 camera was saved thanks to an LCD Glass Protector (shown above after the damage was done). I dropped it at an amusement park onto pavement from about two feet. I’m amazed that the camera survived with just a cracked screen protector, and a small scratch to the metal near the Display button! Of course, if it had fallen a different way, the screen may not have made a difference, but using it might just save your camera one day.
The glass protectors go on like stickers and can be removed without damaging the LCD (I can’t personally guarantee that, but I have never had any problems after using them on my cameras, smartphones and tablets for at least the last five years). And if you want to be a “ninja,” you can measure the entire area of the screen and any additional border, and find a protector that might be for another camera because sometimes the glass covers made for specific cameras will cover most, but not all of the glass on the back of your camera.
Here’s a good video that shows how to install a glass screen protector on a Smartphone. I highly recommend using these on smartphones, especially since most people don’t have a neck strap or other type of strap connected to their smart phone.
UPCOMING LIGHTROOM WORKSHOP
I’m really looking forward to returning to the NJ Media Center in Berkeley Heights, NJ to teach this workshop on Lightroom workflow and editing:
Mastering Lightroom Workflow: From File Organization to Effortless Manipulations w/ Andrew Darlow
Date: Sun. 6/24/2018
Lightroom Classic CC offers many powerful features, but without a good foundation and understanding of its tools, it’s easy to get frustrated. In this full day lecture and hands-on workshop, I will focus on helping you get the most from your images from start to finish.
Here’s what one participant had to say about the workshop: “I’m a full-frame DSLR camera user and I have a considerable amount of experience with Photoshop. However, I didn’t know how to organize my photographs properly, and I was getting frustrated trying to edit my photos inside of Lightroom. The full-day workshop had a lot of information, but it was very well presented, in an easy to follow way. Andrew is extremely professional and he managed a very diverse group, keeping everyone happy and on-course, which is not easy. I picked up a lot of editing tips and shortcuts that would have been much more time consuming for me to research online on my own.” – Branch Watkins