IPTC PLUS Toolkit extends Adobe CS3 - CS5

The IPTC-PLUS Photo Metadata Toolkit for Adobe CS includes:

• For the IPTC Core and IPTC Extension file-info panels built into CS5: a comprehensive User Guide for both schemas

• A plug-in IPTC-PLUS Metadata Panel for Bridge CS3/CS4 for the IPTC Core, IPTC Extension and the PLUS metadata - with a comprehensive User Guide for all fields

• Example images

Download it it here

Invariant Camera Profiles For Lightroom & ACR

I have created Invariant profiles (see my previous post) for all the camera profiles that shipped with Lightroom 3.0. I have also created them for the Version2 Beta profiles that were released by Adobe Labs for the Nikon D3 and D700. You can download them from the links below:

Lightroom 3.0 invariant camera profiles (65MB)
D3 D700 v2 Beta invariant camera profiles (7MB)


The profiles should work with Lightroom 2 and 3 and also ACR 5 and above (I haven't tested them all though as I don't own all the cameras)

Installation Instructions:

Unzip the file which will create a folder containing all the profiles

If you are on Mac OS X, drag the folder to:

  /Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles

If you are on Windows XP, drag the folder to:

  C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles

If you are on Windows Vista or Windows 7, drag the folder to:

  C:\ProgramData\Adobe\CameraRaw\CameraProfiles 

Note that the above path on Windows Vista and Windows 7 may be hidden
by default. Check your folder settings.

Invariant Camera Profiles Save The Day !

A long standing issue I have had with Adobe Lightroom (ACR) camera profiles is the "hue twisting" that happens when you apply the recovery slider in the basic panel. It would just suck the colour from the images. I usually have to avoid the recovery slider and reduce exposure instead and then use the fill light slider to try and compensate. The tone curve tool is also a reasonable substitute, but highlight recovery would be much more useful in many situations especially if you like to use the Auto Tone function to get your base exposure set.

I once tried using untwisted profiles but the results were not good. The colours would be way over-saturated and the hues twisted before any adjustments were made. Recently I discovered that dcpTool can now create "Invariant" profiles. What is an Invariant version? its a version thats somewhere between the standard twisted version and the untwisted version. It applies the default twist that Adobe applies to make sure the colours are accurate to start with, but then it doesn't do any extra twisting when you apply adjustments.

The examples below are shown with 50% Recovery applied.

Nikon D700 Camera Standard v2

Nikon D700 Camera Standard v2 Invariant

Aperture 3 Nikon Colour Preset

I have created a Preset for Aperture that mimics the Nikon Camera Standard colours. I haven't tested it thoroughly but it looks pretty close on most of my test images. You can download it from here. I created it by comparing a shot of an X-Rite Color Checker by eye.

Aperture 3 "Relocate Masters"

The Relocate Masters option in Aperture 3 is very powerful and very useful. It is something I have been wanting in Lightroom for a while and unfortunately Lightroom 3 didn't deliver it.

When you import your images into Lightroom you can choose how they are stored, I use a preset to store them automatically in a date based hierarchy. You can move these folders around manually in Lightroom and you can also move them externally to Lightroom with the OS tools and then reconnect the referenced folder in Lightroom's catalog. But here is the issue, you cannot automatically re-arrange the files and folders after they have been imported.

For example: I imported all my files in a hierarchy of YEAR/MONTH/DAY but then decided I wanted to change it to just YEAR/MONTH. The only way to do this in Lightroom is to manually move several hundred folders or by re-importing and losing all my collections, virtual copies etc.

Enter Aperture and the Relocate Masters option: This can relocate any selection of images in any folders or hierarchy and automatically create and move them to a new folder destination. Its simple and fast and took about 10 minutes to relocate my YEAR/MONTH/DAY folder hierarchy to a YEAR/MONTH hierarchy with around 3,500 images.  You would expect this sort of functionality to be standard in any photographic asset management tool but it is surprisingly lacking in many!