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The Topic
We are sharing our thoughts on a few digital scrapbooking news items (Instagram and Lightroom).
Joining the Discussion:
Peppermint Granberg
Katie Nelson
Steph
From the News:
- New features in Lightroom 5
- Instagram introduces video
- Instagram video story on mashable
- Katie’s instagram rant
- Instagram Video Doomed
- Studio C Facebook Friends
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I am with Peppermint and Katie – I am not a video lover. I like to read my news. I like to read blogs. Plus, I hate to be rude, but there are a lot of low quality videos on blogs, and bloggers that are not comfortable in front of the camera. When a blogger is not comfortable, it shows. And there’s a very popular video person who has a whistle when she’s in front of the camera; it’s super distracting.
I do like video tutorials, especially if they show the computer screen sharply, not out of focus, or foggy.
Hi Courtney
For some video tutorials on Youtube, I find that viewing them in HD mode or full screen helps them to be less ‘foggy’. Also, sometimes if you are on a wireless connection it can make them less crisp.
I record mine in 1280x720p so that is bigger than the default youtube video play box, so I always try to mention that people may need to watch it in full screen mode.
Hope this helps!
I’m a reader too! I much prefer to quickly scan the text to read my news than to sit & have to watch a video. Thanks for sharing about Instagram too. I haven’t started using Instagram yet (need a better phone) but I appreciate the info about how to turn off the auto-play on the videos. Thanks!!!
Oh my goodness! I thought I was the only one who didn’t like video! My boys are always sending me Skype messages (they’re sitting at their computers at the same table as me!) with video links, and I tell them over & over again…I DON’T WATCH VIDEOS! Just give me an article to read and I’m good.
I do agree that tutorials can be helpful on video, but I’m still very selective on those. Chelle’s and Katie’s videos are great because they both have an awesome teaching manner, but there are some that just annoy me
My hubby does that to me with videos too. I tell him, just give me a summary.
Thanks for your nice comment about my tutorials!
Add me to this camp. I rarely click through to video links or even website links. I want a summary like Katie, then if it sounds too good to be missed I’ll check it out.
Hi all… Just listened to the show and wanted to clarify how Lightroom handles tagging for pngs and what that means if you later decide to use something other than LR for your digi stash cataloging. A couple of years ago, after many many years of using Picasa I made the decision to move my stash to LR. I did this for many reasons, but among them, I wanted a solution that meant I would never have to tag ever again, even if I changed programs. That meant I was forced to convert all pngs to tifs …. A bit like adding on a room to each file so I could store all the metadata just like a jpg or psd file. Each time I added new items I had to go through a convoluted process… Open new folders in Bridge (ridiculously slow and cumbersome app), filter all pngs, batch process them by sending to photoshop image converter(suuuuper ssssllllloww), turn them into TIFFs (which also stuck them, frustratingly, in yet another sub folder within each folder location and meant I had to move them in another step), back to Bridge to delete all pngs. Then, finally, I could import to LR and tag. The good news is that you can set LR prefs so that all metadata is written to files automatically, meaning the tags live in the catalog, but if the catalog itself were hopelessly corrupt or lost, you could simply reimport all those nice little closets and rebuild it…. Or import them into another cataloging program and do the same thing with absolutely no retagging. Now that LR 5 recognizes pngs, you can import them directly into LR. The lack of a metadata closet means the tags live only in the catalog. BUT you have 2 choices as to how to handle things. (1) create a simple Export preset thAt will convert png to tif (with LZW compression 8 bit to keep them small) , one command creates them , puts them into same folder as originals (fast!), press one button to delete pngs. Tag away and store metadata in files and continue. …Or…(2) import and leave as pngs, tag away. This means the tags only live in catalog… BUT… Lets say down the road you want to go to another program. No, you do not have to retag 100,000 items in your stash. Simply press a button and convert them to tif, baking in all those lovely tags. Now move to the new program and scrap on.
– THANK YOU! I appreciate your solution to the png – tagging issue. I do not want to go back to converting all my pngs to tifs just so I could tag them.
Thanks so much for this great clarification!! It totally makes sense!
After a little trial & error, I created my own export preset. Now it is a quick import, then quick export & a push of the delete key (since the .png files are automatically highlighted after export). This eliminates the need for Bridge all together! What a great time saver. Thanks so much.
… Yay! Isn’t LR divine? … easy, fast, reliable, solid. And don’t get me started about all its tremendous search flexibility … or all the amazing developing tools for RAW files. Nice, isn’t it!
Great show ladies! I do like the occasional little videos on Instagram and Facebook (especially from my family) but really dislike videos on blogs and websites. I have slow internet and I can read much faster than the time it takes for a video to buffer. I realize that most people have high speed internet but there are still some of us with bandwidth limits or no access to dsl or cable internet. It is disappointing when there is not an option to read the information presented in the video.
Yes, I did listen to the live announcement (well, I did pause it so it would buffer
) from Facebook about the addition of Instagram Video. The quote from Kevin Systrom made that rethink how I use Instagram and the opportunities I miss was this:
At our core, visual imagery is everything. It is in our DNA and it is what drives us. You know one of the most amazing things about us humans is our ability to create tools to remember. We’ve been doing this throughout history. Things like language, books, photography. We are forever on a quest to take a moment and record it forever in time. Because however long life is or how short life is we know we may never get that moment back.
That is a pretty amazing quote!! Thanks for coming and sharing it here Amanda!!
I thought I was the only one that doesn’t like watching video clips for news items! I’ve noticed that more and more news is being delivered via video. If they have a written transcript or summary, I will read that. If not, I move on. I can read or skim so much faster than I can watch people talk, and of course it’s just that much more time-consuming if there is an ad first. I also like to read because it’s quiet. I don’t need loud talking waking up a family member in the next room.
I love listening to all of you on the Digi Show! It feels like I’m having a conversation with friends. Thank you for the time and effort all of you put in to record the show!
Steph, just wanted to mention… Alpha is before Beta, so the alpha version is a earlier testing version of the software, so we generally don’t see alpha software as end users.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Alpha
I think Adobe call the final release the ‘Gold Master’
I totally agree with the autoplay on Instagram – it scared me when it first happened me!
But watch out I have a cute baby, so you may see videos from me
Totally love a short episode instead of none at all.
I really want to do some hybrid – pocket style scrapping and wonder if anyone has a good solution for an 8×8 album for both 8×8 digi pages and good pocket pages. I was looking at the We R Memory Keepers albums made easy but really the only place I’ve seen them is at Target and I hate to get started and then have them not be available anymore. I’ve also thought about seeing if the snap divided protectors would fit in another brands 8×8 album. Any suggestions would be very helpful!
This is the message I get when in LR5 I click on Save Metadata to Files on my PNG files:
“For…file formats supported by Lightroom (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PSD and DNG) XMP metadata will be written into the original files.”
I took that to mean it was written to the actual file. Did I misinterpret what that means?
And, when I look at the File Info in Finder, the keywords are there…
Here’s how I understand it (and I’m not an industry expert, so they could very well correct me on this!). Normally a JPG or TIFF stores tags in IPTC data (along with items like the title, caption or keywords you assign to the file later). Info from the camera itself is stored in EXIF data (e.g., lens info, camera info, GPS coordinates, etc). These are both types of metadata. A PNG doesn’t have a slot for either IPTC or EXIF, so that means there is no standardized place to store tags like there would be for JPGs, TIFFs, etc. Adobe developed a 3rd type of open source metadata called XMP. To get around not having an “official” spot to store the tags in EXIF or IPTC, it parks it there in a text-like setting. That means if you go to another program that does *not* look for tags in XMP, but instead looks for it in the IPTC data where it expects to find it, then blammo , tags are gone. Converting the png to TIFF pushes all that data where it needs to go and then any program will pick them up correctly. (By the way, the reason you see it in the Mac finder is that I think the Mac OS adds XMP info to a Mac file resource fork. That doesn’t happen on PC). Bottom line: PNG’s have no reliable/transportable closet for their tags. Danger, danger, Will Robinson! Here’s a few articles that give a pretty good explanation http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/glossary/f/metadata.htm and http://www.photometadata.org/meta-resources-field-guide-to-metadata and http://www.photokonnexion.com/?page_id=5855
And, just for fun, I imported one of my tagged PNGs into Aperture and my keywords were intact. Is it possible that LR5 has figured out a way to write to the metadata of PNGs?!
Take a look at the link above (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Metadata_Platform ) … it details programs which *will* read the xmp sidecars, Aperture is one of them. Main thing is, that it’s not a universal standard and not one that all programs read. Until it is unified in the same way EXIF and IPTC data is, you will always risk losing tags. From my point of view, having dealt with this same sort of problem since I started taking digital photos and cataloging them in the 90’s, I don’t want to risk losing anything unnecessarily. Just my two cents, but been there, done that, never want to be in that position again. So, safety first is most important in my mind. Since XMP storage in PNGS isn’t universal, I see it as risky and need a solution that makes sure I can portage the tags elsewhere if necessary. Hope that makes sense.
…and just one more thought … often times programs are adept at reading things like xmp, but they’re not always as thorough in writing information back the the files themselves. Not saying that’s the case with Aperture, but in all cases, whatever program you go to, one of the key things is to make sure the program will take database entered information and allow you to write it directly back into the file for transport somewhere else. That’s one of the things Lightroom is very good at with standard files like TIFF and JPEG.
If you look in Finder and the Keywords are there, then that’s awesome! From what I understand it’s how Katherine explained it – there’s no standard, universally accepted way to store this data in a PNG file so it’s possible that not all programs will be able to read it.
I started a thread in the Adobe forums addressing this and someone said that it’s ability to actually write to the original is indeed inconsistent at best.
However, that being said, after having tried many programs for organizing my digital supplies. I am doubtful that I will be switching any time soon since LR5 gives me everything I am looking for. If I ever felt the need to switch programs, I will take Katherine’s recommendation and convert them to tiff at that time.
Thanks so much for all the information you ladies provide. You guys are awesome!
Definitely understand wanting to just READ an article! It’s something I’ve been fussing about for awhile now, so glad to hear I’m not the only one. I will say that lately I’ve been noticing that I’ve clicked on a lot of headlines lately that include both video and text, BUT in order to get the whole story you have to read the article and watch video.
The other news trend I’ve been noticing is that some news articles assume you’ve been following a developing story, so they don’t give any (brief) background or history on the subject. I had to hunt to find out why there was flooding in Alberta the other week. It was frustrating!
I also wanted to say that I was talking to my neighbor about social media the other day when the topic of Pinterest came up. You know how she pronounced it? PIN-interest. I didn’t correct her.
I’ve been referring to it as PIN-interest (sarcastically) for so long that I find myself having to take a minute to think about it before I say it.
Total change of subject, but have you ladies seem Rhonna Farrer’s new app? It’s amazing. I hesitantly bought it (I don’t use Instagram), and I cannot believe all you get for $1.99. You can even add shadows, change transparency, add text (with tons of fonts), and you also get tons of her cool doodles/word art/& frames. You should definitley check it out!
Sorry Peppermint-it’s currently only for iPhone.
WHOA; what an AWESOME app! Thanks Laurel!
As a founding member of GUFI, Grandmas United For Instagram, I am up in arms and all huffy that you youngin’s think it’s too newfangled for us! I’m channeling my peevishness by crocheting super fast. Look for a fancified foto of a perfectly lovely toilet paper cover coming soon to Instagram. *gathers her skirts and stomps away*
OMGOSH. Too funny. I just started the dog with my snorking.
Super funny!!
I clarified by saying that *MY* kids grandmas would never be on Instagram. We are lucky to get email! We do now get texts but they are comprised of a hilarious form of English I only somewhat recognize. 
I just have to say, I think it’s really funny that Katie says something grandmas can’t do and gets nothing, but I get fast crocheting and stomping…lol!! Sigh…everyone loves Katie!
We do have a lot of very tech savvy grannies listening though!
Now I need your Instagram username so I can watch for the toilet paper cover!
’cause I’m so old and addled, I truly didn’t remember WHO said what, so don’t take it personally, Steph! I can spread the peevishness around equally.
Hi, have just listened to this episode. Count me in as a fan of reading blog posts rather than watching them. Could be a generational preference though – given the choice my school-age children would infinity prefer to watch rather than read. In my son’s eyes (he’s 10) why would you “google” something when someone on Youtube can tell you the same information? Changing world, I think.
PS – loved having a short episode rather than no episode!
Hooray for other video not-lovers. I don’t enjoy blogs that are now showing 20 minutes of video content on what could be a 1 page blog post with maybe 3 photos. I can figure out how you made your layout. I don’t need to watch you scrap in real (or semi-sped up) time. I’m sure it’s easier for the blogger but not as informative or interesting for the follower.
And slideshows? Forget it. I close that window once I see it’s a slideshow. So much for their advertisers on pages 2-15. I don’t want to see the 15 top lipsticks of 2014 that badly!