It is much more efficient to create big Keyword lists outside Lightroom and my article for Lightroom News explains the ins and outs of the process.

Mr Plug-in, Jeffrey Friedl has produced two more for Lightroom. The first is Folder Watch for better auto-importing. The second is Megapixel Sort, to enable you to categorize and sort your images by the Megapixel size.

Picture Code has released Noise Ninja Standalone with a Sidekick Mode. If Noise Ninja is in Sidekick mode, any files sent to from external applications, dragged and dropped or via a file open dialog get automatically processed and saved without user interaction. This is useful as an external editor for applications like Lightroom. The official release is available on the Noise Ninja download page.

John Beardsworth has posted some ‘punch graduated filter’ presets. Not normally a fan of Presets, he has suddenly gone preset-tastic! 4 Punch Graduated Filter presets and an Ultra Clarity preset are valuable contributions to the community.

Sean McCormack on Lightroom News has produced some new videos, Shortcuts to Speed Develop and Toolstrip: Redeye Tool.

Sean notes that X=Equals have bundled their presets and posted them on Adobe Exchange.

The new edition of The DAM Book by Peter Krogh has been announced and can be pre-ordered from Amazon US and Amazon UK

On of the most asked questions in the Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw world is about compatibility with new cameras.

New cameras are generally released every 3-4 months.Once they are out Adobe needs to profile the Raw files that the camera produces. This doesn’t take much time, but if there are a few cameras released in the same time period, then Adobe will bundle the release together. This creates a ‘panic gap’ – the time period between users buying the camera and the Raw file being supported by Adobe. Unfortunately, you just have to put up with it! Adobe rarely get advance models of the camera; they have to wait in line just as the normal buyer does!

Generally Adobe Camera Raw, the DNG Converter and Lightroom are released 3-4 times a year. A major release number is tied to a Photoshop version, so the current 5.x releases belong to Photoshop CS4 and recent Photoshop Elements versions.

If you are using an older version of Lightroom (a 1.x version) or Photoshop CS, CS2 or CS3, you can’t use the latest Plug-in to provide Raw support for these newer cameras.

However, Adobe hasn’t just abandoned you. The answer for backwards compatibility is the DNG Converter. It is a free download from Adobe; by downloading the latest version you can convert your new camera’s Raw files into DNG and use these DNGs in older versions of Adobe software.

You don’t get the benefits that the new software can offer, but you can use and edit the files with your current software’s capabilities.

Jeffrey Friedl has released a new Plug-in as a beta. This one allows you to edit metadata-viewer presets and is a Plug-in version of his web-based Metadata Preset viewer.

In my book Inside Lightroom 2, I promised a set of Lightroom Links and an OPML file of RSS feeds. This got a bit overlooked at the time, but now I can make amends. I have created a static page of the links in my resources chapter, plus a few new ones. The OPML file is also available as mentioned in the book. Obviously you will need a copy to get this file, but I am sure the ingenious among you can find it easily enough!

Updates will be announced in the blog and annotated on the Lightroom Links page.

Please feel free to add your own sites in the comments.

Sean McCormack has released some Smoke Presets for Lightroom. Donationware from LRB!

Article by Tyler Ginter on the improvements needed by Lightroom to match PhotoMechanic. Tyler is a military photographer and needs to input Keywords and Metadata fast…