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[marko]

A couple of things occurred to me last week...

1. Why am I exporting 12 megapixel jpg files out of Lightroom, at anything up to 12 Mb a pop, when they will really only be used for playback on the TV.
2. Why am I exporting them in 4:3 aspect ratio when the TV is 16:9

Point #2 is what got me started with all this, as it has bugged me for a long time that the images leave loads of wasted black space either side on the TV screen. I tried with a few images, and the results are brilliant. Files are now mostly less than 1 Mb, and fit the screen. I've auto cropped them all, which works for the majority, but I still need to check them all manually as the "auto" job crops in the center, and sometimes, it's better if it all gets cropped from the top or the bottom... a load of sky that might not be missed, for example...

This then got me turning my attention to all those jpg files that don't have RAW masters in Lightroom...

Works there too. I get MC to send copies to Photoshop, which it does, stacking the new files as it goes, and crop the copies from there. Photoshop actually does a pretty good job of producing a 1920 x 1080 crop from a 1024 wide original, which is clever!

All of this seems like a no-brainer to me, and I wish I'd taken this approach years ago and saved myself this big job. I mention it here for two reasons...

1. If all this is sound theory, it might be useful to someone else who may be just starting out with their image library.
2. If what I'm doing is insane, please stop me, and tell me why. I've tried to think of reasons not to do this, and have not come with any. If I want to make a physical print, I've got stacked originals in MC and RAW files in Lightroom, so I'm covered there, and don't think I've missed anything else. You should see them on the telly, they look amazing. Portrait shots are getting cropped to 880 x 1080.

If nothing else, it'll keep me quiet for a bit
-marko

[HTPC4ME]

one question.... what if you upgrade tv? say to a projector... would those images still be as clear being screen could be 2-3-5 times the size?

[Matt]

I'm a believer in storing the highest quality source possible and making changes (for speed, size, equalization, or whatever) at playback time.  I suppose since you have RAW files backing the images, you sort of do have the highest quality version stored though.

[HTPC4ME]

Matt, thats what we do as well.... We do graphics/printing, if something needs to be scaled down, we grab the original make a copy then work off that copy (crop,resize etc) then put that new version with customers files.

Marko, for doing it quick and not having to open up adobe products (takes forever if you have lots of plugins/brushes fonts)
I use VSO image resizer. http://www.obviousidea.com/windows-software/light-image-resizer/?source=fromapp which allows you to do as many files as you want, it works via a right click,  it does resizing but doesnt allow for cropping, cropping we still use PS. But if one crops, then one usually does more editing anyway and would need PS.

[marko]

Got the last one done this morning. Just over 7000 images, nicely cropped to fit the TV screen. I only did the stack top images. When I hit the scanned images, it was like running into treacle, but hey, I got a job finished there that I'd been putting off for months, so two birds with one edit (all hail the 'spot cleaning brush tool'!). The results are most excellent, and I've saved around 4 gigs of HDD space into the bargain.

We've got a nice 42" Sony Bravia 5-something-or-other. It's just shy of a year old and I don't see us upgrading anytime soon. The TV is the mutt's nuts, and anything bigger would look silly in this room.

This job was easy to manage from within MC. A project view scheme set up just for this purpose, filtering out the cropped images. "Send to > External > Photoshop (make a copy)" and the copy is auto-stacked with the original and opened in photoshop. When saved, MC picks up the changes, updates the database and removes the finished images from the view. When the view is empty, the job is done. Simples!

-marko

[Jaguu]

If MC would allow us to have a side panel on the left or right that could display caption information instead of only on the bottom, we could still display images in 4:3 format without the need to undertake such an enormous task. And it would also look nicer as the caption information would not disturb the display of the image. This is something that I asked several times and would be really easy to implement. A 16:9 screen could allow a larger variety of image display than only a single image slideshow. What about displaying 2, 3, 4 pics or even collages on a screen?

Personally I don't mind to have black space around an image. The colors of the images seem to gain in brilliance with a black background. Another nice addition to MC would be the possibility to frame images as you can optionally do with the thumbnails. We could have a vast set of frames to choose from and add frame properties in tags. A frame could have different colors, sizes, decorations.

[marko]

I hear you!

Video would appear to be what's generating cash flow at the moment, and while the work in that department is little short of amazing, and seriously appreciated, I do hope our picture libraries are in line for a similar level of love in the near future.

-marko