# The new guy, plug-in questions



## Sean-Ray (Jan 20, 2013)

Hello. I just joined up today and have a couple of questions about lightroom that you fine people might be able to answer. I am a semi-pro landscape and portrait photographer in Sydney, Australia. I have limited photoshop skill but I am really good with lightroom but would like to expand my skills.
I just purchased a new iMac and the latest version or LR4 this week and would like to know if there are plug-ins for creating stitched/photomerged panoramas and HRD images that work only with lightroom (no photoshop required)?

                    OR

Is its still better to buy PS elements (as Adobe have years of R&D behind them) and use the "Merge to" option while in lightroom?

And do other plug-ins, such as Nik's silver effects, need photoshop to operate? or can the be used through lightroom alone?

Thank you for any help and guidance you can offer.
Sean-Ray


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## clee01l (Jan 20, 2013)

Sean, welcome to the forum.  The third party tools are the way to go.  Some are integrated into LR via a custom plugin others  like PSE are available through the edit in function in LR. I think all of the plugins eventually use the edit in function to call their app. 
The process is simple, if you have 5 photos to merge, select all 5. Then invoke the plugin or call the app via edit in with all 5 selected and you are transported into the merging app.  Note that when you finish your work the result will be a new composite image file that most likely will not be in LR's catalog.  You will need to do what is necessary to add this new file to the LR catalog.


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## LouieSherwin (Jan 20, 2013)

Hi Sean-Ray,

Nik HDR Efex Pro and Photomatrix Pro both have standalone apps the include Lightroom an Export Plug-in that allows you to select your images in Lightroom and exports them to a scratch space where the application then processes them and opens the resulting HDR image for you to edit. After you are done it puts the resulting image file back into your catalog and optionally stacks it with the originals. I think these programs use Export rather than the Edit In function because there does not seem to be a way for Edit-In to render multiple images at a time where as Export will render all the selected images. The rendering is required to apply you Lightroom settings to each image and make TIFF files that the apps can read. There is one annoying problem with that can happen if you use hierarchical keywords in your catalog. If you do let me know and I will describe the problem and the kludgy workaround that I use.

The other Nik Plug-ins all use the Edit-In function since they all operate one image at at time. Because unlike Edit-In Photoshop they use the Edit-In Alternate Editor action they all render a TIFF from your raw image and put that image file back into your catalog before launching the app. So if you cancel out of the Plug-in and make no edits you are left with an additional TIFF file in your catalog that you will need to remove. The Edit-In function does not have the problem with hierarchal keywords mentioned above. Perfect Effects software is similar.

In the past for panorama stitching on the Mac I have used a standalone application Calico Panorama V2 from Kekus.com. However, the developer has a message on the main page that he has stopped support as of last year due to family medical problems. While it still works in Lion (10.7) it may not be working in Mountain Lion (10.8). 

Recently I came across a fantastic new program Autopano Pro and Autopano Giga form Kolor.com. The "Giga" (more expensive) version comes with a Lightroom Export plugin. I have downloaded the trials and it the best stitcher I have tried but not a bargain and €199. I am probably going to cough up the cash soon since it did a much better job than either Calico or Photoshop. I have attached a pano that I stitched using the trial from my trip to Ireland last Fall. Both Calico and Photoshop failed to stitch the whole series but Autopano Giga easily did the whole thing.

-louie


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## Sean-Ray (Jan 21, 2013)

Great.
Thank you for the help, this gives me a good start point. A well known pro photographer here is Australia told me when I started out to learn lightroom and I love it. It's good to know I can use other apps to do the harder stuff like panos and HDR. It would be lovely if the next lightroom did these 

Thanks again for the help


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## OldRadioGuy (Feb 18, 2013)

clee01l said:


> ...Note that when you finish your work the result will be a new composite image file that most likely will not be in LR's catalog.  You will need to do what is necessary to add this new file to the LR catalog.



I am running Lightroom 4 on Windows 7 and my experience with loss of keywords or other EXIF information when using an external plugin or editor has been a mixed bag. This process works fine with Photomatix Pro, Perfect Photo Suite 7 and PhotoLine. But photoFXlab, Topaz Labs host for their various plugins, loses the information virtually every time.

By the way, I'm new here, too. Glad I joined.

Bob


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## Victoria Bampton (Feb 18, 2013)

Welcome to the forum Bob!


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