Archive for April, 2008

When I originally started the conversion from Photoshop Elements Organizer to Lightroom I ran into a pretty big snag.  The snag was the captions from RAW images were not transferring into Lightroom when I used the Import from Elements feature.  Everything else imported just fine but not having my captions concerned me.

Since my January 1 attempt I’ve contemplated several workarounds to get the captions over.  My ideas were (in order of feasibility):

1.  Export the captions from Organizer and copy and paste them on each image in Lightroom
2.  Export the captions from Organizer and build .xmp sidecar files that could be read into Lightroom
3.  Wait until a later version of Lightroom and hope that caption transfer would be added
4.  Ignore the missing captions

I ruled out option 4 because I value my captions too much.  Option 3 was the plan I went with for some time but not having my catalog in Lightroom was becoming more and more difficult (mainly due to an import issue that raised its head in March).  That left me with options 1 & 2.

I experimented quite a bit with option 2 as it would make the caption import mechanical and eliminate potential errors.  I have been using Lightroom since the first Windows betas in June of 2006 so I had quite a few images that I’d edited already.  Those edits are valuable just like the captions and I wanted to make sure they were included in my new Railroad catalog.  To do this I wrote out .xmp sidecars containing the edit information.   Now I have a dilemma, some files would have two sidecar files.  That won’t work because Lightroom reads in the data in the sidecar file as a replacement for the data it has in the library.  This means when you read the side car file Lightroom overlays all the information on the image.  With two files I’d either get the edits or I’d get the captions but not both.  As much as I hated it, option 1 proved to be the most fool proof and accurate way of getting my captions into Lightroom.

The conversion 

After much grumbling about copy and paste I decided to make the leap and convert the catalog knowing I’d have a copy and paste job ahead.   Here’s the steps I performed to prepare.

In Organizer:

1.  I used the Write Tag Info to files feature to write what information I could to my image files.  This put the caption on about 1350 of my images that were originally .jpg, .tiff, or. psd
2.  I reconnected all missing files to make sure Organizer knew the location of all the images
3.  I recovered the catalog to compress it and make sure it is ready for Lightroom

In Lightroom:

1.  I selected all the images in the Library grid and went to the Metadata menu and chose Save Metadata to files (this is my ‘working’ catalog that did not contain any keywords, captions or anything, just edits).  This saved all the edits I’d made in Lightroom to xmp sidecar files
2.  I created a new catalog and chose Import from Elements.   This started the import process from my Organizer catalog

In less than an hour I had a Lightroom catalog minus captions from about 7950 images.

The clean up

The conversion process wasn’t perfect and I had many duplicate keywords.  As near as I could tell if an image was in a version set in Organizer the keywords were duplicated, one within the keyword hierarchy and one at the root of the hierarchy.  I checked several out and they were truly duplicates so all I had to do was remove the keywords that were not in the hierarchy and the keywords would all be correct.

As a double check that all of my photos were converted I went to each folder and imported all files from the folder.  I found about a dozen images that were not in organizer and thus were not converted to Lightroom.  In the end I wasn’t missing anything valuable, but it was nice to know everything had converted.

The clean up took between 3 and 4 hours total.

The captions

Thanks to Paige’s comments on the previous post I knew that the Organizer file could be opened by MS Access.  I decided to extract the captions from there into an Excel spreadsheet for ease of entry.  This is the query I used.

SELECT ImageTable.fImageOriginalFilePath,
       ImageTable.fImageOriginalFileName,
       ImageTable.fImageDate,
       ImageTable.fImageTime,
       MediaShortCaptionTable.fMediaShortCaption,
       ImageLongCaptionTable.fImageLongCaption  FROM (ImageTable LEFT JOIN ImageLongCaptionTable ON
                           ImageTable.fImageLongCaptionIdFromImage = ImageLongCaptionTable.fImageLongCaptionId)
                 LEFT JOIN MediaShortCaptionTable ON
                           ImageTable.fMediaShortCaptionIdFromMedia = MediaShortCaptionTable.fMediaShortCaptionId;

The results of this query were exported into Excel where I combined the short and long captions (I used both over the years) into one caption giving me something that looked like this:

The copy and paste

In both Lightroom and Excel I ordered the images by file name and went after it one image at a time.  What I quickly discovered is I tended to give blocks of images the same caption.  When you have a DSLR and blast off 10 images of the same train there really isn’t much different information from one image to the next.  I found I could apply the same caption to a block of images by selecting all the images in Lightroom and then pasting in the caption.  For example if you look at the Excel screen shot above you can see IMG_2347.CR2 - IMG_2350_edited-1.psd all have the same caption.  Instead of copying and pasting 7 times I can finish these images with just one copy and paste. 

In the end I captioned over 1000 images and hour.  With just under 7000 to caption that worked out to between 6 and 7 hours worth of effort.  I spread the effort out in small pieces so as to not kill myself.  I also intentionally didn’t set a deadline to complete this because with my personality if I did that I’d have to find some way to get it done before the deadline which would likely translate into some late night marathon.  

The reward

I’m now working exclusively in Lightroom and I don’t have any more copy and paste to do!  As nasty as it sounds the copy and paste wasn’t really that bad.  My decision to to a little here and there really made the job go quickly and took away the monotony that comes with a repetitive task.   Now that the hard work is over I can sit back and enjoy having a complete Lightroom catalog of my railroad photos.

Are you having trouble figuring out which of the Adobe Photoshop products are right for you?  Check out Scott Kelby’s discussion on his blog.  Regular readers of my posts on Lightroom will not be surprised by Scott’s conclusions. 

Even if you don’t agree with Scott I hope you can get a better feel from Scott’s post on where the main photo editing products from Adobe fit in.

…well, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.  Like most of Washington we had a touch of April snow in Vancouver yesterday.  After one of the showers I ran out and snapped a photo of my lone remaining Daffodil.  The poor thing I’m sure it was second guessing its decision to bloom.

Snowy Daffodil

Yacolt is at a bit higher elevation than my house so of course it way snowing up there and yes, that’s snow on the hills above the BYCX 1.  Certainly snow is expected up there in January, but not in April.  Dare I ask what’s next?

Cold Excursion

April 20 marks seven years for me of using a digital camera to capture railfan photos.   Seven years seems like an odd milestone doesn’t it?  As I thought this through I realized seven years represents about one third of the time I’ve photographed trains.  When you do something the same way one third of the time you get used to it and it becomes natural.

The morning of April 21, 2001 was quite busy on the Lakeside Sub.  The plethora of trains would later come in handy for the 700 and crew.

I purchased a Kodak DC4800 3.1MP camera as a Christmas present for my wife in November of 2000.  After Christmas I used the camera a little bit for railfanning around Vancouver but I hadn’t yet taken it on a week long trip.  I stole the camera away from her for my trip to Spokane and back to chase the ill-fated Homecoming Excursion.   With that bit of thievery this trip became my first time using digital to capture railroad images on a road trip.

April 22, 2001.  Still on the rails.  This day would be the last relatively good day of the excursion.

What did I think?  Well, unlike some, I didn’t waffle back and forth between film and digital.  My experience on this trip convinced me digital is where it is.   Despite being a point and shoot, the 3.1 MP camera did a fine job and captured some great memories for me.  Its ease of use, instant feedback, and ability to correct photos really sold me!   On top of that I was still used to prints so I did print some photos…but only the ones I felt were worth the cost.   These advantages were too great to ignore and I never looked back. 

Seven years later digital imaging seems so natural that I feel like I’ve been doing it all my life.

Yesterday Vancouver had a surprise foreign visitor, KCS 4100 which I believe is the class unit of their SD70ACe series in the newer Heritage paint scheme. It was the trailing unit on a westbound train at 8th street (in some amazingly craptastical lighting… but you take what you can get, right?).

Recently I went about town for some photo taking opportunities and managed to grab a few decent shots of a Portland & Western freight rolling on through Union Station downtown. It’s been gorgeous the last few days and I just figured that at least a few trains ought to be photographed.

On Saturday April 5 I made another one day trip to BNSF’s Oregon Trunk sub hoping to again capture some of the detouring UP trains.  Unlike my previous trip this time I was bound for Madras with the focus on the South Jct. to Crooked River segment.   I knew the places I wanted to visit but I really didn’t have a plan of which one I’d hit first.  I just headed towards Madras to see what happened.

As I left Warm Springs I heard the UP 8619 N get a box 7 (after the arrival of) with the BNSF 7644 S at the North Siding Switch Paxton.  A meet!   I headed for Paxton and started off with the Z-LCBR meeting the M-VAWRRB in some decent morning glow.  At this point I was faced with a choice of which train to chase.  Given its unusual for the LCBR to be on the Trunk I chased it north.  That proved profitable since a meet was set up with the UP 5355 S  (M-EURVB) at South Jct. 

Clawing into Paxton

Between Gateway and South Jct. the route drops into the Mud Springs Creek and Trout Creek canyons.  Both of these canyons are neatly carved out of the lava rock and provide the railroad a route to gain some elevation as it climbs out of the Deschutes canyon toward Madras.  Like other parts of the Trunk this part doesn’t lack for scenery!  I think the most fascinating part is a horseshoe curve that nearly turns the train 180 degrees!  The UP 5355 S proceeded to Opal City for a meet with another northbound UP manifest (M-RVPT).

Trout Creek Horseshoe

By the time I photographed the M-RVPT passing through the horseshoe the light was about right for the traditional Trout Creek trestle photo.  Since everyone has seen that photo many times I’ll share some others from this fantastic location.  As I was standing on the hillside above the trestle waiting for the M-PASKLF, I thought to myself how little fun it would be to stand on that hill on a hot August day.  I’m thinking the spring and fall would be best for the Trunk.

Grand Canyon of the Deschutes

Trout Creek

I chased the BNSF 7622 S down to the Crooked River bridge and captured the usual side shot there.  As the day wore on more and more clouds streamed over Cascades into the high desert so by the time the photo was taken the sky and lighting were quite diffused leaving things a bit drab.

Leaving the Crooked River I heard a southbound finishing a meet at Oakbrook.  Doing the math I figured I had enough time to return to Madras, fuel, and head for South Jct.   My estimates were correct and as I arrived at South Jct. the southbound H-PASBAR was finishing a Dixon meet.  That gave me 30 minutes to scope out the area for my photo.  Man was I surprised to see the second unit in the consist!  The UP 2002 of all things on a BNSF manifest.

2002 at South Jct.

The southbound was headed for Round Butte for a meet with another northbound UP manifest (another M-RVPT).  Again doing the math I figured around a couple of hours for the northbound to arrive.  That allowed me time to enjoy dinner (yes, food at South Jct. is BYOB) and take a walk around the recreation area to scope out photo locations.  As it ended up the two spots I liked either required good light or for it to be dark enough to allow for about 20-30 second exposure.  With the streaming clouds and occasional showers it was clear that good light wasn’t going to happen so I hoped for a delay so it would be darker.  I got neither so my last photo of the day was a compromise based on the conditions.

After dark at South Jct.

That does it for my Trunk adventures for now.  I do have to say I’m hooked on this unique operation so I expect to be back again.

After a refreshing spring break trip to the beach, its back to railfanning for me.  On Saturday I made another one day trip to the Oregon Trunk to become more familiar with the South Jct. to Redmond segment.  I’ll post on that later this week.  Sunday I set out with the goal of capturing a few images of the Vancouver rail construction projects.  Yep, that’s right, projects.

Right after the first of the year the West Vancouver Freight Access project phase I kicked off.  Aaron and I learned that this first phase will construct a spur off the Fallbridge sub near Eighth St. to serve Albina fuel and the LaFarge cement plant south of the depot.  The second phase will extend the spur west into the port with the goal of all movements to and from the east using this track instead of the hill and grain lead they use now.  The primary goal of the project is to speed up entry and exit into the port which is now slowed by the fact trains have to cross the Seattle sub at Vancouver center. 

West Side Frieght Access Construction

This should be a very interesting project due to watch as there will eventually be a shoo fly built while the trestle near 6th St. is replaced and the fact the first nearly 1000′ of the spur will be on an elevated right of way built on a pre-manufactured concrete wall system. 

The second project is the construction of a storage track or third main track between the north end of the B Yard and 39th St.  In February a switch and some porta potties showed up which is a sure sign that work was about to begin.  In mid-March, during a one day long main 1 window, the switch was installed just north of the Fruit Valley Rd. overpass.  In the last week a minor amount of sub grade work was done just south of the switch.  Other than that progress has been slow. 

A northbound grain train passes the location of the new storage track

Track to nowhere

As has been mentioned on various forums the approach signals for Vancouver Center and Vancouver Jct. North were replaced with a dwarf signal.  I’m sure that is temporary until the new signals are installed at the Fruit Valley crossing location.  When the opportunity presents itself I grab a shot of the stubby little thing.  This storage track is actually part of the Vancouver Rail Project which involves the overpass at 39th St.  

These projects should make the next 3 years fairly interesting around here!