
In the previous post, Simple Things – 1, I pointed out a few Lightroom tips that may make working in it a little more comfortable. Let me continue with a few more tips and time sinks.
Simple Things: Lightroom Calibration Panel
I wrote an article on creating a camera profile for different lighting conditions using a ColorChecker Passport. It may still be a good read but I want to talk about a much quicker use of the Calibration panel in Lightroom.
When you expand the Calibration panel, you see the three primaries with their hue and saturation sliders and another slider that controls the shadow tint. You may have read and heard advice not to touch these sliders unless you know what you are doing. Nothing in Lightroom is permanent anyway, come let us play with the bugaboo sliders. Look at the image on the left, everything is centered at zero. Bring up a nice landscape image before going any further.
Now that you have the image, make the adjustments you normally make. After that, come back to the calibrations panel and move the Blue channel saturation to the right. Don’t worry go all the way to 100. Nothing weird happens, right? The sky may get more saturated along with the foliage gaining a little more luster and presence. This happens because colors from purple to most shades of green have blue in them and they get a little extra boost from this adjustment. Very likely, the slider at 100 may make things a little over the top which is what you want. Now, you can pull back until the image looks right but a bit stronger.


Above is a pair of comparison images that you can view by moving the slider from left to right. The differences will be subtle as I mentioned, and you will see richer tones on the buds and a little on the green leaves. Your mileage will depend on the image and your level of restraint in using the saturation slider.
I realize you can control the individual color channels to make these adjustments. This adjustment is just one more tool in your arsenal and it produces a little more nuanced results cutting across a spectrum of colors. Some images may see little or no benefit from it, but it can be a powerful tool. Just don’t get too carried away with it. Of course, you can experiment with the other primary saturation sliders but wait for that until you feel comfortable with just the blue calibration slider. Click here to download a ZIP version of the Granger Chart in the image. Extract the single file from the ZIP, import it into Lightroom, and try the blue primary saturation under the “Calibrate” panel and see what is happening to all the colors. Then, zero the blue channel saturation and try the HSL channels to see the difference in behavior. I made this chart following instructions online and it is a numeric creation of colors.
Simple Things: The British Museum Images Online
This, I learned at the PetaPixel site. The British Museum is putting close to two million images online. This is not photography specific, but in the same article you will find other similar contributions from many art institutions, and among the 2M images at The British Museum, there will be plenty to enjoy.
Simple Things: A Stubborn Folder
I am not sure how it happened, but I ended up with a folder on my drive with some files I placed in it. After I was done with the images, I deleted them and wanted to remove the folder itself. I was looking at the folder name in Windows Explorer, highlighted it, and pressed the Delete key. But a pop-up message told me that the folder was no longer there! Come again! It was just before my eyes.
I tried multiple times, I made sure I was not dreaming, copied files into these non-existing folders, and even made a folder inside it. When I deleted the files in it, all was good. But I could not delete the new folder I made inside it for the same reason that it was no longer there.
I went back to the MS-DOS days, used the command line, and tried to delete the folders that way, no dice. I did research online and found that I was not alone. Many, however, found their solution using the old 8.3 file names to delete them but that did not work for me.
One day, this was probably a good couple of months after my initial problem, I read a thread on an online forum. It said to use something like PKZIP or 7-ZIP to ZIP compress the folder and put a checkmark next to the option to delete the contents after the ZIP was created. As a final effort, I selected the inner undeletable folder and PRESTO! folder be gone! Then I tried it on the main folder, and sure enough, that too was gone.
I told you, this may be tremendous news for you or irrelevant. I cannot tell you how happy I was when this worked. I even signed up for a membership on the forum to thank the person who provided this solution only to find out I had to accumulate many points before I could even write ‘Thank you” under this person’s post. So, here it is, my thanks to this anonymous person.
Simple Things: And Something For Fun
Before presenting a few more photographs from short outings, allow me to talk a little about the importance of peripheral vision. I am attuned to that because of Jan’s serious lack of peripheral vision. For this to work, you may need to view the image on a computer with a decent size screen and the dark background of the viewer helps. Click on the image below which shows a bit of wilderness almost next door. Vine climbing on the tree, laying on the ground, all unkempt with a rough grassy patch in the front.

There are blue flowers in the green grassy patch, but they are hard for me to see if I look at them. But if I look somewhere in the middle and move my eyes slowly from side to side, I notice the blue flowers almost winking at me at some point. As I turn my gaze on them, they seem to disappear. Do you have the same experience? I even found an article about it!
And finally, here are a few more photographs from the outings in the neighborhood, including the wilderness next door. Don’t miss the optical illusion of the fence.
Haluk Atamal
Granger Chart: Very interesting to play around. Tells a lot but admittedly more on the fun side.
Un-erasable folder: That is quite astonishing. I never had such a problem, at least yet.
Peripheral colour perception: My eyes notice the blue flowers whether they are in the centre or not. Still, very interesting point. I read the article summary.
The photos: As per usual, a very pleasant closing of the article. I liked the white house a lot.
It feels so nice to know somebody who is always willing to share his/her knowledge and experience. Thanks a lot, Cemal.
Take care and stay safe!
Haluk
A. Cemal Ekin
Good morning, Haluk,
The Granger Chart is probably more useful in Lightroom than in Photoshop. When the blue primary saturation in the calibration panel is used, there is certainly a much greater spectrum is affected than using the blue color slider in the HSL panel. Its construction is also interesting but I skipped that part. The blue flowers are much more visible to me when I do not look at that area but look at the center of the image. As I said, it is most noticeable on a large monitor than a small laptop screen.
The folder problem bothered me for about a month as I tried various tools and methods of deleting them. Then I found this totally unexpected fix! I wish I knew what command they issue to the OS!
Take care,
Cemal