Paddy For Lightroom Adjusts Images Via Hotkeys, Midi Controllers and External Keyboards
If your photography workflow includes using Lightroom, you may wanna take a close look at Paddy For Lightroom an open source DIYish method of assigning keys to Lightroom actions and sliders.(We featured a similar concept before for GIMP, however this one is way, way more flexible)
The neat thing about Paddy for Lightroom is that it can be connected to almost any external input device including "standard" Genovation keyboards, external cashier keyboards, Midi controllers, well you name it. This means that you can map keys to do your some of your tedious work for you.
Paddy (I'm gonna call it Paddy for shorts) started out as a side project for the mysterious Dorfl a hobbyist programmer. It is based on another popular open source key swapping engine - autohotkey. If you've ever wondered why open source rocks, there you have it! I love open source too.
You can use it for free and assign keyboard short cuts, but the fun begins once you start adding external devices, (and those can be as cheap as $70 for 46 keys). Or, or..... you can hook it up with a midi controller and move real (YES REAL!) sliders to make your adjustments and watch them move back when you make adjustments in Lightroom. Like in the video below.
The key features of Paddy include
- Map any LR function to any key or key combination
- Use external keyboards without losing key functionality
- Write Scripts for Lightroom
- Apply Presets, camera profiles, brush presets and Paddy relative Presets on the push of a key
- Move most sliders with keys by amounts you can define
As with any open source project Dorfl accepts contributions, discussion and comments on the project page.
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Comments
Control Fader
I guess this will work with any midi control fader out there, or is there some specific ones that you would recomend ?
Example
This is one I had in mind. Looks to me like a nice amount of keys for the main sliders, good price and realiable source.
Korg nanoKontrol - USB-MIDI Controller
controllers
Any controller that can generate MIDI messages should work, so that one should be fine. However, it looks like the sliders have very short movement only, that will make them quite sensitive.
Dorfl
Learned alot
Hello Dorfl, first off thanks for your efforts and for creating this awesome piece of software, also thanks to DIYPhotography.net for posting this story.
After reading the post today Iread a little bit and posted the question then I searched and read some more, then found a controller board just like yourson craigs list and bought it, after an hour messing around and reading the manual I got it to work and I just have to customise to my own editing needs. I kinda leaned how the different midi channels work and even have some ideas of how users can use it in order to have tons of different uses with one board.
I would like to extend my help to you in the process of testing, troubleshooting and learning about this in order to improve paddy in any way I can. My username in sourceforge.net is hcmlopes and I will post something to your board as a hello.
This is supported by gimp
This is supported by gimp (open source photo editor, soon in 16-bit-per-channel) since version 2.2
http://www.gimp.org/unix/howtos/gimp-midi.html
I have seen gimp but really
I have seen gimp but really never got into it that much. I've benn using Photoshop since version 4 so it was a switch that I didn't really care to making. What I think is great about this application is that lightroom is mostly slider driven and it just makes sence to use a fader control not just extra buttons on programmable keyboards.
Either way I give props to gimp for supporting it.
Sweet!
Wow. Very cool! Thanks for posting this. I'm all over it!!!
mac version
hello I've read the article and I was so happy, then I went to the garage to look for my forgotten Midi controller, but I saw Paddy is for windows!
is ther anything similar for mac?
thanks
knobroom is multiplatform
This looks really neat, but sadly, no osx support. However, I did find http://www.knobroom.com/ which looks pretty similar and is multiplatform
Re: knobs
This is a great find Seph, I will definitelly take a look. It dies look like a great solution if all you want is midi sliders and not external keyboards in general
downloaded!
thanks seph, I'm gonna try it!!
Great DIY Tools
That is an awesome tip...will definitely help busy photographers and editors saving a lot of time.. :)
BISWAJIT DEY PHOTO BLOG
Knobroom
Knobroom works well, Its in alpha at the mo. http://www.knobroom.com
I have created a work around for a problem some people are having with knobroom located here http://su.pr/2avypi, If it hangs are opening midi port then this work around should help.
Im also working on a preset for the Behringer BCR2000
that's cool
forget useful, for many people this will probably take more time setting up than time that it would actually save you, but it's super ffing cool.
here is a blog that walks
here is a blog that walks through the details of setting the Behringer up. We have a standard Behringer setting, which saves a lot of time. We might have a 'standard mapping" at some point, so the whole thing would be packaged.
http://www.danecreekfolios.com/blog/2010/9/22/using-a-bcf2000-with-paddy...
Contour Design ShuttlePRO v2 - NLE Multimedia Controller
Great job with the software and thank you for writing it. I was looking at B&H for midi controllers and found the Contour Design ShuttlePRO v2 - NLE Multimedia Controller. Do you think it would work with your software?
Desk space is not a big deal at home but when I'm on the road something smaller would be great to have.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/298670-REG/Contour_SPROV2_ShuttlePRO_v2.html#reviews
re: contour shuttle driver
hi, the contour shuttle comes with its own driver that allows you to remap its keys and dial to any software you want.
Should work
I think that controller works like any other - you can assign any key to the buttons, and to the shuttle. But i couldn't find a manual online (only quick search). Basically, you need to make sure that you could have the buttons send something like CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-F12 (better even F13 or higher). this will make sure that you can map functions without interfering with the keyboard at all
let me know how it turns out
dorfl
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