LRTimelapse 7 and 6 support a stand alone workflow, without Lightroom. Simple Keyframe editing can be done directly in LRTimelapse and also there is an internal Export and Render feature.
Make sure to also check out my video tutorial for a more detailed and visual explanation of the process.
Of course, internal editing cannot fully replace the power of Lightroom, but for simple edits it works fine and can also be use in conjunction with the more advanced Lightroom Editing, which is explained in the fully featured complete workflow with Lightroom.
This workflow can be used with Raw, JPG and DNG sequences. Of course, Raw will provide the best quality.
- Load your Sequence by choosing a folder on the left. Wait until the sequence has been loaded.
- Launch the Keyframes Wizard, it will automatically create some keyframes based on an automatic analysis of the luminance progression. By dragging the slider you can easily create more or less keyframes. Keyframes will mark the images, that you are going to edit manually – the develop-settings for all other images will be later calculated automatically by LRTimelapse.
You can create additional Keyframes by navigating to a frame and pressing the “1” key. Remove a keyframe via “0”. - The “Holy Grail”- Wizard will only be enabled for sequences shot according to the “Holy Grail” approach: changed Exposure-Time and/or ISO while Camera was shooting in M-Mode.
After enabling the Holy Grail Wizard, an orange compensation curve will be calculated to compensate for the Holy Grail camera adjustments.
The orange curve shows the compensations that the Holy Grail Wizard calculated for the camera adjustments.
The positions of the Rotate/Strech controls should be automatically set. Generally, the the orange curve should be as close to the horizontal middle line as possible. The thick cyan curve gives you an idea about the natural luminance transition.
- Save Metadata
- The double diamond icon indicates, that visual preview will be generated for the keyframes only.
You can now start editing the first keyframe via the editor on the right.
After each edit you need to wait a moment for the visual preview to get recreated. - When you finished editing, click on the double icon to the right (below the histogram), this will synchronize your edits to the next keyframe.
The single (outer) arrows below the histogram allow you to jump from one keyframe to the next. The double (inner) arrows will synchronize the edit to the next / previous keyframe.
- On the next Keyframe now make your changes in editing, if needed.
- Edit all keyframes like this. After each one, click on the double arrow to bring the edits to the next Keyframe.
- Auto-Transition calculates the transitions for all images in between the Keyframes. It will give you a short glimpse on all curves calculated in the preview, you might permanently turn on the display of all curves by clicking on ALL on the top right of the preview.
- The Visual Previews will now switch to “All Frames” mode and start developing the previews for the whole sequence.
- After all previews have been developed, apply a single or multipass visual deflicker as explained in the instructions for the Full Workflow.
- You can now either go to Lightroom and export from there with all options as explained in the Export and Render Instructions – or – you can render internally as follows.
- Click on Export and Render (internal). This will first ask you for an output path. Choose a parent folder here, where your finished timelapse video and the intermediary sequence should go, like “Somewhere/Timelapse Done“.
After that the Render Dialog will come up in the orange mode Export and Render Current Sequence.
- Set your render settings (you can use one of the presets at the top left) and then click on Export & Render. This will create a background process in the LRTimelapse Main Windows and do the export and rendering.
Please note: in comparison to the Lightroom Export, the internal export will always create 8 bit sRGB intermediary JPG files and indicate that with a warning. The quality will be inferior to the quality provided by the Lightroom Export via the LRTExport plugin.
