Day 25 - 20110125

Initial thoughts on Snow Leopard

Here is the short form of my thoughts thus far:  Is Snow Leopard worth the effort and expense of installing?  In a word “yes!”  

For those of you with a longer attention span, here are a couple of thoughts concerning Snow Leopard after upgrading and using it for a couple of days.

1. Is it really faster?  Overall yes, but remember that harnessing the advantages of a 64bit OS come from programs running in the 64bit space.  Native apps such as Safari and Mail have shown a marked improvement for me.
2. Is there a difference running CS4?  Yes, so far I have been impressed at the processing speed of both Bridge and Photoshop.  For example enumerating the thumbnail/medium jpeg preview from both a local source or across the network is a good way to notice the speed difference right when you start using Snow Leopard.  Running actions or plug-ings that do specific processing in Photoshop also seem faster.
3. Does Photoshop CS3 open or is it incompatible?  Well so far, I haven’t done anything specifically with Photoshop CS3, but I did try opening it out of curiosity with success.  Just because it hasn’t been tested fully, doesn’t mean that it won’t work.
4. Do you have any applications that have stopped working?  Yes actually, but that has been minimized to just a few minor apps.  I fully expect that the developer community will catch up in short order.

Well I think that about does it for right now.  There will be more to follow as I start pushing Snow Leopard in my day to day workflow.  For now, I’d say that it is a great step forward for the OSX software package across the board.  

Thanks for reading.

The Beauty of Workflow: Part Two

Well, it has been several tomorrows since I wrote Part One of this thought.  The main thing here is that I did not forget about the post at all, in fact i had various drafts of it but deleted each one.  In fact I have gone back and read the last post several times.  By the end, I knew that I was opening up a can of worms, but since the can is open, why don’t we just look inside for a little bit.

Lately, I have really been sitting back looking at how I work when I am processing photos.  I use both Lightroom and Bridge as libraries and to start certain functionality.  The question that has been posed is would it be better to just stick with one and not worry about the other?  Is it even worth opening up Bridge if you already are using Lightroom?  The short answers to these questions are No and Yes respectively.

In the end it will always come back to where you are most comfortable working, but if you work on your files from both programs, is there anything to be worried about?  Will the file meta data sync if modified from either Lightroom or Bridge?  The good news here is that though there may be a couple concerns, there really isn’t anything to much to be worried about.

I will use the metadata example, as you can create/modify/edit the data from both programs directly.  The main thing to remember here is that each program may appear to work with the files differently from the other.  In the end you are accomplishing the same thing, but in both cases the important part is to either apply the changes to the file (Bridge) or to save the metadata to the file. 

If you know you’ve been making changes to a file or several directly using Bridge and Photoshop; simply synchronize the folder in Lightroom when you open it up.  Piece of cake right?  Right.  This is the main thing to note when modifying files in Lightroom.  The thing to remember is to save the metada to the files as it is just saved as part of the catalogue until it has been written.  This also goes for other photo manipulations and can be the saving grace in some cases.  This is also one of the reasons why I shoot and process in the RAW format.   Ultimate undo and control over the files. 

On that note I think that I will stop.  Check back for more on using Lightroom to help with certain workflow tasks.  In expanding the topic of workflow I will be sharing some of the things that I do that make my life a little easier from day to day.

Thanks for reading.

Photechography

Photechography….. huh? It’s not even a word, and you are a weird, geeky man Mr. Radarland.ca. That may be what shot through your head when you saw the title of this entry. Let’s start off by clearing up a couple of things. One, my name is Jared and two I know that I’m not Shakespeare. What I did accomplish is getting you to the end of the first paragraph, now onto the second…

By using the word “photechography” what do I mean? Well, I would describe it as all the tech that is involved surrounding your photography. In other words, all the devices and services that you may use that help you in your photographic experience. Over the next couple of posts, I will be exploring some of the devices that I use in my day to day workflow. If you would like me to cover specific topics, please feel free to leave your suggestions as a comment or send me a message from the contact page on the website.

Some of the items coming up will be:

• External storage: Is an external usb/firewire hard drive enough or even required?
• My Network: Does it even matter?
• Adobe Lightroom & Bridge: Things they do better than Explorer or Finder when it comes to your pictures.

Thanks for visiting.