Tools that I Use

It’s been a little while since I’ve written about some of the tools and techniques that I use when editing photos.  Part of this has been that I’ve been working on changing how I approach editing workflow, to make it more enjoyable for myself.  I find that the more that I learn about photography, the more I want to continue expanding my (in my opinion) novice skill set when it comes to editing and retouching my images into a final product.  The goal that I aspire towards is to be a well balanced and consistent visual artist.

As some of you know, my day job takes me out of town for extended periods of time and I live in an environment where I cannot bring my camera.  What I do bring with me is my laptop, and as much of my photographic collection as possible.  It is during these times I work on images and do most of my blogging.  

The image below was taken during my last shoot with my friend Graham, that was the subject of my last journal post.  To be a bit more specific, the image below is actually a HDR composite of five images ranging from -2 EV to +2 EV in one stop increments.  After exporting the images from Lightroom 3 beta to Photomatix Pro to do the blending and tone mapping, I discovered  the good and bad about the image.  The good was that I love the golden sunlight that was brought out; and the bad was that it was very obvious how windy that day was, especially with the trees in the foreground.

At first I thought that the image was a lost cause, but then decided to work at it using some of the other tools that I employ from time to time.  I opened the image in Photoshop CS4 and first went to the Phototools plugin by onOne Software.  With it I did a very basic adjustment to adjust the orange/yellow saturation slightly across the image.  I followed this with opening Focal Point 2, also by onOne Software, and proceeded to create the blurring, and vignette on the image.  After this I brought the image back into LR3b where i adjusted the sharpness slightly.  The thing to note about the onOne Software plugins is that they use Photoshop’s resources to provide the edits.  Yes, you could do all of the same edits by just using Photoshop, but onOne’s plugins are very intuitive and natural feeling to use.  

In any event, here is the final product that I came up with.  As always, thanks for reading!

Looking across the Edmonton river valley to the U of A Campus

Second Thoughts on Lightroom 3 Beta

I have now spent a few more intense sessions editing with Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta (called LR3B from here forward).  In my first comments on it, I praised it for a couple of the really obvious things that I noticed.  Since then, I have continued to push LR3B and am still quite impressed with the results.  In fact, I’m so impressed that I have now started to import and edit my catalogues from LR2.  I’m happy to say that the only time that I’ve opened LR2 in the last few days has been to double check settings or quite simply by accident.  LR3B is, quite simply, that good of a product; the results are noticeable and the improved features are intuitive and easy to use.

In this entry I would like to discuss one of the most anticipated features:  Watermarks.  Yes, Adobe has finally heard us users and after 2.5 official versions, it looks like the ability to Watermark your photos is now available in LR3B.  From my testing so far, you can watermark in three places:  file export, print, and web modules. 

Setting up watermarks is quite easy to do as there is a “Edit watermarks…” menu item underneath the “Identity plate” setup on the Lightroom menu item.  The module itself is quite straight forward and is easy to follow.  Here you can setup a text watermark or you can choose a picture watermark that you have created in Photoshop or another source.  The next step is selecting where you would like the watermark to appear by default.  Simply save it as a preset and you are good to go.  If you would like you watermark to be applied in different positions, all you have to do is to save multiple presets.  At export, just select which watermark preset you’d prefer and that’s all there is to it.

This one single feature, is letting me spend more time centralized inside of Lightroom without having to edit in other programs like Photoshop.  Granted, Photoshop will always play an important place in my daily workflow, but once I have the watermark file created, I no longer have to worry about that one detail.  

The point here is that Adobe, is has taken the correct action here, and through features like this, is answering those people who have been questioning why they would even use Lightroom in their workflow when they have Photoshop.  The power of Lightroom for me is a combination of centralization  of  organization, and the tools that I need to perform the majority of  my editing.

Thanks Adobe, and thank you for reading!

First Comments on Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta

As some, or most of you who read my journal may already know.  Adobe released Lightroom 3 Beta (referred to as LR3B) a few days ago.  I excitedly downloaded installed and started testing after watching the videos released by Julieanne Kost on the Adobe Labs site.  Now that I’ve spent some time with it, I would definitely encourage you to download and try it out.  As well, watch the videos, as Julieanne Kost, does an excellent explaining and demonstrating the new features.  

What I do want to mention are a couple of the things that I really like.  The first thing is the performance increase; overall the performance of LR3B is noticeably faster than LR2.  Enumerating thumbnails is one of those performance items, and I was delighted to see the thumbnails almost fly into existence as I was performing mass imports of large DNG files.  What’s the big deal?  The big deal is that I was able to start reviewing and processing images while the import of 3000+ photos was in progress.

The next item is the improvements to the sharpening module and algorithm.  You no longer have to zoom into 100% in order to view the sharpening effect. This also falls into the praise of performance above, as the sharpening changes happen extremely fast and you can see the changes in the full view.  In fact, it was seeing this while working on a photo this evening.  The photo was mostly consisting of wild grass growing on a sand dune close to the ocean.  After working on the tone curves, I moved to the sharpening and was blown away when I saw how good the sharpening was now in LR3B.  

To sum things up right now, the changes that have been made in LR3B are so impressive that it makes me want to re-evaluate the photos that I’ve been working on recently. Over the next little while, I’ll continue to post opinions, comments and concerns surrounding LRB3.  For now, download it, and start working with it.  If you have any comments, please feel free to leave a comment on the post or you can send me a message by using the contact form.

As always, thanks for reading and happy photographizing!