General Archives
Blur with Clarity
Maybe I’m unable to appreciate the subtleties he’s trying to express, but I was somewhat underwhelmed with both of Alain Briot’s essays on in-camera blurred landscapes (part 1 and part 2). Such images “need to rely both on color, placement of elements and use of shapes and lines to be successful”, “the type of light …read more
Thoughts on learning Lua
No, I’m not going to write any tutorials, but Sean suggested writing some thoughts on learning Lua for Lightroom…. Getting this far with Lua has been a real struggle. I am not a trained programmer like Jeffrey Friedl. I know no C, C++, Cocoa etc, so I don’t know if Lua is easy for people …read more
Lightroom Plug-in #1 – PseudoRatings
Imagine you want Lightroom to print contact sheets with the rating under each thumbnail, but you want them to be shown as stars. This can be handy when you're sending the contacts sheets to someone and want to point out which images you consider to be the best. Perhaps unbelievably, Lightroom won't do it out …read more
The bleeding war book
So often it takes a fresh pair of eyes to notice something. As I wrote here, I'm designing my Blurb book in InDesign rather than following BookSmart's canned layouts, meaning the recommended workflow is InDesign > PDF > Photoshop > PNGs > BookSmart. While I could set up a Configurator app to automate saving multiple …read more
Punch the sky – updates
Just a couple of updates to yesterday's presets - 4 punch graduated filter and ultra clarity.
Punch the sky
Regular readers of my Lightroom rantings will no doubt be aware that I’m not a big enthusiast for Develop presets, and I use them so rarely that I probably wouldn’t miss them if they weren’t there (along with Quick Develop, the Tone Curve, Snapshots, and the Filter Panel). But to be fair, presets are an …read more
A brand new DAM
It was no secret that it was on the way, but my friend Peter Krogh’s The DAM Book has now been listed on Amazon US and Amazon UK. The original book was immediately unusual in its cover not being emblazoned with “Photoshop CS2” or focussing on the image processing side of the pixel mountain. Peter …read more
Pandora’s box – or InDesign to Blurb
There’s never one way to do something, and whether it’s climbing a hill or putting together a book, it usually makes sense to have a good look around before setting out. Initially I’m going to do a test book with the minimum number of pages and trying out things like colour images (eek) or double …read more
Derrick Story podcast
Derrick Story's latest podcast is Adobe Engineer Pops the Hood on CS4: Meet Winston Hendrickson, Sr. Director, Engineering, Digital Media, for Adobe. During this chat in a conference room at Adobe headquarters, Winston and I talk about what's happening under the hood for Bridge, ACR, and Photoshop. He explains lots of goodies such as, the …read more
SSP Director 1.3
I'd been holding off upgrading SlideShowPro Director until I had enough time to do so properly, but I was itching to try the smart albums included in version 1.3. Here I've set my new photos section so it's now calculated automatically. I always find that any “latest photos” section soon becomes static, or involves some …read more
It’s damp Up (Pacific) North West
Before the credit crunch washed away O'Reilly's Inside Lightroom blog, its content had only just benefited from a new wave of writers including Seattle-based Laura Shoe. Her Digital Daily Dose is a not quite daily blog on digital photography with some well-written posts on Lightroom such as snapshots and virtual copies, and on on my …read more
Grayscale killer, qu’est que c’est
I know, I've said before that I'm too English or middle-aged to appreciate words like “awesome” or “wow”. And I wouldn't normally mention Matt Kloskowski's latest Lightroom tip as it isn't new to me - but I do appreciate the rant: So here's an easy one that I've been using a lot lately (because I …read more
Speak wisely
Anyway, getting back to the post I'd intended to write, for a while I've been intending to do a book of my English Civil War pictures and thought it would be interesting to blog about the project. I actually mentioned it 18 months ago when the idea was to go through Lulu, but I soon …read more
3000 roundabouts in Birmingham, Warwickshire
Really enjoyed Focus on Imaging. Presenting was nerve-wracking, of course, and I really felt out of practice, but the most fun was being on the stand answering all sorts of questions, most common being what's new in CS4, should I upgrade to CS4 or get Lightroom, how's Lightroom different from Photoshop, why won't CS3 read …read more
Bottom fishing
Speaking of being opinionated, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear I’m more of a BBC or PBS kind of web site viewer. It’s a big turn-off if a site seems too commercial or its language sounds too “Yoof TV” for my taste. So its title alone has always made me feel that Matt Kloskowsky’s Lightroom …read more
So you think Flash is safe?
Just as a lot of photographers think they have to go Mac, a lot think their web site has to be Flash-based because it stops people stealing their pictures. “Stops”, of course, has always been an exaggeration - someone could always do a screenshot or scavenge through the browser's cache folder. Flash only makes saving …read more
Lightroom’s library
Managing Photos in the Library Module of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 is an entire chapter from Martin Evening's Lightroom 2 book, introducing Library's features and how to use them.
Firefox and Lightroom
Here's a nice little touch for finding help on Lightroom matters with Firefox. Go to a topic in Adobe's Lightroom Community Help and up pops a little message asking if you want to add it to your search engines. Update - if you don't want all that corporate trade marking, you can edit the search …read more
The grass is always greener?
Rob Boyer's All Things Photography blog includes Aperture tips and has also ventured into the dangerous waters of direct Aperture versus Lightroom comparisons. While overall Rob's about as fair and balanced in advocating Aperture as I am in preferring Lightroom, some judgements fall in Lightroom's favour. For instance, see his comparison of Aperture and Lightroom …read more
Unplugged
Launching a Flash site has always been a background project – it’s not as if I’m unhappy with the current site – and it’s pretty easy to find a reason to keep it in the garage and keep tinkering away. Learning ActionScript3 was the latest reason for such delay, but I’ve convinced myself it was …read more