Unfortunately Not an April Fools Joke
Posted by latoga | Filed under Uncategorized
Adobe’s Photoshop Express has a terms of use clause that tries to steal the rights away from photographers. At first, I thought this had to be an April Fools Joke. Unfortunately not. Not only was the date a few days early, but the topic is real.
This is an issue that is big enough that it requires every photographer to stand up and make some noise (hence the echo chamber to ensure the word gets out).
Thanks Jim for the wonderful analysis on this topic (as usual)!
Tags: Adobe, Legal Rights, Photoshop
The Beauty of Lightroom is Mis-Understood
Posted by latoga | Filed under Uncategorized
I was reading Reed Hoffmann’s recent article Lightroom and Aperature on Blue Pixel Musings and was a bit surprised that the true beauty of Adobe’s Lightroom wasn’t discussed. Reed was comparing Adobe and Lightroom as some of the tools in the photographer’s digital darkroom toolbox. I will admit that I have only played with Aperture at the Apple Store while I have been using Lightroom since the first beta release available for Windows.
The beauty of both of these tools lie in their ability to address the problems that photographers have started to face in the new world of digital photography: how do I quickly process the photos I just took…all 600, 800, 1400 of them?
As digital photography has taken off in the past 2-3 years, the sheer volume of photos that the average photographer takes has increased logarithmically. Add into that factor the whole digital negative aspect and you had a situation that was demanding new tools to allow the digital photographer to remain productive. This is exactly what Lightroom (and Aperture) are: digital photography bulk processing tools.
I can load my couple hundred photos into either tool and quickly do bulk processing on these photos that cover the majority of my fine tuning of the images. Adjust the white balance, tone, color, apply some general filtering and noise reduction…essentially do the bulk of the work that I need to do to every photo I take. There is still the more advanced photo editing that might need to be done in Photoshop, but not every photo needs to go through that…especially if you expect to do more shooting, get the photos out to the client and still sleep.
Before I started using Lightroom, it would have taken me about 12+ hours to work through 400 photos in Bridge and Photoshop just to do what I described above. Now, in Lightroom, I can load the 600 photos that I shot last weekend at a birthday party and have them all poppin’ to my personal standard within 2 hours (I bet it would be even faster on a dual core machine instead of my 3 year old Thinkpad…something I wouldn’t try with Aperture). The speed boost that Lightroom delivers comes from the ability to adjust photos that were taken in the same conditions to the same settings. If I took 30 shots of the Birthday Girl during her speech in the same lighting conditions, then I can bulk adjust all 30 at once and get the same result 99% of the time.
I feel the real beauty of lightroom lies in how Adobe developed it. They realized the need for this new product by listening to their customer base. They then got beta versions of the product into those same customer’s hands for real world testing and feedback. There are a number of great small time saving features that I just love about lightroom and I know a good number of them came from users. This is how a product is supposed to be developed and what leads to a loyal and enthusiastic customer base. Why else would I take my precious time to share these thoughts about Lightroom if I wasn’t in love with it (we all know love makes you do crazy things…like spend 30 minutes blogging instead of getting caught up on sleep…).
Not only is digital photography changing quickly, but the nature of how technology is developed is also making substantial changes to be more aligned with and driven by the customers. The social aspects of the internet and electronic communities demand this. Those technology companies that realize this will succeed, the rest will not. Thanks for listening to us Adobe and the Ligthroom team!
Tags: Adobe, Aperture, Lightroom
CS3 Beta Available
Posted by latoga | Filed under Uncategorized
Today adobe announced availability of the CS3 Beta. This is a first for Adobe Photoshop, the ability to have beta access for testing, evaluating, planning a transition to the latest version of Photoshop. Some of CS3 new features that interest me are:
- Enhanced Adobe Camera Raw
- New version of Adobe Bridge
- Non-destructive smart filters
- Quick selection tool
- Automatic layer alignment and blending
- Vanishing point with multiple, adjustable angels and perspective planes
Honestly, the enhanced camera raw and bridge might be marginalized by Adobe Lightroom. I have been beta testing Lightroom for the past few months and I am considering adjusting my workflow to utilize it (I might find time over the holiday’s to finally do a write up on my experience with it…we’ll see…). Lightroom allows me to quickly process large numbers of photos (like after shooting a wedding or event). It is comparable to Apple’s Aperature (which I have not had the luxury to evaluate in depth like Lightroom, only short play time at the Apple Store).
Regardless of using Lightroom or not, there is still a need for a faster photo browser that understands raw format in my tool box. Lightroom requires importing photos before you can see them, and there is still times when I just want to browse through my recent captures.
Ah, the photographic life in the digital age, constant change…now if only my CS3 Beta would finish downloading…
