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Evening Light and Snow, Bryce Canyon

The content on this web site was last updated 02 April 2008

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2 April 2008

Regular readers of this site will recall that it was one of the first to preview a new groundbreaking digital imaging application from Adobe Systems called Lightroom, that was back on 9 January 2006. Before you write to tell me that other similar applications predated Lightroom, I know, I've used them. So, when I write "groundbreaking" I mean that up until Lightroom no major developer had released a "Public Beta" of a brand new "application" with the express aim of allowing the user base to influence its development and direction. Well, here we are again with probably one of the first previews of the next version of Lightroom. As with Lightroom 1.0 I have already been involved with Alpha testing version 2.0 for some months, but now it's your turn to kick the tyres and let Adobe know what you think Adobe Lightroom 2.0 Public Beta

15 March 2008

Adobe Lightroom 1.4 update has been released and fixes an issue that was causing significant colour matching difficulties for folk using older printers from Epson, Canon and HP with Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard). In particular, prints from Lightroom should now match those from Photoshop CS3. My Lightroom print tutorial has been amended accordingly.

13 March 2008

Some readers may have notice a slight disruption to the site content over recent days. This was due to the content being transferred to a new and hopefully faster server. Now that the transfer is complete I have managed to upload a small gallery of images from my recent photo shoot in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.

23 February 2008

Not long after publishing the Lightroom print tutorial it became apparent that many Lightroom users were still experiencing some difficulties when using custom media profiles. As I was away from home on a photographic shoot I was unaware of the problem and the workaround that was found by some users on the Adobe Lightroom User-to-User forum. Since I am now aware of both the problem and workaround I have updated the tutorial. Hopefully, it proves useful to those of you who have been having problems. Note that the information provided is ALL that I know, so please do not send me emails asking for further information or complaining because it doesn't work for you.

19 February 2008

Today is the first birthday of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and to mark the occasion Jeff Schewe asked a few friends "where were you on" 19th February 2007. It also turns out that Photoshop version 1.0 also shipped on the same day in 1990.

So where was I? Same place as Jeff and most of the other Lightroom Alpha test team:

Ships Diary - 19th February 2007

Location - Antarctic Peninsula

The early risers were treated to golden light as we passed through the Gerlache Straight. After breakfast we headed into the Lemaire channel not knowing the treats that were to follow. After having navigated our way through the channel we dropped anchor in Pleneau Bay (aka the Iceberg Graveyard).

With Rob our trusty and slightly crazy boatman Michael Reichmann, Jeff Schewe, Seth Resnick, Bill Atkinson, John Paul Caponigro, Stephen Johnson, Kevin Raber, Chris Sanderson and myself climbed aboard the lead Zodiac.

Stephen Johnson had brought his trusty Mini ColorChecker card, but Jeff Schewe wanting to be doubly sure of the correct white balance brought a ColorChecker and multiple grey cards (belt and braces <g>).

The waters in Pleneau Bay are quite shallow, so any icebergs that find their way in quickly become stuck thus presenting photographers with the perfect opportunity to capture their amazing shapes and colours.

I've uploaded a small Flash gallery of images that illustrate above text.

10 February 2008

I have just returned from a photo shoot in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. This was my second winter visit to the parks and due to the very different weather conditions I managed to capture many images that escaped me on my previous visit. Due to other commitments it will probably take me a few weeks pull together a gallery of images. In meantime, I have posted two shots (found on the site Index and Home pages).

The first entitled Hayden Valley Tree was taken in Yellowstone at the end of very long and cold snow coach journey in less than perfect photographic conditions (wind and heavy snow fall). In fact, we had almost given up on any chance of a shot when the weather eased and the subtle contours of the Hayden Valley began to appear. Immediately, eight photographers piled out of the snow coach and grabbed as many shots as the brief interlude in wind and snow would allow. The image is presented in monochrome, which I think is more in keeping with how the scene appeared.

The second image was taken at the Snake River Overlook just as the sun began to rise. The scene was made famous by Ansel Adams with his 1942 image entitled The Grand Tetons and Snake River. Alas, the curve in the river that makes Adam's shot so strong is now obscured by trees, so today's photographers try to come up with their own interpretations. In my case I didn't even try, I shot with morning light on the Tetons using a 28mm wide angle lens on my Canon EOS 5D.

20 January 2008

The various signature images and Flash Gallery from my February 2007 trip to the Southern Ocean and Antarctic Peninsula can now be accessed from a single page rather than a multiple links spread throughout the site.

29 December 2007

A software developers worst nightmare has to be shipping a product at or around the same time as a major update to one of the operating systems it supports. Well, that's what happened with Adobe when they released Lightroom 1.3 a few weeks after Apple shipped Mac OSX 10.5 (aka Leopard). Matters were made worse because Leopard required new printer drivers, which are only now becoming available. Even so, there appears to a lot of confusion as to how the new Leopard compatible drivers from Epson should be configured when using Lightroom. To help reduce the confusion I have posted a tutorial that describes how both Lightroom and the new Epson drivers can be successfully used together with Leopard.

I have also updated the Photoshop CS3 printing tutorial to include details of the print driver setting for Leopard.

18 November 2007

The Lightroom 1.3 review has been updated to include a screenshot of the new Export dialog after it's been adapted by the SDK to support the Flickr photo sharing service.

15 November 2007

Adobe has today released Lightroom 1.3 and Camera Raw 4.3. Apart from support for newly released camera from Canon, Nikon, et al this latest version of Lightroom contains quite a few bug fixes and some feature enhancements. You can find out more in my short review.

6 November 2007

I thought it was time to refresh the signature images. As with the previous set this new pair were taken during my trip to Antarctica in February of this year (it seems like a lot longer). The first image was from the series I shot when in South Georgia and the second at Neko Harbour on the Antarctic Peninsula. The previous signature images can still be seen by scrolling down to 23 August on this page.

5 November 2007

When Apple released OSX 10.5 (Leopard) back on 26 October it didn't take long before some quirky behaviour began to emerge. To be fair, any new Operating System will have teething problems, some more painful than others. Anyway, one such problem effects JPEGs that have been edited in some way in Adobe Lightroom. So what is the problem? You can read all of the gory details at LightroomNews.Com

1 November 2007

A few days ago while reviewing a series of images from my trip to the South Atlantic and Antarctica I noticed that somehow I had incorrectly identified the location of the Cloud Patterns image. The correct location is actually the Ross Glacier in Royal Bay and not the Nordenskjold Glacier in Cumberland East Bay.

30 August 2007

Anyone reading the Adobe User to User forums, especially the Photoshop forums, will probably have observed that some folk love keyboard shortcuts, others hate them and an in between group would just like to know what the fuss is all about. It's for this latter group that I have posted updated versions of Adobe Bridge CS3 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom keyboard shortcut documents. These pdf documents were first made available as part of my Lightroom 1.1 review, but can now be downloaded without having to wade through the review. The Lightroom documents also include information on search rules plus a few minor corrections. To download a pdf simply click the appropriate icon.

Bridge 2.1 (Win) Bridge 2.1 (Mac) Lightroom 1.1 (Win) Lightroom 1.1 (Mac)

23 August 2007

Two new signature images have been added. Both images were taken during my trip to Antarctica in February. The first is of a Castellated Berg at sunset shot somewhere close to the Danger Islands. Anyway, exact location is unimportant, enjoy the image. The second image is a monochrome rendering of an early morning cloud pattern that formed over the Ross Glacier in Royal Bay, South Georgia. The two previous signature images taken on South Islands can be viewed at the following links - Sunrise Royal Bay and Shipwreck Ocean Harbour.

21 August 2007

As noted in my review of Lightroom 1.1 it is possible to define customised default settings for images shot with specific cameras and/or ISO ratings. My tutorial Customising Default Settings describes how this can be achieved.

30 June 2007

My overview of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.1 appears to have been well received with many messages of thanks being received. However, a few readers have asked why I haven't mentioned Lightroom's ability use GPS metadata embedded within images, especially to link up with Google Earth Maps. OK, and even though it's not a new feature, I have put together a few words on GPS tagging and Voice Annotations (yes, you read right - voice annotations).

27 June 2007

As an pre-release tester of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 and 1.1 I've always had the opportunity to checkout new features well in advance of most users. With the 1.1 update now in the public domain I've posted an overview of Lightroom 1.1 which hopefully provides an insight into the new features and enhancements. Note that there are many screenshots, so the page may well take a while to fully load.

9 June 2007 27 June 2007 to reflect new menu options in Lightroom 1.1

With all the buzz around about the up coming release of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom V1.1 we could be forgiven for ignoring some of the issues many users face with V1.0. One such issue recently raised its head again on the Adobe Lightroom User to User forum and to my surprise none of the regular forum users seemed up to providing an answer. So, I've written a short tutorial called Locating Missing Files and Folders.

15 May 2007

Swedish readers will pleased to note that Lars Ekdahl has completed his Swedish language translation of my Photoshop CS3 Colour Management essay.

7 May 2007

Photoshop CS3 has many new and advanced features that will benefit photographers of all skill levels. However, these features aren't a lot of good if your prints don't match the screen or on opening a document or an alert pops up to tell you that there's a profile mismatch or worse. Not to worry, I have updated my Colour Management essay and Printing tutorials to reflect the changes/improvements made in CS3.

20 March 2007

Due to very high bandwidth demand for the Antarctica and Southern Ocean images it has been necessary to relocate the gallery to a separate server. Hopefully, the new location will be temporary and doesn't present too much inconvenience. Since the gallery is in the form of a Flash Gallery (created in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom) I have little ability to include hyperlinks back to this site, therefore to return to the main site just press the browser back button.

Speaking of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom I'm going to take the liberty of promoting a series of video tutorials my colleague Michael Reichmann of Luminous Landscape. In this series of 8 videos (6 released to date), which runs for something excess of 4 hours, Michael and co-presenter Jeff Schewe cover just about every aspect of Lightroom. Viewers will learn a lot and may even have a few laughs for free as Michael and Jeff discuss some of their more humorous moments and experiences during the alpha and beta cycle. More information can be found at Luminous Landscape Please note that I have no commercial interest in the Lightroom tutorials, but that doesn't stop me wishing I had <g> - they are excellent in terms of presentation and at $14.95 provide superb value for money.

27 February 2007

I've just returned from a photo shoot in the Southern Ocean and Antarctica with the best part of 7000 images to sort, edit, etc through. Rather than wait for this exercise to be completed and since the site hasn't been updated in a couple of months I have put together a quick and dirty Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Flash Gallery that contains a small sample of the type of subject matter captured. Places visited included the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, South Orkney and the Antarctic Peninsula.

15 November 2006

The tutorial that demonstrated how to Create a Unitary Library & Manage Off-line Images has been updated to reflect the changes in Lightroom Beta 4.x

11 November 2006

The home and index pages have been updated to include images from my trip to Grand Teton and Yellowstone last February.

25 September 2006

Every two years the movers and shakers of the photographic world make their way to Cologne in Germany for Photokina. Traditionally this is the event where the industry announces new and improved products and this year will no doubt follow tradition. So, given its importance in the photographic calendar Adobe Systems Incorporated have decided to use it as the platform from which to announce availability of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Beta 4 (edit: notice the name change). As a beta tester I've been privileged to be using Beta 4 for a couple of months now and have put together a short review, which is available from here.

22 August 2006

The Lightroom-Photoshop-Lightroom "round-trip" appears to be causing some users a few headaches on the colour management front, therefore I've provided a short tutorial explaining how Photoshop Colour Settings should be configured so as to eliminate the Profile Mismatch dialog that appears to be annoying so many users..

21 July 2006

I've posted a few additional thoughts, comments and screenshots to the Lightroom for Windows review.

18 July 2006

The wait is finally over for Windows user can now get to "play" with Adobe Lightroom - read more about it here

I've also taken the opportunity to update the Beta 3 review for Mac to include a method for creating pseudo-versions or renditions using the History panel.

17 July 2006

With the introduction of Beta 3 Adobe Lightroom appears to be gaining the attention of more digital photographers than earlier betas. Even so many important features are still not available, which for some makes the task of using the application a lot less attractive than it should be. The two features most requested relate offline/online image storage plus synchronising the image library across multiple computers. A short tutorial called Creating a Unitary Library & Managing Off-line Images is now available.

28 June 2006

Apple have just released Mac OSX 10.4.7 update. If you're using Photoshop 9.01 and experiencing the printing problems discussed in the article I posted on 27 May then I suggest that you download a copy.

25 June 2006

Nothing special in this update, just a few minor tweaks to the Home page and removal of old material. Also, keep an eye out for an update to the Photoshop CS2 Colour Management essay as I'll shortly be adding some guidance on saving images for the web.

13 June 2006

Adobe has just announced availability of Lightroom Public Beta 3. Having been privileged to use this version in various guises over this past few months I'm able to give readers of this site a fairly comprehensive summary of the new and enhanced feature set.

6 May 2006

An updated version of the Eye-One Display 2 review has been uploaded. This review reflect my thoughts on the new features, which were added as part of the version 3.6 upgrade to Eye-One Match.

26 March 2006

Imagine a scenario where you have just inserted keywords and descriptions into hundreds of images using Adobe Bridge. Having done so you need a quick way of finding any that may have been missed, but then you discover that the Bridge Find cannot be used to locate images with empty IPTC fields. No problem, where there's a will there's a way. I have updated the Bridge & Camera Raw - Tips and Tricks tutorial to include a description of how to find such images.

13 March 2006

It's just over a month since I posted the first images from my trip to Yellowstone National Park. So, I thought it time to refresh the site entry pages with new images. These two new images were captured fairly early in the morning, when the sun was still quite low in the sky and temperatures were well below freezing.

19 February 2006

A short tutorial describing a method by which you can create Manual Collections in Adobe Bridge has been uploaded. This tutorial aims to address one of the areas that many users feel Bridge falls short on (i.e. the ability to create virtual copies of their images).

12 February 2006

In late January through early February 2006 I was privileged to participate in a photographic expedition to the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks in the USA. A small selection of images from the trip can be found here.

8 February 2006

It's a month now since Adobe released the public beta of Lightroom. During the intervening period I had the opportunity to put it through its paces under field conditions on a 12" Apple PowerBook with 1.25GB of ram. As mentioned late last month I was going on a photo shoot to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in USA. Anyway, Lightroom performed beyond expectations for a beta. As a taster I've posted two images from the shoot to the Index and and Home pages.

18 January 2006

I'll be heading off to the USA on a photo shoot shortly and won't be returning until 5 February, so there won't be any new material until I return. In the meantime I've created a new tutorial called Bridge & Camera Raw - Tips and Tricks. This tutorial draws in material from earlier tutorials but also includes a new tip on how to create Collections that can used to easily display only images that match specific criteria (eg. sRGB, portrait format, etc).

9 January 2006

I received an enquiring email last Friday from a reader. So what's the buzz on this new Lightroom application from Adobe, it's all over the Mac rumour sites". Needless to say I didn't respond ;-) OK, so it's now just after midnight on 9th January 2006 and the NDAs are lifted. So, here's the Buzzzzzzzzz on Adobe Lightroom!