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Black Sand Basin, Yellowstone National
Park
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Home Page
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8
August 2010
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Two updates in as many days for me has to be a record, but
sometimes that's how things fall. Today, I'm posting a short review
of
Alien Skin's Exposure 3, which has recently updated to
provide much tighter integration with Adobe Lightroom.
However, rather than publish it using this sites default page layout
I've decided to use a WordPress blog template.
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Speaking of WordPress. This update is the last that will appear
on this particular page format. From now on What's New will be
posted using a WordPress blog template. In fact, I've already copied
across all of this years entries plus some addition info to the new
template. Using a blog page will allow me to provide more frequent
updates along with any news, reviews and tips that I think may be of
interest to the sites readers. Unfortunately, I haven't found a
template that allows me maintain the current header, but I'll keep
looking. In the meantime, you can bookmark
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/blog/ for direct access to
the new What's New page. If you spot anything that isn't
working as expected then please send an email to ilyons@msn.com
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7
August 2010
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X-rite Photo recently updated their
ColorChecker Passport plug-in for compatibility with Adobe
Lightroom 3. If you feel that the
camera calibration profiles supplied by Adobe with Lightroom
and Camera Raw aren’t quite measuring up to your requirements
then it might be worthwhile in investing in the ColorChecker
Passport. Everything you need to create your own camera profiles is
supplied with the kit.
The ColorChecker chart is built into a
passport sized hard plastic case for protection, and should fit
neatly into pretty much any camera bag or pocket. In addition, and as
can be seen from the screenshots the standard ColorChecker
target is complimented with a Creative Enhancement and Grey
Balance targets. The Creative Enhancement target includes
off-white patches designed to aid the process of warming or cooling
images.
I’ve been using the ColorChecker Passport since it
was first released and have been very pleased with the results. In
particular, I find the Creative Enhancement target to be a very
useful aid with photographs that require a small amount of warming or
cooling.
The ColorChecker Passport is highly recommend, especially if you
find yourself photographing variable light conditions or just want to
have camera calibration profiles that reflect the characteristics of
your specific camera.
Visit my
colleague
Michael Reichmann's over at Luminous Landscape for a
comprehensive review of the ColorChecker Passport and have a look at
Seth Resnicks's video demonstration.
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14 July 2010
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George Jardine formally the Adobe
Lightroom evangelist and well known for his series of
Lightroom
Podcasts has just released a series of video tutorials for
Lightroom 3. The series comprises
15 high video
tutorials amounting to 4.5 hours of in depth discussion
focused mainly on the Lightroom 3 Library module. While the videos
are of very high quality, they are intended to be viewed on-line, so
make sure your internet service provides an adequate bandwidth
allowance.
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20 June 2010
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Two updates today - Lars Ekdahl has been hard at work translating
my Lightroom 3 review into
Swedish, and I've uploaded a zip file containing lens
profiles for the Canon
EF100-400mm f4.5-5.6 IS USM, the EF70-200mm f2.8 IS USM,
and the EF400mm f5.6 USM. More details can be found in my Lightroom 3
review.
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8 June 2010
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2 June 2010
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No sooner had I posted the Yellowstone Gallery than I received
emails asking why I had chosen to use an Adobe Flash Gallery rather
than HTML. Truth is, I didn't think it was going to be an issue,
after all Flash galleries are widely used across the web and tend to
be a lot more feature rich than HTML. Unfortunately, they fall foul
of Apple's policy of not supporting Flash on the iPhone or iPad
devices, hence the emails I mentioned above. Should this really
matter to site like this? Probably not, but I'd rather anyone who
wants to view the images is able to do so. So, I've changed the
gallery over to a Lightroom HTML gallery.
Yellowstone in Winter -
2010
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23 May 2010
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In late January through early February I was fortunate to visit
the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. This was my third
winter visit to the parks, and was again arranged by Roger Reynolds
of Photo
Ventures. Unlike my previous visits there was significantly less
snow around and temperatures much higher than I've come to expect. In
some respects, especially for wildlife photography, this played to
our advantage. many of the hot springs were easier to access and the
wildlife more abundant. The one downside of the higher temperatures
was the lack of earlier morning frosts. The series of images making
up the gallery is presented using Adobe Flash and was created in
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.
Yellowstone in Winter -
2010 (see 2 June above for update on gallery type).
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27 April 2010
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Many Computer Darkroom readers will have read my preview for
Lightroom 3 beta 2,
and some may well already be using it. Even though it's a big step
forward from Lightroom 2 it's a tad shy of headline features. That is
until today, Adobe broke the news that the shipping version (sorry no
info on when that will be) will also include Lens Correction technology
based on that included in Photoshop CS5. A demonstration video is
available on the
Lightroom Journal.
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5 April 2010
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22 March 2010
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Adobe today released an update to its
Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta software. This beta builds on the success
of the first Lightroom 3 beta, which was downloaded by more than
350,000 photographers. Beta 2 incorporates feedback from the first
iteration of the beta while offering users several new features, many
minor tweaks and enhancements, along with greatly improved
performance throughout the application. My feature review is now
on-line.
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25 February 2010
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14 February 2010
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I've just returned from my third winter photo shoot in
Yellowstone National Park. While weather conditions were somewhat
less extreme than during my past visits the opportunities for
photography were still plentiful. To mark my return I have updated
the site index and
home pages to
include two of my favourite images. I'm particularly pleased with the
image of the Bobcat, which I'm told is rarely seen. Additional images
will be uploaded over the coming weeks.
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18 January 2010
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Anyone who has scrolled to the bottom of this sites Home page
will probably have noticed the Adobe
Community Expert logo. The use of this logo is confined to
those who are members of Adobe's "Expert" program, and as one of this
select group it's been an honour to host the logo on this site.
Unfortunately, the name was often abbreviated to "ACE", which as
anyone who follows things Adobe is actually the term used to denote
an Adobe Certified Expert.
So, to avoid confusion Adobe have re-branded the "Expert" program as
Adobe Community Professionals
and launched a new logo. I have updated Home page to show the new
logo.
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2 January 2010
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Well we're into a new year and it's almost time for me to get
down to some serious winter photography again. In a few weeks I'll be
heading back over to
Yellowstone and Grand
Teton National Parks. Hopefully, the weather and lighting are
good for Photography.
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Now to something only slightly different. Over the years many
visitors to the site have suggested that a presence on one of the
photo sharing web sites would be a good way to let them comment on
the images shown here on Computer Darkroom. So, when
Adobe
Lightroom 3 beta was released I uploaded a few hundred images
to a Flickr account that I've had for more years than I care
to recall. Anyway, now that I know it works I can share it with a
wider audience. To date, there are four galleries. They can be found
at
IanLyons Flickr Photostream I hope you enjoy viewing the
images as much as I did taking them ;-)
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31 October 2009
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Since publishing my preview of Lightroom 3 beta I've received
quite a few emails asking when I would be publishing an updated
Keyboard shortcut list. Since we're dealing with a fairly early beta
it wasn't something that I'd planned, but given the interest I
decided to upload something. At present I've only had time to draw up
the Mac version, but will hopefully post the Windows version shortly.
Lightroom 3
beta Keyboard Shortcuts
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22 October 2009
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2 September 2009
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It won't belong until summer is at an end and the dark months
begin. For many, autumn and winter are the time to put the camera
away, but for me they are the months when I put the camera to
greatest use. So, to get me in the mood I decided to refresh the
Index,
Home and
What's New
pages with some images from my 2008 shoot in
Yellowstone and Grand
Teton National Parks.
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28 August 2009
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Apple released OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard today and as
usual with a new operating system there is a fair amount of confusion
surrounding printer color management. Fortunately, most Epson
printers that were already compatible with OS X 10.5 will function
perfectly OK with the new operating system. Nevertheless, I've added
a note to the Adobe Lightroom
Print tutorial giving some information on how to ensure
compatibility.
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18 August 2009
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I have rewritten my tutorial on
Customising Camera
Defaults in Lightroom 2.x The use of Custom Defaults reduces
the need for applying Develop presets during photo import, but
doesn't appear to be as widely used as it should be. Hopefully, the
examples shown in the tutorial will encourage greater use of this
feature.
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23 June 2009
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Adobe have released
Lightroom 2.4 and Camera Raw 5.4. The new releases don't
provide any new features, but do support even more cameras than
before.
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Luminous Landscape has released a new video tutorial entitled
Where The #%*! Are My Pictures?. In this tutorial Michael
Reichmann and Seth Resnick discuss he strategies & techniques of file
organization following a typical shoot. They use Adobe's Lightroom 2
but the strategies are applicable to any Digital Asset Management
program. As Michael says, "It's the Concepts not the Keystrokes."
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I've uploaded some additional images to the photo gallery from my
trip to
Antarctica earlier this year and refreshed the signature
images.
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19 April 2009
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I've updated my Lightroom printing tutorial for Mac OS X users to
reflect the Print modules changes introduced with Lightroom 2. The
tutorial can be found here.
I would like to post a similar tutorial for Windows users, but
the wide variation in drivers means the task is likely to help only a
small subset of users. Matters are made worse in that Vista is
different from XP.
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12 April 2009
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I'm sure that it won't have gone without notice that it's been a
few years since I published any material relating to scanning film.
Nevertheless, the absence of such material doesn't mean that I don't
scan film any longer, I do, but not in the quantities that I once
did. It's also fair to say that when I do scan it will be from film
that I shot a few years back or even longer. So why am still scanning
film? This linked essay that I wrote last year for LaserSoft
Imaging and Epson answers the question. It's a 3.4MB Adobe Acrobat
file that discusses some of the benefits of using a high-end flatbed
scanner such as the Epson Perfection V750 Photo and LaserSoft
SilverFast Ai Studio and HDR Studio.
Digitize your
analogue images
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24 March 2009
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Photoshop CS4 has been around for a few months and I was
hoping that the initial flurry of requests for me to update my
color management essay would have subsided. In truth, the changes
introduced with CS4 are few and far between, but given that the requests
keep coming in I've finally bowed to pressure and uploaded a version
of the essay for CS4. The new essay on Photoshop CS4 Color
Management can be found here.
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22 March 2009
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I've uploaded a new tutorial that describes the Adobe Lightroom
Export as Catalog
feature. This feature is useful for many situations, but many users
still don't realise what they are. Hopefully, this new tutorial will
prove useful.
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11 March 2009
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18 February 2009
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29 January 2009
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Well, I'm back from Antarctica and have lots of interesting shots
to show. Over the next few weeks I hope to post a gallery showing
images from locations ranging from the South Shetland Islands to
Marguerite Bay. In the
meantime, I've uploaded a small
sample gallery,
which I hope you have time to view.
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Also, while I was away Adobe posted Release Candidate versions of
Lightroom 2.3 and
Adobe Camera Raw 5.3. While neither includes any new features
they do include support for the Nikon D3X and a number of important
fixes including for sRaw images from the Canon 5DII and a pretty
nasty memory leak.
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5 January 2009
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I'll be off to Antarctica tomorrow, so new material will be in
short supply until my return. In the meantime, I've uploaded some new
images to the gallery from my previous trip to the
Falkland Islands,
South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. Hopefully, the
weather in 2009 is as kind and photographic opportunities are as in
abundance as they were in 2007. I've also revised an earlier Adobe
Lightroom tutorial to reflect the changes introduced in Lightroom
2. This updated tutorial entitled - Find moved or missing folders
can be found here.
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29 December 2008
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Well, another year is drawing to a close and it's been a busy one
at that. For me it began with my second winter photo shoot to the
Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. From Adobe, we had new
versions of Photoshop and Lightroom, plus the new Camera Raw camera
profiles and profile editor. I was privileged to be a member of the
pre-release group for each, hopefully my feedback to the engineers
was helpful. Last but not least, as a treat to myself I purchased a
new
Canon EOS 5D MK2 digital camera. No doubt it will see plenty
of action on my next big photo shoot - Antarctica here I come ;-)
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14 December 2008
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Adobe have just announced that Lightroom 2.2 will be released on
16 December. In addition to some improvements to adjustment brush
performance this update will include support for the recently
released Canon EOS 5D Mark II, the Canon PowerShot G10 and Panasonic
DMC-LX3.
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I have updated the Home
and Index page images.
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11 October 2008
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28 September 2008
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Irrespective of whether you love them or loathe them keyboard
shortcuts and modifiers have an important role to play in the
Lightroom workflow. Unfortunately, some folk are less than satisfied
with some of the functionality that Adobe have provided and are
continually looking ways to remove some of the restrictions placed
upon them. In this
short tutorial I will share some of the tips and tricks that
I use to get round the Lightroom keyboard shortcut limitations.
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19 September 2008
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Adobe has just posted a Public Beta (otherwise known as Release
Candidate 1) for Lightroom 2.1 and Camera Raw 4.6. Both provide
support for newly released cameras from Fuji and Nikon. Adobe have
also managed to included preliminary (not fully tested) support for:
Canon Rebel XS, Canon 50D, Olympus SP-565 UZ, Sony A900 and Sigma DP1
(note Sigma DP1 support is not finalized due to an unresolved white
balance bug that will require additional testing). Lightroom
also includes a fairly lengthy list of bug fixes, which should
address most of the performance issues that have impacted on some
users of Lightroom 2.0. A download version along with more
information on Lightroom 2.1 bug fixes can be found
here. Likewise, the downloads and more information on Camera
Raw 4.6 can be found
here.
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2 August 2008
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29 July 2008
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So, it's finally here, the release version Lightroom 2.0 is now
available from Adobe. To coincide with it's release I have published
a Feature Review
that summarises the main feature added since the public beta. I have
also published a tutorial entitled
Managing your CMYK Photos
that explains how to do something that officially can't be done in
Lightroom i.e. load CMYK files into your Lightroom catalog.
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2 April 2008
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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
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15 March 2008
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Adobe Lightroom 1.4 update has been released and fixes an issue
that was causing significant color matching difficulties for folk
using older printers from Epson, Canon and HP with Mac OS X 10.5
(Leopard). In particular, prints from Lightroom should now match
those from Photoshop CS3. My
Lightroom print tutorial
has been amended accordingly.
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13 March 2008
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23 February 2008
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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.
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19 February 2008
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 but 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 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 colors.
I've uploaded a small
Flash gallery of images that illustrate above text.
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10 February 2008
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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.
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20 January 2008
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