Monthly Archives: June 2015

Off to the United States

geyserI’m off tomorrow for the United States on a 24 day photo tour. The tour takes in two major locations and was arranged by Roger Reynolds at Photoventures. For the first part of the tour we plan to explore a wide variety of locations around the greater Yellowstone area. Obviously, we’ll take in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, but a good chunk of our time will be spent photographing the flora and fauna found in the Beartooth Mountains. This is a really amazing location in South Central Montana and Northwest Wyoming. The mountains and forests around them are part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. I made a similar trip back in the late spring of 2012 and got some really nice photos (see the gallery here).  In case you’re wondering why you haven’t seen this gallery before; it’s because I didn’t publish it until very recently. Many of the photos were posted as part of my daily Blog for the trip, but I must have forgotten to upload the final gallery. I’ve posted a couple here as reminders.

IL_120624_03978_Edit

Skeleton Trees at Tangled Creek

We were actually quite lucky on that trip because our local wildlife guide had located a Great Grey Owl’s nest deep in one of the forests on the edge of the Beartooth.

IL_120628_07045_Edit

Great Grey Owlet, Beartooth Mountains

Hopefully, we’ll be lucky again this time. If not then I suspect the the second part of this tour will make up for any disappointments in so far as it takes us over to Alaska. Yep, Alaska! There we’ll be spending few days at Brook’s Lodge in Katmai National Park photographing the bears as they feed on the salmon making their way up the Brooks River.

Brooks-Camp-map

Map of Brooks Lodge Area, Katmai National Park

We’ll also spend the remainder of our time photographing around Homer, Eagle River, and the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

All being well, I’ll post a few photos during the trip. Something tells me that I will have used the Canon EOS 7D MkII and EF 100-400m MkII combination for a high proportion of them.

Note: I don’t allow comments on Blog pages, but am more than happy to receive your thoughts on the photos and/or the tutorials etc. Just send an email to ilyons@msn.com

June updates to Adobe CC Photography

lr-cc-logo Lightroom CC 2015.1 and Lightroom 6.1 are now available on Adobe.com. Adobe has stated that the goal of this release is to provide additional camera raw support, lens profile support and address bugs that were introduced in previous releases of Lightroom. Lightroom mobile for iOS v1.5 is also now available. In addition, Creative Cloud customers receive a bonus in the form of two new features.

Lightroom CC on the desktop

Dehaze
Photographers of every skill level will be aware that many outdoor scenes have some amount of haze due to atmospheric conditions. Dehaze is a new feature introduced in Lightroom CC 2015.1 for removing/adding haze and fog to/from your photos. You can control how much haze to remove by adjusting a new slider in the Effects panel in the Dehaze section. This feature can also be used in the other direction to increase the amount of haze.

dehaze

Lightroom CC 2015.1 Effects Panel

Adobe have recommended  a workflow for getting the best results from this new too – Adjust the white balance of the image before applying the Dehaze control. You may also find that the saturation levels in some images needs to be reduced slightly relative to what would be normal had Dehaze not been applied. Below you’ll see a Before/After example of an image where the Dehaze control has been used to reduce the atmospheric haze in the distant mountains. This example also required that I applied a slightly smaller amount of saturation/vibrance than what I’d normally apply.

dehaze-example-1

Before / After Example of Dehaze in Use

Local White and Black Adjustment Sliders

The second new feature and potentially more useful than Dehaze are a pair of sliders within each of the 3 local adjustment tools: Gradient Filter, Radial Filter and Local adjustment brush. These sliders are useful for fine­tuning tonality near the brightest and darkest parts of the picture. For instance, they can be used to increase the contrast of highlights.

blacks-and-whites

Lightroom CC 2015.1 Graduated Filter Panel

As with Dehaze above Adobe have recommended a workflow when using the Blacks and Whites sliders – Make your global adjustments first and then use the local adjustments to fine tune. Use the clip warning indicators in the Histogram to help avoid clipping highlights and shadows.

Again, note that the features described above are only available in Lightroom CC 2015

Lightroom mobile on iOS:

Lightroom mobile has also been updated as part of the June release. Areas updated include:

Video support: You can now import, and sync your iPhone and iPad created videos from Lightroom on iOS to the web and desktop. More adjustment tools

Vignettes: Adjust the Color channel and B&W mix Tone Curve

New Camera Support

Fujifilm X­T10 Nikon 1 J5
Nikon D810A Panasonic DMC­G7 Pentax K­S2 Pentax K3 II (*)

* Preliminary support. The multi­shot Pixel Shift Resolution and HDR features are still under investigation.

For a full list of newly supported lenses and bug fixes refer to the Lightroom Journal Blog on Adobe Blogs

 Disclosure: As an Adobe Community Professional I receive a free subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud.

Victoria Bampton releases Adobe Lightroom CC / 6 – The Missing FAQ

lr6faq-sq300-150x150Victoria Bampton (aka The Lightroom Queen) recently dropped me a note to say that the 6th edition of her Lightroom – The  Missing FAQ book is now available.

As a long established member of the Lightroom Pre-release Group Victoria is well placed to get the inside track on the new features found within Lightroom CC/6. In this latest edition of her well regarded Missing FAQ series of books Victoria again shares this information and knowledge in an easy to read format. Anyone serious about getting the best from Lightroom CC/6 shouldn’t think twice about getting a copy.

So, what’s new in the Lightroom CC/6 book?

Victoria writes – When you have a Lightroom question, where do you look? Do you spend hours searching the web? From now on, you look right here.

About the Book

As the name suggests, Adobe Lightroom CC/6 – The Missing FAQ is primarily designed as a conversational FAQ-style reference book, giving you the detailed information you need to make informed choices, whether you’ve been using Lightroom for a few months or a few years. No more pressing buttons without understanding the repercussions!

Unlike most other Lightroom books, this isn’t just the theory of how Lightroom’s supposed to work, but also the workarounds and solutions for the times when it doesn’t behave the way you’d expect.

Who’s the book written for?

For less experienced users, the Fast Track weaves its way through the book, with short tutorials that guide you through a simple workflow, allowing you to gain confidence before diving into the more advanced questions. To get an idea of the style, download my free Quick Start eBook.

The book then switches to a conversational question & answer format, going into greater detail for intermediate and advanced users. There are questions ranging from simple ones like how to import photos, to much more in-depth details about how the previews are used and how to create your own camera profiles. Check the Table of Contents tab to see the full list of questions covered in this release.

What’s new?

The LR CC/6 version is a major rewrite that’s taken 2 years to complete, and I’m confident it’s my best yet. The information is now easier for less experienced users to understand, and easier to find using the comprehensive new index. If you’ve read previous versions, don’t worry, all of the advanced information is still there and has been expanded too.  The book’s also available in color print for the first time. To learn more about the rewrite, check the “A Major Rewrite” tab on this page.

Is it worth reading?

For many years, the Adobe Lightroom – The Missing FAQ books have been among the most popular Lightroom books available. They have almost all 5 star reviews on both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Some of my favorites from the Lightroom 5 book are copied on the Reviews tab. Many of the Articles on this website are taken directly from the book, if you’d like to read some excerpts.

When you have a Lightroom question, where do you look? Do you spend hours searching the web? From now on, you look right here.

About the Book

As the name suggests, Adobe Lightroom CC/6 – The Missing FAQ is primarily designed as a conversational FAQ-style reference book, giving you the detailed information you need to make informed choices, whether you’ve been using Lightroom for a few months or a few years. No more pressing buttons without understanding the repercussions!

Unlike most other Lightroom books, this isn’t just the theory of how Lightroom’s supposed to work, but also the workarounds and solutions for the times when it doesn’t behave the way you’d expect.

Who’s the book written for?

For less experienced users, the Fast Track weaves its way through the book, with short tutorials that guide you through a simple workflow, allowing you to gain confidence before diving into the more advanced questions. To get an idea of the style, download my free Quick Start eBook.

The book then switches to a conversational question & answer format, going into greater detail for intermediate and advanced users. There are questions ranging from simple ones like how to import photos, to much more in-depth details about how the previews are used and how to create your own camera profiles. Check the Table of Contents tab to see the full list of questions covered in this release.

What’s new?

The LR CC/6 version is a major rewrite that’s taken 2 years to complete, and I’m confident it’s my best yet. The information is now easier for less experienced users to understand, and easier to find using the comprehensive new index. If you’ve read previous versions, don’t worry, all of the advanced information is still there and has been expanded too.  The book’s also available in color print for the first time. To learn more about the rewrite, check the “A Major Rewrite” tab on this page.

Is it worth reading?

For many years, the Adobe Lightroom – The Missing FAQ books have been among the most popular Lightroom books available. They have almost all 5 star reviews on both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Some of my favorites from the Lightroom 5 book are copied on the Reviews tab. Many of the Articles on this website are taken directly from the book, if you’d like to read some excerpts.