O'Reilly Digital Media

This is now part three in a series of Lightroom 1.3 vs. Capture NX 1.3 comparisons, some of you are probably getting tired of these posts, but if you either have or are thinking about buying one of the new Nikon D300 digital SLRs, you might find this interesting.

If you remember with the Nikon D80 NEF file comparisons, the default images out of the two applications was actually fairly similar but the default Nikon Capture output was a bit brighter and some of the colors were more realistic and vibrant.

The main advantage that Nikon Capture NX 1.3 has when it comes to editing the image, is the U-Point technology, which allows you to edit individual areas of the image (like for instance the sky) and punch it up (or even de-saturate it entirely to gray scale) without disturbing the rest of the image.

The main advantage that Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.3 has is a much better user interface and workflow, especially when dealing with larger numbers of images, but also when trying to squeeze the most out of a single image.

Both applications allow you to export to Photoshop CS 3, so more advanced editing is not an issue, but for basic color and vibrance control a lot of Nikon photographers feel that (especially when they are confronted with a particularly difficult image), they can squeeze more image quality out of Nikon Capture than any other application.

Warning: I have not tested the Nikon D300, or the NEF files it produces, in depth yet, so this is a very early analysis and my findings and results may change dramatically as I start getting used to the camera and the image files that it produces.

Nikon D300 - Capture NX 1.3 - default image, resized, and saved to JPEG

My initial impression from processing the Nikon D300 NEF files in Capture NX 1.3 was that the files were somewhat soft and pastel like. Not really unpleasant but also not what I was expecting.

Nikon D300 - Lightroom 1.3 - default image, resized, and exported to JPEG

Imagine my surprise, to see more sharpness, vibrance and contrast in the Lightroom 1.3 default image file. It is actually kind of hard to see in these small images but in the application widows and at larger size, there is a noticeable difference. For the Mac users with the latest version of Safari, the difference will be pretty dramatic, even in these small images.

Conclusion: Well I don’t really have a conclusion yet, but am reminded why I continue to use a number of different editing applications to get the results that I am after.

In teaching various workshops, one of the key points I try to get across to students is to move around when determining the compostion. Everytime I remind them, I also remind myself.

It’s natural to shoot from a “comfort zone”, ie certain lens to subject distances, often from standing eye-level, same fast shutter speed, in our favorite sweater, etc. As a starting point this is fine, but I find that some of my best work has come from wandering far from this first exposure and looking at things through my camera in new ways.

The Composition Dance

I always remind myself, just a slight adjustment or small gesture can vault a picture from ordinary to extraordinary. Bend the knees and change the perspective, changing the juxtoposition of foreground subjects with the horizon.

Take chances-feel your way, shoot on impulse and I don’t edit in the field too much by looking at the digital preview (just some quick checks of the histogram)—it takes me out of the moment and disrupts my concentration. This is crucial when there is a lot going on and things are out of your control. By concentrating and shooting lots I hope to have to have some tough choices when editing back home in Aperture, as with this series in a Lesotho Church.

When there is a lot going on, I move around and shoot a lot, on impulse.

I want to have a lot to choose from to make some tough choices when determining my final frame in Aperture.

I don’t try and capture everything, but instead, identify visually rich opportunities with potential and concentrate on them. An inch wide, a mile deep. In the said workshops, I find many students are overwhelmed with the world around them. For example, at a parade with so much going on, if you try and shoot everything you might end up dissapointed. By focusing on the people and the floats that might make the best pictures, and shoot more of those subjects—the results will be better.

Other Tips

Keep camera perpendicular when possible to minimize distortion particularly with wide angle lenses. For those relatively new to photography, I recommend keeping zoom lenses at the extremes, the widest or longest setting, and move around with your eye to the viewfinder while composing the photo. Don’t underestimate the little things and pay attention to the entire frame.

Lastly, listen to your intuition. If you have a feeling you haven’t nailed the picture, you probably haven’t. So stay a little longer, work it a little harder—you will be rewarded.

Lightroom’s keywording infrastructure is pretty straightforward: by applying any number of keywords to your photos, you are essentially creating a catalog that can be searched through to retrieve photos that match your desired criteria. I have been pretty diligent about cataloguing the subject and whereabouts of my photos.

Having recently started my own photo blog (check it out!), I wanted to keep track of which photos I had posted within Lightrooom. Sure, I could always go ahead and check the archives of my site if, at some point in the future, I’m unsure whether or not I’ve posted a particular photo. But that process requires a few extra steps; I want the information to always be at my fingertips when flipping through my catalog. It turns out that Lightroom’s keywords are perfect for this situation, too: by simply creating an appropriately named keyword (“RMR”, in my case) and applying it to the photos I can keep track of which photos have been posted to my blog.

After seeing the value in this process, I took things one step further and created a keyword set named “Exported” to allow me to quickly flag—and retrieve—photos that I’ve sent to be published (both online and in print). Sure, I canfind this information elsewhere, but I had yet to consolidate it in one place until now.

Viva Lightroom!

After my last blog, several people asked for information about using the Tint Wheels. The Tint Wheels can be very helpful to either introduce or remove color casts. They differ from the White Balance tools in that the latter alter the color cast of the entire image whereas the Tint Wheels affect specific parts of the tonal range. There’s a wheel for the shadows, the midtones and the highlights.

Most of the time I use the Color Balance sliders and/or eyedropper to adjust the color cast in my images. However there are times when that isn’t enough, particularly if I’ve shot under mixed lighting conditions. That’s when the Tint Wheels can be particularly helpful. Using the Tint Wheels I can adjust the warmth - or coolness - of the midtones independently from the shadows or highlights. Sometimes whites become too warm when there’s incandescent lighting and so you can decrease the yellow tint in the whites.

Entering in metadata about your photographs is one of the more tedious jobs in the digital darkroom. Most of the time, I consider it to be a necessary, but unexciting step. Sometimes, when I’m feeling less charitable, I find it to be a pain in the arse. But, one of the big advantages of the digital darkroom is being able to find images in your library with a quick search, so it’s always valuable to do.

While performing this chore in Lightroom, I’ve found that I spend most of time focused on one of two views of the Metadata panel. The first of these is the Location view, which emphasizes setting up the places where you’ve taken your photographs. I find this view is most useful when I’m on road trips and care most about getting the right location set for my photos.

The second Metadata panel view I use is the Quick Describe. This is most useful to me for static events where I’m setting the location data at import time.

The trick is to find which one of the Metadata views works best for applying the metadata that you work with most often. You could, of course, always show the “All” view, but unless you’re on a large screen monitor, that results in quite a bit of scrolling, which is a drag.

One of the things I’d like to see in a future version of Lightroom is the ability to customize the view settings within the application. It would make me happy if I could take half of each of these views and smoosh them together. Apparently, there is an online tool for creating Metadata panel view sets, but it’s advertised as being for Lightroom 1.1 and we’re now up to Lightroom 1.3. Maybe I’ll play with it soon and see how it works. But for now, I’ll merrily keep toggling between the two views as needed for the particular task at hand.

I follow a simple, straightforward and consistent workflow. And it goes like this: after selecting my best shots and after applying enhancements using Aperture, I bring them one by one to Adobe Photoshop CS3 for localized editing, and then save the final edited images back into Aperture. In submitting the photos, I export from the final edited PSD images from Aperture into a designated folder before uploading to an FTP server. (Of course, for a more streamlined workflow, I can just submit and upload the photos direct to an FTP server with the free ApetureToFTP Pro 1.0.1.)

But before sending the photos out, I often want to check and review the information about the images. To do this, I pressed Control + Click (or Right Click) on the exported image, and scrolled down to Get Info. The Information Pane pops up, and as expected, I see there all the embedded information.

This is exactly what I did with last week’s photo assignment, a casual portrait session with Maniya Barredo. Maniya Barredo was prima ballerina for the Atlanta Ballet, and she is now the artistic director of the Metropolitan Ballet Theatre in Georgia.

What surprised me, which I may have previously overlooked, is the fact that the Information Pane now seems to show a whole lot more data than it used to. And since these information are automatically embedded in the photographs, these are the kind of information that you may or you may not want to share when you send out the digital image files via email or FTP, or when saving them to a CD or DVD for distribution.

What information can be “read”? For starters, in the topmost section labeled General, what is displayed includes: kind of image file, actual size of the image, where it is located, when it was created and when it was modified. And then, it also includes the image label and color, the name and extension, what software to use to open it, a preview of the image, and settings for sharing and permissions.

On top of this, there are other (and even more) information listed. The entire metadata of the digital image file shows up. Listed in the More Info section are: pixel dimension, the make of the capture device, the device model, color space, profile name, focal length, alpha channel, red eye, fnumber, exposure time, and even the date when the image was last opened. And because the image has been imported to Aperture, and then exported out of Aperture, additional IPTC data that you’ve encoded upon import are listed as well. This includes the headline title, instructions, city, state or province, country, and perhaps most importantly, keywords — each and everyone of them.

And as if this is not enough (and this is probably a very useful thing), there are aspects in this Information Pane that you can change or update on the fly.

For example, you can change the file name and hide its extension. You can choose and designate a different application as the default when opening the image. And, you can set sharing and permissions.

But wait, there’s more. Other than these settings and metadata adjustments, perhaps the most practical thing you can do is to add comments to the blank editable “Spotlight Comments” area. You can write any comment you want in the allotted space. But in the interest of assisting the Mac’s internal search engine, it may be most practical and logical to just type in keywords each separated by a comma.

You have to remember that from right inside Aperture, you can of course create a version and “edit” in or out the metadata, IPTC and all other information that you want a particular image (or even a set of images via the lift-and-stamp tool) to carry when you export it out direct to an FTP server. I consider this to be one of the most powerful and flexible capabilities built right into Aperture. It’s just interesting to know that we have the option to do it after, and even when out of Aperture.

I selected another image, this time, a RAW image file saved to a folder which was referenced in Aperture. This particular image was from yesterday’s photo assignment, a landscape shoot of Savannah’s well-preserved and well-maintained and well-operated historic district.

The Information Pane of this image showed the same kind of information as the one exported from Aperture, but with one main difference. Despite the fact that I manually typed in the IPTC data and a whole lot of keywords when I referenced the image along with the other images in Aperture, these did not show up. In the processed PSD photograph I exported from Aperture, all the additional IPTC metadata information did show up. But picking on the Referenced image direct from the file folder will not read the metadata and IPTC data that have been added inside Aperture. The original image files in the original file folder from where they have been referenced truly remains untouched.

What this means is that if I want the IPTC metadata and keywords to show on all images, I will add it when importing to Aperture and then export the images from there. But if I want to pick an image from a designated folder without the additional metadata, it is still possible to add keywords by simply typing it into the Spotlights Comments area, which somehow, appears to serve the same purpose: top-level Spotlight search recognition.

To put this into a test, I typed in the only word common to both the Maniya Barredo and the Savannah photos: Georgia. Despite the fact that both photos were archived on an external hard drive, and despite the fact that the Maniya Barredo photos contain the word Georgia as a keyword from Aperture and the RAW file contained the word Georgia in the Spotlight Comments, both images showed up as primary choices.

Of course, none of the managed images inside Aperture showed up in Spotlight. One difference therefore between a Managed and a Referenced image, is that you’d be able to search through your library of images via Spotlight if and when the Referenced images is keyword-tagged in Spotlight’s Comments with the search parameters.

Since now I know that all images I export out from Aperture carry over all the metadata and IPTC data, and since I have a clear idea on how they can be searched through Spotlight, this gives me another reason to be more conscious when it comes to adding (or not adding) information (whatever the case maybe) when it comes to importing to and exporting from Aperture. We often hear the phrase: “If you can control information, you can control everything.” In this case, and with Aperture’s flexibility, we can completely control the management and search of photo images in our Macs from within and outside of Aperture.

Knowing how these things work can help us figure out what is the best strategy for typing in IPTC, keywords, and other information, and how useful they can be when conducting searches inside Aperture, and searching with the Mac’s Spotlight.

Here’s a tip for all the Aperture users who have iPhones: when you find a snapshot of a friend or colleague in your photo library, take a quick second to add it to their contact card in Address Book. Then every time the person calls, you’ll be greeted with their face smiling up at you.

The quickest way to copy the photo from Aperture into Address Book is a simple drag-and-drop. When you’ve found a photo that you want to add to a contact card, do a Spotlight search for that person’s name. Choose the contact card from the Spotlight search results to open that card in Address Book. Then switch back to Aperture and drag the photo from the Browser right onto the placeholder icon next to the contact’s name in Address Book (you don’t even need to put the card into Edit mode to do this).

When you drop the photo on the placeholder icon in Address Book, the familiar crop sheet will appear, allowing you to scale and crop the image to fit in the square. As a bonus, if you’re using Leopard you’ll see that Address Book now includes the ability to apply Effects in this window. Click the Effects button and you will be able to experiment with over 40 effects, including many new effects that weren’t available from the effects palettes in Tiger (Line Overlay and Neon are particularly cool).

Next time you sync your iPhone, the updated contact information will be copied over; after that, whenever the person calls you’ll see the photo rendered in all its glory on the iPhone’s big screen.

This week as I was thinking about a topic for this blog I remembered some features that I would like to see in a future version of Lightroom and I thought I would share those with you. Of course all of this is just conjecture - luckily for all of us Adobe is listening and we can all submit our feature requests for future versions of Lightroom online. You can submit your own feature requests here:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

So here are some features that I have wished for since I first started playing with Lightroom - as it is currently Lightroom is better than anything else out there that I have found - but to make it even better here are some things I would add:

1. Make it even faster.

With the latest upgrade to 1.3 Adobe has made Lightroom faster but it would be nice to see it run even just a little faster. I also just updated my imaging machine to a very fast Apple MacPro and that has vastly improved the operating speed of Lightroom. It isn’t slow on the new tower but it would be nice to see the import process get a little faster - especially the time it takes to render previews. This improvement might require faster computers rather than a change in the software.

2. Make Lightroom the Digital Asset Management tool!

As I have mentioned before in my blog posts, there really isn’t anything out there that I like in terms of a digital asset management tool. I am hoping that the Lightroom engineers can make Lightroom the DAM tool that we have all been waiting for - one where we can have huge catalogs (100,000 + images) of high resolution raw image files imported into Lightroom with no performance penalties.

3. Make the compare mode work with more than just two images.

As a sports photographer it would be really nice to be able to view five or more images side by side and go to the 1:1 preview on all of them at the same time instead of just two images as it is in the current compare mode. This would make the editing process much faster for those of us that shoot lots of high-speed sequences. Even for portraits this could be very useful to compare facial expressions and sharpness.

4. Add local adjustments for contrast, saturation, vibrance, etc.

Lightroom already has some local adjustments - red eye correction and cloning/healing, but it would be really sweet to have the ability to adjust hue, saturation, luminance, vibrancy and other aspects of a part of an image in a similar manner to Nikon Capture NX’s U-Point technology. This would keep us in Lightroom just a little longer and perhaps simplify what can be a complex process in Photoshop. Of course we already have this capability in Photoshop but it would be nice to make basic adjustments in Lightroom and not have to deal with time-consuming selections in Photoshop.

5. Add sharpening to the web gallery images.

One of my long time issues with the very powerful Web Module is that the large previews aren’t quite as sharp as they could be - they need some form of sharpening so that they look their best when viewed by a client. If Adobe were able to introduce a sharpening dialog like the one in the print module it would be a huge improvement to the Web module.

Well, there you have it, just my thoughts on some additions that would make Lightroom a little nicer for my workflow. Lightroom has come a long way in a short while if you ask me. And my workflow has been improved immensely by using Lightroom - I can’t even imagine using my old workflow anymore.

That’s it for this session. See you next week.

Adios, Michael Clark

In my workflow I like to keep most of my Master images files on a network attached storage device. In fact I have my entire image library sitting on a number of USB attached hard drives that are connected to my Airport Extreme base station. This gives me easy access to my entire image library, and a great storage solution for all those large RAW files that I don’t want to cary with me on my laptop.

However, when I want to work on a file, I usually prefer to have it on my local machine for the sake of speed and portability. To move the image masters back to my machine I simply select the images I want to work on and use the Consolidate Masters function found in the File menu. This copies the files back to my machine as Managed files.

Now that I have my selects back on my machine I can go about editing the images from wherever I am.

One caveat to this system is that I end up with a number of Managed master files sitting on my laptop’s hard drive. This was something that I had wanted to avoid in the first place, so once I am done I need to put them back on the external as Referenced Masters.

This is simple enough, just go back and use the Relocate Masters function to put them back. Well, there is one problem with this. Sometimes, while editing, I may decide to downgrade an image that I decide that I don’t like. Now that image is back in the heap of the original shoot. I could certainly select the entire shoot and Relocate the whole thing, but instead, I have come up with a pretty simple trick.

In my Query HUD i select Show All, and then I add the File Status attribute. I set the File Status to look for Managed Files, and viola, my Managed images are shown. I can now set this as a new Smart Album and easily be able to see which images are on my local machine and which are not, regardless of their current star rating. Now I can move the Managed files back to my USB drive with ease.

This weekend I spent some time photographing a benefit Thanksgiving dinner that my girlfriend put on for her local chapter of Physicians for Human Rights. We brought all sorts of food and fun to about 15 residents of a small retirement/assisted living home on the island. The light was sort of all over the place, with harsh sunlight backlighting some of the subjects. Luckily Aperture’s Shadow recovery tool was on hand to help fix up some of the scenes. The pictures turned out pretty good and I may make a quick photo book to donate to the home when I return after the holidays.

To see the rest of the photos check out this post on my personal blog at micahwalter.com

Sometimes the best way to overcome annoyances is to embrace them and make them your own. To protest the way rampant commercialism has corrupted Christmas carols, O’Reilly author Michael W. Dean recorded “God Rest Ye Merry Bonzo.” This “perverted Xmas music” mates a drum loop from Led Zep’s “Bonzo” Bonham with vocals, bass, sleigh bells (!), and an e-mailed guitar track.

On a more expansive note, soundscape artist Darwin Charmber just released 3D Christmas Sound Effects (iTunes link). I’m sitting in the middle of its swirling virtual snowstorm as I type this.

Happy shopping — or nothing-buying. Please leave a link if you come up with your own twisted take on this raucous season.

This has been a week full of Nikon anxiety for me and little less. The big question for the last week has been, will I get one of the first batch of the new Nikon D300? And the answer is, yes it has been picked up from the dealer and is on it’s way to me.

Strangely enough I have bought one in Orlando, Florida and a friend (who just happens to be traveling in this direction) is bringing it to Thailand for me. Those of you who are Nikon users, are of course wondering why I am having a Nikon brought from the US to Thailand, where it was manufactured in the first place. Why didn’t I just buy it in Thailand?

There are two very good reasons that I am carrying the proverbial coals to Newcastle, one being that the camera costs quite a bit less in the USA than it does in Thailand, and two is that I want to have a Nikon USA warranty on the camera, it makes it much easier to get the camera serviced in the USA (if necessary).

I promised to make some corrections to the images I used in lasts weeks blog, but in addition to the new camera release Nikon also threw us all a curve ball by coming out with a new version of Capture NX. Somehow it also seems more fair though, now that we are comparing version 1.3 of Lightroom with version 1.3 of Capture NX.

So on with the show. Basically all I want to do for this exercise is improve the sky a little bit.

The original default Lightroom 1.3 image.

The enhanced Lightroom 1.3 image. I tried to match the saturation enhancement I was able to make with Capture NX in the sky, but was held back because the blues in the rest of the image became over saturated.

The original default Capture NX 1.3 image.

The enhanced Capture NX 1.3 image. I used four color control points to boost the blue saturation of the sky and three control points to boost the contrast of the clouds. I have to say that Capture NX is really great for manipulating the sky, without affecting the rest of the image.

Conclusion:

Capture NX allows me to easily and quickly add (color, contrast, exposure) enhancements to specific areas in an image. I know I can do the same thing from Lightroom by round-tripping to Photoshop CS, but Capture NX allows me to do it without exporting or converting the RAW (NEF) image, right in the application. And if I may repeat myself in Capture NX it is very easy to do this.

I know the following may be impossible for both political and practical reasons, but I have to state it anyway, in the hopes that maybe someone can implement at least part of what I would like to see happen.

I would like to see a Capture NX module made available for Lightroom so that Nikon photographers can both get the image quality and enhancement advantages of Capture NX and at the same time have access to the more practical and easier to live with Lightroom workflow. If it is at all possible I would like to hear some comments on the topic. If you think it is not possible or practical I would like to hear your comments on why you think it is impossible too.

As dusk darkened to night, my exposures got longer and longer until the swirl trails of the stars echoed the swirls in the rock of the Wave.

View this image larger.

To take this photo, I needed to wait until darkness out in the desert with the ordeal that was to come. But, I say, since all’s well that ends well, well worth it!

I have to admit, one of the apps I’m having most fun with in Leopard is iChat. With all the new features Leopard brings to applications like Safari and Mail, iChat’s 24 new features outnumbers all others. With the new video effects for example, you can annoy your friends pretending to be in Paris, or on a roller coaster or in space or just look weird and beautiful, with the many crazy and abstract, distorting video effects.

But all fun aside, it’s got some really huge features that photographers are going to find very useful.

I just discovered how you can host an iChat Theatre Presentation. Unfortunately at this time, we can’t share an Aperture slide show in iChat. But you can share QuickTime Movies and Keynote Presentations, as well as photos or anything Quick Look (space bar in Leopard) can preview. You don’t even need to have a camera built into your computer to take advantage of this useful feature.

iChat is a great way to share your work with friends, editors, students anywhere in the world in real time. Even when you’re in France.

For instance, you can select a bunch of photos and then show them to your Buddies, one at a time as a slideshow. They will not only see the slides, but see you (if you have a web cam, standard on all new iMacs, MacBooks and MacBook Pros) and hear any narration you’re wanting to give. You control the show from a toolbar outside the video window. Same is true for Quicktime movies and Keynote presentations.

I have used a program called LiveSlideShow to make Quicktime movies of my slide presentations with words and music– and have inserted these Quicktimes into Keynote. When Keynote gets to a slide with a Quicktime Movie in it, it launches that Quicktime automatically. I’m hoping the next version of Aperture allows us to save slideshows as Quicktime Movies.

Using iChat, you can share elaborate presentations with Buddies all over the world, in real time. “What will you be presenting at the conference next week?” Let me show you on iChat…and talk about it as we move through the work. Or maybe you want to get editing opinions from a trusted friend a thousand miles away. There are so many possibilities.

I suspect iChat will work with the next upgrade of Aperture, but for now it lets you pick photo albums in iPhoto 08 to share. What is nice about showing work form these apps is, you use the iPhoto 08 or Keynote controls to make your way through the slideshows. Plus, you can record these iChat conversations and shows; iChat asks the other party if it’s okay and a small red light glows to let you and them know, the iChat is being recorded.

Also with Leopard, iChat utilizes something called H.264, which Apple says will give you higher resolution and sharper images with improved color accuracy using advanced video compression techniques.

I’m hoping to put iChat’s video conferencing savy to the test. I’ve been teaching a course at ICP in New York, but I may be heading to Rwanda in a couple of weeks and have to miss the last class when students make presentations. If I can secure a broad-band connection, I should be able to “be there” for that class, see the presentations and comment in real time. Of course the other great thing that iChat provides that real life doesn’t? You can turn someone off, at anytime. The students will love it.

Although I rarely use the Split Tone panel in the Develop module (and I bet you can say the same), there are a couple of situations in which I find it extremely useful: Toned Black and Whites and full color nature scenes that are designed for emotional impact.

Here’s a black and white in which I first used the HSL panel in Grayscale mode to adjust each of the primary and secondary colors to give a black and white exactly the tone shades in black and white that I want. Then I used the Split Tone panel to assign blues to the Highlights and Sepia to the shadows. You can see the color, black and white, and split-toned versions in the illustration below.

Here’s a Sunset in Guayabo, Costa Rica, first as it looked when I adjusted the color as I normally would, then when I used Split toning to emphasize the reds in the Sunset sky and the greens in the tropical lushness of this pasture.

In the world that goes in my laptop, I find that there are few things more refreshing than grabbing an updated piece of software that I rely on and taking a walk through its halls, both in familiar and unfamiliar nooks. There are a couple benefits to taking this time out from my regularly scheduled editing:

• the first benefit is to see what new features and tweaks have been added to the piece of software, and
• the second — and secondary — benefit is to notice features that have been around for a while but that I haven’t even considered adding to my flow.

For applications — like Lightroom — that have a non-trivial learning curve, taking a fresh look at what’s inside the box can shake up your workflow in ways that go beyond the itemized feature list in the release notes. We all like getting things done in the most comfortable way possible; we appreciate comfortable surroundings and thrive in simplicity through repetition. That’s all part of the learning process.

But sorting through gigabytes of data in an effort to stay afloat in your sea of photos can lead you to form a groove that is difficult to break. Every once in a while it helps to take a step back and look at the bigger picture (so to speak) and see how we can adapt our flow as we learn all of the nooks and crannies of our tools. Setting aside some time to take a step back and look at your workflow after an application update can pay off in the long run.

And for those of you running Lightroom on Leopard, it never hurts to have the application actually work on your operating system, either. Viva Lightroom 1.3!

Compatibility with Mac OS X Leopard is one of the bullet points of the recent Lightroom 1.3 release. Now that I’ve had a few days to work with the release, I can indeed confirm that Lightroom 1.3 gets along with Leopard, at least for the most part. There are, however, a few small issues I’ve run into.

The first of these issues appeared for me when importing files directly from a compact flash card. I’ve seen some spurious error messages on a few of my imports, including an odd message indicating that there was a problem with 0 of the images imported. Also, on one occasion, an image wasn’t copied as part of the import process. For the time being, I may start copying images over to my local drive in the Finder and then import them. I did this with a previous version of Lightroom to work around import problems. This would be a real drag, but incomplete imports are also a drag.

Second, I’ve seen Lightroom crash a few times while working with the Print module. This was reported in a few places on the first day of release. The workaround talked about on the net is to minimize the print preview window, as shown to the right. I can report that this seems to work for me so far.

And last, as you’ve probably heard, there have been warnings concerning Lightroom’s database and Time Machine. For the time being, I’ve followed the recommendations to exclude my Lightroom catalog from Time Machine backups. I’ve also excluded the preview folder as well, since it only includes data that can be easily rebuilt from my image library.

This doesn’t mean you have to skip backups of your Lightroom database, however. If you make backups of your catalog from within Lightroom—I have mine set to make a backup every time I run Lightroom—those backups will be nicely stashed away for you by Time Machine. Also, if you have Lightroom automatically write XMP data, those XMP sidecar files will be faithfully backed up by Time Machine as well, providing a fairly complete backup solution.

A while ago, I posted a blog about previews, discussing when they’re useful and how to turn them off. A friend of mine, Ralph Hill, recently told me about a potential problem when you disable previews, and it’s worth sharing with everyone.

Specifically, if you turn off previews, quit, but do NOT force quit, Aperture as soon as possible after changing your settings (if Aperture crashes before you quit it normally, that counts as an accidental force quit). It is possible if you force quit Aperture that you will end up in a funky state where the preference for preview generation displays that generation is off, but Aperture is still creating previews (try saying that three times fast! :) ). If you do happen to end up in this state, simply turn previews back on, quit Aperture, re-open Aperture, turn previews off, and quit Aperture again to restore everything to the correct state.

Lastly, to all of our American readers, Happy Thanksgiving!

The first time I heard and paid attention to the term “pain points” was at an Aperture conference held in Cambodia. I was part of a group of hand-picked professional photographers from different Asian countries. We were selected to attend this conference so we can share knowledge about real-world and actual use of Aperture.

I remember feeling very excited because I’d get the chance to meet and interact with my colleagues from different Asian countries, and learn first-hand how each one of them are managing their workflow with Apple’s Aperture as a post-production tool. I was very much looking forward to picking up and learning a few tips and tricks here and there so I can refine my own workflow with the aim of making it more effective and efficient.

Well, I was not disappointed. Photographers are mostly outgoing, and once you get them started on a particular topic, the discussion is bound to go on forever. I said a few things myself but mostly I listened to what others said. I was fascinated to hear them talk about their actual work experiences with Aperture. I must have asked a lot of questions. Maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising by now that each photographer actually have a somewhat unique workflow style. Still, I couldn’t help but somehow feel really surprised at the innovative ways different photographers use Aperture. No one was shy in sharing what exactly they do and how they actually push photos out of their ateliers’ doors. It turned out to be a fantastic learning experience.

Apple’s Aperture conference in Asia nicely coincided with the annual Ankor Wat Photography Festival. I enjoyed viewing the many exhibits of featured international photographers with subjects spanning from historical to contemporary images. And on the side, we had the chance to explore a couple of places in Cambodia. First, we took an interesting “sunrise” look at the majestic, inspiring and tragic sprawl of the Angkor Wat ruins. Next, we experienced the painful and forlorn beauty of being afloat in the middle of the endless Tony Sap lake at sunset.

In Cambodia, I found myself caught up in the vortex of the old and the new. In this modern world, we continue to “live” the history of the past. There are, of course, valid reasons why we should look back to our past and reminisce. Philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist George Santayana was the first to say, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” From the historic perspective of Cambodia, remembering the past means side-stepping the “pain points” that might again happen.

To me, as a photographer, I hope to keep remembering the past in order to get away from it, to move away from it, and even to escape it, so that I can fully appreciate what is new, and do things in a better way. We may not appreciate it as much as we did the first time around, but, the technology of Apple’s Aperture has truly and radically altered the way we do our post-production work. I feel that this software was designed to remove a lot of the “pain points” we have to deal with on a day to day basis. Aperture has simplified enough the process for us so we can achieve our photographic vision and deliver the results to clients with minimum fuss and on time.

Apple’s Aperture puts into the hands of digital photographers today some of the most important tools of our trade. We may be deceived into thinking, for instance, that the image enhancing and editing tools are quite simplistic and almost like a child’s play, but underlying that simplicity are technologies that does the job. For me, this is one of the ways that Apple have removed “pain points.” To make it easy to do. Many photographers all over the world have amply demonstrated the power and beauty, and the ease, of the many built-in enhancement and editing capabilities of Aperture.

Almost with certainty, the new major version release of Aperture, when it is announced, will contain new and interesting features. Whatever these new features will be, and in whatever way these new features will be delivered to us, we will welcome them. I just hope that Apple shall continue to look back at their fine tradition with Aperture of removing “pain points” for photographers like you and me.

With the recent update of Lightroom to Version 1.3 late last week I thought I would cover some of the improvements that have been made with this latest version…so without further ado here they are:

1. Vastly improved Speed!

I don’t have any hard numbers to back up this observation but version 1.3 seems quite a bit faster than any previous version of Lightroom. I first noticed this improvement when I imported my last assignment into Lightroom. It took only a few seconds for the 300+ images to be imported before Lightroom went to work building the 1:1 previews. I was shocked how fast it loaded the previews. Then while editing and processing these recent images Lightroom was much faster than I have ever seen it. All in all, the new speediness is a very welcome upgrade.

2. Ability to render 1:1 previews on import.

With version 1.3, we can now have Lightroom build the 1:1 previews on import. This is a feature I have been hoping for now for quite a while and it is nice to see it. Thanks Adobe! This just cut one extra step out of my workflow.

3. Improved version of the “Automatically write changes into XMP” preference.

In the past, choosing the preference to “Automatically write changes into XMP” files for each image resulted in a significant slow down. Adobe has now upgraded Lightroom so the slow down is practically nil which is a very nice feature for those of us that rely on the XMP files as a backup and so that the raw files are rendered with our develop settings in Adobe Bridge. This is yet another small but very significant upgrade in version 1.3.

4. Compatibility with Apple’s latest Mac OS X Leopard.

Since I had my G5 tower crash hard a few weeks ago and I have already purchased a new Apple Mac Pro, I am very glad to see the folks at Adobe have made Lightroom fully compatible with Apple’s latest Mac OS X Leopard. I’ll find out later today how seamlessly it works with the new operating system as my Mac Pro arrives today! Very exciting.

5. Better rendering of Nikon RAW files.

One other feature I have noticed but need to look into further is that my raw Nikon D2x files seem to look better than they have in previous versions of Lightroom. It seems with the Adobe Camera Raw upgrade to version 4.3, the folks at Adobe have also improved the auto-rendering of some Nikon camera models. I’ll write more about this as I work up recent images.

Even though the upgrade to 1.3 might not have seemed like a big deal I am very excited about the improvements that have been made. For my workflow specifically these improvements will help make Lightroom even more user friendly and hopefully shave off a bit more time that I have to spend in front of the computer.

That’s it for this session. See you next week.

Adios, Michael Clark

One scenario where I still regularly make trips from Aperture to Photoshop is when I need to use Photoshop’s Healing Brush tool. Aperture’s Spot and Patch tool does a fine job of removing unwanted dust and imperfections from photographs, but it’s designed to be used on contained spots, and it doesn’t work well for long or irregularly-shaped imperfections like stray hairs.

I was recently given a scan of this photograph of my grandmother as a little girl in 1917. The photo was in pretty bad shape, with deep cracks across much of the image, however luckily there were no cracks across her face. I imported the photo into Aperture so that I could manage it with the rest of my photo library, but I knew that working with this photo would mean spending most of my time in Photoshop. And that’s fine with me. Sometimes working with Aperture means using Aperture’s organization and management tools, and doing my retouching somewhere else.

The original scan of Grandma in 1917

Photoshop’s Healing Brush tool is pretty amazing. It lets you correct imperfections by painting with sampled pixels from your photo, also matching the texture, lighting, transparency, and shading of the sampled pixels. As a result, the repaired pixels blend seamlessly into the rest of the image. I created a new layer and used the Healing Brush extensively to remove the cracks and repair dust spots and scratches. I also cropped the photo, and created a few adjustment layers to improve the contrast and brightness.

The layers created for retouching

The retouching is still a work-in-progress. And because Aperture works round-trip with Photoshop, I can always come back to the photo in Aperture, and choose Open with External Editor to go back into Photoshop — my layers and adjustments will always be intact. I’m pretty pleased with how this photograph is shaping up; and I’m glad to be using Aperture so fluidly with Photoshop. Below is the original scan and the current working version of the repaired image.

The Good News: Apple has added more supported camera formats to Aperture via Software Update 10.4.11. The Bad News: the Canon PowerShot G9 is not among them.

Rats!

I was happy to read Ben’s post about additional Raw support via the latest Tiger update. Quite frankly, my nonAperture workflow for the Canon G9 is losing its charm. So, I thought for sure I would no longer be staring at gray boxes after today.

Ack!

I know things are pretty busy in Cupertino right now. Maybe for all the hard work that has gone into Leopard, Tiger updates, Aperture, iLife, iPhone, iPods, and everything else, someone at Apple should buy the entire engineering team the perfect gift. Let me think… How about Canon G9s!

Since we now have two brand new versions of the RAW image processor from Nikon and Adobe, I thought that today would be a good day to do a quick comparison test of a Nikon NEF file from a Nikon D80, arguably the most popular consumer level Nikon Digital SLR on the market at this time.

Basically I took one image and quickly ran it through Nikon Capture NX 1.2 without making any changes and did the same with Adobe Lightroom 1.3.

These images were not edited at all in either program, only resized and saved to jpeg at a value of 80. From what I can see on my computer screen they are fairly similar but the Nikon Capture NX 1.2 image is a little blown out in the highlights and the Adobe Lightroom 1.3 image is a bit dark in some of the shadows and some of the colors are a little dull. I will make some corrections and enhancements in both applications and try to post those images tomorrow. Comments would be appreciated, especially if you have made similar tests.

Image processed with Adobe Lightroom 1.3

Image processed with Nikon Capture 1.2

With the release of Leopard, Apple added raw support for a number of new cameras, leaving Tiger-based Aperture users wondering if they would be forced to upgrade to the new operating system in order to gain support for the new formats.

Fortunately, the answer to that question is a resounding “no!” thanks to Apple’s 10.4.11 update, now available via Software Update. In addition to a number of OS level bug fixes, the update provides support for the following cameras: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50, Leica V-Lux 1, Olympus E-400, Olympus EVOLT E410, Olympus EVOLT E510, and the Canon EOS 40D.

As an Aperture user, is there any reason at this point that you should be hesitant to upgrade to Leopard? Not really, though if you rely a lot on external Firewire drives, you might want to test them with a Leopard system before making the switch. I’ve found that some of my drives aren’t showing up in Leopard - something that happens from time to time with Apple updates. Usually, an OS update soon follows to fix the problem.

I’ve written in previous posts a bit about Amazon’s S3 storage service. So far I have been pretty happy with the service, however, the interface has left a little to be desired. I tried using JungleDisk and a backup program like Synk Pro to move my Aperture Referenced Masters to S3, but I have ran in to a number of problems with this routine. On paper it seems to work just fine. And, in fact, for small numbers of images it works essentially flawlessly. But one thing that Jungle Disk does that has been causing me problems has to do with its method of caching files. It allows you to set a cache and then when you try to upload images JungleDisk writes whatever it can to the cache and then begins the process of uploading.

This is a nice feature theoretically in that you can stop the process and return and begin again, but it can cause problems when trying to upload a large amount of data. When the cache gets filled, the Synk operation can get interrupted. It doesn’t always happen, but on occasion I have to start all over again. If the Synk operation gets interrupted for some reason it fails the backup and you have to try again.

JungleDisk also uses a fairly interesting method of storing your files. Instead of just creating folders and files in your S3 bucket, JungleDisk creates a flattened directory structure, using the folder names you create as part of the filename. It all works perfectly fine if you always use JungleDisk to interface with your S3 account, but once you try and connect with some other application things can be a bit confusing.

So, I am experimenting with Panic’s Transmit. Transmit has been around forever and has served as a great FTP program for me for a long time. Now that there is support for Amazon S3 I have yet another use for the fine program. What’s more is that Transmit offers additional features such as .Mac preference syncing and built in Automator actions.

I set up my Amazon account and saved it as a preference. I created a new “bucket” and then made some sub-folders. I pointed to the folder of pictures I wanted to upload and clicked Synchronize. I was given a number of options as to how I wanted the synching to behave and it is off and running. It seems to write the files one at a time, copying them from my network drive to the laptop and then uploading them to S3. It is going fairly slowly, but seems to working without any problems.

It would be really nice to eventually get everything up on S3 and then be able to just do a sync for any newly added files. This would keep a really nice archive of my Master images files up on a geographically redundant server out there in the ether. Of course an Aperture plugin might be a nice idea as well! Hint Hint….

It’s out. The release we’ve all been waiting for—at least for the last few weeks. Lightroom 1.3 has hit the streets and brings support for running Lightroom on Leopard, some new camera models, and an export SDK.

The new cameras supported are Canon’s 1Ds mkIII and G9, Nikon’s D3 and D300, Olympus’ E-3 and SP-560UZ, and Panasonic DMC-110. Additionally, there’s support for Canon’s sRAW format and Fuji’s compressed RAF format.

As far as Leopard compatibility goes, the print module is working again, but there seem to be a few issues with the newly minted Leopard 10.5.1 release and some of the presets. I’ll know more about this shortly as I’ve just downloaded the release right now and will be giving it a full workout.

You can read more at The Lightroom Journal and the Photoshop Services site.

Generally, when my raw files are well exposed, the White Balance control is the first step I take toward squeezing the best image out of my raw file, and to get the overall color close to where I want it.

When you change the white balance of a raw file, Aperture reconfigures it’s interpretation of color from the red, green and blue data without manipulating it so color correcting with White Balance is a “free” edit, and won’t lead to any posterizing or tonal breaks.

And, you can extend it’s 2500-10,000degrees Kelvin range by having the cursor hover over the color temperature data, which changes the icon, at which time you can click and drag to the right all the way up to 50,000K!

10,000 Degrees Kelvin

50,000 Degrees Kelvin

You can do the same thing by clicking and dragging left to a minmum 2000K. (You can extend the range of most adjustment tools in Aperture the same way). When would you want to extend this range? Rarely, but in sunset or sunrise images for example, you may want higher than 10,000K color temperatures.

When I’m using my monitor at home, I like to widen my Adjustments HUD, so the slider is longer, allowing for subtler changes.

Widen HUD by clicking and dragging the bottom right corner

Getting your white balacne right with the eye dropper tool is easy. Just click on a neutral gray area within the image as a starting point.

Here’s a little nugget that not everybody plays with using the Eye Dropper Control in White Balance. When you click and hold the eyedropper within your image, as you move the dropper around the image you will see the white bala