New Apple iMac’s and a ‘New’ (old) Colour Space

iMacsThis week Apple released new iMac’s, for people wanting a desktop computer they are very nice, though the bottom spec model is a little pricey, the high end models are well worth the money.

The new displays, 4K for the smaller model and 5K for the larger represent a significant improvement in display technology.

They also introduce for many what will be a new colour space.  Most monitors are sRGB, and while fine for most work, do not really cut the mustard for colour critical work for desktop publishing, photography and film.

For myself I use a high end NEC Reference Monitor that can output Adobe RGB, a far bigger colour space and about as good as you can get currently.

The new Mac’s though do not use sRGB or Adobe RGB but a colour space called DCI-P3, which while as big as Adobe RGB is shifted more into the Red’s and the greens are different.  Its a colour spaced by and for the movie industry and I can imaging lots of studio’s placing there orders immediately for these new computers that support this colour space natively.

For photographers then the new iMac’s are better then what we had before but we do need to consider we are not getting Adobe RGB.  If you have an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription then you will find Photoshop supports DCI-P3 (labeled SMPTE) and it might be worthwhile if your getting one of these Mac’s to adopt DCI-P as your standard working space.

smpte

Personally I would recommend doing all your work in ProPhotoRGB, while your display cannot show it this has more colours then either Adobe RGB or DCI-P3)

Rolling Back to Lightroom v2015.1.1

Download Lightroom

 

Tonight I got fed up of waiting for Adobe to fix Lightroom so downgraded my Laptop to Adobe Lightroom v2015.1.1.  You can download it from here: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/lightroom-downloads.html?PID=7252638

Lightroom

Its a simple task, uninstall the old version, download the main Lightroom v2015 then the update you want.  I then went though my Orkney images and completed my Panoramic’s light this one below:

StornowayI’ll be leaving this version on my Laptop now until Adobe issue a fix and I have tested it on my main machine, at least now I can finish up editing my Orkney photographs.

 

Adobe Issues – Lightroom v2015.2.1

Orkney Sea ScapeThe shot above was take with my Leica while on board ship, as I came back to Scotland from the Orkney Islands.

Its a stitch from several images which I put together with Adobe Lightroom v2015.1, quite a nice photograph I hope you agree and a very good stitch done automatically via Lightroom.

I still have a number of photographs still to process from my Orkney trip including a number of panorama’s that still need stitching together and some HDR’s that need putting together.

These personal photographs have been on hold for the last few weeks while I finish up my final Wedding Photographs for customers.

But now its back to my own work.  Now I blogged early that Lightroom 2015.2 had been released and it had some issues.  Every time I tried to exit the program it would hang.  The fix I posted early was a work round that stopped that at least.  Well I also found another issue, you cannot create Pano’s from Leica DNG files, I do not if all RAW files are affected or if its just a DNG issue.

Well last night Adobe issued a fix, Lightroom 2015.2.1.  So I tested and the crashing is still there, in fact it crashed the first time I loaded it and the Pano function is still broken.

Now I had to produce some prints this week for a commercial shoot I had done earlier in the year, now I wanted to test printing from Lightroom on Apple’s latest OS, so as I have already upgraded my laptop, I created a new Lightroom catalogue containing these shots and fired up my laptop to print off the images.  Now it all worked fine, in fact not one crash, but I had not done the Adobe workaround on my laptop.

So I checked out a few forums and a number of people mentioned that if they created a new library referencing all there old photographs the new Library did not crash, so last night I gave it a try.  I created a whole new library referencing my existing photographs and guess what, no crash.

So Adobe; please, please , Please, just now fix the pano issue so I can finish up my Orkney Photographs.

 

Adobe Lightroom 2015.2 Known issues

I have only upgraded my Laptop to Apple’s latest OS but have upgraded both my laptop and desktop to the latest Adobe Lightroom 2015.2, usually point releases have few issues.

I had a few prints to run off for a client yesterday and it gave me the perfect opportunity to test Lightroom 2015.2, the new Mac OS and my Epson Printer, a 3880.  No issues at all.

One issue I do have is on my main machine since upgrading Lightroom but running the old Mac OS.

I cannot seem to close Lightroom, it hangs.

A quick search on the web found the following article from Adobe Support.  Unticking the “Show Add Photos’ seems to have fixed it for me.

Screen Shot 2015-10-07 at 08.43.21

 

  • Tethering with Nikon & Leica cameras

Tethering Nikon & Leica cameras using Lightroom CC 2015/Lightroom 6 is not currently supported on El Capitan.

We recommend customers who rely on Lightroom for tethering Nikon and Leica cameras not upgrade to El Capitan at this time.

Our engineering team is working with our partners to correct this issue and provide compatibility in the future.

 Some customers are reporting crashes with Lightroom CC 2015.2/Lightroom 6.2

  • If you are experiencing crashing, please try the following:
  • Go to Lightroom > Preferences.
  • Click on the General tab
  • Uncheck “Show ‘Add Photos’ Screen”Restart Lightroom

Our engineering team is actively investigating this issue

RED

RedIn the uphill area of Lincoln is a gallery called ‘The Little Red Gallery’; I have a number of ideas for photographs based on people walking past this gallery but have yet to pull any of them off.  I may have to bite the bullet and book a model as the arrangement I want is yet to happen.

 

OS X 10.11.0 El Capitan

OS X 10.11This weekend I updated my seven year old MacBook Pro to OS X 10.11.0 El Capitan.

The issue found initially was that Dropbox would not work, I visited their website and downloaded the latest client and after that things were fine.

So far apart from the usual built in apps, like Safari and Mail I have only tested Adobe Lightroom 2015.1.1.  So far no issues.  I still have lots of things to test but once I have proved all my key apps and also the screen calibrater, Wacom tablet and Epson printer and scanner work, i’ll risk updating my main work machine the MacPro once OS X 10.11.1 is released.

 

Barrons on Parade

Barrons on Parade-2
Barrons on ParadeThis week the Lincoln Barron’s were collected together and were all on show in Lincoln Castle.  They have been a terrific success this summer bringing people into the city and getting them to explorer.  This week the Barron’s are all being auctioned off for charity and this will be the last time they are seen together.

 

Apple Releases OS X 10.11

Apple released the latest version of OS X its called El Capitan an odd name but there are making some bold claims for this minor OS update. 

The big thing for graphic users is Metal a new API layer to access the graphics card. Apple claim 40-60% speed improvement and Adobe after testing an optimised version of Photoshop are backing that claim. 

I will not be risking my work machine until OS 10.11.1 is released but I may upgrade my laptop this weekend and test all my apps. 

I cannot risk breaking printing, screen calibrating software and my Wacom tablet. So testing on another machine or cloning your hard drive and testing on a spare is always a good idea.