Computing – Page 10 – Richard & Caroline's Blog

September 26, 2016September 26, 2016

MacOS Sierra

Last week Apple released the latest version of OS X, now renamed to MacOS. My old laptop is now too old, there are ways of forcing it on, and I may try that but without Bluetooth v4 and Wireless AC you miss out on a lot of the cool features.

Luckily my desktop does support the OS and the cool new features.

Being a photographer I have too many devices that need testing to just jump ahead with the upgrade so I have been doing a little research first.

As far as I could find everything should work, the only worry was my i1 screen calibrator and my printer, while Epson listed my scanner compatible with MacOS the printer only had the previous version of OS listed.

With that being the case I downloaded the new OS and installed it on a spare external hard drive and booted my MacPro desktop from that. First I did a clean install and downloaded the Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom to test, then my Wacom tablet. That all worked fine.

I then tested Apple’s migration assistant and pulled over all my data and applications and settings from my Time Machine backup disk.

I tested Photoshop and Lightroom again and the tablet. Then I tested my scanner and finally I tried some prints from Lightroom to my printer.

I am pleased to report that everything works, so once MacOS 10.12.1 is released I’ll risk upgrading.

September 13, 2016September 18, 2016

iOS 10

Here in the UK iOS 10 was released at 18:00 on Tuesday night. I was looking forward to this more then the new iPhone, my iPhone 6 Plus is still going strong with no issues, I skipped the 6S and will skip the new 7.

I was not at home when it was released but had my laptop, iPad and iPhone with me and internet access. I had made sure that my iDevices were backed up, but also before updating I checked out the forums to see what issues people were having. Lucky I did as the OTA (over the air) update was corrupt so many users ending up having to restore their phones. Apple quickly resolved that and once the reports looked good I upgraded my phone. When I was happy with that I then updated the iPad.

Once again iOS10 is more polish and has changed a few things including getting rid of the iconic swipe to open. Overall I like the changes.

September 9, 2016September 17, 2016

Apple Watch – Will I, Won’t I

I am having a really good look at AppleWatch OS3 and the new devices.

It’s one of those devices that I want but do not need. Like the iPad I waited until an app appeared that would make the device useful for Photography, with the watch I’ll be spending the next week looking into the apps to see if its a device I can truly get something out of. So fitness, walking and possibly sailing, kayaking and swimming. I can also think of a few uses for work.

If I decide to get one then which model. I should get the sport model as its the cheapest but I do really like the black stainless steal but I’ll find it hard to justify the cost, so might just go with the black sport model.

September 8, 2016September 26, 2016

Apple Press Conference- iPhone 7 & AppleWatch S2

So there we have it, the new iPhone 7. I actually found it quite impressive, better colour gamut for both screen and camera, colour management, and the ability to shoot in RAW using Adobe DNG, not a proprietary format like Canon and Nikon.

With phones now getting this good, the small sensor compact is dead.

The watch also I thought was a good improvement, thinner screen, 30% bigger battery, nearly twice the performance. With waterproofing and gps, I can now log my walks, runs, etc without having to carry my phone and not worry when I swim, kayak or sail.

July 26, 2016July 31, 2016

Leica Q Firmware v2.0

So that was quick, only yesterday did I mention rumoured firmware for the Q, SL and M and today Leica go and release v2.00 for the Q.

You can download it here.

The big thing for me is DNG only mode, which can help your workflow when working with mobile software like Adobe Lightroom Mobile on the iPad.

July 18, 2016July 20, 2016

Busy Apple

We had a new iTunes update, OS X and iOS update this week, seems Apple are being busy bees at the moment. I am looking forward to the new OS X being released under its new name macOS Sierra but it may not work with my laptop. Though with Lightroom Mobile now supporting a pure RAW file workflow, I may finally retire my laptop once it gets to old, at over eight years old its doing well.

July 14, 2016July 20, 2016

Adobe Lightroom Mobile Update – RAW Support

We had another update to Adobe Lightroom Mobile and this time they seem be indicating that we now have RAW support for the Mobile version.

This was a big thing for me as I have blogged about in the past. Though Lightroom Mobile already supports DNG, I do want Nikon NEF support.

So I just had to give it a go. I use Lightroom Mobile often to do a quick edit from when I am street shooting using my Leica. The edits are usually just quick adjustments and crops. This time the test was very simple I just grabbed my Nikon D800 and shot a few snaps of the dog and a few flowers in the garden.

So after a few quick snaps I grabbed my iPad 9.7 Pro and imported the RAW files. All looked good and this worked without issue. I then dived onto my Desktop computer and checked out the ‘From LR mobile’ Collection set.

There I saw my photographs arriving. The question was what format? Lightroom reported them as RAW and I also browsed to the file location in finder to confirm and there my files were. So we now have full RAW support in Lightroom Mobile, thanks Adobe.

July 5, 2016July 9, 2016

Photoshop CC 2015.5 – Face Aware Liquify

Adobe released Photoshop CC2015.5 recently and as I had a few portraits to edit I gave it good trial.

The first thing that threw me for a while was the selection tool, this has changed quite a bit.

The second which was very cool is the new content aware face aware Liquify filter. On most images it will detect the face and enable you to tweak the eyes, nose and lips with ease.

June 13, 2016June 13, 2016

Lightroom Guided Upright feature

The latest version of Lightroom now includes a Guided upright feature. In the previous version under lens correction you had the options you see below:

The corrections were Auto, Level, Virtual or Full. Used with care it worked quite well but I don’t think too many people were aware of them as they were hidden in the Lens Correction Panel.

We now have the corrections in there own panel called Transforms with the new guided option. This allows you to select areas of the picture for it to key on correcting the verticals on the areas you select, or horizontals.

As with many of these things corrections can go badly wrong to use with care.

June 10, 2016June 9, 2016

Lightroom Mobile compared to the Desktop – Quick Edit

This week I made myself have a lunch time walk around Lincoln. Each time I shot seventeen images (yes exactly seventeen on each walk).

Once back in my office I imported them into the iPad 9.7 Pro and did a quick select and edit of the ones I liked.

Usually for me I make my street photographs taken with the Leica into Black & White images but this time I kept most of them in colour. Most likely the wonderful weather putting me in a technicolour mood.

I did a quick a edit of the top shot on the iPad, boosting contrast, saturation, vibrance and clarity. I liked it even though its got a bit more colour impact then my usual shots.

Then as an experiment once home, I fired up the desktop computer and cloned the image processed on the iPad and then applied my usual Leica M8 People Preset. Then I returned the contrast, saturation, vibrance and clarity back to the iPad settings. A quick tweak of the back point and you have the second image.

Now I prefer the second image and it also shows that my custom Leica Preset I have created the the M8 certainly does a good job, but what I found interesting is that not having the presets available on the iPad and just developing the image by ‘touch’ has led me to a final image that is very different to the usual way I work and taken the image in a different direction.