iOS Differences

Since moving villages I no longer get a mobile phone signal at home. My current mobile phone contract is up next month and the excuse of not getting a signal at home plus the fact they will not unlock phones for free has pushed me away from my current provider.

So this month I had my phone unlocked and have been trying other networks.

As part of this testing I made a number of interesting discoveries.

Dependant on whose sim you have in and if you restore your phone from a backup or set up as new you get a few minor differences.

The first thing I spotted was the Cellular Menu became a Mobile Menu, also the options in here differed but not really surprising.  No the surprising thing was things like security options, on the old sim I only had auto lock from instant to 15 minutes, but when the phone was setup as new with the sim from another network it had options up to four hours!

I would have thought the functionality would have remained fairly constant.

Now that my testing has finished I have a few choices to make.  A review of the main UK networks was published this week, and the one I am on came top, but this network does not work at home and I still need to use my mobile at home.  The network that works best at home came worst and in my testing was worst for data.

With those results in mind I am not quite sure what I am going to do.  I could remember to put a divert on my mobile before heading home but what if I forget, and there is the cost.

I could just change networks and put up with a better service at home but poorer data elsewhere (though things are looking like changing in the coming year).  Or even go to two phone.  A basic mobile with my main number on it and the best data sim in my smart phone.

Not sure yet but I have till the next month to decide.

What should Aperture Users do?

Lightroom V5If your after an all in one DAM/RAW processor that enables none destructive editing there are only two products that you should consider these have been, Apples Aperture and Adobe’s Lightroom, both were released at the same time and both have advantages and disadvantages, I even know some photographers who use both.

This summer Apple announced that they would be ending there Aperture product.  Now they do have a replacement coming soon likely to be released together with there new OS this autumn but if its anything like there other software releases recently, its likely to be a step backwards with less functionality at the start.

With this in mind many users are now considering jumping to Adobe’s Lightroom.  Lightroom has always been my preferred product, but if your an Aperture user I would be tempted to wait and see what Apple’s replacement is like before jumping ship.

Adobe have announced that they will be releasing migration tools to help and so far they have released the following white paper:

http://landing.adobe.com/dam/downloads/whitepapers/54511.en.switch-from-aperture-to-lightroom.pdf

Photo Archive

Tintern AbbeyI know of a number of photographers who keep a photographic archive. This is not their backup, but a copy of their selects saved either onto a spare harddisk or in the cloud/internet.

The idea is that these are saved in a different format. Commonly used is JPeg but a growing number of photographers now use DNG.

So why not RAW or Tiff?

Well RAW is just that an unedited RAW file not your final image unless you also bundle into your archive the database for Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture.

RAW files are a proprietary format that may not be supported in the future.

TIFF is a good solution if you have the harddisk space, JPeg is smaller but lossy

I find the ideal compromise is DNG. Now this is a standard that Adobe control but it is open and the specification is well published so many program’s can read and view DNG’s.

So if you have a spare drive or a internet storage solution, save your favourite photos as Jpegs or in DNG. Just in case.

If it’s an old drive ask if you can store it at your parents or brother or sisters house. If you have more then one drive rotate them round.

Adobe Lightroom V5.6

Adobe CC - LR5.6Well its Friday and the weekend is nearly here.  I have been lazy today, I had no blog prepared but on checking out Chris’s Blog this morning I read that Adobe Lightroom V5.6 had been released, its not long since V5.5 was released.

I’ll let you read up on the updates from the usual sites but Chris’s blog post is here.

You can get it here from Adobe’s site.

If your a creative cloud user remember to update from the Creative Cloud Installer and not from Lightroom Update.

 

Twitter @ Tweetdeck

I am not a huge tweeter but I do enjoy following a number of people on Twitter.

Most of this is done via the Twitter app on my iPhone and I occasionally tweet from my laptop direct via OS X.

Occasionally though I use Tweetdeck, I especially like being able to schedule a tweet.

I recently spotted this YouTube video on Tweetdeck and found it very useful, hope you do too.

Adobe Creative Cloud Expiring

Photoshop Colour SettingsSince the last major update to Adobe Creative Cloud, when I launched Photoshop it warned me I only had a month left of use and could not contact the licensing server. It recommended I check my account details.

I logged into the Adobe website and checked my detail and everything looked fine, but each day I launched Photoshop I was faced with this message and a countdown telling me when Adobe Photoshop would shop working at the end of the month.

The fix turned out to be extremely easy. Log completely out if Creative Cloud then log back in. Now it works fine with no messages saying it’s about to run out.

Backing up your Lightroom Catalogue to the Cloud

Automator

I was reading Terry White’s Tech blog and his five tips for Lightroom users; one of his tips which was new to me, was keeping your Adobe Lightroom Catalogue in your Dropbox folder (or linked to Creative Cloud – or any of the other Internet storage solutions).

The idea of keeping my Lightroom catalogue in my Dropbox is a little scary to me, but I have been keeping a copy of my Lightroom catalogue, when I remember to update it.  Then I thought how about automating the copy to my dropbox folder.

Windows now has great tools like robocopy for intelligent syncing, copying and mirroring. For us Apple Mac users its even easier as with the OS being UNIX we have a whole toolbox of tools we can use.

I decided to use the tool rsync to mirror my Lightroom settings and catalogue to my Dropbox but then how should I automate it.  Well the easiest way is by using Automator.

automator

First I selected a Run Shell Script action, and added my Rsync lines.  I then added another action to display a notification.

Notification

That way I get a notification when the copy has completed and the Dropbox sync starts.  I set the script to run on login so periodically I now get a backup automatically to the internet.

Adobe Photoshop Shortcuts

CompositI love command line shortcuts and most apps have keyboard shortcuts to speed up your work flow.

Most people know that Command-S ( Ctrl-S for Windows) saves a document and is much faster then taking your hands off the keyboard to reach for the mouse/trackpad.

Here are a few common ones I use when editing documents in Photoshop.

New…Command-N (for Command use Ctrl for Windows users)

Open…Command-O

Save…Command-S

Undo…Command-Z

Step Back…Shift-Command-Z

Copy…Command-C

Free Transform…Command-T

New Layer…Shift-Command-N

Layer via Copy…Command-J (feels like my most often used command)

Merge Visible to new Layer…Shift-Option-Commamd-E (Option is Alt in Windows)

Lasso Tool…L

Spot Healing Brush…J (Toggle to different heal brushes Shift-J)

Brush…B

 

Some of these options are also programmed into my Wacom Tablet and Pen to speed up my work flow.  The key is to just find a few things you do a lot and then learn the shortcut for them, its amazing how much time you can fine yourself saving.