Category: Computing

I 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.

Terry White always has some great Photoshop tips. I remember how tough it was getting started and learning the basics, but this is a very good starter guide.

Before you do dive into using Photoshop, its a very good idea to get the Colour Space and Working Space, I have covered that in my blog before,here: https://brown-family.org.uk/colour-spaces-working-spaces/

Well 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.

 

Since 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.

I 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.

With the recent Adobe updates, I find I now have three copies of Photoshop on my laptop, which with its limited disk space, is an issue. You think you would get option to replace or keep both in case you have lots of plugins.

With Adobe CC we were promised regular updates instead of the traditional release cycle of eighteen to twenty four months, instead we seem to have had this big new version dumped on our machines.

A lot bloggers are commenting on this, some of the best comments I saw was from Scott Kelby on his blog.  It turns out we have had a lot of updates but there has not been much of a song and a dance about them.

Lightroom – So what did we get in Lightroom V5?

Heres the gist straight from Adobe’s release notes:

Release Notes

New Camera Support in Lightroom 5.5

• Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark II
• Fujifilm FinePix S1
• Nikon 1 J4
• Nikon 1 S2
• Nikon 1 V3
• Olympus OM-D E-M10
• Panasonic DMC-GH4
• Pentax 645Z
• Samsung NX3000
• Sony DSC-RX100 III
• Sony A7S (ILCE-7S)
• Sony Alpha SLT-A77 II (ILCA-77M2)

New Lens Profile Support in Lightroom 5.5

Mount	Name
Canon	Sigma 50m F1.4 DG HSM A014
Canon	Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM C014
Canon	Tamron 16-300mm F3.5-6.3 Dill VC PZD MACRO B0163
Fujifilm	Fujifilm Tele Conversion Lens TCL-X100
Nikon	Nikon 1 NIKKOR VR 10-30mm f3.5-5.6 PD-ZOOM
Nikon	Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3G ED VR
Nikon	Sigma 50mm F1.4 DG HSM A014
Nikon	Sigma 18-200 F3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM C014
Nikon	Tamron 16-300mm F3.5-6.3 Dill VC PZD MACRO B016N
Nikon	Tamron SP 150-600mm F5-6.3 Di VC USD A011N
Pentax	Sigma 30mm F.14 DC HSM A013
Sigma	Sigma 50mm F1.4 DG HSM A014
Sigma	Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM C014
Sony Alpha	Sigma 30mm F1.4 DC HSM A013
Sony Alpha	Sony Alpha 28-75mm F2.8 SAM

Bugs Corrected in Lightroom5.5

• Improved responsiveness in Develop module while Lightroom mobile sync is occurring.
• Custom Develop module default settings were not syncing correctly to Lightroom mobile.
• Initial rendition in Develop would sometimes appear posterized.
• Undo function failed and applied a preset instead.
• Scaling looked inaccurate when scaling to 200% in Windows.
• Manual slideshows sometimes did not advance to the next slide as expected.
• Aspect ratio changed when modifying the crop rectangle and when rotating the crop
• Image flips between portrait and landscape after switching orientation while shooting tethered with Leica S cameras.
• Fixed issue with Fujifilm X-T1 raw images appearing too bright at high ISO settings when using Dynamic Range 200% and 400%. Unfortunately, this fix may affect the appearance of existing images captured with this combination of settings. It is recommended that you (1) purge the Camera Raw cache via the Preferences dialog, and (2) review images shot at ISO settings higher than 1600 for unexpected brightness changes.
• Fixed image quality issue (noisy result) when applying spot healing to floating-point (HDR) images.
• Fixed issue with reading lossless compressed Nikon raw files (NEF files) from the camera models listed below. Previously, some images could be read but would appear as random noise, whereas attempting to open others would result in an error dialog. You will need to purge your Camera Raw cache via the Preferences dialog.
  • Nikon D1
  • Nikon D1H
  • Nikon D1X
  • Nikon D2H
  • Nikon D2Hs
  • Nikon D2X
  • Nikon D2Xs
  • Nikon D100
  • Nikon D200

Last week we had lots of Adobe updates and along with the updates CC2014 was announced, so I promptly downloaded the new Photoshop and gave it a quick test from a studio shoot I did a couple of weeks ago.

I only used the features I am used to so did not notice any major changes yet but i’ll be giving it a better test later.

We also had Adobe Lightroom V5.5 and updates to Lightroom Mobile with is now being available for iPhone users.