Category: Computing

General computing with a bias towards Unix, OS X, Apple products, for use in Music and Photography

Posted on

The New Mac Pro – Photographers and Video/Film Editors Dream Machine

It has been a long wait but finally Apple released the new Mac Pro today.  Despite what people may tell you this is not a standard PC and no you cannot build one for $1000 despite what some people are claiming.

Macbook Air -top

The high speed standard 265 GB SSD and processor come to more then that and then there is the EEC memory and the twin workstation class video cards.  No this is a workstation and if you spec up a similar class of workstation from Dell or HP you will see that this is a well priced and well spec’ed machine.

Of course you may be asking will I be getting one.  Well when I get round to next upgrading my cameras I will definitely need more horse power in the photography processing department.

So I see my future desktop needs either being met with a high spec MacBook Pro/Air or a maxed out Mac Mini.  We will have to see what updates are planned.  A Mac Mini is a little low spec’ed in the graphics department but processor and memory is a good choice.  A high end MacBook Pro is close to the price of a low end Mac Pro so I will not say never.

Difficult choice, if only Apple would produce a Mac Mini with decent graphics.

RAW FIle with Extensive Editing
RAW FIle with Extensive Editing

Still until then i’ll keep looking at the Mac Pro and dreaming.

Posted on

Profiling Reminder

Profiling and Trending

Just a reminder, as my machine reminded me today, do regularly re-profile your displays.  Also remember to use your display for at least a few minutes to let it warm up before profiling as the colours can change in the first five or ten minutes until your monitor as fully warmed up.

I tend to re-profile every four weeks and my profiling software reminds me automatically when I need to get it done.

Why profile well check out one of my previous blogs https://brown-family.org.uk/profiles-screen/

Posted on

Adobe Lightroom V5.3 available today

Adobe SiteI have had a busy day today working at home (loving the new monitor).  While I had the little Adobe reminder at the top of my screen it was not until tonight I checked to see what it was all about.  Well it turns out Adobe Lightroom V5.3 is out today.  Seems to be mainly new camera support so nothing new it actually interest me but good to see anyway.

Adobe Update

Posted on

Editing – sorting the wheat from the chaff

If I am shooting fixed subjects like landscapes or buildings then is likely to only be a few shots of each scene. When shooting wildlife or people then I can end up with a thousand or more images to have to sort through.Lightroom editing

Well the first job is to get those image on to internal hard disk of my computer. I then import and copy them into the local Lightroom. The import also copied the files to an external disk. Once the majority of the editing is complete the Lightroom files get moved to external disk. By this time Apple’s time machine will also have a copy on its disk so I’ll havE several copies before the memory cards get wiped and I also clear down the local hard disk for the next set of images.

Something to remember with Adobe Lightroom V5 is that you can create something called a smart preview. This enables you to edit and image but not actually have the image with you, great for when your out and a about but wanting to get some work done on an old MacBook Air with only a small SSD inside.

So you now have a thousand or so images sat in Lightroom, how do you quickly find the great ones. Well there are several ways but I find it a lot easier if I use two monitors, one set to grid view and the other set to loupe.  This enables you to flick through the your images in grid view but evaluate them properly.

I also tend to group similar photographs together, you can then just pick a couple of good ones that ones that are very similar.

I also find its good to do an edit close to taking the photographs but also go back over your old work and look again at the ones you did not select.  To often you can chose photographs because of the amount of effort it took to capture and not based on the content.  Time can be a good equaliser.

Posted on

Diagnosing Adobe Lightroom Issues

KeyboardAfter the fun of yesterday I thought I would blog a few notes on diagnosing start-up issues with Adobe Lightroom V5.

First step is to see if its your catalogue where the problem lies or with the app or plug-in.  Try opening another catalogue, or if that does not work then create a new catalogue.  Option-Click on the Adobe Lightroom icon and when it launches it will prompt you to open an existing catalogue or create a new one.

Yesterday I could create a new catalogue but once I had closed the catalogue it would not re-open.

Once you have ruled out the catalogue which is unlikely you can try resetting your preferences.

The following is direct from Adobe’s website:

Reset your preferences

To reset your preferences, do the following:

  1. Quit Lightroom.
  2. Navigate to the preferences file:
    • Mac OS: /Users/[user name]/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.Lightroom5.plist
    • Windows 7, 8: C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Preferences\Lightroom 5 Preferences.agprefs
  3. Drag the preferences file to the Recycle Bin (Windows) or Trash (Mac OS).

Recent versions of Mac OS have hidden the Library folder under the user account so a quick way of getting there is to press Command-Shift-G then in the box type:

~/Library

This will take you to your library folder where you can find and delete the preferences file.

This fixed many issues in Adobe Lightroom V4 and V5 but it did not fix mine.

The next step is to disable your plug-ins, you might wonder how if Adobe Lightroom is hanging on startup but if you remember to hold the Option key as you click on the application icon, create a new catalogue then once in disable your plug-ins.

If this fixes your issue you can then start up a plug-in at a time, shutting down Lightroom and restarting each time until you find the plug-in that causes the issue.

You can then replace the plug-in which should fix the issue.

Posted on

Timing – things always go wrong at the worst time

I had a great shoot on Sunday with the lovely Amy, so today I was keen to get some photographs processed and posted up.

Amy and the Tree

Sunday evening I imported all the photographs and backed everything up.  Then Monday I made a quick start editing a couple so I send some to Amy.  Then just at the worst time we had a power cut.  I had no idea when it would come back so I had to stop and go to work in Lincoln.

Tonight I promised myself to work hard and at least get some basic processing and key wording done.  Well Adobe Lightroom V5 would not open, not matter what I tried.  My current catalogue and some older catalogues would just hang.  I tried the Option-Click trick and opened Lightroom with a fresh new catalogue and that would work, but when I exited, once again Lightroom would hand when I tried to open it, even opening the new catalogue I had just created.

I deleted the preferences and also tried removing the templates as that in the past has caused issues, all to no avail.  The trick that finally got things up and working was to Option-Click, create a new catalogue, then while I was in the blank catalogue, go through and disable all my plug-ins.  Adobe Lightroom now works and I quickly produced the above image.

I still have to figure out which plug-in is causing the issue but that can wait until another day.  I have editing to do.

Posted on

Wacom Tablet – starting with the Pen

Wacom Intuos Pro

With the house move as well as Caroline having her own sewing and craft room, I have my own office which I use as my digital darkroom.  I am still in the process of getting everything set up the way I want but one of the new purchases to make editing easier is my new Wacom Intuos Pro Tablet.

When you talk about Tablets then Wacom are the market leader.  Many people love tablets others prefer the mouse.  If your thinking of trying one then you have to give it a good try.  The analogy I heard was this “For the first week its likely trying to use a paint brush with your feet.”

I have to admit, the first few days were difficult, I could definitely use a mouse or tack pad a lot easier and get better results.  I have now been practicing for just over a week, a mix of just messing about, plus some actual serious editing in Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop, but as well as that, I have been using it for just general web browsing and controlling the computer.  I am now getting to the point where it is starting to get to feel natural.

This weekend I gave it a good try out in Adobe Illustrator, I made a scale plan of the bottom of the back garden so I could start to make a plan of where to site the chicken coup and bee hives to fit in with the current garden layout as I wanted to leave the main tree and statue that we have at the back.  It was my first time using Adobe Illustrator and its a very odd program.  Like its name sake Adobe Photoshop it has a very steep learning curve. I watched a few tutorial videos on the internet but it is still a very confusing program for a beginner like me to get the hang off.  Still it allowed me to use use the tablet while I concentrated on the program.

Posted on

Splash ID Crashing on Launch

I use a password manager on my phone and computer, I have a lot of passwords to remember for lots of different systems and as I change many of them every month keeping track of some of the more seldom used ones can be difficult.

My password manager of choice, SplashID stopped working after the last upgrade on the laptop, but still worked fine on the phone.

The other day I finally got round to searching the web for the answer to my problem as it would crash after I entered the password ironically!

A quick search of their support area soon found an answer.

Unfortunately the fix did loose me all the data but as I had the data still on my phone a quick sync remembering to set the phone as source soon had all my data back.

Always good to have more then one copy of your data!

The trick is to find the com.splashdata.splashidmac folder in ~/Library/Containers/ and rename it.  Then relaunch the app and log in.  It then works but has no data.  Set your phone as the source, re-sync and your back in business.  Once you are sure everything is working delete the renamed folder as there will now be a new one with your configuration that works.

Posted on

Moving Home Update – Making the Office Usable

There always seems to be a never ending list of job to be completed when moving house.

This weekend saw us finally empty the storage units, so all our things are in our new home.

We are now surrounded by boxes but we our gradually getting them unpacked.

20131111-074137.jpg

Another big step this week was the assembly of my desk. Setting that up emptied several boxes so thing are moving a long nicely.

It was nice to edit my photographs using two monitors again but after calibrating my old Sony CRT I noticed it struggled to reach the appropriate brightness.

Looks like my decision to buy a new monitor for Christmas is justified.