Cloud Computing is the new buzzword. Rent computing power, hosting, email etc all from on line providers. Its not really new but has become a lot bigger.
The last few weeks some of the big players have had major outages, Google, Microsoft and Amazon have all been hit. A self inflicted outage recently occurred at Apple, due to a security issue. Apple closed their developer site for a week while the issue was fixed.
As more and more of us rely on these services repliability and knowing whats happening becomes more important.
If your an Apple user then its likely you use their iCloud services. If you are having issues you can find out the status of Apple’s services here:
Back in the golden years of Hollywood the retouchers tools were a soft B pencil and a scalpel. In the darkroom cardboard masks and little circles of card to stuck to wires to dodge and burn was required.
In the hands of experts, blemishes were removed and complexions made perfect.
Today we use our mouse or touchpad, but often for more detailed work the experts day a pen and tablet is the order of the day.
This week is Photoshop World and many manufactures and software developers are releasing new versions. One of the offers that did catch my eye was the new Wacom Intuos Pro from Wacom. I am not sure yet if this is genuinely a new pen and tablet or just a rebrand of the well known Intuos 5, but as I will be having a major office redesign soon I may just have to test one out and see if there is a place for one in my current workflow.
Adobe came in for a lot of criticism when they release the Creative Cloud. If you just wanted a single app is was expensive, if you wanted and used a lot of the apps then it was good value.
As a photographer I want Lightroom and occasionally Photoshop. For users like me the full price is too much. Well today during Photoshop World Adobe announced a new offer better focused on photographers. They say its a limited offer which would be a shame as its much more focused on what a photographer needs.
As with still cameras which have steadily increased in resolution, with have seen TV’s continually step up in recent years.
From CRT TV to Flat screen, then HD; in our consumer society there is always a need to make people upgrade. 3D was the next big thing, but while moderately successful in movie theatres was less so in homes. Now we have the next big thing 4K which has 4 times the resolution of HD.
I suspect we will see still cameras with 4K soon, we have already seen some mobile phones with 4K but I expect thats more marketing over usability.
One interesting aspect of this is going to be what happens with media and to broadcast. While Blue Ray can cope its likely we will need an updated format as we are close to its limits and that leaves no room for extras. Broadcast is even more of an issue, we would loose the majority of our channels as there is insufficient bandwidth to deliver 4K channels in the current numbers.
Interestingly Sony have come up with an interesting answer. Last year there first 4K TV coast $25,000, this year the current model is $5000. For deliver of content they have released a 4K media server at $700. Movies can come on either SD card or by download.
For many physical media is a thing of the past and it seems 4K may mean that for movies as well.
If you are interested in seeing some of the new features in Adobe Lightroom V5, B&H together with Scott Kelby have put together a free video available on line here.
Where possible I have tried to standardise on as few post production software packages as I can.
The majority of my work is all done in Adobe Lightroom but sometimes you need either the added power of a third party plug-in or application or its just easier to do in some packages.
I feel its better to be a master of one package and try to do as much as I can in it.
In the above photograph you have a basic flatly rendered JPeg, I have just added a crop to tighten up the image. I then ran it through my usual Adobe Lightroom work flow and I was pleased with the result but I still felt it lacked a little zing.
Postproduction in Lightroom
So I exported it as a tif into Photoshop CC to see what I could do with it in there. Now starting with a colour image there are at least four different ways to process an image to make it Black & White, including some very advanced techniques using LAB mode and also creating separate layers each Black & White based on the luminance values of each of the Red, Green and Blue Channels. All of which give very advanced control. Here through I just wanted the image to have a bit more pop and zing!
Dodge and Burn, Overlay method
First of all I thought I would do a little more dodging and burning to improve the local contrast of a few areas. Now the dodge and burn tool in Photoshop is not the best and can cause issues and colour shift. Not too important with a Black & White image but still there are better ways of accomplishing this.
Now this technique is one that I learn’t from a printing tutorial by Jeff Schewe. Create a new layer and fill it with 50% Gray.
Now set the Layer mode to Overlay. Now to lighten parts of the image just paint on this lay with white (Dodge) and to darken parts of the image, just paint on this layer with black (Burn). Using a soft edged brush you can quickly and easily fine tune the image.
The next part is the contrast. I want the darker parts of the image to have a real boost in the contrast. I do this with a curves adjustment. While this has been possible in Lightroom since V4 it is more controllable in Photoshop.
Levels
For the dark portion of the image I have added two control points to steepen the curve and thus the contrast. I have added a third control point to bring down the mid-tones and return the highlights back to normal. For this image I felt the contrast in the mid-tones was still a little to high so I added a second Curves layer to bring it back under control.
I finished the image with a little sharpening.
So here is the finished image and this months “Picture of the Month”. I did try and reproduce this just in Lightroom but I could not get the same degree of control and the image lacked contrast.
For a while now if you bought a Leica you got a free copy of Lightroom V4. Leica have now made there expected announcement that all new cameras, whether a re-badged Panasonic to a Leica M or Leica S, will come with a license for Lightroom V5.
Whether you have the latest SLR’s and big fast glass or a basic compact, with its mix of static displays and flight demonstrations, there is plenty for everyone to photograph. One common disappointment is that often the photographs come out too dark. Shooting into the bright sky can fool many light meters. Back in the old film days I would switch to manual and take a reading from a grey card I would place in front of me to meter off. The same light falling on the grey card was also falling onto the aircraft and this would give me a good basic exposure.
In case your wondering about the shot above, its a rather poor composite of two different shots I took when the Red Arrows flew over Lincoln. A bit of fun you might say in Photoshop.
Cloud Computing is the new buzzword. Rent computing power, hosting, email etc all from on line providers. Its not really new but has become a lot bigger.
For a while now if you bought a Leica you got a free copy of Lightroom V4. Leica have now made there expected announcement that all new cameras, whether a re-badged Panasonic to a Leica M or Leica S, will come with a license for Lightroom V5.
