Category: Computing

The iPad (or insert your favourite Android, Palm WebOS tablet OS here), are consumption devices and toys not suitable for real work is what you are always told.

Well to be honest they’re not suited for Photography heavy lifting but its surprising what you can accomplish.

I went out with a small Billingham Hadley Bag carrying an iPad, Leica M8, spare memory cards, camera batteries a couple of lens for a walk while the rest of my Photo gear was safe in the hotel.

I took photographs of the pretty little church, a few other buildings and a few people who looked interesting.

We then passed a rather small old garage that had stood unused for a number of years so I had to take a few shots.

After a meal we were relaxing and I decided to see what I could do with a few of the images. I have a iPad2 and using the camera connection I imported all my photographs, I usually make a backup of my photographs at the end of the day like this when I do not have a computer to hand. This then gives me two copies, one on the memory card and one on the iPad, once back home I always ensure I have three separate copied before wiping the cards.

Once on my iPad my first job was to use my PhotoSmith App to create a collection holding today’s Photographs, then I added location meta data and keyword’ed them. This App can then sync this information over to my master Lightroom Catalogue. I then used my new Raw processing software PhotoRaw. I loaded a few images and created a few full sized jpegs with a few tweaks.

The photograph of the garage was one I most interested in. I thought as a desaturated imaged leaving a little red in the imaged but removing the rest would work well. The kind of work I wanted to do really needed the HSL model of Adobe’s Lightroom but what can you do on an iPad?

With the garage image in PhotoRaw I had the import sharpening set to Auto, I have tested a few of the manual sharpening import options and there is even a setting for my Leica but Auto seems to produce the same settings as the Leica setting and seems to give the best results.

I gave the image a slight contrast boost, lifted the shadows and warmed and desaturated the image very slightly. I then saved it as a full sized jpeg and opened the image in Photoshop Touch. A quick selection of the coloured area to place it on its own layer, I could then turn the other layer into a Black & White image. Another layer containing the inside view enabled me to brighten that area. Once again it was saved and then opened in SnapSeed, where I warmed the image and added the frame. And so there you have it. An imaged processed from the Raw and the published on the web, all using my iPad. Even this post was written and published using it.

A few people have mentioned to me that they could not find the new Horizontal and Vertical adjustment tool in Lightroom V5.

When I first heard of this tool I immediately went into the crop tool menu (short cut just press the ‘r’ key) and looked for the new tool there.  As you can see above no new tool there, though you can see the new circular gradient tool, to the left of the adjustment brush.

The new tool has been put in the Lens correction section.  If you want to see it in use then check out the post last week. So if you want to have ago, download the beta and have a play.

Originally this content was in a simple website written in a simple text editor. A few years ago I decided to try the WordPress application. I was very impressed and built this new site using WordPress.

I also have a website which I use to promote my Photography services, if you want a portrait, portfolio or for me to photography your wedding then www.rbphotographic.co.uk is where you can find out a little about these services.

It was also a simple website, with fairly static content. Well today I have also moved it over to WordPress. It’s proved to be a interesting learning curve, as for the main content I imported the contents of this site. I’ll post a things about the steps and issued in moving data between sites as I am sure there are others who will hit the same issues as I had.

I don’t usually blog on Wednesdays but the garbage being written on the forums about Adobe’s creative cloud has driven me to my keyboard.

So the big announcement at Monday’s MAX Conference was that Adobe will not be releasing a CS7.  Instead you will have to subscribe to Adobe’s Creative Cloud and their subscription based model. Basically instead of purchasing CS7 Photoshop or the the Suite you rent it, either by the month or year.

The internet forums, twitter and googleplus are full of outraged users.  CS6 will still be available for many its a great choice but for the latest version you will have to subscribe.

Most users are complaining about a) The Price, & b) The Cloud aspect.

The headline figure is £50.00 a month, well actually its £46.88 if your not already a photoshop user.  Thats pretty steep I would agree, but then again Photoshop costs £800 full retail and gets upgraded every twenty four months.  Thats over £33 a month for just one package.

The problem with the rumours, half truths and rage about Adobe is just that, half truths.  Yes the full plan is £46.88 but that gets you every single Adobe Suite Product.  That is very good value.  If you just want Photoshop then you go for the single app subscription, which is just £17.58.

There are also offers available for people who are already registered users.  I contacted Adobe and they offered me a single app subscription for just £8.73 and for all apps £14.29.  If you use two or more apps from the suite that is great value.

There is a problem for Photographers who just user Photoshop and Lightroom, the suite offering for those two is far to expensive, you are better off subscribing to just Photoshop and purchasing Lightroom as normal, and Adobe have confirmed it will still be sold retail.

The Adobe Photoshop Manager did recently admit in an interview that they are looking again at the offerings for Photographers so hopefully they can come up with something a little better.

Lets now address the second complaint, the cloud aspect.  People are saying that the applications now run in a web browser and will only work on a fast internet connection.  Well that is wrong.  You download it from the cloud and install and use as normal so no change.  The license checking is a little different.  If you subscribe for a year then the software needs to check back to Adobe to see if your subscription is current every 99 days.  If you subscribe by the month then I believe its 37 days.

With some of the tablet demos and syncing between Lightroom and iPad’s that Adobe have demonstrated then I think its not going to be long before people think the subscription to Adobe’s Creative Cloud is essential.  Lets hope then can do a good deal for people who just want Lightroom and Photoshop.

Of course if Adobe ramps up the price too much next year my view on the price will be very different.

More details on the Cloud at ‘The Grid” of the Cloud syncing and iPad editing for Lightroom.