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Another weekend shot to….heck

Jason2 Comments

First it’s the teeth, then it’s the toes – anyway, another weekend of hopefully getting out and shooting for a change of pace (I really do prefer to be out taking pictures, rather than in PS or LR editing them, or even be inside on a computer, but being in the IT industry as a profession, well, that’s the fallout…anyway I digress).  As it is, I am stuck inside again, so after a day of actually walking around on my feet, I am trying to post with one leg sticking out to the side (left) and leaning back to write.  Needless to say, it’ll be a short post.  As a kind of wrap-up of the various projects I have in the works, here’s a week in review:

  1. Work is almost finished on the web gallery articles.  I have one more video tutorial to record on JAlbum, and two articles to share with the readership.
  2. My magazine cutting frenzy continues as I shred through stacks of almost two years of photo magazines.  The binder is getting thicker and the magazine stack is getting smaller!
  3. I’ve launched a beta for a new idea on a sub-domain for Canon Blogger, The Online Photograph Test (or TOP Test), which has already seen a few corrections and improvements, so thanks to those that wrote in and emailed…keep ’em comin’!

In other news around the photo world:

  1. Adobe launched their new “TV” service…it’s really a flash-based online multimedia portal to all types of content, naturally with much of it focusing on Adobe products.  Seems like a cool enough idea, and probably intended to compete with YouTube, but on with a more professional and polished approach.  We’ll see if it catches on – my guess is yes with the poster boys talking it up all over the web.
  2. Adobe makes the weekly news twice as they re-released Camera Raw 4.4 that were previously pulled.pulled, have since been re-released by Adobe.   This link is for the Windows version of CS3, LR and Mac versions are also available from the download site – just use Google as needed to find the version you are looking for.
  3. In case you missed it earlier this week, Donny did his last episode (my guess is “of the season” in another hysterical segment of You Suck at Photoshop -careful with kids around…’nuff said.  Well, it ‘s been followed up by a “honorarium” of sorts where you can vote for the DIY’er in both Photoshop and comedy categories.  Kinda funny, but not the same as Donny – so go watcfh, then vote to bring Donny out of hiding!
  4. What The Duck makes it’s Friday appearance below, which means my leg is getting numb and the hour is getting late, so it’s time to bid a hasty adieu!  Good night, have a great weekend, happy shooting, and watch those apertures!

What The Duck - Friday, April 11th

How well do you score?

Jason2 Comments

First off, let me state that I am aware I missed a post and did not really give much advance warning.  Now that it’s done, and at least ready to see a beta response, I guess I can announce it here.  Well, before I make any announcements, let me back up a little bit.  Since inception about 6 months ago, I have endeavored to put forth meaningful and thoughtful comments and ideas on this blog – mostly about photography.  Sometimes I have presented things from as professional a perspective as I can muster, and at other times, I have been admittedly personal in my expressions.  Either way, it’s probably fair to say that I have been putting a lot of time, thought, and energies into posting articles, content, and interesting materials for all to enjoy.  This got me thinking about the constantly changing nature of blogs.  Something new each and every day – the time and energies to putting new and fresh content out on such a regular basis can be overwhelming, to say the least.

So, with that little nugget, I was thinking – what if I were to put together something more constant, but still with the ability to change and improve?  Not articles mind you (and my set of web gallery articles is still progressing – almost there, I promise!)…but an online, interactive approach to sharing and offering resources to help people learn more about photography.  Now that would be cool, right?  Well, here it is!  It’s the brand, new, just been born, never-been seen before:

The Online Photography Test

That’s right – I’ve been putting some time into setting up a site that can give people a place to go and see how they are doing with their photography.  Right now, it’s in a beta form, with only 20 questions, but I am hoping to add more with time, and also to add various types of tests.  Eventually, I see the site as having a set of metrics where people can go to see where they’ve improved, what they need to work on, and where they are pretty solid in their knowledge base.  Naturally I am starting with the basics and intermediate material here, with more advanced stuff to come later.  There will hopefully also be a comment section eventually, where people can submit ideas for new questions, and discuss the material or see some dialog there within the photographic community.  That clearly is “just a dream” right now, but should be fairly easy to implement if there is sufficient interest.

So, without further ado:  stop over at the beta test site and take what I am affectionately calling the OPT Test.  Take the test and see how you score!  Did you do well?  Any material you would like to see added?  Dropped?  Changed?  What do you think of the wording and format?  Since comments aren’t enabled there – please come on back here to CB and share your thoughts on the newest and latest addition to the CB set of resources.  I’ll put forwarding on at the final site once things are more cleaned up and there are various versions for people to explore.  So, take the test, and see how well you score!  Happy shooting and see you back here again tomorrow (watch those apertures!

Photoshop Reloaded – Web Galleries with a twist!

Jason4 Comments

A couple weeks ago I did a tutorial about how to create web galleries using Photoshop. As one of the steps, I advised to sort through your images first and pick out the ones you want to put in your web gallery into a dedicated folder to make the process easer once you start in Photoshop – well, that advice was a little short-sighted.

I got my most recent issue of Photoshop User (from the great folks over at NAPP), and read through an almost identical tutorial, with one notable exception – they used Bridge! That’s right, you can use the companion software to Photoshop, Bridge, to select your photos rather than sorting them before hand. Well, hey that’s cool, right? Saves you a step. Well, it could – depending on whether you have any sort of file management in place. See, in photography (and with most disciplines that use a lot of digital files), there’s an idea called digital asset management (or DAM), that gives you guidelines on how to save, store, archive, and design an effective means of managing your digital imagery. If used properly, any image you want is only moments away. It involves a lot of pre-planning, effort, and discipline to implement and maintain. So, this week I re-did the Photoshop Web Galleries tutorial with that in mind.

You get a peel into some of the basics of how I implement a DAM system that works for me, and an explanation as to why using the Bridge method for selecting your photos for a web gallery is better than the first method I used. *cough/duplicates/cough* Having said that, there are still a few nuances that Lightroom has where Photoshop lacks a little in this regard, but, if you have PS, you can streamline things a little more by incorporating Bridge.

So, without further ado, check out this week’s episode, which I am admittedly naming for perhaps a little visibility:

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Monday Madness: Some news and Making Money ideas for Small Timers

Jason1 Comment

Hello again all, and first off, let me apologize for not making my typical Friday appearance, some stuff came up here that called me away from the blog on short notice. I’m back today though, and I’ll give a Friday Funny at the end, courtesy of WTD, but for the time being, I have a few exciting things to share:

  1. I am almost done with my photo gallery articles! – I will likely have another podcast or two on using other apps like Jalbum, but would like to finish out the written version first before devoting time to that. More to come this week on that subject.
  2. As my photo friends return from PSW chock full of their own tips and excitement at the show, I saw two of them throw a few trackback links to some stuff from here at CB, so thanks and shout outs to Mark and Jason!
  3. As if I don’t have enough things to do on my plate, I also started yet another project that I had been meaning to pick up. I am ditching all my photo magazines! I have been a regular subscriber to Popular Photography, Shutterbug, Rangefinder, PC Photo, and Photoshop Insider for some time now, and they are now all going in the garbage can. Read on for more info on that!

Continue reading “Monday Madness: Some news and Making Money ideas for Small Timers” →

All over the map…

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Well, I know I am all over the map here, with a couple different tangents going on. I had started things last week with the theme of how to create web galleries using different software platforms, and looking at some written materials for publication. When the Photoshop World keynote and Adobe Labs announced Lightroom 2.0, I felt compelled to download that and give it a quick run through. On noticing that the “dual monitors” isn’t exactly what I had hoped, thought to share my own first look of that as nothing else really showcased how it has to be configured.

Well, today I finally bit the bullet (again) and got Quicktime Pro installed on the macbook. I had done so on my Windows desktop so I could save video files as source files for viewing while off line. Since they did not have a camera and were another OS though, I couldn’t take advantage of the Quicktime Recorder feature…actuallly it’s called Quicktime Broadcaster.

As all that was going on, I had also been doing some test prints through my own R18000, a local print shop (Sam’s Club) and an online printer. To really get a broad range of print types, I chose the metallic inks from Mpix and the results just blew me away. I think I will end up framing this one as it really did turn out better than I had thought. I know, the Photoshop guys talk up Mpix a lot, and I had already known about (and used) them, but these metallic inks are just amazing. Great prices, great results, and speedy delivery…it’s like Newegg is the place for computers, B&H is the place for cameras, NAPP is the place for photography training, and Mpix is now the place for online printing! Gotta love people who know how to do a job and do it really well! Thanks Mpix!

I went ahead and recorded a short quicktime recording to illustrate the Mpix results. It’s kind of hard to tell in this video, and it was really a half-baked idea, but figured why not….it also shows the “real” me which I’ve not done yet. Enjoy! 🙂

Lightroom 2.0 Beta – First look at the dual monitor! (A preview video)

Jason4 Comments

lrsplash.jpg

Just before I hit the sack last night, I saw that Adobe went and released Lightroom 2.0 in its beta form. I’ve already downloaded it and checked out some of the key changes. Until this release, I had used a trial version on my one desktop, and decided I’d tr it for 30 more days just a week or so ago on this main one. Well, right after recording a tutorial on creating web galleries in LR 1.x Adobe goes and does this! I shoulda known better.

The NAPP staff was clearly in on the development as they’ve got a page already set up with a first look on a lot of the key items. Great info and the features are definitely the ones I’d been waiting for – guess it’s time to buy! In my earnest to see everything I noticed though, that Matt K. does not show the dual monitor display on his first look. Was rather disappointed, so….in the interests of showing to others what I just saw, I did a little brief first look of my own. The resolution is super huge (1024×768), and it does look a little “off”. The reason here is because my one monitor is a 19″ and my other one is a 15″. So, on Windows it looks a little funny. But, it does get the gist across for those interested in seeing what’s there for the latest version. Check it out in the Quicktime download attached to this post.

As for the nuts and bolts of changes, I’ll leave those details to the pros over at NAPP and other blogging venues. Some of the more salient and interesting ones I saw today are here:

Only a few wishes…I didn’t immediately see any support for tethered shooting…but I guess that’s could go on a wish request since it’s still in beta. Also, it looks like the second monitor support means just 5 view options: loupe/grid/live loupe/locked loupe/compare/ and survey. I was hoping the 2nd monitor would be customizable with the LR panels (like Photoshop), but I’ve not figured out how to do that yet. If anyone knows whether that is something I am missing, or if it’s not been added…let me know.

Anyway, that’s the big news today – LR 2.0 beta was publicly released during the keynote at Photoshop World! With Photoshop Express, and tons of other R&D stuff coming out of Adobe – it’s a good time to be a fan! SO, without further ado, here’s my first look at LR 2.0 dual monitor setup options! Quicktime only version today (renders faster than the flash version and has wider viewing from those that visit the blog).

Funny April Fools posts

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Today was a day of mirth and merriment on the blogosphere…with lots of fun stuff specific to photography too. Here’s a few I ran across in my daily perusal:

Happy Fools Day all….if you’ve got your own stories, photos, and pranks, by all means, share ’em! The double whammy of a root canal on Thursday, and a wisdom tooth extraction yesterday has left me a little worn out, so I’ll keep it short today.  As my parting thought for the day, I’d like to throw some props out to Jason D. Moore.  He’s got a great website, with some very cool tutorials, and a blogroll of the “Who’s Who” in photography.   Regular posts will resume tomorrow. Happy shooting and watch those apertures!

Creating Web Galleries using Lightroom

Jason2 Comments

As Photoshop World is starting tomorrow, I imagine most are watching the pros blogs to see what news, events, and info is forthcoming from that semi-annual event. Something tells me I will be ponying up the $500 to go to the September one in Vegas. (Benefits of NAPP membership notwithstanding…) In looking at the classes that they are offering for this Spring I guess two things caught me as surprising – first that there are so MANY classes to choose from. In a way a lot of options is a good thing, but it also has downsides. The upside is there are lots of choices. The downside is that sometimes the subject matter is so compartmentalized, you really have to pick a path and stick with it. In other words, if you pick one subject, you are also conversely choosing not to go to other subject matter. Case in point, I would like to have seen Painting With Photoshop by Bert Monroy on day one, but that conflicted with the Top 10 Photoshop Techniques by Matt K. – and since very few classes are repeated, there’s no chance to catch the other class later during the event.

In light of that – one small suggestion for future shows (like anyone is even listening to me)… offer fewer classes but repeat them more – that way you give everyone a chance to see everything. I realize it sounds kinda cheap, but for the price tag of entry, I really would rather get to learn from everyone rather than 3 or 4 instructors only.

The other thing that surprised me is that the head honcho himself, Scott Kelby, is teaching very little this go around. One of the things that has made Scott so endearing to so many is his supremely effective teaching style. yet for this Spring ’08 show, he’s only teaching three classes (and one of them is basically his 7-point system which can be gotten from Amazon for a mere fraction of the cost for Photoshop World entry. I’d rather spend my time learning stuff I can’t get from a book. As kind of the “front man” for NAPP, Photoshop World, and leading pitchman for Adobe products, it would have been nicer to see more classes with him up front. Maybe that will change for Fall ’08.

Although I should also note that Scott just busted up his leg the other day, so is heading out on crutches, and that may have mandated some scheduling changes. He is also delivering the keynote speech, which I am sure took a great deal of time to prepare, so there are possible mitigating circumstances involved with his decreased participation in the instruction. Since I hopefully will have saved enough to go to the Fall ’08 one in Vegas, I’ll look forward to seeing if he’s doing more instruction.

In other, more directly related news to Canon Blogger, I’ve finished the tutorial for this week a little early, so will post it here now. Last week I went over some of the basics of how to create a web gallery using teh automated feature of Photoshop CS3. This week, I look at another product in the Adobe family – Lightroom. Setup and generation is pretty quick and easy, just a couple pointers on what to avoid and precautions to take in putting everything together, from both the perspective of the photographer and the viewer. A little shorter than last weeks tutorial, but still hopefully useful. The flash version is linked, and the Quicktime version is attached for those tuning in via feeds, iTunes, and with iPods.

Web Galleries II (Lightroom)

Happy shooting and watch those apertures! For those going to Photoshop World, have a blast!

Here we go again…another round of web galleries!

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It’s Monday again, and I’ve been working on the first round of revisions to my set of articles on creating a web gallery. As the age old saying goes, if you really wanna learn the nitty gritty of how to do something – try teaching it! To take that to the next level, try teaching it without an audience!

After sharing my first rough draft of the Introductiion and Chapter 1, I saw some areas where improvement was (and possibly is still needed.) I tapped away at that over the weekend, since the weather turned out to be such a downer (cloudy with a chance of rain and just blustery and cold – bleah!). So, no shots to share today, instead it’s a revision of the Chapter 1 for the new set of articles. Also, I am pleased to say that Tuesday’s tutorial is finished and should be prepped for early release, so it should be available after work today. In the meantime, here’s the edited Chapter 1. Feel free to share your thoughts, feedback and discussion in the comments section. Until this afternoon then, hope all your snaps are good ones! Happy shooting and watch those apertures!

The Nitty Gritty on Photoshop Express

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I was going to wait until Monday to make this post, but in light of all the hubub, decided to go ahead and make an exception this go around and do a weekend post.  So…without further ado:

Adobe on Thursday unveiled it’s latest incarnation of photo editing software, an online editor it’s calling Photoshop Express. In the aftermath of the online communities reviews, first looks, tutorials and grabbing the headlines, some salient questions are coming to the fore on the value that PE will bring to the marketplace.

What is Photoshop Express?

First and foremost, even heavyweights from NAPP are quick to say that PE is not really Photoshop. Scott Kelby, Matt K., Dave Cross, and the whole bunch were clearly in on the development, but only to a degree – since the Photoshop moniker was there on release. In retrospect, Adobe may re-brand this down the road so as to clear up perceptions of what it’s trying to accomplish here. With that in mind, it does seem pertinent to say that Adobe is likely trying to bring a web-based application into play that can compete with the likes of popular online image-sharing repositories like Facebook, Photobucket, and Picasa (which you can log in to via the PE interface with what is likely a means to transfer images from one repository to another.) It does seem interesting that there is no similar facility in place between PE and Flickr though…perhaps someone could share some thoughts on that in the comments?

The Legalese

The other big hubub surrounding the release was a bit of legalese that granted Adobe some pretty potent rights on images uploaded. Full terms are disclosed here. The specific part that many seem to be having an issue with though, are on transference of licensing. Specifically, the terms stated that:

“Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.”

Apparently there was enough of an outcry (especially the license granting) that Adobe is re-writing the terms to accommodate the concerns. This comes according to some news from the blog of John Nack (who works for Adobe). It will be interesting to see how things roll out from here.

Photoshop Express Backlash

Finally, a question about its value came up on the NAPP forums where members share their feedback on everything NAPP and Kelby Training has going on. Some have expressed concern that even though the new application is being touted as intended for the “18-24” crowd, that with the photo editing that is available, this could further dis-illusion the average Joe Public into thinking that they can do their own photo editing and no longer need professional photographers. As one poster put it, “it’s giving the consumer a false sense of what it really takes to truly manipulate and retouch photo[s]”.

Conclusions

From my perspective, as both a photo enthusiast and as a consumer, that this is merely an attempt by Adobe to expand their market footprint. They’ve already got the pros and enthusiasts (like myself), but there is a huge market share out there of the next generation to appeal to and gain market share from. With the internet expanding past its infancy and getting to the point of ubiquity, the growing trend for online collaboration and Web 2.o applications becoming more common, it only makes sense for Adobe to expand in this regard. Why should other companies like Facebook, Photobucket and Picasaweb get exclusive access to this demographic?

As for the notion that PE will dip into the market share of professional photographers and retouchers – it’s unlikely to have an impact on the higher end professionals that cater to corporations, businesses, and clientele who are interested in the highest quality. Where there likely will be some fallout is the GWOC (guy-with-camera/gal-with-camera) who wants to hang out a shingle. It’s actually a win-win situation for Adobe because the GWOC’s will find that there is no market for them unless they upgrade their skills and buy a higher end product like full versions of PS. At the same time, the next generation of photo enthusiasts is likely to try this Photoshop Express for a while, then want to do more. It would only make sense to “upgrade” to the standalone application for their computer. My hats off to Adobe for an excellent marketing plan to expand their footprint in todays competitive marketplace.