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Time's moving fast!

I'm now already one week at ipernity and I like it :)

Loads of nice photos to watch, nice chats with nice people ... already feels a little bit like "home" ;)

The only small disadvantage: a blog article made me finally order Adobe Lightroom (I've already had heard many things about it but this was the 'final kick') ... we'll see how I'll manage to use this software ... perhaps I'll write here about it a la 'the most stupid mistakes you can make' *g*

Michael

lightroom

today it was delivered :) A really impressing piece of software! Also the ergonomy is excellent clear directions of usage (horizontal from left to right main tasks, top-down the possible tweaks of one task).

But unfortunately I'm already missing something of my previous workflow (I knew this would happen ;) ): rotating pictures, so that foreground or prominent objects (walls etc.) aren't lop-sided ... well, perhaps I only haven't found the function yet and else I have to concentrate more on it when taking pictures ... ;)

 

 

Dinner for One

This is a first result of a first test. And by the way, the neat light comes from a lightsphere 2 (clear) ... ;)

Michael

Lightroom (2)

Basic impression: Okay, this was a fun week, mostly because I love exploring new things :) As I already mentioned, I nearly had arranged myself into something that may be called a 'workflow', it looked like this:

1. imort raw files onto harddisk
2. do corrections of exposure and white balance with the EOS Utilities
3. export into 16Bit Tiffs
4. open each file in Paintshop Pro Photo
5. do croping, and rotating
6. do some coorections with graduation curves
7. perhaps do some other things like sharpening and denoising
8. save files for archiving as jpegs and delete tiffs

That's a lot of things ;)

Now this week, I haven't used any other Program (except one, that comes later) to work on the pictures :)

So, the long enduring process of exporting all the pictures into a temporary file format is gone (Lightroom still could do that with the option 'edit with external program'). Each of the 'working' steps above would be done in the screen "Develop/Entwickeln" going top down the menu at the right side :)

The Library: I now do realize, that importing of all my archive CDs and DVDs wil slightly fail!

Having done that with only a small amount of my discs, lightroom is already getting slower by each imported picture (10000+ in moment)!

The conclusion I plan will be, to have at least two Databases/Libraries: one for the "latest" pictures that are still on hard disc and not archived, and at least one for the long-term archive, if not two (a third one with the "very old" pictures).

So hopefully, the every-day-library will be the smaller one, and this way the faster one ;)

lightroom printing

Printing: The printing functions are wonderful, but to me unusable :)

Although I'd love to use the 'multiple pictures on one sheet'-function, Lightroom produces flat and 'green-yellow'-toned prints (the right one on the picture, the left print was the jpeg-export, printed with the windows image viewing utility) :(

So far: this must be a translation of the color profile lightroom does in the moment of printing, and that although this was intentionaly left to the printing driver! Another point of the help was '... if left to the printing driver, make sure to use the Windows-ICM profile in color adjustments ...', hehe Windows Vista doesn't know any Windows-ICM color-profile ;)

... perhaps I don't wait for the german 1.1-update, we'll see ;)

Finally: Nevertheless I absolutely don't regret switching to Lightroom! The processing of the pictures is a lot faster now (had 100+ pics last weekend, and a tenth of the time developing them) :) The "printing thing" isn't that important, so that it could change my opinion. :)

Most of the time, my amount of pictures I take is within a two-scale range. (and the "always plugged" 1GB Ultra2 CF card fits my needs)

But sometimes on events, partys, or as now on vacations, I arrive home with several hundrets of photos (480 raw files the past weekend) ...

good morning

For comparision: in february I took nearly 250 pictures on a film fest, and it took me about 8 evenings to sight and prepare (the "old way") an output of something around 200 photos.
Now, the photos of the past weekend were done just on one evening :)
(480 input, 320 output)

(and alright I'm a freelancer, so I'm used to count the time ;) )

In the README-File to the Update of LR to version 1.1, adobe writes the following:
"Printing on Vista using the Manage by Printer color management setting may produce unsatisfactory results. It's recommended that specific printer profiles be selected for that setting."
Well yes, you may call false colors "unsatisfactory results" *g*
So I need color profiles for my selphy 740!?! Where to get them, canon themselves don't have any ... :(

So I'm curious what the 1.1-update brings (just installed, not tested yet), we'll see ;)

The thing with panoramas

BTW., LR can support creating panoramas! :)

Panorama (1)

You'll probaly think "what, why that? LR isn't meant to do that ..." *g*

I'll explain: The thing I mean is called 'synchronize'! You refurbish one single photo of a set that is meant to get a panorama one day ... then you apply the settings to all of the photos of the set pushing the synchronize-button, finished :)
(beware: when you've selected all photos of the set, look again before hitting this button! There are two grades of highlightening in LR: one for the selection and a little bit brighter for an - hmmm, let's call it - 'active selection'! If a non-edited photo is actively selected, all of the selected photos get it's - non-existend - settings, and even worse: the already edited photo is 'naked' again ;) )

The benefits are clear: the stitching software (I use PanoramaStudio, it's nice and easy to use and runs with the sacred help of WINE under Linux - my main operating system) finds fitting places between pictures more easily, has nearly nothing to do to chage brightness and colors of the given pictures and so far works faster and more exact! That's it :)

Seit Mittwoch ist es nun wieder soweit, die Bayreuther Festspiele haben begonnen. Die Stadt hat sich herausgeputzt, so dass sich die Gäste hier wohl fühlen.

Als neugieriger oder auch nur schaulustiger Bürger kann man sich auf dem grünen Hügel allerlei Promis anschauen:

Mitte August ist dann alles wieder vorbei, und Bayreuth verfällt dann wieder in einen kleinstadtähnlichen Zustand :)