Since i’ve been shooting in RAW format on my Canon 20D, i’ve explored the new software called Adobe Lightroom. It’s a great program to edit large numbers of images, especially in RAW format.

Some of the great things I like about this software are:

Apply preset to selected images

I’m pretty confortable with this software now but i’m continually surprised by features that make things easier, the apply preset to selected images is a massive time saver. I can colour correct, grade and enhance one image from a shoot, save the preset then select the rest of the photos taken at that setting and apply!

Tone curves

This is different to colour curves as if used properly can give a more subtle and controlled change of tones. This is a new way of editing tones with the highlight, midrange and shadow ranges.
Black and white colour mixer

This is great because typically on photoshop you would have to edit the photo then desaturate it to preview it, but now you can just conver to greyscale and mix the colours in the black and white preview. Now we can push or pull colour ranges in black and white- add that to the exposure and “blacks” slider we can make really contrasty and impacting black and white images.

The comparison views

By using a split screen comparison view, we can see what changes have been made and compare it to the original. Nothing is worse than getting so engrossed in a photo and making so many changes that it ends up being worse than the original. Very easy to do in photoshop with the plethora of plugins.

Multiple image correction and editing

Just like we can apply a preset, we can change any setting to multiple images. A big time saver

Reference to photo/Batch renaming

Working with lots and lots of images, it does make it hard to keep things organised. Especially when you copy photos from your memory can and they are named funny.. yes “ha ha” funny. ok no.

In Lightroom you can rename photos and sequence them to your liking.

Crop tool with 3rd’s grid

This is a big cheating tool, but so is digital photography. This allows you to recrop photos taken and align points of focus such as eyes to 3rd grid line. This is great for making photos more compelling and interesting. Every shot can be pin-point accurately composed.

Photo ratings

This is a good tool to help sort the good from the bad. Rating images from 1-5 gives just enough scope to know which photos are better than others. In Lightroom you can also view and sort photos in the library or shoot by rating.

File sorting and dating

By choosing to sort photos by date instead of name allows you to keep track of your busy life as a photographer. Usually i remember events better by date than the people i’ve shot. It just happens to work that why when you do multiple shoots a day over multiple days.

Adobe lightroom will be available just in time for me to need to use it. I can’t imagine working with digital photoshoots in photoshop. Imagine importing each RAW image individually! No thanks.

I haven’t even used the slideshow or the printing modules yet, and already i’m addicted to this software. Why don’t I just marry it!?

Adobe Lightroom is in Beta and can be downloaded from the Adobe labs website.

Here is a cool little colour scheme generator to create accurate colour schemes for on-screen use –Even just to play with and help spark ideas! Hey, its free! and you don’t have to pay for it either! Exclamation mark!

There are two version to play with. I didn’t think i liked the second version but after playing with it, it seems easier having the variations eg. pastel, light pastel etc.

Pantone Solid to Process Guide PDF

I found this guide going through some emails that i had sent to myself. Yes i send myself emails.

Anyways, I’ve been scouring the web to find a custom pantone solid to process guide to use with my laser printer. If I need to do short run print jobs on my printer, I can now colour match to what my printer will spit out. If you don’t want to fork out for a proper pantone guide More…

I’ve been using Digital TV for a couple of years now, and its been most annoying that when i want to see what is on Channel 10, I have to wait for a rotation of shows in the TV guide sub channel. I want to know what is on now and what is on next.

I don’t care about what was on at 8:00am this morning, I don’t care about what other shows this station features unless they tell me what time it is on! Seriously, this photo was just a random pic taken, i didn’t wait for it to take to emphasise a point, this is it.

Too much space is wasted on useless images like the lime – why do they have that? Why advertise a show that is on “later”. Why spell out “Channel – it is the most dominant piece of text on the screen. I just want to know what is on now and what is on next! Ok, maybe show a couple of items of what i missed, but seriously if they are going to rotate something, make it the first and last few shows, they are less important. If they are important to some, people will wait – it will work faster rotating less shows.

I’ve quickly whipped up a my own variation without any real thought just common sense. I’m sure if i had the resources that a CHANNEL would have, then more efficiency could be achieved.

In my variation, i’ve given the most important part of the tv guide- the tv guide the majority of the space. There is even room for the live preview and for any advertising. The bottom bar can be used for any tickering of weather or advertising, but things like the time, logo and date should be static.

I’ve highlighted the current show, and given it some sort of position in the middle to see how it fits in with the rest of the daily schedule. Emphasis is given on what is to come as i’m more concerned with that than what i can’t watch. Sure its nice to see what i’ve missed, but i much prefer to see what is coming.

The first and last two listings will rotate with shows which appear before or after the times of the shows that are viewed statically. If people really want to wait for shows hours before or after the current the can wait the short period of time for it to rotate. It is much quicker to rotate fewer items.Emphasis is given to the time as this whole schedule relies on the current time.

There are sure to be better ways of doing this, but you can see just from a quick redesign how this page can be better laid out.