The Lockdown Posts
- At July 22, 2020
- By John
- In Book, News, Photography
0
Monday, March 23rd, 2020, the day all our lives as we had known changed. The Covid-19 pandemic had taken a foothold in the United Kingdom and the Government announced that Lockdown measures are to be put in place, forcing us to stay in our homes, bar essential trips to the shops for food and some daily exercise. Our daily lives suddenly changed beyond comprehension.
The mantra became
“Stay Home, Stay Safe, Protect the NHS”
Most people, like me, suddenly found themselves with more time on their hands. A lot more time. A time perhaps, to finally start some of the projects you’d been putting off for years. Social media suddenly became much more important in our lives, to help us stay in touch, communicate, inform, entertain and ease the boredom. For myself, it was a time to finally begin sorting out my large library of photos, update my software, improve my photo processing skills and make some photo books. I posted one or two pictures to Facebook, as I occasionally did anyway, but at the behest of my sister, it soon became an almost daily ritual. These would become my Lockdown Posts.
A snapshot of the Lockdown posts on Facebook
My first official Lockdown post occurred on the 1st of April, and I continued posting almost daily until the 5th July, 2020, although as Lockdown began to ease, so did I, so I didn’t quite conform to posting one image every day. The end date was originally going to be the 4th of July, but I extended this to the 5th which was the 75th Anniversary of the NHS; it just seemed more appropriate.
At first, the images were pretty much selected at random, but at some stage (around late May perhaps?) it just seemed perfectly logical to make them a subject of a book. From then onwards, some of the images were paired up and chosen with the book layout in mind. Many of the images are re-discoveries or previously unprocessed and long-forgotten images, but the whole process proved quite a voyage of rediscovery and quite a cathartic one at that. It’s resulted in a bit of a Hodge-potch of 90 images, but one that provides an interesting snapshot into my photographic body of work. They are all now posted on my Lockdown Gallery, and you can see them all together here.
Lens Correction for Lightroom 3
- At April 29, 2010
- By John
- 0
LIGHTROOM News
Having watched Terry White’s excellent video of some of the new headline features in Adobe Photoshop CS5, one of the functions I really hoped that would be included in the release of Lightroom 3 was lens correction. Well now it’s official, lens correction will be included. Yesterday Adobe released a You Tube video from Production Manager Tom Hogarty who presents a walk through of the Lens Correction Features within CS5 and states that these features and more will also be included within the final release of Lightroom 3.0.
In addition to manual controls to correct for geometric distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration the lens correction in LR3 will include profiles for many Canon, Nikon and Sigma lenses. The video features one of Canon’s most popular lenses the 24-105m f4.0 L lens, which is good news for me as it’s on my 5D mark II most of the time. The profiles will also be included in Adobe Camera Raw 6 (ACR) Photoshop plug-in which presumably will be released around the same time as LR3. Adobe will also be providing a free Lens Profile Creator Tool, which will include a number of test charts for you to photograph so you can create profiles for any lens.
This is great news for Lightroom photographers and at last we will no longer have to create an intermediate file to straighten those horizons and bowed verticals and correct for perspective. I must admit being to having been a tad disappointed with the new features in the original release of LR3 beta One, and not quite overwhelmed by Beta Two either. However, lens correction is one of those features that was pretty high up on my wish list and I’m sure there’s lots more surprises to come. Now I can’t wait till the the official release. let’s hope it’s not too long!
Resources
Adobe Release Lightroom 3 Beta 2
- At March 23, 2010
- By John
- In Lightroom, Software
- 0
Lightroom News
Adobe today have surprised everybody today by releasing a Beta 2 version of their forthcoming Lightroom 3 software. The first beta version was released in October 2009, but I doubt anybody expected a further version before the final release. You can download the new Lightroom 3 Beta 2 version here.
Almost simultaneously with the Beta-2 release the usual first-looks, video clips, reviews and resources have appeared on the web from those in-the-know and the regular Adobe insiders.
Adobe have stated:
“We’re offering a second public beta of the next release of Lightroom to give you a chance to preview the progress we’ve made on the new features and enhancements in the upcoming version. It’s an opportunity for you to evaluate a select portion of the new features planned for Lightroom 3, to help the team discover and address issues if any, and to send feedback that the Lightroom team can use to make Lightroom 3 an even better digital darkroom and more efficient assistant for you”
However if you’ve had cause to visit the Adobe Lightroom 3 forums recently and viewed some of the criticism there, perhaps that, and I suspect the release of Aperture 3 by Apple may have played a part in this unexpected release. It may be that Adobe are buying some time due to Aperture 3 and I would hazard that an anticipated June release of the full LR3 probably looks unlikely now.
That asides there are a few new exciting features on offer that I’m sure will keep the bulletin boards and forum contributors buzzing for a while. Probably the most headline grabbing of these is functionality for tethered shooting; however it’s only for a limited set of the upper market professional Nikon and Canon models; Sony and others will presumably have to wait, but I can see this being a controversial point for starter. One other much requested feature now included is support for Video files, which can be added to your library, rated, filtered, and even made into collections. Some of the other improvements include:
- Improved performance and faster importing and loading of images.
- Full implementation of Luminance noise reduction.
- Further improvement of Colour noise reduction.
- Additional functionality to Watermarking.
- Improved folder browsing with the ability to dock folders to make it easier with long file hierarchies.
- Ability to use point curve editing in the tones curves like Photoshop
- Additional criteria in smart collections
- Sharpen brush can be set to blur
These are just a few of the enhancements in LR3B2 with much attention paid to the engine under the hood, with a lot of the bugs ironed out focus placed on improving performance and speed.
SOME First IMPRESSIONS
One of the much requested features on the Adobe forum was the ability to edit the Tone curve in the same manor as Photoshop. Well now it’s included, and by simply clicking on the Point Curve icon at the bottom left of the Tone panel, editing is switched to Point mode. Photoshop fans will be in familiar territory, but I for one for one, found Lightroom’s Tone sliders far more intuitive and easier to control.
I’ve only briefly toyed with LR3B2, however, as PC user (not MAC) I’ve really noticed a significant improvement in performance. LR3B1 I found prohibitively slow, so much in fact I seldom used it for anything but trying out the new functionality. This was a common theme amongst PC users reporting to the Adobe forum; it was almost if LR3B1 release was aimed specifically at MAC users, where it’s performance seem admirable. LR3B2 is really quite lively on a PC, rendering is much faster, so is zooming, and even switching between modules seem much more responsive. Mind I’ve yet to test this on my large desktop library back home.
Resources
If you want a quick run down of the new features and functionality of LR3B2 a good starting point would be to checkout the Adobe TV video walk-through by Julieanne Kost Julieanne Kost here, which as she so often reiterates, is excellent! If you want an more information check out the one by Ian Lyons at Computer Darkroom. Other resources can be found listed on Tom Hogarty’s Blog, and there’s another video from Terry White here.
Go ahead and download your free copy now!
Lightroom 3 to be released in May 2010?
- At February 02, 2010
- By John
- In Lightroom, Software
- 1
Software
If you mosey on down to Michael Reichmann’s excellent Luminous Landscape web site you’ll see he has announced a Winter Cheer-up competition. He’s giving away 10 copies of the full version of Lightroom 3 when it is to be released. Actually he’s not giving it away, nor is it much of a competition, you simply have to buy and download one of his video tutorials between now and May 1st to stand a chance of winning.
Michael is an Alpha tester for Lightroom so you can bet your bottom dollar he is one of those “in-the-know” as to when LR3 will be released. If his competition finishes 1st May, my guess that will be the intended release date for LR3 or very soon after.