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LATEST NEWS FEBRUARY 7th 2007: LIGHTROOM, GEAR & MORE

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Latest News February 7th 2007

Uwe Steimmueller's Preview of lLghtroom 1.0 is online is a work in progress and already shows his personal style and attention to clarity and we evaluate this here.

Yesterday

LIGHTROOM 1.0 TUTORIAL: The learning curve to be a whiz at Photoshop CS2 is no trivial task.
Well Photoshop was never really designed from the outset for working photographers. However, Adobe now has its flagship product, Lightroom 1.0 out with great ambition.

The goal is nothing less than to be the one viirtual workshop where images enter, are rated, classified, processed and sent to be filed, published or printed. Well, good news, Lightroom 1.0 is pretty straightforward. We will be introduce different training paths to Lightroom.

Michael Tapes at Rawworkflow.com, yes the inventor of WhiBal (and one of our first and key administators who worked to set up the vBulletin for our forum), has provided a wonderful set of free streaming video turoirials. A larger format DVD is available for a nominal ~$10.

The video is of good quality 4"x6.5" (10x14cm) and is broken up into segments of 10-17 minutes each.

Michael's style is conversational and and it's easy to follow. He repeats important stuff in a non-pedantic manner. I did pause and rewind several times to get the point, a simple thing to do.

So far, Michael has posted

01 - Introduction and Greetings 1:44 (min:sec)
02 - User Interface 15:27
03 - The 5 Module Tour 14:44
04 - Importing Photographs 14:43
05 - Getting Around 17:21
06 - Quick Develop Panel 9:53
07 - Coming Soon

Segments 8-?? coming soon

Watch the training Videos here I enjoyed them!

Then let's discuss the who subject of the learning curve in the Workflow Forum. Add your own perspective.


Previous News Update January 30th 2007​


DAM: Part 1. Getting Started at Organizing Thousands of images.

Ivan Garcia asked the question that Salesmen usualy pay shill to ask, because most people won't ask!

How does one sort out drives full of haphazardly filed images. different dates, events, importance, potential for re-purposing.

So I decided to take advantage of the opening and get the topic going here with illustrations and guidance anyone can follow.

The scheme is a modification of that used by Peter Krogh, customized for my needs and departing from his "one-master-catalog" concept to escape from slowdowns and crashes. But that's another topic for a later date.

The Latest News.
Scroll Down for Art Challenges.

OPF's Tony Bonanno featured in January Rangefinder.

Tony Bonanno has impressed me from the first time I saw his pictures.

HoovesDust27.jpg


"Hooves and Dust" as soon a it appeared affected me as iconic of the American West.

We have for some time had Tony's pictures, both architectural and from his Horse Roundup images, shown in our cycling front page galleries of this site.

Now I'm delighted to see that Paul Slaughter chose to write on Tony's work in the January Editon of Rangefinder Magazine.

Read more here.

Congrats Tony!


Satire on the Web Critics of your pictures Mike Johnston, always having his eye for humor and de-inflating the pompous, has written a column which since June 2006 has maintained persistent following. Under the innocent sounding and somewhat academic heading of Great Photographers on The Internet has presented a telling and incisive, almost, but not quite, vitriolic satirical photoessay on some of the greatest photographers of the 20th century.

It is humbling and cautionary!


Interesting Choice of Editing Tools for Digital Image Uwe and Bettina Steinmueller work closely together to create and print their pictures.

I should have pointed this out before, but now's still a good time. This is the list of the most fascinating and useful tools that they discovered helped their workflow in 2006. Well worth a look!

While you are visiting, go here too. The handbooks for RAW coversion, Printing, WorkFlow and more are packed with beautiful illustrations and totally up to date since they are sold as PDF documents that can be refreshed by Uwe so when you buy, it's up todate.

Review of the Zeiss 15mm T* ZM is now available here on the Luminous Landscape website.

zm15-pic.jpg


"These lenses, as with the ZM camera, use the Leica M series lens mount. These lenses started shipping in 2005. At first Zeiss used Hasselblad to distribute their ZM camera and lenses, in the USA at least, but this relationship came to an end, and since April 2006 Carl Zeiss is now distributing these themselves through a new sales organization which they have set up for this purpose."



Luminous Landscape Dowload Video
Michael Reichman announces that his highly successful video Jounal Series will be on sale for download
here.

Michael Reichman said:
Download Video
Since 2001 we have been publishing The Luminous Landscape Video Journal. This has been in the form of DVD videos – each issue containing interviews with famous photographers, tutorials, equipment field reports and travel segments. These DVDs are filmed in broadcast quality video by award winning director cameraman Chris Sanderson, with each issue now running around two and half hours in length. The current Issue is #15.

When we started publishing five years ago we asked our readers if they would prefer The Video Journal on VHS or DVD? The answer was overwhelmingly DVD. Since then VHS has faded into history. Now, in early 2007, technology has reached the point that we're ready to move to the next step – online download video.

We are now making our regular issues as well as special tutorial disks available as download video. All of the video content of each DVD is available. Each DVD is divided into a number of files or chapters for easier download. Content is available in two file formats – high-resolution QuickTimes and as lower resolution (and therefore smaller) m4v files suitable for playing on an iPod. Each Video Journal is available for just $9.95 – about a third the price of the Luminous Landscape Video Journal DVDs with shipping cost factored in. The additional advantage is that content is available immediately. No waiting for the mail or delivery service!

We are very excited about the quality of these download videos. Until very recently video files small enough for download were blocky and pixellated. With the advent of the MPEG4 and the H264 codec, this is no longer the case. While the video quality of the DVDs is still superior, the high-res QuickTimes, which measure 640 x 360 pixels, give excellent viewing up to twice their native size - easily suitable to sit back and watch on a computer monitor. The greatest surprise is looking at the iPod compatible files on an iPod screen - if you're thinking 'Squint TV', think again. When combined with the high quality stereo sound, watching these videos for an hour or so is a real treat and these files can be viewed on your computer screen as well – albeit at a smaller size: 320 x 180.

To answer the obvious question: yes, we expect to continue publishing the DVD edition and will do as long as there's demand. We have been filming in HD for the past 16 months and as soon as the BluRay / HD-DVD format battle settles down we also expect to begin making an HD edition available as well.

My recommendation is that you spend the $9.95 to try it out. My opinion is that Michael puts together an entertaining and easy to follow rescource by which one can stay at the cutting edge of practicality in approach to modern landscape and street anf travel photography. His opinions are, well Michael Reichman, ecclectic but at the edge. I think you'll enjoy the downloads! (Disclosure, I have no business relationship with LL).


*Star Explorer update

Thise of you who need to shoot photographs seemlessly to your Smugmug.com gallery know it's done flawlessly with the product5 of our own Nikolai! Well now it's up to cersion 164!



What's new:
Upload Queue: added Save Upload Queue item to the upload toolbar and to the context menu.
Upload Queue: added Reveal In Explorer item to the context menu.
Upload Queue: added Open Image item to the context menu.
Main menu: moved View Current Log File menu item into a Log File submenu.
Main Menu: added Open Log Folder menu item to the Log File submenu there so it's easy to browse the older logs.
Perused configurable proxy settings to multithreaded (MT) upload
(proxy server, user name, password, port).
Improved MT error handling (don't ask:).
Perused configurable HTTP timeout to MT upload.
Perused configurable repeat attempts for MT upload (0=ad infinitum).

Sharpening With a Stiletto Nikolai not only programs, he writes too and he is engaging. He has reviewed Dan Margolis' approach to sharpening in CS3 as put forward in Margolis' 5th Editon of his book, [url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/032144017X/ref=dp_olp_2/104-7908805-9487148] Professional Photoshop .

Nikolai said:
With the new PS CS3 it seems that you can put your sharpening into those smart
filter layers at any time and at least get an idea of what you gonna have. Later you can move this sharpening group to the top of the layer stack and even disable it if you need to work on something else. You will always be able to return to it and adjust the radius, threshold, amount and other things.'

Read the rest here.


(Disclosure, I have no business relationship with Nikolai).



Challenge Leica M8 Sailing Boats at Sunset

Did you recieve the Sailing Boats M8 files? These are again by Steve Teitelbaum. We have the first RAW conversions and processed images posted by members here.

Here's the new material for "The Boats at Sunset to use creatively, with any RAW prrocessor, to make one picture. There are 2 boats, a buoy, the setting sun, reflections on the waves and birds to include in your own version to optimize this scene.

http://www.yousendit.com/download/RcIPhVi1bWx5TA==

Are you interested in having a go?

Challenge: Santa Monica Shot from a Car

The new Photography as Art Challenge id to derive an Art Work from a snap shot of a girl reading a newspaper is getting interesting responses. Read more, here .
 
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Harvey Moore

New member
Asher,

I ran across the online photographer a while back, cool blog site.

I chuckled at his taking to task some of the historical icons in photography.
 

Diane Fields

New member
I was so pleased to see the article about Tony in Rangefinder. I particularly love the image you posted above--and others too. Congrats Tony.....

Diane
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
News is updated in the top post. The latest news frist!

If you have items for the news, just included it in a PM.

Moderated fora such as this one and several education and service Fora Downtown take a little longer to appear since content needs to be checked for accuracy and relevence to OPF.

You can post anywhere else immediately and without any censorship!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Latest News February 7th 2007

Thanks,

All your comments and experience with such learning tools are welcome!

Asher
 
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