Today, subscriptions are everywhere. You must pay by the month. But if you stop, you lose all your tool setup at the end of the month. Nothing is left, nothing is yours.

So, I prefer tools I can buy, that will serve me for years. If the service/cost ratio is good, I’m OK with purchasing a competent tool, but I don’t want to keep my wallet open at all times.

FastStone Image Viewer

The very first step in any processing is sorting. You need to move fast, you need to find the best images, sometimes in a batch of 10 (fast bursts are lethal for the number of images).

FastStone Image Viewer is a marvel in this respect: inexpensive, very competent in display and – above all – it offers a critical feature for sorting: it can display images 4 by 4 on the same screen for quick comparison. For example, you can zoom in on all four images in parallel with a flick of the mouse wheel and compare the quality of detail in the pre-selected images. Use the “Del” key to eliminate unnecessary images, and the “*” key to mark images for priority retention.

Since the software is free for amateur users, it’s even better. But a $35 lifetime license is still an attractive price to support the ongoing development of this indispensable tool.

DxO PhotoLab

Visualizing and sorting images is not enough. You also need to be able to work on them to fine-tune the rendering. FasStone Image Viewer has some interesting correction capabilities, but while this is sometimes sufficient, I can’t rely on it and need a powerful image processing tool (including RAW).

Photoshop has long been considered the benchmark. But the other tools on the market have really come into line. Today, there are only two reasons to choose:

• The user interface must be simple and effective
• Noise processing must enable you to gain ISOs to work in the best shooting conditions.

Adobe does this very well, but so do others. In particular, I warmly recommend DxO PhotoLab (not to be confused with DxO PureRAW plugin for Photoshop or Lightroom). The quality of RAW processing is exemplary. When it comes to noise reduction, it’s often the case that DxO does better than Adobe.

I therefore recommend two options:

1. Either you’re addicted to Adobe and need to add DxO PureRAW to maintain your usual workflow with incredible image quality.
2. Or you’ve discovered (with the trial version) that DxO PhotoLab is a perfectly fluid development environment that’s at least as comfortable as Adobe’s. DxO PhotoLab is French, and for €229, the software is yours for life. Upgrades only cost €109, but are not mandatory if you haven’t changed your camera (my main reason for upgrading).

I can’t get enough of DxO PhotoLab, and version 7 (yes, I know, version 8 is already out) is simply incredible in the detail it extracts from my RAW files.

A word of warning though: you need computing power. On PCs, a graphics card less than 3 years old is highly recommended to drive the processing engine.

IrfanView

This tool is a bit of a “tool bag” for my quicker DIY projects. For example, it’s very fast for image viewing. But it’s also remarkably easy to use for cropping or resizing an image without having to bring out the heavy artillery.

What’s more, IrfanView recognizes just about any image format (photo or not), which makes life easier for quick format conversion.

Sometimes, I am somewhat dissatisfied with the size of my digital photographs. The simplest way to improve (after the fact) is to run any Photoshop-like program, and apply a resampling (resize) preferably with the Lanczos method, in order to get 2x or 3x or 4x more pixels. It is fast and efficient, but it usually generates a slightly blurry but bigger picture. If the target is a large format print that could be watched from a short distance, or for something like printing on a very large canvas, I should have more details in the picture (more than what was initially collected by the camera). The image is still too small.

The other approach would be to use a software tool like Topaz Photo AI or the all-new Adobe Photoshop “Image Enhancer AI”. Those are Pro tools (“Pro” means “expensive”): Topaz costs 199$, its competition often relies on monthly subscriptions. For a normal guy (who only needs it a few times per year, at most), this is not applicable.

Why not look toward (free) Open Source tools? Fortunately, some are existing.

And I added another constraint: I want it to run on my own PC (no cloud resources and/or cloud subscription like what StableDiffusion requires).

The general idea

For a few months, I have been impressed by the multitude of Artificial Intelligence solutions (Didn’t you hear about something named ChatGPT?) and not only to generate human-readable text. Tools like StableDiffusion, Dall-E, or Midjourney generate spectacular pictures from a textual description (a prompt). But they often include a mechanism to extend their text-to-image activity to a much larger scale (usually they produce small pictures to sparingly use computer resources).

My solution – in details

I won’t detail the steps taken to reach that solution. But here it is.

One strong PC, with two options/directions that could be imagined.

• A powerful graphic/video card (not always, but often based on nVidia GPU).
• A super-powerful PC with (most critical) a lot of memory.

In my own case, I chose:

• i9-13900K (with a good AiO liquid cooler, because this beast can heat up quite quickly when running 100%),
• 64 gigabytes of DDR4-DRAM memory (you will hear that this is the limiting factor for the image size).

But, you could work with a smaller CPU (with a lot of patience), or a Mac computer.

Nobody would claim this is a cheap PC, but it definitely works reasonably well.

EasyDiffusion installation steps

EasyDiffusion is a free version of a tool very similar to StableDiffusion. You may install it on your PC, and it will run either on the CPU or on the video card.

• Download the installation program from the EasyDiffusion home page (according to your needs, you’ll choose the binary for Windows, Linux, or Mac).
• Follow the installation steps from the page, don’t worry about changing any option right now. You will need some patience (it goes and download additional models and other packages, it will build some of the files during the installation).
• Run the program from the Windows “Start” menu. This will open a Command window to run a few background things (no need to even look at this), then a browser window giving access to the EasyDiffusion user interface.

• For the first configuration, I would recommend clicking at the top of the page on “Settings” and selecting the following program settings:
  • Auto-save Images: YES
  • Save Location: select the appropriate directory to save your creations.
  • Open browser on startup: YES
  • GPU memory usage: High (with 64 GB of DRAM, you want to use it all or as much as possible).
  • Use CPU (not GPU): YES
  • Beta channel: NO.

Create a text file whose name should be YR_MoreResolutions.plugin.js with the following text contents:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Ski-SDUI-MoreResolutions
// @version      0.1-YR
// @description  More Resolution Options
// @author       Super.Skirv, JeLuF, YR
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {

	options="";
	for(i=6; i<=32; i++) {
		options += '<option value="' + (64*i) + '">' + (64*i) + '</option>';
	}
    options += '<option value="' + 3072 + '">' + 3072 + '</option>';
    options += '<option value="' + 4096 + '">' + 4096 + '</option>';
    options += '<option value="' + 4640 + '">' + 4640 + '</option>';
    options += '<option value="' + 6960 + '">' + 6960 + '</option>';
    options += '<option value="' + 8192 + '">' + 8192 + '</option>';
    document.getElementById('width').innerHTML = options;
    document.getElementById('height').innerHTML = options;

})();

• Install the plugin, by copying the YR_MoreResolutions.plugin.js file in the C:\EasyDiffusion\plugins\ui directory.

Operation and typical use

When arriving at the EasyDiffusion page in your browser, you will need to feed it with a source picture to enlarge and the right upscaling options:

• Choose the source image with the “Browse” button.
• Custom VAE: None
• Image size: 3072 (width) by 2048 (height) – for 64 gigabytes of DRAM.
  • This parameter is dictated by:
    • The need to work on an image as large as possible
    • The memory size limitation. If you have only 16 gigabytes of DRAM memory, you will need to reduce these parameters each in a ratio of 2: 1536 by 1024. But you can explore the optimum for your configuration.
  • Swap the parameters if the image is in portrait (vertical) orientation.
• Inference steps: 50 (this has practically no influence, you can leave the default value)
• Prompt strength: 0 (This is the critical value: It will ensure that EasyDiffusion AI never tries generating a new artificial image from the prompt text, but concentrates on the upscaling job).
• Output format: choose the right file format for you.
• Show a live preview: NO
• Scale up by 4x with RealESRGAN_x4plus (Avoid RealESRGAN_4xplus_anime_6B which is totally not for photography)
• The prompt (at the top of the page), and the Seed value (in “image settings”) are not used, except when naming the output file.

If you don’t have enough memory, you can always reduce the “Image size” or you get a message like the following:

The message tells you what memory size it tried to allocate/reserve. This will guide you when reducing the “Image size”.

If you are correctly configured, after a few minutes, you will see the result like in:

Notice: the new resolution is now 12288 x 8192 pixels (we left from 6960 x 4640 pixels, to reach no less than 100 mega-pixels). But, above all, the Artificial Intelligence (of the ESRGAN network) determined new pixels not only interpolated but imagined as complementary to the existing ones and totally credible.

In the picture used for this example, don’t spend time checking the blurred background. But take a look at the fine details in the structure of the dragonfly wings. It may not be perfect (from the professional entomologist’s point of view, there are anatomy errors), but the ribs/veins and the light reflections are very natural-looking, even in areas where they are only half-drawn or half-blurred. The same remark applied to the eyes and antennas of the dragonfly.

On the opposite, don’t even believe the proposal from the software: It’s no use clicking the button to upscale again to 20032 x 13376; You already reached the maximum size allowed by the available memory. You can’t go further with only 64 GB.

If you want to check the results, I made the files available:

• Original
• Upscaled x4

With Darktable, like with Lightroom, you can organize, store, visualize. But you also can modify/edit your photo pictures (in RAW as in JPEG), including in a non-destructive way.

It’s worth trying by yourself (with this kind of price, there is no downside).

• Download Darktable (in English).
• Download Darktable (en français).

It’s been years that I was tracking this product with great care. Here is the best photo news of 2017 (it will compensate the worst one from Adobe Lightroom).

I find several advantages to it:

1. At 5 frames per second on my Canon EOS 70D, the animal moves are decomposed enough to chose the best attitude (e.g. avoiding blinking eyes);
2. I also learned a long time ago that optical stabilization is not the perfect tool to remove strictly all the fuzz and inside a continuous shooting set, the second or the third is often a tad bit more precise, more crispy than the first one (the small move induced by pressing the shutter button will produce a minuscule imprecision that is not welcome on a large-sized  print when the tripod is not available).

Of course, this forces me in comparing thousands of photos. Two by two or three by three, I must choose the best one and dump the other(s). On Adobe Bridge, it goes very fast. But, if -like me) you started regretting the time of simple software prices (instead of monthly license rental costs), you want to go and look elsewhere.

On Windows (it would work on MacOS too), I tried Lightroom but its library management is definitely not living well with my (bad?) habit of transferring files from disk to disk, grouping and backing up in many locations (while handling more than 2 TB of archives). So what can I do? I had to find a better solution, preferably a low-cost one. Since I don’t like the idea of pirating a big executable version (is it still happening today?), I rushed into photo forums  and found FastStone FSViewer which is free for personal use on Windows.

The user interface is not the same as Bridge, of course. But you can easily and quickly compare 4 images. Maybe somewhat faster than on Bridge.

This is a free download and it is a good replacement for Adobe Bridge on Windows (I will no longer need to keep this old version, I can go freeware).

Again this month, I walked by a pro photographer on a mission to convince everybody to use (Roger, you know who you are!)

Even though the story is rather simple and fast becoming simpler.

What’s a RAW file?

When a digital camera catches a photo it takes raw data from the image sensor. If it does not do much, it stores them in a RAW file (easy, eh?) If it tries to handle them, it will try an improve them, reduce their size reasonably and it will store them in a different file format (99.99% as JPEG format).

Except in specific cases (entry-level smart-phones), all cameras are able to store a RAW file (if you ask). All cameras will know how to give you a JPEG file.
Except in specific cases (e.g. Linux), all common Operating Systems (MacOS/OSX and Windows) are able to read RAW files as well as JPEG. But even on Linux, it’s easy to find cheap (or free) tools reading RAW Files.

Advantages of JPEG

Really! All! tools can use it.

Files are compressed: They are as small as reasonably possible, use as little memory space as possible on the memory card or on the hard drive.

Drawbacks of JPEG

Compression is at the origin of some issues more or less perceptible depending on the original image:

Advantages of RAW

A RAW file contains all the range of informations captured by the sensor. On the real photo cameras (not smartphones), there is often a wide margin because the sensor is much more sensitive than what is normally needed by the snapshot. But tis is exactly what is needed to “save” some pictures which came out over-exposed or grossly under-exposed, where a JPEG has already lost the important information.

You probably noticed that some picture taken inside a building can come out very yellowish or that some landscapes can appear quite blueish. It comes from the color management automatically applied by the camera on the JPEG photo. For a RAW file, the color management is always kept as an external option that you can modify or choose at the last minute if you are not 100% happy with the engineers choice. You can decide in RAW while a JPEG will forfeit your possibility of choice.

Drawbacks of RAW

RAW are bigger than JPEG files (roughly ten times). So, you can store less pictures on a given memory card, or on a given hard disk drive. But, let’s recognize than this is getting negligeable in front of the permanent progress of capacities/sizes (and the corresponding plumetting prices).

Recommendation from YLovePhoto

Most cameras allow you to store both formats at the same time. Do it!

Then, you will choose which one to use according to the application. I recommend to start working on the JPEG (after all, engineers worked their head off to cover most situations). But, in some few cases, you will be happy to use the RAW version.

• to save an over-exposed picture
• to refine the details of a large size print
• to correct color shift on a tough picture (inside building with complex lighting, high in the mountain, sunset)

You’ll get the most of both worlds at the only (minimal) cost of size. But looking at Amazon prices for memory cards…

Sources and information complements

• PetaPixel: Why you should shoot in RAW
• These Are the Advantages and Disadvantages Of Shooting Raw (LightStalking)
• The Online Photographer: JPEGophobia
• Should you shoot in RAW or JPEG? (DIY Photography)
• RAW Software: What is Available and What Should You Use? (LightStalking)
• A RAW Feast on the Linux Darktable (Photo Editor)
• Photoshop CS6 et le RAW par la pratique : comprendre les courbes

Roger Pimenta on Facebook.
Roger Pimenta’s side company RejectionMedia web site.

But it does not have to be like that. There are a few important things to check and several key aspects to check during this important process. Buying a monitor is not simple, but it does not have to be a very complex protracted decision. Most of the critical factors are readily available (and often overlooked).

Screen size

The very first factor is the screen size. Choice is large from all manufacturers, but you must start by defining what is the optimal size you intend to buy. It comes from the size of your desk and the kind of confort you want to have (too large a screen means you have to be much farther from its front face).

Usually, you would not look at a size smaller that 23″ because most of the applications we use are crouding our screen surface with sub-windows, tool bars, multiple menus, etc. Those are all very useful but they eat up a lot of screen size. 23″ or 24″ screen sizes more and more appear as the minimum for confort.

But even more importantly, you should think about the resolution of your display. A large screen with too few pixels may not be worth it. So, check the maximum resolution accepted by your computer and see what maximum resolution the monitor candidates can accomodate. Today, it is fairly easy to get a 1080p/1080i monitor (displaying most commonly 1920×1080 or 1920×1200 pixels) or one of the higher resolutions like:

• 2560×1440 pixels
• 3840×2160 pixels, also know as 4k

(These figures may vary slightly with the exact size of the panel, but they are industry standards you will find easily on the market).

I would recommend that you start at 1920×1080 pixels, but also look at the higher end options too, since they bring a lot more confort (if you have enough desk space to accomodate them). 2560×1440 pixels with a 25″ to 27″ panel size is usually a very good size for our photographer’s needs. Going further would probably push you into a larger monitor. (30 inches mean a much bigger display on your desk and probably the need to watch it from a longer distance!)

Monitor technology

You will find all kinds of available technologies, with incomprehensible abbreviated names. But a few ones are important recognizing.

TN screens

Those are usually cheap… and look cheap too. Specially for us photographers. For one reason: This TN (Twisted Nematics) technology is very sensitive to the viewing angle. If you are exactly in front of the display, everything looks fine. But the more you move out of the exact axis, the more contrast drops and the more colors shift (mostly unpredictably). Things become quickly so unreliable that you should avoid them.

VA, AVA and MVA screens

Those have very good viewing angles and high contrast. But unfortunately, they are intrinsically less able to reproduce colors correctly.

IPS screens

Those are more expensive, but they have excellent contrast and are very good at displaying precise colors. Some of them are factory-calibrated to be sure that you get the maximum result and this makes quite a difference when you look at a photo.

Some technologies you should not care about

Some fine technological feats are of no use for the photographer (they are intended for other categories of monitor buyers):

• G-sync or FreeSync are strictly for video game fans
• Response times have nearly no influence on mostly static images we use
• Refresh rates should be at least 60 Hz, but which monitor is not? Higher frequencies will reduce eye strain but only marginally.

Some technologies you may want

Check for the presence of a USB hub or multiple video inputs to connect to your computer (VGA may be present but it provides a relatively limited analog input that is not up to the task of excellent colors rendering). You may appreciate the presence of loudspeakers, but this would have nothing to do with your photographer’s activity, I guess.

Color depth

The final critical feature is the size of the color space that the screen can display. SRGB has been known for years as able to produce adequate colors for a computer display. But it is also clear that if you have pictures in AdobeRGB, the color gamut (the extension of colors that are included is larger: You get deeper reds or deeper blues). Most monitors will now display 99% of sRGB.

I don’t like very much the usual graphic to display this, but the picture shown here on the right gives you a rough idea of what can or cannot be displayed.

Don’t compromise and never accept less than 100% sRGB. But pushing for near full AdobeRGB has a huge impact on cost. So, if you decide to go that way, be sure -at least- that you will have a stable light in your room (forget about a nice large window opening on the outside, lighting your desk and monitor), and that you will regularly calibrate your monitor for color stability.

Personally, I still consider that the cost of full AdobeRGB is still a bit too high (and it may stay that way for quite some years because of the inherent physical limitations of technologies currently used). But it’s really an open question if you live from your photograhic work…

After you buy

When your computer monitor arrives, the first and most important thing to do is to calibrate it. Either buy or rent a calibration sensor and you will be able to obtain the most out of your expensive purchase. Many people propose software (even free software) to do some kind of calibration. This is insufficient and very difficult to use if you are not trained for that softare.

I would consider renting a calibration sensor, contacting friends to buy one for several photographers, borrowing one from somebody else (even getting somebody to make you a gift). But do calibrate your monitor!

Until you do this calibration, you will not get the best your monitor can offer. And you will be surprised by the impact this has: It is immediately visible on nearly all the monitors (even on some of those professional monitors which come factory-calibrated).

Personally, I use a Datacolor Spyder5. Good software (easy to use), relatively fast and reliable.

When Adobe launched this kind of solution and when they made it compulsory in order to obtain the most recent version of their tools, some people warned that this was a major blow into the capacity to maintain a reliable capacity to work on our photos. Most either ignored the warning, downplayed its importance or or did not understand the full breadth of the risk. Today, the reality check is here; And it’s hurting real bad with thousands of professionnals waiting for the service to come back while trying to explain to their customers that nothing can be done until Adobe finds a solution (
I sympathize sincerely).

Of course, this suspended animation state is bad in itself (nobody missed that). But this is highlighting the issues at hand that were less obvious or more difficult to understand.

1. Unique/single failure point: If/when Adobe fails, we have no other option than wait. We are used to having a computer fail or a software stopping to work and -usually- it’s only (!) a matter of moving the DVD to a new PC, switching over to another workstation or another professional. Now, all Adobe customers fail in the same minute. This is a systemic risk like we are afraid of in the global bank system. No fall back option.
2. Opacity: The fact that Adobe Creative Cloud is far outside the scope of its users (except maybe some global-level customers who may have a direct line with Adobe management) makes it nearly impossible to have visibility. And in this kind of situation, we, the users, want/need to know immediately a/ what is happening, b/ what we can do to mitigate the situation (even if nothing is possible), c/ how/when the solution will be available. [And today, Adobe communication is an exemple… of what should not be done]

Is ease of subscription worht it? Is the flexibility of having always the latest release version at your hand worth it? This is anybody’s choice and the choice cannot be done for you. But, since we have some time on our hands (if your customers are not shooting on the phone right now), it’s time to think about our choices.

Sometimes, people will remember that GIMP is a program allowing to do digital photography on Linux. And, often, many people think that it is only available on this relatively uncommon platform. But, as a matter of fact, GIMP also exists on Windows. And, because of its price but also because of its features, it is recommended to at least try this Windows software.

The big news of this version 2.8 is the arrival of what its developers designate with the ugly name of single-window interface, which is actually a presentation based on a free window along with tools palettes.

This version is also able to handle layers (individually or as a group), to work on 16-bit or 32-bit pictures, but it’s the more discreet improvements that may be the most critical for user comfort and efficiency. Things like:

• The use of the Cairo library (which gives a much improved rendering of texts and graphics)
• The use of independent processes for save and export operations (which offer a much faster feeling for these long operations)
• Direct editing of text strings (rather than the editing in a separate window, for better Wysiwyg)
• The nicer design of many little tools like spin buttons and many controls

So, if you are not fully convinced by the small fortunes that Adobe is requiring from the customers at each new version, it is now time to upgrade your mind and check GIMP.

To get even more:

• All GIMP-related posts
• Download (freely) GIMP v2.8.0

• Instant Vintage Photo Effects with the FIL Script for GIMP
• How To Create Amazing Text and Font Effects in Gimp 2.6
• Fake Depth of Field in Gimp – DOF Explained will teach you how to handle (and produce) depth of field in a pictureusing GIMP (and it will also provide useful information which will be useful for every photographer, not only GIMP users).
• 5 top tips for GIMP users
• GIMP 2.7 for Photoshop Expatriates
• Content-aware resizing in Gimp is available through the excellent Liquid Rescale plugin for GIMP
• Free GIMP Plugins for Photographers
• Créer un effet de vignettage avec Gimp et Photoshop
• Puis, un site francophone très riche et principalement consacré à GIMP avec de nombreux guides et tutoriels sur la retouche photo (1point2vue.com).

Finally, Adobe has officially announced the newest Photoshop: CS6. We know about everything of it because of the beta which has been available for a few weeks already (and there are a few videos available on a YouTube channel, for you to discover all the new features). But there is one new thing which was left undisclosed up to now, the price.

If the basic cost for a full license is nothing new (some people, including me, were hoping to see a price drop like for Lightroom):

• $699 for a Photoshop CS6 license
• Photoshop CS6 upgrades from $199
• $2599 for the full CS6 collection

But there is now a cloud-based solution allowing a new rent option: US$50 or 20€ per month gives you access to a wealth of applications: all the CS6 Master Collection applications, including Photoshop Extended. The only catch is that you have to pay a full year of subscription. This may not look great if you only need one of the applications but it’s astonishingly good if you need more.

If you are a student, you get an even better bargain at $30 per month.

Remember: You’ve got some time to still decide (Photoshop CS6 starts shipping at the end of May), but you can play with the beta version of Photoshop CS6 up to then.

Download it freely from Adobe Labs.

A reminder of the main new features:

• Improved content-aware patch which is behaving in a nearly magical way;
• Speed improvements everywhere;
• New User Interface with a dark background;
• A lot of newly improved tools (about everywhere).

As always, remember that the beta version will not work any longer after the arrival of the final/official version, that it is not exempt from bugs while Adobe gives no warranty about it (all very good reasons to have backup copies of your pictures before using Adobe Photoshop CS6 beta).

• Install digiKam 1.6 on Ubuntu 10.10
• RAW Magic In Digikam: Understanding RAW Photo Settings
• Process RAW Files in digiKam
• New Features in digiKam 2.0: Geolocation
• New Features in digiKam 2.0: Face Recognition
• Work with Photo Metadata in digiKam
• How to find duplicate images on Digikam
• Geotag Photographs with Open GPS Tracker and digiKam
• Sieve through Photographs with digiKam’s Light Table Tool
• Batch Process Photos in digiKam

But Digikam is not the only tool in Linux photographers life… Particularly, if you are looking for software programs to handle the RAW files from your digital photo camera, the choice is still quite large and diverse enough to have you fooling around for quite some time:

• Editing RAW Photos on Linux with Rawstudio 2.0
• Convert RAW Files to DNG with DNGConverter
• Process Raw Image Files for Free with RawTherapee
• Process RAW Files with Rawstudio

However, if you still want to have an idea of the future of Photoshop through some demos, tests and trials done on some of the versions which were leaked to the Internet, here comes Photoshop CS6 in full video glory.

In English:

Adobe Photoshop CS6.v13.0 Released MacOSX-Incl… par hikarivip

En español :

En français :

In Portuguese:

Last small advice: If you search with Google, you will certainly find a large number of links to download Photoshop CS6. Don’t forget that this is (often, but not always) a fraud to try and infect your computer with a nasty Trojan horse, more than with Photoshop CS6.

Bryan O’Neil Hughes, Senior Product Manager at Adobe, gives us an idea of the next version of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR).

First, it is possible to download the version 4 beta. So, why not? (apart from the risk associated with working in a software version which is not fully debugged and may not even work when the final version reaches the online shelves – you’ve been warned)

The public beta version of Lightroom 4 can be downloaded on the Adobe Labs website.

The most prominent progress certainly comes from the following:

• the RAW dematricing engine has been improved again
• some new modules were included to support book and maps creation using your own photos
• a new interface to touch-up colors and tones
• it becomes possible to locally correct the white balance
• digital noise and moire local correction
• new features targeting video correction

If you don’t have the time (or the courage) to try it by yourselves, I recommend a few good posts I found on the Internet:

• The interview of Tom Hogarty on DPReview.com, who talks about Lightroom 4 from the point of view of somebody working at Adobe
• the hands-on preview of Lightroom4 at DPReview.com
• French tutorial from Gilles Théophile
• French test and advice from Volker Gilbert

But even if you do not start playing with the new Lightroom, if you still keep the old version of Lightroom, it is still possible to spend some time using Lightroom. I collected some very good articles for you (in various languages, as usual here):

• How to Personalize Lightroom with an Identity Plate
• 5 Top Tips for Lightroom Develop Presets
• How to Add Watermarks to Your Photos in Lightroom 3 va vous apprendre à ajouter ces marques ou ces signatures au coin de vos photos ; cela fait très pro et très élégant (si vous ne vous contentez pas d’ajouter votre nom…)
• Camera RAW vs. Lightroom einmal, in deutscher Sprache verfasst
• Lightroom: Alte Dateinamen rekonstruieren
• 3 Ways to Change White Balance in Lightroom
• How to Add a Photo Border in Lightroom
• Wer braucht Fotobücher aus Lightroom? (in Deutsch)
• Black and White RAW Processing for a Landscape Image – Weekly Lightroom Edit Episode 2

• Video demo of “PatchMatch“, an algorithm developed by Princeton scientific research and Adobe.
• AppleInsider’s sneak peek at CS6 look and feel
• Image de-blurring demonstrated at 2011 Adobe MAX in October 2011, and many other technological presentations shown at the same time.

But, for now, since April 2010, we are still stuck with the old and faithful Photoshop CS5. A very good reason to keep looking at enlightening sources of new techniques, tutorials, solutions and free plug-ins. The last ones I stumbled upon:

• An Introduction to Working with Layers and Masks in Photoshop
• Creating Textures in Photoshop
• How to Use Photoshop’s High Pass Filter to Soften Skin While Retaining Texture by PetaPixel
• Smarter Content Aware Fill in Photoshop brilliantly solves an issue often found when using “content-aware fill“: Photoshop sometimes fills with parts of the image that are taken from the most surprising places (and often the less pleasant ones). A simple and 100% efficient solution.
• Camera RAW vs. Lightroom einmal, in deutscher Sprache verfasst
• Finally, a hodge-podge of filters, brushes, plugins, all free for Photoshop: Free Photoshop Filters, Brushes and Plugins

So, many people want to see my photos immediately out of the camera, right after the recording. This is not an issue for me when we are speaking of showing the picture on the back of my camera (Nobody can see anything there, anyway…) but I actively resist when we’re speaking about final pictures. As a matter of fact, I work some more. This is something that ussually annoys a lot of other photographers, but that I consider an integral part of taking a picture (and this is a reason why I switched to digital photography early). First, I sort pictures out in Adobe Bridge. I usually keep only a small part of the images I shot. In a family reunion, I may keep half of the shots (It may vary). From a photo safari, I keep between 1% and 3% of the recorded files. The rest is not really worth it. Your mileage may vary (some will say that I should shoot less and think more, but it’s my style), but you need to select your best pictures.

Then, I enter the real development phase: I work from the RAW picture files of my camera, but this would be near exactly the same from JPEG picture files (I just prefer to start with images less digitally massaged by the camera to reach my own pictures). Consequently, a lot of what I do happens in Adobe Camera Raw (and it applies mostly to Lightroom users too). Here is how I proceed and… why.

The first thing requires to notice that the histogram of most images does not fully cover the full range from black to white: There is not real black (on the left of the histogram) and not real white (on the right). It may be an artistic choice, but in most cases this is merely a consequence of the limitations of the photo camera.

I follow a two-step approach to extend to a full light dynamic range. First, by using the Exposure control to push the highlights to the right of the histogram. Here, I pushed the Exposure to +0.35 to align the last bit of the histogram with the right hand side (I ensured that the white pixels are actually completely white, not light grey and I don’t blow them out).

Then, I do the same with shadows (and the left hand side of the histogram) using the Blacks, pushing only a little.

From this point, the picture dynamic range is maximal. It is also possible to correct the contrast, but it is not often necessary if the shooting conditions were average.Similarly, apart from significant problems in the original, it is not necessary to use the Fill light to lighten dark shadows.

The next step is to re-frame the image: Some will say that I have the bad habit of centering my subject too much, but when we speaking about very active animals, like the three jackals of this picture, I prefer to use the central AF zone of my Sony Alpha 700 which has the most sensitive and fastest AF sensor. So, I leave the re-framing job to Photoshop (even if I recognize that whenever it’s possible, it is simpler to think about framing correctly from shooting time).

For this, I use the re-framing tool in the tool bar at the top of the Adobe Camera Raw window and I choose the right frame with the mouse (thinking about painting traditions and the rule of thirds).

Some will prefer to start the whole process with re-framing (rather than waiting here for this). There are some good reasons for it (specially so when re-framing is used to remove an ugly over- or under-exposed area from the picture). I believe that in most cases, it’s more an issue of personal preference.

Next comes the most controversial step: Detail accentuation. It is easy to over-do it and I strongly recommend to keep the original Adobe settings rather than stepping all over it with too much accentuation (many people do it and I won’t give names). As a matter of fact, it’s true that I tend to force more of these fake details in web pictures than in quality prints.

The best is probably to experiment very lightly, in the Camera Raw settings, after zooming in onto the important area of the image (I’m less tempted to over-do it when it’s big in front of my eyes).

Then, it is simple to open a copy of the image in Photoshop from the “Open copy” button. It will be necessary to save a fine-tuned copy or to print it on your ink-jet printer.

I simply recommend to always convert colors (the impact is usually small but I tend to have confidence in Photoshop choices).

And here is a nice additional step that I get from Patrick Fagot, photographer that I love and whose teachings I used as a basis for my own ideas to use Photoshop, thanks to his advice during photographic trips with did together in Brazil an in Botswana. He advises to immediately add a colored frame to the best photos in order to give them a little additional pro finish and this is true that it help the picture to “pop out”.

It’s only a matter of using the Photoshop Image > Canvas size... control…

…and to choose a new size increased by a few millimeters around the image (and the right Canvas extension color – Black is often good but you can experiment).

Some will prefer the Relative control which allows to give a relative increase size, but I feel it is less comfortable.

From this description, it is possible to change a few settings around this. And I guess this will give inspiration to some of the readers.

If you want to go further: All other tips and tricks of YLovePhoto.

• Intro to Lightroom 3 Lens Corrections
• Lightroom Quick Develop Panel
• Re-visit your older photos
• 8 Important Things to know about Lightroom Collections by Helen Bradley
• Perfect Layers: Ebenen-Tool für Lightroom, jetzt als öffentliche Beta
• Lightroom : préréglages automatiques par boîtier et sensibilité
• A Killer Collection of Adobe LightRoom Tutorials
• Where are my Lightroom Files?
• Im Test: Photosmith synchronisiert Lightroom mit iPad
• Lightroom : comment faire migrer ses images sur un disque dur externe ?
• Lightroom : préréglages automatiques par boîtier et sensibilité

• Windows Explorer (thumbs and gallery)
• Windows Live Photo Gallery

The new Microsoft codec brings new compatibility with the following impressive list of cameras:

• Canon: EOS 1000D (EOS Kiss F in Japan and the EOS Rebel XS in North America), EOS 10D, EOS 1D Mk2, EOS 1D Mk3, EOS 1D Mk4, EOS 1D Mk2 N, EOS 1Ds Mk2, EOS 1Ds Mk3, EOS 20D, EOS 300D (the Kiss Digital in Japan and the Digital Rebel in North America) , EOS 30D, EOS 350D (the Canon EOS Kiss Digital N in Japan and EOS Digital Rebel XT in North America), EOS 400D (the Kiss Digital X in Japan and the Digital Rebel XTi in North America), EOS 40D, EOS 450D (EOS Kiss X2 in Japan and the EOS Rebel XSi in North America), EOS 500D (EOS Kiss X3 in Japan and the EOS Rebel T1i in North America), EOS 550D (EOS Kiss X4 in Japan, and as the EOS Rebel T2i in North America), EOS 50D, EOS 5D, EOS 5D Mk2, EOS 7D, EOS D30, EOS D60, G2, G3, G5, G6, G9, G10, G11, Pro1, S90
• Nikon: D100, D1H, D200, D2H, D2Hs, D2X, D2Xs, D3, D3s, D300, D3000, D300s, D3X, D40, D40x, D50, D5000, D60, D70, D700, D70s, D80, D90, P6000
• Sony: A100, A200, A230, A300, A330, A350, A380, A700, A850, A900, DSC-R1
• Olympus: C7070, C8080, E1, E10, E20, E3, E30, E300, E330, E400, E410, E420, E450, E500, E510, E520, E620, EP1
• Pentax (PEF formats only): K100D, K100D Super, K10D, K110D, K200D, K20D, K7, K-x, *ist D, *ist DL, *ist DS
• Leica: Digilux 3, D-LUX4, M8, M9
• Minolta: DiMage A1, DiMage A2, Maxxum 7D (Dynax 7D in Europe, α-7 Digital in Japan)
• Epson: RD1
• Panasonic: G1, GH1, GF1, LX3

If you want to download immediately the English version of the codec pack, just go to the special Microsoft download web site: Microsoft Camera Codec Pack (16.0.0652.0621).

• Photoshop: Panoramabilder entzerren
• How to Reduce Your Depth of Field in Photoshop
• Camera Raw 6 : accentuer la netteté
• Learn the basics of color focus editing in Photoshop CS5
• Photoshop Tutorial Mine : from image to flickr
• Photoshop CS5: Der seltsame “Eigene Filter”
• Photoshop CS5: Tuning für den “Eigenen Filter”

And I will also add a few Photoshop plugins that I could recommend right now.

• Curves by Mehdi offers predefined curves (helping understand the curves feature of Photoshop
• Grain Generator by Richard Rosenman will add all the grain you want to your photograph (excessively configurable)
• virtualPhotographer by optikVerve Labs: 200 one-click preset effects
• B/W Conversion by photo-plugins.com
• Fed up with the work of cleaning out wires from the landscape, not having the fill-by-content CS5 feature? Go and download Wire Worm by MV’s Plugins

digiKam special!

This nice software program has earned its own sub-list of links because of its own quality:

• Introduction to Digikam
• Finetune digiKam by Tweaking Its Settings
• Find the Shutter Count Value with digiKam
• Publish Photos on a WordPress blog from Digikam

Additionally, some users may want to also have Digikam running on Windows (even if Linux is a better host for such a program). In this case, you would be well inspired to go and visit “Amarok and Digikam on Windows.”

Once again! More links, more sites, more web pages to serve the needs of the photographers using GNU/Linux. As we noticed, most of the Linux-based photographers seem to be speaking English (and nothing else).

• Add brushes to The GIMP
• Krita – The KDE Answer to GIMP
• Ubuntu 10.10 Adds New Photo Manager, Improves Multimedia Experience
• Tackle Color Management on Linux
• 3 Photo collage programs on Linux
• 3 programmi per foto collage su Linux
• Install CHDK on Your Canon Camera Using Linux

photo credit: andyspictures

• 60+ Best GIMP Tutorials of 2010
• 30 great tutorials for GIMP
• GIMP tricks to isolate parts of images and more GIMP tricks for doctoring images
• How to make a globe/planet photo manipulation in GIMP. See a nice little example of a planet-photo here on the right.
• Gimp 2.7 released for testing and we are Impressed with the outcome!!, by Ubuntu Manual
• How to make Photographs Vintage in GIMP
• Making a Watercolour-Paint Photograph in GIMP
• Wedding Photo Enhancement using The GIMP
• Gimp Paint Studio expands GIMP with new brushes, presets

Lightroom 3 sees its price lowered slightly at Amazon.

What is clearly the matter of speculative thinking is the availability date of Photoshop CS6. Most observers indicate that nothing should be expected before the beginning of 2012. But the usual cycle could be shortened to to take advantage of the holiday sales of the end of 2011.

On the contrary, some technical features are getting pretty clear.

Presentation

Visibly, Photoshop CS6 will receive a (more or less) revamped interface in order to take a better advantage of multiple screens (many graphic designers and photographers now use several screens to widen their work space and to spread several applications around). PS CS6 will allow to better spread the tools, palettes between these screens with a new specific “docking” mode and maybe some additional features to support these users.

Furthermore, it is also said by some that the integration of the high-end graphic card features will be improved again (to speed up many basic functions of Photoshop).

Features and productivity

Adobe is preparing to provide a whole set of new features looking toward the best possible result with the smallest number of steps for many day-to-day needs. We already new the content-aware fill feature to quickly clean up a picture zone without hours of brushing details and textures to keep the change as invisible as when the communist Kremlin was wiping out previous officials from photographs.

Here, Photoshop will come with CS6 features to give a picture the look and appearance of another which is provided as reference image. The examples that Adobe Photoshop could use may be as diverse as the pictures from a well known photographer (“I want my photo to look like one photo from Laurent Baheux or like one photo from David Lachapelle“). If you will not get their genius and elegance, at least, your picture will look similar enough.

I expect that if the reference image is an HDR picture, you will obtain directly the same colorful look without the effort to combine several images, and without the long DIY work of false HDR in Photoshop (6 not-so-easy-to-remember steps).

More generally speaking, the automated tasks like “automatic contrast” or “automatic colors” will be much improved and simplified in order to solve simple problems we all encounter: bad contrast, fuzzy images from hand-held vibration, offset colors, etc.

Then, (as usual, I’m tempted to say) Adobe is ready to improve its selection tools with more efficiency, faster operation, more precision.

Video et animated images

If you are interested in the possibility to present your photographs in an animated format, there will certainly be some more possibilities to go beyond “Animated GIF”, and Adobe Helium will be there to allow the creation of sequences, animations, and even some interactive web components based upon CSS3 and HTML5.

Furthermore, the video capture feature of our SLR cameras will be better served. This is pretty sure, even if we don’t know much except that the new Canon codec being developed for the future Canon EOS 5D MkIII will be supported.

Conclusion

We still have nearly a full year to wait until we see the details, but the already-planned features are significant. They will come with an extension of the use of the 64-bit architecture allowing to handle forever more memory space (we already know that 4 GB of RAM is now the minimum for comfort when using Photoshop and PS CS6 will be no exception).

Some ask if Adobe will apply its subscription/rental offer (month-by-month payment) onto CS6 and onto some other markets than USA. If this is the case, it will be the consequence of the subscription offer there and it could well start before the launch of Photoshop CS6.

Meanwhile, you can still go and have a look at the preview of some features of Photoshop CS6 (Alpha version) from November 2010.

You can now compare the single purchase, definitive but unable to evolve after the regular updates (about US$700) and a subscription or a rental scheme. There are several uses I think could be useful.

• Pay-as-you-go (for a pro photographer, this could be useful in front of the accountant; For the amateur, it could help “swallow” the high cost of the needed updgrade from an old Photoshop version): the yearly subscription is down to US$420, paid month after month (with a 1-year commitment, as in most mobile phone plans).
• Do not commit (for an hesitating photographer or willing to do a “long trial”, over the usual trial period offered by Adobe): the subscription is US$49 per month and can be stopped whenever you want without any question asked by Adobe.
• Pay when you need it (maybe for a traveling photographer who is often not using the tool): US$49 per month, but you need to decide when you need it or not. However, good planning could reduce the costs significantly.

This proposal is not available in all countries, but it presented on the American web site for Adobe: Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 family / Subscription editions.

In order to support our activity and to bring us new ideas or better ways of using Lightroom, here is a collection of links selected just for you (you will notice that I have been able to mix English, German and French).

• How to Edit Multiple Files at Once in Lightroom, by Christopher O’Donnell
• Lightroom or Aperture? 3 Factors to Consider
• How to Convert From Lightroom to Aperture
• Lightroom: Der iPad-Exporter
• Camera Raw et Lightroom : repérer des taches de poussière sur un ciel bleu
• Why I Use Aperture Instead of Lightroom
• Targeted adjustments in Lightroom
• Lightroom: Der Stichwort-Automat
• Lightroom 3 : les dossiers
• Lightroom: Kameraprofile in DNGs
• Black and white in Lightroom
• How to Install a Lightroom Plugin
• 5 HOT Lightroom Features

If you have interesting resources to share with us, please, leave a comment at the bottom of this post. I will make sure to include it in a future Lightroom collection.

See also http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/ where you can see the same video in very high quality.

photo credit: Photo Extremist

How old is your last backup?

Check our articles about the photographer’s backup.

1. Local backup options (External hard disk drive)
2. Local backup options (Optical discs (CD/DVD), RAID drives). Interim conclusion is “No local storage“
3. Online backup options (Photo web sites, Friend-to-Friend)
4. Online backup options (Specialized online backup and online sharing web sites, web storage options, software for online storage) and conclusions

Just go to the Adobe Labs web site to get your own downloaded Lightroom.

You’ll get bug fixes for Lightroom v3.3, a long list of supported lenses and an extended list of supported cameras for RAW files including the following.

• Canon EOS 600D (Rebel T3i / Kiss X5)
• Canon EOS 1100D (Rebel T3 / Kiss X50)
• Hasselblad H4D-40
• Olympus E-PL1s
• Olympus E-PL2
• Olympus XZ-1
• Samsung NX11

Free download for Windows

Free download for MacOS

• Tipp Aperture 3: Thumbnails kompakter machen spart enorm viel Speicherplatz (in deutscher Sprache)
• A Quick First Look at Adobe Lightroom 3 & How it Compares With Aperture 3
• Aperture 3.0 Tips & Tricks
• From Aperture 3 to YouTube in 3 Steps
• Aperture 3.0 Tips & Tricks (Photofocus)
• Tuto Aperture 3 : La fonction Zoom (en français)
• Mac OSX 10.6.4 améliore Aperture
• Aperture 3 pour Sony NEX – test à hauts ISO
• How Do I Get My Lightroom DNG files into Aperture 3?
• Aperture 3: GPS-Metadaten exportieren
• Lightroom or Aperture? 3 Factors to Consider