Inauspicious Start?
Posted by Wilk | Filed under Odds 'n Ends
After virtually ignoring my own body of work for over a year, I just got to that point where I had to get something going here. Like I say on the current intro page, I’ve learned SO much about the Adobe Creative Suite and Photoshop in particular, I have decided to wipe the slate on all the work that I had post processed earlier and start from scratch. Having secured that “killer” domain name over 3 years ago (DigitalTerrain.net and DigitalTerrain.info) I can’t simply have that identity stand for naught, so here we go! We’ll see how long it lasts ☺
Adobe aside, I’m never one to say “this is how I do it and this is what I use”. I had done most if not all my RAW processing in Nikon Capture. Their latest product, Capture NX is so f-ing slow (and I run it on a dual 3ghz Xeon motherboard, albeit 3 plus years old) I simply can’t go that route, even though the control points is killer technology, at the same time though, it’s a lot of work to fudge a photo. I imagine if I have a shot that “could be” that I need to fudge with control points, I will use NX to get that done, but for now given what I know about the world of Adobe, it’s just silly to use a program that slows the process so significantly.
So I am currently using Adobe Camera RAW as my raw processor, I also use it (especially at work) to tweak JPEGs, as it makes available all the same tweaks available for RAW (except for color temp, which it fudges). I imagine soon I will dive into Lightroom so I can wrap my bulbous head around yet another software program, but for now, because I know bridge and ACR adequately well, I’m using that. Adobe Camera RAW does after all provide all the same adjustments as Lightroom, it’s just not packaged the pretty paper and bows. I’m sure there’s something I’m missing but so far, the only thing I can see is the lack of the “idiot proof” curves adjustment. I tend to set most of my curves in photoshop as adjustment layers anyhow so I have the ability to go back and tweak them at a later date, or find another avenue to work the contrast levels. I’m quite sure I’ll be blogging about my impressions of lightroom as I get into it, but I am so used to bridge at this point, it will be a slow process, mainly because I don’t like the fact that I have to “import” all my shots to begin the selection process. Bridge as a thumbnail viewer doesn’t need any imports, you just surf to the place on the hard drive you want to work from and it makes all the thumbs right there, you have ratings and all that, so it’s easy enough.
I don’t use Bridge for the RAW weeding process anyhow, because it is not adequate to really check for stofties, shake, etc. Maybe Lightroom with become the cohesive solution for that, I’m not sure, but for now, I’m still using a proggie called Photo Mechanic which has an awesome interface for weeding and selection that lets you get immediately to 100% with one click, which I really like. If lightroom solves that for me so I can get into one cohesive software situation, that would be great, but for now, it will remain as it is until I get more time!
At any rate, I plan to use this blog for all kinds of purposes, even some web development for photographers. I decided to run this site on Wordpress because it has by far the best and easiest tools for gallery presentation. The integration of PicLens is a REAL coupe’—giving the user full screen sideshows is an amazing feature, and even in the fairly early stages of development it seems well structured and fairly bugless, at least on firefox. I can’t speak to IE because I absolutely refuse to use IE except for checking website structure under that inferior browser. I plan to install the IE interface in Firefox so I never have to launch the stupid thing. That’s one of the many things that sets Firefox head and shoulders above IE in so many ways—the ability to install an amazing number of free addins like the IE page addin. The real credit for this technology goes to (of course) Adobe and Flash v9. They have once again raised the bar to impossible heights for anyone seeking their downfall. In the words of dana carvey as ghw bush… NA GA DA!
So, this is a start… we’ll see how far it takes me. The one thing I’m going to do tomorrow am is order a new monitor, because looking at my site at work, I noticed one shot I processed that on a good monitor like I have at work, I could see that I over saturated the reds. It looked fine on my 3 year old dell, but I’ve known for a long time that monitor isn’t the best for true color. The Samsung BW I use at work is very faithful, I know this because I work images that go to print at a commercial sheetfed printer and the results are always exactly as expected based on the output I see on that monitor. Mwave has the 22″ Samsung BW on sale, so I’m gonnna snag it. Don’t quite have the money, but I won’t when it gets off sale either, so now is the time to get the new monitor! FWIW, Mwave is absolutely the best source I’ve found for anything computer and anything they sell. I may get a riadata 8gb flash card when I get the monitor, because the price on those are so ridiculously low. That would give me 26gb to walk around with.
So this is a start. Feel free to place comments on the blog, I cherish everyone’s input, good bad or indifferent!
Tags: soap box
