March 28, 2008
HDR Soft, the maker of the popular Photomatix Pro has just released version 3. For HDR junkies Photomatix is a great tool, giving much more function over Photoshops built in tools for merging images to HDR.
Version 3 is even a free update for version 2 owners, and from what we can tell so far, it’s a nice update. Improved interface and some cool new features shape up to be another solid offering from HDR Soft.
March 28, 2008
Apple has released Aperture 2.1, and it sports a cool new plugin architecture.
The new version comes with a an Apple Burn & Dodge plugin, that does B&D, blurring, and more. There’s also support for other plugins like Noise Ninja, Viveza, and more. Sounds like third party devs will be able to make plugins similar to the way they do now in PS.
It seems aperture is getting into the pixel based editing territory with Aperture. Look out Adobe!
Still no presets from what we can tell, but when Apple catches uo in that area they’re gonna start looking pretty good. Of course Aperture is Mac only still, but if they ever make this for Win/Mac, Adobe may have a run for it’s money.
March 25, 2008
JPEG, TIFF, PSD, Successive Save, Save As, and more.
by Gavin Seim. Updated 11/11. There’s often confusion about what makes a JPEG and other files degrade, so I thought I would so a few a real world test. First let me say that simply copying, or viewing a file does NOT cause any degradation as people sometimes believe. If you copy and paste a file it’s simply a bit for bit cop. There’s no loss because nothing has been altered.
When you open, and then re-save a file is when things usually change. Even if you save at the highest quality JPEG settings you have still re-compressed that file when you save again. Unless or course your using an uncompressed file format to start with (TIFF for example). But even then there can be some quality loss version after version.
So how bad is a file damaged each time you successively save it. Well lets just say you should keep your originals. I’m not saying we can’t make revision copies (or file generations as I refer to them). But we should be aware. Below we’re going to look at the same image submitted to various torturous conditions and you can then judge for yourself.
These image are 700px. Click any image to see it at that resolution, or download all the images to compare them. Images that were opened and saved with “Save As” rather than “Save” commands are noted as such. If you want to join the discussion beyond comments here is the forum topic on this.
March 21, 2008
by Gavin Seim. Updated 01/2010:
Most of us use and love Adobe Lightroom. One of my favorite features is presets. One click WOW & workflow for our photo’s. I even make some very popular preset collections that I sell over on Seim Effects.
So there’s a couple of ways to install Lightroom presets and today I’m gonna show you both, including the guru method. I’m talking about develop presets, but it should be noted that these methods are essentially the same with any user preset, such as print presets, gallery presets etc. If your installing brush presets see this article. Also, I’m using a Mac, but the same process will work on Windows.
March 19, 2008
The new Phase One Medium format digital has been announced. It’s body is a Mamiya 645 AF. Then add the phase one back and you’ve got quite a system. It has a wide range of compatible lenses, and can also do exposure up to 60 minutes long. Fun!
We don’t have a lot of details on it yet, but you can check it out on the Phase One site. Be prepared for a slow hard to navigate experience though. Hopefully their site it not representative of how the camera interface will be.
The system is supposed to be available in Q2 of this year, and though we don;t have a price you better plan on giving a wad for this beauty.
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