Guido from Wacom was kind enough to demo for me the brand new Wacom Intuos 5 touch tablet. He showed me how Wacom removed the OLED displays and replaced them with something even better and also added touch features so you can finally throw away your mouse. Find more Focus on Imaging 2012 videos at PhotoWalkthrough.com
PW180 - Wacom Intuos 5 touch preview at Focus On Imaging 2012
Mark Thackery of Olympus tells us about the new Olympus OM-D E-M5 micro four thirds camera on the Olympus stand at Focus On Imaging 2012.
You know those clear plastic wrappers Apple use on their products that are so fantastically fun to open? Apple are masters of turning a simple unboxing into a special event. It seems Moo are reading from the same playbook. They've always taken great care over the presentation of their products but never more so than with their new Luxe business cards. The cards themselves come in an elegant little box with magnetic closures. That's wrapped in a purple ribbon fastened by what looks like a stamped wax seal. All of this is enclosed in a card wrapping designed to present a neat "lid" as you open the posting box. This attention to detail is what raises Moo above the competition. Moo understands that you're excited about getting your new cards, especially if they've got your photographs printed on them. Their presentation makes that little moment of unboxing even more enjoyable - so much so that you find yourself unwilling to actually give the cards away for fear of spoiling this pristine little shrine to your new cards.
In fact the genius of Moo is not just in the presentation of their product. This is the company that started out offering just minicards which were a strange shape and on fairly thin card but with the ability to put a different image on the front of each one. They weren't business cards and they weren't prints. It's hard to say what they actually were besides insanely desirable. What Moo do best of all is design *great* products. Their product range has always been limited but with each piece carefully chosen for paper quality, print process, lamination and presentation. They don't try to make everything but what they do make is *good*. Reading from the Apple playbook again then.
Buying from Moo is a pleasant experience from beginning to end - enough to make up for the fact that they're actually quite expensive. And Luxe cards are at the ouch end of even that curve. What you get are business cards printed on a fascinating new triple layer paper with a stripe of colour sandwiched between two white layers. This new paper is very stiff and has a matte finish which is much easier to write on than Moo's usual laminated cards. The matte finish does mean that blacks don't print very dark, though. My own black and white designs have very strong contrasts but came out looking lighter than I would have liked - a common problem with matte printing.
Moo Luxe business cards edge view
Overall, though, the quality of Luxe cards is absolutely up there with what I've come to expect from Moo. Where Moo's minicards or business cards are a great opportunity to show off your photography, Luxe cards are better suited to being actual business cards, especially if you want to wow people with quality.
Moo Luxe business cards are £23.99 or $34.99 for 50 cards and you can find out more at moo.com.
I'm going to tell you to do something I think you all know in your hearts that you should do - "post the pictures you love". It sounds almost fatuous but it's harder to stick to than you might think. For example, I was lucky enough to attend a workshop with Welshot Imaging last weekend - normally I'm teaching workshops for Welshot so it's nice to attend one for a change and the teacher, Adrian Wilson, was excellent. We were there to learn about HDR photography and we'd made arrangements to visit Liverpool Cathedral for a few hours to shoot some material to process later.
I have a twisted streak that likes to subvert things so I'd been wondering how I could do something using HDR that didn't fit the stereotype of how HDRs usually look. I settled on two ideas and shot for them all day - black and white HDR and shallow depth of field HDR. I'm pretty happy with the results and you can see my complete collection of images from that day on Google+ and 500px but that's not what this article is about. I want to talk about selecting which images to show.
I've been posting the pictures one by one over a few days after spending some time with each and deciding if I really like it enough to post it. I came to the picture you see above of the staircase and I very nearly didn't post it. You see I'd been shooting HDRs inside a beautiful old cathedral all day surrounded by amazing stonework detail, high ceilings and stained glass windows. And this picture I was considering was just a wooden staircase - and a fairly modern one at that. I imagined that people would think the staircase mundane and out of place. So I vacillated for a while and eventually decided to post it. And to my surprise it gathered the most comments of any picture in the collection (on 500px).
The reason I shot that picture and the reason it was in contention for posting was simply that I find it visually pleasing with the lines that guide the eye and strong contrasts and detail. There are lots of diagonals to keep feeling dynamic and the contrast between the wooden stairs and the stonework is pleasing to me. It's one of my favourites from the day. But it's not really what you'd expect to see in a cathedral picture and I very nearly let that be my guide for what to post. So I have a simple call to action for you:
Find a picture you love but didn't post because you thought others might not appreciate it. Now post that sucker!
Trey Ratcliff recently posted an article about why the DSLR is going to become a thing of the past. He really gets into the nitty gritty of what's good and bad about our 3rd generation camera future and I think he's mainly got it all right but there are a couple of points where he and I differ.
First of all I'm not sure I can put my hand on my heart and say I won't buy a Canon 5D mk3 when it comes out. Trey says he won't buy any more DSLR gear because this 3rd gen thing is coming in the next couple of years. I agree with his timescale - heck I think 3rd gen cameras are good enough NOW and I said so last year. I'm serious about picking and buying into a system like micro four thirds. But I think I'll need to get comfortable with that before I let go of my DSLR. Aparrently I lack Trey's bravery. ;-)
The other point where Trey and I differ is on the subject of time spent in Lightroom. He quite rightly says that in future our cameras will be able to shoot many more frames quickly and we'll be able to pick the good ones from perhaps 200 instead of 20. I fear he's right about that but I won't be thanking Nikon or Canon for the extra post processing work. I teach photoshop and lightroom so you'd expect I love doing that stuff but what I enjoy is shooting and making great images. Picking through a big batch of pictures is to find the ones I want to keep is work to me. It's not much fun. Once I've found that one I want to work on - THAT'S the fun part. So honestly I think he's right that we'll shoot many more pictures and have to spend time picking out the good ones. But Trey says he enjoys sitting in Lightroom and picking the winners. He's clearly derranged. (Just kidding Trey - you rock man).
I just read an article from the LA Times website where Robert Levine talks about how the internet devalues creative work and it got me thinking about how this applies to photography. I have to conclude that I agree with Robert on that hypothesis but not on much else of what he says.
It's simple supply and demand really. There's much more great work being produced for much less money now. In short, you people are getting too good at taking petter pictures and processing them to a professional shine. This is as a result of the rapid educational possibilities of the internet and technology advances that have put in the hands of the masses the same creative tools that were formerly available only to a few. And, shock horror, it turns out that there were loads more talented people out there who previously wouldn't have had the education and tools needed to produce competitive quality work.
Ironically Photoshop is a great example of one such tool. Look at the amazing wealth of superb quality photography on Google+. Even 5 years ago the typical standard of photography I saw online was markedly lower than it is today. And tools like Photoshop are partly responsible. People have always had talent but, today, more than ever in the past they also have the knowledge and tools they need to produce the images they envisioned.
My worry, though, is that Photoshop is returning to being a tool only for the 'elite'. I got a lot of feedback for my article Wave bye bye to Photoshop. Most of that feedback was agreement but of the few that disagreed the majority were basically saying,
"Photoshop *should* be expensive because it's a professional tool and there are lesser tools for the plebs who can't afford the good version".
In essence they were saying that because they could afford it they quite liked the idea of locking everyone else out - everyone else can use the less good tools that produce less good results. This is plain and simple elitism of the most unattractive kind.
The joke is on Adobe and the big media content producers, though, because this problem is going to solve itself. If Adobe don't sell a product that people can afford then smaller, hungrier companies like MacPhun, Coppertino, Realmac Software, Pixelmator and many others will just steal their lunch. The same is already true for the creative work producers. Big stock agencies are already feeling the pinch from micro stock sites like iStockPhoto. And in the music world too with millions of independent producers making and selling music direct to their fans without ever signing a record deal. Google Music is all set to capitalise on that gold rush.
The message for Adobe, Hollywood and the big content producers is simple. Make your product available to people where they want to buy it (online) and make it affordable. Cause one thing is for sure - we masses aren't going to go back to making crappy quality work. The competition is here to stay.
Today we look at Snapheal for the Mac, a brand new app by Macphun software for editing your photos and in particular for tidying or removing distracting elements. Snapheal reproduces and improves on the content aware fill feature of Photoshop and also has clone stamp, exposure, cropping and selective adjustment features. It's very affordable at its launch price of $9.99 through the Mac app store.
The Guardian recently posted an interesting comparison of pictures taken with an iPhone and the same picture taken with a Canon 5D mk2 (lens not specified).
A cursory inspection, especially by a non-professional, might conclude that the iPhone is nearly as good as the SLR - in some cases the exposure looks better on the iPhone. So should pros be considering iPhones as a valid alternative to their SLRs?
Sounds like an idiotic question doesn't it and, sure, you obvisouly won't want to shoot a wedding with an iPhone where looking like a pro is as important as shooting like one. But I'm not so sure the answer is as clear cut when you're just shooting for yourself.
Camera phones haven't got the pixel count or flexibility of an SLR, yet. And it'll be a while yet before they get full manual controls, large sensors, RAW recording or interchangable lenses. But if all you want are snaps that you'll only ever view on a screen or print small then they're more than good enough - and getting better all the time.
This is a perspective issue. When I look at an iPad I see a much more limited version of my desktop computer. I think about all the things I *can't* do with it. When I look at an iPhone I see a much more limited version of a point and shoot camera. But young people don't see limitations - they see opportunities. Young people didn't look at a mobile phone and think, "I'll never be able to type on that". They just used what they had and got really good at it.
And in just the same way young people will use these new tools to make genuine art. They will become skilled in ways that we don't appreciate. We always say, "it's the photographer, not the camera", don't we? And while they're making art those "lesser" tools will improve until they're nipping at the heels of our "proper" gear. We can see that improvement happening already. That's what that The Guardian's comparison article is all about.
We have to be honest with ourselves about the state of technology or we'll end up being one of those old guys still buying 33rpm records and complaining that we don't understand how people can put up with the dreadful quality of those awful CD things.
I've been arguing for years that Photoshop is insanely overpriced and as the cost of software has steadily dropped the problem has become more and more pronounced. The app model that the world is clearly moving to has us paying far less for software as cheap simple apps like Pixelmator, Acorn, Fx Photo Studio, Flare, Analog and many others sell for pocket money prices. Even Adobe's own Lightroom makes spending £600+ on Photoshop hard to justify.
Despite this Photoshop has been seen as the defacto photo editing standard for years and for good reason - nothing else can do what Photoshop does. But I teach a lot of photoshop and photography courses and the dirty little secret is that a great many people using Photoshop do so illegally. Why? Because it's way too expensive. Among those that do have legal copies it's very normal for people to be one or two versions out of date.
Cue the recent announcement from Adobe's David Wadhwani that to qualify for Photoshop upgrade pricing you'll need to be on the previous version. So you'll need to own CS5 to qualify for an upgrade price to CS6. As far as I'm concerned that's putting a gun to Photoshop's head and pulling the trigger.
Until now you've been able to upgrade Photoshop from any of the 3 previous versions. Many of the people I teach who own Photoshop rely on this and upgrade every second or third version - particularly because each product version tends to add comparatively little that's compelling to the feature set.
Adobe's answer is that you can subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud which gives you access to all their creative suite apps plus some other products and services that you didn't know you needed, all for the low low price of $49.99 per month. Yes month. And here in the UK that'll probably £55 per month if Adobe's previous over seas pricing is anything to go by. Well it's the wrong side of the line for me. It's just too much and I won't pay it. I don't like software subscription services at the best of times but this is extortionate. And I'm pretty sure most of the people I teach would just laugh at the price.
Adobe seems to be moving in completely the wrong direction here. They should be giving those huge number of pirate users out there a way to go legal and stay legal. Everyone else seems to have figured out that if you make your software cheaper then you make more money. But Adobe is so caught up in corporate sales that consumers are being priced out of the market.
Time for some video reviews of affordable Photoshop alternatives.
In the final chapter of our free Nik Color Efex Pro 4 tutorial we take a look at the vignette filter then complete our round-trip back to Lightroom where we do a little finishing off and then I give you my verdict on the new version of Color Efex Pro.
View all 6 chapters of this free tutorial here
Throughout the course of this tutorial we'll take a single image from the original RAW through to a finished image. This video is one part of a multi-part free video tutorial and review. You can find the other parts at photowalkthrough.com/tutorial23.
In chapter 5 or out free Nik Color Efex Pro 4 tutorial we take a look at the Pro Contrast filter. This isn't a new filter but it does give fantastic control over the contrast and areas of brightness in your image.
View all 6 chapters of this free tutorial here
Throughout the course of this tutorial we'll take a single image from the original RAW through to a finished image. This video is one part of a multi-part free video tutorial and review. You can find the other parts at photowalkthrough.com/tutorial23.
In chapter 4 of our free Nik Color Efex Pro video tutorial we look at a new filter type, Levels and Curves and learn how we can combine them with Nik Software's U-Point control points to make selective edits to our image.
View all 6 chapters of this free tutorial here
Throughout the course of this tutorial we'll take a single image from the original RAW through to a finished image. This video is one part of a multi-part free video tutorial and review. You can find the other parts at photowalkthrough.com/tutorial23.
During the month of November I'm going to take part in #NaPodPoMo and try to post an audio podcast (using Audioboo) every day for the whole month. It's a kind of creativity exercise and that gave me the idea of bringing you folks along with me. So the first thing on my podcasts every day this month will be creativity assignments. Each day I'll give you an assignment and hopefully you'll try and at least shoot a picture each day. No SLRs required - you can use your camera phone if you like. Just try and shoot something. If you're brave then post it on Google+ too with a hash tag #creativity and we can look at each other's work and see how different people interpret each challenge.
So without further ado, below is my NaPodPoMo podcast for today which contains your first assignment - "Squares".
In chapter 3 of our free Nik Color Efex Pro video tutorial we make our model's skin glow by using the Contast Color Range filter.
View all 6 chapters of this free tutorial here
Throughout the course of this tutorial we'll take a single image from the original RAW through to a finished image. This video is one part of a multi-part free video tutorial and review. You can find the other parts at photowalkthrough.com/tutorial23.
In chapter 2 of our fee Nik Color Efex Pro 4 video tutorials we take a look at the most exciting feature of the new version - stacking filters. We also look at three of the new filters, Film Efex Faded, Film Efex Nostalgic and FIlm Efex Vintage.
View all 6 chapters of this free tutorial here
Throughout the course of this tutorial we'll take a single image from the original RAW through to a finished image. This video is one part of a multi-part free video tutorial and review. You can find the other parts at photowalkthrough.com/tutorial23.
Today we've got another free video tutorial featuring Color Efex Pro 4 from Nik Software. This multi-part tutorial will cover a variety of filters, old and new show and ways to use them creatively to take an image from the original camera RAW to a finished version ready to print.
View all 6 chapters of this free tutorial here
In this first chapter we look at Color Efex Pro 4's integration with Lightroom and examine the user interface before using the Skin Softener filter. This is the first chapter of a multi-part tutorial. Find all the chapters and loads more free video tutorials on Photoshop and Lightroom at www.photowalkthrough.com
At last Lytro have unveiled their Light Field Camera - https://www.lytro.com/camera).
This is the camera that lets you focus your shot after you've taken it. They've picked an unusual design which will make it very recognisable. It's also surprisingly pocketable and affordable. It also seems to shoot square images - which should make it fun to compose shots with.
Two models are available at launch, an 8Gb that holds 350 pictures and 16Gb that holds 750. Not sure how the maths work there. Apparently the second 8Gb can hold slightly more than the first. Anyway, the big bummer for me is that it's not available outside the United States so I guess I won't be getting my hands on one quite yet.
It's available in 3 colours, red, blue and grey. Customers who signed up to reserve one will get theirs in early 2012 and at first you'll need to be using a Mac if you want to run the Lytro software. A Windows version is coming in 2012.
Colour Splash Studio is one of an emerging breed of photography applications that aim to do one task well and that are priced very affordably. Colour Splash Studio is for photographers wanting to make black and white photos with selective colour elements in the style of the movie Pleasantville.
When you first open an image with Colour Splash Studio it'll immediately turn your image black and white. You can now use the brush tool to paint back areas that you want in colour. The brush is edge detecting, which makes the process easier and faster and you've got control over the size, softness and opacity of the brush which combined with zooming the image to full size means it's pretty easy to paint in a good selection quickly. Once you've painted in your selection you can tweak the colour and greyscale areas separately with brightness, contrast and blur controls. Sadly there's no local contrast control but on the colour layer you can also tweak saturation, hue and exposure. I found these sliders a little harsh in their operation - fine tweaks were not at all easy and of course they apply to the whole image so there's no opportunity for tweaking just a portion of the image. There are also no controls for crop or rotation and very few options for getting more creative with colour (cross processing or split toning, for example) or black and white (dodging and burning, for example). I was very pleased to see support for my Wacom tablet. Pressure can be used to control brush size. I would have preferred it to control opacity but this is a good start. I was also very pleased to see standard Photoshop keyboard shortcuts working such as [ and ] for brush size and spacebar for dragging around the image while zoomed in.
It's clear that Colour Splash Studio is trying to do just this one thing well and I can respect that but for an app that concerns itself *only* with turning your image black and white there is one glaring omission - the lack of ability to control the black and white mix. Any photographer that is serious about wanting their image to look just a certain way is going to expect to have much tighter control over the black and white conversion process by being able to dial in brightness values for red, green and blue or at least by choosing from a selection of black and white filter presets.
As it stands right now this is a fine app for one simple task that does an awful lot right. I believe they've gone a little too far with simplifying by not including a black and white mix option and they should look at making fine control of those sliders easier. In a perfect world I'd like to see some dodge and burn options to further improve the black and white control. The quality of the application's results is excellent, however, and if you only want that simplified, limited set of options then Colour Splash Studio might be just the app for you.
Nikon announced a brand new range of cameras a few days ago - Nikon 1. There are 2 initial models, the V1, which is the higher end model aimed at more serious photographers, and the J1 aimed at a more consumer audience. Both cameras are mirrorless and have interchangeable lenses plus some unique new features that will no doubt turn a few heads. For starters they have a "motion snapshot" mode which starts recording a slow motion video when you first touch the shutter button. It'll then shoot 1 second of video during which time your still will also be captured. You can then combine the video and still into what Nikon calls a motion snapshot. The other innovative shooting mode is Smart Photo Selector. When you press the shutter the camera takes 20 full resolution shots and then automatically selects the 5 best images. It shows you the one it thinks is best. If you don't agree you can choose from the others. Both cameras also have an amazing 60 fps continuous shooting speed and of course both cameras shoot full 1080p HD video at 60 or 30 fps. There will be a new range of Nikon 1 lenses to fit these cameras but an adapter is available allowing you to fit standard Nikon lenses as well.
So far so good right? Right - I love innovative ideas and I'm delighted to see Nikon coming up with some creative new features. but I can't help feeling these cameras aren't aimed at me. For starters there's the 10 megapixel resolution which is a good bit lower than I'm accustomed to. Even camera phones are getting close to the 10 megapixel mark (the new iPhone will likely have 8 megapixels). Also the on-camera buttons and controls have been pared down to something similar to a point and shoot. No scroll wheels under your fingers here. Not even any dials for selecting aperture priority, shutter priority or manual mode - even on the big brother V1 model. Then there's those new shooting modes. Do I really want to fill my memory cards with motion snapshot video? Do I want to go through the process of picking the best shot out of 5 when I take a picture? Now I think of it those seem like they'd be more useful on a consumer focussed camera.
But then they also seem to be lacking consumer features. Neither model has a touch screen so there won't be any touch to focus or expose and neither model has a fold-out screen either. The V1 is also lacking a pop-up flash though an optional hotshoe flash is available at extra cost. They're both also very expensive compared to consumer cameras and then there's the extra expense of interchangeable lenses. They're also both lacking a built-in GPS, which is becoming an increasingly important feature. So if this camera isn't aimed at pros and it's not got the features of a consumer camera then who is it for?
Ironically it might be the video guys that find this first crop of Nikon 1 cameras most appealing. The V1 has a mic input and both cameras can use the 10-100 PD-Zoom lens with variable speed zoom. There's an optional add-on That 1080p video with great quality Nikkor lenses might be very appealing indeed.
As part of Apple’s 72hr App Store on Facebook free app program, Nik Software announced that it will be giving Snapseed away for free for just 72 hours beginning at 12:00 p.m. PST on September 20, 2011 through 12:00 p.m. PST on September 23, 2011.
I reviewed Snapseed on PhotoWalkthrough a few weeks ago. Snapseed normally sells for $4.99 and is worth every penny.