Why the Plugin Rocks

This plugin rocks because it makes exporting to Flickr as easy as exporting an image to your desktop. I really like the following features:

• Automatically uploads the photos to your account.
• It lets you place it into one of your existing sets.
• You can easily rename/resize.
• You can include Flickr tags.
• There are several nice features for overwriting existing images.

How to Use the Plugin

The following instructions are for use with Lightroom 2. Use with Lightroom 1 is very similar, though, and Jeffrey’s site has easy-to-follow information on its isntallation and use.

1. Download the plugin from Jeffrey’s page. He has a version for Lightroom 2 here and a version for Lightroom 1 here.

2. Unzip the plugin to a permanent place on your computer. I put mine in the same area as my Lightroom Catalog.

3. Open Lightroom and click File > Plug-in Manager…

4. Click the Add button.

5. Locate the folder that you unzipped – select the folder and click  Add Plug-in. Note that if you ever move/delete the folder, the plugin will no longer work – you will need to re-add it.

6. Moving forward, whenever you want to export a photo to Flickr, select the photo and click File > Export… (or if in the Library module you can click the Export… button in the bottom left corner).

7. Choose Flickr from the options menu at the top (see Figure 1).

8. You’ll need to tell the plugin which account to use – click the Authenticate to Flickr button. It will open a browser and ask you to confirm that you want to give access for Lightroom to talk directly to Flickr. Approve the questions.

9. When back in Lightroom, the Export dialog will still be open and several options will be available, including information from your Flickr account such as your available Sets. You can then choose your settings as appropriate, including size, Flickr set, etc. Click the Export button when done.

Figure 1 – Click to enlarge

Who Should Buy It?

Someone in need of a streamlined or more efficient/fun way to manage and edit pictures.

the Cost

$99 upgrade; $299 full license

the Good

Non-destructive local editing using a brush, dual monitor support, support for larger images.

the Bad

Speed when using certain settings, new features brings a new learning curve.

Adobe Lightroom is hands-down the most commonly used program on my computer when it comes to photography. So, it was an easy to decision to upgrade to version 2 when it came out earlier this week. I’ve had an opportunity to use it and have some initial feedback on what I like and what could have turned out better.

Also, check out the following links for more information on what’s new or for training resources.

Adobe Documentation

Training Support Center

My Favorite 6 New Features

The best news is that there are a TON of new, really great features. The core around many of these new features is reducing the need to go to Photoshop. 3 of my top 6 new favorite features eliminated the need to go to Photoshop – I can now do those things directly in Lightroom. That results in a big time saver.

1. Adjustment brush: The adjustment brush allows you to make non-destructive edits to just parts of your photo directly in Lightroom! Version 1 required that you make your adjustments to the whole picture – you needed to go to Photoshop to do anything to parts of the picture. This one feature nearly doubles my productivity. Also, Adobe did a good job implementing it (for the most part). The brush is natural and easy to use. It’s also very smart. When brushing the image, it can detect edges and only apply the adjustments to the areas it is supposed to. Very cool!
2. Open files in Photoshop without saving them: This is the #2 reason I upgraded. I do a fair amount of HDR and panorma shots – in the past when I needed to open several images to create one larger one, it saved each of the shots as a Photoshop file, even though I only needed one final pano. It resulted in tons of extra files (that were pretty large) filling up my hard drive. Well, no longer! No, you can open an image in Photoshop without having it automatically save it.
3. Larger file support (65,000 pixels): Previously, Lightroom would only store an image up to 10,000 pixels wide. That caused some major issues when stitching together multiple large images, which could result in at least 15,000-20,000 pixel widths. Now, Lightroom supports much larger file sizes – horray!
4. Print to JPEG: The Print area of Lightroom is so much fun to use. Printing is easy and highly configurable. One of the things I really liked in Lightroom 1 is creating fine art prints (prints that don’t fill the whole sheet and often have descriptive text or logos directly below them). Now, it’s even better. You can export those fine art prints, or anything else from the Print area to an image! That’ll make creating images for posting on this blog and in other areas much easier. I used to have to go to Photoshop to be able to do that.
5. Better sharpening: The sharpening section now includes all the same sliders as Photoshop, plus one or two extras. I used to pull almost every final image over to Photoshop for final sharpening. Not anymore! Lightroom can handle it all. It even applies some basic sharpening while exporting.
6. Dual monitor support: I can finally open up various parts of Lightroom on a second monitor, like the Grid view of all my pictures.

A few other nice things include: You can print picture packages, mixing multiple sizes of the same image onto a single page for printing; it upgrades well from Lightroom 1 – it pulled over all my pictures, settings, presets, etc.; you can save your print settings with your photos so that you can more quickly make reprints; better visual cues – for example, when you reject a photo, it now grays them out; vignettes that are based on the cropped part of the image (the old way would display the vignette on cropped out areas of the image, making it unusable in those cases); you can access collections (groups of photos) from the develop and output modules now, reducing the need to go back to the library just to choose a different set of photos to work on.

The Bad

The great new features definately make it worth the upgrade. There are, however, a few things that are causing me some heartache.

1. Adjustment brush speed: I usually like to check the setting that automatically writes any changes to the file directly into the file. In the past, that would slow things down a bit (it is faster for Lightroom to keep track of those changes instead of writing them into the file), but it was tolerable. With that setting checked the adjustment brush is almost unusable – it runs ridiculously slowly, forcing me to turn off that feature.
2. Sub collection creation : I use collections a ton – in fact, I create one collection with several sub collections on every one of my shoots. For some unexplainable reason, Lightroom made it a whole lot harder to create sub-collections.

The Final Word – Should You Buy It?

In some cases, product upgrades may not bring features that are applicable enough for everyone to warrant widespread upgrades. That is not the case for Lightroom 2, though. If you are a Lightroom 1 user (or just want to try it out), I would recommend purchasing Lightroom 2 without hesitation. The adjustment brush and better Photoshop support make this worth the upgrade all by themselves.

Stay tuned over the coming days and months for posts on how I use particular features.

Who Should Buy It?

Someone looking for a nice set of strobes (and all the other gear like stands and soft boxes) at a good value.

the Cost

$900 for the kit, $350/head

the Good

Great quality for the value, fits with other Elinchrom accessories

the Bad

Could always use more power (these have 400 w/s per unit). Missing some of the bells and whistles of the higher end units.

Welcome to the third installment in the Studio Strobes and Setup for Beginners series. Check out the intro here or the Choosing Your Strobes segment here.

My choice of studio strobes that provide a great balance of features and cost are the Elinchrom D-Lite 4’s.

The kit comes with 2 identical, 400 w/s studio strobe heads, with stands, 2 softboxes, cases and cords. The kit includes everything you need to begin your studio lighting setup.

After several months of use, the units work consistently, providing good color and durable use. The units are very easy to set up and use and are one of the best additions to my lighting setup.

The Specs

Each flash head has a power output of 400 w/s, replaceable flash tubes, power variability (ranging 5 stops), modeling light and an optical slave (one can see when the other fires and fires at the same time). They synch at 5V (that is the amount of voltage that runs along the synch cord from your camera to the flash – you can use wireless triggers as well, which is the topic for another installment in this Studio Strobes and Setup for Beginners series), which makes it safe to use with any digital camera.

The soft boxes that come with the kit work best for 1-2 person portraits (they aren’t huge – 1 is 21" and the other is 25.5").

The Good

Good value. You can purchase the entire kit for about the same price as a single professional-quality strobe head. I also really liked the decent range of features and the fact that all the other great Elinchrom accessories worked on the strobe heads. For example, I also purchased the Elinchrom Midi-Octa Bank soft box and it worked perfectly.

The Bad

Not too much to complain about, really. The biggest downside is the power. At 400 w/s, the strobes put out about 1/3 of the power of the high-end versions (400 w/s is still lots of light – the bigger ones will give you about 2 stops of light, though).

The Verdict

Looking for a nice combination of features/power and cost? The versatility, compatibility with other Elinchrom products and the ease of use make these a great studio strobe. You’ll probably also want to purchase some large soft boxes as the two that come in the kit are best for 1-2 person portraits.

Who Should Buy It?

Anyone who owns and uses a camera

the Cost

$24.95 – 54.95, depending on the model

the Good

Nice construction, great price, extremely flexible tripod solution

the Bad

Nothing bad here!

A few weeks ago, I reviewed a tripod by Gitzo, which is regarded as one of the premiere tripod manufacturers around. While I love my Gitzo, the Gorillapod tops its rating!

If you haven’t already seen the Gorillapod, it is a compact tripod (coming in at about a foot tall). Unlike other tripods, it has flexible, gripping legs, allowing you to put your camera almost anywhere. It comes in three sizes, depending on the size/weight of your camera.

I bought mine primarily for my new G9 point and shoot. The smallest version is meant for point and shoot cameras, but because the G9 is a little larger than others, I decided to get the medium version, which is meant for light SLRs. You can also purchase a heavy-duty version meant for SLRs with zoom lenses. Check out the site for full information.

The Good

Simply put, this thing rocks. It is small enough to fit in a backpack, but is still very solid. Knowing that the legs were flexible made me a little hesitant to put my expensive camera on it. But, after seeing it in person, any concern was removed. It easily holds my camera in any position, allowing me to set it on uneven surfaces, or when needed, wrap it around something like a car mirror or tree limb.

See the picture at the right of my Gorillapod in action at a recent family outing (click on it for a larger version). We wanted to take a family self-portrait and set the Gorillapod on the windshield of our van. It worked like a champ.

The Bad

After several weeks of use, I can’t find a single downside. Over time, I’m a little curious to see if the hinges will loosen up to much and become less effective – I haven’t heard anything about that from other reviewers, though. I expect that I’ll continue enjoying this great product for a while!

The Interesting

Joby (Gorillapod’s manufacturer) does a few interesting things. First, they seem to be a very environmentally friendly company. While I’m not as green as I probably should be, I do appreciate a company’s solid effort. And, they’ve turned it into a price savings for you. When at their web site, you can actually order any one of the products for about $3 less if you choose to not have it packaged (thereby saving packaging waste).

Also, they provide a Flash clip for the SLR versions that slides into the clip area and holds a portable flash like the Nikon SB-800 or Canon 580 EX II.

The Verdict

Do you own a camera? Then you should also own a Gorillapod. It’s low cost, low profile and high versatility make this an amazing purchase.

So far, I like the quality of the pictures, but due to its smaller chip size, it does get noisy faster than other digital SLRs at high ISOs. It starts appearing at ISO 200 and jumps up after that.

I should have a comprehensive review on the G9 next week.

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Who Should Buy It?

Someone who wants a solid set of portable tripod legs at a reasonable price (comparatively).

the Cost

$350

the Good

Solid Gitzo construction; G-Locks; great travel or hiking weight/height

the Bad

Still a bit pricey; a little shorter than I’d prefer.

Gitzo is the premium name in tripod names. The Weekend Basalt tripod legs follow in that excellent tradition of quality and solid construction.

Made of Basalt (cooled lava), these tripod legs are light, yet fairly rigid (the quality is higher than aluminum but lower than their carbon fiber series). The set weights in at under 2 pounds, folds down to 22 inches and extends up to about 55 inches.

The Good

I purchased the set primarily for hiking landscapes and travel and they’ve performed wonderfully. Their construction is excellent and they handling them is a pleasure. They are small/light enough to easily place on a camera bag and fit well under an airplane seat or in an overhead compartment. Due to their lighter weight, in windier conditions, I had to put a weight (my camera bag) on the hook under the main post to anchor everything down.

One of my favorite features, though, are the patented G-Locks. They allow you to twist the lock, extend the leg and tighten the lock, without any unecessary leg rotation. The result is an incredibly fast set up and take down. When moving around for landscape shots, this is even handier.

The Bad

The only two downsides to this nice rig, forcing me to only give 3.5 stars, is the price and height. The set folds up small and as a result, the maximum height tops out at 55 inches. In some cases, I was wanting to stretch things a little further to increase comfort when standing behind the tripod or when trying to get a particular shot.

Also, at $350 for the legs only, they can be a bit pricey (the carbon fiber series is even more at $500+). You do get what you pay for, though. These legs will last a lifetime.

The Verdict

If you can spend the money and need a solid set of travel tripod legs at a good price, these will suit you well. The build quality, G-Locks, weight and general durability make them an excellent choice.

Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop’s Most Powerful Feature by Matt Kloskowski

Who Should Buy It?

Anyone who needs to learn about layers. Beginners and more seasoned users of Photoshop will benefit from this book.

the Cost

$39.99

the Good

Basic instruction as well as advanced tips and tricks.

the Bad

Wish there would have been even more layout tips!

I’m an avid reader of Matt’s Adobe Lightroom Killer Tips blog so I was expecting a lot from his highly publicised book. It didn’t disappoint!

Like his good friend and best selling author Scott Kelby, Matt’s writing style is engaging and easy to follow. The book is full of screenshots and step-by-step instructions that users new to Photoshop can easily follow.

While I knew a good amount of the information in many of the chapters, even the repetitive sections provided enough tips and tricks to keep me reading every page. Matt was also able to include a nice number of more advanced techniques (and some basic stuff I never knew), showing how to create effects from beginning to end.

The book also does a nice job balancing information for photographers and graphic designers, providing chapters that would appeal to one, the other and in many cases, both. I really enjoyed the end of each chapter as well – a summary of shortcuts and tips from the chapter are summarized nicely on a single page, which is a great way to reinforce what was learned.

The book is what it claims to be – a comprehensive guide to what is truly a great feature. I would recommend this book to anyone learning or trying to master Photoshop.

I listed the three best approaches I found and brief instruction on how to do each. I preferred OnOne’s Photoshop plugin, Genuine Fractals, but any of these options will provide usable results when followed correctly.

Where to Start

It’s important to always start with as high quality image as you can. Ideally, you can use a RAW file or JPEG right out of your 6 or 7+ megapixel digital camera. You don’t want to grab a 800 pixel wide, been compressed multiple times image off of Google. The old addage is true here: Garbage in > Garbage out.

Also, when doing this, keep in mind that most folks are going to view a large print or poster from at least 3 or 4 feet away. As a result, they won’t need to be quite as sharp as an 8×10″ print.

The Options I Tried

I did some research and tried three different options. #1 and #2 were done directly in Photoshop. #3 was done with a Photoshop plugin.  Here’s how they work. Note that each one will make the file substantially larger (several hundred MB in some cases, so make sure your hard drive is ready to handle that). Also, in many cases I would apply a bit of sharpening to the photo after enlargement to crisp things up a bit (more on sharpening in a future post).

#1: Increasing 10% at a Time with Bicubic Smoother

Open the image in Photoshop and choose Image>Image Size. Uncheck the Resample Image checkbox and change the resolution to 200 and click OK.

Go to Image>Image Size again and re-check the Resample Image checkbox and change the option to Bicubic Smoother. Choose Percentage from one of the document size drop-downs and change the percentage to 110. Click okay.

The image will now grow by 10%. Repeat the Image>Image Size, percentage, 110 steps until your image is at the desired size.

#2: Increase all at Once with Bicubic Sharper

This tip is directly from Scott Kelby’s best selling book The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers. He mentions in the book (and I’ll second it here) that this seems like the most non-traditional of the options. But, it seems to do the trick! The one downside to this option is that it produced the largest file size, which can get tricky when you start to consider Photoshop’s 2 GB file size limit.

Open the image in Photoshop and choose Image>Image Size. Change the settings in the box as shown below and click okay. It’ll process things for a while.

#3: Increase with OnOne’s Genuine Fractals Plugin

This is the only option of the 3 that requires an additional dip into the bank account (past the already pricey Photoshop). Make sure OnOne’s Genuine Fractals plugin for Photoshop is installed (it retails for around $160, unless you need to resize CMYK images and can be found here).

Open the image in Photoshop. Click onOne>Genuine Fractals>Scale Current Image…. The image will open in a new window, with new options. Set the desired resolution (around 200) and size and click okay. One benefit to Genuine Fractals is that it provides advanced previewing and sharpening options while in its resizing dialog box.

The Results

As I mentioned before, the results were all fairly decent, although they varied a bit. Of all, I preferred Genuine Fractals – it provided slightly sharper lines and less noise. I also listed the final file size for each.

Original File: 53 MB

#1: 10% at a Time: 934 MB

#2: Bicubic Sharper: 1530 MB

#3: Genuine Fractals: 928 MB

In my opinion, blogs are some of the best training available and they’re free! Blogs are a great resource for finding a very wide variety of information from industry leading experts. The only caveat being that it is important to verify information – after all, anyone can be a blogger!

I just checked my feed reader (more on feed readers soon) and I currently read around 35 blogs on photography, graphic design, technology and more. Each of the 35 provide something interesting, but I thought I’d highlight my top ten.

My Top 10 Favorite Blogs

• Photoshop Insider (www.scottkelby.com/blog): Written by the infamous Scott Kelby, Photoshop Insider provides a nice blend of photography how-tos, industry news and more.
• Strobist (strobist.blogspot.com): This is the photography lighting site on the web. The Strobist (David Hobby) has a regular readership in the 6-7 figures and provides amazing how-tos for off camera flash lighting. If I could only read one blog each day, this one might be it.
• Presentation Zen (www.presentationzen.com): Garr Reynolds provides resources, instruction and links to GREAT examples of communication. If you ever present in from of a group, this is a resource you shouldn’t pass up.
• PhotoWalkPro (www.photowalkpro.com): Jeff Revelle has created a nice following with a nice, general photography blog. I like this blog because of its variety. Posts include everything from gear to tutorials to HDR.
• Canon Blogger (www.canonblogger.com): Jason Anderson heads up another of my favorite photography blog. Like Scott Kelby and Jeff Revelle, Jason blogs on a number of topics. His regular posts, pleasant writing style and regular tutorials make this site worth visiting.
• Moose News Blog (www.moosenewsblog.com): Want lots of great wildlife photos? Check out this site. Moose posts tons of great photos almost every day.
• Flash Flavor (www.flashflavor.com): Matt Adcock, famous wedding photographer, brings a great set of stories and photos of unique and creative ways to light weddings. He’s also done some great trash the dress stuff. If you are into wedding photography, event photography or just great lighting inspiration, you should out Flash Flavor.
• InDesign Secrets (www.indesignsecrets.com): If you use InDesign (a page layout tool from Adobe), this is THE place for information, tips and tricks. It has a handful of contributing authors, all of which are industry experts and all of which provide great content.
• Lightroom Killer Tips (www.lightroomkillertips.com): Do you use Lightroom? If so, check out Matt Kloskowski’s blog. It’s all Lightroom all the time.
• Layers Magazine (www.layersmagazine.com/blog/): Layers magainze rounds out the top ten with a strong presence. R.C. Concepcion and others provide graphic design news and tips and tons of information about Adobe products.

I just tried a new printer, Zoo Printing Trade and thought that I’d provide a comparison of it against other online printers I’ve used.

I didn’t include any more high-end local printers. I’ve found that in most cases local printers have higher prices, but much better customer service (it’s always nice to have a local person that you can work with, receive support from, yell at when something goes wrong, etc.). As with most things, you pay more, but you get more.

The Comparison

The three online printers we’ll take a look at are: Zoo Printing, Print Pelican and PrintingForLess.com. (One thing to note – I signed up for a trade account from Zoo Printing and received slightly lower pricing as a result of that.)

Criteria	Zoo Printing	Print Pelican	Printing For Less
Price
Quality
Speed
Printing Options
Service
Website
Overall

Choices

Printing for Less (www.printingforless.com)

Printing for Less provided the best customer service of all three sites. I sent several questions via e-mail (and one that was unrelated to my order) and they were answered very quickly and politely. Their delivery speed was average – they did, however, have the highest prices in the comparison printers.

Print Pelican (www.printpelican.com)

Print Pelican had the second best price and the best set of options (they have a better selection of brochures, printing much longer brochures and a few other products the other two didn’t have), yet they still finished in third place overall. I rated them so poorly because their customer service responses were slow and, in some cases, a little rude. Also, their time to delivery was very long. In some cases, I had to follow up several days past the time they were supposed to ship and they still weren’t done (they did end up expediting things at that point – but they were still way behind their already lower-end delivery times).

Zoo Printing (www.zooprinting.com)

Zoo Printing has prices that blow the others away. That, their solid selection and great web site (it has a feature that allows you to automatically track your printing through the different stages at the press) make them a great choice. The one area that they suffer is their customer service. I sent a few e-mails and didn’t even receive a reply. I haven’t tried the support line – but in the future, if I had a problem, I would definately go that route instead of the e-mail.

My Choice

Amazingly low prices, a reasonable selection and a solid web site make Zoo Printing Trade my favorite option. But, watch out for their poor customer service. If it’s important to you, you may want to consider Printing for Less.

Criteria

• Price: Almost always one of the top factors – how attractive are the overall prices? All three choices provided similarly priced shipping. Check out the in-depth comparison here. It details specific prices from all three companies on some standard printing projects. (You won’t believe how much lower Zoo Printing is!)
• Quality: Are there any quality problems? I gave all four options 4 stars in this area – all delivered a product that fully met my expectations. Printing, trimming, etc. were all perfect.
• Speed: How fast is the product at your door from the day you ordered? See the in-depth comparison for more specifics on quoted turn times.
• Options: How many different printing products are available to choose from?
• Support/Customer Service: How responsive was their customer service? How quickly were e-mails answered? How complete/helpful were the answers?