Lightroom 3 Public Beta is now available
I particularly like the improved sharpening, noise reduction, demoasicing, watermarking and new grain tools. There are significant quality improvements especially for high ISO and long exposure photographers. The completely redesigned Import dialog allows you to browse all images on the hard drive (similar to Bridge functionality). LR3 now archives the catalog during exit instead of upon launch (but they use the term "backup" incorrectly). There are also some exciting features in the wings that aren't in this public beta yet. The LR3 beta takes up lots of RAM, isn't optimized for speed and…
Q&A: Which is better for scanning - negative or positive film?
Q) Which is better for scanning - negative or positive film? A) Generally speaking, color negative (C-41) film is a dream to scan relative to transparency (E6) and black and white films. Color negative not only captures a huge dynamic range but compresses it to a very small dynamic range that's easy for scanners to extract. Color negative film allow allows the photographer to print in either color or black and white. Images can be scanned in color mode and in front of the lens filtration (yellow filter, red filter, etc) can be simulated during the process of converting the image to a…
Twitter Experiment
I just started Twittering little snippets of information that although fun, aren't quite blog-worthy. Twitter seems like it could be a fun way to to get "little bits" out there. If you'd like to follow me you can do so at: http://twitter.com/scott_martin_
Double Exposure: Moab (sold out)
April 28th-May 2nd, 2010 in Moab, Utah
with Scott Martin and Andy Biggs
Scott Martin and Andy Biggs join forces to present a rigorous five day photography workshop in Moab, Utah. Moab is the epicenter of red rock country with its famous arches, balanced rocks and spires in Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. If you have never photographed in the Moab area, you owe it to yourself to witness some of the most famous geological formations in the American West. The area is also…
Digital Capture, Lightroom, Change, and why, yes, you really do have to learn this File Management Stuff
October 16th, 2009, 9:30am - 4pm, Houston TX
presented by Scott Martin via ASMP Houston
In my day-to-day consulting I am seeing photographers struggle with organizing ever-increasing, huge amounts of images. To add to this, the "file browsing" applications photographers have been using are showing their age and Adobe Lightroom is emerging as a surprisingly powerful tool for not only image file management, but also…
Working with sRAW image files
The sRAW (small RAW) format is gaining popularity among 20+ megapixel camera owners that occasionally don't want as much resolution or such a large file size. sRAW files are half to a quarter of the resolution of a full RAW and this equates to smaller storage requirements and faster processing for projects that don't require as much resolution. sRAW files do maintain a nearly all the development flexibility of a true RAW file, and therefore are often more desirable than a less flexible JPEG. sRAW files aren't actually true RAW files. The sensor's true RAW data is demosaiced and rendered to a…
Leica M9 and X1 Camera Systems
Leica has just announced two new camera systems - the M9 and the X1. The M9 is the latest in the famous M series - it's the same size and format as the M8 yet it's chockfull of refinements. The M9 packs a 18.5 megapixel full frame sensor and has 3, 5 or 7 frame exposure bracketing for HDR. Its fit and finish are all Leica and its the smallest full frame digital camera on the market. It's available in 2 weeks for $6995.
The new X1 (pictured above on the…
Snow Leopard Planning
Apple's long anticipated 10.6 "Snow Leopard" operating system is now shipping. Snow Leopard's modern cocoa code base promises system-wide responsiveness, reliability, smarter multiprocessor utilization and multitasking on existing Intel based hardware. Geek Mac and Windows users alike should read this in-depth article on Snow Leopard's under the hood technologies. As with any major operating system upgrade it is important that we make a list of our applications and printer drivers and check for compatibility before making the switch.
Seminar: Digital Capture, Lightroom, Change, and why, yes, you do have to learn this File Management Stuff
September 13th, 9am - 4pm, University of Texas, Austin TX presented by Scott Martin In my day-to-day consulting with photographers I see them struggle with organizing ever-increasing huge amounts of images. To add to this, Adobe Lightroom is a powerful new tool to learn that has opened up new possibilities for image file management. This one day class will examine (in great detail) every aspect of file management in Adobe Lightroom. We will discuss a variety of scenarios including transferring images from a desktop to a laptop and back. We'll talk about managing files on different computers…
Lightroom 3 Process Quality Improvements
October 22, 2009articles,commentary