Wednesday, April 15, 2009

1 comments
Blogging about Blogs
When you have nothing to write about you turn to subjects like this one: Blogging about Blogs.
I thought it might be fun to talk about the blogs that I like reading on a daily basis (photographically speaking of course). These bloggers are effective because they keep me coming back to their sites on a daily basis - for me the fundamental success of any blog writer. I'm often amazed where these guys and girls find the time and the inclination to write but am very glad they do. Without further delay:


Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider
I love to read Scott's blog as he usually has something interesting to say about the world of photography or Photoshop in general. You may not always agree with the way in which he says it, but you're almost always guaranteed to learn something new or just enjoy the pleasure of reading about his experiences in the world of writing (Scott is a prolific Photoshop author), training, conferences, camera equipment or his own shared experiences. Scott's 'Guest Blog Wednesday' is always a highlight when an invited guest takes over the blog and shares their insight, wisdom and experience with us. Such luminaries as Zack Arias, Chris Orwig, Joe McNally and Jay Maisel have graced Scott's pages.


Joe McNally
Joe's irreverent style and indomitable talent are a pleasure to read and behold when he has free rein over the content which is his own blog. Usually insightful and always amusing Joe opens us up to his wonderful world of talent and 'Light'. Well worth a read. Go and buy a few of his books as well, you won't regret it! (The Hot Shoe Diaries and The Moment It Clicks!)


John Nack on Adobe
John is Principal Product Manager for Adobe Photoshop and so what you get in this blog is coal-face like detail in respect of Photoshop and associated products. John is usually first to reveal new and insightful details about the latest Adobe offerings and the number of tips, tricks and techniques you can pick up here is amazing. Reading the comments from his followers is also always good for a laugh - Adobe can engender some vitriolic responses sometimes and John usually handles them with aplomb - usually.


Julieanne Kost's Blog
Julieanne's blog is light on content, hyper-loaded on detail. She is Adobe's Digital Imaging Evangelist but this blog primarily focuses on Photoshop's usability and many gems are to be found here in terms of the esoteric keyboard shortcuts that will make your Photoshop experience that much better. A daily dose is recommended.



C4 Images & Safari Blog
Thanks to Shem and his wonderful writing style and even more impressive photographic ability we get to be carried off into the bush now and again. Shem is a photographic instructor and wildlife guide that leads photo safaris and workshops to wild places that most of us only dream of getting to. Shem conjures up dreams and fantasies that attempt to satiate an appetite that will not be fulfilled. It will have to do though.

These are of course my favourite photography specific blogs that I like to read. A few other blogs that keep me reading include:
JohannMarx - my good friend Johann (aka FuzzyYak - a great photographer)
Vesta - my Sister's daily blog which keeps me entertained
Whimsical Blog :) Yes, yes, this is really my 'other' blog!

While I'm on this roll how about a list of some of my favourite inspirational photographic web-sites. Here in no particular order:

OneExposure - 1X
OutdoorPhoto
deviantArt
Shem Campion
Joey Lawrence Fine Art
Ridout Photography
Hougaard Malan - South African Landscape Photography
Marc Adamus
Bird Photographers.NET
Bob Krist Photography
Art Wolfe

Happy Surfing!

Addendum
So after writing this blog I remembered about several other blogs I browse as well as a few new ones I've come across recently of several other very inspirational bloggers. So I thought I would add them here but be assured there are many many others out there as well?
Chase Jarvis Blog
Doug Menuez 2.0 Go Fast, Don't Crash
Vincent | Lafore
Strobist

...and finally you have to check out Jason Lee. His Flickr photostream is just incredible. His creativity and style are just amazing! His children...wonderful! :)


Thursday, March 26, 2009

3 comments
DxO Optics Pro Elite 5.3.3 - A Review

DxO Image Science has recently released DxO Optics Pro Elite 5.3.3. The DxO RAW image converter seems to hold a niche corner in the marketplace amongst professionals due to the fact that it tries to fill a gap that many perceive not to exist? It’s relative complexity of use and previously poor implementations have not helped its cause either over time and its adoption rate is relatively low. With many other RAW image converters available such as Adobe Camera RAW, Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture or Nikon Capture NX there seems to be little space for DxO? It is the very niche nature of DxO however that actually makes it all the more compelling and worth the effort to learn to use effectively. The results can speak volumes and many professional photographic artists have turned to DxO to produce their fine results.

Since its inception DxO has always strived to provide the best image quality by supplying unique profile-based lens correction techniques to camera manufacturer’s proprietary RAW files. This ability to optically perfect images based on specific camera and lens characteristics usually results in RAW image conversions that are more optically correct and representative of the real-world scene which they captured. DxO’s ability to correct optical imperfections can result in reduced distortion, less vignetting, increased sharpness and fewer aberrations than any other available RAW image converter. More recently, DxO has made great strides in actual RAW conversion (the demosaicing algorithm), noise removal and overall colour fidelity.

Included in your DxO license is the ability to download a variety of camera and lens profiles which describe the characteristics of that combination. Mapping out the lens strength and weakness tells the software how to correct the optical geometric defects such as lens distortion, vignetting, colour fringing, lens softness, volume anamorphosis and keystoning or horizon correction. During the RAW import process this profile is applied automatically if you have it loaded on your computer. At regular intervals the DxO science laboratories profile new camera and lens combinations and make them available. For a complete list of currently available profiles visit their web site here. If you do not have the appropriate lens profile loaded then you still have access to other DxO image processing functionality but optical corrections are performed manually.

The RAW converter included in DxO achieves some of the best RAW conversions available in part with its ability to correctly demosaic the Bayer pattern found in most dSLR’s. Other RAW converters exhibit artifacts, false colours and maze-like structures during interpolation whereas DxO generally does not. Comparisons of this nature are easy to do for oneself and compare with your existing RAW converter. The results are quite remarkable actually. DxO achieves this improved interpolation largely through a proprietary mechanism as well as an interpolation of a larger selection of surrounding pixels in order to make a more informed decision. By making a larger selection of surrounding pixels DxO is also able to improve on noise reduction quite dramatically producing cleaner and more precise images. According to DxO their noise reduction techniques provide an overall two-stop gain. Results may vary but this is quite significant. Due to the increased complexity and additional overhead of RAW interpolation the conversion process in DxO is processor intensive and can take a while even on a high-end machine. With the extensive batch processing functionality built into the software however, this comes at a small price as you can simply set up your conversions and walk away.

The overall processing speed and stability of DxO 5.3 and higher is one area where significant strides have been made recently. DxO in the past has been known to be slow and prone to crashes. In DxO 5.3 or higher however this is a great deal better and works effectively on a graphics accelerated 64-bit system with the ability to leverage additional RAM to improve on overall performance. During the transition from DxO 4.x to 5.x the company went through significant change and this affected overall application stability and delivery to its detriment. It does appear however as these issues have now been resolved and updates have been rolling out more frequently and consistently and the application runs without fault on my Vista x64 8Mb system with full support for my camera and lens range.

Apart from the underlying technology in understanding camera bodies, lenses and RAW interpolation the DxO application actually provides a complete environment for managing your Workflow and processing your images. In DxO parlance the application summarises that workflow into ‘Select’, ‘Prepare’, ‘Process’ and ‘Review’ and is not unlike many other tools such as Adobe Lightroom. The ‘Select’ component allows you to import images into DxO, rank them according to quality and filter based on rankings to select the best images for manipulation. The ‘Prepare’ step allows for the full range of image manipulation techniques and is discussed in more detail below. The ‘Process’ step applies all the adjustments made in the ‘Prepare’ step and writes the output in a variety of formats (including JPG, DNG and TIFF). Finally, the ‘Review’ step in the workflow allows you to verify the process for accuracy and compare before and after images for quality-assurance.

DxO integrates with Adobe Lightroom in a variety of ways and does allow you to place DxO in the beginning of your workflow or use Lightroom as your primary image repository and DxO as a stand-alone RAW converter. My preferred workflow solution is to use Adobe Lightroom as my image repository and DxO on selected images that I intend for high quality fine-art reproduction. In my opinion Lightroom excels in the management of image catalogs and does a better job more intuitively in ranking, ordering, keywording and filtering images. I will still use Lightroom for more general purpose image adjustments as it is still simpler and quicker to use. Previously I would convert my images straight into the Adobe DNG format during the Lightroom import process but as DxO works most effectively on native RAW images (.CR2 or .NEF for instance) the conversion to .DNG is then deferred until after the DxO raw adjustments. DxO is also available as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop but in my opinion this is less than effective as that is generally too late in the workflow.

Therefore the ‘Prepare’ step in DxO becomes the most significant aspect of the application after the implicit optical correction and RAW image conversion. Naturally this is where the wealth of the application comes into its own with the available palettes indicating the type of operations that can be performed, including: Move/Zoom; Histogram; Edit EXIF; Preset Editor; Light; Colour; Geometry; Detail and My Palette. It is import to realise that any adjustments made in the ‘Prepare’ stage are not actually applied to your images immediately; they are only applied in the ‘Process’ stage on creation of the output.

The ‘Move/Zoom’; ‘Histogram’ and ‘Edit EXIF’ palettes are fairly self explanatory with the ability of the Histogram to show clipped shadow and highlight areas.

The ‘Preset Editor’ allows you apply a custom developed presets or load a variety of presets available on the web. Creating presets is a simple affair and in much the same fashion as Lightroom a preset is simply a stored combination of the adjustments made to the various sliders in the other modules (Color, Detail, Geometry and Light).

The ‘My Palette’ palette is more useful on screens with less real estate as you can drag a virtual palette into the ‘My Palette’ region to customize the user-interface to your liking and make the more common adjustments easily available.

The ‘Details’ palette allows you to adjust sharpness or softness, grain, dust, chromatic aberration and noise. Any sharpness adjustments take into account the specific constraints of the lens used. In addition you can at this stage apply a more conventional Unsharp Mask if you wanted to. Luminance noise (noise caused by excessive granularity) and Chrominance noise (noise caused by unwanted coloured artifacts in neutral areas) can be adjusted very effectively at this stage. Chromatic aberration can be further adjusted in this palette over and above that which is performed automatically by the lens profile. A dust removal brush is also available to clean up the image with the addition that these settings can be automatically applied to a whole batch of images. (I still find Lightroom or Photoshop dust clean up easier to use however).

The ‘Color’ palette allows adjustments of ‘Vibrancy’, ‘Color Rendering’, ‘Color Modes’, ‘Hue/Saturation/Lightness’, ‘Multi-Point Color Balance’ and ‘RAW White Balance’. The ‘Color Rendering’ option also facilitates access to the DxO Filmpack 2.0 plugin module which provides access to a variety of authentic looking film types emulating exposure latitude, colour, contrast and grain. The Multi-Point Colour Balance tool is unique to DxO and allows selective colour adjustments for up to four areas in your image using a colour wheel. The Multi-Point colour balance works in a similar way to the Nik Viveza tool but with colour adjustment in mind only.

The ‘Geometry’ palette allows for keystoning and horizon adjustments to straighten an image. As long as you have the appropriate camera-lens module installed geometric corrections are performed automatically so adjustments in this panel should be minimal. The ability of the ‘Geometry’ palette to correct volume anamorphisis is quite remarkable and has to be seen to be believed. Particularly useful for correcting art-work or architecture photography when perhaps you weren’t quite level and centered with the subject matter. You can also crop images in the Geometry palette according to various aspect ratios.

The ‘Light’ palette allows for Exposure Compensation; Tone Curve and DxO specific lighting adjustments. The DxO Lighting section includes adjustments for Intensity, Black and White points, Brightness as well as Global and Local contrast. Highlight recovery is particularly powerful in the DxO Light palette but this is available for RAW images only. The Tone Curve gives you precise control over the luminance levels for each color layer in the image.

At any stage during your image adjustment you can quickly and easily see a before and after view to verify that your corrections are going in the right direction. DxO provides a variety of split before-after views or simply holding the mouse down on an image toggles between the two views.

Once your image adjustments are complete you then Batch process your images into their desired output format. DxO supports output in JPG, TIFF or DNG format with the ability to resize, specify image resolution and ensure a proper ICC profile tag (which currently only supports sRGB and Adobe RGB although you can reference a custom profile such as ProPhoto RGB as well with an additional step).

This is a processor intensive step of DxO and can tie up your machine resources quite substantially so it is best to prepare and batch your images in volume and then start the output process. Once completed DxO provides you with a full audit of the results including any errors that may have occurred and you now have the ability to ‘Review’ the images to compare in complete detail the Before and After results. You can also simply return to your image editor of choice and continue further image adjustments where desired.

DxO 5.3.3 is available as a trial version from their web site and in my opinion is a worthwhile addition to your RAW image processing arsenal. I do not use DxO on all my images but those that I have identified as my portfolio images definitely get the special treatment and adjustment that is available with DxO. Further adjustments are then usually made in Lightroom and Photoshop CS4 to complete the image before printing.

The DxO product is fairly complex in terms of the underlying adjustments that it makes to your images and to what it makes available through the various adjustment palettes. The documentation and videos are however relatively approachable and accurate even to the point of suggesting a variety of workflows to best satisfy your needs. The application does however require some experimentation and finesse to achieve perfect results.

DxO comes in two varieties: Standard and Elite with each version offering slightly different degrees of functionality. In particular the Standard version does not offer support for the high-end professional cameras or lenses. In my case the lack of support for the Canon 1D range or the high-end lenses in the standard product version necessitated the Elite purchase. The DxO Filmpack product is also an additional purchase if you want access to a larger variety of colour adjustments and various film-type emulations.

DxO has previously received bad press due to inconsistent updates that lagged behind industry standards and provided poor performance. Recent strides in product delivery and stability have however made DxO a valuable tool and one which I highly recommend if you’re after the very best from your RAW images.

Disclaimer

This essay is based partly on my experience with DxO Optics Pro since version 3 and information contained in the manuals and other online tutorials. I did not receive any financial compensation from DxO for the production of this essay nor am I affiliated with DxO in any way.

If you wish to purchase DxO Optics Pro you can use the following Sponsor Code which will entitle you to an immediate discount of 15% on DxO Optics Pro or DxO Filmpack if used before the 31st March 2009 - RAF8SBR6E. (See Referral programme regulations for further details).

For a downloadable PDF version of this review click here


Saturday, January 10, 2009

2 comments
BlackRapid R-Strap
How do you carry your camera around? Do you have it on a strap around your neck? Do you have a hand-strap? Have you dispensed with any and all straps altogether because they are irritating or uncomfortable? Or perhaps you've tried the BlackRapid R-Strap?



If you've ever tried to carry a large professional camera (such as the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III) around all day coupled with a large lens (such as the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L IS or the Canon 100-400 f/4 L) then you will know this is quite a bulky combination. Due to the overall weight and lens length the balance of the camera is off with a standard neck strap and it constantly leans forward and down all the time. It can be particularly dangerous for the camera or a child as you lean forward and the camera swings out and to the ground. It's also really irritating having this contraption bounce around the whole day against your stomach and let's face it after an extended period of time you're likely to be facing severe neck and shoulder cramping. You also look like the definitive Japanese tourist to any on-looker!

An alternative is to simply shoulder the camera but unless you're confident that your strap is not going to slip off and come crashing to the ground this is not really an ideal solution. You can get rubber straps that are supposed to be non-slip and 'stick' to your shoulder however in my experience this is also not a completely reliable solution and I was always nervous of the camera sliding off.

A hand-strap on the camera body is very useful however and I carried the Canon 1Ds Mark III and the 70-200 f/2.8 lens around the Australia Zoo the entire day with just a hand strap for support. It worked really well as the camera was always readily available however I would often find myself cradling the lens with both hands to alleviate the strain/fatigue and by the end of the day my wrist and forearm were quite sore. However at the time I much prefered this solution over a neck strap which I felt would have been much more uncomfortable and unwieldy for that length of time.

Along comes the BlackRapid R-Strap which is a really interesting innovation in camera straps. If you have the chance you should definitely check out the video on the BlackRapid site to see how the strap works and how intuitive it can be. At first glance it looks strange but after a little consideration it's clear that the implementation works really well for such a simple yet necessary piece of camera equipment. The strap goes across your chest to the opposite shoulder and the most striking aspect is that your camera hangs upside down by your opposite hip. Yet when you actually use this strap it instantly becomes second nature to just reach down, grab your camera and start shooting.

I received my BlackRapid RS-2 strap a while back but only recently had the chance to test it out with the family on another outing to the Zoo (this time the Johannesburg Zoo). Once again I used the same camera and lens combination. Overall I was extemely impressed. The strap sits across your chest and shoulder such that the weight is evenly distributed. The camera and lens sit very nicely against your hip and when properly adjusted with the strap attached to the tripod collar mount of the 70-200 the whole ensemble sits parallel to the ground. It was so comfortable that after a while you hardly notice it is there until it's needed and then you are able to instantly swing the camera up into position for the shot.

As mentioned I attached the strap to the tripod mount collar of the 70-200 lens for effective weight-balance distribution but with smaller lenses you could easily attach to the strap directly to the camera tripod mount itself. Having the strap connected to the camera does mean that it is slightly in the way of your hand for portrait oriented shots although not significantly so. Swinging the camera up in front of your eyes is quick and easy although the strap does tend to move slightly on your body during the process so that after shooting your have to move the strap to bring it back into position.

I so wish that I had had this camera strap when I shot a recent wedding. I tended to stick to one camera/lens combination for the wedding as the hassle-factor of managing two cameras outweighed the benefit of getting different shots and angles with different lenses. It would have been so easy to have had one camera on the hip with a 70-200 or a 16-35 and my primary camera in hand with the 24-70 with very little effort to switch between the two cameras as a consequence.

With the BlackRapid strap you can even shoot one-handed with the camera (provided of course your on-camera two-handed settings are all setup properly - which is not a fault of the strap in itself).

The strap appears to be very safe and the mechanism for securing it to the camera or collar is good. You do have to be a little concious of the fact that you are now slightly wider when passing through narrow openings so as not to bump the camera and getting into and out of a vehicle I was concious of the fact that I had to pick my camera up and put it onto my lap. This far outweighed the negatives of having a camera swing out from your body as you bend over for instance or suffering muscle strain from the other carrying mechanisms.

I would highly recommend one of the BlackRapid R-Straps. I bought two RS-2's on the strength of recommendations from other pro photographers without even trying it out for myself and I certainly have no regrets.

What's Hot
  • Comfortable and Versatile
  • Quick and Easy access to your camera
  • Working with multiple cameras is much simpler

What's Not
  • Cell phone pouch too small on the RS-2 (although it is useful for a memory card or two)
  • Strap does tend to move when picking the camera up and needs re-seating when returning the camera to your hip

Friday, January 09, 2009

0 comments
My BeBook
The BeBookI have finally managed to get my hands on an eBook reader that I believe works really well. It's called the BeBook from Dutch Manufacturer Endless Ideas.

For those of you that aren't aware of eBook readers (Ed: what rock have you been lying under?) then let me give you a brief rundown. Essentialy an eBook reader is a highly portable electronic device that allows you to store many documents or books in a variety of formats and read them as naturally as you would a paperback novel anytime, anywhere. The BeBook reader is slightly smaller than a trade paperback in size and weighs in at 220gr so it is really easy to hold and read.

Probably the most significant aspect of any eBook reader (including Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader) is it's use of the so-called 'e-paper' technology. Click on this link for a more technical explanation but in essence ePaper is not like an LCD that uses emitted light but rather it uses reflected light. This makes an eBook reader much more pleasant to read over a longer period and much more paper-like. It also makes it possible to read an eBook in full sunlight which you cannot do with LCD type readers. Of course this could be considered as a negative as like any normal paper you do need an external light-source such as a beside lamp to be able to read. An upcoming technology which is quite interesting is flexible ePaper and I have seen a new eReader that comes out with a roll up screen which makes for a really small device. Quite amazing what they can do with technology these days.

Like all eBook readers the BeBook comes with some integrated memory (512Mb in this case), The BeBook works in full sunlighthowever it also has support for an external SD card up to 4Gb. On 4Gb you could probably store about 6,000-8,000 average novels! The support for the SD card was one of the reasons I favoured the BeBook reader over the Amazon and Sony offerings. Probably the most significant must-have feature is that the BeBook doesn't tie you into any Digital Rights Managed (DRM) material and has full support for a large variety of document formats with support for .mobi which is possibly one of the largest eBook retailers out there. Sony absolutism dictates that you can only buy DRM eBooks from their web site and then of course you are restricted to the range that they have on offer. As I have access to a variety of PDF's off the web this seemed to me to be an illogical choice.

The current BeBook reader does not have wireless support and it would have been really great as I could then have simply downloaded a new novel onto the BeBook while I lay in bed. However truth be told that is probably overkill and the simplicity of plugging the BeBook into the USB port and downloading in that way cannot be overstated. Wireless support would have added to the overall cost of the device however BeBook indicate that their next model will support wireless. It is however a change in hardware and not a possible upgrade to existing devices unfortunately. One particular instance where wireless support would be very useful however is with RSS downloads. Many websites make their content available via RSS (Really Simple Syndication) which simply put is well-defined file-format standard that allows websites to publish content that can be interpreted by a variety of readers such as the BeBook. This allows you to keep up with new content that comes out regularly on the Web, such as a news or magazine site, blogs, stock information etc. The current BeBook has RSS support however you do need to download it via the USB connection.

BeBook SizeSo what is it like to read from the BeBook. Well in my experience so far; provided the book is properly formatted to fit the 800x600 screen display resolution and the font used is legible and not significantly anti-aliased (ie the edges are jagged) then it is an absolute pleasure to use. The text is crisp and clear, paging works really well and the reader remembers which books you were reading last and what page you were on. You can also bookmark certain pages if you wish to return there at a later stage. However when the book is not properly formatted you begin to run into viewing problems. Of course you are constrained by the size of the display so sometimes the text can appear rather small. There are two zoom levels in the BeBook to alleviate this problem with the 3rd zoom level reverting to a landscape view of the book at which point you must hold the reader sideways. This in itself is not a real problem but does feel a little clunky at first. I have experimented with 're-printing' some of my existing PDF's to another PDF that has the page size properly formatted to suit the BeBook dimensions and this does appear to help. It has been great to have finally been able to read some of the PDF books I have had on my computer for absolute ages. I have never been a big fan of trying to read off the computer screen as it always felt counter-intuitive, you suffered from eye-strain and excessive eye-movement. Truthfully when on the computer as well I'm often distracted by other open windows, in-coming emails etc. So just being able to lie in bed with my 'book' has worked out really well.

Browsing through a book quickly does not work so well however. For instance a technical reference manual in which you may wish just to skim through it looking for one solution or another certainly is a lot easier in a paper-based book. However holding a 1000-page reference manual in bed does not work quite so well? The BeBook allows you to page forward one page at a time or by holding down the button 10 pages at a time so this does help somewhat, however it is still not ideal.

The BeBook also has support for MP3's and you can listen to Audio-Books or music via the headphone socket. I haven't tried this out yet to be honest as I have a really good MP3 player with my Archos 605 however throwing a few audio-books onto the device and trying them out may not be a bad idea? MP3 support certainly wasn't a must-have feature for me though.

Overall I am really pleased with the device. It really is too expensive at 329,95 Euros but on a par with the other devices on the market so I guess that is the going rate. As a gadget freak this was right up my alley and I believe that I will get good use out of it.


What's Hot
  • Support for many different file formats: pdf, mobi, prc, epub, lit, txt, fb2, doc, html, rtf, djvu, wol, ppt, mbp, chm, bmp, jpg, png, gif, tif, rar, zip, mp3
  • SD Memory card support
  • No DRM (Digital Rights Management) restrictions
  • Great battery life

What's Not
  • No Wireless support
  • Rendering - The document needs to be formatted properly to appear correctly and crisply on the readers display otherwise it can appear too small or the fonts can appear pixelated.

Monday, November 10, 2008

3 comments
Save the Photographs
I came across this poem today and found it quite poignant...

Photographs are smiles that last forever
Snowmen that can never melt away
Birthday celebrations caught in amber
Rescued from the vaults of yesterday.

Faces that were once more dear than diamonds
Boys who kept you up until the dawn
Houses filled with bicycles and babies
Ghosts who left their shadows on the lawn.

Then turn the page and see the children glow
The adults age, the lovers come and go
Photographs are holes in time's gray curtain
Through them we can peek into the past

Call upon our parents and our children
Pop a cork with members of the cast
There they are, the days of jazz and joyrides
Snaps of magic moments lit by laughs.

If you ever find my house on fire
Leave the silver, save the photographs.
-- Anonymous

Friday, September 26, 2008

1 comments
Nik Software and U-Point Technology

I have recently become a very big fan of the Nik Software product range. Apart from a great suite of filters and tools in their product range the one aspect of their toolset that I find most appealing is the U-Point technology. With U-Point and Nik tools I have been able to achieve retouching in Photoshop that I would never have attempted before. Retouching in Photoshop is an art and can be quite difficult depending how far you wish to go. However Nik and U-Point have taken this black-art and turned it into childs-play.

U-Point control points were designed to allow photographers to make various adjustments directly on their images without ever having to create complex selections, masks or layers. The degree to which an image can be manipulated is now only superceded by the simplicity with which this can be achieved with U-Point. U-Point isn't revolutionary but more an evolutionary step as one could undoubtedly recreate the effects of U-Point in Photoshop; albeit with complex masks, layers and creative selections which naturally take much longer to achieve and more prone to error.

With U-Point powered Control Points, there is no need to ever create these complex selections, masks, or layers. With simple click and drag functionality, photographers can work directly on their image to control virtually any aspect of their photographic edits. Depending on the toolset the control point is being applied to, you can for the first time control specific elements of an image (such as the sky, skin, grass etc) independently of the rest of the image without the use of masks, layers or other complex procedures. With a control point you can adjust a specific area of object very accurately and by adding more control points to the image the U-Point blending technology works it's magic considering all enhancements and subtely merging these adjustments together. What used to be beyond my ability as a Photoshop user is now simplicity itself. The adjustments made are so visual that your post-processing speeds up dramatically allowing you to adjust colour and light as easily as capturing the original photograph or adjusting exposure. The end result is an image that better suits your intentions or desires.


So, what exactly is U-Point and how does it work then to make your life so much simpler?
With traditional post-processing performing retouching usually involves adjusting pixels at the RGB level or by using complicated and fancy selection tools to mask off objects or aspects of an image. Once these accurate selections are made (which is a very laborious and time consuming process) you then need to apply one or more appropiate filters such as levels, curves, color-balance etc. You also need to manage the interaction between these filters as they applied so that they blend seamlessly and you don't introduce artifacts or banding.

U-Point however changes this process as adjustments are made using a single method that is simple to use and extend. With a Control Point simply click on an area (or object or region) of an image that you wish to enhance in some way. Then by simply adjusting sliders left or right with the mouse you can effect control over your image depending on the underlying filter.
Currently the following Nik Tools allow for U-Point Control point adjustments:
· Nik Viveza: Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Hue, Red, Green, Blue, Warmth
· Nik Sharpener 3.0: Sharpening Strength, Structure, Local Contrast and Focus
· Nik DFine 2.0: Contrast Noise and Colour Noise
· Nik Color Efex 3.0: Opacity Slider to localise filter effect
· Nik Silver Efex Pro: Brightness, Contrast and Structure

Once a Control Point is placed, the Control Point automatically:
· Reads RGB and location values for each Control Point that is placed on the image.
· Calculates additional values of hue, saturation, brightness (lightness), and image detail to create the complete and unique set of U-Point pixel characteristics.
· Incorporates the U-Point pixel characteristics into a central intelligent blending function. U-Point technology’s central blending function enables the user to adjust the entire range of parameters to control color and light (including, Red, Green, Blue, hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, and warmth, as well as the size of area to be controlled) using a set of sliders associated with each Control Point.

When an additional control point is placed on the image, U-Point pixel characteristics for that specific control point are calculated and are then factored into the central blending function. As more control points are placed on the image, the central blending function becomes more intelligent, enabling even more refined and precise changes in the image. The user controls color, light, contrast, and tonality by placing more control points on the image at specific locations. The control points are interdependent and communicate to combine and blend enhancements naturally, which can be easily adjusted or undone at any time, regardless of the order in which the change was made. The important thing is that the overall adjustment is seamless and professional.

Most of the U-Point properties are quite obvious although the size slider may need a bit more explanation. When the size slider is at 100% the Control Point effects all the pixels on your image. Lower values than 100% restrict the effect to smaller areas around that Control Point. By clicking on the 'Show Mask' icon at any stage you can visibly see the exact area that is to be affected by your Control-Point and refine it accordingly.

Once your Control point adjustments are in place and your filter settings have been applied most of the Nik product line now allows you to apply those changes as a Smart Object in Photoshop. If you haven't experiemented with Smart Objects in Photoshop I strongly recommending doing so as in this particular instance it's a great way of being able to modify the respective Nik Adjustments at any stage during the editing process if you change your mind. Of course you can also apply the effect of the Nik adjustment layer and brush in the changes on a seperate mask if needed.

U-Point is already available in Nikons CaptureNX, Apple Aperture and of course Photoshop. As an image retoucher I would really enjoy it if Adobe would introduce this U-Point technology into Lightroom as soon as possible. However it does seem unlikely that they will do so given the way they are forging ahead with their own selective adjustment tools in Lightroom 2.0? It isn't as powerful as the Nik technology however in my opinion.

If you haven't had the chance to try out the Nik Software range of products I strongly urge you to do so. The software unfortunately isn't cheap but the results are certainly impressive. The results may not always be perfect but Nik does a far better job far quicker than I could do with my current knowledge of Photoshop, layers, blending-modes and masks.

Be advised that in no way am I affiliated with NikSoftware, Nikon, Adobe or any of the other products mentioned here.

Monday, September 22, 2008

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Backup strategies

Have you backed up your computer lately? Have you backed up all your important and precious photographs to another hard drive; a CD or DVD? If not, stop reading this right now and go and do it. I'm serious. What are you still doing here? Stop reading and go make copies of all the data that is important to you? Use whatever mechanism you have available to you but go and do it now.

Aah, so you're back. How did it go? It's a bit painful and laborious isn't it which is probably why we tend to put it off and put it off until....well it might be too late.

The fact of the matter is that hard drives fail. How often do they fail? Well a respected Seagate hard drive comes with a 5 year warranty but on average a given hard drive will have an MTBF (mean time between failure) of 3-5 years if you're lucky, sometimes a lot less than that. So the simple fact of the matter is that the hard drive on which all of your photographs are now residing will fail at some point in the not so distant future.

Fortunately there are a plethora of solutions in the market-place to satisfy both the hardware and software requirements of automated backups to alleviate some of this pain. It is important however to formulate a strategy to make the process as seamless, accurate and painless as possible. Because there is such a variety of options available to you, you should make up your own mind as to how best to go about it. All I can do here in this blog is to relay my own experiences and what works best for me currently. It's important to note in reading my personal strategy however that I have a large investment in hardware and software of all kinds that does help the process. But this is not a requirement. The most fundamental part of any backup strategy is to ensure that you have at least one other working copy of your data at all times. You should preferably have two (or more) copies but that is not always feasible or practical. If you're completely paranoid one of those copies should be off site.

In my working machine at my office I have four hard drives which are utilised in the following fashion. Two drives are 160GB 10,000 RPM Western Digital Raptors. These drives are configured for RAID-0 with the sole purpose in inmproving performance as these super-fast RAID-0 devices allow the file system to be distributed across all disks and reduce latency for both read/write operations. What is important to realise is that RAID-0 is NOT a backup or redundancy strategy and this is an important consideration when talking about full system backups (later on in this article). In the event of failure of even one of the hard drives in a RAID-0 configuration it will be almost impossible to recover as the data on any one drive will be corrupt and incomplete.

The two other drives in my system are not setup for RAID but are configured with one drive being storage for my raw digital negatives that are in a work-in-progress status. The other drive stores the photograph derivatives that have been processed either in Lightroom, DxO Optics Pro or Adobe Photoshop and subsequently prepared for web and/or print output. These two drives are constantly backed up using synchronisation software and completed photographs are then deleted to make space for new incoming work. I use an application called Allways Synch and this software allows you to migrate only the changed files or folders from source to a backup destination. The software also allows for dual or one way synchronisation as you please however it works best for me by simply ensuring that my backup drives have an exact copy of whatever has been placed onto the RAW or DERIVATIVE drives at any stage. I use Allways synch in this manner to ensure that my Lightroom Catalogs, Digital Negatives, layered Photoshop files, web JPG output, print prepared TIFF files, documents, saved games etc are always backed up. Since the installation of Allways Synch I have saved about 32 hours of file copy operations as the application ensures that it only copies the new or changed files. That's also 32 hours of hard-drive thrashing that has been avoided increasing the longevity of those drives. There is no manual scouring of files and folders to determine what exactly needs copying over. The application is scheduled to run daily at midnight and this way I can walk away from my machine knowing that it will be securely backed up.

So where does Allways Synch backup to? It currently writes to a Drobo Unit that has four 1 terabyte (TB) drives in it. The Drobo unit utilises a data striping redundancy mechanism that is very similar in nature to RAID-5 however it works much better. It's better and simpler because with the Drobo unit you can mix and match drives as your need and budget allows. The unit can hold up to four drives of a maximum of 4TB in size each for a maximum storage capacity of 16TB per unit. However let's assume starting off with only two drives; once they start to full up the Drobo Unit alerts you to the fact. You can then simply slot in another drive of whatever capacity and the unit then makes that space available. It also then automatically and redundantly stripes data across all three drives for you in the background. Remove a drive and Drobo knows how to recover from just the remaining drives. Nothing could be simpler. With RAID-5 all drives have to be of equal capacity and recovering from a RAID-5 crash is a long process as the damaged drive is rebuilt from the working ones. It can be done, I recently had a hard drive crash on my Intel NAS RAID-5 server and it was simply a matter of removing the damaged drive, replacing it with another similar drive (500GB in this instance) and wait the requisite 24 odd hours while that drive was rebuilt. It worked well, it just took a lot longer than the Drobo and the Intel doesn't support drives of varying capacities.

So the Drobo is where Allways Synch backs up to. Because there is redundancy already built into the 4 1TB drives that's where most of my photographs now reside. If I was completely and utterly paranoid then these drives in itself should also be backed up to some other device (DVD for instance) and stored off-site. However because I am intrinsically lazy and confident that I can recover these photo's if I need them I have left it as is. Besides I can't honestly imagine backing up 4TB to DVD!! Some really very important photographs however (such as the wedding photo's for Renett and Johann are backed up to a seperate drive - my Intel NAS RAID - to be absolutely sure that data is uncorruptible). Previously I used a Digital Asset Methodology espoused by Peter Krogh in terms of creating RAW 'buckets' of 4.2GB each that could be backed up directly to DVD but since I have moved my DAM catalogs over to Lightoom 2 I have dispensed with that idea as I'm not writing to DVD anymore. For more on a DAM philosophy go to Peter's web site - The DAM Forum.

It has been proven also that backing up to DVD is not a fool-proof exercise. Writing DVD's can be prone to failure and the longevity of DVD's is also in doubt. Will we be able to read these DVD's in years to come? Look at those with tape drive backups of their data - they currently have no way of retrieving that. More simplistically can you still play those Betamax video tapes anywhere? With BluRay now replacing normal DVD's who knows what the future of this technology holds? So for now, I personally have dispensed with DVD backups altogether?


It acutally might be worth taking a step backwards for a second to talk about the process I follow when importing images from my cameras CF cards or the Epson P-5000 which I use to store photographs on when in the field. The process is effectively the same; it's just that in the field if a CF card is filled up then I will offload that to the Epson P-5000 so that I can reuse the card if necessary. If a card is filled up and not backed up to the Epson then it is placed in a Gepe card safe 'upside-down' so that I know it cannot be used until offloaded to either the PC or the Epson. Once a card is placed right side up in the card safe then I know that it must always be formatted in-camera before re-use. When back at the PC I begin the import process into Lightroom. During the import I convert my RAW images to Adobe's Digital Negative format (.DNG). I have adopted DNG across all my photographs for longevity and am comfortable that Adobe will continue to support and enhance the DNG format. During the import however for safety's sake I make an automatic backup copy of the images to a IOMega 250GB Firewire drive (supported by the Lightroom import process). This is just a temporary measure as due to the small nature of this drive the files are only kept there until that drive begins to fill up and then I delete the oldest imported files as we go. It's merely a safety net in case something goes wrong during the import process.

So what about the Intel NAS RAID-5 Server. This server has 4 500GB hard-drives configured as RAID-5 for data redundancy and recovery. This server comes into play with full-system backups and backups of all other purchased software, music and any other important data that I have. Most importantly for the purposes of this discussion however, the Intel NAS server holds the full-system backups of each PC in my office. These full system backups are generated using Acronis True Image Home which runs on each workstation. This application is not scheduled although in truth it could be. Once a system has been built to spec with all the requisite software (Windows, hardware drivers, Photoshop, Lightroom, Office etc) then I will use Acronis True Image to image the entire hard drive (remember those RAID-0 drives?) to the Intel NAS server. In this way if one of the system volumes should ever fail then that machine can be rebuilt from scratch quite quickly and will be up and running as before.

I have also recently just installed a Microsoft Windows Home Server on my network to determine it's efficacy. This is only a 180-day trial so we'll see how it goes but in essence all my machines on the network (all 6 of them) are automatically backed up each night by the server. These backups are stored on the Windows Home server and again should any machine fail it can be restored quite quickly. I have to ask myself the question though, shouldn't I be backing up those full system backups to the NAS server? Perhaps I will set that up tonight?

Does this all sound paranoid? Possibly? Overkill? Probably? But then again, I take comfort in the fact knowing that my data is secure and redundantly stored in the event of failure. I say again - hard drives fail! It's just a matter of time. Have you backed up your data lately?