A Speculation on Lightroom 3.0

Adobe Lightroom 1.0 was released on January 29th, 2007. Release 2.0 was born on July 29th, 2008. The beta appeared in April. It's hard to discover a pattern with so little data, but let's do some speculation for fun. Let's say that Adobe, a company that likes money and depends on new releases to generate some, wants to sell a new release of Lightroom every 18 months or so. This means that version 3.0 ought to be available on January 29th, 2010. Let's also surmise that the beta will appear four months before the official ship date. That would bring the beta announcement back to October, 2009. So, in just over six months, we'll have some excitement in the Lightroom universe.

Now for some more rampant speculation. What's going to be in the new release? Here are my predictions, based on what I've seen in the blogs and what I'd like to have:

• Better performance. We've seen the introduction of graphic card acceleration in Photoshop and I'm sure the Lightroom guys are hard at work bringing this set of tricks into their product. I've now installed a fast graphics card and the impact on some aspects of Photoshop is amazing. Lightroom badly needs a shot of this lightning in a bottle.
• Print Proofing. The print module in Lightroom is terrific except for one thing -- you can't proof your work to see if the conversion to the output ICC profile has resulted in something pleasing. Either this is a conspiracy between Adobe and the paper companies to force you to keep printing out proofs or this is something temporary that was waiting for quality developer time. I suggest we'll see this feature soon.
• A Networkable Version. Knowing Adobe, there will be a "Pro" (i.e. expensive) version of Lightroom that will allow multiple users to share a catalog. This is a challenging project because it means that Adobe will have to find a database that they can ship inside their product that supports all the robust features needed for a multi-user environment. As someone who has tried to open a catalog on a network drive, I can also testify that the application is extremely chatty -- the database is continually being read from and written to. This chattiness will have to be damped down if the application is to be ported to a network. Some sort of local caching might be the solution. However, this is a huge opportunity for Adobe to grab some money from photographers who have a collaborative workflow, so look for it in the next release.
• Improved masking. Local adjustments were a very welcome addition to Lightroom 2.0 and they generally work well. However, the masking capabilities of Lightroom are restricted to an automatic mode that doesn't suit all applications. It would be nice if there were ways of selecting elements of a photo (e.g. marquees, lassoes, colour pickers etc.) that would allow the setting of a manual mask.
• Image Stretching. When taking photos of buildings with wide angle lenses, I frequently find myself reaching for that round trip through Photoshop to do a little bit of perspective adjustment or similar image stretching exercises. I'd like to see this capability inside Lightroom.
• Expanded API. The current way of integrating third party applications into Lightroom sucks to put it mildly. Does anyone really want to chop their workflow into three distinct stages? Let's say you want to apply a third-party sharpening tool. Right now, you have to do your pre-work in Lightroom (e.g. import into the catalog, add keywords, ranking etc.), export the photo to the sharpening tool and then re-import the photo before you can apply the rest of the editing changes to it. The benefits of working on the raw file go out the window as soon as you export the file to the sharpening app. What's needed is a way for third-party tools to be able to operate on the raw file inside Lightroom via a safe API that allows the third party developer to see the internal data model of the image. I'd like to see the Lightroom panels to be expandable so that third-party applications can be added in just like you can add user-defined presets. Let's make it possible for a scenario like this to happen: I move to the develop section of Lightroom to start working on my image. On the right-hand panel, there is a new section called Plug-ins. I expand that section and click on Noise Ninja. The Noise Ninja control panel expands and allows me to fine-tune the noise reduction parameters before I apply them. Once I click on the "apply" button, Noise Ninja does its thing to the raw image. As with any other Lightroom adjustment, I can independently toggle between the before and after image to see what NN has done. The NN adjustment is totally non-destructive and can be undone at any time with no impact on any other adjustments. That's the scenario I'd like to see in the next release.
• Better Integration with Photoshop. Real-time integration between software applications is not a new phenomenon. Microsoft has offered this in its Office line-up for years. Yet, Adobe seems to be having difficulties with this. To transfer a file to Photoshop, you have to export it to another format, work on it in Photoshop and then save it. Lightroom automatically imports it into the catalog as a completely different image. Why can't we have real-time cooperation between these applications? Let Photoshop open up a smart object that's a real-time view into the Lightroom catalog and image file. Let me make adjustments in Lightroom that show up immediately in the smart object in Photoshop. How about letting Photoshop write its adjustments back into the Lightroom catalog in real time as an overlay to the Lightroom edits? Of course, there would have to be limits, but Photoshop already has a working subset of functions that can applied via layers to a smart object.
• Improvements to Smart Collections. Smart collections are brilliant. I love the ability to create dynamic collections based on image metadata. But, I'd like the user interface to be a little smoother. For example, how about sensing keystrokes when you're entering in a keyword and presenting you with a list of keywords that match the keystrokes so you don't have to remember the spelling of the keyword? This is pretty common practice for web applications. How about the ability to clone a smart collection and save it under a new name? This would speed up my ability to rapidly create smart collections that follow a template. Here's an example. For each of my portfolios, I create a series of smart collections that allows me to find stuff quickly. I put all the unrated photos with the portfolio keyword in one collection. I put the rejects (low-rated) into another. I put the print candidates into one collection and the ones that I've printed into another. I use this template for all my portfolios, but setting this up was a pain because I had to type in each one. It would have been nice to establish a pattern and then clone it for each portfolio. All that would have to be changed would be the keyword corresponding to the portfolio.
  

That's my wish list for now.

The Joy of Being Green

St. Patrick's Day is coming up next week, so I thought I'd start early and celebrate the colour green. Yesterday, I talked about the difficulties that artists have when they paint or photograph scenery in the UK. The colour green is everywhere. It sometimes dominates to the detriment of the other image elements. You can get away from this by reducing your images to black and white or you can suck it up and strive for compositions and lighting that rises above all that green.

Last autumn, I had occasion to travel to England and Wales for the funeral of a favourite Uncle. He was nearly 90 when he died, but it was still a sad occasion. I decided to take the last day before flying back home to travel the back roads to London and visit a lovely aunt that lives in Gloucester. Fortunately, it turned out to be a lovely day and I was able to take a few nice photographs of the lush countryside. Here are four images that I quite liked. Note the presence of lots of that colour that starts with G.


My first stop on the journey was the Welsh town where I was born. It's called Ystalyfera and it's just to the north of Swansea on the Tawe River. This lovely misty shot was taken in a park that used to be a factory. I'm sure that when I was a toddler growing up in the town this factory was going full-tilt with smoke pouring out the stack. Now it looks very much like the ruin of some old monastery.


My father used to commute between Wales and England for a time, using an old motorbike. He suggested some lovely B roads that I could follow where I could see some lovely rolling countryside. Here's my favourite image from the roadside, with the sun low in the sky illuminating the sheep as the graze up on the hill. The trees are showing fall foliage and the sky has cleared. Here's a photo with more blue than green for a change!


At the end of the B roads, I turned onto a busy motorway and headed towards Gloucester. The sun was starting to set and as the road was going over a bridge, I noticed that some cars were parked on the verge beside the road just over the bridge. I parked at the end of the line and walked back over the bridge. This must be a prime fishing location because there were fishermen arranged along the river. I was struck with this beautiful view of Ross on Wye. The steeple reflected in the river and the puffy little clouds were just perfect. The scene looks very tranquil, but I was standing on a bridge with cars and trucks whizzing by me at high speed just a few feet away.

This is my favourite image from the day. The sun is setting to the right of the frame. These two fishermen are relaxing in the warmth of a fall day watching their lines. Ross on Wye is tucked into the top left of the image and all the lines are flowing from the fishermen at the bottom right diagonally towards the town. I don't think central casting could have found two more rustic looking fishermen than these.

When it came to printing these four images, I had an internal debate. With my new printer, I'm always thinking big, but somehow these little emerald jewels wanted to be printed as miniatures, so I ended up printing them as 4"x6" images and matting them in an 8"x10" frame. This way, they can be mounted as a collection of four smaller pieces. The colour green is actually an integrating element that makes them look like a matched set. The quality of the light is very similar for the four prints because the late autumn sun was low on the horizon all day. I printed them on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl paper and they really pop quite nicely under light. They looked so nice that my wife surprised me by suggesting that we find a spot on the wall for them.

James Ravilious

Thanks to Mike Johnston over at theonlinephotographer.com, I've just been introduced to the photographs of James Ravilious, an English photographer who died in 1999. Ravilious lived in a very rural part of Devon and was employed for nearly two decades by the local art centre to take pictures of the vanishing life of the traditional farmer. He spent his days chatting up the local farmers and watching them doing their chores in ways that had been handed down by generations. He captured it all on film and left a large heritage of black and white photos taken with his beaten-up Leica M3 camera. The photos make up a large portion of the Beaton archive.

Fortunately, there is a BBC documentary on Ravilious here. It's a lovely documentary and it fits quite neatly into a lunch break. Give yourself a treat this week and watch it.

One of the things that struck me about hearing Ravilious speak about his work is that I'm by no means the first person to be struck by the difficulty of photographing or painting English countryside (Duh!). Turns out that everyone who captures the English (or Welsh or Irish) landscape is challenged by all the greenery. You don't need many colours in your pallette to capture the fields and hedgerows! Green will just about do it. Of course, Ravilious got around all that by photographing in black and white. Suddenly the problem of all that green goes away and you're left with the subject matter, the composition and the light.

When I look at Ravilious' work (see online gallery here), I'm struck by the variety of life on the farm and in the town. These are not dull landscapes of sheep and hedges - they capture the busy essence of a farmer's life before machinery. The images are full of wonderful visual treats - the shadow of a tree juxtaposed with men playing a game on the street or a dog captured inside a frame made by the sides of a shed being moved by a farmer. The images are also full of people, captured with obvious fondness that is echoed back by the subjects.

My only regret is that four of his five books are out of print and quite scarce. A search on Amazon turned up a couple of books priced at $107, so they ain't cheap. Maybe someone will re-publish these lovely books one day.

Going into Hock for Photo Paper

Photo paper has taken on the role that candy bars used to fill when I was a child. I know it's absurd, but if I had a zillion dollars, I'd spend it on fancy paper. The problem is that photo paper is the second most expensive thing on earth (second only to Epson inkjet ink). Let me share with you some costs:

The papers below are all intended for inkjet printers that use pigment inks. They are semi-gloss papers that are designed to look and feel like traditional fibre-based photographs. They have a high d-max, which is another way of saying that the blacks are deep and the highlights are preserved. These papers are frequently touted for black and white photography, but they make colour photos look good too.

The papers typically have two or three layers. The back layer that makes the medium nice and sturdy is either cotton rag paper or fiber (i.e. cardboard) with the nasty lignins removed. Some papers have a middle layer of baryta (barium sulphate), a stable material that gives the print a nice white background without the need for optical brighteners (OBA's) that can fade over time. The top layer is a transparent material that is designed to receive pigment inks and prevent them from soaking into the paper. Here's the rundown on the papers that I've used. Prices are in Canadian dollars, so divide by 1.25 for USD. I've shown 4 prices per sheet for 8.5x11, 11x17, 13x19 and 17x22. Price per sheet is based on the most economic size.

• Moab Colorado Fiber Satine - This is a Fiber paper weighing in at 245 GSM. It does not have a baryta middle layer. Prices: $2.40, $3.40, $4.40, $6.00.
• Ilford Galarie Gold Silk - Gold Silk is a lovely paper with a fiber back and a baryta layer. It isn't OBA-free, but OBA levels are relatively low. This is the value leader by far: $1.00, $2.00, $3.00, $4.00. Note that 11x17 is not available, so the best bet is to buy 50 sheets of 17x22 and cut them in half.
• Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Baryta - This is my favourite paper. It combines the wonderful feel and longetivity of a cotton rag board with the brightness and gloss of a baryta layer. It's also nice and thick at 315 GSM and has no OBA's. See a review of the paper here. It is not cheap: $2.55, $4.75, $7.50, $9.50
• Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl - FAP has an alpha-cellulose (i.e. cardboard with lignins removed) back with a pearl coating. It produces an elegant result. It's fairly thick at 285 GSM. For some reason, it's even pricier than photo rag baryta: $2.60, $5.50, $8.00, $10.00.
• Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Pearl - PRP has a cotton rag backing with a pearl finish and weighs in at 320 GSM. It has no OBA's so the paper is warm in tone. Again, this is a lovely paper, but is very pricey: $2.60, $4.70, $6.60, $8.80.
• Inkpress Pro Baryta Warm Tone - I've only recently tried out a sampler and found the results to be excellent. It's comparable to Ilford Gold Silk. However, I was very disappointed with the pricing: $1.49, $2.99, $3.94, $6.12.

Here's the moral of the story. If you are looking for the best value in this style of paper (i.e. alpha cellulose base and pearl/luster finish), then look no further than Ilford Galerie Gold Silk. It's a wonderful paper at a bargain price.

If you feel queasy about alpha cellulose in terms of longevity and would feel better with a cotton rag base, then Hahnemuhle Photo Rag baryta or Photo Rag Pearl are your choices. Both are over twice the price of Ilford Gold Silk.

Here's a good article summarizing many of the papers in the market.

Canon 5D Mark II Woes

Canon doesn't seem to be getting a lot of respect these days. First, we had the 1d Mark III fiasco where Rob Galbraith took Canon to task for releasing a very expensive camera with a broken autofocus. Next up, we had the tempest in a teapot over the very funny blog site FakeChuckWestfall. Chuck is the top Canon guy in North America and this site, written by a very knowledgeable Canon "fan", takes Canon to task for all its foibles. Canon tried to get the site shut down (showing a little frustration maybe?), but the author made some minor concessions and the site lives on. It's well worth the read for its take on a major camera vendor that is clearly struggling with a resurgent Nikon nipping at its heals.

The woe that currently assails Canon involves the 5d mark II. This is a camera that ought to be receiving rave reviews and, to be fair, it has had its share of praise. However, the camera seems to be prone to issues. First it was little white dots next to dark shadows and banding at high ISO's. Canon issued a firmware fix. Now it seems to be allergic to moisture. In a recent photo workshop to Antarctica attended by many photo luminaries including Jeff Schewe and Michael Reichmann, there were lots of 5d mark II's on the trip and a quarter of them failed in the damp conditions. We're not talking about torrential rain here, just drizzle. it looks like the mist leaks into the camera and plays havoc with the electrics. Perhaps Canon is channeling Lord Lucas, Prince of Darkness, who designed the electrical systems of many English cars and spoiled many holidays.

To cap it all off, Chris Sanderson, the videographer who works with Michael Reichmann, has penned a first impression of the much-touted video capabilities of the camera and has damned it with faint praise. To quote "For video it's a bit of a stretch."

Personally, I never saw the point of adding all that video capability to a still camera. If I wanted a swiss army knife, I'd buy one. Adding these functions to a very good still camera just adds cost and functionality that can break later. If Canon offered a mark II without video for $500 less, I'd be all over it.

Can Canon fix the 5d mark II recover from its damaged reputation? I must admit that there's a certain fascination in watching the titan struggle and if the price of the mark II dropped as a result of these early teething problems, that wouldn't hurt either.

Joys of Winter Photography

I really like taking photographs in the winter. The light, especially in the morning and evening, can be lovely and reflections on ice and snow give it a whole new dimension. Sunrise and sunset are closer to the middle of the day, so you don't have to get up at 5 am to photograph a sunrise. The best part about winter photography is the distinct lack of crowds. You rarely meet tourists in Toronto and vicinity in January and photographers are even rarer.

I just posted a tryptych of winter sunrise photographs in Pbase and here's brief description of the circumstances:

Sunrise on Lake Ice - Haliburton

We were spending New Year's at our cottage near Haliburton, about 150 miles north of Toronto. It was bitterly cold, but the sky was clear and I awoke to find a lovely golden glow on the horizon. I grabbed my camera, put on my woolies and walked along the frozen shore of the lake until I came to a spot that had some interesting rocks and ice in the foreground. I waited patiently for the sun to rise above the horizon and took this shot with a wide angle lens (17-40 mm) and lots of depth of field. The wide angle lens caused the sun ray effect. I did a bit of post-processing in Lightroom to bring out the reflections in the ice.

Sunrise - Shore of Lake Ontario

It was one of the coldest mornings of the year. The thermometer said -20 C and the wind was whipping. But, the sun was shining and as I made my way down the Don Valley Parkway on the way to work, I noticed a bank of clouds over the lake to my south. Thinking that there might be some interesting mist rising from the lake, I drove into the Toronto Harbour disctrict and went to the beach at the end of the harbour road. As you can see, there were interesting ice formations on the shore as well as a bank of clouds and mist sitting over the lake. On this shoot, I had the company of another photographer. He was dressed in a full snowmobile suit and I was in a leather jacket and light pants, so he was obviously better prepared. We both waited for the sun to rise and illuminate the clouds. He was comfortable, I was frozen, but we both waited patiently. The sun rose as expected and the clouds lit up. I snapped a couple of hurried shots with a wide angle lens and lots of depth of field and ran as fast as I could back to my car to try to get some circulation into my frozen fingers.

Sunrise - Farmer's Field near Collingwood

This past week-end, we were skiing in Collingwood, a small town two hours north-west of Toronto. Saturday was very cold and windy, but the forecast for Sunday was for clearing skies and warmer weather. I woke around 7 and put on my full ski gear in anticipation of a photo opportunity. On our way back from town the previous afternoon, I'd spotted a farmer's field with straw bales sitting out in the snow. It presented a rather forlorn scene raising the question as to why the farmer hadn't had time to take in the bales. I drove out to the field in the morning, put on my show shoes after parking in a nearby laneway and walked out to the field. The wind was howling and snow was blowing all around. My footprints were covered in almost as soon as I'd made them. Fortunately, the temperature was up around the freezing mark or I would have packed it in. I waited among the bales for the sun to illuminate the clouds and the snow. It didn't break through the clouds until much later, but it did light up the sky with a lovely morning glow. This scene was also captured with my wide angle lens. I used my new portable grey card (attached to my key ring) and it showed that the dawn light temperature was 12,000 - a value that I'd never have chosen unless I'd had the grey card for evidence. I also used the gradient adjustment in Lightroom to add some saturation to the sky and to bolster the whiteness of the snow. This is exactly as I remember the scene.

Art City Part II

Art City Toronto Storefront

I was feeling a bit worried about the second part of my photo class with the students of Art City. In my previous post, I described how I'd volunteered to teach digital photography to a small group of kids from Toronto's St Jamestown district. We had a great time shooting indoors and outdoors using some cameras donated by my friends and I'd taken all the cameras and photo cards home to figure out how we would complete the digital darkroom part of the class.

Still Life

Deborah Harding, who runs Art City, had found a computer lab in a housing cooperative down the street that the students could use, but I didn't have the money to buy a copy of Photoshop for 7 students, so I was looking for some digital darkroom software that was easy to use as well as cheap (or even free). That's when I discovered photoshop.com. If you haven't checked this out, it is really worth your while. Adobe has created a free photo sharing web site that has an excellent photo editor as part of the package. If you are on the look-out for photo editing software for someone who isn't particularly handy with computers, photoshop.com is just perfect.

Student Photographer

It allows you to do all the usual editing stuff (exposure, brightness, saturation etc.) with a very easy interface. For example, if you pick the exposure control from the menu, you are presented with a little slide show of examples of your image in a variety of exposures ranging from dark to light. You mouse over the thumbnails and your image changes to the exposure of the thumbnail. When you see the exposure you like, you click on the thumbnail and the image changes.

I set up 9 accounts on photoshop.com (one for each of the cameras that we used in the workshop) and uploaded all the photos that we had taken.

When the kids showed up on Sunday, we hiked down to the computer lab and I showed them how to sign into photoshop.com and let them get on with editing their photos. They were asked to focus on developing two or three of their best shots that I would print out for them.

Little did I know that photoshop.com had just released a beta of a photo decoration feature that allows you to decorate your images with clip art. One of the kids discovered this feature and from that point on, the class took on a whole new dimension. The Art City students had a wonderful time putting little animals and captions on their photos and the afternoon passed very quickly.

Photo with Decorations

The kids all managed to prepare 3 or 4 excellent photos and enjoyed themselves immensely. I was able to download the photos and printed them off during the following week. I heard that the plan for the next Sunday was to build picture frames for the photos.

All in all, this was a wonderful experience and Deborah and I have decided to have a repeat class in the spring where we'd visit the zoo and take pictures of the animals.