On December 2, 2012, I announced a contest with @ShootProof to give away a Canon camera body.
Today we have a winner.
Congrats to @nandolugo – you win the kit. Email me your full contact info at photofocus@me.com to claim your prize.
If you didn’t win don’t despair. You can enter my next camera contest.
Thanks for entering.
I’ve been using Photoshop since version 1.2. I’ve used many other Adobe products including their type faces, InDesign and notably (recently) LightRoom.
I’ve generally thought that Adobe products, while expensive, were worth the money. But many companies are moving to download-only solutions and it makes sense that Adobe would too. Hence their invention of the Adobe Creative Cloud.
But the Creative Cloud product has caused some confusion in people’s minds. They think they are buying a service like Google Docs that STAYS in the cloud. Not true. Photoshop stays on your computer, not in the cloud. These are not web-based apps. But unlike the old days when you had to pay big bucks to access EVERYTHING Adobe offered, now it’s just all part of the package. For as little as $30 a month (For existing Adobe CS customers) you can have the full Monty. People who are new to Adobe pay US$49.99 a month if you commit to the one-year plan. If you want to sign up for a month-to-month plan, it costs US$74.99 per month. If you just need Photoshop, Adobe is offering a subscription for point products as well. You can get individual products like Photoshop CS6 or Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 for US$19.99 a month for an annual contract.
Bottom line is that Creative Cloud is merely a software subscription, not a cloud-based solution. It allows Adobe to streamline the update process, doing away with the artificially – imposed 18 month cycle. It also allows people to pay for what they use. You can buy a one-month subscription or a yearly subscription. You don’t have to plunk down any deposit or buy-in fee. The cost of ownership is spread out so you don’t get a big hit to your budget all at once.
Other myths about Creative Cloud include the notion that you have to be connected to the Internet to use CS products purchased via Creative Cloud. Not true at all. You can work off-line as you always did. Adobe merely checks once a month to make sure your subscription is active. They aren’t stealing your data. They’re looking for a security token that says – “Yep I am legal.”
The list of software you get for the money is mind-boggling. Here’s what I get with my Creative Cloud membership.
…And a nifty application manager that helps you keep track of what you’ve downloaded and what you haven’t. You also get automatic notice up updates. And here is where Creative Cloud shines.
Recently, Adobe added more than a dozen new features for their Creative Cloud customers. If you buy DVD’s and upgrade every 18 months on the old cycle YOU WILL NOT GET THESE FEATURES* – they won’t be available to you until the next update. But if you are a CC customer they come to you free, and right now.
The latest updates include Retina Display support, Smart Object support for Blur Gallery and Liquify, CSS support for web design, workflow improvements that include crop tool refinements, better naming of merged layers, etc., New 3D effects, image-based lighting enhancements and enhanced detail for textures.
Adobe also announced a new team-based functions for groups who work cooperatively on docs. It’s the kind of functionality I expect and want from a computer program – it just works and it always works at its best.
This solution solves lots of problems. For instance, I am about to get my first Windows Workstation. If it weren’t for Creative Cloud, I would have to buy a whole new set of discs and install from scratch and my investment in the Mac version would be worthless. With Creative Cloud you get a license to install the products on two computers. So I can de-authorize my iMac and instead, download the software to my new HP machine. That alone makes this decision seem very sound to me.
There might be some very limited cases where Creative Cloud doesn’t make sense. For instance if you don’t use many Adobe products, or use them often, or update often, then you might save money in the long run if you buy discs. But for everyone else, I think it’s a no-brainer.
*Retina display support is available now for all CS6 customers.
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On December 1 I announced a contest with @IAEPUB to give away a Nikon camera kit.
Today we have a winner.
Congrats to @SixDegreesPGH – you win the kit. Email me your full contact info at photofocus@me.com to claim your prize.
If you didn’t win don’t despair. I have two more contests going on – you can find all the info on my open contests at http://photofocus.com/open-contests/
Thanks for entering.
Guest Post & Photos by Joseph Linaschke of ApertureExpert.com | Follow him on Twitter
(Did you miss part 1? Start here.)
Once you’ve devised what your strategy is going to be, you’re ready to sort out your old mess. Actually, first I’d recommend that you live with the new structure for a little while, to make sure it’s to your liking. You may find that you want to make tweaks to it when you first start living with it, and there’s no sense in organizing a decade of photos today to find out in a month that you wish you’d done things slightly differently. So, once you’ve devised your structure, import all new photos following your new method for a while, until you have determined that you’re happy with it.
Looking at a mess of photos is daunting, but organizing them can be done. The first step should be to create the framework, or shell, where everything will go. If you’re going to have two top level folders for personal and professional, create those. If you’re going to group by year, create an empty year folder for each year as well.
It’s impossible for me to tell you exactly how to handle your specific library without seeing it in person, however here are some ideas that may apply to you.
Many people have loads of Untitled projects, or projects with short, unhelpful names. However if every time you imported images from your camera you created a new project, you’re already off to a great start. Just view the Project Info (Window > Show Project Info) to get the date of the earliest photo in there, and glance at the photos to get an idea of a descriptive name. Put that in the project title, and then move the project into the appropriate folder.
If the project contains different events of photos spread across multiple dates, or if you just have a few projects with thousands of mixed-up photos, then simply sort by date and move selections of photos into new projects. This is easy to do all at once. Just select a batch of photos to move, and choose File > New > Project (Command-N). Name the project, and be sure to enable the checkbox “Move selected items to new project”. This will create a named project and move the photos all at once. Then just move the project itself to whatever folder it now belongs to.
If you find photos that don’t really belong anywhere, like one or two photos of the kids that aren’t part of any event, what I tend to do is create a miscellaneous project for the month, that would look like “2013-02 | Misc.” and drop those photos in there.
If you have loads of duplicates, that can get a bit complicated. Often duplicates are from duplicate imports, or if you transitioned from an old version of iPhoto, you may have originals and adjusted versions of the photos. There’s no easy answer to how to solve duplicates as it depends on your situation. There are several duplicate detection apps out there; just type “aperture duplicate” into google and you’ll see several suggestions of where to go next.
In part 3, we’ll talk about how to further organize your photos using albums, smart albums, and keywords.
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By Rich Harrington — Follow Rich on Twitter
At the bottom of the Camera Raw window is an often overlooked bit of text. Look closely and you’ll see some blue hyperlinked text that declares the color space, bit depth, and resolution settings for the image. Click this bit of text to open up the Workflow Options dialog box and take control of how the image will be opened into Photoshop.
Sizes with a plus symbol (+) next to them indicate the image will be upsizes when its opened. While upsampling is not ideal, Photoshop does an effective job at it ,
Take advantage of the Workflow Options dialog to specify how the raw file should open.
This post is a sneak peak of our new Photoshop book which will be released this Spring.
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Drobo – Not only is Drobo 5D fast, but it’s easy-to-use, expandable, flexible, and protected.
Photo by Scott Bourne – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons
I once heard the great landscape photographer John Shaw say “The difference between a pro and an amateur is the pro knows what NOT to include in the composition.”
I pondered that and realized that there’s some Zen to photography. I know that many times it’s the limitations in photography that we need to become more comfortable with.
Our inclination as humans and as photographers is to ADD SOMETHING. But what if we realized that it’s all about TAKING SOMETHING AWAY?
This is most easily applied in composition. Start with a big, wide scene. Then start taking things out of the scene – either actually removing them or simply getting closer to the main subject. Changing the focal length or field of view, etc. As you reduce things that appear in your viewfinder you get closer to finding the thing that matters most – the thing you really wanted to photograph in the first place.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Sometimes you find yourself in the field with the wrong lens. Or maybe you come upon a once-in-a-lifetime chance and you only have the point-and-shoot in the bag. Maybe you simply can’t afford what you need in the way of gear. It’s okay. It shouldn’t stop you from making great photos because these limitations are only a road-block if you let them be. Learn the limitations of your gear. Learn how to wring every drop out of every lens. Your images will start to shine because you learned how to make images with what you had. Making do will often inspire because in the process of elimination, i.e., not carrying (or even having) every piece of gear you want will force your mind’s eye to pick up the slack. Your vision improves with LESS gear. You take away gear but you add vision.
Or how about the limitation of shooting on a bright, sunny day at Noon? The light is very harsh and downright unattractive. You can add fill flash, as many photographers do in order to balance the harsh daylight. But you can also limit the light by blocking it from overhead, putting the subject in complete shade, making the new main light the open sky in the background. Create an L-shape (like a tree – trunk forms the long stroke of the “L” and the tree branches and leaves serve as the short stroke of the “L.”) The “L” is inverted now and the tree provides shade from the harsh, direct, overhead sun at Noon and the open sky provides a pleasing main light. You eliminate the light – not add to it.
This Zen way of thinking takes practice and an open mind and patience. But I’ve seen great results by trying this approach and encourage you to do the same. On your next photo outing think about limitations and how they can work in your favor.
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This Post Sponsored by:
lynda.com Learn photography anytime, anywhere, and at your own pace—from bite-sized tutorials to comprehensive courses. Try lynda.com free for 10 days by visiting lynda.com/Photofocus.
Skip Cohen University Professional photo education for wedding & portrait photographers. Sign up for SCU THRIVE in Vegas, March 8, 9 – 2013
ShootProof – Use code BOURNE20 to save 20% off the first year of any level plan – even monthly
Drobo – Not only is Drobo 5D fast, but it’s easy-to-use, expandable, flexible, and protected.
NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE: The Photofocus Podcast Feed HAS CHANGED!
Here is the new feed: feed://feeds.feedburner.com/photofocuspodcast
Download episode here… or get it on iTunes
PLEASE BE PATIENT – OUR SERVERS SEE LARGE LOADS ON PUBLISHING DAYS. THE DOWNLOADS MAY GO SLOWLY BUT THEY WILL FINISH.
Hosted by Rich Harrington and Scott Bourne
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This Post Sponsored by:
lynda.com Learn photography anytime, anywhere, and at your own pace—from bite-sized tutorials to comprehensive courses. Try lynda.com free for 10 days by visiting lynda.com/ Photofocus.
Skip Cohen University Professional photo education for wedding & portrait photographers. Sign up for SCU THRIVE in Vegas, March 8, 9 – 2013
ShootProof – Use code BOURNE20 to save 20% off the first year of any level plan – even monthly
Drobo - Not only is Drobo 5D fast, but it’s easy-to-use, expandable, flexible, and protected.
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