The Weekly Wrap-up is a set of articles that ran during the last seven days on Photofocus. This week Mike Hagen shows us Photo Mechanic 6 and its new catalog feature, Vanelli has a post complete with a video on skin smoothing in Luminar 3, Dave DeBaeremaeker writes about dust in photographing toys, Jason Hahn gets into the dust and tells us how to keep dirt out of our gear when photographing nature and Kevin Ames asks “Are your photos safe in the cloud?’ Good reading!
Photo Mechanic details version 6 and Plus, announces catalog feature - The team of developers at Photo Mechanic have two big software announcements for 2019. First, Camera Bits (Photo Mechanic’s parent company) is releasing a new version of their excellent browsing software in March 2019. Second, they are releasing their long-awaited image catalog functionality in April of 2019. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this software announcement. I’ve known for years that Photo Mechanic was working on a catalog feature, but due to the technical difficulty of creating a photo cataloging tool that is also fast, it has been … delayed. WPPI 2019 Interview At this year’s WPPI event in Las Vegas, I talked to Camera Bits’ development and marketing teams to see if they had made any progress on a catalog tool. To my surprise, they said “yes, but it isn’t really public information yet.” So instead, I asked if they’d be willing to share some of the new features in the soon-to-be-released Photo Mechanic 6. Toward the end of my interview on version 6, I asked them if they’d consider tipping their hat toward the upcoming announcement the catalog software (version Plus), and their answer was yes! Most photographers use Lightroom for their catalog tool, myself included. It is a great tool, but power users often find Lightroom to be a bit slow. Photo Mechanic version 5 is a browsing-only tool and is the fastest piece of software I have ever used. Seriously, it is blazing fast. I use Photo Mechanic when I need to quickly find a photo, quickly export images, quickly keyword or anything else where I need ultimate speed. For me, the only downside with Photo Mechanic is that it doesn’t catalog information or store it in a database as Lightroom does. The announcement of Photo Mechanic Plus changes everything. I will be among the first to participate in the public beta and I hope the software is stable, fast and useful. Camera Bits has been working on this software for a long, long time, so I’m betting on them to knock it out of the park. Check out the official announcement of Photo Mechanic’s catalog feature at the 3:42 mark in the video below. Video interview and Plus announcement Photo Mechanic version 6 Full release on March 25, 2019 64-bit 2x – 3x faster Ingest from selection feature Updated streamlined user interface Photo Mechanic Plus Catalog feature Public Beta in April 2019 To learn more about Photo Mechanic, visit the Camera Bits website.
Get soft, smooth, wrinkle-free skin with Luminar 3 - There are countless ways to edit skin and remove wrinkles. As a portrait photographer, I would rather have a makeup artist fix the skin and I focus on photography. But there are times when you don’t have a makeup artist and you have to enhance the portrait using image editing software. Here’s how to use Luminar to get soft, smooth, wrinkle-free skin.
Toy photography: Dealing with dust - One of the main issues with photographing toys is that everything gets magnified in scale. The smaller the toy, the bigger the world around the toy look. Small things become huge, and microscopic things become large. As you can imagine this makes small things like dust a big problem. A LEGO minifigure is 1:48 scale. This means that if you fill your frame with a minifig, everything else in that frame becomes 48 times bigger in comparison. A small spec of dust that would likely not even be noticed on a human model becomes massive at LEGO scale. Dust is also highly reflective, so when one adds lights into the mix, it can stand out like a sore thumb on an image, and can be large enough to hide important details. Luckily there are a few tricks to dealing with dust in toy photos. Use a cloth The most logical way to remove dust from toys is to simply wipe them down with a dust cloth. This seems like an obvious method. After all this is likely the same method you use to dust the items on your shelves at home. However it does have some downsides. While a cloth is effective, it is almost impossible to wipe down a minifigure, or an action figure, without moving it. Setting up a scene can take a long time, and getting toys back into the right position after moving them can be tedious. So this method is best used before you set up your figures for a shot. It never hurts to start with a clean slate, or at least clean toys. However since dust shows up at any time, it is handy to have some more tools in the toolbox for dealing with dust. Rocket air blower These handy air blowers are intended to blow dirt off camera sensors. However they are also perfect for blowing dust off toys. The long nozzle is also great for placing a puff of air exactly where it is needed. Just be sure to not blow too hard, especially with lighter toys, otherwise you may end up knocking them over. If you don’t already have one in your kit for cleaning your sensor, these blowers can be purchased at almost any place that sells camera accessories. Makeup brushes Many makeup brushes have very soft bristles, and those are perfect for cleaning toy figures. I must confess I am not a makeup user so I don’t know what the brushes are called. However I am led to understand that the soft brushes used for powder blush application are the best ones to use for toys. If you are not sure which brush to use, don’t worry about it too much. Makeup brush kits can be purchased for less than $10, which include a wide range of brushes. At least one of them will work perfectly. With a little care, and the right tools, dust can be banished from toy photos before the shutter clicks. The spot-healing brush in Photoshop is an excellent tool, but getting rid of dust in-camera saves so much time. Hopefully these tips will help you have a dust-free toy photography experience.
Keeping your photography equipment safe around sand and salt water - Beaches and coastal waters provide some of the best opportunities for nature photography, from wildlife to scenery, but sand and salt are probably two of the worst substances for your photography gear. Sand can scratch lenses, jam up tripods and focusing rings, and find its way into every nook and cranny in your gear. Saltwater can be death for electronics. While the extreme way to handle sand and salt is to avoid shooting in areas where they occur, doing this limits you from shooting in some great locations. Carry a paint brush In sandy areas keep a 2 or 3-inch wide paint brush with you. You can quickly knock loose sand off tripods, cameras, clothes and hands. Of course don’t use this on lens elements, as it may scratch them. No canned air! It may be tempting to use a can of compressed air, but a bulb blower is much safer and more portable. Not all cans of air are created equal — some can leave an oily residue on your camera, and the high pressure freezing air isn’t advised for LED displays. Use a closed fist to get off the ground If going after subjects on the ground, either by crawling or kneeling, when it’s time to stand up, prop yourself up with the knuckles of your closed fist. Don’t set your hand flat on the ground, as your palm will become covered in sand, which no matter you will then have to get off before you can take another photo. I’ve learned from experience — once you get sand on your palms, it doesn’t matter how many times you brush your hands off, there always seems to be some left that ends up on your camera. Keep a dry rag at hand If around water, especially salt, keep a dry rag handy to wipe off any accidental splashes or spray. Be sure you have it somewhere that will stay dry. I usually keep a small cloth inside a sealed plastic baggie in my pack. While wading I have had large fish jump directly in front of me and splash water on my gear. A quick wipe with a rag was all I needed to keep shooting. Keep items high, dry, and tied Whether at the beach or wading in the water, try to keep all items that are vulnerable to sand or water damage waist high or higher. You can also minimize the chances you will drop something by clipping or tying everything to you, using retractable cords or lanyards. Periodically check the bottoms of pouches on belts, backpacks or vests to see if you have gotten them wet. If so, take a moment and check the contents to see if they need to be dried. Empty pockets Try to avoid putting items in pants pockets, I prefer putting everything in the pouches on my ThinkTank belt harness or in shirt pockets that can be securely closed (buttons, zippers, Velcro, etc.) If in your shirt pocket, make sure they are zipped/buttoned/Velcroed shut, you don’t want to have something fall out if you bend over. For beach birds or other wildlife I am often prone, slowly “leopard crawling” toward my subject. This helps to both get a good eye level angle and minimize stress on the animal. But, at the beach if you are wearing typical men’s pants with front pockets, they will fill with sand as you crawl. Turn your pockets inside out, or chose pants that have zippered or no pockets, otherwise you will discover you’ve turned those pockets into a sandbag on each hip when you stand up.
Are your photos safe in the cloud? Two cautionary tales - “I’m good. All my photos are stored in the cloud.” Have you said this? Have you heard someone else utter these words when bragging about having everything backed up? I certainly have. It is time to reconsider cloud storage. Here are two, fairly short stories to think about concerning storing photographs and videos or any other content in the cloud. One of them is a personal experience. Digital Railroad (DRR) Digital Railroad was a website that provided its photographer members with archiving services and a marketplace where customers could license images and or buy prints. Many photographers in the early 2000s depended on Digital Railroad to be their primary backup solution. Some used DRR as their working storage as well. At the time DRR was established and was successful in acquiring funding including a $10 million dollar investment in February of 2007. The recession hit in 2008 and Digital Railroad was headed to the end of its track. It was out of money. A note on their website put it this way … On October 15 we reported that the company had reduced its staff and was aggressively pursuing additional financing and/or a strategic partner. Unfortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful. Therefore Digital Railroad has been forced to close all operations. Part of that was a note to its members to download their work right away before the servers were shut off. At least there was some notice although no email notifications were sent. As reported on CNET: The once popular website, where professional photographers archived and sold their photos, is now gone, completely. As it turned out, at about 5 p.m. EDT on Monday, the website alerted existing customers about the shutdown and gave them a 24-hour window to download their photo archive. However, just about 10 hours after the alert, the site was shut down completely. I was a DRR member I joined DRR in 2006 and uploaded photographs so I could participate in the marketplace. I had some valuable photographs on DRR. I also used DRR for delivering work to clients. The system worked well right up until the end. I was one of the lucky photographers. I had a complete backup in my studio of all of the work I had placed on Digital Railroad. When their servers went dark, I lost nothing. Digital Railroad at least gave us some albeit not nearly enough notice. Now consider a current story in the news. Myspace Photographers are not the only digital content creators. Musicians’ work is created and sold digitally. Myspace was, from 2003 to now, a place where musicians shared and stored their work. As of March 19, 2019, CBS news reports that Myspace has deleted “12 years’ worth of music and other content.” Myspace asserts that this “deletion” was accidental. Accidental or on purpose, the songs and other works are gone, apparently irretrievably. “As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace,” the company announced last weekend. “We apologize for the inconvenience.” The Myspace announcement, reportedly made in a since-removed banner on its site, came after participants in a tech-focused group on Reddit called attention to the deletion of, by some accounts, more than 50 million songs from 14 million artists. Andy Balo, former chief technology officer of crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, took to social media to question whether the deletion had been a mistake, saying he was “deeply skeptical this was an accident.” At this writing, there is not a single comment or note on the Myspace website that I can find about this content disappearing. My question here is what happened to the backups of the Myspace servers? Can cloud storage be trusted? This is the overarching question every digital content creator wants to ask. What follows is my opinion. If it is free storage it cannot be trusted. As Robert Heinlein wrote in his seminal science fiction novel “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” ‘TANSTAAFL.’ There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Someone is paying for all that space and bandwidth. If it’s not you then don’t trust it. My belief is that paid storage in the cloud is fine as a secondary off-site backup. My main off-site storage is a Drobo at a friend’s house several miles away from where I am writing this. Cloud storage is for me, too slow and way too expensive even at the wholesale price of $5.00 per terabyte per month. My secondary off-site backup to three weeks to upload a terabyte of data. This is not time effective. My last word Creating photography digitally is about the best thing to happen in my working and my hobby life. I love that whatever I imagine, I can make happen between the camera and digital post-production. When I was photographing on film, I always shot extra frames or sheets in the case of large format. I still have all of that film in a climate controlled storage facility. My digital files are stored on a working Drobo 8D and backed up on a Drobo 5D3 and a Drobo 5D. Another Drobo copy of everything is off-site. I trust this system. I have been using Drobo enclosures for 10 of the 11 years the company has been in business. I have been working digitally in capture and post since 1998. I have (knock on wood, real wood) never lost a digital photo. I intend to keep it that way. Cloud storage might be the future. It is not ready for today’s prime time.
