Lightroom 3 resources

There is a huge supply of Lightroom 3 resources. Among them, I found the following extremely useful:

• Free video tutorial from Peachpit.
• NAPP Lightroom learning centre -- It is not cheap, but many of them are useful.
• Jeffrey Friedl's Lightroom plugin page.
• The Lightroom Lab.
• The Lightroom blog.
• Lightroom Secrets.

There is an official Lightroom forum, but I find that the unofficial one is sometimes more useful.

Disk Utility of Mac OS X 10.6

Everyone seems to say Mac OS X is user-friendly and you need not go through pages of user's manual. Most of the case, yes; but sometimes it isn't. Just now I'm trying to duplicate a non-copyrighted DVD. I opened Disk Utility, choosed File > New > "Disk Image from Folder...". So far so good. Then I created a disk image, burned it, and put the duplicate in a DVD player. It didn't play the DVD. What's wrong? I went to Apple's support page. Here is the answer: You need to choose "DVD/CD Master" before you click "Create" to create the image. Why shouldn't there be a prompt, such that I wouldn't waste my time to burn a few unreadable DVD before I learned of my mistake? Is this because Steve Job wants to discourage pirating? But my DVD is just my friends' non-copyrighted home movie!

iMovie '09 -- tips and tricks

There are good tutorials on Apple's website about iMovie, but it only tells you how you can follow the Apple's way of doing things -- clueless even if you just deviate from it slightly. For example, I am now trying to re-arrange my iMovie events, iMovie projects and iPhoto libraries to more logical locations when upgrading from my old MacBook to my new iMac 27". But eventually I found that I could not do so manually. It's now a mess, and I think I have to put them into the original folder structure, let iMovie recognise them, before I rearrange them within iMovie. Apple just doesn't tell you that.

Fortunately I've found some informative sites on iMovie '09:

• iLife Tips and Tricks -- a comprehensive site
• Unlocking iMovie -- it's what the title suggests
• iCreate -- the official blog of the magazine
• Jim Heid's site as supplement to his book
• 40 iLife tricks -- where I'm reminded not to move iMovie projects manually
• Wondershare Mac iMovie -- it's basically a site selling Wondershare software, but it also contain some useful information

To start with Lightroom 3

Gone are the days of hundreds-page user's manual accompanying each piece of software. Nowadays you have to rely on the help manual within the software, or the website of the software developer. But a better source is the community on the net, in particular where you need to make decisions. Here is a good "walk-through" guide for Lightroom 3:

• Photokaboom, a clear written guide covering all major issues.

Photo management software - Lightroom 3 or Aperture 3?

Lightroom and Aperture are both raw converters and photo managers. As I said before, there is not much difference in quality between Lightroom and Aperture as raw converters. It's pretty much a tie for me. To choose between one of them, I need to consider their features as a photo manager. I'll leave the Nikon View/Capture NX pair as they don't play as a good photo manager.

Each of Lightroom and Aperture has an excellent feature set. If you've got good skills and sufficient time, you can almost produce nearly identical looking images by either one. The decision will thus come with the small details, in particular the convenience and fun of use. My post-processing workflow will also have a lot to do with which one I prefer.

There are never-ending Aperture vs. Lightroom debates. The least biased submissions that I can find are those put forward by Scott Kelby. Among the factors commonly raised in the never-ending Aperture vs. Lightroom debate in various forums, I find the following ones that concerns me and my workflow most:

(A) Lightroom's advantages

• Adobe gives you lens correction profiles and camera profiles similar to Nikon's Picture Control. For Aperture, you have to rely on profiles created by the community. [Any solution? No. Use Capture NX2 for converting critical works instead.]
• It seems Aperture's white balance is not as accurate on import in comparison to Lightroom, and there is no auto white balance feature like in Lightroom. [Any solution? Seems none.]
• It has a gradient tool. [Any solution? No, unless you use a suitable plugin.]
• Lightroom blows away Aperture for color adjustments. It has a targeted adjustment tool where you just put your cursor on the screen and move it up or down to adjust hue/saturation/luminance. I could make several adjustments in Lightroom before I could select the eye dropper tool and pick the color I need in Aperture. [Any solution? No.]
• Aperture has export presets that are limited to file type and pixel size. Lightroom exports presets incorporate just about every setting that is available in the program. You can't sharpen photos during export with Aperture. [Any solution? No convenient solution.]
• Noise reduction is better in Lightroom. [Any solution for Aperture? Use plugins.]

(B) Aperture's advantages

• Aperture has a real clone brush and Lightroom only has a spot removal tool. If I don't have Aperture and want to remove a power line in the sky, I have to use Capture NX2 or Photoshop. [Any solution? No. Use Capture NX2 instead]
• It's a better organizer. For example, in Lightroom, all (smart) collections are separate from the image hierarchy (the folders), which is a mess. In Aperture, (smart) albums are part of the hierarchy, so you always know where they are. [Any solution for Lightroom? No, but it is not unbearable.]
• Almost any adjustment can be brushed in locally. It's brush is more sophisticated, e.g. it can just affects the highlights and shadows rather than anything else it touches. [Any solution for Lightroom? No, but it only slows down the process.]
• Vignette and skin smoothing is better in Aperture. [Any solution for Lightroom? No, unless you use plugins.]
• It has more "fun", e.g. faces, places, slideshows and books. They are not "must-have" items, but they're fun. [Any solution for Lightroom? No, although we can use iPhoto for slideshows and books.]

It's a difficult choice of gives-and-takes. Finally I've decided to buy Lightroom 3, because it seems it takes a much larger market share and shows better potential for improvement.

用甚麼軟件轉原始檔？Which raw converter? Aperture 3, Lightroom 3 or Capture NX2?

The choice of software is closely related to workflow, which will be discussed in another article. Here, we just talk about raw converter. As I'm a Nikon DSLRs and Mac user, I have the following choices:

• Aperture 3
• Lightroom 3 or Adobe Raw Converter
• Capture NX2
• BibblePro
• CaptureOne
• RPP
• Silkpix

I have been using Nikon's own converter for several years. Back in the time of Nikon D70, it was the only choice that could really give you the highest quality of conversion. But now other converters are getting better, and the gap has been bridged. As I'm building up a new digital darkroom, I need to start afresh.

Thom Hogan recently posted a detailed analysis. At the moment, I won't consider BibblePro, CaptureOne, RPP or Silkpix due to my intended workflow. But still I have three choices. After I've read Thom's opinion, I still the following relevant factors that affect my choice:

• Capture NX2. It doesn't support 64-bit or reliable multicore support. It's slow. It's helpful for tweaking up an NEF to its full capacity, except white balance. It doesn't fit into the Aperture or Lightroom workflow. Only Photo Mechanic works well with Capture NX2.
• Lightroom and Adobe Raw Converter. They are fast. Adobe provides custom lens profiles. But they come up with some odd white balance values on their own. They are a bit "orange" on the reds.
• Aperture 3. It's fastest among the three.

I'll use either Aperture 3 or Lightroom 3 most of the time, and Capture NX2 only in tough images. But still I have to choose between the two, Aperture or Lightroom? As either one as a raw converter is good enough, my choice will mainly depend on my workflow.