Ditch the Mac, LR5 on a PC

Running Windows 8 on a PC and photo editing with PS, Lightroom 5, plugins and other stand alone editing software programs. Details of My secret workaround.

I choose windows 8 for an OS earlier this year; I had an opportunity to get Win8 Pro for $49 as part of the promotional package Microsoft offered. I’ve not been a fan of the windows platform since about Win98 introduction when at that point it has only been three years since the introduction of 95.

So maybe I refer to this somewhat begrudgingly, as I recall the avid and massive ad campaign those wonderful folks over at Microsoft went on to tell us all why we needed to update our PC’s. I’ve said enough about that. There track record speaks for itself.

Whether or not this was a mistake by Mr. Gates’, it’s my opinion that it’s also this blunder that allowed the Mac to have its’ resurgence.

How I got to this Point

Mostly curiosity. I became intrigued with the re-engineering of the Win OS platform, and I’m looking forward to the future. Competition breeds excellence. Or death… ummm.

Highly doubted this possibility turning out as swell as it has. I Use Manga Studio 5 with my Wacom Tablet, the Intuos 5, and now LR 5. It works brilliantly thus far. But I have a secret to why this works and how I made this possible which is the reason I am writing on this topic.

The Rest of the Story

I’m doing all of this on a PC from 2005 which originally ran windows XP before the services pack came out. The processor is an AMD 64 Athlon x2, I was able to get this PC from work for free, completely clean with the XP service pack 3 pro edition installed. And less than 1GB RAM.

I found this the perfect opportunity to play with an Idea I got from Sony. Ready to release the PS4 gaming console it has been almost 17 years since the PSone hit the market. Sony promised us all that they would allow for one generation of console to have a ten year life cycle. And they’ve stuck to that.

My theory came from the thought that if it’s possible to create a gaming console with this life projection then why not my image editing PC?

So Why Not?

Rebuild. And it works; I had a great motherboard (which is a must have), with lots of space to grow. I added a sound card, Graphics Card, new larger hard drives, more RAM and a new power pack.

Including the OS less than $600 spent. This gives me way more opportunity to spend my dollars on the things that I want, bigger Wacom Tablet for instance. While a lot of people are out there spending money on their Mac’s, probably using a credit card and making monthly payments. I’m enjoying the fruits of my labor; 

I run an HDMI cord from the Graphics card to a 32” LED HDTV by INSIGNIA, not a computer monitor. Editing a photo or creating a painting is made a whole lot better because it is easier and faster. Price for this was around $220. Which is about the price of the cheaper PC monitors at around 24” and they’ll not have the color quality that a TV will.  

I did it So can YOU

Two more years is all I need out of this PC, I’ll be doing my next build from the ground up, I’ve already got my APU an AMD A6, I plan on using SSD’s and running with 32GB RAM and with the new Creative Cloud from Adobe. I think many more years for less happens to be in my future, now that’s a bargain. 

Julieanne Kost on cL Talks Lightroom 5

Take Notice

2-day workshop with Julieanne Kost the Principal Digital Imaging Evangelist for Photoshop and Lightroom at Adobe can still be purchases at a discount price for just a few more hours. I posted the link below in Lose Notes and Things.

Okay, I was really able to learn a lot, I'm new to Lightroom not just the fifth installment released earlier in 2013. It was just a few weeks ago that I first learned about Julianne from a training course she did with Scott Kelby at B&H Photo in NY. In this project she was just doing some simple edits within LR5. Which helped tremendously, for a first timer anyway. 

The biggest help came from Julianne's blog Julieanne's Blog_LR5 but even here I was very easily overwhelmed as you could imagine not having any previous experience with LR I diffidently didn't know where to start. This workshop helped so much in giving me a place to start. In effect it will be a great road map as I traverse through the LR and digital software world.

Julieanne is such a wonderful teacher, she has no alternative agenda's, Adobe pays her to do what she does, and she is GREAT at what she does! Adobe is blessed to have her, they are such a awesome company, kudos to Adobe.

What I Think I Think

A few things I learned this weekend, here's my top 5:

5) Split Tone on B&W_ place the balance on +75 place the shadow saturation @ 60 and the highlights around 45_this works well when adding color to the highlights and shadows

4) Split Tone _Sepia Tone is in the Darks_this is the way it used to be done in the darkroom by exsposure to the visible light 

Antique look is in the paper or comes from the Lights(not the light bulb) 

3) Cross Processing _come when color is placed in the Highlights & Shadows in LR5

2) Tone Curve [without a diagram, it would be impossible to explain] _but I had been afraid of this area, she really helped give me confidence to play with this very useful tool

1) HSL _the paint in color trick was AWESOME, sooooo simple too!

Worth all my time, and it will be worth yours too!

Lose Notes and Things

Here is the link to purchase this course for $59 cL with Julianne Kost discount price till 12 noon ET after that it will be $79.

A big thank you to Creative Live for the effort they put into the production process to make this happen. So hats off to them. You can link to them here Creative Live for the rebroadcast during the week. If you have time this really helps because it is condensed and edited not the 14 hours over two days that I participated in.

Also Julieanne has several presets for PS and LR on her blog Julieanne's Presets but they are not all in one place you have to scroll down through the different videos they are in links to .zip files. 

If you missed the workshop or didn't catch the rebrodcast, check back here I will continue to post more notes from the workshop. If there's something you want me to blog about let me know, I'll be happy to help!

Free Filmpack by Dxo Labs!!!

DxO filmpack 3 Free till Oct 31st

Just wanted to remind those who are interested, that the DxO filmpack 3 is currently free until the end of the month.

It is a conversion emulation software that simulates the film look. Great way to add POP to all your photo's.

I'll post a before and after photo below. Anyone can use it, it's FREE and very easy to use, don't let the big words scare you. I've taken advantage of this offer and Love it!

Before Conversion

 ...Beautiful and Notable Difference...

Seriously this is great stuff! It's so easy to use.

Digital Imaging (Part V)

The Digital Lightroom (Part 2b)

Lightroom 5, the new darkroom created for the Photographer. I’ve been hyping Ansell Adams photography for a couple of days now so let’s get strait to his images. Below.

What Ansell Adams was able to accomplish will most certainly never be reproduced, nor in my opinion will anyone even come close. His skill behind the camera was just as good as his talent in the darkroom, terms such as dodging and burning may be gone forever but we can still achieve those same results with the digital tools of today, gone is the darkroom, and in with Lightroom.

Lightroom varies in that of what Photoshop can do. It sets it's self apart from the field by bringing a shear commitment to the digital image, it's ability to allow me as a image maker to stay true to what I want to accomplish by staying true to the image I set out to capture in camera. No tricks, no gadgets just think of it as digital chemicals. 

While not the quality subject matter that Ansell has shot over his lifetime, here are a few images that I have achieved with the use of the digital Lightroom. Employing the same techniques Ansell and other great photographers of days past use; I am able to achieve similar results. Some of these are digital from the start and some have been scanned into the digital realm from their original 35mm full frame films. Can YOU tell which ones!

As you can see employing the use of Lightroom is a necessary tool in the digital Photographers handbag. 

Just remember that no software program fixes bad composition in photography! Enjoy your weekend and Happy Shooting! 

Digital Imaging (Part IV)

The Digital Darkroom (Part 2a)

Today we’ll discuss the term photoshopped, and the software program Photoshop from Adobe for which the term was created sometimes a reference almost to seem as a byword.

What is Post Processing? Weather film or digital, the image that is in front of the lens will be different than the image on the screen or paper. Film had the ability to capture light burn, known as exposure, and through post chemical processing the image that was captured could be manipulated based on the chemicals used, or the amount of time that the film is exposed to the chemicals crossed with the type of chemicals the film was to be made out of.

All these things went together to produce a final image, change any part of this triangle and you change the image.

Let’s go digital. Photoshop has become the premier tool for post processing the digital image. Monday I wrote about the digital sensor. Completely simplified, there is a whole lot more that goes into producing a digital image. Consider this, each square is represented by a series of one’s and zeros. Those numbers don’t sound very interesting to look at. Compare these two images below, I would much rather look at the image on the right.

   

The limitations of the digital color spectrum compared to what our God given eyes can see through the visible light spectrum, is quite drastic and may probably never be truly reproduced, because of this we will never be able to capture what was truly there. Photography is, has been, and will always be, a representation of what was.

This is where we briefly delve into the photoshoped image, created by none the less Photoshop. The software is designed to take what is on the right after the camera’s computer processor (which I have not discussed) takes the numbers converts it into something similar to the mountains in what is called a RAW image. Or a digital negative.

Photo editing software has the ability to tweak or change each square as individually or as a whole, by color, saturation, luminance or hue. Photoshop specifically can add, hide, move or completely take away the pixels to create a fake scene by using effects in much the same way I compiled this document in Microsoft word, I took a few images from one place, an image from another, changed the font size and even placed some in bold.

Leonardo painted the Sistine Chapel by hand with a brush, he mixed colors and changed the perspective, photoshop isn’t new, it’s just different. And its here to stay.

Tomorrow I will compare Ansell Adams images with a few of my own using Lightroom 5. I’ll show you how he did it in the same way that I do it.    

Digital Imaging (Part III)

The Digital Darkroom (Part I)

The above image was made on 35mm film then scaned into a digital image 

from the negative and finally post processed in Lightroom 5 to correct the

deterioration that is comon with film, now the photo looks closer to the 

original image on the day it was shot. 

Photoshopped, an ugly word to some but an art to others. No matter what your take is on seeing a fake image created in Photoshop by Adobe software. You should probably get use to it because these kind of images are here to stay. One thing for sure, Photoshop is a much needed program.

In the earlier days of film, to display an image on photo paper the film had to undergo a process of chemicals and exposure to light. This process could be done in a lab or at home, in a Darkroom.

Long gone are the days of those red lights and the stench of chemicals that could be detected around the whole block. Not to mention the creeps and horror films that came along with them.

Why do we need Photoshop? Well that is not a short answer, but I’ll try to make it simple. If you read Part I then you know a little about how the image is made. Once the image has been captured then before we can sell it or put it out for display it needs to undergo a processing stage to produce an image that is pleasing to the eye. Most iPhones, and cell phones have software in them to aid in this process, however it is minimal and anything more than the small image that these camera’s tend to capture will become distorted the larger the image is made.

 credit Johnny Tores 

This image was shot and processed from an iPhone, notice the lack of detail.

Also pay attention to the fake look compared to the other two images in this 

post, all things are not created equal.

 photographed by Brad Tucker, Kevin Queen post processing

This image was shot digital and post processed in Lightroom 5 to give an vignetting effect, and ajust a change to the 

exposure to allow a washed out aging look. Friday we'll discuss how this is possible without changing the image. Because this image wasn't "photoshopped" you would never know if I hadn't told you.

While there are many software options for the post processing of digital images, I want to take a look at two. Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom by the same company. While the same each have a drastic different approach to the way an image can be post processed.

Tomorrow I will compare the two programs and Friday I will talk about the way an image is post processed in Lightroom and why doing this isn’t considered cheating or creating a fake image. That answer can be found in the life of Ansell Adams long before digital imaging. 

Digital Imaging (Part II)

Today  I've decided to deviate from the technical and present you with a few things to gaze at. Some jaw dropping price tags on camera's and in case you didn't read part one you can get to it here Part I.


Sony Alph99 list price: $2,800.00 BODY ONLY
                           

Canon EOS 1D c list price: $12,000.00 BODY ONLY  


 

SIGMA SD1 list price: $3,300.00 BODY ONLY



Mamiya Leaf Medium Format $40,000.00 
  This last camera is a 80 megapixel medium format, it is so expensive that it comes in three parts, unlike all of the above cameras which are two. The Credo Back which houses the image sensor comes in 40, 60, and 80 megapixels. I thought I should display a couple of views since one image doesn't seem to pay tribute enough considering the price.

The back of the camera displays 1.15 million dots on the LCD screen. Impresive.

Tomorrow in Part III we'll take a look at post procesing in the 'digital darkroom'.