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January 26, 2007
[ SOMETHING FOR NOTHING ]
BELIEVE IT OR NOT it is sometimes possible to get something for nothing in the digital photography business. And we’re not just talking about applets like Irfanview or Picassa.
Right now Adobe Lightroom beta 4.1 is available for download from the Adobe web site., but only until 28 February. Once the release version goes on sale the free download will stop.
Lightroom is, you might say, a digital darkroom. Clever name! In Lightroom it is possible to adjust colour temperature, exposure, contrast, brightness, sharpness and so on, just like in RAW conversion software except that in this program you can give jpegs, tiffs or whatever the same post-camera treatment and it is a RAW converter as well.
Just about everything that can be done in Lightroom can also be done in Photoshop but Lightroom is a dedicated image processing tool whereas Photoshop is a design application. Lightroom is faster and altogether better designed for doing one job and doing it well.
Adobe is also offering the next version of Photoshop, called Photoshop CS3, for download in beta form.
To use this for more than two days you must be a registered owner of CS2 and the final release of CS3 is expected in late autumn.
CS3 has some new features, most notable being Smart Layers, Refine Edges and one-click black and white conversion.
With Smart Layers (or Objects) a filter can be applied to a layer that is non-destructive. Suppose you apply Unsharp Mask and later decide that the layer is either over or under sharpened the effect can be adjusted or deleted because it exists only as an instruction set “under” the layer.
The one-click black and white conversion tool is truly brilliant. Photoshop makes its own guess at best conversion and then brings up a dialogue box in which each colour channel can be adjusted individually.
Refine Edges is something we have needed since Photoshop v1. With this procedure fine adjustments can be made to the edges of a selection, such as feather, expand, contract and contrast and the image live view changes when the sliders are moved.
The Photoshop interface has been changed slightly to make it consistent with Windows Vista.
Speaking of Windows, Mr Gates is also being generous to digi snappers. If you maintain a blog for sharing photos then you should download the Microsoft Windows Live Writer beta. Imaging has used the standard editing program for Moveable Type blog software and found it a painfully cumbersome affair. With Live Writer you get a drag and drop program which shares keyboard shortcuts with Word. To insert pictures onto a page simply drag them to the place where you want them and use the alignment buttons to place them left, right or centre in relation to text.
There is a quick resizing routine and an automatic assumption that the picture is to link to something else. Left to its own devices Live Writer assumes a link and it also assumes that you want a drop shadow box around the picture. These defaults are over-ridden with one button click.
There is no suggestion of an expiry date on the Microsoft beta.
Betas, by their very nature, are unfinished programs, but that doesn’t mean that they are dangerously bug ridden. They are functioning programs released to the computer community by companies that use this method for cheap and comprehensive testing. If you find a bug you are invited to report it but no one will come around and smash your computer if you just use the betas as though they are full releases.
(www.dpexpert.com.au is maintained using Windows Live Writer)
Posted by terry at January 26, 2007 02:43 AM
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