Archive for January, 2010
Edge Detail in Lightroom 3 beta: what does it do?
Adobe Lightroom 3 beta offers many refinements and some new features over Lightroom 2. One of the most intriguing is a control labelled Edge Detail. The slider is intended to deal with the smearing of colour that you sometimes see in very high-ISO shots, when noise reduction has reduced the sharpness of edges and the colour might leak from one part of the image into another.
The edge detail slider at work
Here’s a very mundane picture. It wasn’t taken at very high ISO (just 500) but was pushed to about ISO 2,000 equivalent during post-processing and was taken on an older camera that has a very noisy sensor by today’s standards. (As a point of reference, any of you shooting the new Nikon D3S would probably need to go to ISO 25,000 or 50,000 to get anything quite this noisy.)
Now take a look at a detail from the image, first with the new Edge Detail slider set to zero and then, in the second crop, with the slider set to 100. Look at the way the edges of the orange indicator lamp are defined against the car’s bodywork.
You can see the effect of Edge Detail quite clearly—it appears to be adding sharpness and clarity to the colour edges, emphasising colour boundaries in a way that regular sharpening doesn’t and getting rid of much of the orange mush that you can see in the top picture. (In Lightroom, regular sharpening acts only on the luminance data—i.e., the brightness—and not on the colour. That’s intended to prevent colour shifts.)
Digital photography allows us to work in very low light but the level of colour noise reduction going on often smudges the colour; Edge Detail has been designed to counter that where it matters and can be quite effective—it just needs a better name.
Indoor, ambient-light photographer?
Although this slider is a feature of the beta version of Lightroom and could change (or even disappear) before the final release, it might be worth an early look if you’re an event photographer shooting with only ambient light and sometimes end up working in some challenging, low-light conditions. If the Edge Detail feature makes it through to final release, you’ll also see it in the corresponding version of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) for Photoshop, which is rumoured to be ACR 6.
Workflow and notes
- All the processing for the image above was carried out only in Lightroom 3 beta, and designed to show the effect of the Edge Detail slider as clearly as possible.
- The only difference between the two crops is that the Edge Detail slider was moved from zero to 100—no other control was touched.
- Lightroom 3 beta is a free download for Windows and the Mac, even for users who have no version of Lightroom currently installed. It’s beta software so it has bugs and some performance issues that will be ironed out before a final release. It will expire in April 2010.
- All the images used above show lots of noise because Lightroom 3’s luminance noise reduction is disabled in the current public beta.
Training
In case you were wondering, our training is not this geeky—it’s about workflow rather than esoteric details! We put this stuff in the blog so we don’t have to spend as much time covering it in regular courses. If you find this kind of thing useful or interesting and know others who might, we’d love it if you could pass on details of our site.
January 27th, 2010 by Bahi
Courses for groups
We’ve put our London training course on hold but we hope to reschedule soon.
Keep an eye on these pages or drop us a line if you’d like to be updated when we have our next sessions booked—if you could mention your location, how far you’d be prepared to travel and (briefly) your current workflow, that would be useful, too. Sorry to disappoint any of you who were still hoping to book a place. We hope to be back with something for you soon!
Meanwhile, we’re still taking bookings for one-on-one Lightroom courses in London or the South East, delivered at your studio, office, or home and designed specifically for you (after we’ve discussed your requirements) so get in touch if you’d like more details. You can call (020) 3092 2907 or e-mail. We offer prices for one-day and two-day training, for professionals and serious amateurs.
January 11th, 2010 by Bahi
Tips for buying Lightroom online in the UK
Here’s some more detail on how to get hold of a copy of Lightroom (official name: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2) in the UK.
1. The free, 30-day trial from Adobe
The first thing to say to anyone looking at Lightroom is that there’s a 30-day trial available. It’s wise to try before you buy. Even if you’ve already run a previous version of Lightroom on a 30-day trial (i.e., a version older than 2.6, which is current at the time of writing), you’re still entitled to a 30-day trial of version 2.6 and you’ll find no issues downloading and running it. That’s a good start and it will let you begin to test the software and see how you get on with it. During the trial, there are no restrictions whatsoever on functionality. After the trial, you won’t be able to use the application but if you later buy it and activate it, you’ll find you’ve lost none of your work—when the trial expires, the software doesn’t delete the images or its catalogue.
2. Buying from Amazon UK
Between the two of us here at Shoot Raw, we’ve bought a huge amount of stuff from Amazon over the years. We trust them so we’re happy to use affiliate links to the UK store. They’re reliable, their refund policy is good and they no longer charge for super saver delivery, regardless of item cost.
It’s worth mentioning that Amazon has what you might call a very dynamic price policy. Over the last four days, the price of the full version of Lightroom 2 has gone from £200 to £229 and almost all the way back again. (By the way, Amazon prices include VAT and you do get a VAT invoice if buying from Amazon itself.)
That little picture of Lightroom 2 above this text should always display the current Amazon price for the full Lightroom 2 retail product so check back to see it change over the days ahead. (And it will, believe me.)
One thing to watch out for when you order from the Amazon site: make sure you know whether you’re ordering directly from them or from an Amazon reseller. If it’s an Amazon reseller, check the reseller’s reputation and delivery charges before ordering.
In case you’re wondering how our Amazon affiliate links work, here’s the explanation. When you use one of our links to visit the Amazon UK site, you will see and pay the same prices as anyone else buying from Amazon that day. Anything you add to your basket and actually pay for during that same visit earns us a small referral fee that comes out of Amazon’s profit. (We get about 5% of item cost.)
3. Using the Google Product Search service
This is an interesting option that not very many people seem to use but which we’ve found very useuful. Previously branded Froogle, it’s not a retailer or reseller—it’s a product listing generated by Google from online retailers, with prices and online reputations visible to buyers. For each retailer, it also lets you know whether you can use Google Checkout (an alternative to PayPal) to pay. It’s good for all sorts of things that you can buy online, including cameras and lenses. At the very least, it gives you good overall guideline prices that you can use when you shop.
To get you started, here’s an initial search that attempts to exclude versions of Photoshop CS4 that seem to appear on Froogle when you search for Lightroom, as well as attempting to exclude upgrade versions of Lightroom. (Inevitably, one or two of the items listed are clearly version 1 and not version 2—check the listing carefully before you pay.) Before you click on the logo below, read through the search tips that follow. You’ll then feel more confident about modifying the search terms inside the Google search box and experimenting to widen or narrow your search.
Search tips for Google Product Search:
- Lightroom comes in academic and full retail versions. Unless you’re in educaton, you’ll need the retail version so make sure you’re not fooled if you see very cheap prices. If you order the academic version, you’ll likely be stuck with software that won’t work till you offer proof of education status. What you buy needs to say retail version on it.
- Lightroom (both retail and academic) comes in upgrade versions and full versions. Unless you’re upgrading from Lightroom 1.x, you’ll need the full version. The upgrade version is no good without v1 to upgrade.
- Check seller reputation, delivery time and delivery cost before buying. We won’t recommend individual sellers here but haven’t had a problem so far using highly rated sellers found on Froogle. (And again, we have used the service a lot.)
- Check whether the listed price includes VAT or not.
Tip: Mac version and Windows versions
An Adobe Lightroom box always includes both the Mac and Windows versions—not just one or the other—so you don’t need to worry about which platform to buy for. This is part of a new approach by Adobe and one that I hope will spread to its other product lines.
Tip: point releases of Lightroom 2
If you buy any full version of Lightroom 2 (for example v2.0 or v2.3), you can upgrade to version 2.6 for free using the same product key. Just make sure you get v2.0 or higher and you’re set.
Tip: desktop and laptop licences
Like most Adobe licences, the agreement for Lightroom permits you to install the product on one desktop machine and one portable but not to use them on both machines simultaneously.
A note about affiliations
We’re not affiliated or associated with Adobe, Google or any retailer, service or product listed here in any way except for Amazon, as explained above. We list products and services that we continue to find useful.
Lightroom Courses in London
We’re taking bookings for our one-on-one workflow training, delivered at your studio, office or home, over one or two days. Bespoke Lightroom courses in London (and the South East), delivered by a friendly, knowledgeable instructor, at great prices!
Call us on 020 3092 2907 or e-mail develop@shootraw.co.uk to arrange a time to talk (for free) about exactly which aspects of your digital photography workflow are holding you back. We build a course for you and make the difficult stuff seem easy!
January 27th, 2010 by Bahi