Nat Coalson's Photography Blog

• is at the event, "The Creative Composite" at #PSW and loving it! http://bit.ly/oDlts #

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Yesterday at Photoshop World I had a great time chatting with Julieanne Kost at Adobe… she’s a talended artist, brilliant teacher and all around, just a really neat gal!

• at Photoshop World tweetup; good vibes here and everyone looking forward to the next three days. Lots of lights, cameras and beer here! #
• Anyone know the URL for the #psw tweetup pics on Flickr?? #
• #psw tweetup pics are at http://bit.ly/bERfOA #

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Adobe has released the final Lightroom 3.2 upgrade. Details and link to downloat can be found at

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2010/08/lightroom-3-2-and-camera-raw-6-2-now-available.html

• Want to learn Lightroom? Tonight I'm teaching a class at Boulder Digital Arts. http://bit.ly/coalson-lightroom-bda http://fb.me/GIA1nslY #
• I’ll be guest blogging all this week from Photoshop World in Vegas http://photoshopworld.com/category/blog/ http://fb.me/IqZDNKiM #

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Want to learn Lightroom? Tonight I’m teaching a “Getting Started” class at Boulder Digital Arts. Hope to see you there!

Canon has announced the new 60D digital SLR camera and PDN has a hands-on review here.

Photoshop World is in Las Vegas next week. I’ll be guest blogging all this week and next at http://photoshopworld.com/category/blog/

Prior to the show I’ll post tips for saving money, getting the most out of the conference, etc. and during the event I will post event reviews, news items and interviews with people at the show.

Hope to see you in Vegas next week!

New High Dynamic Range software offers photographers a wider range of possibilities and controls

San Diego, CA – August 25th, 2010 – San Diego, CA – August 25, 2010 – Nik Software (www.niksoftware.com) today announced HDR Efex Pro, a completely new HDR imaging toolkit designed to help photographers quickly and easily achieve the full spectrum of HDR enhancements from the realistic to artistic.

High dynamic range photography is a process in which multiple exposures are captured, aligned and merged to generate a single image that enables a much wider range of colors, highlights, and shadows. HDR techniques are typically used to enhance landscape, architectural, nighttime, and artistic photography. New HDR Efex Pro overcomes limitations in other software tools with a revolutionary all-in-one approach that enables both realistic and artistic effects to be applied within a single tool.

“HDR is one area of innovation in the evolution of photography and an area that we have been dedicated to from a research perspective for quite some time.” said Michael J. Slater, President and CEO of Nik Software. “Our focus with HDR Efex Pro has been to bring innovative and best-in-class technologies to HDR, including our unrivaled tone mapping, our proprietary U Point® technology and powerful ghost reduction, all of which have been developed specifically in response to our customers’ requests.”

Ideal for professional and amateur photographers, HDR Efex Pro provides an amazingly simple yet powerful workflow. Photographers will enjoy single-click HDR imaging with categorized style presets, precise selective fine-tuning using Nik Software’s proprietary U Point® technology, advanced alignment and ghost reduction, full access to shadow and highlight details, and new best-in-class tone mapping algorithms. Color, contrast, and vignette controls enable photographers to further enhance their images to create amazing results. Users experienced with HDR will find that HDR Efex Pro offers a complete solution that takes the genre to new levels and offers new possibilities.

With HDR Efex Pro, photographers can also create the popular and dramatic HDR look from a single image. This feature enables photographers to reprocess images in which either an exposure series was not previously shot or for subject matter that does not lend itself to multiple exposures.

A streamlined workflow and tight integration with Adobe® Photoshop®, Photoshop Lightroom®, and Apple® Aperture™, enables the creation of spectacular HDR images quickly and easily within the software tools photographers already use. HDR Efex Pro has been designed with the power and control to empower those experienced with HDR photography as well as those just entering the realm of HDR.

Key Features

• U Point powered selective tools for fast precise enhancements of contrast, shadow, structure and saturation adjustments
• Proprietary tone mapping technology enabling a wide range of HDR styles and capabilities
• Powerful adjustment controls that yield multiple HDR styles from photo realistic to creative
• Standard and custom presets organized into categories for single-click HDR imaging
• Multiple or single exposure HDR
• Advanced technology for automatic image alignment and reduction of subject motion artifacts known as “ghosts”
• Integrated video-based help system including education on HDR photography techniques

Pricing and Availability

HDR Efex Pro will be available in the fourth quarter of 2010 for electronic and boxed delivery directly from Nik Software (www.niksoftware.com), through specialty camera retailers, and through online and national resellers. A complete list of Nik Software resellers may be found at http://www.niksoftware.com/resellers.

The suggested retail price of HDR Efex Pro is $159.95. The software will be available as a free update to those that have purchased the Nik Software Complete Collection after July 25, 2010. HDR Efex Pro installs as a 32-bit or 64-bit plug-in for Adobe Photoshop CS3 through CS5, Lightroom 2.3 (or later) or Apple Aperture 2.1 (or later) and will be available for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems. For more information about HDR Efex Pro, including a detailed product video and image gallery, please visit http://www.niksoftware.com/hdr.

About Nik Software, Inc.

Nik Software, Inc. is a privately held company that develops software solutions and provides award-winning educational programs for the digital imaging and photography markets. Established in 1995, Nik Software has become the recognized leader in digital photographic filter development and produces award-winning technology and software products for digital photography and imaging professionals including U Point® technology (www.upoint.com), HDR Efex Pro™, Dfine®, Viveza®, Color Efex Pro™, Silver Efex Pro™, and Sharpener Pro™ software. For more information visit www.niksoftware.com.

The Nikon D3000 SLR Digital Camera offers the latest in creative imaging technology while maximizing ease-of-use. An advanced, 10.2 megapixel image sensor coupled with Nikon’s exclusive EXPEED processor captures all of your photos with brilliant, life-like color and stunning detail. A fast 11-point autofocus system tracks subjects in motion and captures action up to 3 frames per second. The newly-developed Guide Mode helps demystify menu options and camera settings while Scene Modes are easily selectable using the easy-to-read icons on the camera mode dial. From landscapes to portraits, the D3000 delivers professional quality photographs with ease. Reviewing photos and settings is a snap on the 170-degree, wide-view, 3″ LCD. Low-noise ISO Sensitivity, an Advanced Dust Reduction System, and In-camera Photo Editing Tools keep all of your subjects looking their very best. With all of these features and more, the D3000 represents Nikon’s most compact and easy-to-use Digital SLR.
CLICK FOR MORE DETAILS AND PRICING

• Packing and preparing for my next photo trip… leaving Thursday for Alaska! (Finally!!) My photog buddy Jeff and… http://fb.me/xOjZTa8A #

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My buddy Jesse Speer and I were recently discussing the issue of online image theft and strategies for attempting to reduce the threat.

Jesse and I are both in the midst of major redesigns of our web sites, and we’re using very large images for display. This increases the potential for theft: an unscrupulous person might want to lift a photo for their own purposes, and larger images provide more potential for reproduction. Since Jesse and I both make our living from our photos, this is a serious concern. The question is how to deal with it.

Here’s an excerpt from our conversation:

Jesse: OK, I’m REALLY posting big web images. Much larger than I ever have before. What are you doing for watermarking/copyright? I think I may need to plaster a copyright line on these.

Nat: I’ll also be using much larger images than ever before. These could definitely be printed with “decent” quality at 8×10 etc. It’s probably more likely that some folks would take them to use as screen savers/desktop wallpapers.

I think our shared fear is that someone would take an image and claim it as their own, say, in a contest or something.

In these cases, I don’t think that a larger watermark would really be much of a deterrent. To watermark a photo in such a way that nobody would want to take it would also make it horrible to look at.

In the end I think we need to serve our true customers first, and give them an exemplary experience. I like the way Photoshelter deals with it. With the Image Security on, there’s a single pixel gif in a layer above the photo, so people can’t get it with right-click or drag and drop. Of course, somebody could always do a screen capture.

Although we should take SOME measures against theft, it can’t be something we obsess about, and certainly our efforts should not get in the way of the customer experience.

So I’m against large watermarks.

This is a good reminder for me to get my next submission in to the copyright office, though. If someone steals an image and uses it for a commercial purpose at least we can [attempt to] recoup monetary damages.

I’ll do my copyright submission before the public launch of my site.

—

As photographers, we need to protect our property. But we shouldn’t do this in a way that inhibits our customers from engaging with our products. I will be placing my watermark on every full-size photo, but in a way that doesn’t detract from the viewing experience.

Devious thieves will remain as such; on the internet, there’s no way to completely ensure that somebody won’t steal our stuff. Registering our work at copyright.gov provides some peace of mind, and though it won’t stop somebody from taking a photo, it allows us to sue for monetary damages if we find out about it.

What do you think?

Matt Kloskowski, publisher of the excellent blog Lightroom Killer Tips, has posted a Q&A in which I answer some questions about how I use Lightroom. You can read the article here.

Whenever you’re working within Lightroom, you’re working in a catalog. A Lightroom catalog contains all the information about the image files you’ve imported, as well as any adjustments you’ve made or metadata you’ve added to them. The catalog is a file residing on your hard disk; see figure below.

A catalog file is specific to the version of Lightroom that created it. For example, a Lightroom 2 catalog is different than a Lightroom 3 catalog. When you upgrade Lightroom between major versions (such as from v2 to v3) — and sometimes between “point versions” (such as from 3.0 to 3.2) — you also need to upgrade the catalog.

When you launch the new version of the program, Lightroom looks for the default (or most recent) catalog used, and if it finds an older version, you will be prompted to upgrade the catalog. You must allow this upgrade to be successfully performed before you can access your old data with the new program!

During a catalog upgrade, the Lightroom installer copies your old catalog to a new file and then performs the upgrade to the copied catalog. As a result, you end up with two catalogs – one from the old version and one for the new version.

After you’ve performed a catalog upgrade and confirmed the integrity of all the data it contains, it’s imperative that you remove the old catalog(s) from your system. This will prevent accidentally opening the old catalog when you didn’t mean to.

If you have multiple catalogs from the old version of Lightroom, all of them will need to be upgraded to support the newer version, and then all the old catalogs should be deleted. (If this makes you nervous, back them up first.)

Also, at this point you should completely uninstall the old version of Lightroom.

If you ever launch Lightroom and are unexpectedly prompted to upgrade the catalog (and you haven’t just done a program upgrade)… STOP! If you’ve already upgraded this catalog, don’t do it again – you will just end up with more copies of the same catalog. One of the worst things you can do in Lightroom is work in multiple catalogs without knowing it!

You can always confirm the catalog that’s open by using the Catalog Settings command. On Mac, it’s located under the Lightroom menu at the top left of the screen. On Windows, it’s under the Edit menu.

Adobe has posted the Release Candidate for Lightroom 3.2. Details and link to the download are at http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/