Don’t get me wrong I love the latest version of Photoshop and CS5 is by far one of the best updates we have probably had since layers came along in the early 90′s. But at the same time I also feel its got a little bloated especially if you have bought the extended edition. So someone needs to ask the question and challenge why we get so many features per edition…

Here is my thinking on things. The “suits” at Adobe are first and foremost making a piece of software that is going to make them money and please the stock holders. Right? Then you get the guys that write the code and create all this stuff for us to play with… I am pretty sure they do it for the love of it more than anything else. You can see that passion in some of the Adobe blogs.

But at the end of the day its a pretty expensive piece of kit that is trying to be so many things to so many people at the same time. Its getting way too bloated with new features and do we really need puppet warp? Clever yes, essential? maybe not.

Different Editions

I think it may be time to split things up a little more… and maybe have a Photography Edition, Web Edition, Video Edition etc… You would decide which one or all would be installed for type of work you do and you could jump between them for different tasks.

What would be the advantage? Well, I am pretty sure a lighter version would run faster, and it would be much easier to find what you are looking for from within the user interface… and of course it would be much easier to learn. There is no way any one person uses all the features of Photoshop, so why not give us a light weight version that is still fully featured. It is called “Photo”shop after all.

The Big Question

So here is my question to you in two parts:

What part(s) of Adobe Photoshop do you NOT use at all? and what features would you want the guys at Adobe to improve?

It is not as daft a question as it sounds, because it may give them a little more insight to what to focus on more for the next version… Anyway, It’s audience participation time, drop your thoughts into the comments section below.

Where have all my iPhone images gone?

I have had an iPhone since they first came out back in 2007 but I didn’t buy one until the December of that year. We are now over half way through 2010 and I have no clue what I did with all the images I have shot in 2007/08. Is that not dreadful?

In truth they have been backed up along with all my other shots and are on DVD. But my point is I don’t actually remember much abut them in terms of who, what, when where and why I took each shot in the first place.

I do know that for about a year I turned my nose up at the lack of megapixels and really only thought of it as a device for capturing web quality snaps. How wrong was I? Its all about the moments and memories that transcend what device you are capturing it on.

Think of all the Memories…

Gillian, Jools, and I were looking through my old childhood photos with my mum and dad a while back and when I was a kid we had one of those Kodak 110 Cassette Camera with the flash cubes that sat on top of the camera. There was a little slider on the bottom of the camera to advance the frame and turn the cube so that you were ready to “Nuke” the next unsuspecting victim, eh! I mean subject…

Yep, thats me with my Jack Nicklaus haircut and my first Fisher-Price Camera that didn’t actually take pictures…

I have 2 lasting memories of using that camera. Firstly, wet fingers and flash cubes really hurt! And secondly, blasting through a whole 24 shot 110 cassette at your Aunt Caroline’s wedding before you got out of the church does not go down well with you’re mum and dad.

Anyway I digress, my point is that these cameras and cameras of a similar nature e.g. “35mm Disposables” were the low quality phone camera of their day and how much I appreciate looking back on these images regardless of how bad the quality is?

The Best Camera…

I know a lot of smart phones have 8mp and even higher but lets face it the lens quality and the chip is not up to even the standard of my little Canon G9. But thats not the point. Its the camera you have with you pretty much all of the time and its probably going to be a mobile phone that you capture those precious moments.

Seattle based commercial photographer Chase Jarvis says, “The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You” and he has proved that creating images with your iPhone can be art as long as you accept the limitations of the phone and work with them rather than against them.

Workflow

One of my greatest failings was dumping images taken with my iPhone into iPhoto and then not doing anything with them. Not because I have anything against iPhoto. Its actually a pretty powerful little image processor and it can do a lot with you’re images. But of course my heart lies with Lightroom, Bridge and of course Photoshop.

Starting with all the images from 2009, I have created an iPhone catalog in Lightroom 3 and it is there I plan to start working on these images for personal slideshows, web galleries and output to Photobox etc… In fact the images you see have been been tweaked directly in Lightroom 3 and I have to say the new noise reduction is essential for any iPhone shot because you hardly ever have the right kind of light levels that you need for a phone to take a clean shot.

Photoshop

Up until a month ago I had hardly ever brought a single iPhone image into Photoshop to see what the pixels were really like and I have yet to print one even on my inkjet printer let alone sending it to a lab for printing.

So, with all this confessing I thought it would be cool to include some of my iPhone shots in this article and in future videos tutorials. I am going to see if I come up with solutions to some of the problems you get from using smart phones whether its an iPhone, Nokia, or LG, you get the idea…

Top 5 iPhone Apps

I thought I would leave you with my top 5 photography applications that I use pretty much all the time on my iPhone. They are as follows:

1. Best Camera
2. Flickr
3. Tiltshift
4. Camera Bag
5. Pano

I also use Easy Release and Photocalc for other photography related calculations for when I am working with da big cameras.

It would be good to hear about your frustrations with using camera phones and maybe I can put together an actions workflow and some Lightroom presets to help you make the most of the camera you are likely to have on you most if not all of the time.

And Finally…

I just wanted to apologise for lack of posts of in the last 2 months. I am looking after Gillian pretty much full-time as she comes into the final stages of her pregnancy and this is the main reason why my latest training series Signature and Photoshop CS5 Essential Training were delayed. Anyway they are online right now available as an instant downloads.

Normal service will resume next week with a new screencast and article going online around the middle of the week.

© Stuart Little 2010

A Little Photoshop Live

Lightroom 3 is the umbrella topic for this live screencast but I want to drill down into the workflow side of things. So this is your chance to ask a question and suggest what I cover in the two demos for the live screencast. There are so many new and familiar features in Lightroom 3 that you are really spoilt for choice. Now I put a message up on Facebook a week or so ago asking when it was a good time to do a live screencast and even though I got a mixed response about times. I worked out that early evening at the weekend is a good starting point.

Do you want to know about Importing? Asset Management? Noise Reduction? Image Processing? Slideshows? Printing? Editing? Post a question or suggest a one of the demo’s in the comments and on Friday I will announce which two topics will be demonstrated on Sunday.

Event Schedule

Friday 18th – I will post the demo topics.

Saturday 19th – Join me a for a live rehearsal at 10am.

Sunday 20th – Live Screencast

- 6pm to 6.15pm – Demo One – 2003 Vs 2010 Image Processing
- 6.15pm to 6.30pm – Q&A
- 6.30pm to 6.45pm – Demo Two – Noise Reduction
- 6.45pm to 7pm – Q&A

Be warned, I will probably blow the schedule apart because if you have seen me do a demo live? I like to give my audience “One More Thing…” and I am notorious for over running!

Twitter

I will apologise now if there is a football game on at the time of broadcast. This maybe my downfall and nobody will turn up! But if you are going to drop by, then I look forward to chatting with you via twitter. So make sure you have a twitter account and are following me.

If you have any questions, then please feel free to ask them below and I will do my best to answer them. If the event is supported and it works. Then I will probably make it a regular thing on the calendar! >

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Come on be honest, we have all done it. I know I have… But that in itself is a mistake and one I still get my butt kicked by on a monthly basis. As you can imagine, I have got quite a Photoshop skill set going for me and I can usually make mistakes done in camera instantly vanish in Photoshop.

You would think I would learn, so why keep doing it? Well sometimes its photographic laziness and other times its actually the challenge of working out how I can fix it in Photoshop that excites me. Therefore what is sometimes a mistake in camera can be a challenge for me Photoshop. Both get my heart racing as I find it exciting to solve problems using both tools.

In mid 2008 I started to think about getting back to shooting for clients. The bulk of my work was commercial and even though I found I could get back into it pretty quickly and past clients picked me up for work. Three things happened that put the brakes on it all very quickly.

1 – My camera gear was slow and outdated which lead to a poor quality product.
2 – I did not actually enjoy going back to shooting commercial photography.
3 – The recession hit and I lost 40% of my previous clients, as they just plain went bust!

Relaunching back into photography in 2008 and was not the time or the place and I have spent the last 18 months building up new gear and more importantly I have been learning. So much so I think my brain now resembles a one of those natural sponges, which is better than the empty space that used to frequent the space between my ears. Its truly been a journey and I have covered all manner of topics, from more in-depth business skills to how other photographers are doing off-camera lighting. You see I figured it would be smarter to increase my knowledge and let the photographic gear come later as and when I need it. That way I have to work with what I have got and think more carefully about each shot.

When I first started out, many moons ago… I used second hand screw fit manual prime lenses or S.H.S.F.M.P.L’s as I liked to call them. I kid! which were mainly Pentax K. Eventually I think it was having more money that dictated the road of the zoom lens. It wasn’t until very recently having sold all my Canon & Sigma zoom lenses that I realised how much better my own photography is when I stick to fixed focal length prime lenses. Personally zoom lenses make me lazy as I have been stand pretty much in the same spot and turn the focal length ring. Where are as primes make me hunt for the picture. Its a safari into the photographic jungle and it puts me on edge and makes me think more about each and every shot.

Ya see! there was another mistake and it only took me 14 years to realise that I had made that one.

In fact that mistake neatly fits along side another I discovered by using crop sensor camera bodies like the Fuji S1, S2, and the Canon EOS10D. I can hardly be blamed for this one because it did take the photographic industry a while to make a camera that was full-frame and the right price.

Today is the day I get back to full-time photography and I can tell you its been a while. So whilst you are reading this post I am busy planning the photography side of my business and very soon I will be merging the training with the real world shoots. Which quite frankly is the way it should have always been!

The LPS website is pretty much finished and Greg and I will not need to develop for at least 6 months. I am also pleased to say there is over 2 months worth of content scheduled and ready to go. My new training dvd “Signature” is done and its down to Greg’s talents compiling the DVD that is all that needs to be done. The bonus CS5 training dvd is being worked whilst I am taking the time out to test lighting setups and experiment with locations in and around Ayr. So I will be throwing some extra photography tips for good measure… Not to be missed!

All this organisation allows me to get back to what I am good at and thats making pictures. What comes along with that is making loads of mistakes. Some of which I will share, so that you can learn from them as well. Frankly I cant wait…

But for now its time to share…. What’s your biggest mistake and did you recover in camera or in Photoshop? >

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So whats cooking? Well its nearly a year since we introduced the first WordPress powered website and it has only gone from strength to strength. Since relaunching the website last year we are now averaging 500-600 unique visitors per day. If thats you? Thanks for popping by…

We have been listening to what you guys want and now its time to make some really nice refinements to the website. Firstly we are making quite a few changes for the better starting with the size of the screencasts.

© Stuart Little 2010

Currently the screencasts start out at 635px wide with an option to go full screen. You can see this in the image above and this size was chosen as a good starting point because it fitted in nicely with the page width and it looks good. However times are changing and most of you are now using much larger screen resolutions and we want to take advantage of this and present the screencast videos at a much larger size.

© Stuart Little 2010

So from Monday 12th April (If not sooner) the screencasts will be increasing to a higher quality 960px wide and I have to say they look amazing. In fact, so good that you don’t even need to go full screen! I have been working hard to optimise all the videos for the new size and they now download much faster and play pretty much straight away even on slower connections. But I am not done yet!

© Stuart Little 2010

If you would like to download and keep the screencasts forever, then you are in luck! We will be making the full “High Definition” version of screencasts available for download. These are actually slightly larger than HD 720p and include “stereo” sound where as the streaming versions are only “mono”. As she can see from the screenshot above there is quite a significant difference in the size and there is nothing nicer than to build a library of learning that is available to you on your computer any time, any place, and without the worry of getting connected. Now obviously there are quite a few costs involved, so we can’t make this service available for free, but we have made the monthly subscription very cost effective at £14.99 and there no long term commitments.

New Publishing Schedule

Speaking of the screencasts, here is where some more changes we are being put into place. Currently there is a Photoshop/Lightroom Screencast usually published at the beginning of the week and an article towards the end. Sometimes there is a the odd post over the weekend depending on what I am up to… But to be honest with you I have struggled with “what to do” from week to week and even though the site is more focused it needs a more consistent approach to the content. That is why I feel now is the time to get back into photography on a full-time basis with the LPS site coming along for the journey.

I have never stopped being a professional photographer but I have only been doing a limited amount of work over the past 5 years. Excluding the odd wedding and portrait, I have mainly focused on commercial photography. But now I am in my mid thirties and with a new baby on the way, I have decided to focus my photography solely on the portraiture side of things as it encompasses everything that I want to teach and more… One thing I can guarantee! There will be plenty of baby pictures

Starting from Monday 12th April, the weekly Photoshop CS4/CS5 Screencast will move to a Thursday and the weekly photography/lighting post will move to the Monday. Tuesday’s will be all about Lightroom and will alternate between articles and screencasts in the form of an “Essential Lightroom Training Series”. Eventually I may link the Lightroom screencast to the Photoshop screencast so that you get to see an image being taken through a complete workflow. But lets get all the basics out of the way before Lightroom 3 gets released.

Saturdays will now be for beginners and I will be using Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 to teach all the basics that I tend to skip over with Photoshop CS4. I feel that Elements 8 has grown up enough that it can be used for all the basics and a more and therefore should be supported by myself. This is where I will also be teaching Adobe Bridge 2 and Adobe Camera RAW, which will be of great interest to those of you who do not use Lightroom.

So just to recap on things…

Monday – Photography/Lighting
Tuesday – Lightroom 2 or 3
Thursday - Photoshop CS4 or CS5
Saturday – Photoshop Elements 8

Finally…

The colour scheme of the website is not going to be changing, but you will find a few things disappearing or being moved about. The Live 1-1 Training is ticking along nicely and I am not planning to take on any more photographers at this time. So that part of the website will be coming offline so that I can concentrate more on my photography career. We are also making improvements to the search, navigation and archive so that the videos and articles will be found more easily. My latest tweets and the Flickr gallery will be moving to the footer and more information about me is moving on up including a page all about what gear I am using and where to find it.

The store is also getting a bit of a spring clean as well with the currency going back to UK Pounds Sterling now that PayPal does automatic currency conversions. We have also re-implemented Google Checkout for the same reason. The store is going to be more searchable and the product video screencasts will be hosted on the store in a separate area rather than on the blog, making them much easier to view and download.

So thats it for now… It all starts on Monday next week and I look forward to any comments or feedback you have for me. >

Lightroom 3 Public Beta 2

I had been out scouting a new assignment last week with my little G9 and I still had the images on the SD card. They are perfect for testing the new features and refinements in Lightroom 3 Public Beta 2.

Import & Library Module
The first thing I noticed was that the import module is a lot faster than in the first beta and compared to Lr2 is way faster. The engineers have tightened everything up and it all runs really smoothly. I particularly like the transition effect that happens once the images appear at the end of the import. This combined with better Library Module performance makes using this end of Lightroom a real pleasure. I am a big fan of using the module keyboard shortcuts and jumping from Library to Develop always seemed to have a bit of a delay in Lr2. But nows it gone and scrolling, zooming and navigating all works with no effort at all. They have improved the Flickr output and it will be interesting to see other developers like Smug Mug and YouTube adding to the list of services.

You can Import Video!
The import module now features the ability to import, rate, flag and color code video which in my view is a rushed feature that is trying to compete with Apple’s Aperture 3 Software. Its nice to include the video in the library, but I would really like to see some major functionality including, basic editing, color grading, and the ability to transcode and export video to different codecs and resolutions. Get this right and they have a real game changer which will widen their market share in a big way. Currently if you even want to play a video it pops it out into your default player which really sucks of you are still on Windows Vista Basic… You can just tell that video has been a real after thought.

Tethered Shooting
WOW! I just tried this out an hour ago and I had my Nikon D700 firing images into Lightroom at 5fps and it was coping with it without a hitch. This is much better than Aperture’s tethering capabilities and it just killed the market for 3rd party tethering software. You will not need any other software to shoot tethered. I can also report that when I tested this feature I was shooting via 2 x 5m USB cables joined up with the original USB lead and it all worked flawlessly. Tethering is only currently available for Canon and Nikon cameras, but they will be expanding the range very soon.

Watermarking
Now considering I am in the final stages of creating a training series called “Signature” all about digital watermarking. This is has come just in time for inclusion onto the DVD. On the one hand its a pain in the ass because I have lined up some brilliant work arounds for Lr2 users that wanted better graphical watermarking. But on the other hand the Lr3 improvements made by the engineers will be included as video tutorials. You can even create watermarks and personal brands for slideshows. There is a also new inset feature as well as better control over opacity, size, position, angle, offset, drop shadow and radius. Although some of theses features can only be seen currently in the MAC version of Lr3 Beta2. Sucks to be a PC user right now! Bing!! Sorry…

Develop Module
The luminance slider is now in full “slidey” mode and bloody hell have they knocked the noise out of all my G9 images. This is a major improvement in noise reduction and I will go even further by saying that its now the best noise reduction software out there. Combine that with the details sharpening and you are onto a real winner!! Shooting with the Canon G9 above ISO400 was always noisy in low light or gloomy conditions. Well, now the noise is gone and the detail remains. I especially love the colour noise reduction. I don’t know what tweaks have been done but this is amazing… I would hate to be a 3rd party software developer that makes noise reduction plugins for Photoshop, because Adobe just created a total game changer! Nuff said… Ok, more… I also like the new point to point curve adjustment. If you use Curves in Photoshop like I do, then this is a really sweet edition. Its not there by default, but no matter as long as its there.

Slideshow Module
I have never really used the Slideshow Module that much, but I can see it becoming more useful in the new studio in the coming months. So the fact that you can now fully prepare previews and also brand the slideshow along with the music refinements all ready included makes this a viable option for client presentations. I will play with this further and get back to you on how its going.

Print Module
I mainly use the print to file option and I love the new custom print facility that has two refinements on the rotate to fit and the rotate to cell side of things. Its still not as flexible as Storybook Album Designer, but its a start. Oh!, and it seems that they have increased the maximum print resolution to 720ppi.

Finally…

I feel they are really listening to photographers out there and that Lightroom 3 is going to be the best tool for the working photographer to manage and process their image library. At this moment in time its really starting to make my images look much better than they do in Lightroom 2 and I am seriously tempted to run dual catalogs just to see what the differences will look like between the editions. I know there are few more features to come in the shipping version but currently its a very stable, although some of the adjustment sliders are still a little on the jerky side of things.

What do you think of the Lightroom 3 Public Beta 2? >

You can register an interest at http://cs5launch.adobe.com/ and here is a sneak peek of the new “Content Aware Fill” feature.

Adobe is in a strange position because there are 2 versions of Photoshop. The standard version and the extended version. Yet, since CS4 was released a year or so ago, there has been a dramatic shift between Stills and Video. So will Adobe add video functionality to the standard version of CS5?

What features would you like to see in Photoshop CS5 and do you think it will be what I call a “Photographers Update”? Let me know… >

This Poll has been something of an adobe landslide! Check out the results for yourself…

The Results

I think we knew that adobe would be out in front in this poll, but this highly we would have never guessed! Also I personally would have expected lightroom to come in a little stronger against bridge, but as you can see it’s almost a dead heat between the 2 adobe giants.

Thanks to everyone for participating, it was an interesting one to say the least! As ever if you have a question you would like us to feature, just leave a comment or drop us an email from the contact form and your topic might be the next Little Poll.

Stay tuned for our next topic and a chance to gauge your opinion on the question of the day. >