Friday, September 14, 2007

Camera Raw 4.2 and Lightroom 1.2 Updates are now available

Camera Raw 4.2 and Lightroom 1.2 Updates are now available from Adobe.

You can get the ACR update from the Adobe Camera Raw download page (Win|Mac) .

Support for the following camera's have been added in this update. Visit the Camera Raw page for a complete list of supported cameras.

  • Canon EOS 40D
  • Fuji FinePix IS-1
  • Leaf Aptus 17
  • Leaf Aptus 54s
  • Leaf Aptus 75s
  • Olympus EVOLT E-510
  • Panasonic DMC-FZ18
  • Pentax K100D Super
  • Phase One P 20 +
  • Phase One P 21 +
  • Phase One P 25 +
  • Phase One P 30 +
  • Phase One P 45 +
  • Sony A700

Additional Notes
• Camera Raw 4.2 does not support the Canon EOS 1D Mark III sRAW format at this time
• Lightroom and Camera Raw will be updated together to ensure raw format and settings compatibility.
• Noise reduction adjustment for all cameras with Bayer Pattern sensor: The base point noise reduction applied at the demosaic stage of raw processing has been reduced. The resulting effect is that images with zero luminance noise reduction applied in Camera Raw 4.2 will contain more noise than the

 

You can get the Lightroom update from the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom download page (Win|Mac) .

Updates include:

Lightroom 1.2 includes corrections for the following issues:
● Lightroom 1.1 catalogs with user-specified sort order could not be imported into another catalog
● Lightroom 1.1 for Windows could at times display gray boxes instead of image thumbnails
● The preference to write XMP metadata automatically in Lightroom 1.1 could attempt to write metadata indefinitely for
offline images causing significant performance problems
● Images could be dropped from the Quick Collection upon reordering of the source folder
● Catalogs could not be exported to drives smaller than 250MB
● The Web Module was not accessible in Lightroom 1.1 on the Macintosh platform when Lightroom was installed on
case-sensitive volumes such as the Case Sensitive HFS+ (Journaled) volume
● Errors occurred exporting to a Linux SMB network volume
● Scroll position in the grid view was not maintained when changing the view option using the J shortcut key
● The tokens for image number and image count were not displaying properly in the Slideshow module
● The metadata panel could display incorrectly on Windows
● Slideshows on the Macintosh platform did not display properly when a 256MB ATI graphics card was connected to 30
" LCD
● The Lightroom 1.1 Web module export did not position the copyright tag in the same location displayed in the preview
● The auto-eject functionality on Windows ejected the card reader device in addition to the card
● Noise reduction adjustment for all cameras with Bayer Pattern sensor: The base point noise reduction applied at the
demosaic stage of raw processing has been reduced. The resulting effect is that images with zero luminance noise
reduction applied in Lightroom 1.2 will contain more noise than the identical settings in Lightroom 1.1 but less noise
than identical settings in Lightroom 1.0.
● 1:1 previews were not discarded according to the timing set in the Lightroom preferences
● 1:1 previews are not built for an entire set of images when requested after import

Some addtional notes about Photoshop Camera Raw 4.2 and Lightroom:

Adobe applications must be updated with the Camera Raw 4.2 plug-in in order to ensure compatibility with Lightroom 1.2 develop module settings. Photoshop CS3 users can update the Camera Raw plug-in automatically using the Update tool listed under the Help menu. The Camera Raw 4.2 plug-in can also be downloaded and installed manually by visiting the Adobe web site: www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html. Please follow the installation instruction carefully.

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Friday, September 07, 2007

Camera Raw 4.1 update

 

Here is some information about the new Camera Raw 4.1 update from Martin Evening

Photoshop CS3 for Photographers
Camera Raw 4.1 update

"Last month I wrote a series of feature stories for Lightroom-news.com about all the new changes to Lightroom 1.1. Although many of the changes that took place with the raw processing in the Lightroom 1.1 Develop module were identical to the changes that have taken place in Camera Raw, a lot of readers have asked if I could provide an equivalent Photoshop CS3 Adobe Camera Raw 4.1 update. What follows is a summary of what is new in the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) interface, where I have taken the text from the Lightroom-news story and repackaged it for Photoshop users.

Clarity slider
Let’s start with the Clarity slider in the basic panel section of the Camera raw dialog. I believe Jeff Schewe campaigned hard to get this particular feature included, and as Jeff himself will tell you, Clarity is a hybrid based on two separate contrast enhancing techniques. One is a local contrast enhancement technique, devised by Thomas Knoll, using a low amount and high radius setting in the Photoshop Unsharp Mask filter. The other is a midtone contrast enhancement Photoshop technique that was originally devised by Mac Holbert of Nash Editions. Those who have bought my most recent book, Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers, can read there the steps Mac used in Photoshop to create this effect. The Photoshop instructions are admittedly quite complex. However, Clarity is now available as a simple one shot slider control in the Basic panel section.

The Clarity adjustment is one that can usefully be applied to a great many kinds of photographs. Mac Holbert originally devised his technique in order to boost the midtone contrast and he found that it helped him to bring out crisper detail in his landscape prints. But I think most photographs can gain from adding a small clarity adjustment."

Read it all...

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Book Review: Photoshop Lightroom Adventure by Mikkel Aaland

Photoshop Lightroom Adventure began as an idea by award-winning photographer and the author of nine books, Mikkel Aaland. Aaland, a pioneer in digital photography since 1980, asked Ansel Adams in an interview what he would pursue if Adams was just starting out. Adams began discussing the ideas of digital photographs. Aaland has pursued this topic ever since.

As a beta tester for Lightroom in 2006 and knowing that he was going to write a book on the subject, Aaland also knew that there would be seven or eight other books to compete against. Instead of just writing a standard how-to book, he talked to the people at O'Reilly about putting together an excursion to a far-off land and inviting professional photographers to go along and see how they all used Lightroom (still in beta) in a real live environment. Soon Adobe became involved and the project became the O'Reilly Photoshop Lightroom Iceland Adventure and the book became Photoshop Lightroom Adventure

Photoshop Lightroom Adventure is divided into 12 chapters and 332 pages along with an introduction and a forward by George Jardine; Pro Photo evangelist for Adobe Systems. Why do I include the forward in a review? Not so much for its interesting viewpoint on the creation of the book, but rather because the author of the forward has put together a series of podcasts featuring the major players in this adventure that can be found on his Blog as well as on the O'Reilly page. The podcasts, tied with the book, really makes the adventure come alive in multi-media format.

Chapter 1, "The Lightroom Workspace Revealed," takes you on a tour around the Lightroom interface and explores all of the features that are Lightroom. Chapter 2, "Importing Images into Lightroom," explores the fact that images are not opened in Lightroom, as in other application, rather they are imported. You will learn why this is so and why it makes Lightroom so effective at what it does.

Chapter 3, "Using the Library Module," will show you the how and why of using the Library module to edit, rate, sort and perform some basic image processing. Chapter 4, "The Develop Module," gets you into the meat and potatoes of image processing in Lightroom. Here you will find the sophisticated and easy to use tone, color, cropping, and other basic retouching tools.

Chapter 5, "Develop Great-Looking Photos," continues in the Develop module to introduce you to the more advanced tool that will have you evaluating your images to make sure that they are coming out their best. Chapter 6, "Color-Tuned Photos," shows how, in the Develop Module, you can adjust colors with ease using the sliders to help make global corrections.

Chapter 7, "Black and White and Special Effects," shows how to create great Black and White photographs from within Lightroom as well as how to simulate the rough equivalent of colored filters for additional effects. Chapter 8, "Develop Recipes from Iceland," finishes up the Develop module by showing how to apply custom look and feel techniques to your images and showing how several of the Iceland team members did it.

Chapter 9, "Exporting Files," explains how you don't actually save files in the Lightroom environment; rather it saves instructions on the processing for your images. So, if you want to process outside the Lightroom environment, you will need to export the file for use elsewhere. It also shows how to export them to a catalog for use in another Lightroom Catalog. Chapter 10, "Lightroom Slideshows," will take you through the steps in creating a slide show to present your images to your clients or friends.

Chapter 11, "Power Printing," takes you to the next level of printing images. Many say that the Print module is, along with the Develop module, the most powerful part of Lightroom. Here the Print Module is revealed. Chapter 12, "Creating a Web Gallery," shows how Lightroom can create all of the components to generate a full fledged web gallery in either HTML or Flash. You can even upload your ready-to-go gallery directly.

Photoshop Lightroom Adventure is a concept book and because of that, it may not be for everyone. If you are a total beginner to photography and to the software needed to process images, this book may not go into enough detail and may not explain enough about the controls that are used within Lightroom. The same may be the case if you need step-by-step hand holding to learn a new piece of software.

But if you have worked with Photoshop, Elements or some of the other photo editing software out there and want to learn how to use Lightroom Photoshop Lightroom Adventure will provide you with a unique opportunity to see how many of the master photographers and leaders within the industry use Lightroom and just as importantly, the photos that they took on this adventure.

The imagery is just astounding. Interlaced throughout the book are the photos that they took along with the why and the how. If you get the enhanced podcasts, you will see the images as they describe the experience. You can also see many of the images on the O'Reilly Lightroom Adventure website.

If you want a truly wonderful adventure in learning Lightroom, then Photoshop Lightroom Adventure has your ticket. One additional note Photoshop Lightroom Adventure is the first book that includes the tools provided by Lightroom 1.1 and so it is completely up to date. My only hope is that O'Reilly with do the next logical thing, produce a full photographic image book from this adventure. That would complete the experience.

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