workflow

Old dog, new tricks

Photo ©Neil Turner, February 2023

Hands up if you read the release notes when you go to update a piece of software. Anyone? Just me?

My actual answer is “occasionally moving towards regularly”. In photographic terms I am most definitely an old dog and whilst I wouldn’t say that I enjoy learning new tricks I definitely benefit from quite a few of them. I write about them on here from time-to-time as well.

This blog post was triggered because I actually took the time to read the blurb for the two main bits of software that I use day in and day out: Photo Mechanic and Adobe Camera RAW within Adobe Photoshop. Neither update was spectacular but my rabbit hole tendencies made me go back and see what else I had missed in previous updates and I think that I found one or two gems that will be very useful going forward. I’m not going to go through and list everything but I thought that it would be useful to mention a few.

(more…)

Workflow… again

Having just finished three weeks editing other people’s pictures at Wimbledon and a further six days doing the same for the Open Championship golf the topic of workflow and getting pictures to look good, be accurately captioned and delivered efficiently wasn’t too far from my mind when a conversation with another photographer prompted me to write this. In the last month (and in the last eleven or so years that I’ve edited other people’s work) I’ve edited files from all of the professional cameras from Canon, Nikon and Sony. On a less intensive basis I’ve edited pictures shot on Leica, Fujifilm and Hasselblad and probably a few others that I can’t recall right now and so anything I say is based on the notion that a good workflow isn’t all that dependent on what types of files you have.

I’ve said it before and I will, no doubt say it again but having a good workflow is absolutely central to the business of photography. In fact, when I speak to colleagues and friends most will excitedly tell me that their personal workflow is as good as it gets and surprisingly few will openly accept that they might just be able to do it that little bit better with a bit of training and practice. Personally I lean the other way; spending way too much time looking at different software, trying different techniques and generally trying to get my workflow a few percentage points better.

(more…)

He’s making a list…

He’s checking it twice… and so on. Yes, Santa Claus is coming to town very soon.

There’s a serious point here, though. As a self-employed freelance photographer working with and for your clients you really cannot afford to forget anything. We’ve all done it and I have been a little more than fortunate because it has never ruined an assignment. When I was younger I used to be amused by the number of lists that my wife would produce both for work and in our home life. I learned my lesson and now lists form a big part of my existence too. If anything is part of an assignment then it has to appear in at least one list.

From the obvious shot lists that clients give me outlining what they need through packing lists for clothing and toiletries to the duplicate lists of equipment and serial numbers or the even more bureaucratic (and expensive) carnets that customs in so many different countries require (thanks Brexit) I have come to rely on lists to make my jobs go smoothly.

(more…)

iOS editing update

Screenshot of Lightroom on an iPad Mini.

A couple of months ago I posted the latest update about my long-term quest to be able to do quick edits and add full captions to my Canon images using Apple iOS devices. At the time I was using my iPhone because the apps that I wanted to use weren’t compatible with my old 2017 iPad Mini. Then Apple released a significantly updated version of the smaller iPad and I dived in and bought one (256 Gb wifi + Cellular model).

Bingo.

I am delighted to announce that not only do I have a shiny new iPad but that I have pretty much nailed down my iOS workflow whilst using it. I went for the Mini simply because I like the size. It is easily hand-holdable, is significantly bigger than the largest iPhone and it fits in my Think Tank Press Pass 10 bag which has become a very regular part of my day-to-day shooting kit. It’s clearly not as powerful as the larger and more expensive iPad Pro models but it fulfils my requirements rather well – even when working with the larger files from the EOS R5 MkII.

(more…)

Computer speed and power in my real world

When Apple announced their new desktop Mac – the Mac Studio – I watched the keynote address and was very interested in what this new bit of kit had to offer. Starting at £2000.00 including VAT it looks like a veritable speed machine. I have read some reviews and looked at test bench scores which are supposed to give us real world performance data so that we can compare one machine against another. With all of that in mind, it looks really good. But… what do those score mean for me?

In the editor part of my working life I often end up editing 200, 300, 400 or more RAW files from different cameras a day. When I am shooting my own pictures it is rarely that many and, of course, the files will all be from my own cameras and therefore not varied set of RAW formats. The most power hungry work will all be inside Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) and I want to know what time savings this new Mac will actually give me. Having watched several reviewers (mostly high-end video editors) talk about what has frustrated them in their workflow I started thinking about the relatively few times I find myself waiting for things to happen in ACR.

The truth is that there aren’t many things that take time and frustrate me with my ageing 15″ MacBook Pro but here are a few:

(more…)

Masking in Adobe Camera RAW

Subject masking in ACR 14.2

Spending a lot of my working life as an editor means that I get very worked up about changes to the software that I use. A couple of months ago I mentioned the fact that masking in Adobe Camera RAW 14 had become simultaneously better and more complicated. I have been asked to talk about what I mean and about why it is better.

In the past you could pick a linear gradient or radial gradient straight from the tool box and apply those relatively simple options to an image really quickly. You could also use a brush to painstakingly paint a mask onto an image in order to carry out local colour, tone or contrast corrections to the masked area. The two most common functions were quick and simple whilst the more complex functions were, well, complex. I grumbled about why you couldn’t have the best of both worlds because the method for selecting the simpler ones had changed from a single mouse-click to three mouse-clicks.

It turns out that in ACR 14.2 you absolutely can.

(more…)

Adobe Camera RAW 14

I am a firm believer in keeping up with technology, learning new things and generally being ‘up-to-date’. The one thing that regularly makes me question that philosophy is the changes that Adobe make on a regular basis to their Camera RAW plug-in for Photoshop. This isn’t going to be my first blog post about what they’ve changed and how it effects my workflow. I was unhappy about what they did in Version 12.3 (but I got over it). I was pretty pleased with Version 13.0 and remained so throughout its lifespan. Now that I have had some time to digest what Version 14.0 has to offer I thought that I’d come back and share my impressions.

Before I get into this remarkably short post I’d like to mention one of the relevant things that I have learned over the years – to avoid commenting on change until I have given it a chance to grow on me.

(more…)

FTP and the Canon EOS R5

ftp with the Canon Eos r5 tutorial

A little over three and a half years ago I made a video showing users how to do a simple set-up to transmit images directly from the Canon EOS 5D MkIV camera using the built-in FTP feature. Recently a chap who saw that video asked if I could do the same with the EOS R5. At that time I didn’t have access to an R5 so I made a note to get around to it ‘one day’.

Last week I needed to get my hands on one to make sure that it was able to transmit into a server that some of the photographers that I work with use. Thanks to Canon UK and CPS (Canon Professional Services) I have had the camera for a few days, ironed out any issues we had and so I thought that I’d go ahead and make a quick walk-through tutorial and comparison video.

The video is now on YouTube and you can use this link to watch it. Spoiler alert; (more…)