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The content on this web site was last updated 20 June 2010

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20 June 2010

• Two updates today - Lars Ekdahl has been hard at work translating my Lightroom 3 review into Swedish, and I've uploaded a zip file containing lens profiles for the Canon EF100-400mm f4.5-5.6 IS USM, the EF70-200mm f2.8 IS USM, and the EF400mm f5.6 USM. More details can be found on page 2 of the Lightroom 3 review.

8 June 2010

• It has been a long time coming, but is finally here - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is finally available. My feature review covers most of the headline  and a few of the lesser features.

2 June 2010

• No sooner had I posted the Yellowstone Gallery than I received emails asking why I had chosen to use an Adobe Flash Gallery rather than HTML. Truth is, I didn't think it was going to be an issue, after all Flash galleries are widely used across the web and tend to be a lot more feature rich than HTML. Unfortunately, they fall foul of Apple's policy of not supporting Flash on the iPhone or iPad devices, hence the emails I mentioned above. Should this really matter to site like this? Probably not, but I'd rather anyone who wants to view the images is able to do so. So, I've changed the gallery over to a Lightroom HTML gallery. Yellowstone in Winter - 2010

23 May 2010

• In late January through early February I was fortunate to visit the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. This was my third winter visit to the parks, and was again arranged by Roger Reynolds of Photo Ventures. Unlike my previous visits there was significantly less snow around and temperatures much higher than I've come to expect. In some respects, especially for wildlife photography, this played to our advantage. many of the hot springs were easier to access and the wildlife more abundant. The one downside of the higher temperatures was the lack of earlier morning frosts. The series of images making up the gallery is presented using Adobe Flash and was created in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. Yellowstone in Winter - 2010 (see 2 June above for update on gallery type)

27 April 2010

• Many Computer Darkroom readers will have read my preview for Lightroom 3 beta 2, and some may well already be using it. Even though it's a big step forward from Lightroom 2 it's a tad shy of headline features. That is until today, Adobe broke the news that the shipping version (sorry no info on when that will be) will also include Lens Correction technology based on that included in Photoshop CS5. A demonstration video is available on the Lightroom Journal..

5 April 2010

• Adobe has just released what they describe as Release Candidates of Lightroom 2.7 and Camera Raw 5.7. Both provide support for a new camera models (e.g. Canon EOS 550D <Digital Rebel T2i/ EOS Kiss X4 Digital>). Camera Raw 5.7 will be of particular interest to folk who are currently using Lr3 beta 2 and Photoshop CS4 as it will be able to read and interpret all PV2010 settings available in Lr3 beta 2. The goal of this functionality is to allow Lr3 users to utilise the CS4 Edit-in-Photoshop functionality without having to render out a photo first. More information can be found on Adobe's Lightroom Journal Blog

22 March 2010

• Adobe today released an update to its Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta software. This beta builds on the success of the first Lightroom 3 beta, which was downloaded by more than 350,000 photographers. Beta 2 incorporates feedback from the first iteration of the beta while offering users several new features, many minor tweaks and enhancements, along with greatly improved performance throughout the application. My feature review is now on-line.

25 February 2010

• A few more wildlife images from my recent trip to Yellowstone National Park are now viewable on Flickr galleries

14 February 2010

• I've just returned from my third winter photo shoot in Yellowstone National Park. While weather conditions were somewhat less extreme than during my past visits the opportunities for photography were still plentiful. To mark my return I have updated the site index and home pages to include two of my favourite images. I'm particularly pleased with the image of the Bobcat, which I'm told is rarely seen. Additional images will be uploaded over the coming weeks.

18 January 2010

• Anyone who has scrolled to the bottom of this sites Home page will probably have noticed the Adobe Community Expert logo. The use of this logo is confined to those who are members of Adobe's "Expert" program, and as one of this select group it's been an honour to host the logo on this site. Unfortunately, the name was often abbreviated to "ACE", which as anyone who follows things Adobe is actually the term used to denote an Adobe Certified Expert. So, to avoid confusion Adobe have re-branded the "Expert" program as Adobe Community Professionals and launched a new logo. I have updated Home page to show the new logo.

2 January 2010

• Well we're into a new year and it's almost time for me to get down to some serious winter photography again. In a few weeks I'll be heading back over to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Hopefully, the weather and lighting are good for Photography.
• Now to something only slightly different. Over the years many visitors to the site have suggested that a presence on one of the photo sharing web sites would be a good way to let them comment on the images shown here on Computer Darkroom. So, when Adobe Lightroom 3 beta was released I uploaded a few hundred images to a Flickr account that I've had for more years than I care to recall. Anyway, now that I know it works I can share it with a wider audience. To date, there are four galleries. They can be found at IanLyons Flickr Photostream I hope you enjoy viewing the images as much as I did taking them ;-)

31 October 2009

• Since publishing my preview of Lightroom 3 beta I've received quite a few emails asking when I would be publishing an updated Keyboard shortcut list. Since we're dealing with a fairly early beta it wasn't something that I'd planned, but given the interest I decided to upload something. At present I've only had time to draw up the Mac version, but will hopefully post the Windows version shortly.

Lightroom 3 beta Keyboard Shortcuts

22 October 2009

• Adobe has announced the public beta of Lightroom 3. Whilst it's not as new feature rich as previous public betas it does provide some significant workflow and image quality improvements over Lightroom 2. My preview of the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Public Beta is now on-line.

2 September 2009

• It won't belong until summer is at an end and the dark months begin. For many, autumn and winter are the time to put the camera away, but for me they are the months when I put the camera to greatest use. So, to get me in the mood I decided to refresh the Index,  Home and What's New pages with some images from my 2008 shoot in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

28 August 2009

• Apple released OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard today and as usual with a new operating system there is a fair amount of confusion surrounding printer colour management. Fortunately, most Epson printers that were already compatible with OS X 10.5 will function perfectly OK with the new operating system. Nevertheless, I've added a note to the Adobe Lightroom Print tutorial giving some information on how to ensure compatibility.

18 August 2009

• I have rewritten my tutorial on Customising Camera Defaults in Lightroom 2.x The use of Custom Defaults reduces the need for applying Develop presets during photo import, but doesn't appear to be as widely used as it should be. Hopefully, the examples shown in the tutorial will encourage greater use of this feature.

23 June 2009

• Adobe have released Lightroom 2.4 and Camera Raw 5.4. The new releases don't provide any new features, but do support even more cameras than before.
• Luminous Landscape has released a new video tutorial entitled Where The #%*! Are My Pictures?. In this tutorial Michael Reichmann and Seth Resnick discuss he strategies & techniques of file organization following a typical shoot. They use Adobe's Lightroom 2 but the strategies are applicable to any Digital Asset Management program. As Michael says, "It's the Concepts not the Keystrokes."
• I've uploaded some additional images to the photo gallery from my trip to Antarctica earlier this year and refreshed the signature images.

19 April 2009

• I've updated my Lightroom printing tutorial for Mac OS X users to reflect the Print modules changes introduced with Lightroom 2. The tutorial can be found here. I would  like to post a similar tutorial for Windows users, but the wide variation in drivers means the task is likely to help only a small subset of users. Matters are made worse in that Vista is different from XP.

12 April 2009

• I'm sure that it won't have gone without notice that it's been a few years since I published any material relating to scanning film. Nevertheless, the absence of such material doesn't mean that I don't scan film any longer, I do, but not in the quantities that I once did. It's also fair to say that when I do scan it will be from film that I shot a few years back or even longer. So why am still scanning film?  This linked essay that I wrote last year for LaserSoft Imaging and Epson answers the question. It's a 3.4MB Adobe Acrobat file that discusses some of the benefits of using a high-end flatbed scanner such as the Epson Perfection V750 Photo and LaserSoft SilverFast Ai Studio and HDR Studio.

Digitize your analogue images

24 March 2009

• Photoshop CS4 has been around for a few months and I was hoping that the initial flurry of requests for me to update my colour management essay would have subsided. In truth, the changes introduced with CS4 are few and far between, but given that the requests keep coming in I've finally bowed to pressure and uploaded a version of the essay for CS4. The new essay on Photoshop CS4 Colour Management can be found here.

22 March 2009

• I've uploaded a new tutorial that describes the Adobe Lightroom Export as Catalog feature. This feature is useful for many situations, but many users still don't realise what they are. Hopefully, this new tutorial will prove useful.

11 March 2009

• As promised, I've added some new images to my Crossing the Antarctic Circle gallery and taken the opportunity to update the Index and Home page images at the same time.

18 February 2009

• It's just short of a month now since I returned from my second trip to the Antarctic Peninsula. As I've worked my way through the images I constantly find myself being drawn back to those that were shot  as we anchored off Stonington Island in Marguerite Bay. I've chosen two images from this location to freshen up the images on the Index and Home pages.

29 January 2009

• Well, I'm back from Antarctica and have lots of interesting shots to show. Over the next few weeks I hope to post a gallery showing images from locations ranging from the South Shetland Islands to Marguerite Bay. In the meantime, I've uploaded a small sample gallery, which I hope you have time to view.
• Also, while I was away Adobe posted Release Candidate versions of Lightroom 2.3 and Adobe Camera Raw 5.3. While neither includes any new features they do include support for the Nikon D3X and a number of important fixes including for sRaw images from the Canon 5DII and a pretty nasty memory leak.

5 January 2009

• I'll be off to Antarctica tomorrow, so new material will be in short supply until my return. In the meantime, I've uploaded some new images to the gallery from my previous trip to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. Hopefully, the weather in 2009 is as kind and photographic opportunities are as in abundance as they were in 2007. I've also revised an earlier Adobe Lightroom tutorial to reflect the changes introduced in Lightroom 2. This updated tutorial entitled - Find moved or missing folders can be found here.

29 December 2008

• Well, another year is drawing to a close and it's been a busy one at that. For me it began with my second winter photo shoot to the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. From Adobe, we had new versions of Photoshop and Lightroom, plus the new Camera Raw camera profiles and profile editor. I was privileged to be a member of the pre-release group for each, hopefully my feedback to the engineers was helpful. Last but not least, as a treat to myself I purchased a new Canon EOS 5D MK2 digital camera. No doubt it will see plenty of action on my next big photo shoot - Antarctica here I come ;-)
• Oh, in all the excitement I nearly forgot. I have put together a Lightroom Tips and Tricks tutorial. At present it contains two tips: the first on the new Lightroom Community Help system and the second on a couple of undocumented features in the Import window. I hope to add others when I return from Antarctica.

14 December 2008

• Adobe have just announced that Lightroom 2.2 will be released on 16 December. In addition to some improvements to adjustment brush performance this update will include support for the recently released Canon EOS 5D Mark II, the Canon PowerShot G10 and Panasonic DMC-LX3.
• I have updated the Home and Index page images.

11 October 2008

• I have made a minor but important change to the  Managing your CMYK Photos tutorial. The tutorial now shows how to export a CMYK file from the Lightroom catalog.

28 September 2008

• Irrespective of whether you love them or loathe them keyboard shortcuts and modifiers have an important role to play in the Lightroom workflow. Unfortunately, some folk are less than satisfied with some of the functionality that Adobe have provided and are continually looking ways to remove some of the restrictions placed upon them. In this short tutorial I will share some of the tips and tricks that I use to get round the Lightroom keyboard shortcut limitations.

19 September 2008

• Adobe has just posted a Public Beta (otherwise known as Release Candidate 1) for Lightroom 2.1 and Camera Raw 4.6. Both provide support for newly released cameras from Fuji and Nikon. Adobe have also managed to included preliminary (not fully tested) support for: Canon Rebel XS, Canon 50D, Olympus SP-565 UZ, Sony A900 and Sigma DP1 (note Sigma DP1 support is not finalized due to an unresolved white balance bug that will require additional testing). Lightroom also includes a fairly lengthy list of bug fixes, which should address most of the performance issues that have impacted on some users of Lightroom 2.0. A download version along with more information on Lightroom 2.1 bug fixes can be found here. Likewise, the downloads and more information on Camera Raw 4.6 can be found here.

2 August 2008

• I have updated my tutorial on setting camera default profiles in Lightroom and Camera Raw. The update now includes references to Lightroom 2.0 and Adobe Camera Raw 4.5

29 July 2008

• So, it's finally here, the release version Lightroom 2.0 is now available from Adobe. To coincide with it's release I have published a Feature Review that summarises the main feature added since the public beta. I have also published a tutorial entitled Managing your CMYK Photos that explains how to do something that officially can't be done in Lightroom i.e. load CMYK files into your Lightroom catalog.

2 April 2008

• Regular readers of this site will recall that it was one of the first to preview a new groundbreaking digital imaging application from Adobe Systems called Lightroom, that was back on 9 January 2006. Before you write to tell me that other similar applications predated Lightroom, I know, I've used them. So, when I write "groundbreaking"  I mean that up until Lightroom no major developer had released a "Public Beta" of  a brand new "application" with the express aim of allowing the user base to influence its development and direction. Well, here we are again with probably one of the first previews of the next version of Lightroom. As with Lightroom 1.0 I have already been involved with Alpha testing  version 2.0 for some months, but now it's your turn to kick the tyres and let Adobe know what you think Adobe Lightroom 2.0 Public Beta

15 March 2008

• Adobe Lightroom 1.4 update has been released and fixes an issue that was causing significant colour matching difficulties for folk using older printers from Epson, Canon and HP with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). In particular, prints from Lightroom should now match those from Photoshop CS3. My Lightroom print tutorial has been amended accordingly.

13 March 2008

• Some readers may have notice a slight disruption to the site content over recent days. This was due to the content being transferred to a new and hopefully faster server. Now that the transfer is complete I have managed to upload a small gallery of images from my recent photo shoot in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.

23 February 2008

• Not long after publishing the Lightroom print tutorial it became apparent that many Lightroom users were still experiencing some difficulties when using custom media profiles. As I was away from home on a photographic shoot I was unaware of the problem and the workaround that was found by some users on the Adobe Lightroom User-to-User forum. Since I am now aware of both the problem and workaround I have updated the tutorial. Hopefully, it proves useful to those of you who have been having problems. Note that the information provided is ALL that I know, so please do not send me emails asking for further information or complaining because it doesn't work for you.

19 February 2008

• Today is the first birthday of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and to mark the occasion Jeff Schewe asked a few friends "where were you on" 19th February 2007. It also turns out that Photoshop version 1.0 also shipped on the same day in 1990.

So where was I? Same place as Jeff and most of the other Lightroom Alpha test team:

Ships Diary - 19th February 2007

Location - Antarctic Peninsula

The early risers were treated to golden light as we passed through the Gerlache Straight. After breakfast we headed into the Lemaire channel not knowing the treats that were to follow. After having navigated our way through the channel we dropped anchor in Pleneau Bay (aka the Iceberg Graveyard).

With Rob our trusty but slightly crazy boatman, Michael Reichmann, Jeff Schewe, Seth Resnick, Bill Atkinson, John Paul Caponigro, Stephen Johnson, Kevin Raber, Chris Sanderson and myself climbed aboard the lead Zodiac.

Stephen Johnson had brought his Mini ColorChecker card, but Jeff Schewe wanting to be doubly sure of the correct white balance brought a ColorChecker and multiple grey cards (belt and braces <g>).

The waters in Pleneau Bay are quite shallow, so any icebergs that find their way in quickly become stuck thus presenting photographers with the perfect opportunity to capture their amazing shapes and colours.

I've uploaded a small Flash gallery of  images that illustrate above text.

10 February 2008

• I have just returned from a photo shoot in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. This was my second winter visit to the parks and due to the very different weather conditions I managed to capture many images that escaped me on my previous visit. Due to other commitments it will probably take me a few weeks pull together a gallery of images. In meantime, I have posted two shots (found on the site Index and Home pages).

The first entitled Hayden Valley Tree was taken in Yellowstone at the end of very long and cold  snow coach journey in less than perfect photographic conditions (wind and heavy snow fall). In fact, we had almost given up on any chance of a shot when the weather eased and the subtle contours of the Hayden Valley began to appear. Immediately, eight photographers piled out of the snow coach and grabbed as many shots as the brief interlude in wind and snow would allow. The image is presented in monochrome, which I think is more in keeping with how the scene appeared.

The second image was taken at the Snake River Overlook just as the sun began to rise. The scene was made famous by Ansel Adams with his 1942 image entitled The Grand Tetons and Snake River. Alas, the curve in the river that makes Adam's shot so strong is now obscured by trees, so today's photographers try to come up with their own interpretations. In my case I didn't even try, I shot with morning light on the Tetons using a 28mm wide angle lens on my Canon EOS 5D.

20 January 2008

• The various signature images and Flash Gallery from my February 2007 trip to the Southern Ocean and Antarctic Peninsula can now be accessed from a single page rather than a multiple links spread throughout the site.