This part 2 of Jon Lightroom 3 review. You can see the introduction in is first post and the second part here.
ACR 6.1
The newest incarnation of Lightroom uses the new Adobe Camera Raw 6.1 for it’s RAW conversion. Since this is a review of Lightroom and not ACR, I’m not going to get into the nuances of the newest ACR suffice to say that overall it appears to be an improvement over previous versions. One of the first things new users will notice is an exclamation point icon on the bottom of some images. This message is that LR wants to apply the new ACR default settings to the image. Upon allowing the update, you will notice a slight change in the handling of shadows, color rendition and a few other areas and overall, it looks good. If you’re someone who prefers the camera manufacturers software for RAW conversion, you’re probably still going to prefer those. The color rendition, quality of detail and overall fidelity provided in those programs (Canon Photo Professional, can’t speak for NX2) still has an edge over Adobe’s CR. This should be expected, given that ACR accommodates almost all types of RAW images and therefore isn’t quite as specialized as those from the Camera makers. That said, for those who do prefer ACR for it’s convenience and options will be very pleased with the new engine overall.
The only downside to the new engine is that you need to have ACR 6.1 running on your system, meaning you need to be running Photoshop CS5. If not, than you will need to render RAW images in LR before opening in Photoshop, which means an extra TIF (if that’s your selected preference for external editing) on your drive and more time spent waiting for an editable-image to be created before being re-opened. Of course, LR offers the option of “open anyway” rather then “render using Lightroom” but the results are inconsistent and frankly a bit unreliable for accurate rendition and conversion. So, if you’re not running CS5 be prepared for a little extra leg work to reap the full benefits of Lightroom3’s develop Module.
Noise Reduction Improvement
Adobe is pushing heavily the improved performance of Noise Reduction in LR3, which is no surprise since Noise Reduction is an item of large interest for photographers given the “Noise Wars” being waged between the camera manufacturers to push the high-iso-noise-performance envelop further and further. So the question is, how good is LR’s new noise reduction? The short answer is very good, in fact certainly better than previous versions of Lightroom and Photoshop. Luminance and color noise are handled nicely with details staying largely intact (compared to previous versions) and realistic. To get a sense of the improvement, I’ve set up the comparison below between LR3 and LR2, Aperture3 and noise Photoshop plugins Nik Dfine and Imageonic Noiseware. I’ll be posting the results soon.
Lens Correction Tool
Another crucial addition to the develop module is the inclusion of the Lens Correction tool. The LC too is taken directly from Photoshop, with all of the same parameters with the exception of scale and edge transparency (I would not recommend using the LC tool for scaling anyway). In addition to the default Photoshop parameters, Lightroom has raised the bar by including it’s own camera/lens profiles- similar to DXO software. These profiles, when applied, automatically correct a the image based on the lens and camera preset detected by LR. This is an excellent feature, and works well for most images. I would, as a recommendation use the automatic profiles as a starting point, as different images shot in varying situations will certainly require different levels of correction. Another great feature is the ability to batch lens correct, as the lens correct option has been added to the list of options when syncing develop settings across a number of photographs. Overall, the LC tool is yet another vital work flow time saver especially when trying to stay solely in Lightroom for image editing.
This part 2 of Jon Lightroom 3 review. You can see the introduction in is first post.
Import Dialog
One of the first things you’ll notice about LR3 is the new import Dialog, which is largely different than previous versions. The simple dialog box of old is gone and replaced with a full screen window complete with a large preview area. The preview area is the most significant improvement- you can now preview images and video before importing and can un-check any you don’t want to ingest- a nice feature (and overdue!). However, in exchange for a more sophisticate import dialog we are also given a slightly more complex interface, with essential source and destination information on opposite sides of the screen. This can make a normally simple task of simply importing, renaming, and adding metadata, cataloging and backing up a little more tedious. It also doesn’t help that they’ve now included a few seemingly unimportant options for these tasks, for example the rename images by shoot in addition to custom name. In other words, LR3 will add the words “shoot_whateveryouwant-1”. It would be just as easy to do this with a custom name, and with this option they’ve just made the list unnecessarily longer. Another annoyance of the new import dialog is that you will get it when importing ANY new images, even simply updating a folder. This essentially creates an extra step in the workflow, i.e. importing tiffs or psd back into LR after they’ve been processed in Photoshop. For photogs who require speed and consistency and are used the efficiency of previous versions of Lightroom in this regard may be surprised when they find themselves being slowed up by these little nuances of the new import dialog.
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So, I have been playing with Aperture 3 for over two weeks now. I haven’t explored fully its 200 ‘new’ features yet, but I have played enough to make up my mind about it.
I am not going to go over every new features since a lot of people have already done it. Instead, I am going to talk about the stuff that matters to photographers.
Speed
I am very sorry to say that but the current version of Aperture is slow. Browsing from one picture to the next is slow unless you are in quick preview mode (Press P to toggle). Once you get into the habit of switching between modes, it is not that much of a burden but remember that you can only edit pictures in normal mode.
Before some fan boys reply that it isnt slow, know that I did everything I could to speed it up: rebuild library, use a fast machine with RAID-0 drives, etc… With the same setup LightRoom runs circles around A3. That is sad.
Adjustments
Noise
Aperture 3 noise reduction is good and would stand well on its own if it was not of the spectacular results one can get in LightRoom 3 or with Neat Image. If shooting in low light is important to you and you want to use A3, get Neat Image.
The Presets
I have a love/hate relationship with presets. Amateurs see them as the be all end all of image editing, thinking they can get pro results with a click of the mouse without even understanding what is going on. A3 surfs on the preset wave started with LR to get pretty much the same results (given the same adjustment panels). Actually, I prefer the way A3 handles presets than LR: you can either combine presets by picking them one after the other, or replacing them by option clicking the new preset.
Curve
A3 has a nice curves adjustment tool. You can select a color from the image and it will place an adjustment point at corresponding position on the curve. Quite useful to clean up background or changing cloths color. Remembers me of the way Capture One 4 handle curves.
Brushes
There are a lot of talk about the new non destructive adjustment brushes. Here again, the A3 team fell a bit short. While the brushes work very well, you cannot use the same brush with two different adjustment level. I correct myself, if you click on the option gear, you can add as many distinct adjustment brushes as you want. Cool!
The missing adjustments
Where the hell is the grad filter? It has to be one of the most important filter one can use, yet it is not there. It really makes me wonder if the Aperture dev team actually use the software!
The other missing adjustment is the tone splitting. While I think LR user overuse this tool (especially in presets), it has proven time and again to be a key feature to quickly set a mood on a batch of pictures. Here again, the adjustment isn’t there.
The vignette tool has not evolved at all. I was hoping to at least get the choice of going toward white instead of black as in LR or to select the desired affected corners but we got nothing new.
Import
I love the new import screen and its link to Places. If you have a mix of geolocated pictures and non geolocated ones, once you start to import, the software will ask you if you want to associate the locations. Brilliant!
Conclusion
Unfortunately, A3 is not what I would call a release ready product. While it has some incredible features that I havent covered (slideshows & hybrid stuff) it fails to cover the basic by giving photographers what they need the most: speed and controls. The dev team spent too much time working on ‘new’ features instead of working the app core.
Hopefully, a software update will come in a few months to correct these issues but right now I can only recommend A3 as a slide show editing platform. Actually, pro photographers might want to get it for that feature alone. It is really that great!
Finally out! It was about time.
I will not list all the new features (over 200), if that is the kind of stuff you like reading about, head over the official Apple page. Instead, I will list the features that mean the most for us.
First, facial recognition. I already talked about it in my Aperture 3 prediction about 8 months ago. This is a big thing if you are often shooting the same people. I am just worried about how long it is going to take to pass over my 192 gigs of pictures…
Next on the line is Places. Another feature that most travel photographers will love. I know because I had to geotag over 2000 pictures when I came back from Vietnam. Not a fun experience! At the local scale, it is also going to be useful to organize pictures when doing on a location scouting day. I used to import them in iPhoto just for that and it was a real pain.
Video import and playback directly in Aperture! I love this one for two reasons: first because it is going to be useful to do everything in a single operation and also because it shows how Apple recognize HDSLR as a trend and not a novelty. As soon as I finish the download, I will see if it if possible to batch process video files automatically for conversion to ProRes.
Slideshows. I never used these in Aperture. I preferred working within either Lightroom, Animoto or Motion. But, with the new slideshows, I just have one thing to say: wow! I am impressed. 95% of the work I used to do in Motion is doable in Aperture and it looks even easier!
Finally, Brushes. It was about time Aperture got these! None destructive editing at the pixel level has been the reason why I moved to Lightroom (ok, also because it was faster!). I am glad the feature is now in Aperture since it saves a round trip to Photoshop for 95% of the image corrections.
While waiting for my review, you can read what Chase has to say about it. He was on the beta list so he probably knows more than me!
Note: You can upgrade to Aperture 3 from the Academic version of Aperture 2!
Note2: I havent found an electronic version for the full product, so I had to place an order and download the demo.
A lot of people talked about the announcement of the EOS E1 plugin for FCP yesterday so I feel like I have to talk about it too. As far as we know, it is all vaporware so far since the software is not released yet. Old time blog readers might remember this post from Vincent Laforest testing a similar tool developed by Glue Tools (which has not been released yet, hence my lack of faith in unreleased software!).
So, what is all the fuzz about anyways?
Why do you need a tool to import files from the CF card to your computer? The finder/Explorer is already doing a fine job. Well, the first reason is to make the file importing task part of the FCP workflow. When using the Log & Trans window, you can attach other process to the import action, for examples sending the file to compressor for transcoding, make a backup copy on another drive, add meta tags, etc… Pretty cool and a nice time saver, especially if you are working on a set.
Now about what it cant do…
I have seen a few cut&paste reports of people saying the plugin would allow users to start the edit with the video still in the camera/CF card. Sorry but this sounds more like a sentence taken from the generic Log & Transfert feature description than what you can expect to do from this plugin. You still need to transcode to ProRes if you want real time editing, and it is not like we are shooting 45 minutes long clips with the 5D, we are limited to 12 minutes so no real need to partial file import. Actually, I dont even know if it is possible with the H.264 codec to do partial import without re-encoding the whole clip.
So, is this a big announcement or not?
Yes it is because the Log & Trans tool is part of a professional work flow. Pros are used to it and expect it. While not a show stopper, it was keeping the 5D away from being seen as a ‘real’ tool on a production set.
The plugin is not out yet so we can’t confirm its features but I hope the file metadatas include exposure settings, lens used, camera id, etc…
Once released, the plugin will be available here.
Now that Final Cut Studio 3 is out, lets talk (and guess) about what we will find in the upcoming Aperture update.
I have been an Aperture user since day 1. In version 1, is was revolutionary but slow. V1.5 brought a nice speed boost and V2 introduced a few new tools and the plugin architecture. So what should we expect for v3?
First, meta tagging has to be improved as I talk about it a while ago. I am so frustrated about the tagging system that I am not tagging as much as I used to, which is a bad thing since it is one of the reasons why I picked Aperture instead of Lightroom in the first place… In fact, improvements to the tagging functionality has been so slow that I expect it to be one of the focal point of v3 with the release of automatic tagging of pictures which was started in the latest iPhoto update.
I received a reply from Mike Wong @ On One regarding my review of the DSLR Remote iPhone application. Mike had the generosity to go over each element I outlined in the wish list and to give us a glimpse of what is coming in the 1.1 update. So here is the relevant part of the email (with my comments).
Auto focus
Assuming that you are not shooting in Live View mode and that your lens is set to AF, the camera will automatically attempt to auto-focus when you press the fire button. You’re not alone in asking this question though so I’m going to be soliciting some feedback from users to find out more about what people are looking for here. As for focusing during Live View, that is something we have planned for a 1.1 update.
Yes, I was thinking about Live View.
Video recording
Also planned for the 1.1 release is to add start & stop for the video recording function on the 5D Mark II
YES! If we could change exposure settings while shooting, it would be even better 
Adding filters to the live view
I’m not sure how we would do this. I’ll share the feedback with the product team though.
Big screen mode
If you rotate the iPhone to landscape mode, the controls disappear.
Oups, my fault! When I tried to rotate my iPhone while I was testing the app and nothing happened. I will blame this on my iPhone then.
Bracketing Assistant
Another feature we have planned for the 1.1 release.
YES, YES!
Shortcuts to some user made presets
If you set up your C1, C2 and C3 buttons with a custom function and then move the dial to one of them, the camera shoots in those modes. You just can’t change into one of those modes from the iPhone.
Too bad, I guess we can’t get everything we ask for in a single update.
Thank you very much for the response Mike. If you have not done so yet, go get the app before the special pricing ends (in$ instead of 20$). Looking at the incoming features of the next release, it is a no brainer!
As stated a few days ago, I bought the DSLR Remote on the day of release, picking the Pro version. For a 8$ difference, I don’t understand how someone could go with the lower-end alternative.
Installation & Setup
On One Software really did a great job to make the setup process as easy as it could be. Basically, all you need to do is download and install the server application on your computer, plug the camera via USB, start the iPhone app and voila!
Note: If you are like me and dont read instructions, you might be looking for Liveview and the intervalometer for while. They are hidden under the FIRE button. You need to press the FIRE button and hold it for a few seconds to make the options appear. Took me a moment to figure that one out!
Things I liked
1:1 zooming
Being able to zoom in at 1:1 is incredible. It allows you to review shots faster at the press of a button. The problem with the current implementation is that you either zoom at 1:1 or you dont. It is impossible to do fractional zooming like in the iPhone photo app.
Note: you can only zoom after the shot is taken and zooming is disabled in live view.
Liveview
Adjusting the exposure settings from the iPhone and automatically seen the update on the screen is very cool. Well, its like the first time I used liveview but now I can adjust the lights as I am looking at the result on the iPhone. Brilliant!
Time lapse (Intervalometer)
If there is one thing that I hate about Canon bodies, compared to those from Nikon, is how crappy their firmware are. Nikon gives its user more control over bracketing and allow them to set time lapses in ways that are even better than what you can do with the dedicated and over priced Canon remote trigger
Note: if you activate the bracketing, only one picture will be taken per interval period. My suggestion to the developper would be to add a check box to set the camera to take 3 (or even better, x) consecutive shots per interval.
Things missing / Wish list
Auto focus
You have to prefocus, even the AF button of the 5D can’t be used remotely. Blame it on the Canon API.
Video recording
While I would have been happy with just the ability to press the record button and have the camera starts recording, a more advanced version would be even better. I am thinking here about the ability to zoom while recording. Doing so would transform the iPhone into the perfect follow focus screen. And, while I am at it, what about plugging the iPhone directly into the camera? (On One Software said that is something they plan to explore once the new iPhone SDK is out, cool!).
Adding filters to the live view
This is a follow up to my previous point. If it was possible to have a high pass filter on top of the video preview, it would make follow focusing even easier/better. I doubt the iPhone has enough CPU power to do this but still, everyone is allowed to dream, no? A more realistic request might be to enable/disable zebra mode with the press of a button when shooting pictures.
Big screen mode
Once the parameters are set, the only required button is FIRE. Why not then hide all the other buttons and put the picture full screen? Even better, rotate it according to the orientation of the iPhone.
Bracketing Assistant
I love bracketing. I don’t know how many times it saved me when shooting outside or in HDR. Unfortunately, DSLR Remote does not offer a bracketing assistant. I would have loved to be able to set it up like the intervalometer: assigning a number of pictures to take and the variation in exposure between each shot. This feature alone would motivate me to bring a laptop in my bag the next time I go in the wild.
Shortcuts to some user made presets
I hate switching my camera settings, even more so if the menu I need to change is deeply nested into the custom functions. Wouldn’t it be great to click on one icon and have all your HDR landscape preferences loaded? Then click another to move into time lapse mode? Of course to be really useful the software would need to be able to access the camera custom functions and I have no idea if it is possible right now…
What I couldn’t test
I wish I had the wireless battery grip to see if it worked. I think it does since it allows tethered shooting but I would love to know if someone has tried it.
Conclusion
Should you get the application? At the current intro price of 10$, it is a no brainer. It is obviously a very first try and some more iterations will be required to satisfy the more demanding users. Yet, the current version does what it is advertised for, never crashed during the 200+ shots I took and saved me from round tripping between the camera and the light stands while adjusting lights to do some product shots.
I am happy.
Btw, there is a trouble shooting document here in case you run into any issues and a FAQ.
We talked about it a few days ago and now On one software just announced that DSLR Remote is now available for purchase on the iTune store. It is available in two format: lite (2$) or pro (10$ now, 20$ regular price).
I did not even take the time to read the differences between the two and picked the pro version. I will test is out for a day or two then post a review.
Folks. I think I have been sitting on this news long enough. As you all know, one of the most frustration thing about video editing in HD is that you can never work directly with the original clips without some serious performance hit and frame skipping.
The solution to this issue, so far, has been to either use proxies or transcode the clip into a format that can be rendered in real time (ex: ProRes 422). Each of these solutions has a disadvantage. Proxies add complexity to the workflow (I wish Premiere
Well, it is time to rejoice because very soon all of these issues are going to be history! I have learned that the next version of Quicktime (coming with Snow Leopard) is going to allow real time editing of the Canon 5DMrkII H.264 clips!
I have yet to figure out if this improvement will be the benefit of Core Video optimization or new hardware coming in the next Macs. I guess we will know about it at the developer conference.
Of course, this is just a second hand rumor so it has to be taken for what it is: a rumor. I publish this because my source is very credible and it fits nicely in Apple video editing strategy.
I have another rumor from the same person that might be of even greater interest to us but before posting it, I will wait for confirmation of this one. After all, I dont want to be known as the guy who keep posting false rumors!
