Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 - Available Now

Well, the day is here. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom has graduated beta and is available for download this very moment.

I'm sure you already know the run-down of features, so there's no need to rewrite the litany of improvements. The only feature I wanted to highlight was the lens correction addition. It seems that Adobe has taken the time and energy to implement an addition that makes our lives easier - kudos Lightroom team. The setting allows you to select the make, model, and profile of the lens, adjust the profile, or even manually adjust the lens correction and save it as a new one. I recall reading something from a company that creates software specifically for this cause - and that company was not impressed with this feature. From what I understand, it's too complicated for end-users and it should be left to the professionals, so they say. Wrong. Anyone with the willingness to learn how to correct lens imperfections is better for it, it'll also teach you a great deal about optics in the process.

The obvious relation between this feature and real estate photography is just that - obvious. Real estate photography demands the accurate recreation of reality and most lenses distort reality in one way or another. Even if the lens is 'perfect', the photographer probably isn't. I'm not suggesting you should ditch PTLens or DxO Optics just yet, I'm just saying that there's another player in this game and so far it looks very promising.

So check out Lightroom 3 here, it's well worth your time and energy.

Adobe Photoshop CS5 Technology Preview

I just stumbled across this a few minutes ago:

The one and only reason I thought it belonged here is due to the last technology preview the demonstration covers - improved warping. Currently, the warp tool in Photoshop is good - as long as you have patience. It appears that the new warp tool allows the user to anchor specific section of the image while warping the rest. That's a huge benefit for real estate photographers who need to correct those straight lines.

Free Aperture 3 Preset Pack

Here's the Aperture preset pack I mentioned in the podcast this week. Many thanks to MacCreate for making this great set of presets available to us so quickly.

Apple's Aperture 3 Released

Big day today - Aperture 3 is out! 

I'm a Lightroom user, but I'm willing to give it a try, considering the bazillion changes they made. The most notable improvements are:

• Adjustment Brush - you know, the one we've been enjoying in Lightroom for a while now
• Presets - finally
• Stills, Video, and Audio management - sounds incredibly useful with the fact that video on DSLR's are becoming a new standard
• Faces and Places - the same nifty stuff we've seen in iPhoto
• Slideshows - I think we all know what they are
• Photo Books - new sizes and now with the ability to send your books out to professional photo labs via plug-ins (now that's a welcome new feature!)
• Printing - lots of new printing options
• 64-bit - Under-the-hood improvement that should help with speed and access to RAM

Check out all of the improvements here.

Which one is the HDR…?

Photography Bay recently posted about their experiences with Photomatix Pro and HDR. The idea is to select which photo was produced from three exposures (-2, 0, and +2) in Photomatix Pro and which one was produced via heavy Lightroom processing.

Check the complete post out here.

Episode 108: PTLens Overview

Correct Lens Distortion with PTLens

We mentioned in the second podcast how barrel distortion was able to be corrected, and in the fifth episode the software that can do that - well, here's a brief overview of PTLens.

PTLens is nothing short of an amazing tool for real estate photographers. It can fix all sorts of distortion problems including lens pincushion/barrel distortion, fisheye distortion, vignetting, perspective distortion, and chromatic aberrations. The main thing to point out is that it doesn't duplicate Photoshop's 'Lens Correction' filter and that's because Photoshop's filter is fairly limited. PTLens produces better and more consistent results than Photoshop for various reasons, but the main one being that: "Photoshop uses one parameter to correct distortion while PTLens can utilize up to 3 parameters. One parameter often does a fine job on standard and telephoto lenses. Wide-angle lenses typically require more than one parameter for accurate correction. For example, moustache distortion can be corrected with PTLens but not with Photoshop's Lens Correction filter."

The continually updated library of lenses is another selling-point. If you acquire a lens that isn't in the database already, you can send in some calibration images and they'll run run the distortion test on the files, then update the database. How great is that?

The final feature to note is the tight Lightroom integration. Say you just came back from a shoot, you've post-processed your files, and you are about to export them for delivery - well, just quickly send them to PTLens to correct the barrel distortion and you're on your way.

One thought remains -whenLightroom has the ability to do lens corrections, will it be as good as PTLens? More than likely not at first, but only time will tell.

The trial currently allows you to correct 10 files and the price for a license at the moment is $25.

We'll be doing a video review of PTLens and all it offers in the future, so stay tuned.

Check our PTLens here.

Exposure Fusion over HDR

I'm not going to lie, I'm a huge fan of Exposure Fusion. Even though it's only just beginning to emerge as a promising method for creating great real estate photos (among others), it still rocks, and it can even 1-up HDR in a few instances.

Digital Photography School did a quick summary of what it can offer, here's a clip:
"In short, EF takes the best bits from each image in the sequence and seamlessly combines them to create a final ‘Fused’ image. Or more technically, the fusing process assigns weights to the pixels of each image in the sequence according to luminosity, saturation and contrast, then depending on these weights includes or excludes them from the final image. And because Exposure Fusion relies on these qualities, no exif data is required, and indeed, if you wanted to, you could include an image with flash to bring darker areas to life."

Read the complete article here.

DSLR Remote App Update

onOne software released version 1.1 of their software a few days back and it's beginning to get some much deserved appreciation. Basically, if you have a DSLR and can connect it to a wifi network (if you have your laptop with you, you can create a network), just use your iPhone or iPod Touch to fire it remotely. For real estate photographers, this means it can add to your already complex PAP setup, and it just might simplify things a bit - depending on your workflow, of course. Anyway, this update now supports Nikon cameras (prior to this update, it only supported Canon) - a feature that was many had been begging for - and that's only the start of the improvements.

Check out onOne's page for the application here.

Check out DSLR Remote in the App Store here.

Great Tips for Web Slideshows

Here's a very good article about creating and presenting functional slideshows online. The best part for real estate photographers is the 'How to Make a Good Slideshow' section. Tips like providing buttons, making it automatic or manual, not overdoing it, are all great points to be made.

Check it out here.