The emergence of Canon DSLR video has been a triumph and a struggle for wantabe Steven Speilbergs, me included. The triumph is the undoubted quality of the image, and the creative avenues opened up by the wide variety of lenses available.
The struggle includes the introduction of so much new terminology, so many new ways to be creative and to fail miserably, and the inevitable havoc caused to well established workflows with the introduction of video. This post outlines my efforts to arrive at something resembling a usable workflow for video, using MPEG Streamclip, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Youtube.

Towards The Light - Tourists shoot the Pantheon Oculus
Slowly but surely I am sorting and sifting my way through my back catalog of images. This new gallery features some of my favorite shots from a two week trip to Rome in 2007. During that time, we really got a feel for this wonderful city, and especially it’s food!

So Adobe has announced Creative Suite 5. There have already been some amazing preview video’s, but, as always with Adobe products, there will be the debate whether to upgrade or not. I am lucky enough to have Adobe Master Collection CS4, but here are the top three features which will probably push me down the upgrade path…

Adobe Lightroom 2
In my previous post on Digital Asset Management, I briefly outlined some of the entry level contenders for DAM software such as Google Picasa and Adobe Photoshop Elements. In the rest of this series, I will look at some of the heavy weights, the professional asset management systems. I will start with the one I use most – Adobe Lightroom. Not sure if this is a good idea as I it is the product that I am most intimate with, knowing its strengths and weaknesses. Let’s get started…

20 Years of Adobe Photoshop - But is it Still Relevant for Photographers?
Webdesigner Depot website has a great overview of 20 Years of Adobe Photoshop. While I have Adobe Photoshop CS4; I find myself using it less and less, and I wonder whether it will remain as relevant to Photographers in particular in the future. The touch up tools now available in Adobe Lightroom / Apple Aperture and the like could very well render Photoshop to the realm of super specialized tool for Graphic Artists and Web Designers.
That said, it really has been a phenomenon; so much so that it is often used as a verb:
That image looks photoshopped!
A result of that is that in popular culture it now stands for all that is wrong with magazine images of skinny models. It is accused of being complicated, difficult to learn and use, and extremely expensive. So much so that it must be one of the most pirated pieces of software on the internet.
Still amazing software though…

Which Photo Software? What photo software you need, when, and why...
I recently discussed the must haves / don’t needs of buying a digital camera, depending on the stage of your photography obsession
. I would imagine that most of the time photo’s come straight out of the camera and onto paper, if at all. If you want to take your photo’s that little bit further, here are some software tools which can smooth the way…