Testing conditions for Video Stabilisation software!

My last post, a general mediation on the Apple Macbook Air, Final Cut Pro X, and editing video while you are waiting attracted a reasonable number of comments. Stabilisation seems to be a hot topic at the moment, especially considering that it is one of the planks that Adobe’s new After Effects CS 5.5 is standing on. The piece of video I used to illustrate my recent post was a challenging piece for any stabilisation technology, considering that I was hand holding an iPhone 4, on a windy day, walking backwards on a beach!

In order to demonstrate what’s possible, I ran the same footage through the following tools:

• iMovie 11 on the Mac
• A demo ProDAD Mercalli V2 plugin for Premiere Pro CS5, hence the diagonal lines
• After Effects Warp Stabilizer in CS5.5

The Beach

My day job is IT; a necessary part of that role is waiting. Wait for a process to finish, wait for somebody to complete a task, wait for equipment to boot up.

I dread to think how much of the last 15 years have been spent waiting.

So while implementing a major production change this week (and encountering some frustrations) I put my “waiting” time to good use by testing out Adobe After Effects CS5.5 and Premiere Pro CS5.5 on my Macbook Air to put together this little video. Shot on an iPhone 4, Warp Stabilizer in After Effects (more on that in another post), and finished up in Premiere Pro. I don’t think it turned out too bad, and the “Air” behaved very well, especially considering it is the lowest, 2Gb RAM, 64Gb HD model.

What’s really great about it is it’s “there when you need it” availability. Small and light is good, but some of the other things really make a difference. Like it’s ability to wake instantly from sleep, whether it’s 5 minutes or 2 weeks since you used it; or it’s long battery life. Sure, I had to go for lunch when rendering out the stabilized footage from AE, and the final footage from Premiere, but the video mostly played back in real-time on Premiere, and if I rendered the time line, I could scrub forwards and backwards without pause.

Premiere Pro CS5.5 on Macbook Air

This was my first time using After Effects, and similar to Premiere Pro, there is a fairly steep learning curve. That said the Warp Stabilizer is simple to use, and very, very effective. It practically looks like I am floating out there! I know that it is one of the key features that Adobe is using to sell the CS5.5 upgrade, and it nearly looks like it might be worth it. Premiere Pro and After Effects are getting a lot of interest of late since the release of Final Cut Pro X from Apple.

Apple Final Cut Pro X

A lot of the pro video and film editors are dissatisfied / distraught over the missing interoperability features in FCPX, and videos comparing features, performance, and migration methods abound. I like this one comparing the Stabilizing function in FCPX and the Warp Stabilizer in After Effects:

When all is said and done though, FCPX looks like a very polished offering for the casual / prosumer video editor on the Mac, such as I am. One app (essentially), with all the output options I would typically need, and interesting media management capabilities; I only wish there was a trail version available. I would love to compare the performance of both when editing Canon 7D footage on my Macbook Pro. FCPX seems to offer GPU rendering on all Macs, whereas the magnificent Mercury engine of Premiere Pro is only at it’s best when paired with one of a select group of Nvidia GPUs, none of which are typically offered by Apple. Or are they…?

How come I didn’t find this link sooner? More on this too, later.

Super Moon Over Manly

Nearly forgot about this; so fired up the trusty Canon 7D @ ISO160 F11 with my 70-300mm IS onboard. It was pretty cloudy, but managed to grab a couple of shots.

The Clouds Begin To Roll In…

My Mac!

This post has little to do with photography, but it perhaps does answer some of the most common questions I have heard at trade shows, in forums, and the like… What’s your setup? What do you use? Many will lament the complete lack of photographic merit in those questions, but as a tech head, I will indulge my inner geek.

I recently started reading a great set of interviews where IT personalities give an overview of the hardware and software they use personally called “The Setup”. I really love the format of these interviews, being very breezy, not getting bogged down in the details, while still providing some great insight, tips, and hints for helpful tools and software. I doubt I would ever be invited to feature in “The Setup” but I will try to write this post in the same style.

Who Are You And What Do You Do?

I am Jonathan Bourke, currently living in Sydney, Australia. By day, I am a corporate IT guy, but by night I dream of being a professional travel photographer. Some day…

What Hardware Are You Using And Why?

The title refers to my first real computing experience, editing a school magazine on an original Macintosh. About a year ago I went “back to the mac” from a hot and heavy 18.4″ Sony Vaio laptop to a 17″ Macbook Pro. I love it, the pure clean lines, the excellent battery life, and the lack of extraneous stickers! I have the matte screen, but I must admit, it’s not as good as the one on the Sony, which definitely had a wider gamut for photography. One unexpected benefit of the screen though, is its extra “depth”; the extra 200 or so pixels it has over the Sony are great in Lightroom or other full screen apps. The Sony also had a BluRay burner, but considering I never burned a single BluRay in it, or watched a full movie, I don’t miss it at all. At the time, I couldn’t stretch to an SSD, but I have just upgraded to a Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive, which has provided a bit of a boost when opening apps.

I still keep a Dell desktop as a media centre and as a backup destination using Crashplan. Despite my years in IT using many operating systems, I found the move to the Mac a little of a challenge. I really missed the Windows 7 snap to edge feature which I have since solved with Cinch. I continue to miss the global shortcut Windows Key — E to open an Explorer window, so if anyone knows of a way to implement that in Finder, please let me know!

I have Epson R1800 and Dell 3100cn printers and an Epson V700 scanner. Thankfully, all of which are fully supported under Mac OS X (although the Dell driver requires Rosetta).

What Software Are You Using?

My Applications Folder

I believe a lot of people have the perception that moving to the Mac means missing out on all the software that they already know and (perhaps) love.

Not so!

The majority of the software I used on Windows I also have for Mac, such as Microsoft Office 2011, which is such a major improvement on Office 2008 for a user migrating from Office on the PC, and Adobe Master Collection CS5, which is effectively identical. I have always used iTunes to manage my media; migrating this wasn’t child’s play, but help is available.

I use Lightroom 3 to manage my photo library, and this was a joy to migrate. Just download trial version from Adobe, use your existing serial, which is platform agnostic, open your migrated catalog, and reconnect missing photo’s by selecting the top-level folder of your Lightroom managed photos.

I have always used some excellent Open Source or freely available software, and most have versions for the MAC:

• VLC — for playing assorted media files
• HandBrake — for DVD ripping
• Google Chrome — I flip-flop between this and Safari, only for full screen view and the Omnibox
• Google Earth — well, for travelling the world
• Skype — for a long time the Mac version was much neater, better looking than the windows one
• Evernote — for general note taking / scans of documents, etc.
• Sun, now Oracle, VirtualBox — for when I want to test something out on another OS
• Tweetdeck — for Facebook / Twitter stuff

I have also discovered a thriving world of beautifully designed Mac specific software such as Skitch for screenshots, Tranmission for Bittorrent, CyberDuck for FTP, and Growl for system notifications.

I have never used Apple’s Time Machine, though it looks magnificent. I have been a Crashplan user for a while; It gives me continuous, automatic, block level, differential, deduplicated, versioned backups of all my photo’s, documents, movies, music, and everything else sent to an external disk, my Dell desktop, and a datacenter in the US. Takes some beating!

I love Mac OS X’s integration of mail, calendar, and contacts syncing either from MobileMe or GoogleApps. While there are those who complain about the native clients, I am quite happy with them. I am still looking for a good task management app; I would love to get OmniFocus or Things, but I just can’t justify their cost so I currently use Toodledo.com.

My main camera is a Canon EOS 7D, with Sigma 12–24, Canon 28–135, 50 F1.4, and 70–300 IS lenses, but I use the camera in my iPhone 4 surprisingly often.

What Would Your Dream Setup Be?

I love screen real-estate; you can’t have too many pixels! So the 27″ iMac or the Apple Display are very tempting. I would love to get one, a Bluetooth keyboard and magic trackpad, a BookArc from Twelve South to give me more of a desktop setup.

I would also need to look at some more external storage, preferably Firewire 800 (oh, how I would love that ThunderBolt port now!) for raw, in use movies and photo’s to live before being archived. As it is the internal drive on the MacBook Pro is nearly always at 80% full.

Two last things for the wish list:

• I always struggle with colour consistency from screen to print, so I would love a proper colour management system such as a Spyder3Studio SR or a ColorMunki Photo.
• Now that I am doing more localised adjustments in Ligthroom, a Wacom Tablet would be nice

I get asked for product recommendations frequently. And my recommendations are ignored frequently .

Oh well.

I am a bit of a “gear head”, and love researching new camera gear. If only I had some way to pay for this obsession?

What about an Amazon Store you say? A good idea indeed. Behold my new Recommended Page!

In the spirit of full disclosure, as a signed up Amazon Associate, I get a tiny percentage of any products bought through the links in this Amazon store. I won’t be buying a private jet anytime soon, but it should help towards the cost of running this site. And just in time for a Christmas bailout!

Each of the hand-picked items listed I have either owned in the past, own currently, or would love to own in the future. There is no filler here, it’s all good stuff, and I would happily recommend to my family or friends.

Enjoy.

The Original Image

A quick grab shot of my son in his buggy, looking a little less than pleased . This was taken with a Canon 7D @ ISO320, 50mm F2.5. Not a bad shot, but a little dull.

After Basic Adjustments

After importing into Adobe Lightroom 3, my initial goal is to arrive at the “best quality” photo. In this case I did the following:

1. Lens Profile — enabled lens profiles. As I used my favorite Canon EF 50mm F1.4, this did not make a major difference in this case.
2. Noise levels — Lightroom 3 has excellent noise removal tools, and this table for the Canon 7D from David Gold is a brilliant starting point.
3. Sharpening — I used David Gold’s suggested values again here.
4. White Balance — I can’t remember where I heard this tip, but taking a white balance from the white of an eye gives a pretty good result.
5. Exposure, Fill, Blacks — Pretty much the auto setting.

Crop, Adjustment Brush, and Lightroom Preset

Feeling creative, I said I would try for a wallpaper for my dual monitor setup at work, either in black & white or sepia:

1. Crop — The ratio required would be 3.2:1, and using the Rule of Thirds, I cropped so that the intersection was on Adam’s eye.
2. Adjustment Brush — Never tried this before, but setting up an adjustment brush of –4ev, –100% brightness is fantastic for “painting” out unwanted detail.
3. Lightroom Preset — Finally I simply applied the Color Creative — Color CP 3 preset. Love it.

The Final Result

The emergence of Canon DSLR video has been a triumph and a struggle for wannabe Steven Spielberg’s, 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.

Camera Settings

• Movie Mode: Depending on whether you have your Canon 7D set to PAL or NTSC, you are normally presented with 3 real options:
  • 1080P @23.97 Frames/Second or “24P”: This is the Movie Pro’s choice for the supposed cinematic look.
  • 1080P @25 Frames/Second for PAL or 30 Frames/Second for NTSC
  • 720P @50 Frames/Second for PAL or 60 Frames/Second for NTSC. This is the setting I use. Why? Mainly because it is the best balance between good quality and acceptable file size. Also, converting, editing, playing back HD clips takes a lot of processing power, which not everyone has.
• Shutter Speed: For best results Canon recommends a shutter speed between 1/<video frame rate> to 1/125 of a second. Click here for more.
• Aperture: One of the great benefits of Canon DSLR video is the ability to use fast lenses, so this is very much a creative decision.
• ISO: For lowest noise, this excellent article from Marvels Films  suggest using one of 160, 320, 640, 1250, 3200.
• Highlight Tone Priority: The interwebs suggest leaving HTP off to reduce banding in the movie files, as mentioned in this forum.
• Noise Reduction: With moving images, noise isn’t the same issue it is for photo’s. This can be turned off.
• White Balance: As with photography, try and set this before shooting. Saves pain later.
• Image Stabilization: Some seem to imply that using image stabilization helps reduce jitter / flicker in your movies… BUT if you are using the inbuilt mic, you can hear the lens motor all the time!
• Picture Style: After seeing this YouTube video, I was using the Canon Neutral style to preserve shadow and highlight detail, as in the movie at the top of this post. More seasoned Movie Pro’s employ custom Picture Styles, as excellently outlined in this video:

Shooting

Shooting video with a Canon 7D brings with it a number of ergonomic challenges, which many companies have sought to address with Finders, Follow Focus, Matte Boxes, Contact Rigs. These can all add up, but if you have the money to spend, get a load of this:

Canon EOS 1D Mk IV in a Zacuto Cross Fire Z-DCF3

If you are not in this category, and are improvising with their existing photographic supports and techniques, as I am, then I can share the following:

• Shoot more, shorter clips than fewer longer ones. Camera shake, noise, etc. will be less noticeable in your final edited movie as the viewer will have less time to notice erratic movement on-screen.
• If you plan on changing zoom, or focus, then you better be using a tripod or monopod, as it looks wobbly as hell if you try to do it hand-held.
• A lot of sites recommend manual focus, mostly for the creative cinematic effect of bring a scene into focus, but if you are shooting handheld, I would go for a larger F-stop with focus at infinity. This is especially important if you are shooting moving objects.
• Aperture Priority, Time Priority are completely ignored when shooting video. They become Program Mode, where you adjust exposure using Exposure Compensation. If you are dealing with erratic lighting or have a creative goal in mind, Full Manual is the way to go.
• The built-in Mic in the Canon 7D is fairly poor, and just “loves” the wind! I nearly always overlay my movie clips with music for this reason.

Transcoding

Ah yes, now to the heart of some of the difficulties. If you think the range of photographic file formats was complicated, wait till you get a load of movie file formats! You’ve got containers, codecs, compression settings, frame rates, dimensions, associated sound formats, sampling rates… it goes on and on. Let’s start with a couple of definitions from Wikipedia:

A video codec is a device or software that enables video compression and/or decompression for digital video.

And

A container or wrapper format is a meta-file format whose specification describes how data and metadata are stored.

My knowledge is very far from in-depth at this stage, but the reason why Canon 5D Mk II and 7D movie editing has preoccupied many people on the web is that the file format chosen by Canon (using the H.264 codec in a Quicktime MOV container) is a great balance between quality and size for playback but terrible for editing.

The reason for this is the video compression used, which utilizes Groups of Pictures, where only every 15th frame of the movie is a complete frame, and the intermediary frames are calculated based on differences from this complete frame. As you scrub forward and backwards in your editing software, searching for clips to extract, your CPU needs to work overtime to calculate and re-calculate movie frames as you make edits. Some editing programs do this better than others, with Sony Vegas, AVID Media Composer, and Pinnacle Studio coming in for mention. Try scrubbing through Canon 7D movie footage in Adobe Premiere Pro and you will think that your CPU’s are going to melt!

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 is meant to be a vast improvement in this area, implementing native support for Canon DSLR movie footage. This improvement is enabled by a move to 64Bit, a new rendering engine called Mercury, and support for real-time rendering on a number of high-end nVidia CUDA enabled graphics cards.

While I have vastly simplified this explanation, you can now get some idea why movie files like this are so hard to edit, so the approach taken by most people is to transcode or convert the out-of-the-camera movie files to a format which is less CPU intensive to work with. The three main approaches that I have read about are:

1. Convert to ProRes which is a Codec supplied by Apple as part of Final Cut Studio. Which means you need to buy Final Cut Studio. And a Mac. $$$$
2. Convert to Neoscene which is a Codec supplied by Cineform. This Codec is compatible with Adobe Premiere Pro, but it does cost US$129.
3. Convert to DNxHD supplied by AVID which many in would consider to be the leader in HD Video Editing. The basic Codec can be downloaded for free here. You need to also get a copy of the free MPEG Streamclip from Squared 5 to accomplish the conversion.

The availability of a trial download of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, which brings with it greater native support for DSLR video and much improved performance during playback and editing, allowed me to compare editing performance as can be seen in the following sequence of screenshots:

Processing RAW Canon EOS 7D video in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. In the clip properties, you can see the different coloured frame types (i.e. the full frames and the differences). Simply playing the clip results in excessive CPU utilization.

Processing 10Bit AVID DNxHD video in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Even converting to this codec does not bring much of a saving in CPU utilization, although you can see that all frames are now full frames.

Processing 8Bit 50% Quality AVID DNxHD in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Dropping the quality level even further still doesn’t show great improvements, but it does help.

Processing RAW Canon EOS 7D video in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. Now we see an improvement, which is especially good considering that it is using only the software version of the Mercury Engine, and the trial doesn’t include the native DSLR codecs due to licensing reasons.

I am unable to show Cineform Neoscene as my trial had expired and I don’t plan on purchasing it after seeing what Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 can do. Pending an upgrade, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 is still my day-2-day video editor, and I chose the last, free option of AVID DNxHD and MPEG Streamclip. After installing these to components, here is how to go about performing the transcode:

1. File, Open 7D file.
2. File, Export to Quicktime.
3. Choose AVID DNxHD.
4. Click Options button beside the AVID DNxHD choice, which brings up a confusing looking dialog window. There is a bug in the layout.
5. Set Color levels RGB.
6. Click the tiny sliver of a box at the bottom of the window, and a drop down box will appear, allowing you to select the bit rate for DNxHD. As I demonstrated with the screenshots above, you may need to experiment to see what works best for your editing workflow, but ensure you pick the same resolution and frame rate as the source clip.
7. Hover over the Uncompressed selection and the OK button will appear. This is another bug. Click OK.
8. Set quality to 100% (again this is something to be experimented with).
9. Uncheck Interlaced Scaling.
10. Ensure that “1920x1080 unscaled” is selected (or the relevant unscaled resolution for your source clip).
11. Click “Make Movie”

Setting AVID DNxHD options in MPEG Streamclip. Note that the drop down list for resolution and frame rate settings hang awkwardly from the messed up dialog window.

Other MPEG Streamclip “Export to Quicktime” settings, in particular frame size is unscaled and interlace scaling and video are unchecked.

Editing

I tested the waters with a number of video editors, including:

• Microsoft Windows Live Video (I can’t believe that I am even admitting this, but it worked fine!)
• Pinnacle Studio HD (based on the advice from this Photoframd Blog post)
• Premiere Elements 7

As I stated at the beginning, and alluded too at a number of other points, I eventually settled on Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, which I am lucky enough to have as part of the Adobe Master Collection.  No point having all that professional software if I don’t use it! For me, the easiest way to learn this product is to watch a number of the excellent tutorial series on Youtube, such as this one from Sesestro:

I won’t go into great detail here about the editing process, as that in itself would make up a very very long post, but will make the observations:

1. When creating a new project in Premiere Pro you will need to create a new preset based on the nature of the video files you will be using, i.e. you shot 24p
2. I am still tiptoeing creatively when it comes to editing, using simple standard Cross Dissolves / Dips to Black
3. I am not using any external sound recording, and the Mic on the Canon 7D just loves background noise and wind, so I mostly overlay music on the clips
4. If you have imported a lot of media, some of which you have trimmed, others you haven’t used at all, creating a new “Trimmed” project at the end and deleting the original is a great way of conserving disk space.

Exporting

I am not really churning out sufficiently long (or sufficiently high quality for that matter) videos to want to create DVD’s or BluRays… currently. When it comes to exporting, I typically have the following two targets in mind:

1. Web Video: mainly YouTube, but for a more professional feel I am also looking at Vimeo.
2. iPhone / iPod Touch: My iPhone is my photo album, my slide collection, my primary method of physically sharing with those around me.

Once you are done in Premiere with your edits, you need to render or export your project for the appropriate destination. I am not familiar with your version of Premiere Pro but these are the general settings I use, much of which is based on the guidance from this YouTube and this Vimeo support page :

• Originals: the fewer re-encodings or transcodings between original file and YouTube the better
• Aspect Ratio: don’t change the aspect ratio if possible
• Resolution & Frame rate: again, don’t change the resolution or frame rate
• TV Standard: I am not sure whether this has a major bearing, but if you shot in PAL you should export in PAL (same for NTSC)
• Containers & Formats: While YouTube and Vimeo both support a wide variety of import formats, sticking with H264 in a MP4 container seems to be the best option

Finally

So that’s it, my longest, most involved blog post to date. Writing this has helped me collect together the various snippets of knowledge required to produce something approximating a quality video.

Hopefully it will be useful to all of you as well.

For further reading, please visit:

• Canon Digital Learning Center: Harnessing the Power of the EOS 7D’s Video System
• Philip Bloom: Articles about DSLR Video
• Cinema5D: Originally created for 5D, but relevant to 7D as well
• Planet5D: 5D and 7D News
• DVINFO: Canon 7D Video Forum
• Vimeo: Canon 7D Group

This collection features images from the Vatican Museum, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, St. Peters Basilica, and the Coliseum. If you are visiting Rome, here are some tips I would offer:

• Don’t fill everyday with museums and sightseeing. One of the best ways of getting under the skin of this city is sitting in cafes, or in a Piazza, and watching the world go by.
• Skip the restaurants on the Piazza’s, especially on the Piazza Novona and the Campo Di Fiori. While the food may be good, it will be overpriced. Search down the side streets for the small local trattorias where the locals go.
• Walk or use public transport. Rome is easy to get around by anything other than car!
• The Vatican museum is worth a full day on its own.
• A tripod will not be welcome in the Vatican, nor will you be able to take pictures in the Sistine Chapel (though many do).

While the gallery contains some of my favorite images, I have posted additional images in my Flickr Set.

All images taken with a Canon 20D, and post processed in Adobe Lightroom.

What’s In The Box?

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…

Content Aware Fill in Photoshop CS5

Ok, I’ll admit it, I am terrible at retouching photo’s, and I would imagine that I am not alone. Good behind the camera, but don’t have the time to master this exacting skill. For us, Adobe has introduced Content Aware Fill.  I could explain it, but it’s simpler to see it in action:

Native Support For Canon 5D MkII / 7D Movies In Premiere Pro

Let me tell you, editing video from a Canon DSLR in Premiere CS4 is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. The main issue being Canon’s file format choice for DSLR video, good for size and playback, bad for editing on a Non Linear Editor (i.e. Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Sony Vegas, Avid, etc.). Because of the type of compression used, Premiere Pro has to work hard to extrapolate image data when you try and “scrub” through your clips. The normal resolution is to trans-code the files to another format, usually at additional cost for additional codecs (Neoscene, I am pointing at you!).  Combined with a new, GPU accelerated, playback engine called Mercury, native support for Canon formats should make the whole editing process a lot less labor intensive:

Ability To Create / Edit WordPress Sites in Dreamweaver

As I am the jack of all trades (and more than likely master of none) when it comes to the design and maintenance of this website, I am especially looking forward to the ability to create, edit, and maintain WordPress sites within Dreamweaver CS5. Up to now, I have been reluctant to dive in and learn proficiently the HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript necessary to perform this task, but this feature should allow me a greater understanding of how a typical WordPress template hangs together.

Bonus Features

Some of the other Creative Suite 5 features which caught my eye:

• Lens correction in Photoshop CS5 (as against PTlens)
• HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5 (as against Photomatix Pro)
• 64Bit across all applications

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…

Adobe Lightroom is now the elephant in the room of DAM software. As John Nack (of Adobe) revealed a short while back, Adobe Lightroom pretty much owns the professional market, beating it’s next nearest competitor, Apple Aperture, by a considerable margin. I have been using it since the very early beta’s (and Pixmantic RawShooter before that, which Adobe bought to kick start Adobe Lightroom), and hopefully, am somewhat qualified to give you a non-professionals opinion.

Library / Catalog Tools:

This is the module of Lightroom where I spend 85%+ of my time. I am slowly working through my back catalog of images, and suffering from OCD as I do, I insist on all images being correctly located, named, tagged, etc. Lightroom is very strong here, having the ability to apply extensive keyword tag hierarchies to images. A strong file renaming engine, along with virtual collections (and collections of collections), and numerous methods of catagorizing images (by colour label, by star rating, and by Pick/Reject) are available. Apples’ Aperture was the first major DAM product to be announced in my memory, but immediately there was a lot of critism regarding it’s approach to asset management; namely migrating all managed images INTO it’s database, removing all external access. While this had it’s merits, Adobe chose to go another way, winning lots of friends in the process, allowing the Lightroom user to:

• Reference the image file from it’s existing location
• Manage the image file by copying it to a managed location, still on the file system and accessible from other tools (I will touch on this again at a later date).
• Manage the image file by moving it to a managed location.
• Manage the image file by converting it to Adobe’s open DNG RAW standard, and moving it to a managed location.

Image Editing:

The second major module with Adobe Lightroom is the develop module, which is where the real fun starts. Here is where you apply image adjustments such as exposure, white balance, contrast, saturation, and a host of other modifications. Version 1.0 of Lightroom restricted these adjustments to the whole of the image, requiring the use of Photoshop for more targeted adjustments such as removing blemishes, or other distractions. Thankfully with version 2, Adobe introduced the adjustment brush and other specific pixel level adjustment tools. Now you can remove spots and blemishes, smooth skin, whiten eyes and teeth, apply graduated filters as well as adjust other settings relating to the entire image. You still need Adobe Photoshop in order to perform more advanced adjustments such as panoramas, collages, HDR, or other major image surgery. I would recommend Martin Evenings’ book if you want to get best value out of the Develop module though…

Altering white balance in Adobe Lightroom

Exports / Sharing:

In some respects this is where Adobe Lightroom has lost ground on the competition, especially Apple Aperture. Out of the box, Lightroom can export images to disk, and to CDROM (not on 64 bit windows), as well as having modules to govern printing, creation of a web gallery, and a slideshow. Doesn’t sound to bad… but Facebook, Flickr, and other online resources are now becoming major marketing tools for photographers, and exporting directly to these locations is a capability now offered by some competitors. Another major gap was the ability to export to a Photo Book creation service. This capability may feel a little consumer orientated, but again, it is offered by Apple Aperture.  Yes, export plugins are available, and I use them myself; they are very capable, but the lack of a native ability to export to the major hosting sites feels like an omission.

The X Factor:

What do I mean by the X Factor? Basically, why would I buy this over a competing product when, on paper,  the competing product is more capable. And for Adobe Lightroom, the X Factor is this… community. Lightroom has a massive community around it, producing tutorials, presets, blogs, reviews, reports, etc. When you are getting started with a product as advanced as Lightroom, that really helps and can’t be overlooked.

Details:

• Link: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/
• Cost: US$ 229
• Platforms: Windows, Mac OSX
• Buy: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2