Tag Archives: Apple

A Bunch Of Stabilizers!

Jonathan | July 25, 2011 - 10:56 pm

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!

[…]

Posted in Video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

On Video Editing on a Macbook Air, Hacks, FCPX, and Waiting…

Jonathan | July 7, 2011 - 12:44 am

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.
[…]

Posted in Gear, Video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 30 Comments

Back To The Mac

Jonathan | March 2, 2011 - 10:07 am
A photo of my 17

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.

[…]

Posted in Gear | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Recommended

Jonathan | November 30, 2010 - 4:22 pm

Rec­om­mended.

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.

Posted in Gear | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The State Of The DAM 2 — Adobe Lightroom

Jonathan | March 8, 2010 - 12:08 pm
Screenshot of Adobe Lightroom 2

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…

[…]

Posted in Blog Posts, Gear | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Great Overview of 20 Years of Adobe Photoshop

Jonathan | February 18, 2010 - 11:32 am

Image of the Photoshop CS4 splash screen on launch.

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…

Posted in Gear | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment