Hey Everyone!  I hope everyone's new year is starting out good.  In this blog post I want to talk about the new Luminar 3 with Libraries and if it is an alternative to Lightroom.  I have been using Lightroom from almost the beginning of the software and watched as it has turned into the main photo editing and digital asset manager for almost everyone.  It is the true standard that all other softwares are compared to.  When it started being a subscription service, many did not like the monthly payment scheme.  I didn't mind too much because it was the price of a couple of Big Mac meals, and I remember the price of a full Photoshop or Lightroom for that matter.  Photoshop was $600-$800, and Lightroom was $150.  So the $120 a year was a small price to pay to get the most current versions of both.  But others didn't like this at all.  There were some other contenders at the time like Corral and Aperture, but they didn't have the power of Lightroom and Photoshop.  Lightroom and Adobe have had a monopoly on the image editing software business.  But new contenders are starting to come in, like Capture One and Luminar with DAM (digital asset managers) of their own, giving Lightroom a little cause for concern.  I currently have used Capture One 12 on a trial basis and did like what I got with it.  If I were a studio portrait shooter, it would be the perfect choice for me.  Its tethering capabilities are unmatched as far as I'm concerned, and its RAW conversions are beautiful.  You can see my last blog here Capture One 12 first look  luminar_sq_logo_500

I purchased Luminar last year and have been experimenting with it as a kind of go-between of Lightroom and Photoshop.  I use it as a plugin, and it works great with beautiful colors and tools that are not easily done with Lightroom or Photoshop.  And I'm all about easy.  But how does it work as a digital asset manager?

First, let me say that it is not as advanced as Lightroom as an asset manager.  You can rate your photographs and use the star system.  You can organize from within Luminar and from the outside of Luminar which can be confusing.  You basically tell Luminar what folder you're going to put photographs in, and it will look there.  It does keep a catalog with all of your changes much like Lightroom does, but not as robust as Lightroom, which can be good or bad. To me Lightroom has become a sluggish program over the years, and with the more features they put into it, the slower it becomes.  But as many of you, I have been using Lightroom for so long that almost all of my photographs are in a Lightroom catalog, and to switch to a new system now isn't really where I want to go.  But as a photo editor I think that Luminar is almost as good, and better at some things, as Lightroom is.

Who do I think that Luminar 3 is for?  I think that Luminar 3 is for new photographers who are just getting started and don't have large Lightroom catalogs already established, for people who are still using Bridge or some Finder or Windows Explorer based program.  I believe that in the future Luminar will make its digital asset manager better and better and at some point I will say now is the time to move, but now is not that time for me.  I will still use it as a plugin to Lightroom and as a go-between of Lightroom and Photoshop.  I recently went on a photo outing, and all of the photos I shot I brought into Lightroom, did my culling thing, and for the winners I did a quick edit and then sent them to Luminar to really make them look the way I wanted.  It worked out great for me, and I'll bet it could for you too.  On my travel laptop, a MacBook Air, I have taken Lightroom off of the computer and only use Luminar 3.  When I travel I only want to process a few photos and then send them to Instagram or Facebook, and the rest I can upload into Lightroom when I get home.  You can purchase it for $69, so it's fairly inexpensive.  Give it a try.  I believe after a while you will enjoy it as I do.  Here is a link to a podcast from The Digital Story that talks about Luminar 3.

The Digital Story Luminar 3 with Libraries Podcast

Hey Everyone!  This blog I'm going over my first thoughts on Capture One 12 as an alternative to Adobe Lightroom. First a disclaimer.  I am no Capture One expert nor am I thinking of changing to Capture One, but I wanted to research the program to see what all the fuss was about.  A lot of YouTube-famous people have switched from Lightroom to Capture One, and I am curious about it.  So I downloaded the free one-month trial, which was painless.  No credit card needed.  I loaded it onto an older MacBook Pro, a 2011 model, to see what it could do.  This machine has been upgraded to a SSD hard drive and 16 gig of memory.  This is an okay machine but by no means top of the line.  So that's where I've started.  In bullet form, I'll list what I've found so far.

-Download and install was easy.  I logged into Capture One and got the free 30-day trial. Thumbs up!

-After doing a lot of tutorial watching online, I imported my Lightroom Catalog from my DC trip into Capture One, over 2,000 photos, and it took about 40 minutes.  This was the Lightroom catalog, and it had all of my edits that I had made in Lightroom.  This catalog I had on an external drive with all of the photos that I had taken on the trip.  It then made smart previews of all the images.  This is a default in Capture One and makes the program snappy!  You can edit your photos without having the photos present.  Thumbs Up!

-The interface was all in one page.  I didn't have to go to a different module to edit my photos.  The interface is totally customizable. You can even arrange things so it almost looks like Lightroom.  And, like I said before, everything is snappy!  You can make it anything you like and then save the settings.  So if you had more than one person working on the same computer, they could have their settings and you could have yours.

-Capture One 12 creates catalogs similar to Lightroom.  You can have the catalog on one computer and copy and paste it onto another computer that has Capture One, and you can edit your photos there even without your photos because of the smart previews it created on import.  Moving of folders and photos to and fro must be done within the Capture One catalog just as you do with Lightroom.  Capture One also has Sessions.  These are smaller shoots that have everything contained in the session.  They are smaller than the Catalogs and can be copied and pasted onto another computer and worked on separately without bothering the Catalog database.  When you're all through, you can import the session into the Capture One Catalog database.

- Tethering is where this program really shines.  Tethering is simple.  Just hook up your camera to your computer, open a session, and start shooting.  The photos come in very quickly, and you can edit on the fly and apply all the edits to incoming photographs.  For example, if you wanted to crop a certain way and make the photos black and white, you would just edit the first photo and tell the program that you wanted to make those edits to all incoming photos the same way and it will.  You could lay layout templates on top of the photos coming in, like if you were shooting for a magazine and you could have the magazine cover layout put on top of the photos coming in to see how it will look as a final shot.  We probably will never need this, but it's cool.  You can also shoot live view and see the setup that you are making live before you take a photo, say for example a food shot.   You could take your time and get it right before you ever take a shot and know what the composition will look like.  Tethering is what this program was made for with Phase One Cameras, which are mainly studio cameras, and it shows.

These are just a few of my first thoughts.  I think this would be a great program if you were only doing studio work.  I'm not quite sold yet on all of the other things that it offers.  But if you're only doing studio work, this would be the program for you. Luminar 3 is another program that I think is a good replacement for Lightroom.  Formerly, Luminar 2018 had added a DAM (digital asset manager) to its program, and I will go through it in another blog soon.  

Hey Everyone!  The holidays are upon us and everyone is hustling and bustling to get things done before the family comes to visit or you go to someone else's house.  And now that winter is here the weather isn't as photogenic as in the spring and fall.  How do we keep our photographic edge when we don't go out as much to shoot?  For me, it has become sort of a pattern that I've done the last couple of years, and it seems to help even though I don't get to shoot as much as I want.  The trick is keeping your mind photography active.  Thinking, learning something new, stepping out of your comfort zone.

This time of year I'm winding down from the biggest photo event of the year for me, which is my photo club's fall trip.  This is usually a week full of photography-rich shooting situations, and the senses are alive with what to take next.   This year we went to Washington DC for our fall trip (DC Fall Trip Blog Link), so I started early in the year getting geared up and experimenting with different camera and gear combos trying to figure out what to take with me and also researching the DC area and what photos look like that have been taken there before.  Last year it was a big change for me, because I'm mostly a landscape and travel photographer, and street photography in DC was a new and exciting thing to get ready for.  So there were lots of things to keep my mind photography active.  This time of year we also have our Help Portrait event that you can read about in my last blog. Help Portrait Blog Link This year I was helping a young lady with her lights, and it really got my portrait juices flowing again.  I used to do lots of portraits, but I have slowly gotten away from that.  I enjoy taking the photos, but it's all of the other stuff I don't enjoy, like dealing with people.  LOL...  But this year I really enjoyed it.  I sold all of my studio lights over the last couple of years, and all I had left were some manual flashes.   I've heard a lot about the Godox/Flashpoint line of flashes and strobes that you can control all of your lights from your controller on camera.  Big plus!  Since I've gotten my Sony I haven't really done any flash photography.  So I purchased some of the lights so I could play and take some portraits of the family during the holidays and also expand my photography knowledge.

logopodcast Okay, I've wandered off subject a little.  The point I was getting at is that you don't always have to be out taking photos to keep your edge.  As long as your mind is actively thinking and learning about photography, you can keep from getting too rusty.  So this time of the year I start preparing for next year and start learning new techniques.  Yesterday, I downloaded the free trial version of Capture One editing software as an alternative to Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.  I've heard a lot about it, and I'm going to try to learn all I can about it and play with the program for my free month.  Every day while I commute to work I listen to podcasts about photography and learn about all kinds of things that I would never even have thought about if it were not for the podcast.  I have written a blog that you can go to to see what I listen to. Podcast Blog Link I also look at YouTube and watch lots of webinars and video tutorials about different things instead of watching regular TV.  This is a great way to learn stuff, and it's free!  You can also go to CreativeLive website.  They have all kinds of tutorial programing, and if you watch it live it's free.

So this time of the year is the time to plan for next year.  Set goals, learn something new, and get out of your comfort zone.  Last year I wanted to do some astro photography, so I did all the research, got geared up, planned a trip, and got some shots of the Milky Way.  I'm looking forward to new gear that will come out next year, especially camera gear that is supposed to come out.  My camera is a couple of years old, and there are rumors that a new one will come out this coming year.  So I'm looking to see if it will be worth upgrading to.  The same can be said about new lenses coming out this year also.  I don't know where the next fall workshop will be, so I haven't started planning yet.  This is also the time to get my camping trips soft scheduled for next year that my wife and I will be taking that I look forward to.  Maybe I'll sneak in a festival or two and a backpacking trip or two.  But now is the time to plan.  Because if you're like me and wait until the last minute, you won't go.  You'll find some sort of reason not to. 

I hope this holiday season brings you much joy and happiness with family and friends and please always be safe.  Take lots of holiday portraits and document your family's history!  Keep shooting!