Take a Tablet and Call me in the morning

Now, if you're like me, you've heard of tablets and how handy they are to use with photoshop. If you're also like me, you've been doing just fine with a mouse and involved in too many other things to learn a new technology unless it's critical.

When I was at Imaging USA in Florida earlier this year, Jed Toufler (www.v-gallery.net) showed me what he likes about tablets. He had a small Wacom Intous 4x6 tablet (www.wacom.com/intuos) with his laptop for use on the road. He was actually showing some interesting stuff in Photoshop, but I got distracted by how fast he was with the tablet.

Jed's enthusiasm is a bit infectious and I soon found myself in front of one of the vendor booths, buying a 6x8 tablet for myself. Of course, once I got back home, I found myself with several problems. I didn't have a long enough USB cable to reach from my system to the monitor on the other side of the room and other projects soon consumed my time.

Well, along comes my office move and I found myself at the electronics store looking for a few things and remembered the USB problem. With the addition of a USB extender, I could now play with my not-so-new toy.

Jed was pretty honest and said it would take a little bit to get used to the tablet, but would love it. He was absolutely right. I'm not an expert yet with the tablet by any means, but I found myself proficient with it within 10 to 20 minutes - and I love it.

Using a tablet has some pleasant surprises. It's a lot more sensitive than a mouse (or at least my mouse) and you have the added dimension of pen pressure, which affects the brushes particularly. Photoshop brushes now act like real brushes with a tablet, rather than crop circles, as with the mouse.

It doesn't seem to care if you use your left or right hand and even a 6x8 is a comfortable size for desktop work. I haven't even really explored the programmable keys on the tablet, but I can see how they would be useful.

There are larger sizes, from 6x11, to 12x19 and one smaller size, the 4x6, which I'm told works well for laptops. I have no problems with the 6x8, but may play with one of the larger units in the future.

Wacom does another line of tablets called the Cintiq, which actually display the picture on the tablet itself. It's an interesting ideas, but I don't really like. I found mu hand blocked what I was trying to do and was a bit of a hassle. Since artists have been using pens for some time, I presume this may simply be a case of me needing to get used to the tablet screen, but who knows.

I recommend trying a tablet the next time you're working heavily in Photoshop. I found it particularly useful while retouching portraits.

Protecting Your Assets

Well, I try to update this blog on a weekly basis, but life sometimes gets in the way and it's been several weeks since the last update.

Nonetheless, I thought I would share some advice for the photographers out there who may be reading. One of the biggest challenges of modern photography is protecting your digital assets. This is otherwise known as Digital Asset Management (DAM).

First, a book recommendation - go get a copy of "The DAM Book" by Peter Krogh from O'Reilly (ISBN# 0-596-10018-3). This is probably the standard text for understanding both the technology and the issues involved with proper digital management. This is not a simple subject, but it does break up into nice simple to understand parts. Taken in pieces, it's pretty easy to look at your own requirements and make informed decisions.



Peter Krogh also has an excellent website supporting readers of his book:
http://www.thedambook.com/

One of the big elements to proper Digital Asset Management is making sure you have backup copies of everything of value. If you're shooting as a hobby the loss of your work is heart breaking. If you're shooting for a living, it's professionally fatal. Clients generally do not accept any excuse for the loss of their work, nor should they.

I have multiple copies of everything on multiple drives, usually in three different places. I'll talk more about my office data management in a future post, but challenge of my own DAM is how to protect myself from theft or loss. For example, some miserable soul, breaks in and steals my equipment. Everything is insured, but what happens when they steal my harddrives and backup harddrives? As well, what happens if there is a fire or other event that damages my office.

Everything is replaceable under my insurance policy, but I can't get my data back. Scary thought, losing thousands upon thousands of photographs, never to be able to replace them.

My first solution, was to backup my data onto removable hardrives and simply put them in a safety deposit box. I do this once a quarter and might increase this to once a month, but I am still exposed between bank visits. Some shooters I know keep the backup disks at home and the studio.

Now I'm taking advantage of the services of Photoshelter. This company was formed to focus specifically on the storage requirements of photographers and offer an online storage from 100MB to over a terabyte. I'm currently chewing into a terabyte, but I can upload a shoot as soon as I complete it and access these files form anywhere in the world. I'm still bringing all of my files online, but I'm pretty happy with this solution and their customer service.

More info here

Lightroom

I've recently purchased Lightroom and I am impressed.

I've avoided this product in the past for various reasons. During it's year long beta period, I was too busy with other projects. When it sent on sale, I was reluctant to spend the money ($299 USD) or, more importantly, take the time to learn a new tool.

After some interesting comments from other photographers, I finally decided to take the plunge.

Now if you are not fluent on digital workflow and what it means, I suggest you go out and read Peter Krogh's The DAM book immediately. As a professional photographer, digital workflow is almost as important as light.

It's hard to describe what lightroom does, as it covers multiple areas of your workflow. So, I'll simply explain by showing how I'm using it in my own workflow.

Priot to lightroom, I used imageinjesterpro to load my photos from memory cards or external disks after a shoot. This task would:

• Copy the files to my local disk and a backup disk (I always have two copies)
• Rename the files according to my naming convention
• Store them in a file folder by date of the shoot
• load my default metadata
  

Afterwards, I would use Adobe Bridge to rate, keyword, and perform general editing of the pictures. Finally I converted my raw files (I only shoot raw) to DNG and update my photolibrary. Iview Pro (now Media Expression) managed my photo library.

Now.....

Lightroom imports my files from cards or external disks, renames them, applies my default metadata and processing, copies them to two locations and converts them to DNG in one step. It also runs in the background, so I can do other things while this happens.

As an added plus, it will read the XMP files that my Epson P-5000 creates, so I can rate work in the field without having to redo it when I get home.

Lightroom has replaced Imageinjester Pro.

Iview Pro was beginning to slow down with my library size, while lightroom keeps going strong. I can also directly edit work with non-destructive editing , white balance, etc. It can also apply my default processing to images as they are loaded, so I can often skip this step for creating proofs.

Lightroom has replaced Iview Pro (Media Expression) and Adobe Bridge.

As well, I can resize, remove dust spots, print, and export to different formats (such as jpgs).

All and all, Lightroom has replaced three core applications in my workflow (Iviewpro, imageinjester, and Bridge) with more efficiency and more options.

If you haven't taken a look at Lightroom, I recommend you download the 30-day free trial. It's well worth your time. If you are a member of EP, ASMP, or some of the other professional groups, you can even get a discount on the purchase price.

- Scott -