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So today I noticed that the Beta 2 for Adobe Lightroom 3 was out, and I decided to give it a shot. Never really understanding what was that different between LR and Bridge/ACR, I decided to give it a try. What the heck, can't beat the price.
Well, thus far, I love it. I did everything to the image posted here in LR (including uploading it to Flickr!), and it was fairly intuitive for someone already familiar with Bridge/ACR. I LOVE the brushes, too! My only concern is that since I can do so much in LR, I will be lazy and not go into PS when I only anticipate making minor adjustments there.
The second purpose of this post is to invite you all to the Disney Photo Challenge Group. While I'm sure many of you are already members, for those who aren't, this is a light-hearted group with topical challenges. It's not an ordinary "awards" group nor is it a critique group. It's more a fun and community type group...it also happens to be my favorite group on Flickr. So if you haven't checked it out, give it a shot; you might have a good time there, too!
Karolina & Jacek - wedding session at Gdynia Orłowo
I must admit that I developed Delicious Recipes firstly for myself ;)
I just couldn't stand so many hours it took me to create satisfying colors through Capture NX2, so I struggled to find other way for processing with my beloved colors. And finally I developed them in Lightroom 4 with Color Efex Pro :)
Now I have such an easy way to get my RAW files developed. Now it takes 4-7 hours of work from import to LR to export for a 380-450 wedding. ( Time depends on lighting conditions and retouch needed ). Before, in CaptureNX 2 it took me rather 20-35 hours and it was definitely worth it, as colors were brilliant, but so time-consuming!
I share all the details of my actual workflow for Lightroom 4/5 + Color Efex Pro 4 in Delicious Recipes. All the instructions and tips, combined with all the recipes and presets needed to get beautiful results fast:
www.deliciouspresets.com/delicious-recipes-lightroom-colo...
WORKFLOW:
5 exposures merge to HDR in CS4, save as 32bit Radiance
Toned mapped in Photomatix 3, Save as 8bit Tiff
Adjusted levels, Hi Pass, Noise Reduction, Borders and Texts in CS4, save as Jpg
Pictures by Massimo Vitali
Drum scan by CastorScan
n4 Kodak Portra 8x10" color negatives
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CastorScan's philosophy is completely oriented to provide the highest scan and postproduction
quality on the globe.
We work with artists, photographers, agencies, laboratories etc. who demand a state-of-the-art quality at reasonable prices.
Our workflow is fully manual and extremely meticulous in any stage.
We developed exclusive workflows and profilation systems to obtain unparallel results from our scanners not achievable through semi-automatic and usual workflows.
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CastorScan uses the best scanners in circulation, Dainippon Screen SG-8060P Mark II, the best and most advanced scanner ever made, Kodak-Creo IQSmart 3, a high-end flatbed scanner, and Imacon 848.
The image quality offered by our Dainippon Screen 8060 scanner is much higher than that achievable with the best flatbed scanners or filmscanners dedicated and superior to that of scanners so-called "virtual drum" (Imacon – Hasselblad,) and, of course, vastly superior to that amateur or prosumer obtained with scanners such as Epson V750 etc .
Dainippon Screen SG-8060P Mark II exceeds in quality any other scanner, including Aztek Premier and ICG 380 (in the results, not just in the technical specifications).
8060's main features: 12000 dpi, Hi-Q Xenon lamp, 25 apertures, 2 micron
Aztek Premier's main features: 8000 dpi, halogen lamp, 18 apertures, 3 micron
ICG 380's main features: 12000 dpi, halogen lamp, 9 apertures, 4 micron
Some of the features that make the quality of our drum scanners better than any other existing scan system include:
The scans performed on a drum scanner are famous for their detail, depth and realism.
Scans are much cleaner and show fewer imperfections than scans obtained from CCD scanners, and thus save many hours of cleaning and spotting in postproduction.
Image acquisition by the drum scanner is optically similar to using a microscopic lens that scans the image point by point with extreme precision and without deformation or distortion of any kind, while other scanners use enlarger lenses (such as the Rodenstock-Linos Magnagon 75mm f8 used in the Hasselblad-Imacon scanners) and have transmission systems with rubber bands: this involves mild but effective micro-strain and micro-geometric image distortions and quality is not uniform between the center and edges.
Drum scanners are exempt from problems of flatness of the originals, since the same are mounted on a perfectly balanced transparent acrylic drum; on the contrary, the dedicated film scanners that scan slides or negatives in their plastic frames are subject to quite significant inaccuracies, as well as the Imacon-Hasselblad scanners, which have their own rubber and plastic holders: they do not guarantee the perfect flatness of the original and therefore a uniform definition between center and edge, especially with medium and large size originals, which instead are guaranteed by drum scanners.
Again, drum scanners allow scanning at high resolution over the entire surface of the cylinder, while for example the Hasselblad Imacon scans are limited to 3200 dpi in 120 format and 2000 dpi in 4x5" format (the resolution of nearly every CCD scanner in the market drops as the size of the original scanned is increased).
Drum scanners allow complete scanning of the whole negative, including the black-orange mask, perforations etc, while using many other scanners a certain percentage of the image is lost because it is covered by frames or holders.
Drum scanners use photomultiplier tubes to record the light signal, which are much more sensitive than CCDs and can record many more nuances and variations in contrast with a lower digital noise.
If you look at a monitor at 100% the detail in shadows and darker areas of a scan made with a CCD scanner, you will notice that the details are not recorded in a clear and clean way, and the colors are more opaque and less differentiated. Additionally the overall tones are much less rich and differentiated.
We would like to say a few words about an unscrupulous and deceitful use of technical specifications reported by many manufacturers of consumer and prosumer scanners; very often we read of scanners that promise cheap or relatively cheap “drum scanner” resolutions, 16 bits of color depth, extremely high DMAX: we would like to say that these “nominal” resolutions do not correspond to an actual optical resolution, so that even in low-resolution scanning you can see an enormous gap between drum scanners and these scanners in terms of detail, as well as in terms of DMAX, color range, realism, “quality” of grain. So very often when using these consumer-prosumer scanners at high resolutions, it is normal to get a disproportionate increase of file size in MB but not an increase of detail and quality.
To give a concrete example: a drum scan of a 24x36mm color negative film at 3500 dpi is much more defined than a scan made with mostly CCD scanner at 8000 dpi and a drum scan at 2500 dpi is dramatically clearer than a scan at 2500 dpi provided by a CCD scanner. So be aware and careful with incorrect advertisement.
Scans can be performed either dry or liquid-mounted. The wet mounting further improves cleanliness (helps to hide dirt, scratches and blemishes) and plasticity of the image without compromising the original, and in addition by mounting with liquid the film grain is greatly reduced and it looks much softer and more pleasant than the usual "harsh" grain resulting from dry scans.
We use Kami SMF 2001 liquid to mount the transparencies and Kami RC 2001 for cleaning the same. Kami SMF 2001 evaporates without leaving traces, unlike the traditional oil scans, ensuring maximum protection for your film. Out of ignorance some people prefer to avoid liquid scanning because they fear that their films will be dirty or damaged: this argument may be plausible only in reference to scans made using mineral oils, which have nothing to do with the specific professional products we use.
We strongly reiterate that your original is in no way compromised by our scanning liquid and will return as you have shipped it, if not cleaner.
With respect to scanning from slides:
Our scanners are carefully calibrated with the finest IT8 calibration targets in circulation and with special customized targets in order to ensure that each scan faithfully reproduces the original color richness even in the most subtle nuances, opening and maintaining detail in shadows and highlights. These color profiles allow our scanners to realize their full potential, so we guarantee our customers that even from a chromatic point of view our scans are noticeably better than similar scans made by mostly other scan services in the market.
In addition, we remind you that our 8060 drum scanner is able to read the deepest shadows of slides without digital noise and with much more detail than CCD scanners; also, the color range and color realism are far better.
With respect to scanning from color and bw negatives: we want to emphasize the superiority of our drum scans not only in scanning slides, but also in color and bw negative scanning (because of the orange mask and of very low contrast is extremely difficult for any ccd scanner to read the very slight tonal and contrast nuances in the color negative, while a perfectly profiled 8060 drum scanner – also through the analog gain/white calibration - can give back much more realistic images and true colors, sharper and more three-dimensional).
In spite of what many claim, a meticulous color profiling is essential not only for scanning slides, but also, and even more, for color negatives. Without it the scan of a color negative will produce chromatic errors rather significant, thus affecting the tonal balance and then the naturalness-pleasantness of the images.
More unique than rare, we do not use standardized profiles provided by the software to invert each specific negative film, because they do not take into account parameters and variables such as the type of development, the level of exposure, the type of light etc.,; at the same time we also avoid systems of "artificial intelligence" or other functions provided by semi-automatic scanning softwares, but instead we carry out the inversion in a full manual workflow for each individual picture.
In addition, scanning with Imacon-Hasselblad scanners we do not use their proprietary software - Flexcolor – to make color management and color inversion because we strongly believe that our alternative workflow provides much better results, and we are able to prove it with absolute clarity.
At each stage of the process we take care of meticulously adjusting the scanning parameters to the characteristics of the originals, to extrapolate the whole range of information possible from any image without "burning" or reductions in the tonal range, and strictly according to our customer's need and taste.
By default, we do not apply unsharp mask (USM) in our scans, except on request.
To scan reflective originals we follow the same guidelines and guarantee the same quality standard.
We guarantee the utmost thoroughness and expertise in the work of scanning and handling of the originals and we provide scans up to 12,000 dpi of resolution, at 16-bit, in RGB, GRAYSCALE, LAB or CMYK color mode; unless otherwise indicated, files are saved with Adobe RGB 1998 or ProPhoto RGB color profile.
Still life vegetables in preparation for the salsa.
One Canon 600EX-RT, camera left, bounced off the ceiling, at full power.
Workflow: Negs processed by apetureuk.com
Raw file scanned with Reflecta RPS 10m @ 2,500dpi
Imported to Lightroom, then 'edit copy in Photoshop' selected. Colorperfect filter applied in Photoshop then saved. Colour, sharpness and N/R applied in Lightroom.
The workflow for a particular project had to be documented for all of the different parties to approve and sign off on. Completed in 2004
I recently add the 5th monitor set-up but to find out the i1 Display Pro can only calibrate 4 monitors at one time, it is a hassle process when the Xrite calibration program can not support 5 monitors at the same time, will change back to 4 monitors setup as my standard editing workflow :-)
Dell XPS 8500 i7-3700 @3.4GHz, 16GB
Windows 8.1 64-bits
AMD FirePro W8000 (FireGL V) 4GB
U2713H AdobeRGB
U2711H AdobeRGB
U2412M sRGB
S2240T sRGB 10 points touch screen
NI GO RI Sake (Japan)
I had a request here at Flickr for the workflow of this photo, and thought I'd post the original. Well, this is a different frame, but it shows her surroundings better.
The field behind her had looked beautiful in the setting sun, but had fallen into shadow by the time I got out of the car and pulled out my camera. So I tried to recreate in editing that warm glow I had seen seconds earlier.
Post processing involved extending the canvas, removing the car door, and adding some bokeh overlays I had shot earlier in a similar location. I always look at everything out of focus while shooting now and take shots for my texture folder whenever the light, colors, and shapes look interesting. I used 2-3 different ones with various opacities and blend modes, masking out parts that didn't work. On top was a blank layer that I just painted on lightly to blend it all together. I added a little noise to that layer so that it matched the rest of the image.
Looking back now, I think I like this frame better, and don't know why I started editing the other one first.
But as Dan Margulis says, there are no bad originals.
Workflow & Credits
Track created on the Suno website.
Image generated with AI.
Concept and lyrics developed from my original idea, brainstormed and refined with ChatGPT.
This project was created with full AI assistance — openly, deliberately, and as part of the creative process.
Intro (chanted, ritual, slow build)
Raise the banner
Feel the ground
Stone remembers
We are crowned
Verse 1 (marching, heavy)
Carved in steel and winter flame
Names endure, outlast the pain
Every scar a spoken vow
We stand as one, here and now
Runes are burning in the night
Guiding hands that held the line
Not forgotten, not erased
Every fall became our place
Pre-Chorus (building tension)
Hear the drums beneath the stone
Every step we’re not alone
Chorus (anthem, powerful, chant-ready)
THIS IS OUR KINGDOM
BUILT FROM THE PAST
WEAR THE MEMORY
FORGED TO LAST
NO SURRENDER
NO REGRET
THE CROWN IS HEAVY
BUT WE DON’T BEND
Post-Chorus (call & response, playful but strong)
HEY! — Remember!
HEY! — Stand tall!
HEY! — Together!
WE WILL NOT FALL
Verse 2 (faster, more kinetic)
From the fire, from the snow
From the blood of long ago
Voices rise, old and new
What they died for — we continue
Not a throne of gold or lies
But iron will and open eyes
History is not a chain
It’s the strength inside our name
Bridge (breakdown → ritual chant)
Strike the stone
Mark the ground
Speak the names
Hear the sound
(half-time, deep)
Memory is power
Power is the crown
Final Chorus (max energy)
THIS IS OUR KINGDOM
NO TIME ERASED
WE CARRY THE ASH
WE KEEP THE FLAME
NO FORGETTING
NO GOODBYE
WE RULE THE NOW
THEY NEVER DIE
Outro (chant fading, epic)
Carved in us
Eternal sign
Past and future
Intertwined
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HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY to my U.S. friends & audience. What better subject to post today than our national bird, the magnificent Bald Eagle! Hope you enjoy. Have a safe and wonderful weekend everyone!
I appreciate the comments, faves, & follows. Glad you enjoy!
If you’re interested in nature photography, please check out my youtube channel!
www.youtube.com/channel/UC-nMVA45F8kWmJC0dwHkAkw
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©Matthew Schwartz, All Rights Reserved.
This image is protected by Copyright, and is not available for use on websites, blogs, videos, or any other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.