Camera Raw 7.1 LR 4.1
This report today from Adobe through the Lightroom Journal:
Camera Raw 7.1 is now available on Adobe.com and through the update mechanism in Adobe Photoshop CS6. Camera Raw 7.1 adds new Defringe controls to help address chromatic aberration. Defringe is available as part of the Lens Correction panel. Camera Raw can also now read 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit HDR files. Supported HDR formats are TIFF and DNG. Photoshop CS6 customers can upgrade to Camera Raw 7.1. Customers of previous versions of Photoshop can utilize DNG Converter 7.1 for raw file support for newly added cameras.
Lightroom 4.1 is also available as a download which should appear when you start Lightroom 4. Of course, the same information applies to this upgrade.
Diffraction Limit Sharpness vs Depth of FIeld
There is a limit to the resolution of any optical system. That limit is called diffraction and I first ran into the term with astronomical telescopes. In photography, according to optical theory, any lens devoid of aberrations should perform best wide open. In the real world our lenses generally perform best (sharpest) stopped down slightly from wide open, performing best in the range of f/4 to f/8.
In film days we typically closed down our lenses to achieve added depth of field. The reduction of the circle of confusion created by the out of focus image on either side of the point of focus makes the image appear sharper over a greater area. This is still true, providing we do not exceed the diffraction limitation of the lens. The effect of diffraction limitation has a more obvious effect in digital capture than it did in film for reasons I will not pretend to fully understand. The result is an image that loses critical sharpness even at the point of focus. This is because the disc resolved by the lens exceeds the size of the capturing pixel resulting in loss of resolution. That means that optimum sharpness and depth of field are a trade off after you reach the limiting aperture.
The pixel size on a DSLR is a result of the capture resolution, and the size of the pixels related to the lens determines the effective diffraction limitation, not the lens itself. Therefore, the limits change as you put a lens on different camera bodies with differing sensor resolutions. The diffraction limitation of a particular lens of mine is nearly the same on a 10Mp APS-C body as it is on a full frame 22Mp body because of the difference in the size of the pixels themselves.
While it may be helpful to know what your limitations are for a particular camera there are many other factors that will have a greater destructive effect on your images. All optical maximums depend on solid support, shutter speed, ISO noise, and other factors even including the characteristics imparted by the raw converter used to process the file.
For further information I recommend visiting http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/ and searching for diffraction limitation. There is more information there than you probably really want, but the interactive charts can be useful in ballparking the optimum apertures for your camera.
Plugins and CS6
Installing some plugins in Photoshop is pretty straight forward as the installation makes the needed connections and the next time you start the program all is well. In some cases there is really no installation. In the case of Topaz plugins for example, simply pointing Photoshop at the folder where the Topaz programs reside is all that is necessary. That is done in Preferences by checking the “additional plugins folder” option and directing Photoshop to the folder. If you have other plugins that work the same way you can simple create a folder for all of your plugins and make that the destination.
One of my friends discovered that her Nik plugin did not transfer quite so easily into CS6 and I was no help as I am not familiar with their software. For those of you who may use them, here is the procedure recommended by Nik to get their software into CS6. Not intuitive.
“To get our software into CS6, you will need to download the latest versions of the current plug-ins from www.niksoftware.com/downloads. Install CS6 and run it at least once. Then shut it down. Uninstall our plug-ins, and then re-install using the downloads from our website.”
I do not use many plugins but I do recommend a few that do more than you can easily accomplish within the program itself. The Topaz DeNoise and InFocus plugins have proven useful over time in refining an image. If you like to work with HDR images, Photomatix Pro is likely the best candidate and can work as a plugin or a stand alone program. A free program called Picturenaut produces realistic results but doesn’t have much tone mapping control if you are into the more edgy looks. Useful productivity tools are available from Russell Brown at http://www.russellbrown.com/. He is Senior Creative Director at Adobe and writes a number of scripts that work within Photoshop and Bridge. His Image Processor Pro is a vast improvement over the one supplied by Adobe with Bridge and I am surprised that it isn’t the default processor for the program.
I’m sure you have your personal favorites, and that is fine. I usually prefer to “pick and shovel” my way through the Photoshop tools to accomplish my image refinements, even minimizing the use of actions except to simply reduce repetitive procedures where creative modifications are not called for. There is no reason to ignore plugins if they help you, especially in productivity. Just remember to maintain your creativity by not letting them be the style setter for your photography.
Goodbye, Bill – we will miss you
Long time friend Bill Simone passed away earlier this week. He was 56 years old, and looked much younger. The news was shocking. I have known Bill for several decades, and worked with him on several projects in years past. I haven’t seen much of him recently, but I always remember his smile and somewhat distinctive laugh. He was a good guy.
As a photographer I considered Bill to be among the best of the profession. He produced absolutely top quality work in a wide variety of styles as he understood how light sculpts an image. His vision will be missed as much as his sense of humor. I am only sorry I didn’t get to spend more time with him, for any reason.
{From the Lebanon Daily News) Funeral Mass Saturday morning 11 a.m. at St. Mary’s Church, 2 N. 8th St., Lebanon 17046. Interment at Holy Cross Cemetery. Visitation Saturday morning from 9 to 11 a.m. at the church. In lieu of flowers donations may be sent to Lebanon Valley Rails to Trails, P.O. Box 2043, Cleona, PA 17042; or Relay For Life , c/o Zachary Simone, 845 Cumberland St., Lebanon, PA 17042. You may share your thoughts and memories with the family at our online guestbook at www.thompsonfuneralhomelebanon.com.
Goodbye, Bill – we will miss you!
With the release this month of CS6 and ACR 7, which matches the raw engine in Lightroom 4, ACR has made a considerable change. Modifications to the way the raw engine handles many aspects of a raw file as it enters the system are considerable, and in my estimation, very good. I have long been an advocate of modifying the camera raw defaults to favor lower contrast and less aggressive black points to begin the processing of images. The new ACR 7 does exactly this, using a linear rather than a jpg like curve for handing you the initial processing of the image. The result is better low end detail rendering and more control over tonal range.
The new sliders in the default tab will take a little getting used to at first, but you will soon realize that they are much more logical than before, and offer a lot more subtle control, especially at the end points. Highlight control in particular is improved. I never cared for or used the Recovery slider much as it simply appeared to gray out the high values. The newer Highlights control is less aggressive, and far better at recovering high end details without flattening out the higher values. Similarly, the new Shadows slider is less aggressive, but as good or better than the older Fill Light slider in pushing information into the lower end values without mushing up the bottom.
The Exposure slider is more intuitive than before, doing exactly what you would expect it to do in raising mid tone values, which is how most people would tend to use it. At the same time it does less to set the white point than the older version. It acts more like the previous Brightness slider in that respect. The new Whites slider is more accurate at setting the white point, and does so with minimal effect on the mid-tones. The Black slider will confuse some people who were accustomed to seeing the blacks get darker as you cranked it up. Now it is set to zero to start and can be moved in both directions to increase or decrease the black point. To make things darker now requires lowering the numbers instead of increasing them. Again, this is a more logical setting technique.
The sliders do nothing for color, as before, so setting the white/neutral balance of the image still requires using the White Balance tool. However, the Tone Curve panel Point settings now include individual color channels. I suspect most people will miss this important change which essentially allows you to apply curve corrections to a raw file in the individual channels as you would do in Photoshop previously. I strongly suspect this was in answer to giving curves control to Lightroom users as the change is the equivalent thereof. Using this with resetting raw defaults can be used to take bottom end color casts out of raw captures. Similarly, presets can be used in ACR or Lightroom to make these changes easier and speed up image processing.
CS6 & LR4 Crop Tool Changes
When you open the crop tool in Lightroom 4 and CS6 you will immediately notice changes, some of which may throw you for a short while. For one, the crop guidelines immediately embrace the entire image and you may modify the image using the corner or edge handles simply by dragging them into the image. Adding the shift key constrains the crop to the original image aspect ratio, and shift and alt/option keys together keep the crop centered so that the edges all move together.
In the upper left on the options bar you have the ability to set this behavior as well and also to choose an aspect ratio for a specific output as you are likely accustomed to doing in the past in ACR and Lightroom. If you drag a corner to get the sze you want, the crop window may not encompass the image as you wish it to be. This is fixed by simply releasing the mouse from the handles and you can now move the image, not the crop guide, so that the part of the image you wish to use is positioned inside of the guide.
The crop guide itself includes options for assisting you in making compositional decisions with overlays in several including the Rule of Thirds, a Grid, the Golden Ratio and several others. You can, of course, turn these off of put them into “auto” mode in which case they appear when you grab a handle and disappear when you let go. Other options include automatically centering the crop view, showing or hiding the cropped off original pixels and reverting the tool to the legacy operation you are used to. I recommend you live with the tool for a while as you may discover you like the new options once you get accustomed to them.
While the enter key commits your crop as you would expect, Photoshop has added cancel, restore and commit icons similar to older Elements style which looks a bit silly to me. Anyone working in Photoshop for more than a little while understands the Esc and Enter keys well enough that the icons are really not necessary.
Within the crop options in LR4 is a straighten option which is also in the Options bar in Photoshop, and in both programs it can also be activated by holding the Control key down. Probably moving the image instead of the crop box is the biggest thing to get accustomed to, and it makes sense pretty quickly.
While the legacy option is there, it is also possible to simply put your cursor where you want to start a crop and drag to where you want to end within an image and the aspect ratio in play will be respected when you do this. That means you can pretty much work as you did in the past without having to relearn the tool. All in all, some advantages and added options to the tool that can be useful.
Missing from the options bar, but available in the drop down for aspect ratios is a box to add resolution to the mix. In CS6 hitting the R key with the crop tool active opens the resolution box so you can plug in the numbers you need. The X key rotates the crop from vertical to horizontal if you need to, but that behavior still works as you move the cursor within the image changing the crop area.
One big change is the “Delete Cropped Pixels” check-box in the Options bar in CS6. The default is unchecked which gives you the option to change your mind on a crop later in the process. Changing the aspect ratio or grabbing the crop handles and the original image content reappears so you are not stuck with your original decision. This works with saved PSD files which says to me that the image is being treated as a smart object by default. Once you flatten the file you lose this option.
Tunnel Vision
Another rant about composition. It is amazing how many images I am seeing recently with subjects dead center, for no good reason. There are reasons for centered composition, most notably symmetrical compositions, and most of those usually sit high or low rather than perfectly in the middle of the frame. The images I refer to have no such justification.
When you point a camera at a subject the natural inclination of the photographer is to put the subject in the middle of the frame. That is where the primary focusing aid usually is located, and when you look into a camera you look at the center of the framed image. However, this is something you need to train yourself to stop doing. You need to consider the entire frame of the camera and compose the subject to sit comfortably in the composition it creates. The most common place puts the visual weight of the subject at a primary compositional balance point, and the most common of those is defined by the rule of thirds. There are other “rules” you can use to learn to compose, but ultimately you need to learn to feel where the subjects in an image sit comfortably and what makes a better photograph.
By example, notice that the train in the image above is not centered but has “room to move” into the composition by sitting off center to the right and slightly higher than center vertically. There is a full article on learning composition on my Learning Page which is easily accessed by a link under my name at the top of this page. If you are a beginner or not sure exactly what I am talking about I suggest you read the article which introduces you to the language of composition and illustrates some of the guidelines you can use to help you get a feeling for better images.
Most versions of Photoshop and Elements include the rule of thirds overlay as an option in the crop tool. CS6 and Lightroom 4 include other overlay options as well. They are there to assist you in placement of the subject within the frame, but ultimately you are the final arbiter of placement. Whether you are making images for competition or just casual shots for yourself, you will discover that your results are much more satisfying if you learn to balance your subjects within the entire frame and eliminate the static feeling of a centered “bullseye” composition.
