The Cult of Creative Cloud.

Adobe has always been the premium choice in the creative media space. They make great products. I have used Photoshop, Premier, After Effects, InDesign, Lightroom, Acrobat Pro, and Audition. Probably others.

Photoshop, Premier, Lightroom, and Audition were the most used in my workflow.

I refer to these programs in the past tense because I am currently not using them. Why? I'm trying to quit. I've been CC free for almost a month now.

I hate the cloud. It exchanges old annoyances with new ones. And extracts a monthly cost for them. Although the old CS bundle was costly, I was not reminded every month! I understand the cost thing. I really do. It is the best way for Adobe to stay profitable. But it hurts my monthly budget enough to notice. And the cloud validation fails just often enough to be a regular workflow interruption. Inspiration can be fleeting. And when you have to wait for Photoshop to load, it can be difficult to hang on to. And when you have to stop everything to sign back into your Adobe account, it can die completely.

Adobe gets in the way.

Alternatives? Yes. Better? Probably not technically. But in terms of getting out of my way? Yes.

I'll highlight the alternatives that I have been using over the next few posts. But here is the short list.

Photoshop --> GIMP
Lightroom --> Darktable
Premier Pro --> Lightworks
Audition --> Audacity
After Effects --> Natron
InDesign --> Scribus
Acrobat --> Pdf Editor

Admittedly a couple of these have to try hard to keep up with the Adobe version. It's really too bad that it has come to the point that it is easier to deal with clunky interfaces and suboptimal programs than to waste time in the cloud. I am not very familiar with a few of these. Some are old standbys. I'll review the familiar ones first and as I become more familiar, highlight the newer ones.

Canon 7D
Tamron  28-200mm@39mm
Post: 
Darktable 
GIMP
Alienskin Exposure X

Google-

Another one bites the dust. A Google service that is.

With no google+ I'll push to other common platforms. No big.

Be sure to stay tuned for my post on the Cult of Creative Cloud.


Scott.

Preparing for summer

A good spring cleaning always reminds me that complexity often is at war with creativity. How often have I missed put on a good opportunity because I was too busy fiddling with the gear? I have typed out a quote and taped it to my PC. It reads "Simplify and Excel". I often refer to this if I am finding myself bogged down in the details.

Too much stuff gets in the way and ends up fighting the very excellence that we want. This spring I have cleared out boxes and boxes of camera equipment. Some were originally for reselling. Some were for specific projects. Some sentimental. But all of it collectively was weighing me down. I found myself longing for the time when I had all my gear in a single camera backpack... So that is the aim. It might hurt at first but it will be healthy.

I'm down to a backpack, and a large crate. And a Rubbermaid bin, And some odds and ends. And maybe a pile of tripod pieces. And probably more... But the percentage is down significantly.

.

I'm looking forward to running a nice tight kit once again.


Phothog

Flower in the concrete jungle

Fairweather friends

Maple through the falls

Maritime dream

 

Canon 7D

75-300@145mm f/5

ISO 800

Adobe Photoshop CC 2018

Reflections on Lake De Sabla

Canon 7D
100-300 f/4-5.6

Recent Waterfowl

During intensive training or school I tend to simplify my shooting. Black and white become the norm. This is as much color you are likely to see until I graduate at the end of the year.

Morning Monochrome

RGB

Morning Showers

Maple Gold

Canon 7D
ISO 640
Edit Photoshop CC + Exposure7

Forest Procession

Canon 50D@ ISO160
24-105L@ 45mm & Aperture 4.0

Backup

One of the challenges to modern photogs, is where to put all the media. Image quality increases every year and there is a reciprocating increase in the size of your data. For the casual shooter the computer's on board drive is sufficient. Even SSD are becoming prevalent in sizes greater than 500GB. However if you are a serious photog you know that extra space is a valuable resource.

If you shoot RAW or video it is even tougher to have enough. And then backup? What? Waste a drive on copies? Yes. But it gets worse. I am here to say that backup AND redundancy are a requirement to any photographer who is ever going to be paid. There are backup solutions online. And those are great for home use. But you need on site redundancy and onsite backup. Like so:

Photog takes picture ----> Picture goes to production PC ----> Picture is reviewed/ edited(depending on your workflow) ----> Picture is placed on external NAS box with at least RAID1 but better RAID5 for redundancy(You can skip this step if you store your pics on a workstation w/RAID) ---->The NAS is then backed up to an external drive(My external drive is another RAID1 NAS, but that is probably overkill). ---->The picture is then deleted off the camera.

This seems a bit complicated to the uninitiated, but it is important to protect your media, your customers, and your job. Learn how to do this or pay someone to do this. Don't try to cheap out with an "Online solution" you'll just gum up your internet bandwidth constantly and for the larger media collections it could take weeks to get it all online. And if you shoot aggressively(You should) you will always be waiting for the upload. There are other reasons why I'd recommend shying away from online or cloud back-ups(privacy etc) but that is not the point. Get backup ASAP. Like now.