Lightroom Tip: Auto White Balance

Setting the right white balance in the camera might sometime be tricky and difficult and it's not always possible to use a grey card for that. Also, in-camera auto white balance might not always give good results, so I find myself sometimes correcting the white balance when post-processing images in Lightroom. However, that's always sometimes difficult for me when I have to judge myself what is the right white balance for an image.

Auto_White_Balance

What I discovered already some time ago is that Lightroom 4 also has auto white balance. Every time I use, I'm still amazed how good it is and how well it sets up white balance itself. You can find the auto white balance in Lightroom 4 in the Development module under the Basic panel on the right-hand side. I found the Lightroom's auto white balance to be quite reliable and correct in about 95% of cases but be aware that sometimes you need to make adjustments and changes.

Having problems using a Wacom pen tablet with Lightroom 4?

If you've upgraded to the Lightroom's latest version of Lightroom 4 and you're experiencing problems with using a Wacom pen tablet with it, then this very simple fix might help you - at least it helped me. For some odd reason, my pre-defined key's and shortcuts on my Wacom pen tablet didn't work at all or did different things when I upgraded to Lightroom 4. I spent hours googling, searching forums, etc. until I came up myself with this easy fix that worked for me. Wait for it.... just go to Wacom's website and head to the Driver section to download the latest installation and driver files for your Wacom product (for Europe-based customers, you can go here). Just re-install and upgrade the drivers and software, restart your computer (unusual for Macs, I even had to restart my Macbook Pro) and enjoy your Wacom pen tablet as it was before you upgraded to Lightroom 4. Yes, it is so simple :)

I'm not sure why my Wacom pen tablet didn't behave in the same way with Lightroom 4 as it did with Lightroom 3. I think it could have been an outdated Wacom's driver or software.

Mac OS X Tip for Photographers: Inverting Colors

I was recently browsing through tips & tricks for Mac OS X and I ran across a trick for inverting colors on a display and a monitor. You can use the 'inverting colors' function as a photographer on Mac OS X during editing and post-production. For example, if you have a bright picture or a picture with a big area with bright colors (for example the white color) and you need to locate, edit, heal and clone out dark spots (sensor dust, airplanes, birds, etc.), inverting colors can be very handy, especially when your eyes feel tired in finding these little spots. Inverting colors in post-processing in such situations is just perfect because its much easier to find bright spots on the dark background rather than the opposite.

In order to invert colors in Mac OS X press Ctrl+Option(Alt)+Cmd+8 and your colors are inverted. To return to the normal color scheme, press the same keys again.

Article Picture: I went to the China Town when visiting Antwerp in 2010. This red Chinese lamp really stood out of the background and the environment.

Goodbye Aperture 3, Welcome Lightroom 3.

It's official: I've switched over to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. I know that some of you followed previously my experience with testing Apple's Aperture 3 when it came out. Unfortunately, the processing speed of RAW files in Aperture 3 became simply unacceptable for me - waiting for 4 minutes for a program to process some adjustments within an image can be painful and a big time-waster as you can imagine.

I gave a try to Lightroom 3 a week ago and I edited the latest photo shoot with it. I have to admit that I'm very happy with Lightroom 3 - it's fast, intuitive and it didn't take me as long as I thought it would to learn it. Therefore, I advice to anyone having problems with Apple Aperture 3 to at least try Adobe Lightroom 3 (there is a 30-day free fully functional trial version) - you might be as positively surprised as I was.

Aperture 3 Finally usable: Aperture 3.0.2 Update

You might recall that I mentioned in my previous blog article I would be moving away from Aperture 3 and I promised to tell you why. Well, things have changed in the past week and they've changed quite dramatically, but in a good sense. Apple released update to Aperture 3 with the number 3.0.2 on 25 March 2010. Although, this update number looks insignificant, it includes many crucial updates and fixes (at least for the most part) what was bothering me the most: extremely low performance of Aperture 3. The detailed description of the fixes in Aperture 3.0.2 update are provided on Apple's website here.

I spent few hours yesterday testing Aperture 3.0.2 and I have to say I was positively surprised. This update makes Aperture 3 finally usable or as Scott Bourne from PhotoFocus.com wrote: "Aperture 3.0.2 “ FINALLY Finally Ready For Prime Time". It's true (and many photographers confirm that) that Apple's first public major releases (like Aperture 3.0) are in fact full of glitches and bugs. Therefore, they should be seen by the end users as 'unofficial' public betas and not final products. Only after few updates (just like in case of Aperture 3), these products become usable. I myself didn't use Aperture 3 and I waited for the first update of 3.0.1 but even then, the product was not operational, unusable and buggy. I'm a little surprised and even disappointed that Apple acts the way it does with its products towards the customers. Maybe they will learn the lesson, especially after such a sound criticism about buggy Aperture 3. Sometimes it's good to learn from competitors Apple!

Having said that, I will probably stay with Aperture 3 (well, actually Aperture 3.0.2) as it seems to work fine (more or less at least). I've tested about 75%-80% of the features and performance of its 3.0.2 update and it works much MUCH better than the previous version.

Article Picture: Some of you might be familiar with it: it's the Atomium in Brussels (Bruxelles), Belgium (see map) or at least a part of it.