A couple of U3A members have expressed an interest in purchasing Lightroom. It’s a confusing time in the Adobe world at the moment and the window for purchasing a stand-alone desktop version of the software (Version 6) is possibly closing, possibly … I don’t know!!
Adobe wants its users to move on to a Subscription-based Photography Plan which includes access and use of Photoshop as well as Lightroom, or alternatively a new Lightroom Creative Cloud Plan that is cloud-based with loads of cloud-storage and access to just Lightroom.
I decided to join the original plan about two years ago, and I hadn’t regretted it (until recently), but it does involve an ongoing commitment of c.£10.10 (currently) per month to allow you to keep editing your photos. If you cancel your subscription you can still access them, but the main editing functions are disabled. On the plus side you are provided with all the updates and new versions of the software whilst you still pay your subscription. As it was the main piece of photo software I used – it was a no-brainer for me back in 2015.
When I moved from Lightroom v.5 back in 2015, I opted for the Adobe Photography (20Gb) Plan Creative Cloud subscription. This is obtained from this link.
However beware. Adobe are pushing the cloud based service, rather than Lightroom as a desktop application, and are confusingly using the name of the old subscription Desktop application – Lightroom CC – to describe the mobile-world, cloud-based version which they are trying to push to the consumer market.
The desktop application is however ALSO part of the Photography Plan and IN MY HUMBLE OPINION this is the one you should be installing if you opt for the Photography Plan. It’s NOW called Lightroom Classic CC. This is the version that I upgraded to in the New Year – you could call it Lightroom 7.
However, as I said at the top of the message; if you just want a standalone, one-off purchase of Lightroom v.6 with a CD, it’s still available from Amazon for instance (also John Lewis, Curry’s and PC World I believe), or from Adobe direct.
Installing the standalone version from Adobe is relatively straightforward. You need to create an AdobeID as part of the process, and then you get a Licence Key. If you want to save c.£6 and NOT have the CD you can get it as a download to install the software – see the links from the Amazon page to get the “ xxx Activation code by email” version.
If you have an earlier version of Lightroom (e.g. v 4 & 5) you can upgrade it from this link and save yourself about 50% on the purchase price of Lightroom v.6, and if you’ve installed the Lightroom CC trial here’s a link if you want to change to Lightroom v.6.
Now this is important. Lightroom v.6 will not be upgraded in the future. It is not straightforward to go back to Lightroom 6 from Lightroom Classic CC (v.7) without losing some of the information you’ve applied with that later version. However for the amateur photographer there is plenty in Lightroom 6 and unless you’re thinking of buying some very expensive camera bodies and lenses in the future you probably won’t suffer from just using Lightroom v.6.
Installation assistance for Lightroom 6 is provided here.
If you decide to go down the Creative Cloud subscription route (as I did initially), you should be careful during the installation process, and you may find it useful to follow the assistance provided in this link.
If you want to ask me any questions before making a decision, don’t hesitate to do so, it will be my pleasure to try and answer them. If I can’t answer the question I will point you to a link which I think will answer the question.
So what is my recommendation? This matter has taken up a lot of my time just recently and I’ve agonised over the decision I should make. You can read about my reasoning and the decision I eventually made to probably stay with Lightroom v.6 whilst trying out Lightroom Classic in this blogpost.
Category: Photography
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Decisions, decisions … Adobe Lightroom
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Sharing an image (or album) from Google Photos
To finish off this series of posts on using Google Photos, this post complements the email that I sent out to the Cardiff U3A Computer Group which encouraged them to do some “homework” and share a photo stored in Google Photos with me.
This post uses a couple of photos which I took this week of some toadstools that had appeared in our garden after the heavy rains we’ve had this month and which Jenny was worried might be Honey Fungus. I took them to achieve an identification – which I hope I’ve got right!From my Google Photos desktop I can see this …
… I need to select Create, then Album and click on the photos I want to put in the Album …
… and click on Create and give the Album a name …
… in this case I’m calling the album “Common Inkcap” and then click on the Tick in the top left-hand corner of the screen.Now I can Share the album using the Shareicon in the top right-hand corner of the screen, and clicking on Get link …
… and after clicking on COPY I can email the link to the album to anyone, or if you’re a Google+, Facebook or Twitter user I can share a link to any of those social media sites.At another time, you can change the Sharing options from the More optionsmenu in the top right hand corner of the screen …
… and click on the slider to let others if they have the link to see the album, and you’ll see a screen like this …
… and you can choose how others will interact with your album, but that’s for another day.In case you’re interested here’s a link to the album -
More Google Photos – some simple image manipulation
Following up from my earlier post which covered uploading images from your mobile device, or camera, to Google Photos; this post picks up from the point where the images have been uploaded and gives you an idea of what simple editing you can do to your photos. This Google article with separate tabs to follow for Computer (browser-based), Android and iOS (iPhone/iPad) sets out the scope of the things that you can do. For this post I’m only looking at what you can do on a Computer, from your browser.
What I’m going to do is to take the “featured” image from the earlier post and show a few screenshots of things that I have done to it, perhaps to improve it – although that might be rather difficult as it’s a rather boring subject. So here’s the original photo (unedited), taken with my Sony NEX-6 camera and stored onto its SD-card and then uploaded into Google Photos, using the SD-card reader on my computer.
Let’s crop it a bit to get rid of the spade handle. First I double-clicked on the image in my Google Photos pictures at https://photos.google.com and this menu appeared …
The first icon
to Edit the Image, the third to Enlarge (or Zoom) the Image, the fourth to get Info on the Image, the fifth to Delete the Image and the sixth
Another window opens to show you this …
… you’re being offered a range of filters
which you can apply to change the appearance of your image. I’m not going to use this option preferring to do it manually, but I’d encourage you to have a quick peak at what automatic enhancements can be made to an image from this selection of effects. For the moment I want to do a crop (change the viewing window of the image), so I’m going to click on the
icon to Crop and Rotate.
On this screen, the first icon allows you to select the Aspect ratio of the image you want (as shown above). Selecting one of these will apply an automatic crop. The second icon allows you to Rotate the Image. You can then drag the corners or edges of the image now to crop to exactly the form of the image that you want to keep. The third icon allows you to Reset your edits to start again, and Done is clicked when you’ve finished editing. So in this case, I want to keep the Original aspect ratio and just get rid of the spade handle manually …
… so I drag up from the bottom right-hand corner, and down from the top left-hand corner to get the cropped window on the image above. I can move the crop window around the image by clicking and dragging on it until I have it just the way I want it. I could also finely rotate the image if I thought I’d not got it completely straight by clicking and dragging on the slider on the right-hand side of the image. So, having done this, I have an image I want to work with so I click on Done and I get returned to the Edit window …
… you can see I have the choice of changing the Light, Colour and Pop (sharpness) of the image. By adjusting these sliders I could arrive at something like this …
… but even finer changes can be made by clicking on the arrow against each of these elements and adjusting individual components, so I could end up with changing the Light a little and adding a Vignette to the corners with some Warmth from the Colour slider to give me this …
Now I know I’m biased, but I think that this almost becomes a reasonable picture. All you need to do is to select Save Copy from the More Options
What do you think?
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Google Photos (homework), the kernel, Spectre and Meltdown 25th Jan 2018
Boot-up
Review Google Photos – Homework???
Issues and problems
clean and speed-up your PC (at a later date, with notes)
Articles eg. How to stop Windows Updates (Flipboard ???)
Jargon
Kernel
Software and/or Hardware (keyboard, camera, etc)
Kernel
CPU – RAM – DEVICES
News
Meltdown and Spectre
Housekeeping
How much communication from me?
Thought grazing
Google+ Community
Flipboard – https://flipboard.com
Evernote
https://evernote.com/ -
Google Photos – how I use it
As promised, and apologies for the delay – Christmas and illness got in the way – here are some notes on how I’ve got Google Photos to work for me. It concentrates mainly on how I’ve configured Backup and sync to do what I want it to do. I think the editing of photos is relatively straightforward, as is creating albums and slideshows. I may get round to doing something on the latter, as I might with sending photos for printing – that’s quite a good topic. I’ve used Snapfish and Yophoto for printing photos and books, both of which I can recommend. I now use Blurb, but that’s because it works so well with Lightroom – it’s more expensive than the other two.
Some more links, if you’re interested …
25 tricks to master Google Photos – https://www.pcmag.com/feature/345998/25-tricks-to-master-google-photos
How to master Google Photos – https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/9/15762170/google-photos-how-to-master
32 tips and tricks for Google Photos – https://www.computerworld.com/article/3148245/desktop-apps/32-tips-and-tricks-for-google-photos.html
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Getting to grips with Google Photos
It really is rather surprising that given the widespread adoption and use of Google Photos, that I can not find a sensible, easy to read, introductory guide on how to use it. Perhaps it’s because it’s so easy to use? Well, it is – up to a point. That point being how it works alongside Google’s other cloud-based software, ie Google Drive and Backup and Sync, and the now defunct and disconnected Picasaweb – where your photos are still accessible in your Google Archive.
So this note is an attempt to set out what you can do with Google Photos using images obtained on your phone or tablet, or uploaded from your camera’s SD card. It will principally work from the principle that you’ve taken the photos, you want to upload them to your laptop or desktop (PC or Mac) and then want to work on them there using a web browser. That is not an essential workflow, you can do everything on your mobile device – if that’s where the photos are, even down to editing the photos using Google’s Snapseed application for iOS, or Android devices, it’s just the approach I’ve taken here. So if you want to do everything on your iPhone/iPad or Android device you can learn how to use Snapseed on iOS here, I believe the application is nearly the same on Android.
To avoid duplication of effort however, here is an article that you should read first. It covers nearly all the features of the device apps, and the web browser version, and in particular handles some of the editing functions available, but it doesn’t cover the intricacies and peculiarities of the Backup and Sync tool.
So … how do you get photos into Google Photos? This Google article tries to explain how you can use Backup and Sync to do that. How does Google Photos work with Google Drive? This Google article attempts to explain how. Confused, I thought you would be! This is what I’ve done, why I’ve done it and perhaps most importantly how I do it!
Sometimes, it’s best to work backwards from Google’s most recent announcement because in doing that you can be reasonably sure you’ll be moving in the right direction … forwards! Google has separated Photos from Drive and is encouraging users to deal with them separately. It’s a continuation of the separation which started when Photos was spun out of Google+.
So how do I get my photos into Google Photos? From the iPhone/iPad (or any other smartphone that has the Google Photos app) it’s quite straightforward.From the menu icon, choose Settings, enable Backup & sync and then make decisions as to the quality of the images, and when they’ll be backed up (uploaded). I have opted to use the High Resolution storage option, and for them only to be uploaded when connected to a WiFi network. The reasons for this are that my main photo software is Lightroom and I have a different method of working with that. What I want to use Google Photos for is essentially sharing albums with family and friends.
From my desktop/laptop it’s almost as straightforward. I connect the camera by USB cable to the computer, or insert the SD card from the camera into the SD card reader in the computer and I will be prompted with this message …They should then get uploaded to Google Photos and the images can be seen in my Google Drive as an entry under USB Devices & SD cards, from which I could copy them to a folder on my Google Drive – I don’t recommend you do this.
So there you have it. I’ve disentangled Google Photos from Google Drive; I’ve used Backup and Sync to upload photos to Google Photos and I’m now ready to edit photos, create albums and share images through Google Photos.
Finally … if you were a user of Picasa and Picasaweb, your photos are still accessible. What you can, and cannot do with them is recorded in this Google Help document. You can still download and use the PC or Mac Picasa desktop client for editing your pictures and if you want a simple photo-editing tool to get started with as long as you’re using a 32-bit operating system (ie not Apple’s Catalina or later), it’s a good place to start, but, it is no longer linked to Google Photos (or Picasaweb). However, there is a workaround!
When you save an image that you’ve edited in Picasa, you can save it to a folder that will then be automatically scanned by Backup and Sync and thus uploaded to Google Photos.
[NB Only those who attended my two sessions on Google Photos will actually understand why I included the really uninteresting image at the top of this post – I’ll leave the rest of you to ponder on what could possibly be the reason 🙂 ]
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Getting started with Digital Photography: Part 2
Once you get “hooked” on digital photography, and have chosen the software you are going to use and have started using it – what might be the next step?
Traditionally you went to the newsagent and bought a magazine to tell you more about your camera, or the software you were using. By doing this you could follow developments in your hobby and pick up advice, hints and tips which were often very useful. However nowadays there is an alternative. You can use the plentiful resources made available on the Internet – often indeed from the magazines that you might have been considering purchasing.
Here’s a tip to make your browsing and reading more productive.
I think it’s a “good idea” to sign-up to either flipboard, or feedly – so that you can subscribe to RSS feeds and receive a regular stream of articles (blog posts) that you could find interesting. This is rather like getting a tailored magazine or newspaper delivered to your computer, tablet or phone every day. I tend to use feedly – it’s a bit easier to use and less like a magazine than flipboard – but if that’s the presentation you’d like, go for it.
Sign-up for a free account on either of these and then whenever you see the RSS icon on a website, you know that you can add that site to your feedly or flipboard account. Both sites work well if you have a Google (gmail) account as you can use that as your identity/userid for registration/login. Both have apps for smart devices and can be used from standard web browsers (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, etc).
I intend to write a post specifically about using feedly and flipboard shortly.The feeds I read regularly include …
Digital Photography School, DIY Photography, Lightstalking and Petapixel.I also follow feeds which are specific to the camera and the software I use. It’s also a good idea to view other people’s images to give you ideas. I referenced in my last post that I share my images my images on Google Photos, flickr, Instagram, flickr and 500px. I’d suggest however that you browse other people’s images on these sites for inspiration!
I then tend to save articles I’ve liked, or have just not had the time to read in Pocket. It’s a bit like bookmarking a webpage, only with the content as well so you can read the article offline as well. Once it’s there, you can then share the link with others, or even create your own Flipboard Magazine which is what I have done with the Photography magazine on this blog. This is a little more advanced than using Pocket however – so start there. Remember too, bookmarking works best if you add some tags to help you find the article in the future from the many hundred you’ll soon have bookmarked – a problem somewhat similar to the tagging/metadata that you’ll need to get into the habit of providing to identify your images in Adobe Lightroom, or alternatives.
I also use Evernote (but am thinking of moving to OneNote) as a piece of note-taking software to just record ideas, and other bits of information, when I’m out and about with my iPhone or camera. You can save links from your browser directly to both of these note-taking apps.Finally, it’s worth considering finding out if you can attend a photo workshop to learn from a professional. I’ve been on a number of these and personally can recommend …
Ken Jenkins (Freespirit Images) and his associated blog.Finally, I can’t resist of course plugging my own blog – Just thoughts … where I post my personal thoughts on my approach to photography and digital photography in general. However, my photo blog – Moments like these … is my main platform where I show an image and the describe the story behind it, and this blog is associated with my portfolio / gallery site. -
Getting started with Digital Photography: Part 1
A new venture for Thought grazing …
This article starts from the assumption that you already have a digital camera, or smartphone, and doesn’t pretend to give advice on how to proceed to purchase one except to say that I would strongly recommend buying from a camera shop for the after-sales service you would get. In buying a digital camera you’re buying into a system – Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, Panasonic etc. – it can be a painful (and expensive) decision to change later, so it’s worth talking to someone who can talk about their experiences, or who can match your needs to what is available.So therefore this article focusses on the software and in later posts – the processing of images using software.
Photography is a hobby that cries out to share its results (images) with other people and so therefore it’s best to work back from answering the question – what are you going to do with the images? By answering that question, the rest of the toolkit and the workflow you adopt is easier to answer. Typical workflows might be …
I just want to take a photo and print it.
I want to take a photo and possibly share it on Facebook, Instagram.
I want to take photos and make them into photobooks.
I want to take photos and post them to a website.
… of course it could be all of the above. One thing tends to unite them however, you need a place in the cloud to store your photos, from which you can then share them. If at all possible you should adopt a platform t
hat provides the maximum flexibility to allow you to do all of the above, and more, so that you don’t need to keep changing your systems as you develop your hobby. I’ve written about my workflow here.
So apart from the local USB disk-storage I use (with its backups, of course) to store and post-process my images, I use Google Photos as my main way of sharing photos in albums eg Orchids from Changi Airport, linked to the free storage (as long as you don’t store images at high resolution) you get on Google Drive. I do have other cloud storage/sharing platforms, but this is the one I use for photographs. I do also have a flickr account to share images – and I use it occasionally, as I do Instagram. As you develop your interest in photography, you may wish to have a more professional platform (I have used 500px), or the sharing platform that may be provided by your preferred software supplier (eg Adobe).
If you’re starting-out (or don’t want to spend any money) then you can use the editing software available within Google Photos, or if on a phone, or tablet, use Google’s Snapseed apps. You can still get Picasa for Windows
and the Mac, which is software Google bought and supported for a while, but it is probably better to bite the bullet and use their Photos app in a browser, as it integrates well with Drive and Google+.
Then of course you might (like me) be an Apple user, and could of course use their Photos app and iCloud, but at the moment the editing facilities offered in the app are not (in my humble opinion) as good as Google’s. You can sync your smartphone “camera roll” to Google Photos automatically which is nice.
Other free photo-editing options are available. I will however after reviewing the other possibilities, only mention and discuss Google Photos on this blog.
If you’re a bit more sure that you want to invest in digital photography then there’s no better (imho) software than Adobe Lightroom. I’m not going into a whole set of reasons why you should invest in Lightroom rather than Photoshop Elements, or Apple’s Photo app, Paintshop, or even full-blown Photoshop. However for me these are the main benefits …
- It doesn’t matter where your images are stored; you don’t have to import them into a database, but you can choose to import new images into a single location of your choice which is unconnected to the software.
- It employs a catalogue which references where the images are stored. You can have multiple catalogues referencing the same set of images.
- All changes (edits) to the images are stored in the catalogue.
- The original images are left untouched. This is called non-destructive editing.
- You can go backwards and forwards through your edits, and can even create multiple virtual copies that allow you multiple versions of the same image, but only one actual (original) image.
- You can store your images in Collections which equate to virtual albums unconnected to the actual folders the actual images are stored in.
- You are supplied with a huge range of Plugins to allow you easy publishing to social media sites (eg flickr, Instagram, Dropbox), in addition to publishing to photobook websites (eg Blurb) and print sites (eg Smugmug).
- You can apply presets to your images at import, developing or export so that the same look and feel can be achieved.
- It integrates well with a whole range of other software such as WordPress (for blogging).
… I just feel that (for me at least) Lightroom is the best at the moment and it integrates with Adobe’s other software. It also now has a mobile version that allows editing on your iPad (or iPhone) if you subscribe to their Photography Creative Cloud Plan. This costs c.£9 a month and gives me both Lightroom and Photoshop, storage space in the cloud, and more besides, plus all the upgrades.
If you decide to go down the Lightroom route then here are a couple of resources you might wish to reference …Laura Shoe’s Lightroom – http://laurashoe.com/Lightroom Killer Tips – http://lightroomkillertips.com/
Adobe Training – http://tv.adobe.com/product/lightroom/ and https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/tutorials.html
… and for Lightroom tuition, you’ll do well to beat …
Scott Kelby’s Lightroom books for digital photographers, New Riders
