Lightroom 2.6 and ACR 5.6 released

Adobe update page / LR Bllightroom-logo-300x300og page

Lightroom 2.6 – Windows / Mac

ACR 5.6 – Windows / Mac

Highlights from release notes:

* This release includes improved camera profiles for the Leica M9 and Ricoh GXR.

* Camera Raw 5.6 and Lightroom 2.6 provide a fix for an issue affecting PowerPC customers using the final Lightroom 2.5, Camera Raw 5.5 and DNG Converter 5.5 updates on the Mac. The issue, introduced in the demosaic change to address sensors with unequal green response, has the potential to create artifacts in highlight areas when processing raw files from Sony, Olympus, Panasonic and various medium format digital camera backs.

* The Lightroom 3 beta has not been updated with this new camera support. If you’re working with one of these newer cameras and the Lightroom 3 beta, please use the DNG Converter 5.6 to convert proprietary formats to DNG files that can be used in the Lightroom 3 beta.

Lightroom

Known issues:
* Burning exported images to disc is not available for the Lightroom 64-bit Windows application.
* Upgrading a Lightroom 1 catalog during a catalog import can create multiple temporary copies of the catalog while upgrading
* Lightroom performance can be impacted when the Window’s Recycle Bin contains thousands of files
* Lightroom may not automatically launch an import dialog when a memory card is attached to a Windows Vista computer. Please select the Import button in the Library and select the attached card reader to begin the import.
* Lightroom 2.6 will not automatically migrate plug-ins located in the following directory: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2\Modules\. Any plug-ins in this folder should be moved to:
XP: C:/Documents and Settings/{your_username}/Application Data/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules/
Vista: C:/Users/{your_username}/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules/

Bugs fixed:
The crop tool would unlock a locked aspect ratio after a rotation adjustment
* For Mac OS X 10.6 customers, visual artifacts could appear when panning an image viewed at 1:1 in the Develop module.
* For Mac OS X 10.6 customers, the 10.6.2 update included a correction that prevented Lightroom 2 from opening more than two files using the Edit-in-Photoshop functionality.
* Lightroom 2.6 provides a fix for an issue affecting PowerPC customers using the final Lightroom 2.5 update on the Mac. The issue, introduced in the demosaic change to address sensors with unequal green response, has the potential to create artifacts in highlight areas when processing raw files from Sony, Olympus, Panasonic and various medium format digital camera backs.
* Lightroom 2.5 and earlier did not support the updated Panasonic DMC-LX3 aspect ratio modes added with the camera’s latest version 2.0 firmware.

ACR

New Cameras:
Canon EOS 1D Mark IV
Canon EOS 7D
Canon PowerShot G11
Canon PowerShot S90
Leaf Aptus-II 5
Mamiya DM22
Mamiya DM28
Mamiya DM33
Mamiya DM56
Mamiya M18
Mamiya M22
Mamiya M31
Nikon D3s
Olympus E-P2
Panasonic DMC-FZ38
Pentax K-x
Sigma DP1s
Sony A500
Sony A550
Sony A850

Photo-A-Day for 30 Days

If you want to follow along, this might be an interesting experiment.  An idea from some new friends I met at the Photoshop World convention back in October, I’ve joined a “Photo A Day” project — we take a single image a day for 30 days and post them to a pool in flickr.  The 30-days just started today.  I usually think these projects are kinda cheesy, but for some reason I’ve jumped into this one.

You can see my personal “Photo A Day” photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29353014@N05/sets/72157622770574592/

You can see the entire group’s photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/1255718@N20/pool/

You can also search twitter for the hashtag “#PhotoADay” to see our tweets about it.  This link should work:
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23PhotoADay

Feel free to comment if you want.  You already have a flickr account if you have a yahoo account (yahoo owns flickr now, and all yahoo accounts automagically are also flickr accounts, too).

Wish me luck!

FREE Photography Seminar – Art Wolfe – India, Myanmar & Bhutan

ARTWOLFE-Asia-180pxThe folks at creativetechs (who also put together the free 4-week and 10-week photography courses, the free 6-month Photoshop Course and free 10-week Lightroom course) are having another special one-day seminar with Art Wolfe.

Tuesday, Nov 3, 11am-1pm PT

General info

Who is this guy?

Art Wolfe web site
Travels to the Edge (Art’s PBS show) web site
wikipedia article on Art Wolfe

FREE Photography Seminar – Art Wolfe – All About Light

ARTWOLFE-LIGHT-180pxThe folks at creativetechs (who also put together the free 4-week and 10-week photography courses, the free 6-month Photoshop Course and free 10-week Lightroom course) are having a special one-day seminar with Art Wolfe.

Tuesday, Oct 13, 11am-1pm PT

This is part of a 3-day seminar Art has put together and is teaching separately. If this session is successful enough, he may come back and teach the other days in free sessions with creativetechs as well.

General info
Seminar series info
Registration page

Who is this guy?

Art Wolfe web site
Travels to the Edge (Art’s PBS show) web site
wikipedia article on Art Wolfe

See My Concert Submission on Retouch Thursday!

I’m very excited — I just heard from Jason Hoppe — the Photoshop instructor at creativetechs — I’ve had an image selected for their Retouch Thursday program, October 8, 2009!  Retouch Thursday is an INCREDIBLE program, and I highly recommend it.

If you can tune in this Thursday, you’ll even get to hear yours truly on the phone with Jason, discussing my images below!

For Jason’s (and my own readers!) benefit, I’ve put a brief description of the retouch below — The actual web form used to submit images to Jason only allows 100 characters for comments, so I put my full description here for easier reading…

20090731-DSC_3717

Here is a retouch I’d love to see if you’re interested.  I love the backlighting and lens flare in this shot, but right at the moment of exposure, the guitarist/singer moved his hand just out of frame, and his hand is clipped.  I have several shots around this, with the hand visible, but no lens flare.  I’d have preferred the shot with the lens flare, but still have his entire hand in the shot.  I’ll upload the lens flare shot, as well as one short immediately before it with his hand still in-frame.  I have a number of other shots “close-by” these, if you’d like to have more to work with.

Let me know if you’re interested!

Attached file is Nikon D90 NEF raw file.  I’ll be happy to export jpgs if you prefer, but what what I heard from Rich, you’d prefer the original raw images.

– Chuck

20090731-DSC_3716

 



UPDATE – Oct 8 – Here’s the result!

SmileEmptySoul

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — JASON IS AMAZING!  Keep in eye on the creativetechs web site for the video showing how this retouch was done.

 



UPDATE – Oct 11 – The great folks at creativetechs gave me the link below to an online version of this video – You can watch it on-demand!