Why I use Adobe Lightroom.

Prior to Lightroom’s 11.x major upgrade in late 2021, my biggest reason for using Adobe Lightroom as my post-processing app was Jordy Meow’s set of Lightroom/WordPress plugins. They make it stupidly easy to create gallery collections in Lightroom and sync them automatically with WordPress. Not that I didn’t think Lightroom was a great cataloging and … Read more

New top Lightroom features: luminosity & color masking

Several of the new features in the latest (2021) Lightroom Desktop 5 upgrade are important enough to deserve the title game changer. I’ll be discussing two of them in this post. Luminance masking and its close cousin, color masking, have heretofore been a somewhat advanced editing tool employed in Photoshop. People accomplished this ‘by hand,’ … Read more

Sharpen AI by Topaz Labs – a Winner!

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to photograph Kiane, a lovely Minneapolis-based model. One of my favorite shots of her was spoiled because I missed the focus. (Note to self: avoid using manual focus lenses in situations that are risky.) Enter Sharpen AI, a software product created by Topaz Labs. Their claim was sharpening … Read more

Einstein & Monroe

You may have seen this illusion. Look at it close-up, and it is Albert Einstein. Back away a few feet and it is Marilyn Monroe. What is going on here? You’re seeing the effects of frequency resolution. Close-up, you’re seeing the finer detail that is familiar to you as details of Einstein’s face. When you … Read more

Why you (probably) don’t need more megapixels

If you’re worried about whether you need more megapixels, I used to be like you; let me help you. You do not need more megapixels. I’ll explain in a somewhat Zen-like manner. If you need more megapixels, you already know it, so you aren’t worried about it. If you’re worried rather than knowing, it is … Read more

Lightroom Enhance Details and Fuji – a winner!

Note: this was written late 2019.  Fast-forward to mid-March 2021, Adobe launches “super resolution” – currently only in Adobe RAW and Photoshop. I will review it when it comes to Lightroom. Introduction Almost all my Fuji image-gurus believe the images produced using Lightroom’s new Enhance Details feature are as good, if not better than any … Read more

John’s Big Note

“John’s Big Note is a very simple plugin to add a big free-form note for your own metadata.” If you’ve worked in Lightroom for any length of time, there’s come a moment when you’ve wanted to leave yourself a note about the photo, be it details of the shot, or development notes. This plug-in is … Read more

“Chasing” in Lightroom

In construction, an accumulation of small errors can aggregate to create a large catastrophic error.  I once heard someone use the word “chasing” to describe this phenomenon. The way to avoid the problems was to measure total distance and subdivide rather than adding together smaller measurements. When you work in Lightroom or other post-processing applications, … Read more