Dave Hartley

Recently, my wife was using Capture NX (1.3.3) to process a Nikon NEF file. After modifying various parameters, she did a “File -> Open with…” to export the file into Photoshop. This will render the file as a TIFF and automatically pass it to Photoshop. Normally this works fine, but this time, when Photoshop opened, instead of showing the image, the Adobe Camera RAW window popped up. This should not have happened. Somehow, the Adobe preferences had got… Continue reading

When buying electronics or digital cameras etc, you usally get asked whether you want to purchase an extended warrenty. Normally I don’t bother with these but when I bought my Apple Macbook Pro over a year ago, I decided to get the AppleCare protection plan as the laptop used the new LED backlit displays and I erred on the cautious with the new technology.

In April this year, I had the screen replaced as I had a few stuck pixels. Yesterday, I went to boot up my Mac and had the unfortunate experience of seeing it fail to switch on, not… Continue reading

I’ve previously written about the problem I was having when selecting a number of images and hitting command-return for an instant slideshow. With Lightroom 2.0 the images were being displayed in random order which was really frustrating and different to what I was expecting (Lightroom 1.4.1 did not do this). Well, whilst drinking a beer, I looked at the slidehow settings and guess what? The default behavior is to use a random order for playback! That’s not very clever; why not… Continue reading

There seems to be a major bug in the Lightroom dual monitor support. with the primary screen in loupe view and the secondary screen in either loupe view or grid view, the application will produce the infamous spinning ball. Occasionally, this will fix itself after a minute or so, but more often than not, a force quit is required. In all cases, the Lightroom cpu load is ~98%. This is running on a Macbook Pro, 2.4GHz, 4G ram and 10.5.4. The bottom line is dual monitor support is not stable.

Update: since I was having problems with dual monitor mode, I… Continue reading

Previously, when processing my raw files, I would look at the image and depending upon whether there was a predominance of red or blue I would pick either Nikon Capture NX (for reds) or Adobe Lightroom (for blues). The color of the reds I was obtaining using Adobe Raw converters was always below par, whereas the Nikon Capture NX software would give me the vibrant reds I was expecting.

With the release of Lightoom 2.0, Adobe has also introduced beta versions of it’s new camera… Continue reading

Images of icebergs in the Scotia Sea and the Antarctic Peninsula are now online. You can access them through my Galleries page or directly via this link

Looks like I hit another bug in Lightroom 2.0, this time with keywording.

I had a set of 12 images in a collection. I selected all twelve and applied a keyword to them (eg. “AAAAA”). Then I hit command-L to switch off the catalog filters. I then went to the Keyword list panel and confirmed that the number of images with the keyword was indeed 12. I then clicked on the right arrow for the keyword “AAAAA”… Continue reading

Images of the wildlife at Palo Alto Baylands are now online. The images can be accessed via the Galleries page or via this link

In Library mode, grid view, use command-click to select a number of images that you want to put into an instant slide show. For example, if you have four pictures, select pictures 1, 2 and 4. Then do command-return for the instant slide show. All four images are displayed, not the ones you selected. This is quite a basic bug and you wonder how the software ever got through quality control.

My advice is to wait for the next point release before upgrading. I broke my own rule with respect to buying software when it has just been released as… Continue reading

I upgraded my 1.4.1 release of Lightroom to the new version 2.0 last night. Today was the first day that I really got to play with it. Somethings I like, some I don’t; I’ll post a blog on my initial thoughts after I’ve played around with it some more.

One thing I have noticed is that it’s given me the spinning ball of death on my Mac twice tonight (please read the full post as I’m updating whenever I get a hang). Both times, I was in the develop module. The first time I was using the dust spot removal tool… Continue reading