Archive for Reviews
New hosting for my photos – SmugMug
Posted by: | CommentsHowdy all,
Firstly I apologise for being away, I have been sick as a dog and have also had a death in my partner’s family. Anyhoo, onto the topic for today.
I have been hunting around for somewhere that I can host my photography works (and also do a little e-commerce as well, such as selling digital downloads of my photos), while at the same time integrating with Adobe Lightroom (to make my life easy).
After playing around with SmugMug.com for a few days I have made my pick. Although it is a little expensive, I have managed to get my hands on a 50% off code so that is a massive bonus as well because I can now get a Pro account at a pretty decent price.
You can see the new gallery as I am putting it together at http://gallery.eccentricreality.com, if you bare with me while I play with the templates and such, I will try to work it all around to make it look pretty.
Anyhoo, if you are interested in somewhere that can host your images with a LOT of great features (most importantly… Adobe Lightroom Integration), SmugMug is my current pick.
If you think you might get an account and want to help me pay for my new digital camera, there are SmugMug ads that will display at the bottom of this site every so often, if not, tis all good. But as that is not the aim of this post I am not going to throw an affiliate link in (unless you guys really ask me to). 
Anyhoo, has anyone else used SmugMug? I am rather curious, if not, what do you use for your photo hosting (professional or otherwise)?
Stuart
Adobe CS4 and Photoshop Lightroom 2
Posted by: | Comments
A few weeks ago I purchased myself a bit of a pre-Christmas pressie which consisted of Adobe Creative Suite (CS) 4 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2. Luckily as I am still a student at university I was able to get academic pricing on both of these and save an absolute bundle.
After buying both the packages, and another trip to the store to get a bigger hard drive for my laptop (*hehe*) I was able to install both and start getting my hands dirty.
The main topic I wanted to cover in this post is actually Adobe Lightroom 2, however thought that I would mention Adobe CS 4 as the integration between Lightroom and Photoshop is nothing short of spectacular.
After installing Lightroom and importing all my photos (which is a little over 31, 000 photos at this stage but I started with around 34, 000) I started to get to work actually looking through some of my historical shots.
I have spent the last day going through and starting to organise everything into folders as well as adding meta data such as keywords to each of the photos. I have to say that the ability to search my images by meta data will be a godsend. There have been so many times in the past that I have wanted to find a photo but could not find it at all due to it being hidden in the deep dark recesses of my hard drive that I am now coming across (and appropriately tagging) before moving into meaningful folders.
I am also finding that I am no longer going to the Windows “My Pictures” folder to find things, I am now just going straight to Adobe Lightroom as it is just so much easier to find in Lightroom (and the interface appears to be faster than explorer for most things too).
Back to the integration, when I wish to edit an image, I can make adjustments to the post-production exposure settings and such and then export straight to Adobe Photoshop for further edititing. It is just so easy to move back and forth between the two it really does feel like heaven.
Anyhoo, I just wanted to say that if you are starting out in Photography, the CS 4 suite (I got CS 4 Web Premium but whichever suits your needs will be fine) and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom are an absoulute must.
I look forward to hearing other people’s thoughts, do you use the Adobe Suites or something else?
Stuart
