Observations About the Upcoming MacPro

It’s Not Unexpected

A week before the announcement of the new MacPro I had dinner with a videographer who was quite passionate about his need for a new MacPro, and what he needed it to contain. I warned him that the next generation would most likely not have a standard tower size or configuration, would likely offer Thunderbolt 2 as the expansion solution, instead of internal options, and would have excellent native  graphics capabilities, though it might be some time before third party graphics options would be available. This was all clear from the general direction Apple has been moving in, and from the areas they have been showing interest in. That forms a fairly good description of the new MacPro in advance. And having that sense of the device has allowed me to think less about the tech specs, and more about the concepts and applications of the machine, now that it has been announced.

Courtesy of Apple Inc.

Who is it For?

Without belaboring the specs, the key take away is that this is a fast graphics machine. Still photography long ago ceased being the standard by which computers were tested. 3D rendering and video tasks have taken over as the heavy lifting tests. And this machine is all about fast memory, fast internal storage (I hesitate to call it a drive) and fast communications protocols to external devices. Which pretty much describes video editing. Not that it won’t be great for many other uses, but anything you can do conveniently, without delays and slowdowns, on the latest iMac, is not a candidate for the (as yet undefined) much higher price tag of the upcoming MacPro. Photographers working with huge layered files or composites, those wishing to work with multiple HD (and 4K) screens, and those wishing to access large numbers of images quickly, may find justification, but basic photo editing won’t really need the capabilities of this machine.

Courtesy of Apple Inc.

Why is it Groundbreaking?

Apple’s key advantage over other companies in the industry is the ability to customize and integrate all components of software, hardware and communications. Here, this takes the form of integrating all the high powered, heat creating chips into a unified core. This allows better heat transfer, which should have implications for longer life, improved performance, and with the custom cooling system, lower noise. All in an elegant little package.

Courtesy of Apple Inc.

Why is it Risky?

Another  unique decision was forcing all other high speed functions to Thunderbolt 2. This is an external data transfer system so fast it vies with the fastest internal data protocols, with the added flexibility of not having the components be internal. This allows the device to be small, and the expansion to be totally fluid, as it does not need to fit specific expansion bay sizes and numbers. The risks of this forward-thinking strategy include the current lack of Thunderbolt 2 accessories, the long lag time it took before Thunderbolt 1 accessories trickled onto the market, the premium cost of Thunderbolt devices, the small market size (which may not lure as many third parties to produce such accessories) and the need for companies accustomed to creating only internal products, such as video cards, to create external products. Which leaves those companies responsible for their own heat dissipation schemes for those external enclosures as well.

Courtesy of Apple Inc.

Conceptual Design

Good design consists of determining what the key aspects of a project are (selecting too many dilutes them all), and how best to express those elements. In the case of the new MacPro, Apple has emphasized speed, centralized cooling, reduced size, and the external nature of everything else. This is a legitimate design list, and rethinking the computer’s size, shape, and other factors based on this short list is excellent design. Whether it is excellent marketing is yet to be seen.  

Credits: C. David Tobie, Copyright 2013. Website: CDTobie.com Return to Blog’s Main Page

PhoozL Architectural Night Photo Contest Results

I’ve just completed judging the PhoozL Photography Contest of the Week. This week’s theme was Architectural Night Photography. From my overview:

“I was impressed by the quality of images submitted to the ‘Architecture Nights’ photo contest. Many were classic city skylines, with dramatic sunsets or colorful water reflections. A few stood out by offering unique perspectives or content, something that will stick with me and effect my vision in the future; which is always an important criteria for me when judging images.”

Here is the link on Phoozl to read more, to see the winners, and to read the critiques of them. Thanks to Harald Johnson for inviting me to participate in this PhoozL event.

Credits: C. David Tobie, Copyright 2012.   Website: CDTobie.com   Return to Blog’s Main Page

Magic Lantern: High Quality RAW Recording with Canon 5D Mark lll

What is Magic Lantern?

Magic Lantern is an Open Source project that was created to provide extended features and more user control to the Canon 5D Mark ll camera, specifically for videography purposes. The project has since been extended (no surprise) to the 5D Mark lll camera as well, and offers some advantages even for still imaging. Magic Lantern is firmware that is run on top of the Canon firmware. As such, it involves “hacking” your camera to install it, but has a history of successful use without problems.

What’s the Big Deal Now?

All this now becomes much more important, as Magic Lantern has recently been making progress that has captured the interest of the entire videography industry. They have moved on from “short burst” video capture to continuous capabilities, and now are able to capture 14 bit RAW data from the 5D Mark lll. The results of this are more than interesting; they may well be groundbreaking.

Canon 5D Mark lll rigged up for serious video work

The latest captures with early builds of this RAW firmware extend the quality of what the 5D Mark lll can manage to a level that appears to exceed other affordable video options such as the Panasonic GH2 and GH3; and even beats the Canon C300 dedicated video camera. This makes affordable options such as the Black Magic cameras much less tempting, and could even have an impact on sales of more advanced cameras such as the Camera RED models.

What do the Results Look Like?

Here is a screenshot I captured directly from the sample video demonstrating the capabilities of this combination. Be sure to click on the image to see it at full resolution. Whether you want to see that much lose dog hair in detail is questionable, but the ability to do so is exciting.

5K Mark lll Magic Lantern Screen Capture

To see sample video from the 5D Mark lll using the latest Magic Lantern firmware, click HERE. Also, for more details and screenshots, take a look at this article.

What Does This Mean for the Future of Video?

It’s too early to make any grand pronouncements, but the value of the 5D Mark lll as a video tool has just increased significantly. The balance of camera cost versus quality, and particularly bit depth and resolution, has shifted as well. It’s only reasonable to expect this to put pressure on Canon to create RAW firmware for the Mark lll themselves (or other means of exporting high bit video in flexible resolutions), or else lose development control for their own products to third parties. Certainly Canon, and all other competitors in the DSLR video category will need to adjust their plans for future products accordingly, as will companies developing affordable dedicated video cameras, again starting with Canon, but most notably Black Magic, whose value proposition is largely defined by the low cost of their products.

And Finally: What about Video Editing Software?

Video editing software developers are racing to incorporate high bit and high resolution into everything they offer. This firmware option will increase the number of cameras in use which can shoot RAW by a large percentage; which in turn will increase the pressure to be able to color correct and process RAW high bit video. With high bit capture, its less damaging to white balance in post processing, and there is more headroom for color LUTs and camera calibration. This is all to a good end, and will settle into the video workflow over time. But there will be bumps in the road during the race to get there.

Credits: C. David Tobie, Copyright 2013. Website: CDTobie.com Return to Blog’s Main Page

Adobe Angst and the Creative Cloud

Creative Cloud Image Courtesy of Adobe

The saying is that you can’t stop progress. And yet we aren’t always happy about it. Many of us live in towns or neighborhoods which once were quite self sufficient, with services from barbers and hairdressers to hardware and grocery stores. Now most of us have to travel miles to reach larger, more impersonal, alternatives to these long-gone local shops. That’s progress.

The digital revolution has been a main focus of progress in the last couple of decades, and many of the professions that have been “digitized” have suffered as a consequence. Unless your digitally impacted line of work is licensed and mandated, you probably earn less, and have less job security, than in the analog days.

Photographers and graphic designers have been hard hit in this manner, and at the same time that their livelihoods have been impacted, their responsibilities have mushroomed. They learned a range of new and foreign computer skills, studied everything from prepress standards to color management, and those that survived have developed some type of balance in the digital world.

The description above attempts to set the stage for the angst that has rocked the photo and graphics community since Adobe, King of imaging software, announced that it is moving virtually all of its graphics, photo, and video applications to a subscription-only model. Adobe did not do this lightly, nor without research and testing. Its not something that user response it likely to change: Adobe has seen the future, and this is their response to it.

And the plans Adobe is offering are not unreasonable, for many users. One or another option will meet the needs of many at reasonable prices, and are actually a very good deal for some. But end users have still been very troubled by the change, and have been expressing their angst in various on-line forums in quite colorful language.

I will apologize in advance for using this term, but there is really no other description for what Adobe is doing than “paradigm shift”. Its a change in the basis underlying the whole field of imaging and design. It feels, to many, as though, after years of owning their own homes, officials have knocked on the door and told them that home ownership is no longer allowed, and that they will need to pay rent in the future. Those who firmly believe in ownership, of not owing anyone anything, of buying what you can afford, as you can afford it, and making your purchase decisions carefully, may certainly find this troubling.

I have no intention of pitching the Creative Cloud options to Adobe users, not today at any rate. Nor do I plan to raise my voice in protest; I believe Adobe is sincere, serious, and probably right in what they are doing. But I did want to address the angst I am hearing in the voices of many users. Much of this is a matter of how we think about things, and if some concepts from me can ease anyone’s concerns, than I’ll consider that enough.

We have never actually owned our software. We bought it, and in some cases even the right to resell it, under a “shrink-wrap license agreement.” Software is written, like a novel, and unlike most things we buy, is covered by copyright, on the basis of it being written. The fine print in your license agreements have long told you that you are licensed to use this software under certain terms; this is not ownership in the sense that you can own a horse or a baseball bat.

Owning software has always been a cooperative venture. I have recommended against purchasing products from companies in financial difficulty, which might not be around to provide bug fixes, updates, and new versions over time. Adobe recently publicly released the source code of Photoshop 1. I downloaded a copy. Its availability underscores the fact that what Photoshop was then is not of much use now, it’s the movement forward, and all the versions in between (which I sometimes awaited in agony, when my workflow didn’t really work until a new feature or function was released) were a work in progress. “Owning” Photoshop 1, which I now own in a far more concrete manner than I did in its heyday, since the actual source code is in my hands, means nothing today, except as a curiosity or an educational tool.

The future of design and photography, more so than most other fields, depend on the prosperity of Adobe. If Adobe disappeared tomorrow, videographers would complain, as they moved up to Avid, if they could afford it, or down to Final Cut X if they could not. Non-Adobe options for graphic design, vector art, page layout, and photography are far weaker, and we would all prefer that Adobe remain in business, even if we would simultaneously hope for some competition to keep prices reasonable and features moving forward.

We are in danger of losing our best newspapers, with their failure to transition to a digital subscription system that people will accept. Adobe’s position in photo and design is bigger than any one newspaper. In fact, without InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop, the remaining newspapers would have quite a scramble to continue producing papers. So the financial health of Adobe, and its move forward into the type of financial model that appears to be the future for higher value applications (as opposed to low cost Apps) is important for all of us that have drives full of InDesign Layouts, Catalogs of Lightroom adjusted RAW files, Layered Photoshop files, Adobe Postscript fonts, and Illustrator images.

Credits: C. David Tobie, Copyright 2012. Website: CDTobie.com Return to Blog’s Main Page

Review: Acorn, Intermediate Image Editing for the Mac

What is Acorn?

Acorn is a basic image editing application for the Mac from FlyingMeat.com. Its standard price is $49.99US, but it is specially priced at $29.99 US during the month of May 2013. It can be purchased from the developer, or from the Mac App store; with all the usual advantages and disadvantages of each method.

Where’s the Market for Acorn?

Acorn uses the tag-line: The Image Editor for Humans. While that line casts me on the role of non-human, I understand perfectly what it means. Apple owns the low-end of this category with iPhoto, for organizing images, and doing simple, mostly global, corrections to them. And Adobe owns the high-end with Photoshop and Lightroom. In fact, the only Mac application that comes to mind in between these two extremes is Adobe’s Photoshop Elements, which is a stripped down version of Photoshop for non-power users. Acorn certainly fits in the same zone as Elements, without the name recognition that Photoshop offers, or the value of having the app you’ve been learning be an exact subset of the app you may end up graduating to, as is the case with Elements and Photoshop.

How’s the Interface?

Since virtually all non-Apple, non-Adobe image editors are on Windows, or from Windows, it is typical to expect a rather unattractive look and interface in such programs. Acorn, refreshingly, looks like a well-designed Mac app. With its most recent update Acorn uses much the same general layout as Elements or Photoshop, with a double-row vertical tool palette on the left edge of the screen, and further tool control windows to the right of your image. While it is not an actual subset of Photoshop, a Photoshop user has no difficulty navigating the app, and learning in Acorn would not leave a new user at a big disadvantage in moving to Photoshop later.

Acorn Interface

What’s the Feature Set?

If you are not the type of user that feels a need to work in Lab space, convert images to CMYK, or perform other power functions, Acorn might well fit your more-advanced-than-iPhoto needs. It offers many of the typical basic and intermediate functions, including layers, masks, and even alpha channels; as well as most common selection, cropping and adjustment functions. One interface element that takes a moment to get used to is that many of the tools found in the Image column of Photoshop’s menu bar are under Filters in Acorn. We’re used to looking under Filters for Blur, Sharpen, and Stylize effects; in Acorn you’ll find Color Controls, Exposure, Gamma, Grayscale, and other such items there as well.

What about HighBit Files, and Other Formats?

Acorn has no trouble opening images saved at 16 bits per channel, or saved as Tiffs with common Tiff compression formats. Pings are also supported. Even layered Photoshop (.psd) files. So most formats the typical user will come across are covered.

Does It Deal with RAW?

Acorn is capable of opening RAW files in at least some formats. Its RAW converter is simple, and best used for emergency situations where a RAW image needs to be viewed, or a quick Jpeg created from it, and a full fledged RAW editor is not convenient or available. The controls in Acorn are not powerful enough to be effective in adjusting RAW images using the SpyderCube. HSL controls for use with SpyderCheckr are also lacking. So consider Acorn not as a RAW converter, but a RAW converter substitute.

Acorn RAW Import Dialog

How’s the Color Management?

This question is of special interest to Datacolor customers. Color presents identically on-screen in Acorn and in recent versions of Photoshop. sRGB and ProPhotoRGB versions of the same image present identically in Acorn as well. So clearly the application is utilizing the display profile; and converting from the tagged image space to the display profile correctly.

Acorn Image over Photoshop Version

The printing dialog from Acorn presents are the standard versions accessed other applications for the same graphics printer, allowing a custom printer profile to be selected. Printing sRGB and ProPhotoRGB versions of the same image gives matching results; so printer color management seems to be functioning correctly as well.

Acorn even has an Assign Color Profile command. There is no matching Convert to Color Profile command, so this limits users from converting the pixels in an image from one color space to another (such as the conversion from sRGB to ProPhoto used for the tests above), and allows only the more practical task of setting the correct color space for an image which is either mistagged, or more likely untagged. Assigning sRGB to the ProPhoto version of the test images used for this article instantly changed the colors to be incorrect, as would be expected, and reassigning ProPhoto instantly corrected them again.

Acorn’s Assign Color Profile option

So What’s the Conclusion?

More and more photographers are going without a copy of Photoshop, given its price tag of several hundred dollars. Many of these users are using the much more affordable, and for most photo tasks much more practical, Lightroom to organize and edit their images. There are also the users still working in iPhoto, but who have reached the point of wanting more advanced features than iPhoto offers.

Such users have the need to occasionally make localized edits, layered files, composited images, images with text added, and other such tasks not covered by Lightroom or iPhoto. Acorn is a very legitimate option for both these cases. It can even be set as the optional second editor from Lightroom, to open Lightroom exported files directly into Acorn for pixel editing.

With Photoshop Elements listing at $99US, and even on special tending to run well above Acorn’s price, Acorn is certainly an easy-editor worth considering.

Credits: C. David Tobie, Copyright 2012. Website: CDTobie.com Return to Blog’s Main Page

FocusTwist: Focus-Controllable Images with the iPhone

Logo Courtesy of Arqball

When you think of controlling the focus of images after the fact, you probably think of the Lytro camera; a clever little device (one is tempted to say prototype) that shows us one way of gaining different info from a shot, instead of spending all our pixels on increased resolution. But now there is an iPhone/iPad app (I’m tempted to think of this as a prototype as well) which allows you to perform a similar trick with your phone photos.

With Arqball’s FocusTwist  app, its time, not resolution reduction, that is used to produce the multiple images. Hold your iPhone still, tap on the foreground element on screen to start the focus process, and in a couple of seconds the FocusTwist app will have captured multiple images with different focal planes; starting with the foreground element you selected. Take a look at this example, which I shot with FocusTwist to include in this article.

FocusTwist Image Example

The process is something of a gimmick, in that the resulting photo can’t be used as a standard image, since there is no current format for “multiple focal plane images”. The other “gimmicky” factor is FocusTwist’s expectation that the foreground object be three to five inches from the lens. This is a great range for macro shots with recent iPhone models, and it shows off the focal plane change function clearly. But it also makes all photos taken with FocusTwist rather similar. The term “meme” comes to mind.

But there are other issues than the “one trick pony” aspect of the application. Note that, while the iPhone was carefully placed and oriented for several seconds before the shot was taken, that FocusTwist failed to orient the image correctly; it appears to be a one-orientation pony as well. And if one wished to adjust the exposure or other factors of the image, say to lighten the tub handles in the foreground? Since this is not a standard image it cannot be edited in a standard image editor, so rotation, lightening, cropping, or other adjustments are not possible. Please recall my “prototype” comment above.

Will FocusTwist images make the rounds as the next phone photo fad? Will such images be passé in a few months? Or are the capabilities of this App perhaps a bit deeper than the directions and marketing video imply? One further dimension that immediately comes to mind is time: it would be possible to capture boughs waving in the breeze, cars moving on the road, or a dancer spinning on the floor in the multiple frames of a FocusTwist image; particularly if Arqball chose to extend the App’s capture capabilities.

How much further will Arqball move with features and functionality? Will they add an option to render out to video, or animated GIF, so that the results of their app can be widely used, instead of trapped in the snowglobe of their own application and website? Will they see this as a beginning of a category, or a parlor trick? Only time will tell…

Credits: C. David Tobie, Copyright 2013. Website: CDTobie.com Return to Blog’s Main Page

Adobe Lightroom 5 Beta for Datacolor Users

This week Adobe released a beta version of Lightroom 5. Here is my initial report on what Lightroom 5 Beta means for those using Datacolor products:

SpyderPrint

Lightroom, while it has added many printing conveniences over the years, has always lacked certain desirable functions for color managed printing. Black Point Compensation is always on when printing from Lightroom; Adobe invented BPC, and is very proud of it, but there are legitimate reasons for choosing not to use it, and the lack of a checkbox for this feature makes Lightroom printing less robust. And while there are four (or at least three and a half) rendering intents in ICC printer profiles, Lightroom chooses to only offer two of them to users. So those who prefer Saturation intent when printing using Datacolor’s SpyderPrint profiles, will have to continue using the SpyderPrint Preference option to switch the Saturation and Perceptual intents to create a version of their profile for printing from Lightroom using the Saturation intent (accomplished in Lightroom by then selecting Perceptual, and the special version of the profile with the switched intents).  None of this has changed in Lightroom 5 beta; though hope springs eternal. Perhaps Lightroom 6…

SpyderCube

The Rendering Engine in Lightroom 4 was significantly different from previous versions, necessitating major changes in how the SpyderCube was used; but providing better controls for working with the Cube in the process. Lightroom 5 has no such engine changes, allowing the same process for using the SpyderCube with LR5 as with LR4.

SpyderCheckr

The lack of Rendering Engine changes, or Color changes, mean that creating Camera Calibrations is done the same way in Lightroom 5 beta as it was in Lightroom 4, and that results are the same as well.

Spyder Display Profiles

How Lightroom uses display profiles does not appear to have changed, so it is not necessary to reprofile your displays to use Lightroom 5 beta. But its still a good idea to recalibrate at least once a month anyways…

SpyderLensCal

Lens Auto-Focus Calibration is a camera firmware function, so does not effect Lightroom, or any application, other than providing sharper images to work with.

A Word on LR5B In General

Most of the changes in Lightroom 5 beta involve allowing it to perform more image editing functions. Some of these are functions that used to require moving the image into Photoshop (and out of RAW) that now can be done in Lightroom; and in some cases more easily and automatically than in Photoshop. And a clever new version of Proxy Editing allows images on drives not currently on-line to be edited using a new, larger preview image. This will have some interesting Cloud implications in the long run.

For me the improved rendering engine was the key feature of LR4, while the softproofing function and its ability to create custom tuned virtual print versions of an image for various papers was the elegant new addition. This time around the off-line editing capability has a similar feel of being the elegant new addition, while the LR5 “engine” changes are limited to added capabilities in the Lens Profile section. I will plan to cover these Lens Profiling changes, and what they mean for advanced users, in a future article.

Credits: C. David Tobie, Copyright 2013. Website: CDTobie.com Return to Blog’s Main Page