Roland Tanglao's Weblog

[Disclaimer: I am a friend of Kinzin honcho Michael Fergusson and Kinzin social media marketer Megan Cole]

I love Kinzin's aka "These are my Kids"'s new (well not so new my blog post is late!) "Print Pack" feature. This feature allows you to ship 10 prints for $US 2.50 plus shipping anywhere in the world!

I use it to send 10 photos per month to my family in Belgium and Ontario and also to us. Great idea (which I and probably others suggested to them!)

Digital photos are great but having hard copies is also great. And finally through the Print Pack Feature I have an easy way to do it from flickr (or from your local drive or facebook but I don't store my photos on local drives or facebook).

Feature Request: do the same thing for videos i.e. how about a DVD from my flickr videos shipped once a month for say $5 / month plus shipping?

Feedback on These are my kids:

1. Could we please have it as an independent website? There's no value for me having it as a facebook app (but I can see why it is a facebook app; the community is there, still I'd rather use it using my kinzin login rather than my facebook login)
2. The default privacy settings are to make everything visible in your Facebook feed. I'd prefer the default to be that everything is NOT visible but I concede I am over zealous about the privacy of our child.
3. Adding a photo to my print pack is not intuitive. You can't add all 10 at once, why not? Also I would prefer to have to be able to add photos via a tag e.g. kinzinprintjuly08 to my print pack.

After using an Eye-Fi card for about 3 weeks, I have to say it's fantastic and highly recommended!

Observations:

1. Shouldn't have to rely on a PC or Mac to configure it (although i can see why they do, it's the lazy/easy way, c'mon be creative and do it without a PC or Mac or Linux box!)
2. The fact that none of the digicam or SLR manufacturers have this built-in (Nikon's Wifi on their point and shoots is inflexible and the WiFi transmitters on digital SLRs are overpriced and far too big) shows their analogue camera heritage. Connectivity is the most important part of digital cameras and WiFi is the easiest and most ubiquitous connectivity and should therefore be built in
3. Eye-Fi should do RAW files and video files as well
4. Can't wait for the Eye-Fi Explore, the geo version that uses Skyhook technology
5. Please can we have an Eye-Fi version for Compact Flash as well as SD Cards? I don't want to have to buy SD to flash adapters
6. I'm going to buy another Eye-Fi and a SD to CF adapter so I can use it in my Canon 20D digital SLR and upload photos no muss no fuss at public events with WiFi
7. The fact that the Eye-Fi is *still* unavailable in Canada is unacceptable

I am running the Lightroom 2.0 Public Beta and like what I see so far. I love the dual monitor support and the many many keyboard shortcuts (e.g. '<' and '>' to cycle through basic adjustments in develop, ';' to reset the adjustment, plus/minus to make the adjustments go up and down and command/control f11 to toggle the the second monitor on and off). Haven't tried the localized adjustment too much; initially it's a bit confusing to me because it doesn't have a preview, otherwise the fantastic what's new in Lightroom instructions by Ian Lyons are very helpful. Looking forward to the upcoming Lightroom 2.0 videos from Michael Reichmann . It's non production-quality but I don't see any reason for early adopter enthusiastic amateurs like myself not to try it out.

QUOTE

As a result of user feedback the engineers have enhanced the Basic adjustment panel so that it's now possible to cycle through the controls using either the comma '< 'or period '>' keys. The keyboard '+/-' keys now increase/decrease the active control, and larger adjustments can be obtained by holding down the 'Shift' key when holding down the '+/-' keys. Tapping the semi-colon ';' key resets the active control to its default value.

The Clarity control can now be adjusted for negative values, which has the effect of softening images. This particular feature is likely to be ore useful when applied as a local correction brush than globally.

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I know nothing about sharpening. So I will read this blog post about Lightroom 1.1 sharpening very carefully and try the new presets (and playing around with the sliders of course!).

FROM LightroomNews » Sharpening:

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Perhaps the easiest way to get started is to use either of the two new Sharpen presets found in the Develop module Presets panel (Develop presets are also available via the Library module Quick Develop panel). These two presets can be a useful starting point when learning how to sharpen in Lightroom 1.1. All you have to do is decide which of these two settings is most applicable to the image you are about to sharpen.

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Great Lightroom 1.1 tip!

FROM John Beardsworth Photography News/Blog:

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When it's ticked, Lightroom adds the VCs and not the master images to the new Collection. This is a smart move because, especially when you're working with lots of pictures, a Collection remains the fastest way to select your virtual copies - grouping all the black and whites for a job, or all the alternative crops etc. It's certainly faster than filtering on the date or keyword or whatever, and then on virtual copies in the Filmstrip. I'm tempted to say forget other methods of creating VCs - the shortcut's Ctrl/Cmd N.

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Ian Lyons' Lightroom 1.1 Review is the best Lightroom 1.1 review and summary of what's new I've found so far. Complete with informative annotated screenshots! Thanks!

FROM Adobe Lightroom:

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So what's with the reference to a photo shoot to Antarctica? The photo shoot was memorable for many reasons, not least of which was the opportunity it provided to put Lightroom through its paces away from the comfort of home and our very speedy desktop computers. It allowed us to see how the application performed in the hands of those less familiar with its operation. It also provided an opportunity for those who had influenced much of what had gone into Lightroom 1.0 to hear what others really thought. Much was learned (good points and bad) and I think it’s fair to say that many of the frustrations experienced by a much larger group of users since the official launch was also experienced by those on board the good ship Professor Multanovskiy.

Did much of what we learned find it's way back into Lightroom 1.1? Some of it did and some didn't, but then again Rome wasn't built in a day. Remember, Lightroom still hasn't celebrated its first birthday, so expectations of major enhancements are unrealistic, or are they?

READ THE WHOLE THING FOR THE COMPLETE SCOOP!

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This is the most comprehensive list of Lightroom 1.1 changes I have found so far!

FROM Photoshop Services - Lightroom:

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1.1 has finally been released!!!

Download links

I've noted as many of the changes I can think of, and there are no doubt plenty more I've forgotten!

Updates to the keyboard shortcuts sheets are available here

So, the main new features...

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The new Lightroom 1.1 catalog functionality that replaces Libraries at first glance appears very similar to iView Media Pro catalogs. Must check this out and explore this further!

FROM LightroomNews » General menus:

QUOTE

With the release of the 1.1 update, the Lightroom program has undergone a number of fundamental changes. The program’s performance has been tuned to run that little bit faster and more smoothly. Elsewhere you will notice quite a number of interface changes, not least in the Lightroom menus. When you first launch Lightroom after upgrading you will see a big change here, so as a service to those of you who are upgrading I have highlighted all the main menu differences. You can use this as a quick guide to some of the new changes.

Let’s start by looking at the File, Edit and Help menus, which are common to all of the Lightroom modules (I have not included the Window menu here because this is the one menu list that hasn’t changed in 1.1).

...

Starting from the top, we have the Catalog options. Catalog is the new term now used to describe what used to be referred to as the Lightroom image library (the file that contains all the information used to manage the images that are displayed in Lightroom). It is argued that this change in terminology from ‘library’ to ‘catalog’ now provides a clearer distinction between it and the Library module. Plus there is now better support for multiple catalogs.

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Without the N93's optical zoom, this shot would not have been possible since I had no other camera on me. Without the N93's GPRS connectivity (too bad it doesn't support 850 MHz EDGE which is not 3G but much faster), I wouldn't have been able to upload it to flickr while I was still at the beach and get reactions to it via the N93's WebKit web browser again while still at the beach!

The combination of an optical zoom with always on connectivity is unbeatable (in spite of the imperfections of the memory management in S60v3 and the random shutoff bug that happens with the latest firmware). I am jealous of the N95's GPS but when I get an N95, I am sure that I will miss the zoom. In the meantime, I continue to groove on my awesome but flawed N93!

Are you a busy parent and don't have time to correct each of your photos in Lightroom? Then just use Lightroom's cataloguing and culling features and upload to flickr using Mac OS X's built in RAW to JPEG converters.

I do this for kids pics to get them up on the net as soon as possible. Obviously you'd want to crop and develop using the Develop module if you want to print your pictures or have total control over the JPEGS but this works for fast and dirty, get 'em up on the web so your worldwide family can see them !

1. Import the photos into Lightroom
2. Remove blurry and non keepers
3. Add keywords
4. In LIbrary mode, select all the keepers and then Metadata->XMP->Export Metadata to Files
5. Drag the photos into PictureSync and then upload to flickr
6. Done!