Category: Business

New and Improved?

New and Improved?

Posted on by Jim Roberts

Recently Adobe published some previews of new functionality coming to Photoshop and Lightroom. I expect these new features to be released at the end of the month at the Adobe Max Virtual Conference. Photoshop will soon have an AI enhanced sky replacement feature while Lightroom will have a new Advanced Color Grading tool.

It seems to me that while these are interesting updates the seem to be more towards add functionality to the Adobe apps that are already in other applications. Case in point take a look at the color balance tool in Capture One Pro:

Capture One Pro Color Balance

Seems fairly similar don’t you think? As of this date I believe that Luminar and ON1 both have “AI” driven sky replacement tools but since I don’t use those applications I will not comment on how similar they are to Adobes new features.

I’m getting the feeling that Adobe is now becoming a reactionary company. Instead of innovating they are just covering the features that are in other application. It would seem that Adobe with it’s resources and (a whole boatload of subscription payers) would be creating new stuff rather that duplicating what others have done with a lot less resources and a lot less money.

Over the years I’ve met quite a number of Adobe’s forward facing Evangelists and I quite like each and every one of them. Just not sure how excited they will be to now be able to say, “yes we can do that too”.

The Plight of the Self Employed

The Plight of the Self Employed

Posted on by Jim Roberts

I’ve been self employed for the last 23 years. It has advantages, name your own hours, work from home mostly, doing what you love to do. One of the downsides of self employment is getting sick. As a guy who writes programs for a living I usually can muddle thru a cold as for the most part if I keep my nose from running and shorting out my keyboard I can still send out the invoice at the end of the week. When being self employed requires you to go out in the real world, be it writing code, taking pictures, or other such fun stuff, feeling less than prefect is not well, fun.

While I have been rather heathy, this is my first cold in probably 5 years, it does make some parts of the job at hand harder to do. So my advise is if you can, take a down day (yeah probably not if you have a team of twenty descending on a photoshoot). Time spent recovering early in the sickness may keep you from having a longer illness.

You can still be semi-productive if you have stayed at home to recover. Things I like to do between hacking fits:

  • Process  images I have not had time to get to.
  • Clean up social media. Websites don’t fix themselves.
  • Clean up email (unless that is what made you sick in the first place).
  • Be feverishly creative. Make a virtual copy an image and see how far I can take it. Push that vibrance slider really far remove all clarity, twist it poke it, reverse it. Remember the have an excuse (I was out of my head).
  • Don’t get overwhelmed by the down time.
  • Research a new project or product that you have wanted to try. (Today I spent a couple of hours reading about a programming environment I might need to know for a new client. Geeky I know)).

Note: If it’s Mission Critical put it aside. It will take longer to fix if it more borked.

Bridge (St Augustine) Fujifilm X-T2 XF 16-55mm f/2.8 R LM WR ISO 200 f/11 10 seconds at 55mm

And just relax, take a nap, get better, and work at keeping yourself healthy.

On Being An Aspiring Pro Photographer

On Being An Aspiring Pro Photographer

Posted on by jrnoded

Sage advise from Ming Thein on being a professional photographer. His points works with just about any business you may want to start.  Link

 

you must also be wise enough to know when to turn a job away: if it’s a bad creative fit, or there’s too much price negotiation, then walk away.

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