Wide-screen monitors are all the rage these days and, in fact, that’s just about all you can buy anymore. That’s great if you want to watch movies on your computer. But I don’t. I watch movies on my TV. I use my PC for editing photographs among other things.

If you use your wide-screen monitor in the standard landscape orientation and take portrait orientation photos that’s a problem. It’s a problem because you’re using only about one-third of your monitor’s pixels. When editing portrait-orientation photos you have to do a lot of zooming and panning to really see what you’re doing.

But if you have two monitors there’s an easy fix. Rotate one of your monitors to portrait orientation. Give it a try. You’ll be amazed at how much more impressive your portrait orientation photos look. It’s also great for reading long Word documents and PDFs.

Spring is in the air and with it comes the reawakening of this blog. I’ve just returned from a four-day workshop with Santa Fe Photography Workshops in New Mexico. My next post will be a trip/workshop write-up but right now I’d just like to mention that I’m working on a redesign of this blog and will be relaunching soon. I’ll have some posts about that process as well as posts on a variety of photo topics.

One of the things I’ll be doing is taking a second look at Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The folks at Santa Fe Photography Workshops are enthusiastic Lightroom users and, as a result, I’ve been thinking about how I might streamline my workflow with it. If you read my previous post on Lightroom you’ll know that I had some objections to it in the past. But seeing how other photographers are using it in a highly efficient manner has caused me to rethink my position. I’m not sold yet but I’m willing to take a second look at the latest version.

I’ll also be posting a trip write-up of the Composition and Light workshop I did at SFPW along with some suggestions on how to develop a better feel for composition.

Watch for that and lots of other new information along with a more attractive and responsive web design during the coming weeks and months.

Adobe has released Lightroom 4 as part of the Creative Cloud; see Adobe website for details.

Making selections and masking are essential skills for photographers and it’s common to encounter images where it’s difficult to cleanly select just the desired subject from a busy background. In recent years software has become much smarter and innovations like Photoshop’s Quick Select and Refine Edge tools have greatly simplified the process. But even with recent advances the process can still be time-consuming. So any product that can improve the process has the potential to be a big time-saver. And if you don’t have Photoshop but still want to do some compositing or localized image adjustments you need an alternative such as onOne Software’s Perfect Mask. I recently got the version 5 of Perfect Mask as part of onOne’s Perfect Photo Suite 6. I was eager to find out if the new version could help me save time in my masking and selection chores. Watch this in-depth video review of my experiences using Perfect Mask and find out if it could be a useful tool in your tookit.

If you have problems viewing the video here you can also watch it on YouTube:
Masking and Selection with Perfect Mask 5, Part 1
Masking and Selection with Perfect Mask 5, Part 2

I previously posted about my problems installing and using onOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite 6 and now, I’m happy to report, that we’re mostly past those problems. The most serious of the problems I encountered, such as the inability to use the product from Photoshop, have been remedied. It’s now much more stable and, I feel, has reached a level that makes it usable.

That’s not to say that it’s now trouble-free. I continue to experience odd behaviors occasionally when zooming, for example. And I’ve seen some glitches in the Perfect Mask module. But these are relatively minor problems that can be ignored or worked around with little effort.

Check back in a few weeks for news about an upcoming review of the Perfect Mask module.

UPDATE 1-7-12: See my post Perfect Photo Suite 6.0.2 Update is Usable for news of recent fixes.

I’ve been hoping to write a review of Perfect Photo Suite 6 since before its launch in October. I pre-ordered it in order to save a few bucks and had been watching the daily videos with eager anticipation of the cool new features to come. However, I’ve been disappointed with the product as delivered. I’ve had repeated problems with installation, licensing and use of the product. I’ve been working with onOne Software tech support, trying various things myself, including a clean reinstallation of Windows and all my software. Alas, the problems continue, with the result being a seriously degraded user experience. I’ve been holding off writing about these problems in the hope that all would eventually be fixed but, at this point, I feel like I owe it to you to let you know about these problems. (more…)

I want to say a few words about retouching and photo ethics. I could probably write 10,000 words on the subject but that would be overkill because my philosophy is pretty simple. I’m making images for my own enjoyment and, hopefully, yours. I’m not trying to document the way Half Dome looked on September 18, 2011. I’m not a photojournalist. Those guys have a strict set of rules for a good reason—they are trying to document how something looked or what happened at a given point in time.

I’m’ not. So, for me, anything goes. Remove dust specks? Absolutely. Remove a power line or a tree branch? Sure (in Photoshop—not the actual power line or branch!). Change the sky? Yes, if it makes a better image. I’m trying to create interesting and pleasing images so whatever serves that goal is just another tool in my toolbox. I’ll use anything from the healing brush to Alien Skin SnapArt.

After all, it’s clear that all photography is interpretation starting with what to include in the frame and what to omit. (more…)