Before and After Photos

Last Tuesday we had the 'Digital Presentation Night' on our local camera club. I expected that most of the members would 'just' bring photos. Therefore I decided to do something different.

I like black&white photos, so I made a small presentation showing the original photo (unedited) and the final (B&W) result. The responds was actually better than expected.

The original presentation (created with Adobe Lightroom) can be viewed here (flash-required).

Nik Software for Adobe Lightroom

A while ago, Nik Software released the Nik Color Efex Pro plugins for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (or so it seems :) ). Now they also release the awesome B&W filters Silver Efex Pro plugins for Adobe Lightroom v2.3.

No need to open the images in Photoshop for the Black and White conversion process. Just do it from within Lightroom.

Nik Silver Efex Pro 4 Lightroom

The new installers (either Silver Efex Pro or Color Efex Pro is nothing more but an small update of the original software with the added support for Lightroom. The update is free for registered users. New users pay $199,00.

Downside (apart from the price for new users) is that the custom templates created under the Photoshop CS version are not directly accessible under the Lightroom version.
Another point of attention is that a new copy is created every time you open the photo in the Lightroom plugin. This copy isn't removed when you press cancel in the Nik plugin. This behaviour was also present in the earlier Lightroom versions when you editted a photo in Photoshop. So I hope that this (bug) will be gone with a new release of the NIK software.

Here is the information supplied with the Color Efex Pro for Lightroom installer (the Silver Efex Pro text is basically the same):

Installation Help for Color Efex Pro^TM 3.0
For Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom®
© 2009 Nik Software, Inc.

Installation for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

1. Start the installer utility by double clicking on the Color Efex Pro 3.0 Installer file.
2. After you read the Welcome Screen and Read Me and accept the license agreement, the Color Efex Pro 3.0 installer will automatically install into the appropriate location.
3. Click the Continue button.
4. Enter your user name and password and then either select Begin 15 day demo and click on the Demo button or select Enter Product Key and Activate, then enter your name and product key and click on the Activate button.
5. Select whether to automatically register Color Efex Pro 3.0 as an external editor with Lightroom.*
6. Complete the installation.
7. The next time Lightroom is opened, your new software will appear under the Photo > Edit In menu.

Minimum Requirements
Operating System:
• Mac OS X v10.4 or later

Processor:
• Macintosh-PowerPC® G4, G5, Intel Core^TM Solo, Intel Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, Xeon®

RAM:
• Minimum: 1 GB

Image Editing Application:
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

*The option to automatically register Color Efex Pro 3.0 as an external editor for Lightroom is only available if Lightroom is detected during installation. Color Efex Pro 3.0 can be manually added as an external editor to Lightroom with the instructions below.

Adding Color Efex Pro 3.0 to Lightroom as an External Editor

1. Open the Preferences in Lightroom.
2. Click the External Editing tab.
3. In the Additional External Editor section select a desired File Format, Color Space, Bit Depth, Resolution, and Compression.**
4. Click on Choose to select an application. Navigate to the location of Color Efex Pro 3.0.
5. Select the Color Efex Pro 3.0 file and click Choose.
6. Under the Preset drop-down menu select Save Current Settings as New Preset... and name the Preset.

**Color Efex Pro 3.0 only supports TIFF files (8-bit or 16-bit) with No compression or LZW compression.

Color Efex Pro 3.0 can then be accessed under the Photo menu as an external editor.

v Color Efex Pro 3.000LRmac

Lumix LX3 in Poor Light Conditions

Metallica @ AhoyLast Monday I visited the Metallica Death Magnetic Tour concert in Ahoy, Rotterdam (NL). A relatively small establishment for a rock band like Metallica, but great for the fans (if you got tickets), since the podium was centered in the middle of the arena. So everyone was relatively close to the stage.

I brought my Lumix LX3 for this occasion (since I won't be allowed entrance with my D300 + 70-200mm lens). This was the first time I brought a (P&S) camera to a concert, so I had no idea of what to expect of the quality.
I must say that I did try several settings, but the iA (Intelligent Auto) mode left me with the best images. Downside is that this mode produces only JPEG's and no RAW files. The A, P, S and M modes are too susceptible to the light changes (over- or underexposed, or just blurry images), and the light conditions change a lot (almost every second).

The movie-mode of the camera performs relatively well. Extremely bright lights results in vertical lines across the movie. The audio is not that good, but hey... it's a digital still camera with filming capabilities.

The only downside of the camera was (and still is) that it lacked zooming to 400 or 600mm :).

The photographic results can be seen on my flickr page.