See the Rainbow

Every day I have huge flocks of Rainbow Lorikeets come around to the garden to display their amazing colour. I love watching their antics as they hop around squabbling and working out who's the boss. Sometimes I think they all reckon they're in charge. It truly is hilarious. 

I guess, as they are always around, you tend to get a little blasé and just take them for granted. 

Sometimes, though, the camera has just got to come out to capture their amazing display. 

The light was gorgeous but failing fast so I used a little flash fill to bring out the colours of the rainbow. 

Have a great week everyone and enjoy the wonders in your garden. 

The Future of Post Processing for Photographers

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So, I've just completed a booked out Digital Processing Bootcamp weekender at Redcliffe with a great group and I got to thinking about a few things. 

It is becoming more and more obvious that to me that photographers don't need all the whiz-bang tools and features in Photoshop. 

In fact the user interface of Lightroom 5 is very easy to learn and most tasks performed by most photographers can be carried out without needing to resort to the 'heavy lifting' in Photoshop. 

Sure, there are many professional photographers out there who have some unique and specific uses for Photoshop with tried and tested formulas, actions, scripts and so forth, me included. But, for the everyday 'hobbyist/serious amateur' photographer Lightroom will do the job. 

When I talk about heavy lifting, I refer to layers, composites, large blemish removals and the like.
For most though, the import, library, cataloging, adjusting, cropping, straightening, colour correcting, exporting, printing, etc. etc. can all be taken care of more than adequately in Lightroom. 

Of course, add in a couple of magic plug-in suites such as NIK or OnOne and you have a very powerful editing tool.

The reason I bring this up is that we spent less time in Photoshop over this last weekend's bootcamp but it really made no difference. We accomplished all that was needed in Lightroom and a couple of inexpensive plug-ins.

With the recent changes that Adobe have made to the way you can purchase Photoshop through the Creative Cloud (or rather can't purchase photoshop) you may be better served using Lightroom 5 (which has the very latest whiz-bang RAW convertor) and Photoshop Elements. 

Elements is far cheaper and has many, many of the important features found in the full version of Photoshop. It could just be your perfect post-processing solution.

As an added bonus with the money you save, you can come along to my digital processing bootcamps and learn how to get the most out of your images with Lightroom  

Here is our happy group at the end of their gruelling weekend bootcamp. Have a great week everyone. Cheers, Mark