Photo Project 1, 24. Traditional or Lifestyle

Lifestyle? Well I thought about picturing my other half, she runs her penny saving themed blog and regularly returns with items she's reclaimed from charity shops and the like, but this seemed a little too obvious.

How about feeding pigs wearing black tie? Seems like a lifestyle choice to me.

The only change from the original was saturating the colours.

This picture is of a gentleman referred to as Mutley, who was hosting a wedding reception on his farm – naturally the pigs still need feeding regardless of attire. The wedding was of the lovely couple Kate &Rob Crothers. 

Photoshop CS6 a hash of a review.

So I've been contemplating the upgrade to CS6... there is even a free 30day trial from adobe.

So 17 days left, and will I purchase it? Given it's just shy of a grand? No.

Don't get me wrong, it's very pretty, a vast improvement from any before... but it's key thing seems to be it can crop and straighten pictures for you at the same time:

All you do is draw a crop line, like the ruler tool then it rotates and crops to fit.

But to be honest, anyone who could use the ruler tool and arbitrary rotate could do this in previous versions.

However, the functionality of the RAW image processing is amazing, you can even do bulk lens correction it picks out the lens automatically, and you just tick a box. This seems to do an amazing job on the lenses I've tired it on. And it works on .CR2 files by default, which is the file type newer canons kick out.

The other big change I've noticed is under the photo merge and HDR - the HDR is MUCH better and aligns images will even if taken by hand.

But if anything with all these settings it seems to do a worse job of merging! But it is quicker, probably because of the 64bit architecture, allowing it to use a lot more RAM.

So yes, generally prettier than earlier models, 64bit, nice Raw functions, HDR improvement and probably other things I haven't noticed. But £1000, honestly? B would kill me and I'd rather get a 16-35mm F2.8 L and use gimp.

There are a few things you can do to bring down the cost, upgrade prices are lower (about 60% lower) and I think you can buy from the American page - which basically has the same price but different currency... given it's currently (31/05/2012) 1 British pound = 1.5485 U.S. dollars that's a massive saving.

But still no, for now.

Photo Project 1, 23. Sparkle or Blur

I'm taking this one quite literally - here's some macro bubbles in a glass of champaign.

Photo Project 1, 22. In a Store

Back in Disney again... the captions just write themselves.

Photo Project 1, 21. Vintage

Well I add a vintage touch to a lot of pictures, it's that sort of instagram look which seems to be very popular... and I can understand why it's good on phones - pictures from phones are generally rubbish, so adding vignetting covers that up nicely.

Occasionally there is a scene captured in a photograph which just looks a bit better with a vintage feel, here my other half pushed her way past some kids in Disneyland Paris to do the Singin' in the rain routine.

Photo Project 1, 20. Self Portrait

I've got a feeling this has been covered off before in a post about the 10 Second Challenge - basically you set the timer on the camera and run to be in shot, some of the mores tricky locations for this were on the end of the Grand Canyon or on top of the Death Valley sign (the silly footwear was on account of American Airlines deciding to send my shoes (and rest of clothes) on a tour of the states without me).

Also on that previous post was me staying very still in a river... well I've taken that picture and added it to a few more to make a panoramic.

Photo Project 1, 19. Light and Dark

Light and dark meaning Silhouettes?

Photo Project 1, 18. Texture or Pattern

Its a pattern, amazingly complicated... and normally dogs don't stay still enough to notice this detail. Luckily for me Jazz was fast asleep at the time.

Photo Project 1, 17. Mirror or Window

Well out the window it was pretty rainy, sadly the view out of our windows is onto an office car park... which is only entertaining when it's covered in snow.



So instead I have a pirate getting rained on.