P-r-o-L-i-g-h-t

Wedding pictures nearly ready

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:44:00 +0000

I confirm that I do prefer strong color and contrast

I think I am getting there (got to finish this week-end) still I must have already worked the equivalent of a week on these wedding pictures. That is lot of spare time. I don't regret though. I hope the family will be pleased and I learnt quite a lot from it too (see Lessons learnt from my first serious wedding as official photographer).

I confirm that I do prefer strong color and contrast to the point where the highlights start to go; but not too much: just a bit. I plan to make it "my style". I am sure it is not for everybody's taste (i.e. I am not sure the family will like it) nevertheless I do really like it. Worth noting that it does not always work well for every picture. Dark pictures become often too murky when boosting color and contrast.

I also got in the habit of using layers in Adobe PhotoShopfor the ajustments like curves and saturation. It is far more effective to compare the multiple effects applied to one picture using layers rather than history state. You can also adjust them indepedently from each other: that is absolutely great.

The IMatchcategory window is acting up. It automatically selects random categories when I click on one and then I have to close the window to select a second one; if not it does not select it (I think I had this problem before and fixed it). Quite annoying when one has 600 pictures to categorize.

Also I had a script to sync tiff files to raw files and it does not work anymore. I had to copy manually the properties for each picture. Plus the ratings don't copy across, I had to set them for the tiff files manually. Don't be scared IMatchis a great DAM tool!

I am going to reoganize (again) my category splashers (that is a cool feature of IMatch). I want to use them for groups now (like family units). They are often together on my pictures so it makes sense to have a splasher to add them all at once.

Also I have second toughts about my use of categories for my workflow. I still don't use labels. Maybe I should use them for that (the author of The DAM Bookdoes it so it must be right). My main problem with my solution is that there is no good short cut to change the status of the workflow. The only shortcut I now off is F11 plus categories number but then you have to press ESC to leave this mode.

Lessons learnt from my first serious wedding as official photographer

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 13:02:00 +0000

You must come well prepared, know your camera, know your subject.

I went to my cousin's wedding on the 2nd of June. I sort of hijacked it and took control over the photography session as I was getting little bit frustrated with the number of people standing in front of everybody else for hours trying to work out how to take a picture "of the newly married couple" with their camera phone (yes a bloody camera phone).

I am not a photo snob but men if you want to take some pictures of a unique event like this please be prepared and most importantly be respectful of the people around you. You don't want to go fiddling half an hour with the buttons of your camera phones with ten people behind you about to strangle you!

Anyway, looking at my pictures, there are quite a few obvious problems. Quite a few are blurry, some are badly framed, some are boring, some are overexposed or underexposed. The list goes on. It was a revealing experience. Don't worry there are some good ones too.

Some of the blurry should not have been. They were taken at 1/60s - 1/80s with my wider lens (Sigma) at the maximum aperture of f4.5 and at a zoom level of about 40 mn. As a rule of thumb one considers that you can go as low as 1/Xs if your zoom level is X mn. I also think because my camera has a small CCD it makes the problem worse. To be safe I usually reduce that number by one or two spot(s). So at about 1/60s I should be able to zoom at up to about 40 mn i.e. the blur is not related to camera shake.

Interestingly most of the ones taken at an f5.0 looks sharper by a visible margin. Could it be that my sigma wide lens is a bit soft at its widest aperture? Yes, I think it is. I would generally suggest being careful around the max and min aperture of a lens. They tend to be softer than the middle of the aperture range.

The underexposed one can be corrected in RawShooter by increasing the exposure level. However doing so increase significantly the level of noise. You can reduce this noise using the noise reduction tools but then your picture can become a tad fuzzy: nothing beats a well exposed picture.

As for the badly framed pictures, practice should hopefully improve this. The key thing is to consistently review the camera viewfinder edges for intruders. Obviously this is easily said and far more difficult to do in real life especially in a wedding where people consistently move. Some of this could be corrected with a crop in PhotoShop or a bit of cloning. However in the former, you loose quite of bit of the image, and in the latter you will loose quite a bit of time.

Many of my pictures appear quite uninteresting, but some looks really original and dynamic. I used the wide lens for closeup portraits in the restaurant; it worked really well. It gave them life and makes the picture stand out immediately: it feels like you are inside it. I highly recommend this technique (get very closed to your subject using widest setting of your wide zoom lens). Also of the boring one, you could try to crop the closer towards the subject which will give it a bit more edge. The rest could be improved with a bit of PhotoShop magic but it gets quite time consuming (filters effects for instance).

Out of 500-600 pictures, I believe I have 10 great pictures and possibly 20 really good. I will possibly send about 100 pictures to my family. I would say 1/6 of the pictures are worth looking at. The rest will never see the day of light (sad). Don't be surprised though. This is a normal ration acceptable by professional standard.

In conclusion, all these little problems can be solved or at least improved easily with a bit of preparation and practice. I must say things go very quickly and people are impatient and somewhat unruly therefore you must come well prepared, know your camera, know your subject.

Photo: Old Alsacienne Window (d005910)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 29 May 2007 21:32:00 +0000

Title: Old Alsacienne Window (d005910)

Location: North - East of France (Alsace)

Date: October 31, 2006

Comment: Alsace is full of lovely old house making it a dream for photographer

Amazing Flickrvision 2D/3D Flickr mashup

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 20 May 2007 10:56:00 +0000

You have to check this out, this just hilarious. Flickrvision made a 2D and 3D map mashup using the Flickr picture stream. You can see the pictures appearing life on the map: just fantastic! Above is an example of the 3D map my favourite and below an example of 2D map:

Photographic backup strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 19:50:00 +0000

My current backup strategy is very simple: I have 2 Seagate drives, I copy using SynToy files from one drive to the other one and I use one drive for working, the other one for backup. However reading the The DAM book, I can see that my current backup strategy has flaws.

Firstly the 2 drives are in the same location therefore are exposed to the same risk (theft, accident). Secondly drive fails, although I have 2 copies of my files, it is not a long term storage, eventually both drive will fail. Lastly the syncing process is manual, if I don't run it I am seriously exposed.

For the next iteration of my backup strategy, I will likely reorganize my files on the drive so that I can use longer life storage like DVDs more readily. I will put together the "negative" files (being literally raw files or simply jpeg), the working files together and the finished files together.

This means that I can then backup on DVD (read-only that is) the negatives as well as the finished files and leave the working one one the harddrives. This also means I could free space from the harddrives as when needed (I am already close to fill up the smaller drive).

This is not perfect but I am getting there. What are you doing?

Photo: White daffodil

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 13:42:00 +0000

Title: White daffodil

Location: London Green park

Date: 22th May 2006

Comment: busy day at Green park but a large aperture got rid of the people

Defect in the Canon EOS 20D battery pack

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:34:00 +0000

The whole process took about 10 working days no more.

My Canon EOS 20D is one of the early model and used to suffer from the well documented (see canon website) battery pack problem where after about 150 to 200 pictures the battery charge goes down to half and die pretty soon after (that is with 2 batteries by the way). It is due to a defective part in the battery pack fixed at no charge by Canon UK. I can now take more than 200 pictures on one charge.

Except that it is very hard to get through them (have to go through their lengthy automated answering system and then customer care), the service was very good and the whole process took about 10 working days no more. I even got a warranty for the work they have done.

Great service from Canon UK.

Thanks a lot guys.

Have you seen the light yet?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:49:00 +0000

In case you are struggling to light with flash I highly recommend reading the S t robist blog. It contains lots of useful stuff (techniques, books, equipments, ...) for flash photography using small strobes (read small hot shoe flash). Also check the matching Strobist Flickr group where readers of Strobist go and discuss their favorite subject: flash photography.

Upgrade mostly done, feedback welcome!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 20:10:00 +0000

That is it. I worked hard on it but it looks even better than before.

The layout is wider, there is lots of cool widgets like videos, news, pictures, .... I have dropped the AdSense for now. Not that I was making much money anyway. And I even now have a favicon.

I must give Hans from Beautiful Beta and Annie from Blog University a big thanks for their great hacks. Without it my blog would just be like any other one.

So here we go it is your chance to give me your views on my little new upgraded photography blog.

Newly upgraded blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 22:01:00 +0000

I finally upgraded to the new Blogger today. It was not too hard at all but I have lost quite a few of the customizations I have done manually on the previous version. On the good side, it backs up the old version automatically (see settings edit html view classic template).

I have found some fun widget to display my other blogs: SpringWidgets thanks to Jesse I got that to work.

All in all it is easier to customize than the previous version for simple things (drag and drop user interface). I think it may be harder to make complex adjustment although I have not tried yet.

Anyway I have done a bit of work to get it back to something close what it was before (about 2 hours). There is still a few things to do (like AdSense, social bookmark, map, ...). I have found some fun widget to display my other blogs: SpringWidgets thanks to Jesse I got that to work, pretty cute, see below in the right column.

It is worth noting that my feed is not working in FeedBurner any more. I am still waiting to see the contents displayed in FeedBurner since I have upgraded to the new template. However if I look at the feed direct in Google Reader I can see the new post (this one) while with the FeedBurner address I don't. A bit strange. I finally found that it was due the Calendar function of FeedBurner which solely works with Calendar blog.

I also found a nice blog with steps to install the social bookmarking button see below and check out Beautiful Beta.

I got published in iVillage

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 13:49:00 +0000

Click on the link below :

www.ivillage.co.uk/food/picturegallery/promos/1,,,00.html

And follow " Eggstreme Easter eggs"

In case you can't be bothered it looks like this

http://www.chinasecret.co.uk/

Are you on Utata yet?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:22:00 +0000

Hi Reader,

I decided to join the Utata group on Flickr. Let's me explain what it is. You'll understand.

First the nerdie bit: Utata is a front end to Flickr managed by a bunch of lucky people who have got way to much free time on their own (I don't mean that in a bad way, I am just anvious).

Utata gives you the possibility to create your very own member page where you can expose your favorite pictures. Since they arguably have around 30,000 visitors a day it is worth spending a few minutes plus you get to hang around with the cool kids.

There are fun projects to keep you busy after work. Also they have articles to read during the cold and dark nights of winter. Utata also highlights a photo on their spotlight giving the lucky owner some more of the these juicy internet clicks. There is also the bulletin board where you can post your news: free ad space cool (like your first sale or publication).

Also you will find lots in Utata technical resources on various subjects such as exposure and flash. They of course have a great photo pool where you can add your best photos and expect some friendly feedback. Finally you can check the Daily Ink for the latest news from Utata.

It is all rather unformal and relax giving the impression to be in a lounge or a bar with a bunch of friends. I am there around 6-7 pm (sometimes I drop by for my lunch break).

Have a look it is worth it.

See you at the bar,
Marc.

Photo: Milford Sound

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 10:24:00 +0000

Title: Milford Sound

Location: It was taken from our boat looking back into the fjord

Date: The 23th February 2005

Comment: It did not look very inviting at all

What is your favorite Flickr toy?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 07:26:00 +0000

I must say the Flickr gadgets is half the reason I joined Flickr.

I love the Flickr badges. It is such an easy way to decorate your websites or blogs just look at the right column of this blog (for instruction on how to create a badge see).

I also found recently a great Flickr toys page and god they have a lot of toys on this page. Try the ID card, the Magazine or the Calendar they are really neat.

Do you know of other resources? What is your favorite Flickr toy?

That is official I joined Flickr

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 07:00:00 +0000

You've got to admit Flickr is fun.

I upgraded to a Pro account (i.e. I paid instead of skimming) just because it is really fun (despite being a bit slow).

The group stuff is really good. There is lots of weird groups to share your weird interests with like: Vanishing points and Minimalism.

Also you can create lots of gadgets to display your pictures like for instance the badges on this blog (see right column) or the ID card and magazine cover.

You can post comments and notes which appear on the pictures (neat).

You can organize your pictures (with tags and sets).

You can watch them using slideshows.

Of course you can share your pictures with the rest of the world or just your friends and family (i.e. restrict access to it).

Finally you can watch all the others pics.

Simple but fun!

Great deal on Photographic equipment

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 06:37:00 +0000

Hi Guys,

I am selling some of my film gear on Ebay:

Canon EOS 300V with Canon 28 - 105 USM - Mint

Canon EOS 30 Body only - Mint (includes handgrip)

Remote Control Canon RS 60-E3 for Canon EOS 30 - Mint

Lowepro Mini Trekker Classic Digital Camera Bag - Mint

About 30ish 35 mm films to grab quickly

Don't miss it. See you on Ebay.
Marc.

Extreme (Photoshop) Makeover

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 11:47:00 +0000

Following on to my post about a photographer getting caught changing the true reality of a picture in order to make it more "saleable" (to the expense of the thruth), I bring you Photoshop Extreme Makeover.

It is a pretty short video of people images before and after being retouched in PhotoShop.

The skills of these guys are amazing, my little tunings of my photos look quite futile compared to that.

Can I have one for my bad mornings too?

Photo: Sunset on Mount Cook

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 00:57:00 +0000

Title: Sunset on Mount Cook

Location: I believe it was taken from our camping the "Glentanner" on the road going to Mount Cook

Date: The 18th February 2005 around 9 pm

Comment: It was bitterly cold however really worth it

Digital Photographic Workflow

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 22:27:00 +0000

(Version 1.1)

Tools:
RawShooter Essential 2006
PhotoShop CS
IMatch 3.5.0.22

Prerequisites:
You have setup a set of workflow categories that resembles the followings:
1. Review and Rename
2. Document
3. Categorize
4. Rate and Label
5. Edit
6. Finished

Note that I also gave step zero called “0 - Parked” which related to pictures I don’t intend to deal with or I am done with. The originals become “0 – Parked” while the newly created and finished copy becomes “6 – Finished”.

The reason for that is twofold:

One to keep original untouched,
Two avoid polluting my workflow.

Workflow Overview:
First import all new pictures (raw or jpeg) in IMatch, then categorize and rate them. The default settings set by IMatch import tool be “1 - Review and Rename”.
After that open the pictures in RawShooter one by one starting from the best ones. Process a bunch from one directory then open them in PhotoShop. Finally, import finished pictures (tiff) in IMatch and propagate categories.

Detailed Workflow
Importing new pictures
First import all new pictures in IMatch.

If using an external drive, you can map your drive directly to your pc and add all the contents of the drive at once avoiding possible mistakes going directory per directory. Then inside IMatch move the pictures to their final location. This will make sure you don’t loose some while copying them to their final location (you can check in IMatch to see whether your external drive is empty).

If connecting your camera directly to your computer, you will have to use their proprietary technology to load the pictures on your drive. Then after that you will import the pictures in IMatch directory by directory. Be careful not to miss some out.

Rate pictures
Start by rating pictures before categorizing so that you delete immediately the rubbish pictures and don’t waste time categorizing them (like out of focus pictures, badly frames, …). A rating of one or more will guaranty that they will not be deleted when space become an issue. Pictures with no star will possibly be deleted at the next clean up stage. I suggest using the Slide Show tool to rate the pictures.

Document pictures
Document the pictures now. Give them a name, a location, set the photographer and add them to some categories. Make sure to sort by date so that you can quickly set the location and other categories (pictures taken at a closely related time are likely to have the same categories).

Edit pictures
Start by ordering pictures by dates. Then you look at an entire set and pick the best one(s). Open this one in RawShooter.

RawShooter
1. Start by checking out the White Balance. When using the Pick White Balance feature, your picture may look a bit off (a bit too cold), that is when you want to fine tune with Colour Temperature (possibly Tint too if you still have a colour cast). This step will fix most problems like colour cast and set the pictures exposition to something near to useable.

2. When that is done look specifically at exposition and contrast playing with (most times in that order): Exposition Composition, Shadow / Highlight Contrast, Filling Light. That should lift the picture up quite a bit. Sometimes you will have to come back between these settings until the right balanced is found. You can use the Appearance preset to go faster. You then will have to fine tune it with the Exposition Composition.

3. Then have a brief look at the Saturation to bump up the colour. I personally never use Hue.

4. Now is time to zoom at 200% to 300% and look at sharpness. You can use the Sharpness setting to fix little focusing problem. Look also at increasing contrast (see step 2), that should help as well. But frankly don’t expect miracle a out of focus pictures (unless intended to be so) is good for the bin.

5. Finally, look at the noise level. You may have to zoom even more to see the noise at low ISO. Small adjustment should be sufficient. Noise Reduction will reduce general noise in the Sky or other evenly light space, Colour Noise Suppression will get rid of the strange clutter of coloured and often blurred dots. Finally Hot Pixel / Pattern Noise Reduction will get rid of the little dark spot.

6. Get RawShooter to produce a tiff file, you can also ask it to open this picture in PhotoShop when ready.

PhotoShop
With the newly created image from RawShooter:

1. Open the Levels, move the white and black point to the edge of the graph. That will boost the picture by making the blacks really black and the whites really white. You can also adjust the grey point. Don’t underestimate Levels, it really is worth it. However using Curves is better as it gives more control on the effect.

2. Open the Curves, select a ‘S’ curve to increase contrast or an inverted ‘S’ curve lower the contrast (far less common option). The wider the curve the higher the increase in contrast.

3. Finally, zoom and check out the pictures for dust or visible noise. Remove it using the Ealing Brush or Clone Tool. The Ealing Brush reproduces better random patterns.

Import new pictures
Back in IMatch import the newly created pictures. To make that easy you should process a bunch of pictures at a time (for example from the same directory) because the import from IMatch works per directory and it will make it easier for you to push the meta data from the originals to the new pictures.

Make sure to change the type status from “Raw” to “Finished” so that you can use Ferdinand’s script (by default it will ignore the “Raw” pictures for safety).

Note that you can use Ferdinand script to synchronise the new pictures data fields with the old one. Finally for Ferdinand’s script to work you need to select the source pictures. To do that go and order the bookmarked files using “Smart File Name” which will arrange the source with the matching new picture together. Then you should be able to see clearly the new and original pictures.

My evaluation of Flickr is starting well

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 18:58:00 +0000

Check out my Flickr bage on the right side bar: isn't that cute? More to see on my Flicker page.

I am already thinking redirecting my weiersmuller.org domain directly to Flicker instead of running my own little JavaScript gallery.

For my evaluation, I want to look at SmugSmug too. Although Flickr is nice and neat, I want to have some control over the look eventually. SmugSmug gives you more control but at a price.

Possibly Coppermine. I have looked at Gallery2 about a year ago. Not too bad but like Coppermine you need a PHP web account and some technical knowhow.

I also been told about new products that came out recently: Exposuremanager and Zenfolio.

Finally, I am wondering whether I could built one from scratch just for the fun of it! I found out about that cool web framework Ruby on Rails and I am dying to get my hands dirty again.

Lots to do, little time!

Which is the best Photo Gallery?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 11:44:00 +0000

Hi Guys and Ladies,

I have built my first Gallery using a script running out of my DAM software (IMatch). You can see the result at weiersmuller.org.

However I want to create something better. I am today trying to import some pictures on Flicker. It looks nice and easy to use and has lot of traffic. But before that I need to rename properly my pics, export ITPC fields and then I will load these to Flicker, long day today!

Anyway I can see that I am not the only one to start Galleries. For instance Mark is going for Gallery2 see.

So, I am asking to the people who went through that process before, what would you recommend and why?

My main requirements would be:

- to share my pics with family and friends, online but also on CDs,

- later sale a few pics to pay for the hardware,

My secondary requirements would be:

- access control,

- integration to paypal,

- integration to online printers,

- integration to IMatch,

- cool presentation,

I see that there are quite a few vays to go about creating photo galleries:

- specific software like IMatch Photo Gallery,

- Online service like smugsmug and flicker,

- open source gallery like the php Gallery2,

- custom made ones (I am looking at Ruby on Rails for that)

What did you use? And most importantly why?

Photo-journalist caught cheating!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 09:00:00 +0000

My wife sent me that great article Ease of Alteration Creates Woes for Picture Editors from the New York Times.

It describes how a Reuter photo-journalist has merged two pictures into one changing totally the perceived meaning of the moment. I suppose the journalist was hoping that creating a new more sensational picture he will be able to sell it more or for more – instead he got sacked!

In the past many journalists got caught cheating, for instance by making up statement from sources that did not exist. Today these people will get fired and sued. However a new breed of cheats came out with the advent of digital photography. As mentioned by the New York Times finding them out will be very difficult.

This really begs the question:

Will digital photography destroy photo-journalism?

Adobe LightRoom beta 3 installed, working on the review

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 21:13:00 +0000

I have de-installed beta 1 and then reinstalled at the exact same place beta 3. All seems ok; my database of images is still there. It also maintained my layout mode (full screen : sweet).

I am now actively working on the review, it should be a week or 2 at most.

Adobe LightRoom beta 3 is out, new post coming!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 11:25:00 +0000

Who wants to find out more about Adobe LightRoom?

Do you want prefer a plain review of what the tool is about?

Or do you want feedback on the quality of the beta?

Maybe both?

Please post a comment to let me know what you like to see in this forthcoming post!

Feeback on the Adobe Lightroom beta 1

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 20:23:00 +0000

Having played with Adobe Lightroom for a week or so, I decided to share my findings with the community.

Keep in mind that I am a user of IMatch and RawShooter Essential so my views are partly biased.

Finally, this is not an introduction to Adobe Lightroom, it is merely feedback to the community on the product, this really would appeal to other beta testers.

I may write a proper review for the next release so keep posted and subsribe to the feed (see links section on the right side).

User Interface:

Adobe Lightroom is still definitely too slow at that point in time. It needs a lot of speeding up to become useable. The dev team is very likely of this as it feature in many posts on the forums.

For the purpose of my little test, I imported (just) 36 files - the computer CPU immediately max out for I thought was a very long time! About 20 minutes. For reference I run this on a 1.5 gig of ram 2.66 GHz PC.

The user interface of Adobe Lightroom is very neat but a bit unresponsive and also fiddly. Plus I have to use the full screen mode as quite a bit of space is wasted with the little arrow on the 4 sides. These arrows are used to hide or show the toolbars.

Sadly the full screen mode does not actually use the windows toolbar area even if toolbar is unlocked. It should use that space too if this is possible as space is a scare resource when you are editing pictures (basically the pictures should occupy as much space as possible).

One tiny regret with this lovely user interface is that I was not able to move the toolbars around at least up and down on each side so that I can order them per importance or as per my workflow.

The preferences window bizarrely hasn’t got a “apply”, “cancel” or “close” buttons. Maybe this ok on Mac but they are expected on Windows application. Also I find it strange that is located under edit, file would be more in line with windows practices (don't know about Mac)

Increasing/Decreasing should show the rating after change or just show the new value.

Also I would like to see a mark for delete flag and a way to display all delete pictures (collection?) Then I can review all the marked for delete and actually physically delete them.

Finally the user interface need a “To process” and “Processed” flags as I want to be able to see quickly the finished pictures. Filtering should include processed and not processed option (Collection again) so that I can select these quickly.

Loupe mode:

Unfortunately the Loupe mode does not display ratings. I think this is necessary addition. I would like to see the display settings to be either global (i.e. include loupe view) or better different per view.

I would like to see the picture settings (ISO, aperture, focal and exposure) based of course on view settings which could be different (or not) for the 4 modes.

Develop mode:

The controls aren't smooth enough (e.g. black). It needs to be more subtle. I think there is a general problem when grabbing the slider, depending on where you grad it, it moves left or right a little or a lot ... This is rather difficult to use. I suggest:
- One could have a very small slider which on one click would move to the mouse position at that time,
- Or a large one (like here) which you grad and move (i.e. click on it does not move to the mouse position).

We definitely need states or stacks to compare the effect of a change to the previous state (a la RS). I understand this is under consideration by Adobe and expected by the community.

I would also like a highlight/shadow contrast slider. I use that lot in RS to give a strong feel to the picture. However I am just exploring the curve tool.

I like the Tone curve. It takes some getting use too but I can see it being quite powerful and possibly faster than the curve in PS as you can smooth it up with just a slider (when they work better ;-))

The compare mode is fantastic. A tiny little nag, would it make sense to have the before button before the now button? Also, could we revert to the previous configuration by clicking again the same button?

On the main window can you display the zoom level at the bottom along side the RGB values and also display the picture settings (ISO, aperture, focal and exposure) based of course on view settings.

The crop tool is a bit slow but really impressive. I like the way the picture rotates instead of the crop frame. The crop tool could have a button like PS to black out the cropped area so to see better the effect of the crop.

Generally I like the idea of on/off buttons for tools (to compare the effect of a specific setting) like for grayscale. It could simply revert back to the previous history state.

I don't think the noise tools are sufficient. I hope you will integrate the rest of noise RS tools. Comparing RS to LR Hot pixel / Pattern noise suppression is the one I miss from RS. I also understand that there is better noise reduction engine out there opening up the tool for these engines would be good.

Can we have preset per tool available as a drop-down on each tool? Create and save would be good as well on the tool itself. That would basically create a preset just for this tool.

In RS we have contracts for highlight and shadows would that make sense to integrate it too? I have created some very dramatic picture of NY using these only these 2 sliders.

Library mode:

In compare mode, picture rating messages appears always at the bottom of the screen even if the selected picture is somewhere else. It would be clearer if it appeared at the bottom of the active picture.

Conclusion

It is looking like a great tool, still lots to do but really promising, I like the idea of putting together the main tools that a serious photographer need on a daily basis.

I am using today 3 tools, it is slow and cumbersome, having %80 of these tools in one would be a great benefit to me and other fellow photographer.

I hope that Adobe won’t charge the odds for it or better I hope that would make a free version available ala RS for the non professional user.