Month: March 2012

Lightroom 4 now available

Adobe have today released Lightroom 4 to market.
I have just ordered an upgrade copy on-line as I was pleased with the new functionality of the beta version.

The upgrade price (£59.09 inc VAT) is lower than previous versions and the retail price for the full product (£103.88 inc VAT) is also much less than previous versions. Adobe have reduced the price because of market competition from software such as Apple Aperture 3 which is priced at £54.99 for a new licence. A pity there is no competition for Photoshop.

You can read about Lightroom 4 here:
http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/photoshop-lightroom.html

If you decide to purchase I recommend requesting the box be sent to you, there is free shipping till the end of the month. The software download version costs more money and means no physical media to reinstall from, you will however be supporting the Irish Governments attempts to get the country back from the brink of economic collapse (the higher VAT rate Adobe charge for software downloads from Ireland are the reason for downloads costing more than shipping physical product). Its your call.

Windows 8 Preview

I have installed the public beta version of Windows 8 onto my main machine as a boot option in order to assess its suitability for my imaging clients.

First impressions are not good, the touch interface may work well on a tablet but as the default for a standard PC + monitor its hopeless.

The rest looks to be Windows 7 with some changes to the interface. It took me 5 minutes trying to find out how to restart the machine since all the usual desktop controls are not there any more and Microsoft are not giving the user any clues.

Clearly Microsoft wants Windows 8 to be hip but it ends up looking like an old fool, I just hope they can drag this one back from the edge as it currently looks like a slow motion car crash.

If your planning a system upgrade in the next 12 months then specify Windows 7 (preferably 64bit – give me a call if you have any queries.)

I will persevere with Windows 8 to check out Photoshop/Lightroom/Wacom/Xrite  interoperability but I’m not looking forward to it.

Stephen

Canon 5D MKIII a bit of a disapointment

The  extra 1mp resolution is not going to be visible, (its a 22mp camera).
http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/03/02/Canon-5D-Mark-III

Improvements to focusing etc are welcome and it will no doubt be a slightly better camera than the Mark II but it wont be significantly better. If you have lots of Canon lenses then its an option, if you can start from scratch then Nikon are where things are at these days.

Update: Canon are pricing the camera at £3,000 in the UK some £600 more expensive than the new Nikon D800 with its leading edge 36mp sensor. Even without the sales tax the camera is still far more expensive than in the US market.

Canon have also release a wifi transmitter for the camera at £790, yes, £790 for a box of electronics that cost at most $40 to produce, clearly Canon are not planning on selling too much kit in the UK from now on.