You’re welcome. I unfortunately never got into film. My friends who made the transition to digital told me that you’re not a true photographer until you can shoot and develop your own film. So I join you in the “wannabe” status.

Sorry for the post delay. It got stuck in the moderation pool, and I just realized it!

One of the things I have wrestled with is a good noise reduction software. I have tried Photoshop’s abilities and looked at Noise Ninja and Neat Image. Perhaps Adobe can wow us with a nice update on that.

I guess I am really old school with DPP. I thought I was hip when I downloaded the latest version.

I need to look more into Lightroom. The review and now this give me enough impetus to perhaps check out the free trial version.

As far as my RAW settings, my screen just says “RAW”. I normally do not shoot RAW+JPEG, but if I do, I always shoot the RAW+JPEG small (normal) setting. Does that make sense?

However, I need to check to see if Lightroom converts RAW to jpeg or not. I’ll update you when I find out.

Also, hanging out and learning from you would be great. Let me know when your schedule is open. As of now, I’m just preparing for J-terms and working.

Talk to you soon,
Brandon

I have been using Lightroom for about two months now. It is incredible. It beats DPP hands down. I paid $95 for it through Academic Superstore (assuming you are a student). I now use LR for about 95% of my workflow.

The only things I really don’t like is the sharpening and noise reduction controls which they are reportedly fixing with the soon to be released update 1.1.

What I like about it:

1. The ability to tag and mark your photos for organization with flags, stars and colors. This allows for a diversity of organizational structures within LR itself to help keep things uncluttered.

2. Of course it is a RAW program so you are not altering the final state of your files. If you mess them up you can always return to the original. As a side note, the flexibility of RAW was the main reason why I bought a DSLR.

3. You can tag photos with keywords and change the metadata of a photo or group of photos. For example when you import photos into LR I have a copyright metadata preset so it automatically applies my copyright signature to all my photos when it brings them into LR.

4. Having more than two lenses I like that I can organize my photos by lens. This also goes for cameras if you have more than two.

5. Basically all the major adjustment features that one would do in Photoshop can be done in LR’s Develop module. And no layers are needed since we are working with indestructible RAW files. You can change the exposure by + or – 4 stops, use the tone curve, do split toning, add fill light. I also love the recovery tool which helps recover over exposed highlights.

6. I could go on and on but those are just a few things I really like. Just one last thing. They have a lights out feature which darkens the whole screen around the photo so you can view the photo alone against a black back drop. This is very cool!

In short, I would download the trial and play with it for 30 days. Be sure to also check out these links. http://www.whibalhost.com/_Tutorials/Photoshop_LR/01/index.html
http://www.ononesoftware.com/photopresets-wow.php

Oh and about that wedding, email me the date, and perhaps we can hang out either then or before and talk photography.
For those curious, to explore Adobe’s lightroom, go here:

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/