I’m a Fan of Lightroom 5 Smart Previews

Adobe Lightroom 5 Smart Previews make fairly large jpegs of all your RAW files. If you don’t care about Smart Previews then just scroll down to see one of my favorite images from the Glacial Lagoon and Beach.
I just recently started using Lightroom having transitioned from Apple’s Aperture, when Apple decided to stop development of Aperture. Like Aperture, Lightroom allows you to store your images in a different location(i.e. an external drive) and only references the files. Lightroom acts as a database to organize all the photos that could be spread out over multiple drives.
I store my Raw files on external drives to keep my local hard drive space freed up. If something happens to the drive where the Raw images are stored, you lose your images even though a place holder image shows up in Aperture or Lightroom. In Aperture you couldn’t do edit the image if the referenced file was not connected. I have lost quite a few images due to external drive failure to other issues.
Lightroom 5 will create something called a Smart Preview. Smart Previews will allow you use the develop module on your images even if the referenced files are not connected. This is convenient in that if you store your files at home and then take your Laptop somewhere you can still work on photos in the Develop module. Smart Previews will not allow you use plug ins or edit the file in say Photoshop since all the menus to do that are grey. But one thing you can do is export a JPEG file. And this JPEG is roughly half the pixel size of the original RAW file. If the Raw File is say 5500 pixels wide on the long edge, then the JPEG that is exported is roughly half that dimension. This is great! No matter what happens to your referenced file Lightroom will preserve a decent sized JPEG file of the original. According to Smugmug’s Photo Labs an image 2200 pixels on the longest edge is enough data to get large prints up to 40″.
So, I had never used Lightroom before until my trip to Iceland and every night I would save my images to an external drive and import them to Lightroom and create Smart Previews. So I have Smart Previews of all my images as I wait to hear about the condition of my damaged drive.
So until then I’m going to keep sharing images(thanks to Smart Previews) from Iceland!
These are the cool ice bergs that flow out of the Glacial Lagoon and into the Atlantic Ocean and then are washed up onto the beach!

If there is one place in all of Iceland that one must go, it’s to the Glacial Lagoon and Beach… Its magical.
On our first night at the Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon we had clouds and rain, in fact for most of the time on the beach we were cursing around the rain, but that didn’t really deter us. In fact the only reason we could be pulled away from the beach in the rain at 2am was a promise to return the next night.

River Below Oxararfoss-Iceland

This is the separation of the North American and European Tectonic plates… It’s a lovely walk and Waterfall!

 

This is the first stop on the Golden Circle tour that leaves from Reykjavik, Iceland. The separation in the basalt is split between the North American and European tectonic plates. The right side is North America and the left is Europe. It’s a fun and easy hike to this location. We were there at around 11pm and were the only people there!

Also, a few notes for those that bother to read my little outpost on the internet. I’ll be making some changes in how and when I post. For the past few months I’ve been posting images from my daily photo project(changes are coming to that as well!) that I have been doing for the past 3 or so years.

Any changes that I’ve been pondering have been placed on hold until I get my hard drive with all the Raw Files back from The Data Rescue Center. Just as I was getting ready to back up my external hard drive that contained all the Raw Files from my trip to Iceland I dropped it from my desk to the carpeted floor in my office, picked it up and plugged it in and all I heard was click,click, click…. Wouldn’t load. Tried to access it with recovery software and nothing. So the Data Rescue Center has it now and has determined that the drive head is broken, so they’ll have to transfer my drive parts to a good drive head and hopefully be able to clone the data onto a new drive. Fingers crossed and should know in a few days.

Fun with the Olloclip in Iceland!

This is the inside looking up at the ceiling of the Lutheran Church in Reykjavik, Iceland. I took this with the Fisheye Olloclip on the iPhone 5S It’s a bit grainy but cool in that you can see the large pipe organ and the front of the church in one photo!
07-01-2014

I purchased the Olloclip on a whim from a Kiosk at the airport before my departure. (I went to the kiosk to buy some headphones as I always lose the pair I bought on a previous trip right before I head out on my next trip.) I saw the Ollocilp in the kiosk and remember seeing a few posts from my networks about it and decided to go for it! I’m glad I did. It turned out to be a fun add-on!

OlloclipOne fairly big caveat, the Olloclip fits very snug to the iPhone 5S and won’t fit over a case. Either the case needs to be pulled back from that section near the camera or removed all the way. I had to remove the case all together. Another smaller caveat is that there is no way that I could figure out to use the Olloclip on the forward facing camera, so taking a fisheye selfie can’t be achieved easily. It only works with the  camera on the back of the iPhone.
The Olloclip comes with 4 different lens adapters in one clip. A Fisheye, a Wide Angle, a 10x Macro and a 15x Macro. The Fisheye and the Wide angle are easily used, the Macro’s require you to unscrew either the Fisheye or Wide Angle(the red tubes will unscrew and leave the Macro lenses below).

Here are a few more sample images from the Olloclip!

 

Outside Hallgrímskirkja

Sun Voyager-Fisheye

 

Inside Harp-Reykjavik

 

10x Macro-Olloclip

Skogafoss-Regular iPhone 5s capture

 

Skogafoss-iPhone 5S capture with Wide Angle Olloclip

 

Skogafoss-iPhone 5S with Fisheye Olloclip

Overall I’m a fan of the Olloclip enough that I’ve started to carry it in my pocket on occasion for some fun captures out and about with my family! If you have an iPhone I’d definitely pick one up! If you purchase using this amazon link I will earn a few shekels…. Thanks!

 

Sunny Winglet on IcelandAir to Reykjavik!

Jumped on an IcelandAir flight from Seattle to Reykjavik. Technically this flight is a redeye as it leaves at 4:30pm in Seattle and arrives in Reykjavik at 6am… I had mentally prepared for a few hours of darkness but the sun never left the winglet! It never got dark! And I wouldn’t see night for an entire week!


06-30-2014

Here are a few other photos from my Flight to Reykjavik:

IMG_7330

These ladies were kind enough to move my seat to an exit row with extra leg room!

Icelandic Glacier Water
Cold Icelandic Glacial Water as your board an IcelandAir flight!

Welcome to Iceland!

This is the welcome sign at the Keflavik Airport right as you take the escalator to baggage claim!…

 

Overall it was a pleasant flight over the Canadian tundra and Greenland.

Hossa Leaf

Playing with the textures of this Hossa Leaf
06-29-2014
via Photo a Day-2014 http://ift.tt/TvnnC1

Pool Waterfall

Didn’t really think I’d like the LED pool lights, but I do! I have them come on every evening.
06-28-2014
via Photo a Day-2014 http://ift.tt/1lowYkY

Smile through the bangs

Wanted to get a capture of my daughter before she got her hair trimmed!

 

06-26-2014

Edited with Nik’s Analog Efex Pro2

via Photo a Day-2014 http://ift.tt/USqepR

Sunflower Textures

I like photographing sunflowers.

06-25-2014

I like all the varying textures around Sunflowers. The greenery, the petals and the dark center.

I used the light above the stove for light and then I used Nik’s Analog Efex Pro2 and Perfect Photo Studio8 in post processing.

 

via Photo a Day-2014 http://ift.tt/1qcwUfS

Fun with Sunflowers

Two Sunflowers!

Another day, another photo editing technique on these Sunflowers.
06-24-2014

via Photo a Day-2014 http://ift.tt/1lQ1vOn

Tried using the Stacks in Photoshop for this image. I was too lazy to pull out my tripod so I took 4 exposures handheld but moved the focus spot in each exposure.  I then opened up all 4 images in Adobe Photoshop 2014CC, loaded each of the files into a Stack and the aligned the layers as a stack.  It’s not perfect but it basically achieved what I was looking for.  One image captured fairly wide open with a broader range of focus. At the end I loaded up the stacked file into Perfect Photo Effects 8 and applied a few filters to adjust the contrast.

I liked the textures in these Palm Fronds

06-23-2014

So I have trouble spelling Fronds. For some reason when I say Palm Fronds, I hear Palm Frawns, kind of like Prawns. So I kept spelling it Frawns and my computer spell check kept notifying me of my error. I finally googled Palm Frawns and found that it really is spelled Palm Fronds. Also, I’m only a few days from the half way mark in this years Photo a Day… I have to say that I’ve been going through a bit of a lull in my daily photos. Many days its just a quick snap here or there… I still enjoy the challenge personally so I’ll keep going. I wish I had more time to blog about the thought process each day though. Maybe that’s something I’ll try and incorporate more in the last half of the year.

 

This is a low light hand-held exposure of a few Palm Fronds in my back yard,(I have photographed it in the past) and I edited it with Aperture and Perfect Photo Effects 8. If you’re looking to add to your photo editing toolkit OnOneSoftware has a great summer bundle for $99.

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