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So I decided to give Lightroom 4 beta a whirl and process a few images. I was curious about the new processing engine.

Of course, I immediately ran into a problem. That’s life with beta software. LR4 would import my images fine, but any attempt to bring up the Develop module on them crashed. I do a couple of not-quite-standard things with my images, which are stored as .DNG, but I embed the XML sidecar in them and have LR3 set to update them on any changes, and my .DNG also has an embedded .CR2. I’m guessing the latter is what’s giving LR4 indigestion at this time. I used Adobe’s DNG converter to extract the .CR2 and import it into LR4, and it worked fine. I expect that variation of a file format isn’t too common so I’m not surprised or annoyed it’s causing a burp, and it’s the sort of thing I expect will be fixed in a later beta. and yes, I sent along some crash reports…

(why do I do this? because if I ever need, for some reason, the original .CR2 before it was converted to .DNG, I know where to find it and it’s easily extracted — disk is cheap, and this really simplifies file management; it’s my emergency storage for “we finally found a case where DNG conversion screws the pooch”, or “.DNG isn’t good enough, we need the original RAW file” — and yes, this is the first time I’ve actually NEEDED to extract the original raw. Which worked fine. And disk is cheap, so I actually had it without mad thrashing around looking for it. See, that’s why…)

Below are some 1:1 looks at an image I experimented with. The first one is Lightroom 3, the second is Lightroom 4 beta.

I chose this not because it’s a great image, but because it was a difficult image. My initial reaction was that the imaging and preview work done within Lr4 is much improved and the images “out of the camera” looked noticeably better in LR4 than LR3. There’s a slightly different color tone, but I was tweaking the color balance and didn’t explicitly set them the same. What impressed me most was that the detail in the cliff along the front of that rock, which is in heavy shadow, was rendered very nicely and a big improvement over LR3, without any significant addition of noise. The image in general seems a bit sharper (look at the splash of water lower left), and places where the whites could blow out seemed better managed. Places where you might see a color case sneak in (the heavily shadowed stream water lower right) seem well controlled (and if you pixel peep beyond 1:1, you see more detail in the water sprays).

The early response to the new develop module has been pretty positive, and I’ll echo that. It’s going to take a bit of getting used to, but they’ve looked at what photographers are doing to offset some of the defaults in LR3, and created a pretty solid blank canvas and the tools make it easier to manipulate that canvas quickly. I’m unlikely to spend a lot of time with LR4 until it’s later in beta, but it definitely looks like the step forward I was hoping it’d be. (what this really means is that I’ll defer my planned library reprocessing death march until LR4 is available, because it makes sense to wait for the new, final engine to be available before I do any mass reprocessing…)

Lightroom 3

Lightroom 4 Beta

And yes, I’m pushing my image all over the side of the blog. That’s one reason I’m working on a redo of my site, to allow for larger, better rendered images than the current format allows.

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Lane, who became executive chairman of HP on September 22, 2011 (he had been non-executive chairman since November 1, 2010, the start of HP’s FY 2011)  logged more than $10 million in total compensation — the bulk of it in stock and options — for the fiscal year, according to the HP proxy.

Other highlights from the proxy:

 

 

 

Meg Whitman who famously took the HP CEO position in September for $1 in salary, gets $16 million in stock and options. Former CEO Leo Apotheker walked away with $30.4 million when he was fired by HP last September.

Except for my first year tenure, when they couldn’t even afford that. (but don’t feel bad for me, according to them, I was very well compensated).

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at I got a rock.. This article is copyright 2012 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license for non-commericial use only with attribution. See the web site for details on the usage policy.

No sport seems more at war with its playing surface than hockey.

The players get bigger and faster. Coaching keeps getting smarter, deeper and tech-enhanced. Yet the rink remains 200’x 85’. And because of this scoring, offense, and creativity is suffering.

So what should be the strategy to counter this? Make the rink bigger? Not gonna happen, those seats with fannies in them are the lifeblood of the individual teams. OK, what if they eliminated a player per side and played four on four?

Noted stick and puck sorcerer, Mike Ribeiro is in my camp on this and I’m-a go ahead and say many of his ilk would concur.

If this radical change were to be implemented me thinks the impact on the game would be both positive and profound.

At first thought, I can see the attraction of shifting the NHL to a 4 on 4 league full time. I’ve wondered at times whether the league should expand 4-4, or go to it full time myself.

Well, unless you’re a player or the player’s union. It’d likely mean losing 3-4 roster spots per team, or 100 player jobs. I can’t see the union buying into that any time soon.

But I think back to the wonderful days of Roller Hockey International, which for a few fun years was a summer distraction in NHL arenas (“Let’s Go Rhinos!”). It was summer fare populated with a few IHL/AHL caliber players, but mostly European and ECHL caliber athletes.

And it was four on four full time. And the more I think back to the style of play we saw watching the RHI for a few years, the more I remember thinking that it was hockey, but it definitely wasn’t what I’d call “real hockey”. And that there was a reason the NBA outlawed the zone for those many years….

I think the four on four discussion is a lot like the international rink discussion. It seems logical and like a good idea, but in both cases, the answers to what’s going on with the NHL is a lot more complicated, and you might solve some problems shifting the league to four on four, but you’d definitely create new and different problems, and it’s not at all clear to me it’d make the league better, just different.

Having watched RHI hockey and full time 4-4 for a few seasons, I don’t think that’s the kind of hockey I’d want to watch every night in the NHL. I don’t think it’d be better. Just different.

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at WOULD 4-ON-4 BE BETTER?. This article is copyright 2012 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license for non-commericial use only with attribution. See the web site for details on the usage policy.

What struck me as much as anything about the job is how this stuff is increasingly central to any smart marketing team — and how little of the technology that you’d be involved in doing this job existed five years ago in any form anyone would have known about.

National Hockey League Jobs:

The Manager, Social media and Business Development will be a member of the digital media team reporting to the Director of Digital Business.  He/She will be responsible for maximizing the asset value of the NHL’s extended reach on social networks as well as creating social media activations for campaigns related to sponsorships, ad sales, partnership marketing, and league marketing initiatives.

RESPONSIBILITIES/ESSENTIAL DUTIES The position will be responsible for however not limited to the following duties: Managing the Social Media plans and activations for NHL events (onsite and offsite), NHL marketing initiatives, and NHL sponsorships / partnership activations. Developing creative campaigns for partners / agencies, implement and execute all activations on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, and develop pricing/selling models around the NHL’s extended reach on social networks. Co-develop communication plan for social media with editorial, communications and PR team (tweets, posts, pictures, etc.) Creating a pipeline of social media sales prospects and exposing the League’s extended reach via social networks to League partners, clients and prospects to deliver incremental revenue. Working with the NHL’s internal and external resources to develop brand- and audience appropriate activations on the League’s social media channels; integrating the League’s social media channels into broader partner activations to deliver incremental revenues. Sales pitches and business case development and delivery. Identifying and vetting new social networks of interest to the NHL that both extend the League’s reach and are strong candidates for monetization. Identifying and vetting social media partnerships and opportunities that grow the League’s reach, carry financial opportunity, or expand content offerings.

QUALIFICATIONS The qualified candidate for the position will be an expert in social media with intimate knowledge and contacts at the most popular and emerging social networking platforms.  They will be experienced in developing and closing sales and partner opportunities, able to develop creative concepts in the social media context and be well versed on trends and data in brand spending on social media marketing.

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chuq: RT @sugar_dave: Wow, #Enyo developers….you wish you were here right now

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Today’s Twitter Activity for February 2, 2012. This article is copyright 2012 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license for non-commericial use only with attribution. See the web site for details on the usage policy.

Imagine the possibilities of selective removal in your landscapes… that tree, for instance. hmm…

(Laurie and I had a discussion about why the hair was moved onto its own layer. My best guess — they want to repurpose the image with different hair colors, so you turn it into it’s own layer so you can manipulate it easily).

Why You Should Check All Your Layers Before Saving For Web:

Here’s a Photoshop protip: before saving a final version of a photo for publishing on the web, make sure all the layers you want in the image are actually visible. Apparently some Photoshopper working for JCrew got careless with his layers, which led to the above catalog photo showing a model with transparent hair (in fact, the hair appeared by itself in a separate photo). The catalog entry has since been fixed, with the invisible-haired woman replaced with a boring photo of a blue blazer.

 

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I apologize for the quiet on the blog the last week. Blame it on a rhino-virus, which took just enough out of me to make sitting on the couch a lot more attractive than other options. Tonight I’m back off sedated, off the Aftrin, energy levels almost back to normal, so I thought I’d check in and remind folks I’m alive.

I’m into my sixth week at the new gig, and things seem to be progressing well. It’s been this whirlwind of meeting folks, listening to them, offering them our views, and trying to figure out what exactly we need to do (as opposed to what we were hired to do). We’ve made lots of progress, we’ve gotten the contract with the developers approved, I’ve gotten the first round of wireframes making the rounds and the various teams looking at them haven’t laughed or cried yet. But we’re just scratching the surface; I’m already mentally planning a year out, and trying to make sure when we get there, we have what we need. Good stuff so far. My new cohort in crime and I seem to sync up well in complementary ways, and it’s nice being in an environment of yes.

January was a positive month for my online stuff and a good start to the year, despite my being pretty quiet the last week or so. Overall visits were up 60% over December with page views up 50% — and up 110% over January 2011. Traffic to my photos on smugmug rocketed to almost double my previous highest page view month. I got my first video experiment up, and it got 125+ views and good feedback and some very useful critiques. I only got out with the camera twice, but both were very intensive trips and both generated some really nice images — but I also got the trees pruned before the apricot budded and I’m making good progress on some neglected work in the yard and the house — much as I wish I could spend all my spare time out with the camera, there are other things I like doing as well. I also filed 13 reports with eBird for a good start to the year — one lifer and 114 species to the year list, my best january since 2009, which beat it by about 8 species, and if I hadn’t caught this stupid cold, I’d probably have gotten out one more sunday and caught it.

And I’ve started the redesign of this site and my online stuff, although you probably won’t see it for a while. it’s not just swapping in a new theme, from the looks of it. But that’s where my evening focus is right now (that, and skyrim and the sharks). I am working to shift to a more active creation attitude from a content consumption mentality, and so far, I think things are headed in the right direction.

Most popular pieces in the month?

• Changing of the Guard (about HP and webOS, not surprisingly)
• My piece on the ‘skiing crow’ (which got picked up by Google and which has fed a number of curious people over. Hello, curious people!)
• How not to be a doofus with a camera
• Some Thoughts on Lightroom Keywords (which keeps chugging along)
• My Favorite Images of 2011
• We’re having the comment fight again
• Everyone’s best photos of 2011 lists
• Why I walked Away from my Fiction (and why I’m back)

Although I have decided, for the short term, to focus on blog writing and the blog redesign as the primary tasks, and photography as the third wheel. Other stuff will wait to later in the year, just so I can keep focus on things I want finished sooner.

So I’m hoping to carry this forward into February, and see what happens. It’s both nice and scary to be through January, because I feel like i’ve accomplished a lot and set things up to accomplish even more — but I’m not sure where the month went. Been good, and busy. Better than the alternatives, I guess.

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This is one of those experiments, a video slideshow of Merced National Wildlife Refuge, which by now you’ve probably figured out is a favorite place of mine. Nothing too fancy here, just working out the workflow and making sure I can go end to end through the tools, but I think it turned out pretty well (would love to get your feedback on this…)

Merced National Wildlife Refuge from Chuq Von Rospach on Vimeo.

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Merced National Wildlife Refuge Video. This article is copyright 2012 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license for non-commericial use only with attribution. See the web site for details on the usage policy.