Photoshop or Lightroom? or both?

Photoshop is a fantastic program isn't it?

However for photographers about 90% of the program isn't used or isn't relevant and this is understandable, as it's not just aimed at us photographers. So when Lightroom came along I thought, here's a program that will have all the photo editing related tools with Bridge all wrapped up in one package!
To a certain extent this is true, however there is one very important thing missing that will stop me ditching Photoshop: Layers!

Alot of my photography is landscape based and I regularly take two exposures, one for the sky and one for the foreground and then do a layer blend via a mask in Photoshop. I know that in Lightroom I can export to Photoshop for editing and then return it to Lightroom, but that kind of defeats the purpose doesn't it? You then lose the non-destructive RAW editing that Lightroom touts. Plus having to use both Photoshop and Lightroom is a real pain and very expensive!

I do love the features Lightroom offers especially version 2 with the new local exposure tools, but CS4 now offers these as well. So for the time being I won't be buying Lightroom and I will continue using Photoshop and Bridge as this combination can do everything that Lightroom does.

Thanks for listening.

Tip for Canon HDR and exposure bracketing limitation

Many of you that use Canon DSLR's may have noticed that when it comes to exposure bracketing, the Canon is quite limited. not all Canon's mind you but certainly the 40D and 50D are.

Exposure bracketing is limited to three shots at -2, 0 and +2. While this may be ok for some people, if like me you occasionally like to take HDR images then the default exposure options are quite limited. What really annoys me is the fact that my old Olympus E500 went to +3, and I know that Nikon cameras (including the cheap ones) will do five exposures from -5 to +5!

If you do need more than what the standard options offer then try the following trick that I use to get -4, -2, 0, +2 and +4.

Set the camera up for normal exposure bracketing of +/-2, then use the exposure compensation to set the exposure to -2. When you take the bracketed shots you will get -4,-2 and 0. Now move the exposure compensation to +2 and shoot again. you will now get 0, +2 and plus 4.

What you will end up with is -4, -2, 0, 0, +2 and +4. Delete one of the '0' exposures and you have five exposures covering 8 stops!

Cheers for now.

Digital photography forums and photographic comments

How many of you are members of photography forums that allow you to create galleries and receive feedback on them?
I first gave this a try about 18 months ago as I was hoping to get some (real) feedback on my photography at the time.

The first few comments I received were very favourable and I was pleased. However after trawling through many other galleries (some good, some not so good, some bloody awful) I noticed that everyone was receiving good comments. Now let's be clear here I'm not saying that bad photographs should be slagged off but there should be positive criticism as opposed " Oh yes I really like the way you captured this or that blah blah blah" rather than "the exposure is spot on but there is no foreground interest, perhaps you should try this blah blah blah". You know what i mean.

Without proper positive criticism the photographer may never see the mistakes they are making and will take far longer to improve.

So come on people! it's in everyone's interests to positively criticise at every given opportunity so that we can all learn something!

anyway as you've probably already gathered I don't post my photographs on any of these forums anymore!

Thanks for listening