After keeping the project under wraps I’m finally ready to announce that my first Lightroom eBook will be coming out in a few days. It’s called “10 Supersonic Lightroom Tips” and it shows some of my favourite tips and tricks for using Lightroom. I’ll be posting more details as it takes shape in the next few days. Right now I’m working on the cover which I’ll post as soon as it’s done. Stay tuned.

And to get some inspiration how about some amazing black and white images of majestic animals in Africa. Nick Brandt from the U.K. has a portfolio of images that have incredible detail and a surreal feeling. This image of a lion just blew me away. I wish I could afford his prints, his work is amazing.

Check out all the images by clicking on the image below

Spencer Murphy

• Reads RAW files out of the camera
• Previews the RAW images without a problem
• Apps can read the RAW files inside the iPad

One of the great things Terry shows is that you can connect a card reader to the iPad and download from your Compact Flash cards (the card format most professional cameras still use). This is huge since the Camera Connector only has 2 options, SD connector or USB connector.

I’ve always lusted after an Epson P6000 for it’s ability to preview files and work as a photo backup on location or a trip, but it’s ridiculously overpriced so I never considered purchasing one.

Now for the same money I can buy an iPad and trust me, it’s WAY more advanced and useful. I wouldn’t be surprised if Epson started to discount the P6000 any day now.

Check out the video at Terry’s site while I go put a few more dollars in my piggy bank.

The day I discovered RSS feeds my web browsing experience changed dramatically. I used to visit many sites, one by one, hoping to see some new content posted. This was slow and impractical. With RSS feeds you can check as many sites as you want from one convenient location…one single page. You can quickly see what’s new in your favourite websites and decide if you want to check it out.

There are many ways to read RSS feeds, there are special applications for this of course but I found that using Google Reader is the easiest. You open the Google Reader page with your feeds and see what’s new. If you want to read in more detail any item you just visit the site right there in the browser.

I recently found 2 feeds that are a great source of inspiration (Fubiz and FFFFound). They contain images of all kinds: photographs, logos, posters, animated gifs, etc. The problem was that I had to click on each news item in Google Reader to see the images. This turned out to be impractical to say the least (click, click, click….) So I searched for a better way to see the content of these feeds and to my surprise Google had the solution, and it’s great.

They have an option inside the Google Reader where you can select a group of feeds and have them displayed as a slideshow. Awesome! This is exactly what I needed. Here’s a video showing you how to use the Google Play option in Google Reader. Instant inspiration! Nice.

(by the way, your Google Reader will look a bit different since I installed a “skin” that makes it look way better..)

Check out a quick video where I show how to use Google Play

I’ve checked out the webinars from CreativeTechs before and they are really good. As in any other workshop the teacher is the key to a good learning experience. They have some great teachers and some not so great but when they are good they are worth your time (check out the John Greengo, Fundamentals of Digital Photography).

So now we as photography enthusiasts have many options to learn online. There’s Lynda.com who’s the original online training site. They have every imaginable course you can imagine on software plus a few interesting profiles from famous creatives.

Then there’s Kelbytraining.com. With Scott Kelby as the driving force behind this site there’s an amazing selection of photography and digital retouching courses. Both these sites have a monthly plan with no strings attached so you can try them for a month and see if you like them.

I’m excited to check out the new CreativeLive webinars announced by Chase Jarvis and see what they are like. Online learning is a great way to learn from home but of course for learning in person with a teacher I  recommend you check out my own workshops. Having a teacher right there showing you how to use your camera or computer and being able to ask questions is one of the many advantages, check them out.

My first suggestion has to do with reading interesting articles online. I read a lot of photography blogs and crative inspiration articles. As you might know, web pages are full of ads and “stuff” that distracts from the actual text you are reading. Readability is a tool that makes pages a joy to read. it’s a little bookmark that you place on your browser toolbar and with one click it cleans up the page and leaves only the information you want to read. Check out the following example:

Page from the New York Times as it normally appears. This is a quick news item. Less than 1 page which you need to scroll down to finish reading:

An here’s how it looks like after one click on Readablilty. No scrolling, clean borders and easy to read:

A super simple tool that makes reading articles online much easier on the eyes!

The other tool is part of the Mac OS and it helps when you are reading those great articles online and you find a word that you are not familiar with (English being my second language I often use this to learn new vocabulary). This is a shortcut to the dictionary that all Mac computers come with. Lets say you are reading an article or writing an email and you need to check the definition of a word. You simply have to place your cursor over the word and hold down Control + Command + D and a tiny pop up window appears over the word you selected with the definition. Easy and very useful.

As you can see there is also the option to select either the dictionary or thesarus at the bottom of the window as well as the option to open the Dictionary application.

Hopefully this 2 tips will be useful to you. I know that for me this little things make a big difference in my daily work routine.

Apple has released Aperture 3. Even though I’m a Lightroom user I’ll be checking it out to see what’s new although I see a lot of new features that already exist in Lightroom (colour labels, image presets, printing presets) but we all benefit from Adobe and Apple competing in this field.

It works in Firefox and it will make your browsing faster and less annoying. By the way if you are using Internet Explorer on your PC you should really move to Firefox. Better experience overall.

One of the major speed boosts comes from the new Radial menu. Program any button on the pen or on the tablet to show this menu and when you activate it you get a circular overlay where your pen is positioned. This menu can show any command that you need to access frequently. And it gets better. You can have a submenu of commands so the total number of items available is huge.

Wacom Radial Menu

I have arranged this menu so that I have my most used actions there. I just need to click the back button on my pen and in that instant and wherever I am on my screen I can create layers, change brushes and add masks to name a few.

I’ll add more of my Wacom tricks in the next post but since I have to run and actually work on some shots I’ll leave you with a cool link to some cool images.

Mathew Albanese has created some amazing landscape photos but the cool thing about them is not that he was at the right place at the right time to get them. He actually created the landscapes himself as miniatures. Everything is “fake” but it looks real. Great creativity to figure out how to mimic what we see in nature with things like paprika and parsley! Go check it out at the following link:

Strange Worlds