WayWest

Lightroom inSights: my new blog & book

Peachpit Press is now shipping my latest book, Lightroom 3 Visual QuickStart Guide. A new blog/companion site can be found here with lots of info, including sample content, the table of contents, and lots of tips.

Sample Lightroom chapter to help you decide

If you need help deciding whether to jump on the March-only discount price for Lightroom 2 VQS, you might want to read this sample chapter. Taken from Chapter Four, it highlights one of Lightroom's best features: The Library module. The Library module is what gives Lightroom an edge over its more well-known cousin, Photoshop, and it's where you'll do most of your organizing and reviewing of images.

Only 9 days to save $9 on my Lightroom book

Save 30 percent at Barnes and Noble on select Visual QuickStart Guides—including my own Adobe Lightroom 2 VQS. That's $9 bucks off the regular $20.99 price. But deal ends March 31, so click now!

(Via Peachpit Press)

Lightroom 2.2 now available

Adobe has finished whacking the latest bugs in Lightroom and has released version 2.2 to send them running. Tom Hogarty details the fixes, the most welcome being that the Adjustment brush now works much more smoothly. If you're already running Lightroom 2, of course, it will automatically alert you about the update.

While it sometimes makes sense to hold off and let the early adopters find bugs in the updates, this particular round of fixes has been in the works for at least a month. Beta testers (not that I know anything about that) hit it hard early on, so it's one I installed immediately. 

Lightroom 2 Beta: sweet & public

Adobe released a 2.0 public beta of Lightroom this morning that includes so many of the items we've been asking for:

• Support for multiple monitors, something Apple's Aperture has had from the start that stirred a lot of envy among Lightroom users
• A Detail pane so you get a real-close look while keeping sight of the full photo
• Localized adjustments, aka dodge and burn, without having to hop over to Photoshop
• Smart collections, which automatically gather up photos by your criteria, such as keywords, ratings

I'll have more details in the days ahead. In the meantime, here's a sample of what the multiple-monitor support offers:

Keep your overview using the Grid view on main monitor…
…while seeing the details, using Loupe view on a second monitor.

Aperture & Lightroom speed: Now neck in neck?

Speed was my top concern last spring when I was debating whether to adopt Apple's Aperture or Adobe's Lightroom as my main photo tool. One of the reasons I ultimately picked Lightroom was that it did not demand the latest, fastest chips to run smoothly. In contrast, reviewers' tests back then found that Aperture had a major CPU appetite. In fact, my one-year-old Macbook wasn't fast enough—and it was my fastest Mac machine.

So I passed on Aperture. (The other big reason being that I find Aperture's controls quite awkward, in the same way that its little cousin, iPhoto, feels like a computer tool instead of a photo tool.)

In his review of the just-released Aperture 2, Fraser Speirs says the update's speed is now on par with Lightroom. Although I'm now wedded to Lightroom, his take and stats are worth a look.

FrontPage > Expression Web migration

Back in 2006 when Microsoft released Expression Web, its replacement for FrontPage, I'd said in my Expression Web VQS book that folks looking to migrate from the old program to the new should check Microsoft's site for more info. But even today if, as I suggested, you go to the Microsoft site and enter the terms "FrontPage migration" you won't find anything particularly relevant.

But using Google, I found the document to answer your questions: written by Microsoft and stashed at microsoft.com. Gad zuks, what does that tell you about Microsoft's site search engine?

Anyway, what you want to download is a 51-page white paper that's chock full of useful info.

If you used FrontPage to build your site, take comfort from this: Expression Web can open FrontPage sites without a hiccup. But because FrontPage uses so many nonstandard tools and bots, there are some migration issues.

Here's the white paper's key bit of info:
"FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE) will continue to work as long as the site remains on a server with FPSEs. In addition, almost all of the components can be edited in Expression Web by double-clicking the component in Design view.

Even though Expression Web supports your pre-existing Web components, you might want to consider moving away from FrontPage Web components for several reasons. First, they produce invalid code; second, your ability to customize Web components is severely limited; third, FrontPage Server Extensions have a limited life span; and fourth, you can’t add new components using Expression Web. This section explains how to edit FrontPage Web components you may have in your site and also provides resources and suggestions to get functionality similar to that provided by unsupported FrontPage Web components."

BTW, Microsoft has a $99 upgrade package from FrontPage to Expression Web available as a download. Despite the migration heartaches, the best strategy remains upgrading.

Too True

Charlie Sorrel in a Wired blog discussion of top tips for writers offers this gem:

Someone (sorry, don't remember who) wrote that writing is "5% inspiration, and 95% not getting distracted by the internet."

Peachpit Gets Blogging

My book publisher, Peachpit Press, has launched its own blog: Nectar. A great name for a place they hope will provide "fuel for creative computing." Only a week old, Nectar has some fun posts and videos from the Macworld Expo. So get over there, take a look around, and subscribe to their RSS feed.

The Mac expo folds its tent today after a week of kicking off Apple's new Intel-powered iMac and MacBook Pro. What with all the pre-show rumors, it's not surprising some folks feel a bit let down. (What!—no media-center Mac Mini?) Soon enough, I think, Apple will pull some living room video magic from its sleeve.

In the meantime, some of us can finally get faster Mac laptops—not to mention dig in using iWeb.

(Thanks to Backup Brain for the Nectar tip.)

Still Holding Your Breath for AppleWorks Update? Exhale!

It's been pretty clear for more than a year that AppleWorks, once a Mac mainstay, is not just out to pasture but dead and buried. I'm afraid the The Unofficial Apple Weblog has it exactly right:

Since iWork 06 was clearly the 5th wheel of yesterday's keynote, I'd throw money down that it is (unofficially) nothing more than a 20th (note: not 21st) century version of AppleWorks just to give those who still use it something OS X-ish to switch to. I would also bet that Apple is sick of supporting that old horse and could simply be using iWork to help put it out to pasture.

If you watch yesterday's keynote, iWork 06 gets a mention on stage but almost immediately a 'well we don't have time for it now, but you can check it out on the web' from his Steveness.

Um, what? You're going to mention this software you introduced barely a year ago but then promptly drop-kick it off stage? And where is Numbers, one of the supposed missing links that could propel iWork into the 'useful' category of so many users software toolbelts?

Given this year's 'we barely care' treatment of iWork, I think it's safe to say that Apple really isn't planning on stacking it up against Office.