RomanT.net

This morning, Apple announced the much speculated and predicted MacBook Air. An ultra portable laptop that in the price range sits between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro [that's if you're considering the old decrepit PATA drive, instead of the SSD], otherwise it is the most expensive laptop in the MacBook range. Read more »

Photos are the most precious material possession anyone owns, and should be the first to be saved in the case of a fire.

So how does one provide the appropriate backup solution to safeguard their cherished memories? My general approach to backing up the photos is by no means simple, yet it does the job. Read more »

I’ve recently decided to try out Microsoft’s latest incarnation of Team Foundation Server; a document and code versioning, as well as defect tracking system for developers.

Since TFS manages source code, as well as documents, it is an extremely convenient repository of data for your projects; yet - by putting all your eggs in the one basket, you may be unpleasantly surprised when you decide to rename your project. In Team Foundation Server 2005, this ‘feature’ was absent, if you were hoping to find it in 2008 – stop looking, there are too many DB references to update. We can only hope that Microsoft will bring about a tool to do this as part of a service pack.

The feature-set within Lightroom’s newly released 1.2 ‘update’ - should have really been a mere patch or a service pack, and carried the 1.1.1 designation - as that’s all it really is.

Lets have a look at some of the main new updates/fixes [complete list available over at Adobe]:

XMP bug - where Lightroom, upon having the “Automatically Update XMP metadata” setting - would run like a dog and simply become un-useable.
1:1 previews - Lightroom used to ‘ignore’ your request to disgard any full previews after a specific time-frame. I ended up [and I'm sure so have others] with over 5GB of ‘previews’ - which were supposed to be discarded on a daily basis.
Metadata Panel - If you’re a Windows user, you would have noticed intermittent display problems when trying to drop down the Metadata Panel.

As shown by the above, this is merely a fix-pack, and nothing else. Which is unfortunate given the feature-set brought along by the initial 1.1 update.
This tells us that either Lightroom was released as a Beta in V1.0’s clothes, and the real deal was provided in the form of 1.1 release.

Given the above performance, we shouldn’t be seeing any more updates for another 6 months. After which 2.0 will hopefully be released encompassing what I find missing in Lightroom:

• Dual monitor support - common guys [and girls], you can have detachable panels in Photoshop - and not in Photoshop Lightroom.
• Export Watermark embedding - what is available now on ‘Export’ - is a joke. There are workarounds, such as droplets in Photoshop; yet they either are too time consuming - or simply take too much time. Lightroom is about simplifying the photographers workflow, so give us a customizeable export tool.
• Smart Collections - I just wanted to look for all photos that I haven’t added any keywords to, and then thought I’d save that search for another day - guess what - you can’t! Lightroom doesn’t support smart collections of any kind. A quick look in google, revealed it’s a well known problem/limitation with Lightroom. Fingers crossed this will be addressed in the next version.

Many souls weren’t happy that Adobe didn’t support Canon’s 40D when they got it, in ACR and consequently in Lightroom.

Now you can jump for joy - as right now ACR supports 40D

Also note that on the page it lists Lightroom 1.2 as available also, yet this has been reportedly false. which is available for download over at Adobe