Archive for July, 2009

Lightroom vs. Aperture

Photography | Friday, July 31st, 2009

Not that likely that the post is really a versus post but it is about me switching from Aperture to Lightroom. My reasons and a short overview of my new structure in photography processing.

Over the last year I used Aperture 2 as my main library to organize and edit my photos. Not that long ago, a friend of mine — Windows user — bought his own DSLR — an Canon EOS 1000D — and wanted to get to know a great program to sort and edit his pictures. I suggested him Lightroom 2 and he tested it. Now his library runs with Lightroom and I got to see a bit of the capabilities of Lightroom. Thats most part of the reason I even thought about switching. All the features I saw. All the simpler things.

But I have to tell! Most of which had to be understood the right way. Last year as I tried Aperture vs. Lightroom the simple structure of Aperture — that you do not have to think about the files, they are just stored inside the library — was great. Now I understood why Lightroom does not do that. If you want to sort your pictures on your own. Now I use folders for project based sorting and catalogs for sorting pictures across different projects. And that already is in my view the main difference of the file handling. Second the backing up with Lightroom is much simpler too. Just sync two folders!

But not just the file handling was a reason to switch. One additional were the editing capabilities of Lightroom. The ability to add gradient filters or a mask brush are just awesome and now that I am used to them I can not imagine going back to Aperture which does not have that features. In Aperture I needed to export an image and than process a mask in Photoshop, now I can do most of the editing in Lightroom and just in occasion need to fire up Photoshop to add a watermark or do some fancy editing.

Over all I am very satisfied with Lightroom and can not imagine why I was using Aperture for so long! Even though, Aperture has it’s points! It is a great program and I still think that everyone searching an application to process his shots should download at least this two to test them with about 100 shots and than decide which to choose! If you are on Windows the choice does not depend between Aperture — which is Mac only — and Lightroom but there are still some to be tested — like Capture One or Picasa (which I will not recommend even if you are just a amateur photographer). Make your choice and I wish you all the best that you do not need to switch form one to the other platform with a mass load of pictures — I had to move over 10k pictures over to Lightroom.

I wrote about not being that great at design some time back but this site by Chriss Coyier — who also does CSS-Tricks.com — is awesome and inspiring!

Design, in its broadest sense, is the enabler of the digital era — it’s a process that creates order out of chaos, that renders technology usable to business. Design means being good, not just looking good.

~ Clement Mok

The site is about quotes and the quotes are on design — like the name of the site may let you already know. Have fun browsing the site, and may embed it into your own.

quotesondesign.com

Quotes on Design API in use

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Reading, Educating and using Spare-Time

Organization | Friday, July 24th, 2009

I have a problem. The past weeks I was pretty busy but I had topics to write about. Now that has changed. I have lots of time — even though I need to get many things organized and done — cause I have no school any more till the 15th of September.

Now what to do with so much spare time? Well at first I have to say that it is not just spare time. I have some work to do plus getting things done which I was not able to get finalized in the past weeks. But still there are loots of moments I think about what I want to do with the next weeks.

One of the things I started doing, is to read books. I never read much — maybe I should use ‘many’ cause I can count my read books at about two hands — but that changed about one and a half week ago since when I started to read The 4 hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. That book — plus some other factors which massed up over the past month — inspired me to read more, teach my self other things besides that tech stuff and maybe head into an other direction with what I want to do in the future.

I am nearly finished with that book and have a couple more to read and hope that I am going to remember as much as possible, so that I can use that stuff in my life and enhance my personality and getting better organized.

For now, I just can refer the 4 hour Work Week to you. It is an awesome book teaching you how to get more stuff done, better organized, more free time and maybe even how to get a little — or much — richer. For me I just hope that I can someday do great in this world and that book already taught me some very important things, now I just need to get used to them!

At the internet there are many great videos but to find some really great once can be tuff some times. Even better if they just occur in life by someone tweeting about it or sending me an email with an awesome video. That is why I want to share one with you today.

World Builder

This is an awesome video about a man building a world for his wife who lies in coma.

I think everyone should do that for friends build a great world around us, around everyone around us. Not a world just of beauty — life has it’s bad corners — but a world of working hard to make it beautiful. If we want, we can be friendly to everyone. The man standing right round the corner, the woman walking across our way and even the stranger sitting at the street.

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RSS feeds to delete if you need to get stuff done?

Organization | Friday, July 17th, 2009

One short answer — for sure! I think that RSS is a great thing and when I heard from it first, it was a time saver for me! At the time — something like end 2006 — I was reading some sites regularly but not via RSS but instead via going to each of the sites and watching the news which arrived while I was not there.

That was in the past. After I got used to RSS and RSS-Readers, I was able to save about 3/4 of an hour — per day! That has changed! Now I spend about 1 hour per day skimming through my RSS Reader and saving long reads for later which take some more time to read! That — in fact — is exactly the opposite of what RSS was for me in the first place. Now it costs more time than before!

And that is what, why I thought about how to save time reading less but staying at the top of the news. And I found a way — which looks like it will work for me:

First of, I look through my RSS Subscriptions from time to time, searching ‘dead’ once and looking at each feed skimming through the headlines, looking if I found the posts interesting enough to read or if I just noticed that there was a new post but did not read it because I was not interested. After that, I — most of the time — have 10 subscriptions less and that is an great improvement in saved time per day.

The second thing I changed was the way I read. At first I wanted to read long posts the minute they arrive. That was an wrong attempt. Now I save longer posts to read them later when I have time. That can be 2 weeks later or just 2 days but either way, it is better than reading it if I need to get other stuff done — and longer posts most of the time have no reference to actual happenings.

The third thing is that I check my RSS in batch. I now more start NetNewsWire at computer startup rather than checking about twice a day — mostly short after I started to work and than short before I go to bed. Sometimes — if I have nothing else to get done — I tend to jump into the RSS reader to get time down, which I need to stop cause there is never nothing else to get done!

One more thing about which RSS subscriptions I deleted when I was under pressure. While I was at preparation for my final exams, I unsubscribed from blogs like NETTUTS, PSDTUTS and other tutorial blogs. If you not currently trying to actually do the things, you should not follow that blogs. I use these sites but not that regularly that I need to get each and every post right into my head. I use them if I have a problem to solve, than these sites are the go to resources to get tutorials.

I just recently reread an old post by Michael Mistretta, to remind me what blogging is about and why I do it. In the end I had some great new ideas, some new attempts and new strength about what I want to achieve over time. If you are a blogger, make sure you read his

Letter to Blogosphere

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The Finish is the Start

Personal | Friday, July 10th, 2009

Last Friday — the 3rd of July — I wrote my last exam and with that finished the school I used to go to for the past two years. I don not know my marks yet and have no school leaving certificate in hands yet but still I am ready to go on.

The past days since the exam were pretty low riding. I started to get some work done which was stuck due to learning for the final exam — mostly picture editing plus some web-design. Till now I have to recall that days without going to school and just doing own stuff — plus some work that needs to get done, like cooking — is much less productive and I have to get used to this workflow cause I will have to get many things done in the upcoming 8 to 10 weeks. I just can not slow down or get less done. But that should not be the topic of this post.

But what else? Well I thought about the past years of school which were pretty much in the field of my interests — if you cross out photography and web-design. It was geeky and somehow techie too. In the end it will come down to a technical assistant of informatics. But is that really what I want in the end to be?

Well, for sure it is not the end of my education! I am moving on to attempt the in germany so called ‘Berufsoberschule’ which is one year of school to achieve the grade to attempt college afterwards. But what than? I still don not know what I really want and especially what I can achieve.

The problem is that I know what I love doing. I know the tools I love using. I know the things I’m passionate about. But for the life of me, I cannot find a hole that fits me.

~ Michael Mistretta

That post, by Michael Mistretta called Digging Holes, describes the problem really well. The problem of knowing what the passions are and not knowing how to life them.

For me the next life changing decisions are going to be weather or not to attempt college, go on freelance or building an own business in spare time or just go out and search a job out there. While the last one is the least I would choose. At the moment attempting college plus going on freelance / building an own business is the most appealing thought.

That are just some quick brainstorming for the feature, I don not know the feature and do not know weather or not they will change rapidly in some weeks but for now, finishing one school and going on to the next, I think it is worth looking into what I want to do in life. For now the most important I need to do now is that I get the next year of school done in a great way so that I get an degree to got to college and than can go study. Till than I have time to decide what I want to achieve!

I found one more set of Stunning mac Setups. I love to look at them!

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What a perfect way to describe / visualize a situation that we’ve all faced at one point or another (and, obviously, what perfect advice). Awesome post!

~ abartelby

That comment totally speaks out of my mind and best describes the post by Jack Cheng about Maxing out your Triangle.

If you have a shit job, come up with new ways to learn something out of it. If you have a hobby you’re super-excited about, try to turn it into a business. If you’re just starting a new gig, instill it with something you’re passionate about.

~ Jack Cheng

Thinking about that, I need to reevaluate my own jobs / hobbies!

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