Gadgets Future

Adobe has finally released Lightroom 2.0, the newest version of its digital edit suite for photographers. It offers significant changes from the previously current v1.4, and even manages to add in a few neat extras which were absent in the 2.0 beta. Because Lightroom is one of the most important pieces of software for photographers, and because I have been testing the beta version for the last four months, we’ll take a look at those changes here at the Gadget Lab.

On April 2nd of this year, the 2.0 beta version debuted, hot on the heels of Apple’s brand new Aperture 2.0, and swiftly devastated a few of Aperture’s killer features. The most exciting part of the original Lightroom was non-destructive editing. In short this means that when making edits in Lightroom, your original RAW (or TIFF or JPG) file is left untouched. Any changes you make, be they white balance or crops, are saved in an XML file, a small text file which describes what you did. Every time you make further changes, this is the file that is changed, and those edits are applied on-the-fly.

What v2.0 adds is the ability to make localized edits. For instance, you can dodge and burn a subject’s face but leave the rest of the photo untouched. You can do this with exposure settings, saturation, sharpness and contrast, among others. This allows for some very accurate tweaking of the image without sending the file off to Photoshop and then saving it back to Lightroom, thus adding one more big image file to your hard drive. Aperture allows these localized edits, too, but they are destructive. That is, the edits you have made so far are committed and rendered irreversible when you decide to dodge and burn: the RAW file is saved as a TIFF and the editing occurs there. This, for many, is far from ideal.

This official 2.0 release adds some extras not found in the beta. In addition to the localized edits listed above, you can now save presets. One is included, called” Soften Skin”. Click this, paint over the skin of you subject and their skin is indeed softened.

There is also a brand new tool, called the Graduated filter. This acts just like a real graduated filter, graduating an effect from one side of the image to another. Above you can see it pointlessly adding exposure to a perfectly good portrait of the Lady. You click, drag to set the angle and then tweak the intensity of the effects. It would even be possible to make that 80s hallmark of tackiness, the tobacco grad. In fact, I think I will:

Also updated is the catalog module, the place where you organize your photographs. Smart folders are now possible, so you could have Lightroom keep all of your flash photos together, automatically. The interface has been tweaked since the beta and looks more polished. The icons are a little different and things are easier to find. And when you first start up Lightroom 2.0, it will ask if you want your previous catalog to be imported. I said yes, and it took a few seconds (using a MacBook Pro).

The other biggie is dual monitor support. The beta had a crack at this, but it was a little janky. It didn’t always work as expected and caused a few slowdowns. The new version is said to be a lot smoother (I don’t have access to an external monitor right now) and, just as important, you can choose which of the screens the main editing screen appears on, instead of being limited to the main monitor.

After this brief first look, Lightroom 2.0 looks to be a significant improvement over the beta, and a massive step forward from 1.4. There are many more additions I haven’t had a chance to check, but below you can read the full list of changes from 2.0 beta to 2.0 full. The new program will cost $300, or $100 as an upgrade. And if you want to take it for a spin around the block, you can download a month-long trial.

Download page [Adobe]

Lightroom 2 Now Available [Lightroom Journal]

Lightroom 2 beta vs. Lightroom 2

Hierarchical Dates and locations in the Library Filter. (Including days of the week for the date)

The Volume Browser in the folder panel.

Improved iconography for folders, collections, collection sets and output collections.

Dedicated keyword input field in the keywording pane.

Ability to add or remove metadata filter columns.

Improved Keyword List interface. (Including filter by keyword to manage and organize keywords)

Repositioned and refined dual monitor support location and experience. (Moved from right to left and the ultimate dual monitor experience is much more polished in terms of performance and stability

Ability to set target collection for quick collection shortcut(b). (Target any collection as the target when you hit the B key)

Lightroom Web, Metadata and Export SDK available on the Adobe Dev Center

Local control improvements

Complete list of local controls including, Exposure, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Sharpness, Clarity and a color toning option available for the brush or gradient adjustment tool

Additional gradient adjustment tool

Improved auto-mask functionality

Improved brush performance

Additional post crop vignette options: roundness, feather

DNG Profiles Concept

DNG Profile Editor available on Labs

Profiles for our current raw support list available

Match camera JPEG looks in the Calibration tab by selection Camera Standard profile

Export to JPEG functionality in the Slideshow Module. (Intermediate format for additional authoring tools)

Enhanced output sharpening

64-bit memory handling improvement

My friend, Jesse Stay, has finally given up on Twitter. He states all his reasons why he is leaving and why he thinks you should join him:

• My Hiatus From Twitter - Why You Should Join Me | Stay N’ Alive

I stopped really using Twitter several months ago and I basically agree with Jesse’s reasons for leaving, but I refuse to jump ship for just another social network like FriendFeed, Tumbler or indenti.ca. The reason why Twitter is more appealing than these other options is because I can use my cell phone to do an update. A simple SMS can keep me in touch and I can receive SMS updates of my favorite friends. THAT’S why Twitter is the killer app that people aren’t abandoning.

Honestly, I’ve been disappointed with Twitter. Instead of offering me a pay service that will turn my IM back on (along with other features), they have been putting out fires because of scaling issues. I still read my friend’s tweets to keep up-to-date on their lives, but if I have 140 characters to say, I’ve gone back to using Flickr’s post to blog feature. Then I can include a picture and say as little or as much as I want about my life.

With the advances in mobile options, Twitter’s killer app won’t be as important to me as it has been over the last two years. Until then, I’ll still read my friends’ Twitter feeds to keep up to date. Sadly, I fear that Twitter is just an intermediary technology. As soon as the cell phones increase their capabilities (or when there is an iphone in every pocket), Twitter will no longer serve any use.

Imagine being able to unplug your hard drive and hook it up to your TV to watch some popular movies or even see some great digital vacation photos sent by Uncle Phil of his recent vacation to Cleveland with the wife and kids. Okay, that would be torture, but being able to enjoy movie downloads or listen to favorite songs while looking at a digital photo album wouldn’t be too bad, would it?

The trouble is, that unless people know a lot about networking and media center TV hacks, the blinking VCR crowd isn’t likely to get it, much less enjoy it. Until now. This SATA HDD Multimedia Dock will plug in not only 2.5/3.5 inch hard disks but also SD Cards. And with its standard RCA or S-Video outputs, users can easily enjoy video, photos and even audio from their TVs without a computer.

The Multimedia dock also works as a data backup unit as well thanks to its USB interface. This unit presupposes the ability to remove a hard drive and install it into the unit, but if that hard drive is part of an external array, then removal is much simpler, and safer for other data, than removing it from within the computer itself. The only real drawback is that it only works with FAT32 formatted drives but for less than $100, it represents an intriguing option for enjoying PC based media on a TV without hooking up one’s computer.

Hat Tip – The Ferret

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The iRiver Spinn has certainly whipped up a fair bit of interest since it was unveiled at CES 2008 earlier this year, and all that anticipation will soon culminate in holding one in your hands since it is open for pre-orders, with the 4GB model retailing for around 164 Euros while the 8GB model costs approximately 190 Euros. Just to refresh your memory, the iRiver Spinn will feature the following :-

• 3.3″ AMOLED display
• Supports MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, ASF audio formats
• Supports MPEG4, WM9, WMA video formats
• T-DMB support
• Built-in radio

That’s not an exhaustive list though, but you can bet your bottom dollar you’ll be the envy of the block (at least for a while) until the next ipod comes out.

Don’t you think that the Nekura Twilight Watch oozes with nostalgia, harking back to the 1980s era of science fiction and fantasy? It will definitely make heads turn, but I don’t think you’d wear this to go along with your business suit. The watch’s face itself is split into two colors - red on the left and blue on the right, but it is just there for aesthetic purposes. You will need to retain your analog reading skills if you want to tell the time with this, and good thing it doesn’t require a rocket science degree unlike watches from Tokyoflash.

Everything and everyone’s going green these days, making me think that going green is the new black. I suppose we all want to do our part by helping keep the environment clean in a passive manner, hence the deluge of green products being released by manufacturers left and right. Fabrik is one of them, shipping what it touts to be the most eco-friendly hard drive in the world, although there aren’t any official benchmarks or studies done to affirm that self-proclaimed statement. I wouldn’t go up against it though, since the materials it is made from is already much greener compared to your regular hard drive. Known as the [re]drive, it uses bamboo as a design element and comes with low-impact packaging. Internally, you will find a 500GB hard drive for you to store all your precious files.

Interestingly enough, there is no On/Off switch with this (come to think of it, other portable hard drives don’t have an On/Off switch either - you just take the tried and tested Plug-n-Play route) as it will turn itself on and off depending on the usage level. Each $159.99 purchase comes with an Energy Star-qualified power adapter. On the outside, you will find a thin sheet of bamboo lining the drive, doubling up as a cover as well. The chassis itself is made out of aluminum and adds to the drive’s ability to passively cool itself, which means there are no built-in fans with the [re]drive. That translates to virtually zero noise, making it an instant favorite with librarians and those who like some peace and quiet.

The [re]drive’s packaging is also minimized, coming with just a small amount of corrugated cardboard. Each Simpletek [re]drive will be accompanied by 2 GB of free online storage, but those who want unlimited storage can fork out $5 per month.

Source: PC Mag

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Cafetière (or, as you might say, French Press) meets Victorian deep-sea diver’s helmet in the Freud coffee plunger. Switch the stainless steel for brass and you’d have the ultimate steampunk coffee-pot (there’s also one for tea). One vendor site shows the dearth of imagination present in gift marketing departments. While this should obviously be bought for you favorite top-hatted tinkerer, Fabstuff suggests that it is:

A perfect gift for a 4th wedding anniversary, as silverware is the traditional gift of this event!

At least they added an exclamation mark to make it sound more exciting! The Freud gets its name from the café which designed it: Frevd in London’s Neal Yard (no, that’s not a mistake. It’s a strange old-fashioned English spelling tic). The steampunk steamer is billed as having a “unique drip proof spout”. This might be so if you don’t overfill, but the tipoff I got last night told me that “it’s easy for the spout to dribble if you have too much water.”

Even so, the thing looks awesome. I’d buy one, but I’m a little worried about spilling coffee into my steampunk laptop. Around $100.

Product page [On the Table]

We can kind of get behind cats’ eye contact lenses, and we wonder why nobody has yet invented the mirror contact lens, but this Eye Jewelry from Amsterdamer Eric Klarenbeek can only be described as eye-watering. Dangly pendants affixed to suction cups, the hanging, tear-like eye-rings creep us out like nothing else we have seen this week.

Klarenbeek actually began this project back in 2005. That we haven’t seen any of these in shops shows just how impractical they might be. The video above features, judging by the excellent Nine Inch Nails soundtrack, a newer version of this ocular torture device.

We’re pretty sure this wouldn’t be dangerous — one tug and it would pull right out — but imagine the discomfort of blinking. A single stray eyelash is enough to have my eyes streaming like those of an emotional mother at a wedding. A length of fishing line hanging from my mince pies would be insufferable.

Product page [Eric Klarenbeek via the Giz]

This nifty looking device you see above is known as the DVD Zabady VD-J713CW, and it will be perfect for those who just cannot tear themselves away from the TV even while taking a bath. Since large screen waterproof displays are expensive, the VD-J713CW comes in a much smaller 7″ display at 480 x 234 resolution which makes it way more manageable. Features include an integrated DVD player and a 1Seg TV tuner to accompany an SD memory card slot and multimedia support. It is not waterproof indefinitely, as leaving it underwater (less than 1m) for more than 30 minutes will result in seepage, making it turn off permanently.

Regular readers might know of my weakness for bicycle inner tubes (both in and out of the bedroom) and home made flash accessories. David Hobby over at the excellent Strobist blog has combined the two into a low cost hack which will let you attach all manner of accessories to your speedlights without leaving them gummed up with glue.

Self adhesive Velcro is the tool of choice for attaching snoots, honeycombs, softboxes and reflectors to a flashgun, but when that Velcro gets old it needs to be peeled off and replaced. David took a look at the (admittedly cheap already) commercial straps, which you sling around the flash head, and devised an even cheaper home-made alternative.

Simply cut a strip of inner tube, clean it up and cover one side with soft Velcro. Add an inch or so of the hard, hooked Velcro to the other side and you have a grippy wraparound strap. As David says, the picture below should explain everything.

Head over to see the full post, paying special attention to David’s advice for “deep-walleted DIY haters”. We agree completely.

Mount Your Mods with Speed Straps [Strobist]