One onOne with Mike Wong

I am happy to be posting today that we have gone GM with PhotoTools and PhotoTools Professional Edition and it is now officially available for download. For those of you who pre-ordered PhotoTools, the CDs are in production and orders should begin shipping by November 29, 2007.

Thank you to everybody who has pre-ordered either PhotoTools or PhotoTools Professional Edtion. You're going to love it when you get your hands on it.

Here's an example of a photo I enhanced with it - and you can even download the preset that I used and add it to PhotoTools Professional Edition.

Here's the original photo.

Here's the PhotoTools enhanced version.

It's a somewhat subtle change, but sometimes subtle is better in my opinion. It all depends on the shot.

If you have PhotoTools Professional Edition, you can download the preset or recipe that I used to create this and use it yourself. Just download this preset file (Skin Smoothner LOTR) then unzip the file and then you'll need to get it into PhotoTools. To do that, launch PhotoTools, then go to the File menu and choose "Show Presets Folder". A new window will show up in the Finder or in Windows Explorer and you can then copy this file into the User Presets folder.

We're going to be creating a place for users to upload their own presets to share with others so stay tuned!

Posted by Mike Wong at 11:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I had a few minutes at the end of the day today to get to another one of my shots from my St. John's Bridge shoot the other day.

Shot with my Canon 20D with my EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS lens at 24mm at ISO 100 on Lexar Digital Film. Processed with Adobe Camera Raw 4.2 and using the Scott Kelby 7-Point System. I also had a Moose Peterson Circular Warming Polarizer to help bring out the colors even more. This is such a great time of year in Portland. Clear skies, amazing colors. Give it two weeks and it will be gray and raining...

Posted by Mike Wong at 10:39 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Dan Harlacher (the Senior Product Manager for onOne Software) invited me out to shoot the St. John's Bridge this morning. We were hoping for some fog that usually is around this time of year early in the morning but we didn't get any. We did however get some nice light, ran into another photographer who was also taking advantage of the light with his DSLR and his Canon Powershot G9. Boy was it cold though this morning. 37 degrees F when I left the house and it didn't warm up much during our shoot.

Here's one of my shots from this morning. I'll try to post some more this weekend and early next week. You can click on the photo for a larger view.

Canon 20D, EF 24-105mm f/4 L, at f/4.5, 1/40, ISO 400 at 24mm, Lexar Digital Film, Developed using Adobe Camera Raw 4.2 and using the Scott Kelby 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop.

Posted by Mike Wong at 12:22 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Chris Orwig has some new training available for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.1 and 1.2 over at the Lynda.com online training website.

According to Lynda.com, in Photoshop Lightroom 1.1 New Features, instructor and professional photographer Chris Orwig covers the latest additions to both version 1.1 and version 1.2. He explains how to work with each of the application's new features, including the updated interface, database catalogs, and modules. Chris also shares some useful tips and tricks along the way. Exercise files accompany the tutorials.

Topics include:

• Understanding the Lightroom interface


• Defining, importing, and sharing database catalogs


• Working with metadata


• Removing red-eye


• Using the Crop Overlay tool


• Converting to black and white


• Exploring the Slideshow, Develop, and Library modules

Posted by Mike Wong at 10:53 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)