Category: Software & Technology | John Batdorff Photography

A Review of Macphun Tonality

April 17, 2016 by John Batdorff 5 Comments

A a few years back I had the pleasure of demoing a program nicknamed Houston by the folks at Macphun. Houston, which later became known as Tonality, had a very successful launch (pun intended) by some of the very same people that made Nik Software so great. I’ve been working with Tonality for a while now and I think it’s safe to say it’s a real player in the black and white conversion world. Here is my review of Macphun Tonality.

The tools I love

Tonality has a host of tools that I love and which have become the backbone of my workflow. These include basic tone adjustments (exposure, contrast), clarity and structure sliders, and tone curve and color slider adjustments.

The user interface is very similar to most image editing software programs with an easy to follow, top-down approach to editing. If you're familiar with Lightroom or Silver Efex Pro then this workflow will feel very natural. But, what's great about Tonality is they didn't stop with the basics. They have provided us with a host of other creative editing tools including lens blur, glow, texture overlay, and more for artists who want to create a very unique style.

Presets

For the preset lovers out there, Tonality comes with a ton of presets already loaded. If you'd like more you can visit their Tonality Preset Page and download presets from some of your favorite artists, including your's truly. I created a Travel preset series while on our Italy workshop, pulling inspiration from my amazing surroundings while fueled by good food. I'd like to say that these presets are sponsored by Italian pizza and gelato. 🙂 The Presets are incredibly easy to install: simply sign up and download them, then drag the file onto the Tonality icon at the bottom of your screen and the presets install themselves.

Another cool feature is the ability to dial back the opacity of a preset's effects simply by moving a slider. You can also stack presets and effects in layers.

What about Silver Efex Pro 2?

I love Silver Efex Pro 2, and while the program is still functioning on most operating systems, it’s been made clear by Google that future developments will be limited to updates to guarantee compatibility with the latest operating systems. Frankly, this isn’t news and is simply a confirmation of what many of us had suspected for years. Google needed Nik's algorithms and technology for other projects (e.g. Google Plus and Snapseed). PC users: Nik is still is probably one of your best bets outside of Lightroom because Tonality only works on Macintosh computers.

Looking Ahead

If I had to envision a future for Silver Efex Pro then Tonality would be it with only one caveat: I wish it was available for PC users as well. However, I respect a company that sticks to its core competency and creates great products. Tonality has a rich feature set that perfectly melds the tools we love in Photoshop with a user friendly interface that is intuitive too.

Here are a few images processed using one click of my Travel presets for Tonality

Classic BW Preset

Italy workshop, macphun conversion, review of macphun

Gritty Preset

macphun review, tonality presets, black and white presets

Deep Shadows Preset

My nit picks

An honest review of Macphun Tonality wouldn't be complete without a few constructive criticisms, so I have some small complaints, but they really are nit picking if anything. There is a small lag in rendering the after-image when you resize the screen. Importing presets is extremely easy — simply drag the presets onto the Tonality Icon and they’re installed — however, adding presets to already established categories (or folders) is less intuitive and appears to be done at the system folder level. But, these are far from deal killers and if anything they're just fixes to look forward to in future releases.

Conclusion

For Macintosh users, Tonality is the future of black and white processing. Its algorithm creates beautiful black and white images and is supported by a strong suite of tools. But, like with anything, I always recommend kicking the tires first. You can download Tonality for free HERE to try it on for size. Check it out and let me know what you think by leaving a comment here on the blog. I have a feeling you're going to truly enjoy it.

How to Disable Lightroom’s Add Photos Feature

October 25, 2015 by John Batdorff Leave a Comment

Adobe's New Add Photos feature

Lightroom's newest updates, LR 6.2 and Creative Cloud version 15.2, were a huge disappointment with the major overhaul to the import module being particularly problematic. The upgrade was so flawed with so many bugs and features added and removed that Adobe issued an apology for their mistake. Now this might not be new for many of you, but I've received a lot of questions on how I'm handling the update so I thought I'd share my thoughts here for my readers.

My feeling is that mistakes happen (even at Adobe), but how quickly they respond to the mistake is the real issue. Adobe quickly released an update to versions 6.2.1 and 15.2.1 which did help alleviate some of my system's crashing issues, but it wasn't until I turned off the “Add Photos” feature that my system starting acting somewhat normal. I'm sure intentions where good in that Adobe tried to create an easier way to import photos into Lightroom, but sometimes simplifying things too much creates more problems down the road. The add photo feature brought my system to a crawl and ultimately made Lightroom unusable. The word on the street is that Adobe is working to release 6.3 which will revert back to the old style of importing. While you can roll back your system to a version prior to the upgrade, this does require a few steps with which some of you might not be comfortable. So my recommendation is simply to disable the “add photos” feature. Here's how:

How to Disable Lightroom's Add Photos Feature

Step 1

Launch Lightroom

Step 2

Locate Lightroom Preference menu and navigate to the General Tab and uncheck “Add Photos Screen.” Once it's unchecked, then simply close the preference screen and you should be set.

I also created a video on how to disable Lightroom's Add Photo feature so you can see it in real time:

Disable Lightroom Add Photos feature video

Signature Series Silver Efex Pro 2 Presets

March 14, 2014 by John Batdorff 6 Comments

My Signature Series for Silver Efex Pro 2

I'm really pleased to announce the release of my Signature Series Silver Efex Pro presets. Last year I created and shared with you my Signature Series Black and White presets for Lightroom. Admittedly I was pleasantly surprised by how well they were received. However, since the release of my 2011 book on Black and White From Snapshots to Great Shots, I've had many requests for my Silver Efex Pro presets. Well the day has finally come and I am now sharing my favorite Silver Efex Pro 2 presets with you. There are 38 presets here, some are for landscape, others for streetscapes and portraits, and yet others that are creative and artsy. I think you'll find some great presets to give you a jumping off point for your workflow in SEP2. You can purchase all 38 for $12.50 by heading over to my store on the website. Please before purchasing make sure you're running the latest updated version of Silver Efex Pro 2.

Purchase

Copperhead preset was used on this image of Kilimanjaro as seen from Amboseli National Park.

Monochrome 4 Presets was used on this image of Machu Picchu

Pinhole Film preset was used on this image of the Eiffel Tower

New York City street portrait central park

Streetscape 2 was used on this image of a New York City ballet dancer

Wave Apps Rocks for Small Business Accounting

October 18, 2013 by Staci Prince 5 Comments

From the Studio

As I’ve been settling in here at Batdorff Photography, I’m realizing how different things are in the photography world than in the healthcare world. As a nurse, the idea was always to get as much as possible squeezed into as little time as possible, while always trying to be three places at once. Here in the photography world, I’m learning that the value lies in the details, in the small stuff, in everything being artfully, thoughtfully created while still managing your time.

Wave Apps is the product we use to make business accounting easy.

I’m also learning how little I know about the business end of things. You see, in my relationship with John, he has always been the business guy. It may be unusual for business types to also be art types, but he’s an unusual guy, what can I say? But part of my duties here at the studio are to run the business end of things so that he can continue working on his photography and working with all of you. I’m here to make it all work seamlessly together. We had started the studio off using Quickbooks like many other businesses, but we found it to be overkill for an operation of our size. Moreover, as we moved into payroll we wanted something that would be easy to manage. Thankfully we found a system to meet our needs that was built for small houses just like us.

The system we use is called Wave Apps. It’s free for invoicing and general accounting, but there is a small fee to use the payroll. John is a big believer in sharing the products we use and love. We aren't sharing because we are paid to, we're sharing because we want to. While accounting isn't glamorous, it's essential to running a good business, so we hope you'll enjoy our thoughts on this product that we use every day.

Wave makes invoicing super easy.

Top 8 things we like about Wave Apps:

1. The invoicing is super easy and very customizable with email delivery.

2. You can see when your invoice has been delivered, viewed, and paid for by your customer.

3. Invoices can be paid via credit card, or you can manually enter them if your customer pays using a check or cash.

4. WaveApps accounts helps us keep track of our expenditures and income. We can track our workshop income, travel expenses, utilities, and camera equipment purchases (Hey John, why is THAT line item so LARGE???).

5. Wave even provides a weekly email update to let us know how our cashflow is doing by providing a snapshot of income versus expenses.

6. Wave sends promotions on a regular basis from partners that include free services and discounts that every startup business would love.

7. You can schedule recurring invoices so that you can offer your customers payment plans, or create any type of recurrent payment.

8. If you download the Wave phone app you can take photos of all of your receipts to safely store them away and organize them for when you need them.

I have to say, this system is not only intuitive — it’s powerful. Making a career change is difficult, but it’s programs like this that make it so much easier. I hope to be able to share some other business stuff from the perspective of the Studio with you every so often here on the blog.

Cabin Fever = Timelapse Experiment

August 9, 2013 by John Batdorff Leave a Comment

Mother feeding her young

Over the summer I had a chance to play around a bit with a Trigger Trap in creating timelapse movies. Now, admittedly I’m not an expert in the field and this is post will be an oversimplification of the process, but what’s important to know is it’s really not hard to do. In my case, one afternoon when I was suffering from a little cabin fever I decided to set up shop photographing a bird house that had tree swallows nesting in it.

I’m not a birder and I don’t own a 500mm lens, so I used my 70-200mm with a 1.4 extender to close the gap between me and my avian subjects. Using the Triggertrap mobile app’s timelapse feature, I was able to program the app to take a series of nearly 700 images over the course of 40 minutes. If you don't see the movie below in your feed then simply click HERE.

The process was pretty straightforward:

1. I set my camera file to a medium quality jpeg to save on space and processing time.

2. Set your camera’s image aspect ratio to 16×9. If you’re unable to do this then you can make adjustments later in Lightroom using the crop tool. (If you do have to crop later, remember to give yourself room to do so as it will shorten your vertical height.)

2. I turned off the camera LCD preview to save on battery.

4. The Trigger Trap really does most of the work by calculating how many images need to be photographed based on how long you’ll be photographing. There are two sliders, one for the amount of photos and the other for the duration you’ll be shooting, and you work them back and forth to get your desired movie length and fps rate. For example, I told the app I wanted 40 minutes worth of photos and 750 images, which it calculated would be 55 seconds of footage at 15fps.

5. Using Lightroom 4.4 I processed the images a bit further by adding some contrast and vibrance, and then synced those settings between all the images by selecting all of them and using the Sync button in the Develop module.

5. Finally, I used the Slideshow feature in Lightroom’s 4.4 to export the clips as a movie by clicking on the Export video button. It’s important to note that you’re no longer able to create time lapse videos in Lightroom 5.0 (to the best of my knowledge) so if you enjoy making timelapse then I strongly recommend keeping the older LR version installed.

A good quick read that will get your feet wet on the subject is “Timelapse” by Dave Delnea available on Craft & Vision.

Signature Series Black and White Lightroom Presets

April 26, 2013 by John Batdorff 5 Comments

I’m excited to announce my Lightroom presets specifically designed for the black and white photography lover. My Signature Series is a set of 26 effects that have been designed from scratch, tested, and carefully curated by yours truly. I’ve always been a huge fan of presets as a starting point, and on rare occasions, they have been a “one click solution.” This series includes all my favorite effects that I use on a regular basis.

Below a sample of the “Soft Portrait” preset in action. Place your cursor over the image and slide the divider back and forth for a before and after preview. You can try out more presets and purchase the package on the new Lightroom Presets page or using the Purchase button below.

[beforeafter][/beforeafter]

Here are the Signature Series highlights and disclaimers:

There are a total of 26 presets and each is labeled with it’s own name. Some perform similar functions, but will have added information in the label distinguishing them from one another. For instance, there are two soft portrait presets; one preset uses an auto exposure and the other does not. I recommend trying both and then comparing your results.
The presets were designed for Lightroom 4.4 and Lightroom 5.
These are not one-click solutions and were not designed to solve every image problem. These presets were designed with a particular style or look in mind. More importantly, many of these presets are making a lot of adjustments in the background via the tone curve, graduated filters, exposure, sharpening, etc… So please take your time to get know them and feel free to tweak them to fit your creative goal.
I like to think of the Signature Series as part of my family. Each preset has it’s own personality, and when coupled with the right image, it can be stunning. However, much like family members, sometimes personalities don’t mix and the image and the preset simply don’t mesh well together. Take time exploring your images and the presets to see which pairing works best for you and your creative goals. My hope is you’ll come to love these presets as much as I do and they too will become an essential part of your processing family.
Most importantly: If you use one of my presets please tag me on Facebook, Google Plus, or even Twitter. I’ll select someone’s photo in the coming months and post it here on my blog with your permission.

I love this series of presets and built them specifically for my needs, but I’m happy to share them with you. It’s my hope you come to enjoy them as much as I have over the years. All 26 presets are being sold for $8.50

PurchaseI have put together a quick tutorial on installing presets, but please feel free to drop me a note with any other questions.