I’ve completed a new revision of The Fader plugin and I’m proud to present a new name for the plugin site, Capture Monkey.
http://www.capturemonkey.com/thefader
I’ll be posting more plugins there in future and this blog will concentrate on the MIDI plugin.
As you have probably read at http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/01/lr4betanowavailable.html, Lightroom 4 is now in public beta phase. Most significant updates are to new photo development process, which totally replaces the old basic develop settings (bye-bye Fill Light, its been both pleasure and pain). Sure, there’s picture books etc, but I currently have no use for those.
Because the changes are so fundamental; Knobroom, Leak Lite and The Fader need to be updated to support new process version. I am already working on these updates.
What has also happened, is that I also quit my other day job, so I have much more time to put into plugin development at the moment. This comes with a price though – meaning that I’m considering a shareware model for future plugin development. I am planning to keep the price reasonable (or is $10 reasonable?) and providing some basic functionality for free.
PS. The server has moved back to the old continent, this time it is located in Germany.
UPDATE: OOPS the download links weren’t working. If you got “Multisite support not enabled” message when downloading, please try again, there was a lighttpd configuration error.
Lately, I’ve been playing with Adobe Lens Profile Creator and since there aren’t that much profiles available for Micro Four Thirds cameras, I decided to post my todays efforts here.
First one is a profile for chinese CCTV lens which has a C-mount thread and it’s got some serious distortion and vignetting. I bought my copy from eBay for some $25. I don’t mind the vignetting, but the distortion is sometimes annoying.
Download MFT Fujian 35mm f1.7 Lens Profile
Another one is a profile for PK mount Samyang 8mm f3.5 fisheye on E-P1. I don’t know if its any use for other people, since the 8mm lens is REALLY picky about PK adapter thickness, but here’s it anyway:
Download MFT Samyang 8mm f3.5 fisheye (PK) Lens Profile
To install, copy the .lcp file to proper directory:
The profiles are shot on Olympus PEN E-P1, Fujian aperture at f5.6 and Samyang at f8.0. Both had about 2m focus distance to the chart.
PS. In theory, these could be uploaded to Adobe’s Lens Profile Downloader tool, but unfortunately it seems to have some sort of bug with Olympus lenses. If you select “Olympus” from the pulldown menu, nothing is shown. But if you only write e.g. “Olympu” the tool shows profiles correctly.
Lightroom 3.5 removes the license restriction section “2.10″, which required the two computers to use same operating system.
This means that I can now again install Lightroom on my Windows PC and from now on, the plugins on this site are once again supported on Windows.
PS. There was unscheduled server downtime on Thursday and Saturday, my apologies for that! Server has now been moved from Lahti, Finland to US East Coast.
UPDATE: OS restrictions were removed from Lightroom 3.5 license, see comment #4 below. Windows support is now back.
Previously, I’ve been under impression that my Lightroom 3 license covers both OS X and Windows platforms. I originally got that idea after reading the Lightroom FAQ, which is a bit vague about the platform issue.
From http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/faq/
Subject to the terms of the software license agreement, the primary user of the computer on which Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is installed may install a second copy of the software for his or her exclusive use on either a portable computer or a computer located at his or her home, provided that the software on the second computer is not used at the same time as the software on the primary computer. Lightroom is sold as multiplatform software, which means it can be installed on either Mac OS X or Windows.
Apparently, this is not the case, as the official license says it more clearly.
From http://www.adobe.com/products/eulas/pdfs/photoshoplightroom_3.pdf
2.10 Dual Boot Platform. The Software is licensed for use on a specific operating system platform. You must purchase a separate license for use of the Software on each operating system platform. By way of example, if you desire to install the Software on both the Mac OS and Windows operating system platforms on a device that runs both of those platforms (i.e., a dual boot machine), then you must first obtain two separate licenses for the Software. This is true even if two versions of the Software, each designed for a different operating system platform, are delivered to you on the same media.
As a result of this new information, PLUGINS POSTED ON THIS SITE ARE NOT SUPPORTED ON WINDOWS. Effective immediately, June 7th 2011. From this date onwards, the plugins are only tested on OS X.
Best Regards,
Jarno Heikkinen
John R. Ellis pointed out a way to assign keyboard shortcuts for Lightroom plugins at Adobe Lightroom SDK forum, I figured that most people are not familiar with this, so I’m sharing the information here.
You can add shortcuts in System Preferences’ Keyboard section, open the Application Shortcuts and click on the plus sign.
With Lightroom plugins, the trick is to add three spaces before the menu entry name!
Good news everyone! Excessor plugin received two important features:
- ability to set virtual copies’ “copy name” to either preset name or preset UUID
- option to develop all preset folders at once
I’ll post a more detailed use-case later on, but you can now e.g. create print out galleries of your favourite presets, so you do not have to figure out which preset is which.
Note that it might take LR3 a while before it renders hundreds of virtual copies!
Excessor is a Lightroom 3 plugin that allows you to apply a preset folder on a single image, generating ridiculous amount of virtual copies with applied presets. You can then further edit the virtual copies as you wish.
Download Excessor 0.2.298 (10082 bytes)
Above you can see an example of single image and its 11 virtual copies, which are generated from a single preset folder with a click of a button.
I’ve just released a remotely related cousin for Knobroom – an iPad app which connects to Lightroom using Wi-Fi. It’s available at Apple’s App Store, see http://lrpad.com.
The future plan for Knobroom is to use LRPAD’s plugin to interface with Lightroom, which should keep Knobroom’s core functionality nice and tidy, so that Knobroom can concentrate on the MIDI implementation.
Long story short: Knobroom 0.1 plugin has a expiration date and the time has come!
Update: Version 0.1.8 is EXACTLY same as 0.1.7 except there is no expiration check. It’s on the download page.
Longer version: I’ve decided that the 0.1 needs a complete surgery, so I’ve started rewriting it. The rewrite is “working”, but there’s no dialog or user interface yet. I was hoping to finish it during the seasonal vacations, but I’ve been working for the whole week in my daily job. So it’ll take a few moments longer before I’m comfortable with releasing it to the public.
The actual plugin is split in two parts, there’s the Lightroom process and a seperate process which handles the MIDI input. In 0.1.7 version communication between two parts was based on HTTP. This turned out to be not that great idea. Firstly, the HTTP is request-response protocol, which means that I had to use “long lived” HTTP requests to get MIDI data into Lightroom. Sounded like a great idea, but Lightroom’s exit waits for all the HTTP requests to finish…. so sometimes there was annoying few seconds delay when exiting. That was enough for me, the NEW 0.1 release is strictly file based.
Here’s some “features” in the next 0.1 release:
- Total rewrite, new architecture
- Growl notifications
- Assigning controls to different MIDI channels
- Fixed path, drive issues on Windows
- MIDI navigation buttons
The Fader is now listed at Adobe’s Lightroom Exchange
Lightroom Exchange provides possibility to review plugins and rate them, so if you have used The Fader and do have Adobe account, I would appreciate any feedback there.
