Lightzone

Hi all,
Thought this may be of great interest to many...
http://www.lightcrafts.com/products/lightzone/

Can't stop playing with it! It's extremely intuitive, a little slow sometimes, but I've got some very quick results out of it. Be sure to check out the tutorials on the site as well

Have fun!
Matt

Wow! This just might be it!! Gonna upload a trial.
Thanks Matt! and congrats on your EC plus Photo of the Week

LOL! Thanks for the complements

The RT version seems quite quick and stable, but can't save anything except the full output file.
The more expensive version is misbehaving badly on my mega Dell machine (Precision 690). The results are quite good...

...but I've got better results from using Capture One to process a TIFF/JPG and then Lightzone to process.

Just a shame it's soooo slow, running in Java. An optimised binary version would've been quicker methinks.

If nothing else, it's opened my eyes to some new ways of working within Photoshop

Matt

Hi Matt, I've been admiring that photo all week on the home page, never looked to see who took it, congrats from me too superb shot.

Thanks Brian! I'll let you all know what the canvas looks like when it arrives

Just posted a waterfall (mostly) processed in LightZone. The RAW file was first converted to JPG in Capture One, but the output was too flat. Lightzone helped greatly in sorting out the exposure - I found it very intuitive and "creative". Just slow in outputting Maybe that'll change with future releases though
Final polish done in Photoshop

Matt

I can't figure out what EC means and would like to see this photo too. More clues please.

EC = Editor's Choice (on ePhotozine)
The photo is here: http://www.ephotozine.com/gallery/showlargepic.cfm?photoid=723669

Taken with the *ist-D and SMC-F 50mm/f1.4

Matt

Thanks Matt. Absolutely STUNNING. The black background was just the perfect enhancement to make it look like it was taken in a dark club. How did you manage to get the background so perfectly around that stray guitar string? I also love the use of DOF. Excellent.

Drew

Drew - thanks
So you spotted the string Not too hard really...
The black bg is done with a layer and a mask. The main mask was outlined using the pen tool in Photoshop, then softened and tamed into shape. The string was done after - used the pen tool to create a path through the middle of the string and stroked (Edit / Stroke) it on the mask with a soft brush
I did it by putting the layer to 50% opacity so I could see where I was going.

Actually there were a good few layers in this image to bring all the lighting levels into shape and increase the density of colour.

Hope that makes sense!
And if you haven't mastered the pen tool - you must
Matt

To tell you the truth Matt, I have mastered nothing yet. Thanks for the tips.

Drew