The guys over at Craft & Vision keep releasing titles at a rate that’s faster than I can read them, let alone review them.

Still, I was pleased to see another C&V eBook by Corwin Hiebert, the manager of David Duchemin, Mr. Craft & Vision himself. It’s called ‘Your Creative Mix’.

The ebook is about the problems and opportunities you face as a creative or artistic entrepreneur when trying to market yourself. As Corwin manages only creative people, he’s more than well-placed to give advice in that matter.

Without giving away the whole content of the eBook, there are a couple of great do’s (do work together with other creatives in other disciplines) and don’ts (don’t shamelessly plug your person, but elicit curiosity about your work) that by themselves are invaluable advice. But there’s more than that. The book gives a solid insight to creative entrepreneurship. And as with each and any C&V title, it’s only $5, or less, if you read on:

Special Offer on PDFs

Until tomorrow evening only, if you use the promotional code MIX4 when you checkout, you can have the PDF version of Your Creative Mix for only $4 OR use the code MIX20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more PDF ebooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST July 23rd, 2011.

Zoals gisteren beloofd werden er onder de aanwezigen van de webinar voor X-Rite twee boeken verloot. Kim Engels en Edwin Smet mogen binnenkort op vinkenslag staan voor de brievenbus.

Bent u niet in de prijzen gevallen, dan kunt u het nog altijd bestellen. Meer info in deze blogpost. Het boek is ondertussen ook in de boekhandel verkrijgbaar.

I received a question from Bianca, one of the ‘Speedlight to Lightroom’ workshop participants on how you can make Black & Whites in Lightroom while retaining certain colours. Well, as usual, there’s more than one way of doing this so I decided to do a little video on the subject.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Nederlands.

Even een vlugge tip tussendoor: in de Fnac van Gent (ik weet niet of de actie elders ook geldt) kan je versie 5 van DxO Standard kopen voor 59 €. Dat is minder dan de helft van de normale prijs. Volgens mij – maar u checkt toch best nog even op de site van DxO – kan je deze versie kosteloos online upgraden naar versie 5.3.
59 € is echt wel niet veel voor dit pakket. Ik gebruik het vooral in combinatie met Lightroom, omwille van de uitstekende ruisreductie en de optische correcties: de correcties van DxO zijn immers specifiek voor bepaalde camera-lens combinaties gemaakt, en dus veel correcter dan de generieke correcties van Photoshop.
Maar, naast de plugin is DxO ook een op zichzelf staande Raw Converter.
Geïnteresseerden geven misschien best een belletje naar de Fnac, want de stock was beperkt.

[lang_nl]De D3x zou ongeveer 8.000 USD gaan kosten. Geen idee hoeveel toenmalige Reichsmarken dat zijn, maar ene A. Hitler kan er niet mee lachen! Je kan voor die prijs natuurlijk al een pak forellen met botersaus verhapstukken. Ene cndlpwr heeft een fragment uit Der Untergang wel héél vrij vertaald. Te bezien op YouTube. Vooral leuk voor wie géén Duits verstaat [/lang_nl]

I have already said from time to time that I am a user of DxO Optics Pro software. Now that the software is also available as a Lightroom Plugin, I usually also give a short demo during my Lightroom workshops.

DxO actually offers two software packages: DxO Optics Pro and DxO Filmpack. The latter allows users to simulate certain film looks. This article is about Dxo Optics Pro, however. DxO Optics Pro is actually a Raw Converter in itself, but one of a very specific kind: the DxO test lab actually makes test shots of a specific digital SLR with a specific lens, and it repeats this procedure for different focal lengths and different iso-values.

For Example: DxO will test a Nikon D700 with the 24-70 lens at 24 mm, 25 mm, 26 mm, andsoforth. That way, DxO knows the distortion this zoom lens gives at every one of its different focal lengths, in combination with the specified camera body. This knowledge enables the software to counteract or ‘invert’ the distortion in order to deliver an image free of those distortions.

That way problems such as barrel or pincushion distortion and vignetting, can be adressed, turning bent lines back into straight ones. The software also deals with camera-specific noise and differences in lens sharpness between the center and outer edges of a lens, although I find the latter sometimes to be too pronunciated. Fortunately, you can finetune the amount of the effect with a slider.

DxO calls such a Camera-Lens combination a ‘Module‘ and often makes new modules available, also to existing users and cameras. A user of the Standard Version of the software can download the modules for every camera and lens he or she owns.

There is one limit to this, though: the Standard Version only lists ‘DX’-type of DSLRs. If you have a FullFrame DSLR such as a Nikon D700 or D3, or a Canon 5D, you have to invest in the ‘Elite Version’ which at 250 € is about double the price of the Standard Version. Fortunately, Elite users also have access to the Standard Database. So if you own a D300 and a D3, you don’t have to buy both the Elite and the Standard Version.

Experienced Photoshop Users might wonder if they can’t use Photoshop’s Lens Correction Filter. While this is true, the Lens Correction Filter has two main drawbacks. Firstly, it is a generalist filter, that aims to tackle general distortions. Users will often find that dealing with a distortion in one area of an image will lead to distortions elsewhere. Secondly, the Lens Correction Filter has to be applied to every image separately, in order to determine the Filter’s sweet spot for that specific image. (Although theoretically, you could make presets for different lenses and focal lengths). DxO does everything tailor-made and automatically. A difference soon to be noticed when dealing with a large number of images.

Especially photographers of architecture and panorama photographers (who will want to run the DxO corrections before stitching the photographs together) will appreciate the sophisticated and indivualised correction controls, but also Portrait Photographers will be amazed by the differences a corrected image will show, especially when they use their zoom lenses at the extremes (where distortions are usually most noticeable).

Those who find the price to be an obstacle, can get a 33% discount until the end of the year. DxO not only restores lens correction, but now also our plumetting purchasing power. What else could a photographer possibly want? More details on the DxO site.

[lang_nl]Had je ze ook al gezien? De nieuwe knopjes ‘English’ en ‘Nederlands’, bovenaan de rechter kolom?

Bij wijze van experiment (uiteindelijk is dit blog een half jaar geleden ook als een experiment begonnen) ben ik van plan om een aantal verleden en toekomstige blog-artikelen ook in een Engelse vertaling online te zetten. Let’s face it: er zijn hoop en al 20 miljoen mensen op de wereld die Nederlands spreken, en er zijn er honderd keer meer die Engels spreken (ik rond af, ik heb ze niet echt geteld ).

Een blog onderhouden kost weinig geld, maar het kost des te meer tijd. Ik denk dat iedereen die er zelf eentje heeft, daarover kan meespreken. Maar, de meeste tijd kruipt in het bedenken van de artikels, het nemen van de foto’s, het online zetten en dergelijke. Een vertaling maken valt relatief nog mee. Zeker als het een vertaling is naar een taal waar je toch al de helft van de dag zit in te lezen en te denken (ik heb een Engelse Lightroom, een Engelse Photoshop en de helft van mijn vakliteratuur is in het Engels). Degenen die al eens een workshop gevolgd hebben weten dat ik toch al sowieso de helft van de tijd Engels praat

Vandaar. MeerDanWoorden voortaan ook écht MoreThanWords![/lang_nl][lang_en]Did you notice them? The new switches ‘English’ and ‘Nederlands’ to the right?

This blog – in Dutch -  started out half a year ago as an experiment, and to add to that experiment, I have come up with – to quote private Baldrick ‘a cunning plan’. I’ll translate some of the past and future blogposts into English.

Let’s face it. There’s about 20 million people that speak Dutch on this world (and even they have trouble understanding each other). There’s about a hundredfold that speak some kind of English. I’m rounding here, I did not actually count them .

Running a blog costs little in terms of money. It costs a whole lot more in terms of time invested. Anyone that hosts a blog will agree. But, most of the time goes into putting together the articles and pictures that accompany them. (And finding out the code to use to make your blog bilingual). The actual translation is not that hard. At least not if you’re already thinking, reading (and dreaming) in English half of the time anyway: my Lightroom is in English, my Photoshop is in English (I just could not get used to those strange translations – ever saw Photoshop in French? It’s like reading an existentialist novel! – and half of my Photography literature is in English. And those who attended one of my workshops knows that half of what comes out of my mouth is in English anyway…

Dus, daar gaan we dan. MoreThanWords voortaan ook in het Engels. That’s Dutch for ‘From now on, MoreThanWords will be available in English as well’. If you could read that, what are you doing here in the first place? [/lang_en]