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“Fixing” What Ain’t Broke
I am often confounded by the software industry tweaking something out of usefulness, and the upgrades that Adobe is making to its Lightroom software may be just that. I’m willing to see where it goes, of course. But since mine apparently upgrades itself, this morning, when I wanted to get something done and move on, I had to deal with some unfortunate issues with the latest and greatest version of Adobe Lightroom CC (2015).
If you’re using Lightroom CC and you’ve deliberately or accidentally upgraded to the latest version, here is a link to instructions to go back to the last version of the software (CC 6, I believe). Lightroom is a great piece of photo-editing software, but it appears that rather than keeping this a high-end, usable program for photographers, Adobe is trying to cater to the mobile photographer set. To that end, they’ve dumbed it down, ostensibly so the learning curve is less steep. Unfortunately, in doing that, they’re eliminating useful things I, and many other users, have come to depend on. That said, I imagine we’ll eventually get used to that. The problem now is that several things in the upgrade just don’t work, although they’re supposed to. They’re things that are not being eliminated, just changed, I think.
So, if you use this great software and want to continue to use it until the engineers get the kinks worked out, downgrade. It’s so cool that you actually can, and it’s even more amazing how simple it is! I used the instructions in this article—Install a previous version of any Creative Cloud application—to do just that. It’s very easy, and I’m back up and running with what works.
One of my issues was importing. I imported all my pictures, but somehow Lightroom didn’t show all the pictures I thought I had imported. I could see that some I had shot were missing, and Lightroom said I had 20 more to import, but when I went to find the 20 missing ones, I couldn’t import them because Lightroom said they were already imported. In CC 6 (I think was the latest before this upgrade), I could tell it to ignore suspected duplicates or I could uncheck that box. Nowhere in the new import window could I find such an option. I also checked out all the Preferences panel (may be called something else on a Windows machine).
I then found I was now unable to copy from one picture to another, settings that worked for the type of picture I was working on. You know, if you make adjustments to the exposure, temperature, highlight, shadow, white, and black sliders, for instance, you can then copy those setting and apply them to the next similar photo by clicking on the “paste” button. That wasn’t working today.
Anyway, if you’re using Lightroom CC, and have any of these issues (or others), the answer for you may be to downgrade. It worked for me.
Here are a few of the pictures I was trying to work on. I took a walk in Downtown Grand Junction yesterday with my camera. Colors are great, but in Grand Junction, we’re getting almost to the end of color season. Leaves are falling off trees, and there’s less to shoot. I got a few that I liked and here they are.
BOO!
Fall 2015, Downtown Grand Junction, Colorado
Fall 2015, Downtown Grand Junction, Colorado
Fall 2015, Downtown Grand Junction, Colorado
Fall 2015, Downtown Grand Junction, Colorado
Fall 2015, Downtown Grand Junction, Colorado
A New Adventure
I begin a new adventure on Monday when I report for work at a new job. I was awarded a part-time internship at a local accounting firm. This is what I have trained for and will finally have the opportunity to use that training. The dichotomy of the job search is that if you don’t have experience, you can’t get a job. If you can’t get a job, then you can’t get the experience. So, I’m excited (and a little nervous) to start and to learn. I know I will learn a lot.
I didn’t do it alone, either. There were so many people pulling for me, helping me, and teaching me. I owe so much to the people in my life—not just for this instance—but for all they’ve been and done in my life that brought me to this place.
Today, between other tasks, I took my camera out and put in the last lens I bought a year ago or so. It’s different. It’s a fixed lens and I wasn’t really sure what to do with it. I think it will take nice closeups, like the images below. Today I took pictures of cactus blooms, a pine cone, and a huge, open dandelion seed pod. (Is that what it’s called?)
I think they turned out really well and I can’t wait to take more.
Goosed and Tweaked
Here’s a picture I took of a goose in Summer 2012 while on a bike ride. I love capturing wildlife, but not a lot of it will sit still long enough for me to get a good shot. At least these swam close by and didn’t move too quickly to get a good capture.
Goose
I used Lightroom 5 and Topaz filters on this to get the effect I finally liked a lot. I will, from this time forward, do a better job of documenting just how I got an effect. I am sure this was a mix of one of Trey Ratcliff’s Lightroom Presets and Topaz Labs’ Simplify, both of which I tweaked a little.
I have the most fun playing with photographs in various software to create something that pleases my senses.
This Was Fun
I watched—rather listened to—a Topaz Labs filters video. That got me started. I filtered this to within an inch of its life, but I love it.
Fall Foliage, 2012
Photo Granny's Blog 