photgraph week 14 may 2015

14 - 20 MAY ISSUE 138

SEE LEICAS NEW $7450 BLACK & WHITE CAMERA

INSPIRAT ION IDEAS IN-DEPTH REVIEWS

WE TEST THE FUJIFILM X-A2

PARQUE NATURAL SINTRA-CASCAIS

PAULO BENJAMIM Paulos wonderful long exposure

has produced an exceptional milky sea effect, and has saturated the colors nicely

TAKEN WITH: Nikon D7100 with 10-20mm f/4-5.6EXPOSURE: 30 secs at f/11, ISO100http://500px.com/paulobenjamim

JOIN THE CLUB...Welcome to the worlds No.1 weekly digital photography magazine. If youre already a

reader, thanks for your continued support and involvement; if youre new to Photography Week, youve come to the right place! In addition to expert advice, brilliant tips and step-by-step tutorials, every issue features interactive galleries of the best new photos, how-to videos on

essential shooting and editing techniques, and in-depth video reviews of the latest cameras.

But thats not the whole story. Photography Week is more than a magazine its a community of like-minded people who are passionate about photography. To get involved, just follow any of the links below and share your shots and comments your photo might even appear on our cover!

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C O N T E N T S FIND OUT WHATS INSIDE THIS ISSUE

G A L L E R Y

S K I L L S

I N S P I R AT I O N

F E AT U R E

WE PUT LIGHTROOM CC/6 TO THE TESTGet our verdict on the latest version of Adobes software

N E W S

THE WEEKS HEADLINESFind out whats happening in the world of photography

P H O T O S

GALLERYThe very best reader images

I N S P I R AT I O N

ITS COOL, THATStriking portraits of families and their online shopping...

S K I L L S

CRASH COURSETry this DIY technique for cool soft-focus portraits!

P H O T O S H O P

LIGHTROOMGet to grips with Lightrooms powerful Spot Removal tool

G E A R

FUJIFILM X-A2 We put Fujifilms

latest compact system camera

through its paces

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L I G H T R O O M

F E AT U R E

W H AT S H O TTHE WEEKS TOP HEADLINES IN PHOTOGRAPHY

SN E W

Sales of power compacts in the UK rose 24% year on year in January-March 2015, according to a new survey from GfK. Bridge/superzoom compacts proved popular during the first three months of 2015, increasing 7.5% in value terms and 11.1% in volume. In March alone, unit sales of superzooms jumped by 16.8%, although overall demand for compacts fell 16.8% from January-March. Meanwhile, SLR sales fell by 8.5% in the period compared with last year.

POWER COMPACTS SURGE AS OVERALL CAMERA SALES FALL

The Royal Photographic Society (RPS) and The Open University have launched a new online digital photography course that will bring together The RPSs 160-year experience in photography and the Open Universitys expertise in delivering education online. Digital Photography: Creating and Sharing Better Images is a 10-week course designed to help new photographers and those looking to hone existing skills. The course (200) has been designed to give those completing it the skills needed to tackle The Royal Photographic Societys Licentiate (LRPS) distinction. www.rps.org/online-courses

RPS AND OU TEAM UP TO OFFER NEW PHOTO COURSE

Leica has announced the Leica M Monochrom (Typ

246), an updated version of its rangefinder camera

that only shoots in black and white. The camera

features a 24Mp full-frame CMOS sensor, ISO range of

320-2500, Leica Maestro image processor, Live View function

with focus peaking, full HD video and compatibility with

almost all Leica R lenses. The body is made from

high-strength magnesium alloy, and the top and bottom

plates are machined from solid brass. The new Leica goes

on sale in early May for 5,750 / $7,450.

The 24-megapixel black-and-white camera with a $7,450 price tag

LEICA UPGRADES I TS M MONOCHROM

According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, Apple has bought an Israeli camera technology firm called LinX Imaging. The move, if verified, is seen as an attempt to boost the

camera performance of future Apple mobile devices. LinX cameras are

significantly smaller than any camera on the market today, leading the way to digital SLR performance in slim handsets, the company claims on its website, but neither it nor Apple confirms the purchase.

SLR QUAL I T Y CAMERAS COMING TO iPHONES?

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LIGHTROOM CCLIGHTROOM 6

dobe has just announced Lightroom CC and Lightroom 6, the latest versions of its

professional photo cataloguing and editing software. Theyre actually the same program, but Lightroom CC is the version thats integrated into Adobes subscription-based Photography Plan, part of its Creative Cloud service, while Lightroom 6 is the perpetual licence version, which you pay for and use in the old-fashioned way.

The advantage of the Lightroom CC version is that you get all the benefits of the Creative Cloud system, including online storage and display, and the ability to synchronize collections with other devices such as mobile phones and tablets.

Lightroom 6 is for folk who dont like the idea of software subscriptions. The disadvantage here is that you dont get the Creative Cloud features, and when Lightroom 7 comes along youll have to pay to upgrade.

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IS PHOTOSHOPS BIGGEST RIVAL RIGHT UNDER ITS NOSE? WE TEST THE LATEST VERSION OF LIGHTROOM

AND ITS EVER MORE POWERFUL EDITING TOOLS

L I G H T R O O M S N E W F E AT U R E S

WHAT DOES IT DO?Lightroom is Adobes professional image-cataloguing program, and is designed to be used alongside a regular image-editor like Photoshop, although as Lightrooms editing tools get more and more sophisticated, it can often do all the image-editing work you need on its own.

Youll still need a program like Photoshop for layers, montages, masks and other heavy-duty manipulation, but Lightroom is fine for adjusting exposure, contrast and colors, cloning out sensor spots and unwanted objects, adding graduated filters for skies and radial filters for vignette effects it even has adjustment brushes for enhancing selected areas of a photo.

Basically, if you need to combine images and make precise collections, you need Photoshop (or some other image editor), but if you simply want to enhance single photos, then Lightroom can almost certainly do it on its own.

Lightroom isnt the same as Bridge, Adobes folder-browsing tool. Bridge is designed to show you the contents of folders on your hard disk in real time, and with no centralized database to speed up searches. Its fine for simple filing systems, but no good if you need to search for images by keyword, camera uses, location and a host of other possible parameters. This is where you need Lightroom. Its designed for large image collections, which it can search and organize in seconds,

regardless of where images are stored. You start by importing photos into the Lightroom library. It can then show you your pictures in a Folder view, showing the folders on your computer, but you can also create Collections (and Smart Collections), which are independent of the original folders, and can form the basis of a fast, flexible and adaptable filing system for your photos.

LIGHTROOMS EDITING TOOLSLightrooms editing tools dont reach the same depths as Photoshops, but thats because its working within the limitations of a non-destructive process. Lightrooms adjustments simply change the appearance of the picture within

the program itself the original photos remain completely unaltered. To create permanent copies of your adjustments you export your edited images as new JPEG or TIFF files.

Lightrooms editing tools are now so powerful, though, you may not need a separate image editor. It can adjust exposure, contrast, clarity, white balance, saturation and more. It has built-in lens correction profiles to counteract lens distortion and chromatic aberration, and geometric correction tools for perspective issues.

In particular, it can apply localized corrections. You can paint adjustments onto areas of a picture using the Adjustment Brush, darken bright skies with the Graduated Filter tool and create subtle vignette effects with the Radial Filter. You can even clone out sensor spots and even whole objects with the Spot Removal tool, which is more powerful than the name suggests.

SO WHATS NEW?Adobe has introduced new tools for organizing photos into Lightroom 6, but the main additions are to the editing tools. There are new panorama and HDR tools, and its now possible to brush out areas adjusted with the Graduated and Radial filter tools.

Lightroom 6 also introduces face-recognition, and comes with new HTML5 web galleries and an upgrade to the Slideshow tools so you can create more movie-like experiences.Lightroom CC also has powerful non-destructive image-editing tools, and it handles raw files seamlessly

Lightroom CC can organize the largest photo collections into a single searchable library


ut now, the same Photomerge technology used in Photoshop is built

into Lightroom too for these particular tasks, at least. HDR (high dynamic range) images can be tricky to get right. Its easy enough to shoot a series of exposures of the same scene, and there are plenty of programs that can merge these into an HDR image Photoshop

HDR MERGE AND PANORAMA MERGE

is one but getting results that look realistic or pleasing takes a bit

more work.But Lightroom 6 makes

it disarmingly simple by keeping the technicalities of the process to a minimum, yet delivering really good results.

First, you select the images you want to merge,

and then you choose the Photo Merge>HDR option from the menus

and wait while Lightroom creates an HDR preview in a separate HDR Merge window. You can check the Auto Align box to make sure Lightroom adjusts any misalignment between images, and the Auto Tone box to automatically correct the contrast and brightness of the result.

There are options too for Deghosting the image, but these may only be necessary if you have moving objects moving between the frames, such as leaves and branches, or passers by.

When you hit the Merge button it can take a minute or so to blend the images, and once its done its clear that Lightroom has done something different and rather good. Instead of creating a lurid, artistic HDR image with dramatic tonal contrast and glow effects, it produces a very realistic image with all the shadows and highlights intact, but without unrealistic tonal compression or flattened contrast.

PANORAMA MERGE IN ACTIONThe Panorama Merge feature could hardly be simpler. First, you select the

These two features are brand new in Lightroom 6. Previously, if you wanted to stitch together multiple frames to make a panorama, or combine separate exposures into a single HDR (high dynamic range) image, you would have to send them to Photoshop


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Merged HDR images are saved as DNG files, so you can modify and enhance the pictures as raw files using Lightrooms regular Develop tools

individual frames of your panorama in Lightroom, then choose Photo Merge and the Panorama option.

If youve done this before in Photoshop, youll know that youre then presented with a fairly complex dialog listing different layout options and a list of source files. Here, its much simpler. Lightroom offers three different Projections you can think of these as the surface youre creating the panorama on. You can leave it to Auto Select Projection or manually choose Spherical, Cylindrical or Perspective. A cylindrical projection is usually best for regular single-strip panoramas.

Now you just decide whether you want Lightroom to Auto Crop your panorama or not. The stitching process will leave ragged blank areas at the edges of the picture, and while Photoshop has special content-aware technology to fill these in, Lightroom does not, so the Auto Crop option will save you having to crop the edges off manually afterwards.

And thats it. Lightroom will produce a perfectly-stitched panorama with

can be stitched together to produce a more normally-proportioned super-wide-angle shot.

In a final twist, both the HDR and Panorama tools produce DNG files rather than JPEGs or TIFFs and this gives much more scope for image manipulation and enhancement later.


no further effort on your part. It works extremely well, and its a simplified version of the panorama tools in Photoshop, which makes it all the more welcome.

Panoramas dont always have to be in a super-wide letterbox format, of course. Just two overlapping frames

Lightroom CC has HDR tools built in. You simply select the images in your exposure series and choose Photo Merge

The Panorama Merge option is just as simple it will even crop off the edges of the merged panorama. This too is saved as a DNG file

here you might use an adjustment layer and a mask in Photoshop to darken a sky,

for example, you can use the Gradient Filter in Lightroom. Theres also a Radial Filter for creating highly controllable vignette effects and subtly relighting your pictures, and a manual Adjustment Brush for painting over areas you want to modify.

But Lightroom adds two important modifications. First, its now possible to manually mask out areas modified by the Gradient and Radial Filters. This is important because sometimes youll have buildings or other objects jutting out into a darkened sky and you dont want these objects darkened

FILTER MASKING AND BRUSH CHANGESThe secret of Lightrooms success is the way it combines image cataloguing features with powerful editing tools. Its not just a raw converter. As well as adjusting contrast, dynamic range, exposure, white balance and a whole host of other global image properties, it can apply localized adjustments to specific areas of a picture

by the Gradient Filter. Its a common problem that now has a solution.

Second, its now possible to move the pins created by the Adjustment Brush. Previously, these were placed permanently at the point where you

started brushing, and the only way to alter the area

affected was to brush in new areas or erase areas you wanted left alone the pins themselves were immovable.

Now you can simply drag the pins to new

positions. It doesnt really change the way the Adjustment

Brush works it doesnt make anything possible that wasnt before but it does make using these brush adjustments simpler, quicker and more intuitive.

FILTER MASKING IN ACTIONThe new Filter masking tools are really easy to use because theyre just an extension of the familiar Adjustment Brush tools. Now, when you use the Gradient Filter to darken the sky, youll see a new Brush tab alongside the Mask options. When you click this, the panel expands to show the brush tools, where you can set the Size, Feather and Flow options for the brush.

There are two sets of brush settings, A and B for fast switching if youve got a tricky job that needs different types, and an Erase option. This is what you use to mask out areas of the image you want the Gradient Filter to leave alone.

If you check the Auto Mask box, it becomes simpler still, because now the brush will automatically follow well-defined object outlines, like buildings jutting up into the sky.

The same applies to the Radial filter, so that once youve used the filter to create the broad lighting effect you want, its a simple matter to brush in additional areas manually or erase the mask where needed.

ADJUSTMENT BRUSH CHANGESLightrooms Adjustment Brush is a deceptively powerful tool. At first sight it seems quite primitive because you simply drag the brush tool over the parts of the image you want to change it looks a million miles from the sophisticated and precise selection and masking tools in full-on image-editors like Photoshop. Actually, though, it works rather well. Many of the enhancements you need to make to photos require a subtle blending-in of effects, not hard-edged selections.

The point about Lightrooms Adjustment Brush is that all these adjustments are non-destructive. At any time you can add to the mask, erase parts of it tidy up edges and so on. Once the mask is created, you can adjust the Exposure, Contrast, Highlights and Shadows, Clarity and more, and these are non-destructive too.

Lightroom is less sophisticated than Photoshop in a host of ways, yet in others it offers a fresh and clever approach that you kind of wish you could use in Photoshop.

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If you hover the mouse pointer over the Gradient Filter pin, the mask minus the erased area is shown

t first, Lightroom can identify unique faces and group them together, but you have to tell

it who these people are. The more you use it, though, the more its able to suggest names automatically based on identifications youve made in the past.

You can search your entire library for faces, but its not a particularly fast process, so its best to start small. If you come back from a holiday or trip with a few hundred pictures, you can open the Folder or Collection theyre stored in, then click the new People button at the bottom of the Lightroom grid view. It then starts scanning all your pictures for faces.

This is likely to take several minutes, but you can start identifying people while its working. In People mode, the grid view is split into two panels. The

FACE DETECTION AND COLLECTION FILTERINGIts a little odd to find face detection and recognition tools in a professional image-cataloguing application, but maybe Adobe wants to broaden Lightrooms appeal to the amateur market too

top panel contains Named people, while the bottom panel displays Unnamed people. Type a name into the box below a persons face in the lower panel, and it moves to the one above.

This doesnt take as long as it sounds because Lightroom is quite smart. It

groups similar-looking photos right from the start, displaying

them as a single thumbnail image, so you only have to add a name to the group, not every photo within it.

And, as you add more and more pictures to the

Named panel, Lightroom gets smarter at recognizing

the same people in the Unnamed panel, so that by the time you get to them you only have to agree with Lightrooms suggestion or, if necessary, type in a different name.

No face recognition system is perfect, and sometimes Lightroom will

pull out sections of an image that arent faces at all. All you have to do here is click the X box to remove them.

Lightroom tags pictures of people by adding the names youve typed in as keywords, so its a simple matter to find them later on by searching your library or you could set up a Smart Collection with that keyword.

COLLECTION FILTERINGFace recognition isnt going to be top of everyones list, even though its touted as one of the main new features in Lightroom 6. But theres another feature also connected with searching which is much more important but only given a minor mention.

Its called Collection Filtering, and its a new search box at the top of the Collections panel that enables you to type in a name or a search string to find Collections with those words in the title.This doesnt sound like a big deal unless you have a large Lightroom library with tens of thousands of images, and potentially, hundreds of named Collections. The larger your library, the more Collections youll create, and the harder it will become to find the one you want in a giant, scrolling list. You know youve got a Collection called Las Vegas at Night, for example, but where is it? It may not even be visible at all if youre in the habit of using Collection Sets and keeping them collapsed to save space. But now, if you start typing that Collection title into the new Collection Filtering box, itll find your Collection even before youve finished the second word (probably).Or, if you like shooting black and white, and always include black and white in the Collection title, this will find all your black-and-white Collections in just a couple of moments by typing this into the Collection Filter box. For photographers who rely heavily on Lightroom Collections for organizing their photos, this is a massive improvement.

Any Aperture fans reading this will be grinning through gritted teeth at this point. This is something that Apples own professional image-cataloguing tool (now controversially dropped) did already.

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Lightroom CC can scan your whole library for faces, but that could take a long time, so you might want to search a Folder or Collection at a time. As it scans, Lightroom will automatically group similar faces together to save time

or example, the Crop tool has a new Auto button that uses some of the clever

image-analyzing Upright tools in the Lens Correction panel. If you click the Auto button, Lightroom will straighten skewed horizons automatically by rotating the crop marquee. This saves time and effort trying to straighten images manually, and its reliable too it correctly straightens a skewed photo almost every time.

SLIDESHOWS, GALLERIES AND MORE

Also new in Lightroom 6 is a CMYK soft-proofing option. Soft-proofing enables you to check how your images will appear on different output devices in case you need to adjust the colors and contrast to suit them. The CMYK option is important because this is the process used for commercial printing, and theres often a marked color shift in the transition from RGB images (what the camera shoots and what you see on the screen) and the CMYK images

that the printers need. Adobe has also introduced a new pet-eye correction tool its like regular red-eye correction for human subjects, but modified to allow for the different colors of animal eyes. This seems distinctly out of place in a program designed for professional photographers and advanced amateurs, but here it is anyway.

NEW SLIDESHOWS AND WEB GALLERIESMore importantly, Adobe has made some big changes to its Slideshow module. Not everyone will use the slideshow tools, but professional photographers who want to create a multimedia portfolio, for example, will find they have a lot more power at their fingertips.

For a start, you now have a choice between slideshows that play back automatically or ones that offer manual control you might choose this if you want to talk people through your slideshow, for example. Theres also a new Pan and Zoom slider to add motion

There are a number of other significant improvements in Lightroom, some of which are more obvious (and more useful) than others

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Lightroom slideshows are now much more sophisticated. You can add multiple music tracks and time the slideshow to match the total duration

to your still images (you can include video clips too if you like), and the ability to add more than one background music track handy if you want to show a longer presentation with lots of slides. Tracks youve added are shown as a list in the Music panel, together with their individual duration and the total time. You can drag tracks up and down the list to change the order.

There are two ways to synchronize your audio with your slides. One is to use the Fit to Music button this automatically adjusts the duration of each slide to match the total length of

displaying images as small thumbnails against a plain background. When you click a thumbnail it opens a larger version of the photo, and you can then use left/right arrows to cycle through the rest.

The Square Gallery works in a similar way except that thumbnails are displayed as a grid of square images with no gaps in between.

The Track Gallery displays thumbnails in rows all the thumbnails are the same height, and vertical images are simply reduced in size to be the same height as horizontal ones.

Web Galleries created in Lightroom can be saved as permanent collections within your library, and they can be exported and published online in one of two ways: you can export them wholesale to a folder on your computer and use an FTP client to upload them to your web server, or you can enter your FTP servers login details in Lightroom itself and leave Lightroom to look after the FTP transfer. If you have your own web server, publishing web galleries with Lightroom could hardly be simpler.


the audio tracks you can still adjust the length of the Crossfade between slides. The other is to synchronize the slide transitions with the beat of the music a clever idea but youll now need to manually match up the total slide duration time with the total audio time, which could prove trickier.

Finally, Adobe has added HTML5 galleries to its web templates as an alternative to Adobe Flash, which is steadily falling out of favor. There are three new gallery templates: Grid, Square and Track Galleries. The Grid Gallery is the most straightforward,

Lightroom CC offers three new HTML5 web gallery designs including Grid (left), and Track (right). You can export and upload galleries manually, or use Lightrooms built-in FTP transfer tools to publish them to your web server

Slideshows can be saved permanently among your Collections. You can use the preset slideshow templates or create and save your own

ightroom CC is the subscription-based Creative Cloud version of Lightroom,

while Lightroom 6 is the standalone desktop version with a perpetual licence. In other words, with Lightroom 6 you pay a flat price and then you dont pay again until you decide to upgrade.

So far, all the features weve talked about are in both versions but there are key differences between Lightroom CC and Lightroom 6 beyond this. Lightroom 6 works as a traditional desktop application, but Lightroom CC embraces the full potential of Adobes Creative Cloud, including the ability to synchronize photos with your mobile devices so that you can use your devices to browse, rate and even edit your pictures through shared Collections. These Collections

LIGHTROOM CC VS LIGHTROOM 6

can also be viewed and shared online in web galleries.

MOBILE PHOTOGRAPHYOnce youve enabled the Lightroom Mobile synchronization option, the rest

is really straightforward. Lightroom doesnt synchronize your whole photo library, but you can, however, synchronize as many different Collections as you like (though not Folders or Smart Collections). You can do this either when you create the Collection (check the Sync with Lightroom mobile box) or in the Collections panel in the left sidebar. To the left of the Collection name youll see a small blank checkbox when you click that box its replaced with a synchronization symbol. Lightroom CC will now upload your photos to the Creative Cloud in the background this can take a while if youre using a regular domestic Internet connection with slow upload speeds.

On your smart device you need to install the free Lightroom mobile app

The perpetual licence of Lightroom 6 will appeal to some, but there are a host of powerful new options for mobile users only within Lightroom CC

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You can add Flags and Ratings in the Lightroom Mobile app very useful for a quick scan through a batch of photos and picking out the best

and this is now available in an Android version too, after being initially iOS only.

When youve signed in on the mobile app, youll see all the Collections youve shared from Lightroom, including any new Collections that are still uploading the Lightroom app shows new images as they arrive.

You can now use the Lightroom mobile app to browse through your photos, add Flags and Ratings and carry out basic editing tasks you can crop images, adjust the white balance, exposure, contrast, clarity and more. In fact, Lightroom Mobile offers you all the tools you see in Lightrooms Basic tab.

You can even edit raw files! This sounds like a major technical hurdle because raw files are much larger than JPEGs and would take a long time to synchronize. However, Adobe uses much smaller Smart Previews based on its own DNG format theyre small enough to synchronize but can store all the editing data needed for the full-resolution version on your computer.

You can also apply presets, although here there is a slight catch these are designed specifically for Lightroom Mobile, and you cant add custom presets of your own in the same way you can on the desktop app. The best you can do at the moment is to create adjustments manually on one image, swipe to the next and tap the Previous button this applies all the adjustments from the image before. You can carry on doing this for all the images in the

Collection if you want to apply a single preset look quickly and easily.

This is one of Lightroom Mobiles limitations there are many other things you cant do, such as creating virtual copies, adding keywords, applying optical corrections and so on.

But then Lightroom Mobile is designed as a companion to Lightroom desktop, not a replacement, and provided you accept its limitations it opens up the way you can browse, share and enhance your pictures without having to be at your computer.


INSTANT WEB GALLERIESThe Lightroom Mobile synchronization has an additional advantage. The synchronization process automatically creates an online version of the Collection, which you can view in a web browser and share with other people by sending them the link they can even share comments.

These web galleries arent just for show. You can carry out basic organizational tasks, too, such as copying photos between Collections and even creating new ones. Any organizational changes you make here are then synchronized back to the Lightroom desktop and Lightroom Mobile apps though of course the speed of your Internet connection will play a part, so these changes could take a few minutes to filter through.

There are other Adobe mobile apps that can use images stored in Lightroom Mobile, including the new storytelling app Adobe Slate and the mini-Photoshop app Adobe Mix.

Lightroom Mobile does feel like a work in progress, but already its possible to see how mobile devices can play a big part in your photography, and its a compelling reason on its own to choose Lightroom CC over Lightroom 6, regardless of any cost savings in the subscription-based Photography Plan.To synchronize a Collection you just click the small icon to the left of its title

You can use Lightroom Mobile for basic editing tasks and applying preset effects

VERDICT

Its not difficult to recommend Lightroom in fact, its hard to find reasons not to. If youre a photography enthusiast, expert or professional, you need software that can organize, output and enhance your pictures, and with a few minor quibbles, Lightroom does that perfectly.

Its true that youll still need a full-blown editor for more complex tasks involving layers, masks and complex image-manipulation processes, but if you subscribe to Adobes Photography Plan you get that too, in the form of Photoshop CC. In fact, Lightroom and Photoshop work so well together that its as if they were designed that way.

You dont have to use Photoshop with Lightroom. You can configure any other image-editing program to work as an external editor in just the same way. And all the top plugin makers now produce Lightroom versions of their tools.

So do you choose Lightroom 6, the one-off perpetual licence version, for 104 / $149, or opt for the subscription-based Lightroom CC + Photoshop CC Adobe Photography Plan at 102 / $120? You may not like the idea of subscriptions, but if you go for the perpetual licence, then in a year, or two years, when a new version of Lightroom comes out, youll have to pay for the upgrade, when Creative Cloud subscribers will get it for nothing.

ightroom CC brings a whole series of improvements over Lightroom 5, but it represents

steady development, not a giant leap forwards. Is it worth upgrading? If you own Lightroom 5 on a perpetual licence, it will cost you 59 / $79 to step up to Lightroom 6, so its a close call we probably would, but others might not.

But if youre already in the Adobe Photography Plan, it wont cost you a cent the Lightroom CC upgrade is all part of the service.

So although many users will be relieved that Lightroom 6 will still be available on a regular perpetual licence, its getting harder and harder to find an economic argument against swapping to Adobes subscription service. You have to remember that youre not just getting Lightroom, but all the Creative Cloud ancillary services too, such as the ability to synchronize Collections with the Lightroom app on your tablet, and showing the same Collections as online web galleries that others can view.

Adobe says that Lightroom 6 and Lightroom CC also run faster than Lightroom 5, although any improvements werent obvious to us. We timed both versions while carrying out routine tasks and the results were inconclusive. It seemed to be around 10 per cent faster at importing a folder of images (600, in both JPEG and raw formats), but slower at rendering previews (Standard and Smart). It was around 15 per cent faster at exporting 10 images as full-resolution JPEGs, though.

WE LIKEDLightroom very nearly gives you the best of everything. Its a fast and powerful image organizing and cataloguing tool that can also print images, turn them into slideshows and publish web galleries straight to your web server. Its editing tools just get more and more powerful with each version, and each time they do, it reduces the time you need to spend in programs like Photoshop in fact, you can find yourself processing, enhancing and finishing whole folders full of images entirely within Lightroom. And while theres still resistance among some users to the idea of subscription-based software, the price you pay for the Photography Plan gets you Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC and free updates to both in the future.

WE DISLIKEDLightroom still has some quirks that you

might not notice if this is your first full-power image-cataloguing tool, but if youre an Aperture user on a Mac whos been forced to migrate to Lightroom, there will be a few things that grate.

One of these is the way that Folders and Collections are entirely separate. Its like having two parallel but separate filing systems. If you pick out some pictures within a folder to make a Collection, that Collection appears in an entirely separate panel.

Another is Lightrooms stacking system. You can group related images together, but that grouping only exists within the Folder or Collection you created it in. If you look at the same photo in a different collection, its not grouped with those same images, but could be ungrouped, or grouped with a different set of images. Lightrooms grouping feature can be useful, but it would be more useful still if it was consistent across your whole library.

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X P O S U R ETHE WEEKS MOST INSPIRING READER PHOTOS

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FLY ON THE WALLJASON CANNING The detail in Jasons striking image is mind-boggling. This is macro photography at its very best!http://tiny.cc/qaptxx

THE WEEKS MOST INSPIRING READER PHOTOS

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CALM DUSK COASTLINEGARY CLARK This well-composed seascape nicely juxtaposes the craggy rocks against the milky ocean, creating a sumptuous tactile feelhttp://tiny.cc/06utxx

BRANCHESSTEVE LAVELLE Few photographers think to look up, but Steve has not only done that, but also wisely used black and white to create a nice graphic imagehttp://tiny.cc/jhptxx


EL R YG A L

NIGHT HARVEST JAKUB NITRAN Spectacular! Jakub has chosen a wonderful subject and produced a truly inventive night-time imagehttp://tiny.cc/gbptxx

LAGO DI GARDASUNIL CHAWLA Sunils stunning low-light image looks almost like an oil paintinghttp://tiny.cc/zbptxx


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NIGHT MARKETRAUL GOMEZ FERNANDEZ Street scenes are difficult to capture, and Raul has done it well. We love the dynamic range in this imagehttp://tiny.cc/3cptxx

NIP AND TUCKGEORGE KURZIK Georges image was captured at the perfect moment!http://tiny.cc/ndptxx


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LLOYDS BUILDINGDAN HIGHTON

We love the abstract quality of this architectural shot, and the

overwhelming sense of depthhttp://tiny.cc/captxx

PHOTOGRAPHY WEEK WANTS YOUR PHOTOS! Taken a portrait youre particularly proud of? Shot a sensational sunset youd like to show off? Then join the Photography Week Facebook community and share your best photos today! Youll get feedback from fellow readers and the Photography Week team, plus the chance to appear in Xposure, or even on our cover!

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Since 2003, Huang Qingjun has been diligently pursuing a slightly odd, but distinctly

unique, photo series. In Family Stuff, the Chinese photographer has been asking families across China to pose in front of their homes with all of their material possessions.

Its a transparent and interesting way to look into peoples lives, Huang explains. People usually only invite good friends into their homes because its a private space. But my pictures show what people possess. They satisfy

Photographer Huang Qingjuns series Family Stuff is famous in China

FAMILIES REVEAL EVERY ITEM THEY BOUGHT ONLINE

our natural curiosity. The Family Stuff project made Huang famous in China, and on the back of this, the Chinese internet shopping platform Taobao commissioned him to shoot a special series based on Family Stuff, which looks at peoples online shopping. For this project, Huang photographed families from all corners of China, capturing the diverse (and similar) habits of Chinese materialism. You can take a look at the full project on Huangs website at http://huangqingjun.com/ or watch the BBC interview at the link on the right.

I T S C O O L , T H ATTHE BEST THING WEVE SEEN THIS WEEK

I N S P TI R A OI N

WATCH THE V IDEOht tp: // t iny.cc /n0xqxx

C R A S H C O U R S E ESSENTIAL PHOTO SKILLS MADE EASY

S K I L L S

Why plod your way through Photoshop to create a digital soft-focus effect when, as Rod Lawton shows, its so easy to do it for real?

SOFTEN YOUR FOCUS

Its possible to buy all manner of soft-focus filter attachments for your camera, but for this project

were using a cheeky old-fashioned technique that works amazingly well.

All you need is a pair of tights! Take a pair of scissors and carefully cut out an area large enough to cover the lens and extend down on to the barrel. Fix it down with an elastic band and start shooting. Youll need to get tights of the right thickness and take the color into

account, and be careful not to ladder the fabric. Thats all there is to it!

The fine net pattern of the fabric produces the soft-focus effect, because the image is formed from the light that passes through the tiny gaps between the threads. This may be related to the diffraction (softening) effects you get when shooting with extremely narrow lens apertures.

There are two reasons we really like this effect. First, theres no need to make any special adjustments to the

camera settings you can just fit the tights and shoot normally. The only settings we changed were the sort youd use for portraits anyway.

Second, you can see just how your pictures will come out in the viewfinder as you shoot, and on the LCD immediately afterwards. Photoshop has its advantages, of course, but its really useful to be able to see these effects as you go along so that you can modify your settings and your composition to get the best possible results.

30MIN

STEP BY STEP: SOFTEN YOUR FOCUS

S K I L L S

ADVICE FROM AN EXPERTOur model Sam helped us pick out suitable hosiery for our

soft-focus effect. The color makes a difference, of course, but the key factor is the thickness, or the denier value. We settled on 15-denier tights, which gave the perfect soft-focus look, but still showed enough detail in Sams features.

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TOP TIP SHOOTING SETTINGSTo make the most of the hazy, soft-focus effect we set the camera to A, or aperture-priority, mode and set our 18-70mm lens to its longest focal length and maximum aperture (f/4.5 at 70mm). This HJWFTTIBMMPXEFQUIPGmFMETPUIBUUIFCBDLHSPVOEJTUISPXOPVUPGGPDVT8FVTFEBVUPXIJUFCBMBODFbecause our tights were a neutral color. If you use colored tights, set a manual white balance preset to stop the camera trying to correct the tint.

A BIT OF A STRETCHYou need to cut out a section from the tights thats at least

twice the size of the lens, so that you can fold it back along the barrel and secure it with an elastic band. An extra pair of hands is useful! Once the elastic band is in place, pull on the edges to smooth out the wrinkles.

SHADES OF GRAYOur tights are a charcoal gray color. The shade of gray

wont make any difference to the pictures darker tones will reduce the exposure, but the cameras exposure meter will compensate automatically. Different-colored tights will affect the color balance, though.

SMILE PLEASE Now we just shoot as normal. These 15 denier tights are

quite thin, and the autofocus on the camera we used copes perfectly well, even though the image is a lot hazier. Normal portrait photography rules still apply: use a longer lens for a NPSFnBUUFSJOHQFSTQFDUJWFBOEBMXBZTGPDVTPOUIFFZFT

Discover how to use Lightrooms Spot Removal tool to remove sensor spots and other annoying dust marks from your images with just a few clicks

HOW TO...

REMOVE SENSOR SPOTS

L I G H T R O O MLEARN ESSENTIAL EDITING SKILLS FAST!

E D I T I N G

espite our best efforts to keep our lenses and cameras clean, some photos may suffer from

sensor spots. When you swap lenses on location, tiny fragments of dirt and dust can enter the camera body and adhere to the sensor. These sensor spots can then show up in a photograph as small, soft, dark blobs.

Your D-SLR may attempt to remove sensor spots by vibrating the sensor, but this mechanical technique may not prove effective. For a more thorough clean, you can activate the cameras sensor-cleaning feature.

Even after cleaning your sensor you may find some spots are still visible. At this point youll need to remove the

blobs using Lightrooms Spot Removal tool. This powerful tool samples clean sections of the photo adjacent to a sensor spot. The sampled section is then transplanted over the unwanted spot to hide it. The sampled pixels are seamlessly blended with their new surroundings to create an invisible edit, as youll see in our latest video tutorial.

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AFTER

BEFORE

WANT TO LEARN HOW TO USE LIGHTROOM FASTER? GET THE WHOLE COURSE NOW!If you dont want to wait a whole year to learn how to use Lightroom, you can download our whole course from the Photography Week app for just $19.99/11.99. Well be including one part of the course every week until the end of the year in the magazine, so the choice is yours: wait and take the course for free, or buy it now and learn faster, with all the videos in one place!http://tiny.cc/0bxaqx

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DOWNLOAD THE PROJEC T F ILES ht tp : // t iny. cc / i22qx x

ON A P C OR M AC

ujifilm has produced a series of highly successful compact system cameras based around

its X-mount interchangeable lenses, and with the X-A2, Fujifilm has replaced its cheapest model, the X-A1. The new X-A2 uses the X-A1s regular CMOS sensor design, which suggests its an economic decision rather than a

The new Fujifilm X-A2 brings new focus modes, updated lens designs and a swivelling selfie screen

SENSOR 16.3 million pixels LENS MOUNT Fujifilm X mount VIDEO 1920 x 1080 at 30p for up to 14min; 1280 x 720 at 30p for up to 27min ISO RANGE ISO200-6400 (extendable to ISO100, 12,800,

25,600) MAX SHUTTER SPEED 1/4000 sec EXPOSURE COMPENSATION -2EV to +2EV BURST RATE 5.6fps (30 JPEGs or 10 raw files) SCREEN 3in, 920K-dot tilting LCD HOTSHOE Yes MEMORY SD, SDHC, SDXC WEIGHT 350g

FUJIFILM X-A2

FUJIFILM IS TARGETING THE POINT-AND-SHOOT MARKET WITH THE SELFIE MODE IN THE X-A2

technical one. As it happens, the X-A1 produced great quality images without the X-Trans sensor in Fujifilms more expensive models, so the users this camera is aimed at are unlikely to notice any real performance shortfall.

The original X-A1 had a tilting screen, but the X-A2 extends the tilt angle to 175 degrees, making it easier to grab selfies. When you tilt it fully, this activates the X-A2s new Eye-detection AF mode, which focuses on your subjects eyes.

The X-A also has a Multi-Target AF mode, and an Auto Macro AF mode. This is backed up by a new 16-50mm kit lens, which can focus down to 15cm.

Find out what we thought of the Fujifilm X-A2 in our latest video review.

T H E B I G R E V I E WEXPERT OPINION ON THE LATEST KIT

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WATCH THE V IDEO ht tp : // t iny. cc /9 imt x x

Body only: 366 / $550 www.fujifilm.com

DIGITAL CAMERA WORLD

A monthly magazine that aims to improve

your photography with an inspirational mix of

amazing images and how-to articles.

PHOTOPLUSPhotoPlus is a monthly magazine for Canon photographers that features expert advice, tips and video tutorials on all things Canon.

PRACTICAL PHOTOSHOPImprove your Photoshop skills with the monthly guide to creating stunning images. Each issue comes with expert video lessons.

TEACH YOURSELF PHOTOSHOP Transform your images with the

expert tips and advice in 50 Photoshop video tutorials. Discover the power of layers, blending modes, raw file editing and more with this easy-to-follow course.

Check out these other fantastic photography apps for iPad & iPhone

TEACH YOURSELF LIGHTROOM Unleash the creative power

of the Lightroom digital darkroom with this 50-part video course. Enhance landscapes, master black and white, make gorgeous portraits and more.

TEACH YOURSELF RAW IN PHOTOSHOP Learn how to

use Adobes professional-level raw file editor to make amazing prints from your photos. Every important tool in Camera Raw explained in detail by our experts.

CREATIVE SLR SKILLS Learn a range of

new photography skills with this 30-part video training course designed to stimulate your creativity and boost your photographic confidence.

MORE GREAT MAGAZINES FROM THE MAKERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY WEEK

N-PHOTON-Photo is a monthly

magazine for Nikon photographers, and is packed with technique

and Photoshop video lessons every month.

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C R E D I T S

Future is an award-winning international media group and leading digital business. We reach more than 49 million international consumers a month and create world-class content and advertising solutions for passionate consumers online, on tablet & smartphone and in print.

SENIOR CREATIVE TEAMGroup Editor-in-Chief

Chris GeorgeGroup Art Director

Rodney Dive

DIGITAL EDITIONSHead of Digital App Production

Bessie WedgwoodApp Release Manager

Shaun SawyerAcquisition Campaign Manager

Daniel Mead

IT DEVELOPMENTDirector - Future Folio

Paul HudsonApp DeveloperElizabeth Wilson

Product & Technology DirectorEmma Harvey

THE TEAMEditor Jeff Meyer

[email protected] Editor Justin Webb

Production Editor Steven Raynes

TESTING TEAMHead of Testing

Angela NicholsonImaging Lab Manager

Alastair Jennings

REGULAR CONTRIBUTORSBen Brain, George Cairns, Claire Gillo, Rod Lawton,

James Paterson, Chris Rutter

MULTIMEDIAProducerPeter Gray

Videographer Adam Lee

ADVERTISING Account Director

Matt Bailey [email protected]

MARKETINGDirect Marketing Executive

Charlotte Lloyd-Williams

LICENSINGInternational Director

Regina [email protected]

SENIOR MANAGEMENTHead of Content & Marketing,

Photography & Design Matthew Pierce

Director of Content & Marketing

Nial Ferguson

www.digitalcameraworld.com

[email protected]

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