RAW Therapee Helps Charlotte at the Zoo

Big news.  RAW Therapee 3.0 now has a manual. All of RT's secrets--well, most of them anyway--are explained. And if things go as planned finished version of the manual will be on line by the end of the week. If you can't wait for that version you can find today's version at  http://paul.matthijsse.pagespro-orange.fr/tmp/UnfinishedUsersManualRawTherapee3.0.pdf  

It is well written. I've been following the development of RT for 9 months and thought I had it almost figured out but now I've read the manual I know a number of new tricks.  Great job, Paul.

But back to Charlotte.  She went to the zoo yesterday--this time with my first digital camera, a 3.2 mp Oly 3020Z, hanging around her neck.

Over the years her interest in photography has had its ups and downs. At one and a half, a camera was a great toy that made a flash when she managed to find and push the right button  At two and a half came the  "LOOK Grandpa! Feet! MY FEET!" moment when she realized her "flashy toy" took pictures of real things like feet. Then came the preschool days when we took long 'nature' walks that always seemed to end at the swing set in the park up the street. Her camera came along with her favorite doll. Now and then she might even stop to snap a picture or two.

Then came her grown up years.  In kindergarten she learned there are many more fun things to do than push buttons on a boring old camera. So except for an occasional moment, photography became her really old grandpa's hobby.

Until yesterday. That's when this recent graduate from the third grade decided pushing a shutter button might become fun again.  She did very well for herself, running through a set of batteries and coming close to filling up the camera's memory card.

But when it became time to learn about the great joy of post  processing with  RAW Therapee--alas, that was trumped by on-line video games. On this computer no less.  So the rhino image in the blog is pure Charlotte.  Only the relative minimal cleanup and cropping is by scribble.

The Oly 3020 was not sold with a RAW mode on its menu. Charlotte could only shoot jpgs.  So one of the great features of RT came into play.  It works almost as well on jpgs as it does on RAW files.

Because of the bright foreground the subjects, the rhino and photographer above it are under exposed.

That was easily fixed using the LAB mode adjustments.  This could have been done in the RGB mode.  While I prefer the LAB adjustments,  the manual has a section on the advantages and differences between the two modes.

The camera's default sharpening tend to be a bit soft.  RT has several ways to sharpen but I find Contrast by Details the most useful. The upper image with the blue circles has CbD disabled, the lower one with the red circles has CbD enabled.  Click on the  two images to view the difference in the lettering of the photographer's T shirt.

While Charlotte had zoomed the camera out as far as it would go, the image could also use a crop.  Notice the grid marks for rule of thirds. RT has a fill set including a few for rule of --- that I've never read about.

And finally the masterpiece.  More are posted on flickr

Memorial day in McFarland

More as an experiment than anything else I shot this from the hip. Or more accurately from hanging down around the neck where I pointed my D7000 is the general direction of the girls and tapped the shutter while I was walking.  As soon as they passed, Charlotte's mother caught up with me and said quietly, "I hate to think about it, but those two are Charlotte in a couple year.  Cute, popular, and walking around with the latest high tech toys."

Charlotte now.  Her high tech toys are upstairs waiting to be unpacked. She moved into a new home in McFarland this weekend.  So how high tech is this kid? A few years back when she was five and three quarters, she sat me down and told me I needed a new computer with more bandwidth. Her online games were playing 'tooo tooo sloow.'  And if I also tossed in some Barbie dolls, she might let me babysit again.

End result--if she's not hogging the big screen TV downstairs, she is cycling between her Barbie cluttered bed/toy room and this computer.  Kids rule in this house.

Now a pairing of images:

The first one was a for-sure flickr post but I didn't know what to do with the second one.

A few days ago during  Half Price Books  20% off sale I picked up a copy of 'the photograph as contemporary art' , Charlotte Cotton, Thames&Hudson, world of art.  This morning I was reading Chapter 2 "Once upon a time." To quote: "This area of photography practice is often described as tableau or tableau-vivant photography, for pictorial narrative is concentrated into a single image, a stand-alone picture."

This image certainly isn't museum grade art (like some I've seen hanging in museums)  and pairing the two is sort of cheating.  They were, however, taken a few minutes apart.  First the popcorn girl, then across the street to Charlotte and her ice cream, and finally inside to check out the Historical Society's bake sale.  A sequence that was meant to be.

But, given this high tech world, I didn't want to embarrass the overweight girl in the unlikely but not impossible event she saw it.  She might even flickr mail me an enraged complaint.  (Which did happen a few years ago but that is another tale.)

So into the blog it goes.  Where I know she and anybody she knows will never see it.

A new look

For years I've been looking a my blog and telling myself I should do something about the format that forced me to post ridiculously small images. After this was a blog about photography.  But I never did anything except add a line saying 'click and thou shall see large.'


Part was 'procrastination thy name is scribble.' Part was an ancient fear from olden days that I might end up having to edit some HTML code.  Been there. Done that. And folks I do know how to mess up HTMl code big time.Then, in the spirit of spring cleaning, I poked around a bit in Blogger and saw how simple it was. A new template, a few slider adjustments and done. 


Might even do a post or two with just photos and no theoretical  stuff.  Now that is a wild idea.