Good Monday morning to all.  I hope you all had a great week and look forward to a good productive week coming up.  This image is a photo of the Lake Jane (I call it a pond) across the street from Lake Kensington ( I cal it a larger pond) behind my house, (Taken with my IPhone and processed with Snapseed.)

I thought it was a beautiful morning and a great way to start the week!

Last week I had UVerse internet installed (along with TV & Phone) and the technician who installed the system commented on all the wires in my office (my digital darkroom).  He said that if I wanted some extra money I could sell all the wire for scrap copper, as he was installing a new wire, a dedicated data line for the new internet system.  So, I was motivated to revamp all those wires and organize my photo editing system.  Here is a quick photo of the wires and my editing set-up before revamp.




Wow, what a task!  All those wires and plugs.  It was a maze of wires.

 I have a 27" IMac with a second monitor ( a 22" LCD) hooked up, a Wacom tablet & pen, and two G Drives for back up.  One is 2 gigabytes and the other is 4 gigabytes.  I also have a MacBook Pro for location & tethered for Shoots.  I synchronize the two computers to keep Lightroom 4 current and up to date on both computers with all my edits and photos.  I also use Photoshop CS5, as well as various plug-ins such as OnOne's Perfect Suite 6 and Nik's Complete Collection.  In addition I use HDR Soft's Photomatix and Nik's HDR Efex Pro 2 for HDR processing & tone mapping.  Let me side track a little and talk about how great the upgrade to Lightroom 4 is.  I love it! The Highlights, Shadows, Whites & Black sliders are great.  You adjust the exposure so the min parts of image is exposed correctly and then adjust Highlights to adjust blown out areas or Shadows etc.  I am amazed at how it brings back detail in those blown out areas, so much more effectively then Lightroom 3 did.  The Clarity slider is also great with so much less distortion as you increase clarity.
So anyway, after a good day of reorganizing and re arranging all the wires plugs and extension cords etc., I was able to get back to work!  Here is a photo of the work station with less wires/cords!


Next week I'll talk a little about some of the plug-ins and what they can do to save time.  Also in a few weeks I'll write about my backup process.  Talk yo you then.  In mean time if you have suggestions about back-up or plug-ins, don't hesitate to comment. Have a great week!