Over the past few months the service that Apple rebranded from .Mac to MobileMe has gone through some insane growing pains, even a trip or two. But it has come out of its ugly duckling stage and is revealing its true potential. With the increase in storage from 10GB to 20GB with the rebranding and a monthly download limit of 200GB transfer it lends itself well to a great client based proofing service and downloads area. 

In a past post on MobileMe’s gallery potential I talked about how easy it is to now setup a great looking portfolio and now we’ll dive into a bit of how you can now use that to let your clients proof great images quickly and efficiently.

First as a recap - We need to remember that you no longer need the iLife suite to upload images to create the great albums, all you need is a MobileMe account. You can organize, rearrange, sort, even select whether you allow users to download the images, etc.

Another great feature to the MobileMe suite is it’s iDisk and how it allows users to upload large files to a server for download by clients, friends, family, etc. and with that large bandwidth limit per month, you don’t have to worry about your website being bogged down or server crashing because of large uploads and downloads. 

It’s turning out to be a great package for the average user and the photographer on a budget wanting a clean simple solution. If Apple continues to beef up the service with reliability and more storage, they’re going to start having an amazing tool set online. Did I mention it offers amazing “push” style capabilities for my iPhone with my contacts, calendar, and email? Another bonus of keeping track of clients while on the road.

Yours truly has been featured on Wallblank.com. We’ve decided to go with a four images and four different causes. There is a limit of 50 prints / picture so they will go like hotcakes! All prints are 13″x19″ in size so they’re going to look incredible on your walls. 

Spread the word, all the proceeds go to four amazing causes. Did I mention they make great Christmas presents? (Sorry I had to)

A couple of weeks ago a great website launched called Wallblank.com. It’s head up by a few people whom I know, so I will get that out in the open at the start. 

The basic premise of the website is to allow layman (normal people) purchase great art to fill their rooms, homes and offices. On a usual print they will have a limit print run, approx. 100-200. Once those are sold out then you’re out of luck so you have to act quickly. A great aspect to this startup is it’s focus on the artist, which I am always gun-ho about. They, unlike other nameless sellers don’t keep 99% of the profit from the prints, they allow the artists to afford something better then a PB and J sandwich. They also run non-profit Fridays (which I will hopefully be involved with on a regular basis) that raise 100% of the profits from the prints and send them to a select organization of the artists choice.

So now that you know, buy a print, support an artist and I will keep you posted when a print of mine comes up and you can support me or a non-profit organization that I will supporting. Let me eat better then PB and J, please!

Last week I posted about the new Canon website that featured a camera that looked distinctly like a 5D. Well now the light is starting to be shed on the look of the camera. Yes, I am being that guy again.

With the recent acquisition of a couple 250GB portable HD’s I knew that the biggest issue would be how to back up all that onto the HD’s. A while ago I posted on the programs that I use to back-up all my data, one piece of software that was among them was Super-Duper. Since that post I have had major issues with this program and have deleted it off my system. A program that has replaced Super-Duper is a great program by the folks at ECon called ChronoSync.

What differs from Super-Duper to ChronoSync is the fundamental differences of what type of back-up it is. Super-Duper will makes a clone of your entire drive (including the errors!). While ChronoSync will back-up and sync just the files on the drive that you have selected. It has automatic back-ups and allows the user to even make sure specific files types aren’t backed-up. 

I have yet to have any errors or issues involving back-ups. It has run flawlessly for over 7 months now and you become accustomed to hearing that wonderful “DING” when the back-up is successfully finished. 

It costs $30 to buy and has a 30 day trial as well. I would highly suggest any photographer who uses a mac use this software for backing-up their photographs. It can even back-up your files to MobileMe on a consistent basis, a feature which I use daily on an auto back-up.

Once again, I am blown away by the amazing comedy of WTD author Aaron Johnson.

Check out the great What the Duck comic.

After many painstaking months of working out a look that has suited my new vision, I decided to go through my Colombian Joy images and edit accordingly. I am pleased to say that I am super proud of this set. Go check it out HERE.

As well, within the coming weeks I will be updating my Qwanoes set with new 2008 images. There there will also be in addition to Kaleo 07/08 set a Kaleo 08/09 set being added and contributed consistently over the next 8 months. It’s never a dull moment around here. Tell your friends, call a loved one, yell it from the street corners, Jordan’s got his game on!

If there has been one feature that I have loved the most, it has to be the “Graduated Filter” tool in the Develop module. While I was out shooting today I was shooting so that I took take advantage of this new tool and really see if it would make the cut in my workflow.

Wow did it ever impress me. With the combined ability of bringing back details in specific areas, it also allows you to “tone” the filter as well.

Another feature which I have never really taken advantage of in Lightroom is the ability to average out exposures on multiple shots.

“Average out exposures? How do you do that?”, you say! Well it’s easy.

Simply select multiple images in your catalogue, enter the development module and go to the “Settings” menu bar item, and select “Match Multiple Exposures”. As per the image below.

Voila! Your images you’ve selected will now be roughly the same exposure. This works best with images that were shot around the same time frame. It can be a serious time saver when editing lots of images that were shot around the same time.

Enjoy the new attributes to LR 2.0! I am still basking in the new interface improvements. Who doesn’t like it when the company you buy products from actually listens to the customers?!?

Adobe just announced and released LR 2.0. Here is the press release:

SAN JOSE, Calif. — July 29, 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the immediate availability of Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 2 software, the photographer’s essential toolbox for managing, adjusting and presenting large volumes of digital photographs. With new enhancements such as dual-monitor support, radical advances in non-destructive localized image correction, and streamlined search capabilities, Lightroom 2 is a compelling upgrade that simplifies photography from shoot to finish. As Adobe’s first application to support 64-bit for Mac OS X 10.5 Macintosh computers with Intel® processors and Microsoft® Windows® Vista® 64bit operating systems, Lightroom 2 also provides improved memory performance for dealing with large scale images…

I have posted many a comic strips by whattheduck.net. So here is another to wet your appetite. 

After much anticipation and endless re-workings of the design we have finally launched the Camp Qwanoes Summer Web Galleries. Here we you can check weekly for the photos that I take this summer. Each week at approx 5:30PM PST on Saturday I will post up the past weeks photos. 

As well if you would like to see the slideshow that we put together for the Staff Development day, head over to my MobileMe gallery, HERE. 

Hope you enjoy the content of both. A lot of work and passion goes into pumping out content like this every week, and it starts to take its toll on the ole brain. 

I recently found this interview done by Frederick Van on Adobe’s John Nack. It’s an interesting look into the world that is Adobe and the future of Lightroom and Photoshop.

John Nack - Photoshop Principal Product Manager from Frederick Johnson on Vimeo.

With the recent update of the infamously out-dated .Mac service to the newly named MobileMe service has brought about a new level of great services. One that I was very curious about trying out was the web galleries. Ever since the implementation of the amazing web galleries with iPhoto and Aperture, I was extremely jealous. But now Apple has offered the ability to create these great web galleries for anyone who has a “MobileMe” account.

Upon logging into the MobileMe service you can navigate to the “gallery” section. Here you will be greeted with simplified interface that makes even the simplest mind jump for joy. From here you can create new albums, edit album names, re-organize old albums, etc.

Creating a new album is as simple as selecting it from the drop down menu, typing in a name, figuring out what type of “share” options you want on or off and clicking “ok”. 

From there you will need to upload your images. And yes, once again a simplified interface has been implimented to make the stupidest simplest minded person happy.

Once you have selected the images you want and clicked the “select” button, you will begin to upload you images. The upload window will show which images were uploaded by marking them with a check-mark and show the progress of the ones uploading with a progress bar.

From there you can view you newly created web gallery in the sleek MobileMe gallery interface! What is even better about this new web gallery app. is now even the mortal PC users can use it to make their own galleries. Yes I can see you all jumping for joy right now!

Pros:

• Simple interface
• Large 20GB storage capacity
• Gallery interface is very sleek and professional

Cons:

• Expensive for just gallery usage.
• MobileMe is a stupid name

One of Lightroom greatest assets within Lightroom is its ability to create amazing web content within minutes. Not only are the basic templates that come with Lightroom amazing, but the array of third-party web galleries available now is incredible. One of my personal favorites is the Slideshow Pro gallery. At first glance it looks like a basic web gallery system. But under that deceptively easy hood is an extremely powerful and flexible system. I recently have been playing with it a lot lately trying to do some brainstorming on how to use it more and I think I have come up with some great ways to take full advantage of this great utility.

Jordan’s Tips on Slideshow Pro in Lightroom:

1. Make sure you get to know the tool bar (inside and out) for within the web galleries module. Upon first glance it can be very overwhelming. It is strongly would recommended you dive in and start playing around, pop on that explorers hat and start changing colors, options, transitions, etc.
2. Know the different sections of the tool bar, there are ten different sections. Those sections are: albums, captions, content area, feedback, gallery, header, media player, navigation, typography and extra effects.
3. Understand the needs of the gallery you are creating. Is the gallery going at the front of a website, in a portfolio or basic slide show. This will help you define what the look of: control bar type, transition type, etc. that will be used.
4. Make multiple different templates and save them for future use. I always use the same template for my blog, a different one for another blog, etc. Templates are powerful and save time.
5. Lastly, is uploading and displaying on the web. If you have ever setup a web gallery from the FTP uploader within Lightroom, then you know that you can select a specific location you want the SSP files to go. I generally place them all within a specific folder, then from there I will choose my options for displaying. For displaying the gallery on my blog I will use an iframe html code that is in the dimensions of the specific gallery. For example: <iframe src=”place url here” height=”450″ width=”500″ name=”" scrolling=no frameBorder=”0″ ></iframe> is the coding I use to place a gallery within this blog.

Here is a quick example of a gallery that I created with SSP in Lightroom. If you like this look and feature set, here is a link to the template: Slideshow Clean