Top 10 Software I use for editing

January 2, 2023 by Peter

These are the new and just updated for 2023 TOP 10 software packages I currently use for my image and video editing. As well as the hardware I use to run them on.

Surprisingly six of the ten programs can be had FREE for non-commercial use!
While three are subscription model products, and one is free but requires custom proprietary hardware.

Links to all the applications both free and paid are at the bottom of page.

The Software

What I edit still images with:

Name	Description
Adobe Creative Cloud Lightroom Classic	Image developer and catalog
Adobe Creative Cloud Photoshop	Image Editor
Picolay	Focus stacker by Heribert Cypionka

What I use to edit still images

My image catalog database is currently

Adobe Creative Cloud Lightroom (Image developer and catalog)

What I create videos with:

Name	Description
Blackmagic DaVnci Resolve 18	Insanely powerful video and audio editor
OBS Studio	Screen capture and live stream
qDslr dashboard	Tethering and time-lapse
Handbrake	Video converter
Audacity	Audio editor

What I uses to create videos

The Hardware

The Monitors

ASUS ProArt PA248 (Main image editing display)
Samsung S27R350 (Text and control panels)
Samsung S27R350 (everything else)

The rapidly ageing eaters of bits

Custom built Intel I7 system with
- 32Gb RAM
- 2 * 512Gb SSD + 2 * 4Tb sata3 internal drives
- Nvidea rtx 1650 4Gb video card
- Wacom Intuos 3 9*12 tablet
Custom built Intel I5 system with
- 16Gb RAM
- 512Gb SSD + 4Tb sata3
- Nvidea rtx 1030 2Gb video card

Backup & Stability

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office (data backup)
A random array of Western Digital external drives (backup medium, on and offsite)
Apc UPS unit(s) (power stabilization)

Here are the links to all the products if you want to get any them

Links will open new tabs or windows.

Paid/subscription

Name	Description and link	Platform
Adobe Photography bundle	includes both Lightroom & Photoshop for $9.99us/month http://bit.ly/2rbDvvF	w m
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office	(search web for discount coupons!) http://bit.ly/Acronispp	w m a i

Paid software – platform: w = Windows, m = Mac, a = Android, i = Ios

Free!

The following ~~seven~~ six products I use can all be downloaded and used for free!

Name	Description and link	Platform
BlackMagic DaVinci Resolve 18	(video/audio editor) http://bit.ly/resolvepp – non commercial use	w m
Microsoft ICE	(Panorama stitcher) – no longer available	w
Picolay	(Focus stacker, 3d renderer) http://bit.ly/picolay	w
Handbrake	(video converter) https://handbrake.fr/	w m l
Audacity	(audio editor) http://bit.ly/audaditypp	w m l
qDslr Dashboard	(remote camera control) http://bit.ly/2IVppWf Wired, wireless, timelapse, bramping, focus stacking Free on windows/mac and paid app for android/ios	all wmlair
WeMacro controller * * requires wemacro rail	WeMacro Focus stacking rail software https://bit.ly/wemacrosw	w m a i

Free software – platform: w = Windows, m = Mac, l = Linux, a = Android, i = Ios, r = Raspberry

The Photographers stages of being.

March 28, 2015 by Peter

The Photographers stages of being.

plasma ball lightning

stage 1 “The Complete Newbie”

Knows they want to take pictures but have no idea how to go about it.

stage 2 “The Interested Beginner”

Knows there is more to photography they begin the process of learning and spend time looking to forums & groups to help grow their skills.

stage 3 “The Obsessive Amateur”

Has a growing evolving kit of equipment.
They spend large amount of time pouring over manufacturer equipment specs and arguing over even the most trivial of details on forums.
They become overly obsessed with the equipment IQ capabilities.
Unfortunately while sidetracked by all the neat equipment available to them they do not spend much time actually growing their skills by working on task of image making.

stage 4 “The Image Maker”

Realizes the equipment is just a tool, a necessary evil.
They finally embark on the real journey of understanding light and imagining. They have a tendency to become a bit reclusive while chasing their new found vision and drop off from or become infrequent visitors to on-line communities in favor of actually working on their skills of producing images.

stage 5 “The Master”

at the zenith of their abilities they reach the Zen of image making.
They become one with the image making process and their equipment (Anyone who believes they have reached this stage, have not!)

stage 6 “There is no stage 6”

By far most people who embark on the photographic journey appear to progress fairly quickly from stage 1 through stage 2 to stage 3 where many tend to get stuck.
They become mired down in trying to understand all the wonderful equipment that keeps appearing on the market for them to obtain.

Many fortunately eventually escape the bling and flash of all the new kit after a while, and get back on track of becoming a proficient image maker.

Though not all make it to stage 4, their hobby becomes the photo equipment in itself. Which is fine, especially if you are a photo equipment manufacturer!

Stage 5 is a myth, no one ever actually gets to this point though some have gotten very close!

Workflow and library major changes in the works

October 10, 2013 by Peter

Construction equipment

DAM (Digital Asset Management)

DAM is a pain at best of times.
Trying to hammer out workable, reliable and consistent backup schemes, file naming conventions, image workflow, key wording, meta data is not easy.
And as you keep changing things to hopefully simplify your work, you usually ending up with a lot of inconsistencies in the old image archives.

At least until I attended Gavin Gough’s Photo Workflow seminar at Photoshelter and watched his video on Vimo

Conveniently linked for you here:

Workflow changes

The first changes to my workflow include adding a new step to my backup strategy, and completely renaming all my existing image files! Would be a big ouch except it is actually turning out to be a painless process!

Good thing was my existing backup strategy was already good (decades of working as a IT analyst pays off) but even here I added a new step to separately backup all the raw image files automatically as they come in to an external drive using a neat feature of lightroom I did not know even existed!

At the moment all my existing working image files are being renamed to a consistent naming convention (one day at a time, just so I can watch what is happening) and converted to DNG format files.
All being done automatically and being handled by LightRoom itself!
Yes, I did take a full snapshot backup of the entire image library before beginning this process, so reverting in case something “not good” happens would be easy.

This is one eBook package (includes a lot of extra like pre-built Lightroom presets to speed things up) that can really help your workflow especially if you are handling large volumes of image files.

Wish I had found it sooner, going back and converting 10’s of thousands of digital image files to the new consistent workflow format from many years of shooting is going to take a bit of time.

The next step will be to implement the tagging process to keep track of where individual images are within the workflow process.