July 26, 2010

Blistering benchmarks for CS5 video apps

From Tom’s Hardware:

After Effects: “ What took more than 44 minutes to finish in CS4 drops to a little more than one minute in CS5.”

Premiere Pro: “A combination of shifting to a 64-bit environment and utilizing Nvidia’s Quadro FX 3800 drops a 3:40 render (in CS4) down to 19 seconds (in CS5).”

Nice.  Read on for details. [Via]

Lightroom 3 “like switching to a new camera,” says DPReview

In giving Lightroom 3 a Gold award, Digital Photography Review says:

The difference between high ISO images converted using the new 2010 process compared to the older 2003 algorithm is remarkable, both in terms of detail and noise reduction. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that at high ISO settings, switching to the new RAW processing engine is like switching to a new camera.

Elsewhere, Bright Hub gives the software a perfect 5 out of 5 “Excellent” rating and concludes, “This product stands head and shoulders above the competition in an increasingly crowded sector.”

Excellent; thanks, guys.

In other news, the LR/Enfuse multi-exposure blending plug-in has been revved to version 4. The concept is similar to HDR imaging, but the plug-in authors say their approach produces more natural-looking images.

(rt) Photography: Summer storms, giant Russians, & awkward stock

• History:
  • The Very Last Roll of Kodachrome Film Ever Made Was Used to Capture NYC, at the hands of the renowned Steve McCurry. [Via] (“If I ever become CEO of Kodak,” says Mark Rosenberg, “I’ll manufacture one more roll of Kodachrome, just to drive Steve McCurry nuts.”)
  • We got your Woodpecker right here, da: Photography of giant Cold War Russian radio tech. [Via]
• Jeffrey Friedl’s cool rollover shows the visual effects of Lightroom’s JPEG export settings.
• Stock:
  • Just what’s promised: AwkwardStockPhotos.com [Via]
  • Similarly great: StockDBags.tumblr.com (Love the Kuato/abs reference!) [Via]
• Man, having grown up in Illinois, I love this photo–”Summer Storm, Chicago” by Ken Tanaka.