I posted a new set of photos today. It’s taken at Discovery Park at Sunset (as the name implies). Something new here – I’ve incorporated some new techniques, both in photography and in post processing (Adobe Lightroom is a fantastic new toy – I’d love to buy it someday). There are a lot of shots that appear to be of the same thing. There are differences in composition and timing (notice the sun) and I originally took over 200 shots – so you’re just getting the very few I decided to keep.
So a little discussion of why Adobe’s Lightroom is so cool: First, you can modify your histogram and any other settings on one image and apply the same modifications to other images, by copying and pasting the applied effects – that is fantastic for standarizing color affectations (I didn’t do that on all those images – they are almost all hand-modified). This means that if you take a lot of pictures in the same scene with similar settings, you can make up for the shortcomings of your camera (or exposure work) in single clicks. Also, you can remove things like dust spots and CCD/CMOS errors (I have that nasty blue dot that appears in high contrast dark scenes).
The interface is very nice – sufficiently robust to allow delicate regional changes: brushes for things like exposure and saturation are huge. You’ll notice, in the first picture in the series, the couple sittingo n the rocks looking at the sunset – I was able to increase the exposure slightly on them to make them more visible. On the bug on the plant in the third or fourth photo, I was able to employ some regional tricks to bring out the bug without making it stick out too much.
You do lose out on some of the simplicity of Windows Live Photo Gallery for many tasks, unfortunately. If you just need saturation, basic histogram, white balance changes and sharpness application, Live Photo Gallery is much easier and still offers a finer degree of control than Picasa. Where Lightroom seems to shine is in providing a much finer degree of control and the preservation of resolution and quality on horizon changes and providing the choice on jpeg saving (very important for water scenes where the horizon is really obvious). This is a problem I’ve seen with many of the free consumer products which is fully adjustable here. On the minus side, I think it’s a $200 product – however, much cheaper than Photoshop and more finely tuned to meet the needs of a photographer.
It’s seriously going to take my life away from me – this set was like 2 hours of work – but I’m happy with the results and I can’t wait to apply these new post-processing techniques on future shoots. And it’s something that’ll really make a difference as I move to higher quality images (when I get a new camera… some day). All-in-all – I like it a lot so far, but it won’t be really useful until I get lots more practice with it.
Phlargo's Dodgey Meanderings 
You are a master of time, space, and histograms.