Ideas For Future Virtual Meetings

[Mike Farley]

At the online meeting held 8th April, a number of ideas were discussed for the content of future meetings and a number of good ideas came up. The purpose of this thread is to solicit feedback on those suggestions and seek any other proposals.

As a club, we can only do what members are prepared to do for each other. At the moment, only a handful of people are involved in the organisation and running of our meetings. Inevitably, in the current situation to continue making a success of our online meetings, we will need to generate more of the content for ourselves than we have been accustomed. If anyone has anything which they can contribute, can they respond to this thread or send me an e-mail at my usual address.

Based on the feedback from attendees, there was interest in the following.

• Presentations. The talk which Steve gave about his recent trip to Finland demonstrated that talks can work well in the online format. Provided external lecturers are willing, the option exists to invite speakers from further afield who we might not otherwise here.
• Member presentations. These do not have to fill the duration of the meeting and can just be a few minutes, for example showing a few favourite images.
• Processing. Demonstration of members' workflow and useful post capture processing techniques.
• Raw Challenge. Members demonstrate the results from processing different Raw files.
• Alternate applications. Demonstrations of software other than Lightroom and Photoshop.
• Youtube. Viewing videos (not necessarily just from Youtube) and discussing the content in small groups using the Zoom Breakout function. A representative from each group will summarise the views.
• Internal competitions. Critique and score our own images. As one example, we are looking into the possibility of holding a "Lockdown Challenge" of images created since the Coronavirus restrictions were put in place.
• Image Critique. Both by external judges and members, but not at the same event.

Some ideas received less enthusiastic responses and are unlikely to happen unless a viable approach is developed.

• Photo montage challenge. Create a new image from components of five or six images supplied to members in advance.
• Quiz. No support at all.

An idea which was liked was a Match-a-PDI contest. However, that might prove to be a challenge to implement using videoconference technology. Suggestions on how to make it work are welcome.

Are there any comments or other ideas? Responses to this thread so that everyone can view them.

[Franke07]

Alternate software -
I moved to LR when Adobe purchased RAWShooter from Pixmantec. I used this alongside PhotoShop Elements and I still have LR ver 6.14 installed; this was the last non subscription ver available before Adobe moved to it's perpetual pay model.

When Adobe introduce it's new purchasing model. I like many others felt aggrieved that choice of when to upgrade had been removed. This did not sit well with me as it did not fit how I previously purchased my software. That being I only purchased a new version if it made my workflow easier or more productive, further I like to own what I have purchased!

So I decided to see what other software solutions were available. I tried a number of well known as well as the not so well known: GIMP, RAWTherapee., CorelDraw -PaintShop Pro, Affinity, ACDSee. (I trialed them in this order)

When I got to ADCSee, I found this fitted my workflow so I looked no further! This works for me, it helps me to reduce my time processing my pictures. Are there things that I miss from LR? Yes! Do they impact the way I work? No, as they were nice to have which was used occasionally and not part of my main workflow. My transition to ACDSee was without indecent as they allow you to import your LR catalogue.

I still occasionally fire up LR, but I don't use it for editing it's just so I can keep my hand in so as to be able to give others pointers for LR, although this in itself is becoming less useful as LR continues to develop.

At the end of the day we all need to look at the way we work and see if the tools we use suit our needs, when I worked in the darkroom there was a set pattern/methodology that you followed. There were very few areas that could be tweaked that allowed you to speed up the process. Digital breaks that mould and allows you to produce a flow that works for you!

While I have no hesitation in recommending ACDSee, I would encourage you to think about what it is you want to achieve and then find the software that helps you get there.