Improve Photography Plus: Get every product Improve Photography makes in one place for just $19.95/month.  You’ll get dozens of hours of video training, but lots of websites offer that.  The unique selling point of Improve Photography Plus is the download center, with hundreds of Lightroom presets, photography contracts, sky replacements, and eBooks, and of course first crack at our free photography workshops all around the world.

Questions of the Week:

Andrew Zaragoza:  I’m going on a roadtrip and need something to edit photos on the go.  Nothing too serious, just something so I can post updates while I’m shooting.  Is there a better option than a laptop, like an iPad?  I need something that won’t kill the bank account.

Jeff: Dell XPS 9350-1340SLV 13.3 Inch Laptop (Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD, Silver) Microsoft Signature Image $790

Kathy Nemec-Lucas: What is a good online sales method for prints and image file downloads? Looking to not spend a lot to do it since I don’t sell that way very often, but want to offer a few print sizes and digital file download sales.

Jeff: Super easy through Zenfolio.  $60/yr for printing to work, have to go $240/yr for digital products

Nathan Whitworth: I just picked up a new 27 inch iMac (base model – 3.2 GHz i5, 8GB MHz ram) While its a huge upgrade over what I’ve been using I’m still noticing a little lag in lightroom when adjusting sliders and using brushes.

Jeff: Try disabling graphics acceleration.  Moving between pictures it is the SSD that is critical.  Too little RAM can make the sliders and adjustment brushes slow.  So can too little CPU.  The bigger CPU in the highest model of the 27” iMac would have been better, but I don’t think it would have been a massive difference.  It probably is just the way Lr is today, which is the reason we keep complaining and telling Adobe they have to fix it.  Should run like butter with a sparkling new computer and it just doesn’t.

Brian’s Segment: Shooting bald people?  Event photography w/ Indy500

Josh’s Segment: SBDC and business development tools

Video Blocks – Get your subscription today for only $99 at www.videoblocks.com/x/improve. That’s w-w-w dot v-i-d-eo-b-l-o-c-k-s dot com slash x slash improve

Jeff’s Segment:  3 quick things I feel are my responsibility as the nerdiest nerd on the network:

Windows 10 upgrade.  

Been running it since August 2016 on my editing PC, have had NO issues.  Have upgraded 5 other machines in my house (they don’t run Lr or Ps) but also no issues.  

Was a little noise in the forums about issues initially, but been relatively quiet for some time now.  

Prepare to upgrade before July 29th, after which time it may not be free.

Along the same lines, OS X El Capitan is also proven enough that everyone using a Mac should be upgraded if you haven’t taken that step yet.  Same story as Windows 10.

Adjustment brush amount slider.  Am I the only one who missed that?  Talked about it on Photo Taco this week.

On1 Photo RAW.  New product supposed to be available this fall.  Looks really exciting to me for a very specific reason – using the graphics processor to make editing HUGE RAW files super fast.  I hope this forces Adobe to make my 2016 prediction from last December come true where I said Adobe would make graphics processing actually work and it would make a huge difference in Lr.

Jim’s Segment:

A question for the group: Am I safer backing up my Drobo every 3 weeks and leaving the backup at my parents house, or putting the backup in another area of the house and turning on versioning so it’s backed up every night?

Doodads of the Week!

Brian: