This NAFTA thing clearly isn't working, because whenever I make a trip back to Canada, 3/4 of my suitcase ends up carrying things that are cheaper when bought online in the US. Take for example:
Anonymous Stranger: hi
me: hi Anonymous Stranger.
AS: can i ask a favour?
me: yes?
AS: do you have room in your bag to bring something for me from US?
me: a lens?
AS: no....
AS: a colon cleanse system?
Yes, my friends can be incredibly funny. In this case, even without joking.
Jun 18, 2009
Jun 11, 2009
On healthy eating.
Remember those drink your vegetable commercials? Do hops count as vegetables?
What about pesto?
What about pesto?
Jun 3, 2009
May 23, 2009
Beyond all expectations.
It's a McG movie, so there's the lowered expectations and all. But how bad can a Terminator movie be, especially with Christian Bale as John Connor? I'll have to say, this wasn't the movie I thought from the trailer. It didn't for a moment, feel dark or gritty. This is the cheeziest, most cliched, feel-good Terminator yet. So, the answer is: about as bad as you can imagine, and maybe a little bit more. Thanks McG, you've exceeded my expectations again!
May 19, 2009
Whatever happened to winter?
I like looking forward to that last snowboarding trip of the year, the one where you end the season with a bang and wave goodbye to the snow capped peaks for another seven or eight months. Some years don't quite work that way though, a few busy weekends here, bad weather there, and before you know it, it's 35C out and the grass on the east bay hills is golden again.
I had an idea to blog about music, but the days flowed into weeks and months, and I've forgotten most of it. I have noticed that imeem's somewhat become my new radio (Pandora seems down a lot, and YouTube audio quality just isn't that great).
Not that any of these are new, but just an assortment from the past couple of months:
Your Hand In Mine - Explosions In The Sky
im good im gone - lykke li
Hope For The Hopeless - A Fine Frenzy
L.E.S. Artistes (Single) - Santigold
1901 - Phoenix
Bach: Partita No. 2 in D Minor - J. S. Bach
May 6, 2009
Quixotic.
I just got $300 in Amazon gift certificates. At first I thought it was spam, but then I found the certificate codes work. I think someone out there can't type their own email address.
Apr 29, 2009
Braindead.
How come every so often, I'll read something intriguing or inspirational, and I'll never get around to blogging about it?
And when I do come around to blogger, my mind draws a blank?
Work is sucking out my brains. <slurp>.
Now where's that schmassion?
And when I do come around to blogger, my mind draws a blank?
Work is sucking out my brains. <slurp>.
Now where's that schmassion?
Mar 17, 2009
what monoculture?
Toronto's always boasted about it's multiculturalism. But since there's a small group discussion going on in Hindi in the cube to my left, and my coworker's talking on the phone in Mandarin in the cube to my right, I don't feel *that* far from home.
Mar 5, 2009
On Storytelling.
Part of the appeal of studying the sciences is the immutability of the physical laws. There's the hope (or perhaps fantasy) that contributions to the field will last as long as the physical laws themselves, to be applied universally by mankind, years and millenia down the road. Like how Einstein's theory of relativity is still constantly applied to physics and astronomy. The arts on the other hand, are subject to fashion, politics, and the capricious winds of humanity's trends. One man's epic may be another's satire; a woman's fashion statement may be the laughingstock to the next generation; a failed artist can die in poverty - either to be hailed a master posthumously, or to remain in the obscurity for the rest of history.
Perhaps unchanged over the millenia of human existence is the enjoyment of a good story. The intriguing characters, the rise and turn of the plot, the ideas and commentary all serve to play upon both the intellect and emotions. Story after story, fact or fiction or some combination of the two, have been repeated across the globe and through the ages. The story's taken many forms, spoken by a grandparent, sang by a bard, a puppet show, a play, a dance.
Today's most popular medium is probably film or television. But the video games industry is already bigger than Hollywood. I still recall playing "Grim Fandango" a decade ago; the story there was entirely captivating, in a way few following games have succeeded. Some recent titles, "Dead Space", "Mirror's Edge", and "Need for Speed: Underground", all from EA, all shared the same story. You do task after task (kill zombies/jump across buildings/drive your fast car) to get to some goal, just to realize that the character who's been giving you directions is a traitor and you have to defeat them.
There was no great storytelling, but all three games attempted to create some sort of cinematic atmosphere, and it's just an indicator that the industry is moving beyond twitch-based entertainment to a real storytelling medium.
After reading "Watchmen" a month ago (after having heard about it for years), I was struck by the stupendous storytelling genius behind it. In my mind, Dostoyevsky was literature, comic books cheap entertainment, and graphic novels somewhere in between. "Watchmen" firmly put itself into my literature category, with its allusions to religion, discussion of humanity and exploration of (anti-)(super-)heroes buried in the plot. And compared to your standard novel, it was rendered two-fold, in both the text and the symbolism in the art. Perhaps four-fold if you include the comic-book-within-the-comic book.
Just as the comic-book matured into something like "Watchmen", I suspect it'll just be a matter of time before a game of such epic proportions would be created - provided game creators aim above the teenage male demographic (just like graphic novelists).
That being said, I'm skeptical of how well the "Watchmen" will translate to film. I'm sure there's plenty like me out there. It would be extremely difficult for some of the nuanced symbolism to come across in a moving picture. Plus, let's face it, comic book text bubbles just need to have that little extra bravado and flair. Speaking it aloud in a leotard onscreen would be just - cheezy.
Perhaps unchanged over the millenia of human existence is the enjoyment of a good story. The intriguing characters, the rise and turn of the plot, the ideas and commentary all serve to play upon both the intellect and emotions. Story after story, fact or fiction or some combination of the two, have been repeated across the globe and through the ages. The story's taken many forms, spoken by a grandparent, sang by a bard, a puppet show, a play, a dance.
Today's most popular medium is probably film or television. But the video games industry is already bigger than Hollywood. I still recall playing "Grim Fandango" a decade ago; the story there was entirely captivating, in a way few following games have succeeded. Some recent titles, "Dead Space", "Mirror's Edge", and "Need for Speed: Underground", all from EA, all shared the same story. You do task after task (kill zombies/jump across buildings/drive your fast car) to get to some goal, just to realize that the character who's been giving you directions is a traitor and you have to defeat them.
There was no great storytelling, but all three games attempted to create some sort of cinematic atmosphere, and it's just an indicator that the industry is moving beyond twitch-based entertainment to a real storytelling medium.
After reading "Watchmen" a month ago (after having heard about it for years), I was struck by the stupendous storytelling genius behind it. In my mind, Dostoyevsky was literature, comic books cheap entertainment, and graphic novels somewhere in between. "Watchmen" firmly put itself into my literature category, with its allusions to religion, discussion of humanity and exploration of (anti-)(super-)heroes buried in the plot. And compared to your standard novel, it was rendered two-fold, in both the text and the symbolism in the art. Perhaps four-fold if you include the comic-book-within-the-comic book.
Just as the comic-book matured into something like "Watchmen", I suspect it'll just be a matter of time before a game of such epic proportions would be created - provided game creators aim above the teenage male demographic (just like graphic novelists).
That being said, I'm skeptical of how well the "Watchmen" will translate to film. I'm sure there's plenty like me out there. It would be extremely difficult for some of the nuanced symbolism to come across in a moving picture. Plus, let's face it, comic book text bubbles just need to have that little extra bravado and flair. Speaking it aloud in a leotard onscreen would be just - cheezy.
Feb 23, 2009
On supply and demand.
A few days after release, I had to call around to maybe 6 stores to find myself a copy of Street Fighter 4. All the stores were sold out of the two $80 or $150 Mad Catz built, Street Fighter branded 6 button joysticks though.
Checking online, the high end stick is now going for over $400. That's more than 6 times the price of the game itself. Recession wha?
Checking online, the high end stick is now going for over $400. That's more than 6 times the price of the game itself. Recession wha?
Feb 18, 2009
It's pouring.
Not working on a midweek Wednesday and hitting these conditions instead:
Snow Stats (snow totals in inches)
Last 24 hours 14-16"
Last 48 hours 38-44"
Last 7 days 102-132"
Oh, and it wasn't actually pouring, it did that over the weekend. It was sunny. I'd like to think it's a little like what heaven's like. Except maybe in heaven I won't suck and spill in waist deep powder on the flats. Oh, and T & V will be there too.
Snow Stats (snow totals in inches)
Last 24 hours 14-16"
Last 48 hours 38-44"
Last 7 days 102-132"
Oh, and it wasn't actually pouring, it did that over the weekend. It was sunny. I'd like to think it's a little like what heaven's like. Except maybe in heaven I won't suck and spill in waist deep powder on the flats. Oh, and T & V will be there too.
Feb 17, 2009
Jan 21, 2009
There's probably a Law for this somewhere.
It's been sunny for what, 3 weeks straight? So no fresh snow up in the mountains. Great. So how come it is that the day I want to ride the bike around, my battery is dead, and the following day when I actually have it all recharged and ready to go, it starts raining?
Yo Obama, you gotta work on controlling the weather.
Yo Obama, you gotta work on controlling the weather.
Jan 20, 2009
Early to the party.
Back at what we used to call the old house, there was this small magnolia tree, smack dab in the middle of the front lawn. Every spring we'd see it's tiny fuzzy buds emerge like like pussy willows, but bloom into huge magenta and white flowers until the petals fall off and whither on the ground while the leaves eventually fill the tree.
That was then, this is now. Screw waiting for spring, the flowers come out in January. I hope this isn't the end of the snowboarding season, it's barely started!
Hm, that magnolia tree back home must be fricking huge now.
Jan 16, 2009
RAW Workflow: Bibble Pro 4.10
While Bibble Labs has announced a faster and more featureful Bibble 5, the latest version available is still 4.10. While screenshots of 5 show a modern grey UI like C1 4, Lightroom and Apple's Aperture, the existing incarnation bears a more traditional, labyrinthine interface. Once upon a time, I believed that an app should be judged by its capabilities, and that the user interface was merely gloss. By that reasoning, Bibble should earn top scores. In terms of things that you can do with your image, it's got almost everything that you can do with Lightroom 2 (except dodge and burn), and far more than you can with C1. It's also reasonably priced, with Bibble Lite coming in at $89 with all the image manipulation features, and the Pro version coming in at $159 with more batch processing and tethered shooting.
When it comes to workflow apps though, a better UI isn't just about being prettier, it means you can get stuff done faster. While I wouldn't say Bibble's interface is poor, it's a minor frustration after being comfortable with C1 or Lightroom. After using C1, playing with Lightroom and Aperture were quite intuitive (even C1 was pretty intuitive to start with). Out of all these apps, Bibble had the steepest learning curve, probably because it gives the user the most choice. Instead of giving you a single view like C1, or different views where you can do different things like Lightroom, Bibble offers you multiple views where you can pretty much accomplish the same things; some are more optimized for particular tasks, but i found that it distracted me more than anything. If you're the type that appreciates being able to set things up just so, you'd like Bibble's options of customizing your UI. Personally, I'd prefer it if the app developer did the research to figure out what's the most efficient UI so I don't have to experiment myself, but I'm sure others would like to spend the time figuring out what's their personal preference - I lack the patience.
My main complaint about Bibble though, is that the browsing of images is incredibly slow when compared to the competitors. Again, it's a case where Bibble has not prioritized the UI sufficiently. Bibble actually has the fastest RAW->JPG conversion; the thing is, if I can queue up all the conversions in one step, I can walk away from the computer and do other things, like make dinner, and wait for all the images to get processed. What I would prefer to be speedy is browsing through my hundreds of images, when I actually have to sit in front of the computer. This is the case though, where Bibble is pathetically slow compared to its competitors. The developers have optimized the wrong thing.
Another case where too much choice comes in is the selection of plugins. Not only can I tweak the image through the standard contrast/saturation/curves/levels tools, but also through a bunch of other plugins with anthropomorphosized names like Sadie, Andy, and Rumplestiltskin. Seriously, by looking at these plugins, I can't tell exactly what they're meant to do. Plus it seems I can get similar results with some of the standard tools. I'm just confused, and that's not a good state to be in. C'mon guys, make it clear, not confounding.
One final comment about Bibble is the use of Noise Ninja. A few years ago, I had tried out the actual Noise Ninja product, and it was awesome compared to any other noise reduction algorithm that I've used. Noise Ninja is entirely worth it's price, and it seemed like Bibble included this piece of software. Unfortunately, the version of Noise Ninja includeded in Bibble is not much better than the noise reduction technology that you get in any of the competitors (okay, maybe better than the muddy results the C1 produces when you turn up the NR, but it's not noticeably better than Lightroom). To get the real Noise Ninja, you still need to pay to upgrade to the Real Deal.
Overall, I think a lot of good work in Bibble. The features work well, and there are a lot of them. Unfortunately, it lacks polish, and the other apps have it. If you told me, Bibble is actually faster to use once you get used to it, I'd be tempted to believe you, although you'd still have to prove it to me. In my short experiments though, the learning curve just threw me off, and I'd still prefer one of the other apps.
When it comes to workflow apps though, a better UI isn't just about being prettier, it means you can get stuff done faster. While I wouldn't say Bibble's interface is poor, it's a minor frustration after being comfortable with C1 or Lightroom. After using C1, playing with Lightroom and Aperture were quite intuitive (even C1 was pretty intuitive to start with). Out of all these apps, Bibble had the steepest learning curve, probably because it gives the user the most choice. Instead of giving you a single view like C1, or different views where you can do different things like Lightroom, Bibble offers you multiple views where you can pretty much accomplish the same things; some are more optimized for particular tasks, but i found that it distracted me more than anything. If you're the type that appreciates being able to set things up just so, you'd like Bibble's options of customizing your UI. Personally, I'd prefer it if the app developer did the research to figure out what's the most efficient UI so I don't have to experiment myself, but I'm sure others would like to spend the time figuring out what's their personal preference - I lack the patience.
My main complaint about Bibble though, is that the browsing of images is incredibly slow when compared to the competitors. Again, it's a case where Bibble has not prioritized the UI sufficiently. Bibble actually has the fastest RAW->JPG conversion; the thing is, if I can queue up all the conversions in one step, I can walk away from the computer and do other things, like make dinner, and wait for all the images to get processed. What I would prefer to be speedy is browsing through my hundreds of images, when I actually have to sit in front of the computer. This is the case though, where Bibble is pathetically slow compared to its competitors. The developers have optimized the wrong thing.
Another case where too much choice comes in is the selection of plugins. Not only can I tweak the image through the standard contrast/saturation/curves/levels tools, but also through a bunch of other plugins with anthropomorphosized names like Sadie, Andy, and Rumplestiltskin. Seriously, by looking at these plugins, I can't tell exactly what they're meant to do. Plus it seems I can get similar results with some of the standard tools. I'm just confused, and that's not a good state to be in. C'mon guys, make it clear, not confounding.
One final comment about Bibble is the use of Noise Ninja. A few years ago, I had tried out the actual Noise Ninja product, and it was awesome compared to any other noise reduction algorithm that I've used. Noise Ninja is entirely worth it's price, and it seemed like Bibble included this piece of software. Unfortunately, the version of Noise Ninja includeded in Bibble is not much better than the noise reduction technology that you get in any of the competitors (okay, maybe better than the muddy results the C1 produces when you turn up the NR, but it's not noticeably better than Lightroom). To get the real Noise Ninja, you still need to pay to upgrade to the Real Deal.
Overall, I think a lot of good work in Bibble. The features work well, and there are a lot of them. Unfortunately, it lacks polish, and the other apps have it. If you told me, Bibble is actually faster to use once you get used to it, I'd be tempted to believe you, although you'd still have to prove it to me. In my short experiments though, the learning curve just threw me off, and I'd still prefer one of the other apps.
Jan 11, 2009
Best weekend in ages.
It's a matter of getting back to the roots, hanging out with old friends, and having all the pieces fall together just so.
Hiking up Mission Peak with djpraise to get back into shape brought back memories of Morocco, though this hike was far easier than hiking up the dunes in the Erg.
Getting the old crew back together for a few hours of zergling rushes and dropping nukes, this time across the continent, instead of an IPX lan.
Driving up to Tahoe, towards the sun, rising golden in the horizon above the haze in Livermore as the full moon set in the rear view mirror. Driving back and watching the hazy crimson disk of the sun disappear behind the East Bay hills, and a blazing orange moon rise peek above the western horizon. The camera was in the trunk, but the picture's in my mind.
Hiking up Mission Peak with djpraise to get back into shape brought back memories of Morocco, though this hike was far easier than hiking up the dunes in the Erg.
Getting the old crew back together for a few hours of zergling rushes and dropping nukes, this time across the continent, instead of an IPX lan.
Driving up to Tahoe, towards the sun, rising golden in the horizon above the haze in Livermore as the full moon set in the rear view mirror. Driving back and watching the hazy crimson disk of the sun disappear behind the East Bay hills, and a blazing orange moon rise peek above the western horizon. The camera was in the trunk, but the picture's in my mind.
Jan 8, 2009
I miss Amsterdam.
The renovated Safeway's got a new big beer fridge. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any Affligem or Leffe or Chimay or Westmalle. I would have settled for a Jupiter or even Alexander Keith's.
Jan 2, 2009
Anecdotal data on drive failure.
While cleaning up my old archived data, I realized I had a couple of backups of my old computer, Totoro. Totoro was my main machine during university, from 1997-2001. It never got to the point of failure, it was sitting around mostly unused between 2001 and 2007 when I eventually recycled it. One backup was from around 2004, the other around 2007. Since that machine was mostly unused during that period, I expected most of the files to be the same. Just for fun, I did a comparison to check. The interesting thing was that I had 19,294 identical files, and 18 files that were different. Somehow, after sitting around for 3 years, about 0.093% of my files became corrupt.
Now, I have way too many uncontrolled variables to even determine where the corruption occurred. I had backed up that original disk twice - the first time was over the network to my archive server, the second time was after I had pulled it out of Totoro, stuck it into a different computer, and copied it onto a portable disk. My guess is that the disk became corrupt, although the errors could also have been introduced at some point when I was copying the files around.
In any case, this introduces a bit of paranoia. Just because I have something backed up, I have no idea that the backup copy is perfect. My current "backup process" is just to copy important files over to my archive server, which has mirrored disks, meaning if one of the disks in the server dies, I still have a 2nd copy. This experience has shown that I ought to look for some specialized backup software that generates CRCs and can verify file integrity instead of simply using "copy".
Addendum: Found another partition from Totoro that I had backed up twice. This time the "newer" backup contained 285 truncated files out of 4377, that's 6.5%.
Now, I have way too many uncontrolled variables to even determine where the corruption occurred. I had backed up that original disk twice - the first time was over the network to my archive server, the second time was after I had pulled it out of Totoro, stuck it into a different computer, and copied it onto a portable disk. My guess is that the disk became corrupt, although the errors could also have been introduced at some point when I was copying the files around.
In any case, this introduces a bit of paranoia. Just because I have something backed up, I have no idea that the backup copy is perfect. My current "backup process" is just to copy important files over to my archive server, which has mirrored disks, meaning if one of the disks in the server dies, I still have a 2nd copy. This experience has shown that I ought to look for some specialized backup software that generates CRCs and can verify file integrity instead of simply using "copy".
Addendum: Found another partition from Totoro that I had backed up twice. This time the "newer" backup contained 285 truncated files out of 4377, that's 6.5%.
Dec 14, 2008
Advent conspiracy.
Here's an awfully un-timely video given the struggling economy. I think there's still hope that Christmas will be more than just another consumer holiday when people don't feel like spending. While I have enjoyed shopping for my cousins (as tough as that could be at times), and I admire thoughtfully purchased gifts, I've noticed that I've somewhat missed out on the Christmas spirit in the past few years, given all the rush and commotion (though the family time is always excellent).
So hopefully I'll do something about that this year.
RAW workflow: Lightroom 2
Most RAW workflow apps were developed by smaller companies focused on the needs of photographers. When Adobe came out with Lightroom 1.0 early in 2007, ir validated the market, confirming that Photoshop alone didn't meet the needs of professional or advanced amateur photographers. I had toyed with the Lightroom 1 beta release. It was slow and didn't much impetus to switch over. However, through various releases, bugs were fixed and performance improved. At $299, Lightroom 2 is priced less the Capture One 4 PRO, but still double the price of Capture One 4 or Bibble Pro.
Lightroom operates in one of 5 modes, Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, Web. This structure forces you into a certain workflow. First, in the Library mode, you "import" your images, after which you can quickly browse and make your edit. Lightroom offers a number of tools to aid in organizing photos, including the ability to add tags to images and search with them, as well as "smart collections" that can update themselves. I was able to easily create a smart collection of all photos within a date range that were rated 3 and above. After I finished rating my photos, this folder automatically contained all the files that fit the rule. I don't have a habit of tagging images, so I haven't done this.
After you have your edit, you can move on to the Develop mode, where all the postprocessing tools are provided. In addition to having all the basic tools that I'm familiar with in C1, there's a number of new tools, all potentially useful for creative manipulation, but which also give you power to violate your sense of "journalistic integrity". Advanced colour controls let you tweak particular colours, for example you can make your oranges redder without affecting your blues or greens. Split toning allows you to modify the colours of your bright and dark areas separately. There are tools to fix chromatic aberration and vignetting flaws in your lenses (available in C1 PRO), although some people (like wedding photographers) may choose to use this to add some vignetting for that vintage effect.
The most standout features though, are the tools that allow you to manipulate a small area of your image, something that Photoshop does effortlessly, but are unavailable in C1. Use the clone/healing tool to get rid of a spot of dust here or a pimple there (available in Bibble). Or do some dodging/burning by changing the brightness, contrast, saturation or sharpness of one little area of your image (unavailable in Bibble). These aren't as full-featured as they are in Photoshop, but having them built in means there's much less reason that you would actually need to start up Photoshop at all.
One other thing I like about Lightroom is the availability of Presets. You can save a certain set of settings and name them, say "Super Contrasty" or "Way Oversaturated" or "Fake Lomo", which will then appear in an organized list on the left. You can then select them to apply to your image. In C1 and Bibble you can mimic the functionality with some clunky methods, either by saving presets to file and reloading them (takes a lot more moouse clicks), or having "template" images with your presets applied, and copy from them later. However, the real magic they can't emulate; when you mouse over the names of the presets in the list, the effect is shown practically immediately on a preview image. You don't even need to you click, just move your mouse up and down and decide extremely quickly what preset you want. Potentially huge time saver.
My biggest gripe with the Develop mode is that you can only manipulate one image at a time. For example, you can't select a bunch of images and apply a Preset to all of them. Now, it's possible to do this in the Library mode, so all is not lost. It is annoying however, to have to switch between modes to do this, and it was not at all intuitive.
When I'm done processing my images, I select the ones I want to convert to JPEG, and use the File\Export option to convert to JPEG. It's pretty convenient, especially since you can create Presets on where and how you'd like your files exported. There's also plugins available that can do stuff like automatically upload your photos to flickr or smugmug with the tags you added while editing in the Library mode. There's also three modes, Slideshow, Print, and Web for creating ways of presenting your images. Right now, I'm done when I export to JPEG, so I haven't used any of these modes.
Overall Lightroom 2 was the favourite of the apps I tried. The features are great, it's quick and responsive, the layout is easy to use and is mostly intuitive. The only drawback really is the price, but if you can get a student discount or a similar deal, it's a good way to go. As a last random thought, one way to increase your productivity in any of these workflow apps is to learn to use hotkeys instead of clicking through menus and options with your mouse. Common hotkeys get picked up fairly quickly with use, once you know what they are, but there's probably enough in any of these apps that you won't memorize them all immediately. One thing about Lightroom is that there's only one must-remember hotkey, Ctrl-/, which will bring up a well-organized list of the hotkeys available in the current mode. It's just one more example how the UI design of this app is so well polished.
Lightroom operates in one of 5 modes, Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, Web. This structure forces you into a certain workflow. First, in the Library mode, you "import" your images, after which you can quickly browse and make your edit. Lightroom offers a number of tools to aid in organizing photos, including the ability to add tags to images and search with them, as well as "smart collections" that can update themselves. I was able to easily create a smart collection of all photos within a date range that were rated 3 and above. After I finished rating my photos, this folder automatically contained all the files that fit the rule. I don't have a habit of tagging images, so I haven't done this.
After you have your edit, you can move on to the Develop mode, where all the postprocessing tools are provided. In addition to having all the basic tools that I'm familiar with in C1, there's a number of new tools, all potentially useful for creative manipulation, but which also give you power to violate your sense of "journalistic integrity". Advanced colour controls let you tweak particular colours, for example you can make your oranges redder without affecting your blues or greens. Split toning allows you to modify the colours of your bright and dark areas separately. There are tools to fix chromatic aberration and vignetting flaws in your lenses (available in C1 PRO), although some people (like wedding photographers) may choose to use this to add some vignetting for that vintage effect.
The most standout features though, are the tools that allow you to manipulate a small area of your image, something that Photoshop does effortlessly, but are unavailable in C1. Use the clone/healing tool to get rid of a spot of dust here or a pimple there (available in Bibble). Or do some dodging/burning by changing the brightness, contrast, saturation or sharpness of one little area of your image (unavailable in Bibble). These aren't as full-featured as they are in Photoshop, but having them built in means there's much less reason that you would actually need to start up Photoshop at all.
One other thing I like about Lightroom is the availability of Presets. You can save a certain set of settings and name them, say "Super Contrasty" or "Way Oversaturated" or "Fake Lomo", which will then appear in an organized list on the left. You can then select them to apply to your image. In C1 and Bibble you can mimic the functionality with some clunky methods, either by saving presets to file and reloading them (takes a lot more moouse clicks), or having "template" images with your presets applied, and copy from them later. However, the real magic they can't emulate; when you mouse over the names of the presets in the list, the effect is shown practically immediately on a preview image. You don't even need to you click, just move your mouse up and down and decide extremely quickly what preset you want. Potentially huge time saver.
My biggest gripe with the Develop mode is that you can only manipulate one image at a time. For example, you can't select a bunch of images and apply a Preset to all of them. Now, it's possible to do this in the Library mode, so all is not lost. It is annoying however, to have to switch between modes to do this, and it was not at all intuitive.
When I'm done processing my images, I select the ones I want to convert to JPEG, and use the File\Export option to convert to JPEG. It's pretty convenient, especially since you can create Presets on where and how you'd like your files exported. There's also plugins available that can do stuff like automatically upload your photos to flickr or smugmug with the tags you added while editing in the Library mode. There's also three modes, Slideshow, Print, and Web for creating ways of presenting your images. Right now, I'm done when I export to JPEG, so I haven't used any of these modes.
Overall Lightroom 2 was the favourite of the apps I tried. The features are great, it's quick and responsive, the layout is easy to use and is mostly intuitive. The only drawback really is the price, but if you can get a student discount or a similar deal, it's a good way to go. As a last random thought, one way to increase your productivity in any of these workflow apps is to learn to use hotkeys instead of clicking through menus and options with your mouse. Common hotkeys get picked up fairly quickly with use, once you know what they are, but there's probably enough in any of these apps that you won't memorize them all immediately. One thing about Lightroom is that there's only one must-remember hotkey, Ctrl-/, which will bring up a well-organized list of the hotkeys available in the current mode. It's just one more example how the UI design of this app is so well polished.
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