OK Blu-Ray, you won. Now where are the movies?

This splash image for the Netflix Blu-Ray page has not changed in three weeks. I still have not succumbed to the pressure to re-live The Devil Wears Prada in 1080p. It’s time for some new movies.

When I bought my Playstation 3 I couldn’t wait to buy some fun disks to try out. I wound up standing in the aisle of Best Buy for half an hour growing depressed.

Today I was back at Best Buy and the situation is the same. One new movie caught my eye—I Am Legend. But I decided it wasn’t worth $35 plus tax. It’s next in my Netflix queue anyway, and it’s only $19 on Amazon.

I’m happy that the HDDVD/Blu-Ray battle has ended, but the war is far from over. Downloads could still win the hearts and wallets of consumers, which scares me because the quality sucks, and they lack special features.

You won Blu-Ray, now start acting like it. But don’t get cocky, and don’t go thinking we’re a captive audience with no other recourse than to spend double a DVD price on a new release. Give us the movies we want at a price that makes it a no-brainer to eschew iTunes rentals and other, less scrupulous options.

EDIT: Gotta have Hitch now? Amazon has a buy two, get one free deal on Blu-Ray disks.

Lightroom 2 Speed Session

Six minutes of editing at six times speed, using the selective editing controls in Lightroom 2.0 public beta 1.

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Lightroom 2.0 Will Keep You Up All Night

Uhm, if you're me that is.

Here's a photo I made last year with my Canon 5D:

Here's that same photo with some Develop module work in Lightroom:

Here's that same image with some local corrections in Lightroom 2.0 public beta 1:

Now Lightroom users face the same dilemma that film and video colorists do. You have the tools to do whatever you want to the image. And no one but you will tell you if you've gone too far. Does the last image look better than the middle one? Does it look less natural? Do I care?

There Will Be Blood received an Oscar for cinematography, and did not undergo a DI. But No Country for Old Men did have a DI (Michael Hatzer, colorist) and was, it seemed, neck and neck for the honor. Which do you find more beautiful? More natural? More cinematic?

And which of those three criteria matters the least?

Lightroom 2 Public Beta, like, Now

You actually kinda heard it here first (unbelievable, I know), but now the cat is out of the bag. Lightroom 2 is available from Adobe Labs as a public beta. Uhm, now.

What are you still doing here? Oh, you want to know why this is awesome? From John Nack's blog:

Lightroom 2 adds a Retouch tool right within the Develop module (see screenshot). That means you can paint regions of the image to dodge, burn, saturate/desaturate, adjust contrast, and more. Edits are stored as metadata, just as all other LR adjustments are stored, and are applied directly to your raw images. (Because people will quickly ask, I'll point out that unlike Apple's newly released Aperture 2.1, Lightroom integrates its selective editing tools right in with the other adjustment tools. In Lightroom you don't have to generate a TIFF file for editing, and unlike in Aperture, you can always tweak the results later. In addition, Lightroom features Auto Mask technology for tweaking the clicked region without bleeding into neighboring areas.)

Dang.

I just became a better photographer.

Sorry to blog and run, but the installer just finished! Go read more, or download the beta for yourself.

Dodge This

I made fun of Apple for releasing a version of Aperture that was a blatant "me too" response to Lightroom's most-admired features. So in fairness I now must point out that Aperture, while still lacking some key image editing features that make Lightroom my choice, has leaped ahead in two key areas:

Available today as a free software update, Aperture 2.1 includes the Apple-developed plug-in, Dodge & Burn, which adds brush-based tools for dodge (lighten), burn (darken), contrast, saturation, sharpen and blur. Over the coming months, third party software developers will deliver image editing plug-ins for localized editing, filters and effects, noise analysis and reduction, fisheye lens correction and more.

Lightroom, your turn for a "me too!"

EDIT: Right on cue! See comment below from a mysterious "John" who may just be John Nack of Adobe.