I wanted to share a quick update on some ongoing projects, and some other things that have been going on.Lots of people have been asking me questions, which I've only gotten around to answering a few, and I've promised some updates on various things, so here's a quick roundup of what's going on.

Autumn is usually my favourite time of the year. Apart from the fact that my birthday is at the start of the season, I love the colours on the leaves, and the beautiful Autumn light. However, this year, there's been a dark cloud hanging over Autumn for me. A few weeks ago, after a short illness my mother passed away. Needless to say this has been a very distressing and upsetting time for me and my family. My mother was an amazing woman. Unassuming and always avoiding fuss or attention, she raised nine children who went on to have 12 grand children. I'm still trying to come to terms with the loss.

Next X-Trans Guide

Because of that, several projects I've been working on have been on hold. the most notable of which is the "Processing X-Trans Images With Lightroom" guide that I've been promising for a while. I am still working on it and it's nearing completion. The bulk of it is done, but I need to tidy it up and add some screenshots and diagrams. I've put a fair bit of work into it, so I hope it will be worth t. Someone had asked about my sharpening presets, and the thought gone into them, and in the guide, I do cover my rationale for how I approach sharpening x-trans images in lightroom. I hope to have it out in the next week, but again, things are a bit up in the air at the moment.

Lightroom Alternatives

I've also been getting requests for my thoughts on alternatives to Lightroom. It seems that the CC.2 was the straw that broke the camels back for a lot of people, which I can understand. I've been doing some research and looking into some things and I'll try and collate this into a coherent article soon. In the mean time, here's what I've been looking at. If you have any suggestions for other software that you thing I should be trying, please let me know. I'm not giving up Lightroom myself, I'm just looking at alternatives for the sake of being able to provide that information to you, dear readers!

Capture One Pro 8. I'e been talking about this a lot in the past, and I've covered its use as an alternative for X-Trans processing. I've been trying to use it more as a primary processing solution as an experiment to see if I can get by with just using this.
Mylio. This is an interesting one. It's kind of hard to describe what Mylio does. You can use it for raw processing but I wouldn't, as it's raw engine isn't very good. However it does have a great management function and syncs your images to multiple devices. It's kind of like Apple's photos, only with considerable more control over the syncing process, and what gets stored where. I'll have a report on this soon.
Affinity Photo. I was using this during the beta and it's pretty amazing. I know it's more of a photoshop alternative than a Lightroom one, but it's useful in the context of a workflow looking at several apps. Plus, it's really fast!
Apple Photos. I'll touch on this too. It's not really a viable option in my opinion for advanced users, as the lack of control over several things is problematic. However for some users, this may be a good solution, in conjunction with other applications. Also, people regularly ask me about it, so I'll try to cover it.

I know there are lots of other apps out there. I'm not deliberately trying to snub any particular app, so if your favourite isn't mentioned here, please just let me know and I'll take a look. I'm not covering Iridient developer or Photo Ninja, because they're really more stand alone processing apps, rather than full featured workflow applications. Both are great applications, and I've covered them quite a bit in the past. I think the biggest problem looking for Lightroom alternatives is the lack of good database/cataloguing/metadata editing applications. I know that some people are still using Aperture, and I can understand that too, but I wouldn't recommend using a discontinued application, unless you're prepared to not update the OS on your machine.

If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. I know this has all been very mac centric, but that's just because I happen to be using a mac, and I don't have access to a PC for testing workflows. If there are PC users who want to suggest workflows, let me know (send me an emil)

My Other Sites

I've been neglecting my other sites a bit lately too, again for reasons mentioned above. I do have a plan to get back up to speed on them soon, and I'll have new articles posted to the Lightroom Diary soon. My Photo Wander project will be back up and running soon too. The Streets of Dublin has been kept updated (relatively). My Wife actually does the posting and social media for this project.

Store Issue

I've been having some issues with the store over the last few days. It seems that PayPal is timing out. I'm not sure what's going on but I'm looking into it. If you're trying to buy anything and you're having issues, send me an email and I'll see what I can do. I'll have a follow up post on this soon. I've made some changes to see if the issue is on my server side, but I think it's a combination of WooCommerce and PayPal as I haven't changed anything.