Flower

This was shot in daylight in someone's front garden near where I live.

This image is nice because the shallow depth of field works. The muted
colours is done by turning the original image black and white then
overlaying a colour version. I've blurred the colour version using
simple Guassian blur to give a diffuse quality. I'd prefer to have used
a wider focal length. a 50mm lens becomes a 80mm lens on the cropped
camera sensor.

This is an image effect I couldn't seem to get from Adobe Lightroom.
Lightroom's still the better choice for the professional photographer.
The digital noise reduction on Lightroom is considerably better than
with UFRaw though I've not searched extensively for open source
alternatives. It may be hard to find one however the latest version of
UFRaw (my personal favourite open source RAW converter) has built-in
lens correction algorithms for many Canon lenses (albeit not very easy
to use ones and probably nothing like as good as Dx0). I still feel the
quality from UFRaw and Gimp is astounding and they're both free.

I think Adobe have been careful to leave out features that are available
in Adobe Photoshop. Lightroom is carefully marketed as a photographer's
product. It lacks basic tools many photographers are used to, for
example layers, and this omission is to maintain the price and value of
the more expensive and versatile Adobe Photoshop. It's a shame because
if it ha all the features integrated the £230 price tag for Lightroom
would be an bargain. It's still a bargain with the high ISO noise
reduction and much, much faster workflow which is in part due to it's
dual processor-optimisation which is something that, alas, Gimp doesn't
have.

To put the price into perspective, some photographers value wide
apertures and fast film/sensors. A Canon 50mm f1.8 Mk II costs £100. The
next model up which eschews the exotic L-series glass of the top of the
range 50mm is the Canon 50mm f1.4 and this is around 3 times the price
of the cheapest lens, which is what I use. It's almost a license for
Lightroom on its own. In terms of light sensitivity and quality, the
same difference is visible in the difference between the entry level
500D and next model up which I use (the 550D is the very latest entry
level camera and the Canon 60D will be released this year) as is the
doubling in price for the higher quality at higher ISO camera - from
around £500 to £1000.

Learning to use the software is as important as taking the picture. The
RAW image is just the beginning just like the unexposed negative was the
start of the journey to the final print or electronic display.

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Canon 50D & Canon 50mm f1.8
edited with Gimp and UFRaw