Review of Photo Director 3

A few months ago, I acquired a copy of PhotoDirector 2011 from CyberLink. PhotoDirector is a photo workflow tool which I have come to rely on for the processing of my photos from capturing them to placing them in my scrapbook. As an amateur photographer my main interest is not in showing off my creative talents in how well I can edit a photo but in capturing the stories of my life and placing them in photo albums to share with friends and family.

At the same time, I want my photos to look as great as possible.

Now I am using the beta release of PhotoDirector 3 and find the software even better than before.

There are several steps that I use for taking my photos from being shot with my camera to being placed in an album. PhotoDirector makes these steps fast and easy and allows me to use powerful tools to enhance my photos to make them even better. The current price of PhotoDirector 2011 (from the CyberLink web site) is only $60 and includes an upgrade to PhotoDirector 3. While I have never used Adobe's Lightroom, I have used Adobe Photoshop (CS3) and while there are more features in Photoshop than in PhotoDirector, PhotoDirector is several orders of magnitude easier to use than Photoshop and Photoshop includes lots of things that I don't need or want to do - such as making montages). When you compare the cost (Lightroom is $300 and Photoshop is $700 but you can save 30% on Lightroom if you also buy Photoshop), PhotoDirector provides an amazing value for a great suite of tools for only $60.

My Personal Workflow

1. I copy the images from my memory card to the hard drive into a directory that specifies the quarter (such as 2012-Q1) and sometimes a subfolder if I have a big event (like a wedding within that quarter).
2. I back up that directory.
3. Working from a portable hard drive I then "import" the photos that I want to work on into PhotoDirector. I can select a folder or a set of photos to import and then I can even de-selet images before I actually import them. This allows me to not even bother with photos that I know that I don't want to work with.
4. Once the images are imported, I create an album for those images so that I can quickly work on just those related images.
5. Now, I shoot a lot of images and one of the big tasks in getting my photos ready for my scrapbook is simply deciding which images should be in my album. In the past, I would create a duplicate folder of all of my pictures and then view them and delete ones I didn't like. But that was a clunky way of doing things. In PhotoDirector I have options for several ways to view pictures such as a filmstrip or as several images or even one image at time. This coupled with the support of flags, ratings, tags, and labels gives me several options for marking which images are the ones I want to use in my album.
6. In my recent work, I shot both RAW and JPG and so I had two images of everything I had shot. So I first put a label of "green" on all of the JPG images (don't ask me why "green" it just happened) and then I could choose to limit what I was looking at to either only the "green" labels or only the images that had no color label.
7. Next I went through a flagged as "rejected" those images that I did not want to keep. PhotoDirector has a very handy way of cycling through the images that makes that process easy and fairly quick.
8. So, for my recent project the steps above reduced the 654 images that I had originally captured down to 90 for use in my album. 
9. Once I have selected the photos that I want to use, then I can go through and edit and make improvements to the pictures.
10. Most of my editing is limited to adjusting the white balance and "tone" which includes exposure level, black level, highlights, shadows, brightness, contrast, and fixing red eye. Occasionally I will venture into more advanced editing.
11. Once I finish editing the photos, I export them. It is the export process that takes the instructions regarding the edits and actually applies them to the photos. By default PhotoDirector will make new copies of the edited images leaving the originals untouched.
12. Now that the photos are exported in their edited forms, I can set about putting them into my photo albums (I use Book Smart by Blurb for that, another great tool worth checking out). I will often do a second export of a subset of these pictures at a reduced resolution to share on Facebook.

Great Features of PhotoDirector

• Native support for RAW data files such as Canon's CR2 file format. PhotoDirector has actually licensed the SDKs to support the raw files from the camera manufactuers which results in the best possible quality of these images. To work with RAW files you don't need to do anything special, just import the pictures just like you do with JPG images.
• Non-destructive editing of the images. As you work on the photos the editing details are stored in a project. No changes are actually made to the images until you are ready to export them
• I absolutely love the custom white balance tool in PhotoDirector. Just select the eye dropper and point it at a neural gray point and voila custom white balance is achieved. You can fine tune the settings if you desire.
• Changing various Tone adjustments is also very easy: black level, exposure, highlights, shadows, and brightness. The Auto Tone button usually does a good job and is also a good way to learn what impacts the settings have on a photo.
• These coupled with the easy way to "undo" a series of changes makes is so easy and worry-free to play with the setting and get the best outcome.
• Of course PhotoDirector also has tools for removing red eye, adding gradients to an area, straightening a photo, cropping, etc. All of those are easy to use and work very well.
• PhotoDirector has support for more advanced editing such as healing and cloning and even tools to reduce wrinkles, improve the tone of the skin, whiten teeth, and add sparkle to someone's eye. The results, if applied sparingly, are amazingly good and so easy to do.

There are a number of other features in PhotoDirector that I could talk about and even more that I haven't explored enough to talk about. But I am convinced that the tool is very useful, user-friendly, and affordable. Comparing what I can do with this $60 program compared to what I can do with Microsoft's built-in Window Picture editor (which always left me frustrated when I used it plus it is destructive editing) or with Adobe's very expensive products, PhotoDirector is the hands-down winner.

Examples
A typical indoor scene of lots of people which usually provides poor lighting for good photographs.

Before/After photos showing the typical editing I do

 Who doesn't take lots of pictures of their pets? Now you can easily make them look as good as your pet really does.

Before/After showing how lightening the shadows improve the photo.

 The people-enhancing tools are easy to use and actually you must be careful not to apply "too much" as you don't want the people to look plastic and fake. These photos were just casual pictures so just think what you could do when you were really taking portraits.

This editing included the skin beautifier, the tooth whitener, and "eye bling"

 Next time you capture something really cute but it is too dark, don't despair - just reach for PhotoDirector to make the necessary edits.

Before & After - now others can enjoy the moment too.

George was here

Each evening during the Christmas season I read a different Christmas story. Rob is kind enough to humor me and listen to me read. The kitties usually join us (or are already sitting underneath the tree when we get there).

On Wednesday I read the story Merry Christmas Curious George. In the story George goes to a Christmas tree farm and is in the tree that is cut down and taken to a children's hospital. At the hospital George causes lots of trouble and ends up decorating the tree with objects he finds around the hospital such as bandages, x-rays, and balloons.

On Thursday I spoke with Rob several times during the day and he kept telling me that the kitties were saying that "George was here."

I had no idea what was being referenced (so I'm slow sometimes). When I got home I found a a balloon tied to the tree and still I didn't make the connection. As I was looking at the balloon that said "Merry Christmas" I noticed an x-ray sticking out of the tree.

Finally I put the pieces together.

The Chrismon Tree

One of our family traditions each Christmas is our Chrismon tree. Rob made all of the ornaments and it stands in our family room and shines the light of Christ into our days.

The tree is actually on a corner of the kitchen counter and Dakota loves to take up residence underneath it.

Presents!

The kitties love Christmas. They love the tree. They love sitting under the tree. They love chewing on the tree. They love the packages. This Saturday I did a lot of shopping with Sherry and then Rob and I had a wrapping marathon wrapping about 50 gifts.

This gift is for Steve Jones. I bet he can't guess what it is!

Thanksgiving

We hosted Thanksgiving and had a house full of guests. We had all of our immediate family and five people from my office. We have much to be thankful for.

Bev, Stan, Rohit, Rob, Todd, Denning, Veronika, Vladimir, Alf, Sherry, Renga, Fuzz, Win, Steve, Tracy, Vita

Operation Christmas Child

Rob and I love participating in Operation Christmas Child, a ministry of Samaritan's Purse. We promote this ministry at our church and our church embraces it with a lot of enthusiasm every year. This year I handed out invitations to a Shoebox packing party to all of the trick-or-treaters who came by and then invited a lot of folks from my office. Between the donations of people who could not attend and those who did come, our packing party resulted in 52 boxes!

Rob and I put together more boxes and of course Fuzz and Dakota helped.

At church we gathered all of the boxes and took them to the collection center. While Heritage may be a tiny church it has a big heart - as we collected 130 boxes this year.

Keith George and Hobbs Moseby

Pretty as a Princess

Our little Dakota Boo is such a pretty little one.

Earth Shake!!!

While I was in Kansas City last weekend, I got email from from Rob informing me that he and the kitties had felt two earthquakes around 2:30 Saturday morning. The first was magnitude 4.7 and the second one was about 3.4. The quake was centered near Prague, OK east of Shawnee and Oklahoma City.

Saturday night while in Kansas City laying on our hotel beds Tracy and I felt the hotel shake and quickly confirmed on Facebook that it was indeed an earthquake. This time it was a magnitude 5.6 centered near Prague and was felt as far away as St. Louis.

Rob and the kitties felt several more and then on Monday night we were sitting watching football and the house rattled and rolled for about 45-60 seconds. This time it was "only" a 4.7. In fact in the last 7 days there have been 38 earthquakes of magnitude greater than 1 from this area.

The M5.6 earthquake is the largest recorded in Oklahoma in modern history. The "shake map" is interesting to look at as it helps convert the magnitude at the epicenter to a rating for how it was felt away from the center. According to the USGS web site, earthquakes east of the Rocky Mountains can be felt nearly twice as far away as an earthquake of the same magnitude west of the Rockies.

I can tell you that the kitties were quite brave although for the "big one" on Saturday night Fuzz dove under the bed and then came back out. Our guess is that Fuzz came out because it was shaking under there too. For Monday's 4.6 quake it lasted longer and the kitties tolerated it for awhile but then Dakota had clearly had enough and she left. I don't know where she went but we didn't see her for about an hour.

A different type of intruder

Monday night we had the priviledge of taking care of Hobbs for a couple of hours. His grandfather had dog agility training with his dog Abby and his mom and grandmother were returning from South Dakota where they had spent the weekend taking care of the other new grandson.

Neither Fuzz or Dakota really knew what to make of Hobbs. But everyone survived the two hours just fine and it was nice we could help out our friend Randy that way.

Fancy New Water Dish

As everyone knows, Fuzz and Dakota are no ordinary kitties. So of course they do not have an ordinary water dish. For years we have had a "water fountain" type dish as this was something we purchased for Siggie and he really liked it so we continued this with Fuzz and Dakota.

Recently the pump for their dish died and so we needed a new one.

What Rob came home with is a fancy stainless steel water fountain that offers three, that's right THREE, spouts of water and runs into a large pond at the bottom. Dakota drinks from the pond or sometimes where one of the streams hits the center column. Fuzz slurps from where the water comes out of the center column. So now everyone is happy and well watered.

Kitty Helpers

Tuesday night we had some in-depth discussions on new house topics. One of these was doing our best to evaluate the size of my study to ensure that it was big enough for its planned usage. The study is the planned location for our grand piano which is a large piece of furniture and so we did a lot of measuring.

Fuzz was our big helper for this event.

First he had to subdue the tape measure. Then he had to remove the post-its that we had stuck to the wall to mark off certain dimensions. Such a good helper.

September Caturday

We enjoyed a nice Caturday today.

We slept late and then aided with help from Fuzz finally got up. We had breakfast together. The humans watched a lots of football including some exciting games. I made significant progress on my El Salvador scrapbook leaving only the last steps of final proof reading, designing the cover, and setting the page backgrounds (although these last steps can be time consuming).

The kitties did a lot of napping on, next to, and near us humans.

It was a good day.

Recovered

As far as we can tell, Fuzz and Dakota as well as the rest of the house have recovered from hosting their cousins last week. I think Fuzz has totally forgotten about it and Dakota is trying to get us to feed her more canned food as she misses that perk from last week.

Intruders!

This last week we had intruders hosted visitors. Dakota and Fuzz were polite but distant hosts most of the time. Dakota's preferred location this week was in Rob's lunch box on top of the fridge. 

Aggie and Legs had the guest bedroom and we would invite them out several times a day.

What may be unnoticed in this next picture is Fuzz and Dakota sitting at the other end of the hall.

Legs seemed quite content to sit on the bed waiting for her next meal.

Everyone was glad when Mom and Stan arrived to pick up Legs and Aggie.

Dakota taking an afternoon nap in the comfort and safety of Rob's arms.