As I mentioned before, I decided to get myself a new Surface pro 4 tablet. And since today it finally arrived, I thought I share with you few first impressions, and why I actually bought it.

This is my third tablet, after an Ipad 2 and a Nexus 7 2013. My main reason to have a tablet, is that I don’t like to cary a laptop with me when I’m traveling. So over the years I tried using iOS and Android, but not really to my satisfactions. The limitations on what one can do on those devices is just too much to handle. Even trying a simple tasks, like creating a new blog post, was just too much. Copy/paste without a mouse is just so strange and slow. And of course, not being able to have Lightroom and Photoshop is quite a big problem.

So when I seen the first Surface Pro, I knew I want one. Of course due to the availability outside US and some money constraints, I got one only now, in the 4th generations. But always better late then newer.

So let’s take a look at my first impressions after few hours of use.

Hardware

I went here for the midrange model, with the Intel i5 processor, 8gb of RAM and 256gb ssd drive. I wold have been probably OK also with a slower version, but I really wanted the 8gb of ram for Photoshop.

The Surface pro 4 looks great. A bit heavier than I would though, but the metal build screams quality. The stand is nice and sturdy, so it does not wobble at all. Having no need for a dedicated tablet stand makes having it on the table so easy. The magnets on the pen and the power connector are crazy strong. When I attach the pen, it feels it it suck it out from my hand :)

The high resolution screen is just beautiful. Very colorful and very bright. I did notice a slight light leak on the bottom edge, but it’s very minimal and only visible during the boot, when the whole screen is black. One thing I learned from my LG monitor is, that a small light leak has no effect on the usage of a device. One forgets about it very quickly (also, I seen few articles, that all IPS screens suffer from this problem).

I’m not used to using a pen on a tablet, so it’s a bit strange for me. Does not completely feel like a normal pen on a paper. Still, it works fine, I haven’t seen any noticeable lag in OneNote or Photoshop.

The Surface got warmer while I tested it, but not really hot. The only time until now I heard the fan, was when I was performing windows update. Still, it’s quite quiet, and I had to turn of all the other sounds in the room to hear it at all.

I don’t yet have the type cover, so can’t tell how that is. I plan to get one, but since I ordered the Surface Pro 4 form Germany, and I want an English keyboard, I have to get that separately.

Software

With software this is a little more hit and miss. After I first started the Surface, I of course did all the updates. There was a new Windows build recently, and also new firmwares for the surface line. For some strange reason, when I was connected to a 2.4ghz wifi, the downloads were very slow (under 1 megabyte per second), but switching to the 5ghz wifi solved this right away (not sure how it is after the update, haven’t yet tried switching back).

Then, between two updates, I got a blue screen error. This is so unusual for Windows 10 in my experience, as on my main desktop PC, I have been using Windows 10 since the first preview, and I never seen one. But it showed up only once, and looks to be gone after the rest of updates (these errors are mostly a hardware problem or bad drivers, here I bet it’s the drivers).

Additionally I run into two smaller problems. One is the task manager showing wrongly the SDD speeds. It shows 100% usage already by few megabytes read per second, while a benchmark program was able to measure much higher numbers (1500mb/s read, 300mb/s write). Still, this does not effect anything.

Secondly, the Intel video driver crashed on me few times. Again, this is more of an annoyance, as it only causes the system to be unresponsive for few seconds, and it than refreshes back. I seen that this has been a problem with most of the users, so hopefully Intel updates the drivers soon.

On the positive side, this tablet is fast, really fast. Using store apps is a breeze, with them loading and switching instantly. I tried Photoshop and Lightroom, and booth start pretty fast, comparable to my desktop PC.

I really like the tablet interface. Just swiping from the left edge opens a list of open programs, swiping form the right opes notifications and quick settings. I do prefer this to having to look for some button or double clicking and similar. It’s really nice to see in the Microsoft apps, how they try to provide a consistent experience through them all, and I hope all other developers will follow suit. Regrettably, some of the apps still use the Windows 8 approach which means that they are controlled a bit differently.

Having a real desktop browser on a tablet is just wonderful. No limitations, no mobile websites and similar. Edge is fast and very responsive. Windows Hello works as advertised, recognizing me withing seconds. The system even recognized my horrible hand writing once I got a little used to writing on the screen.

I haven’t yet tried to edit a photo on the Surface Pro 4, but it the next step, and I will go more about the Photoshop, Lightroom and other software usage in my review (in a week or so), where I will focus more on that. If you would like to know something specific I can check with the surface pro 4, feel free to ask in the comets.

Btw. If you would like the wallpaper that I used in the Surface photos, you can get it from the Wallpapers page.

The plan for todays post were my first impressions with the Surface Pro 4 (which I got today), but due to a bit of bad timing, between the late delivery and my visit to the theater today (Flashdance.. it was really good :)), I had no time to finish the article. So it will be tomorrow, and for today, I’m only reposting one of my short video tutorials. Sorry for that.
 

Written guide here.

Let’s have a look today on one of my recent photos and how it was edited. This time I chosen this very early morning shot from the Bir-Hakeim bridge in Paris. So lets start :)

When you compare the final and the starting shot, the biggest thing I needed to correct was how crooked the photo was, the color, and tone down on the sky, and brighten the shadow places.

I started with Lightroom, where I removed the chromatic aberrations, toned down the highlights, and corrected the crooked horizon. I also needed to correct the perspective distortion a bit. From there I exported all the files and loaded them into Oloneo Photoengine. Not much work there, as just by changing the TM strength, I got almost all I needed. I also moved the hue a bit toward purple, as the picture was a little too green.

From here I loaded the Photoengine result and the original 0Ev exposure into Photoshop. The 0EV was a second export from lightroom, where I opened the shadows, toned down the highlights and tweaked the hue, so it blends more nicely with the HDR.

In Photoshop I did the following steps (numbered from bottom up):

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. The 0EV exposure, to get rid of the moving car that passed while I took this photo
3. Merged layer, on which I removed the dust spots, and the crane on the right side
4. Color Efex Pro Contrast, to get a bit more local contrast into the photo
5. Color Efex Polarization to darken the sky
6. A bit of correction to the left side, as there was another crane visible :)
7. Noise reduction using Imagenomic noiseware, but I removed it from the trees, and it destroyed all the detail.
8. Another merged layer, on which I removed all the white outlines. Here I’m including a before/after shots, to see what I mean. This outlines are a result of the HDR process, where two areas with very different brightness come together. If you want to see exactly how I got rid of them, check out the tutorial I made about this. Btw. you can still see them a little in the final photo, but that’s due to the sharpening process. If I printed the full resolution file, there would be none :)

And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here:

Due to shipping delays, my own Surface Pro 4 is still few days away, but today I have here something for those of you who already own one. I added a new part to my wallpapers page, with wallpapers at the 3:2 aspect ration, exactly sized for the Surface Pro 4, that is 2736×1824 resolution. But since thats quite a lot, they should look great on the Surface Pro 3, the Surface 3 and also the Surface Book. You can head over to the wallpapers page to download them. As with other parts, I will be adding more randomly over time :)

And one very nice thing, that I noticed only just now (I feel stupid that I didn’t noticed it before :)) is that 3:2 is exactly the same aspect as most cameras use, so it just fits so nicely.

I mentioned quite a few plugins from Topaz before and today they are introducing a new one Topaz Texture Effects. And since I had the opportunity to already try it, today I will show you what it is about, and what I think about it.

As the name already suggest, this plugin is mostly about adding textures overlays to your photos. But you would be mistaken to think that all it’s about. In a way it’s similar to Nik Analog Efex, but without the focus on trying to emulate vintage cameras. Topaz Texture Efex comes with a set of tools (which I will get to in a moment) and a huge collection of over 275 textures, all over 5000x5000px in size. Of course this makes the installation file a little bigger (1.5Gb+), but that’s to be expected.

Working with presets

When you open Texture Effects you are greeted with a set of default presets. These are quite diverse and use all of the available tools the plugin provides.

 
Still, if you want to tweak any of them, replace the texture or any other adjustment, you can easily edit the presets and save new ones.

 
Additionally, you can download more presets from Topaz website, and if you register, also upload your, for other users to use. From what I seen, no registration is needed to be able to download presets.

Performance

Before I get to adjustments, a little about performance. On my work PC (i7, 16gb Ram, SSD driver, gtx660) the plugin was very snappy, with most of the adjustments taking effect almost instantly. The only time you will experience a big slowdown, is when you try browse the pressets gallery, when between downloading and creating previews, it get really slow.

Standard Adjustments

In the first group of adjustments, you will find some very standard ones, well known from other editing programs. Adjustments like basick adjustments (brightness, shadows…), diffusion, film grain, posterize, split tone and vignette are well known. Two more different that it also provides is Edge blur, which allows you to soften the borders of your image and Edge exposure, which allows you to change the exposure and color of the edges. One very nice touch here is, that you can edit every edge separately, so you can create light leak effects very easily.

 
Another nice feature is, that you can apply the same adjustment as many times as you want, and each adjustment has it’s own opacity slider. Like this you can easily layer as many as you need.

Texture Adjustments

The second group of adjustments is all about included textures. You can add borders, color overlay, dust/scratches, light leaks and textures. Additionally, you can do double exposures, by blending two different photos.

 
All this adjustments offer the same flexibility as the standard ones, so you can use the multiple times and change the opacity as you want (among other tweaks). For each of those, you also have the ability to import your own textures or just stick to the ones provided.

 
You also get all the classic blending modes for all the texture effects, so you can choose how it’s overlayed over your photo.

Overall

Overall, this is a quite nice plugin. It gives a huge amount of options and you even get a good texture library with it. I like to split the plugins based on who are they better for. It’s either for those who want more realistic photo edits, or for those who want a more artistic result. This one is really more for the second group. Texture effects creates a very artistic and vintage camera looking results.

So if this is what you are looking for, you should give it a try. You can find more info on the Topaz Labs website. Also, since it’s a new product, Topaz is giving a big discount for the next 10 days for both, the PC and MAC versions.