Plotagraph category

You may have noticed that there is a plotagraph category shown over all the posts that include a plotagraph. And if you want to see all of them, scroll down to the bottom of the page, where you can find a Photos by location dropdown menu.

Just choose it and select Plotagraph under Articles.

Random timelapse clips

One of the areas of photography I’m very interested in is timelapses. So from time to time I take some sequences, to practice editing and cutting them together. And in the recent days I did so for few sequences and put together this short videos, as a sort of a test. If I manage and have time, I hope to do a longer one this year :)
 

Calm sunset reflection at the Neusidler See

Last weekend I stopped by the Neusidler See in Austria. My first working trip with my new camera is close, so I have to use it as much as possible until than. One has to get the hang of things :)

For this shot, I used the Formatt Hitech 10 stop ND filter, to stretch the exposure, and this nice silky water. Exactly as I hoped it will be. This is a single exposure, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

I posted many posts recently edited with the Plotagraph Pro, and today I wills share with you my thoughts on it, and if it’s something you may consider purchasing.

Ease of use & interface

Plotagraph Pro is focused whole on a single result, so the interface is quite simple. On the left side you have all the tools you need to start animating (and in a logical order) on the other side you have finishing touches, like brightness/contrast, crop, watermark and similar. Most of the editing is just switching between the brush and animation points anyway.

All tools have their shortcuts, but to tell the truth, I can’t get over that Space is not pan, but it starts the animation. It’s just so learned from Photoshop, that I keep on triggering it each time I want to pan (and I can’t find the pan shortcut, just the switch to the hand tool :/)

One can get started really quickly. There is a tutorial video on first start (or from the menu) and that explains all the basics. Or you can check out my guide here. There is a bit of a learning curve between the first animation and the first good looking animation, but with a bit of experimenting it’s not so hard getting there.

Speed

In editing process, the software reacts quickly, just the masks take a few seconds to redraw. As I mentioned, the rendering is done on the server. So when you hit play, it takes mostly around 10-20 seconds for the preview to start (at the highest quality). It is faster if you lower the preview quality of course.

When you want to export a result, it goes into a separate rendering list. Here it can take quite longer for your result to be ready. Depends a lot what format you want, how long the duration is and whats the resolution. Still, most of my exports were ready within few minutes.

Pricing

This is the biggest gripe everyone has with Plotagraph Pro, because as it’s a service, you can’t just buy it outright. When they first offered it, they only had a full year price (297 USD), and that discouraged even me from giving it a try. But after few months they introduced also quarterly (79 USD) and later also a monthly pricing (29 USD), so now it’s much easier and cheaper to just pay for a month, to try it out.

Is this for you?

That’s a hard question to answer. It can create some were beautiful results with little work. The repeating videos look great shared, like I do here, or for instance on Instagram. On the other hand, it’s not really cheap, and you have to keep the subscription if you want to continue to use it.

But I would suggest giving it a try. The monthly subscription is affordable enough to try it out, to see if you find use for it.

Working on a tablet

I never used tablet to edit my photos. I’m just so used to just use the mouse all the time. But I thought it’s maybe time to give it a chance.

So about a week ago I got the Wacom Intuos Pro S and to tell the truth, I still have not gotten used to it. Not that I did not use a tablet before. But each time it was just for retouching. Not for general photo editing. It’s just so different.

But let’s see how it goes :) Will keep you updated, and maybe will do a review of it later on.

Blue hour lions on the Chain bridge

Getting the chain bridge people free is not really easy. There are always people using it to cross to the other side of Danube. So for this shot I took multiple exposures and blended them in Photoshop. As you can see, I did not take enough shot to remove everyone, but it’s close enough.

And if you want to see how its done, check out this tutorial I posted some time ago.

Points, points and more points

It’s quite fun to edit photos with Plotagraph Pro. It really reminds me of those newspapers in Harry Potter movies. The little bit of movement really changes how a photo looks.

And it’s not even that hard. Just check out the guide I posted few days ago. I will also do a video version, but that will be later, as I caught a bit of a cold, and my voice is quite horrible right now. And of course, a review is also in the works.

To the side you can see a screenshot of how this photo looked like when I finished editing it into a plotagraph. It all just about adding animation points. And many of them :)