Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book

The announcements from Microsoft today were quite interesting. I’ve been planing to get a Surface Pro 3 for a while, but decided to wait for the Surface 4 announcement first, and now I have an even bigger choice, with them introduction the Surface Book. What do you think? Which one you like?

Vertical view

I shared a horizontal view form there, and here is also a vertical one. This makes the whole city look a bit different, with also the closes streets to the tower still visible in the photo. I actually regret not going to this spot a bit earlier, while it was still blue hour, but I spend that on the roof. So I have a reason go there again next time.

This is a blend from two exposures, created in Photoshop.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 2, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones MkIII Adapter, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 23mm, Aperture: 6.3, Middle exposure time: 15s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.842261, 2.321754

A little less common view of the Buda castle today. One just tends to take photos of it more from the river, so more from the front. It not a surprise, with the amount of light right in front of the castle :)

This is a 3 shot HDR, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 3, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones MkIII Adapter, Lens: Canon 24-70mm F2.8, Focal length: 62mm, Aperture: 9, Middle exposure time: 10s, ISO: 100, Tripod used: yes, Location: 47.490053, 19.045322

No clouds, no nice sunset, but at least one can count on a nice blue hour. And since most of my photos of the Eiffel tower are a part of a more elaborate compositions, here I went simple, just having the tower in the frame.

This is a 3 exposure HDR, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 3, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones MkIII Adapter, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 35mm, Aperture: 16, Middle exposure time: 15s, ISO: 100, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.861037, 2.292590

Macphun Creative Kit

While on the Mac subject (from yesterday :)), one more thing for Mac users. If you are looking for a set of tools to enhance your photography, you may try out the Creative Kit from Macphun. As the name says, it’s available for Mac only. You can look at this kit as an alternative to offerings from Nik (Google) or Topaz, as it give its own way to accomplish some of the same results, but also different ones.

I’m working on a bigger article about these applications, but since that can take a little time, you might miss on quite a great offer from them right now. In the preparation for an upcoming big update, they are offering a pre-order for the whole Creative kit (Snapheal Pro, Noiseless Pro, Tonality Pro, Focus Pro, Intensify Pro, FX photo Studio Pro) with a huge 80% discount (thats 89usd instead of 455usd, or 99euro instead of 504euro), and you even get the current versions right away.

So if you think that this could be interesting for you, head over to the Macphun site, for more info, to try out their trial version or to order the Creative kit.

Full of light

This shot came out a bit busier than I thought it will be. With all the lights and all their reflection, there is so much detail here, that it’s a bit hard to decide what to look at first. But thats one of the reasons HDR photos look mostly better when seen quite big, so one can take all the detail in :)

This is a HDR from 3 exposures, created in Oloneo PHotoengine, finished in Photoshop.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 3, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones MkIII Adapter, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 27mm, Aperture: 7.1, Middle exposure time: 15s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.887950, 2.250533

Often when people ask me what software I use, and I mention Oloneo Photoengine, the next question is, if it also works on a Mac. Regrettably, there is no Mac version, but there are ways how you can use it on MacOS quite easily. And today I will show you how to do it :)

As I don’t own a Mac computer, I did all my testing under a virtual machine, running on my PC. Suprisingly, even under this limited conditions, the Oloneo Photoengine works really nicely, and all the changes on the photos are done almost instantly, almost as quickly as running it directly under windows. So how to run it? Let’s take a look:

1. Download needed files

You will need two files for this. The first is the WineBottler (I used the latest stable release), an application that makes it possible to run windows programs on a Mac. You can get it from WineBottler webpage and it’s a free application.

The second thing you will need is the instalation package of Oloneo Photoengine, which can be found on the Oloneo webpage.

Just download both of those files to you Mac.

2. Setup WineBottler

Open the WineBottler Combo you just downloaded, and in that open up WineBottler. Here we will create the Mac application. Choose Advanced tab on the top.

 
The options you have to change here are:

– select the file that needs to be installed – PhotoEngineSetup.exe
– choose – This is an installer, execute it
– under Winetricks select – dotnet20 MS .NET 2.0
– mark the Bundle checker, as this will create a self containing application that does not require wine installation

When this is done, hit Install and choose the name for the new application and where it will be saved. Choose anything you want, I selected desktop here.

3. Go through the installation

You now have to go through two installations. First MS .NET 2.0 will be installed, as that is needed for Photoengine to run. Just click next and finish the installation. After that is done, a second installation start, this time for Photoengine. Again, just click next and normally install the program.

 
When the installation finishes, you have to choose which program starts from the ones that have been installed. Choose here PhotoEngine.exe and confirm. And also confirm the next popup about that prefix has been created.

4. Run Photoengine

In the location you specified, you will now have a new App, called Photoengine. It’s around 640Mb big, as it includes everything you just installed, plus few more things :) You can now open it.

 
And now you are running Oloneo Photoengine on your Mac. I would suggest using Desktop as the place to store the results, as that is the easies accessible folder that is shared between Win and Mac. If you save it to a different place from inside Photoengine, you may not find the file so easily, as it uses a different structure of folders, that is not accessible from the system.

Limitations

There is only one limitation I found, and it can cause problems to some of you. The problem is, that Photoengine here runs only as a 32bit application, not as a 64bit. This may prevent you from saving bigger files as the program will just run out of memory. The max you can do is around 25Mpix images, 36Mpix from the Sony a7r will not work.

This will be probably fixed over time, when a version of Winebottler that support 64bit is released. If I find other way to run it, so it supports 64bit, I will do a new guide.

Even so, I think you should give it a try, as you can get a 30day trial of Photoengine for free.