Two quick thoughts… First, sadly, I agree with you. I’m not finding any highly recommended solutions, and $600 or so for a huge paperweight doesn’t fit into my plans. Second thought, I’m happy to have helped out my nephew, who only has owned the Mini for a few months.
As I see it, most everything I do on my computers has been greatly improved with the much more powerful Mini, so life is good - and I now have the two-screen solution working fine…
The remaining part of the puzzle is Final Cut Pro, and one of the experts at Apple told me that if I’m going to stick with HD, my Mini might be good enough for me - but when/if I want 4K or more, I might be better off using my old iMac with the Radeon 560 graphics.
Life is good. …and 95% of the “hints” I am being given agree with you. Thanks!
Now that I’m all settled in, I went out this afternoon and took 20 or so photos, keeping 8. Of those, I only processed two, one of a dog, and one to see if I’m still up to date on what I’ve learned here. Here’s the end result of that last image.
Curious - is there anything I did too much of that I shouldn’t have done, or are there corrections I ought to have noticed that I wasn’t aware of?
I like that I could throw the background out of focus by using a 90mm f/2 lens, but I couldn’t get all the way down to f/2, despite what PL4 thinks I used. As I recall, I got it down to f/4, by setting the ISO to 100 and the shutter to 1/2000th. Despite the cropping, I like the way it looks “full size”, but so much detail is lost when I view it in reduced size. When I tried to use the land to set the “horizon” the buildings were off, so I set it the way Joanna did, making the buildings vertical.
If anyone wants to see what they can do with this image, go for it!
Here is my take on Mike’s image. Among other things I cropped the image, straightened the horizon, and added a bit of creative vignetting to focus more attention on the main subject.
I love the way you brought out the clouds, and the color in the sky. Adds a lot to the photo. I also like the vertical format, as it’s a sailboat, with a tall mast. I went to horizontal to make the boat larger to show more detail, but to someone seeing this as a new image, the vertical format makes it more obvious this is a photo of a sailboat.
So, I’m puzzled - what did you do to make the clouds look so nice!
I guess I need to try again. You got the horizon AND the building at the right, AND the building at the left straight and square with the photo. I could get two of them right, but not all three together, Either you used some tool that I’m not familiar with yet, or I messed up somehow. You got all three perfect. Maybe perspective control??? Nope, when I get both the right and left buildings perfectly vertical, the horizon is off… …I tried the “rectangle” tool, and that got really, really close. Is that how you did it?
I just horizon with a value of -1.78. And lens distortion is turned on.
Fixing clouds can be done a couple of ways. I usually use Local Adjustments… Depending on the image I use a graduated filter, control points, or auto mask. I start by lowering the LA highlights setting. Then I modify the LA color temperature and vibrancy… Finally I modify LA microcontrast, contrast, and sharpening as needed. I may play with some other settings but those are the main ones I use.
You can also use global settings including the tone curve, HSL color wheel, split toning, and microcontrast, contrast and sharpening to get something like this image below I normally wouldn’t go to this extreme. This is just an example of what can be done with just global adjustments. I’m often amused when I see people replacing perfectly good skies because they don’t know how to extract details or create the mood they want from the original sky…
You guys are going to find me too boring, I think. After spending a good part of an hour playing around with settings, then deleting, repeat, repeat, I realized I can’t do what you guys do, and have it look as good to me as when you do it. So, I went back to the original image, and using some of your ideas, I got this.
No watermark - that seems to confuse PL4 for other people without my fonts.
When I stare at it after editing, I get the feeling I didn’t do anything to it. Then I click on COMPARE and see the difference.
The finished photo reminds me of what I saw standing there with the camera, but it is so much better than what I saw. I couldn’t see the details nearly as well as my camera could, and did.
Now that I’ve edited this image, the original photo without editing looks awful.
I see something else that I guess I’ve been oblivious to. When I view the image on my ASUS monitor at 100% size, it looks to me like I shot it with a LF camera, and the depth of field shows exactly what I hoped it would do, but all that is lost when the image is only as large as my display. There is so much detail - and what looked like dirt turned out to be an (out of focus) seagull. What is frustrating to me right now, is nobody is going to see all this detail - how could they. And if I started making four foot wide color prints, what would I do with them? Maybe I should buy a 50" wide, or larger, “digital photo frame” to hang on my wall.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’ve been using PhotoLab almost every single day since version 1 was released in late 2017. In that time I have spend at least a few thousand hours learning how to use all its tools and features, experimenting with different combinations of controls, and learning the interrelationship of the controls and their effect upon one another. There was no magic bullet. I spent a huge amount of time and energy. It doesn’t happen over night. I’m still learning new techniques and can honestly say that my skills continue to improve almost daily.
I use a mac mini 2018 with 6 cores and 32GB
I have bought and returned the blackmagic eGPU and don’t recommend it. You want something to connect using displayport or HDMI not thunderbolt otherwise some applications will skip the eGPU
So I have since 2018 a Razer X enclosure (you need a big power supply don’t buy anything else) and a Radeon Vega64
I use it for the mini and I can also use it for the macbook with a benq adobe rgb 4k screen and have no issues of any sort with DxO
I also use it for 4K editing in final cut pro and it is very fast
By connecting via thunderbolt and then connecting the monitor to the eGPU using HDMI or displayport you are guaranteed acceleration. If the enclosure has only one thunderbolt port like the Blackmagic only some applications work
Learning the tools is huge, but knowing how and when to apply them is just as huge. Most times when I go “overboard” with the tools, and substantially change the image from what I saw through the viewfinder, I get discouraged, and likely go back to an “empty slate”. Thanks to all of you, and especially @Joanna, I’ve learned how to correct my images, but when I start to exaggerate features (such as the sky), I don’t enjoy the end result. I feel better about improving images, bringing out information where it was hidden.
Then there’s the other thing that hit me like a brick last night. I was amazed at what I saw viewing my image full size, but 90% of that vanishes when I see the image in a smaller size, perhaps in email, perhaps when posted in this forum. That was bothering me when I turned things off last night and went to bed. I woke up this morning thinking I should post two images, one the full image as I’ve been doing, and along with it a tiny crop of the full size image so people can realize what they’re missing. Heck, from the full image I posted here, I can’t even see that the city-scape is out of focus, while the boat and person is razor-sharp.
This works in reverse, too. I look at photos from other people, including @Joanna but rarely download them so I can view them full-size. I’ll start doing that from now on.
To summarize what I think you are telling me, I need to by a full-size Razer X enclosure, and a Radeon Vega64. What kind of cable should I use connecting my Mini to the eGPU? First you say it sould not be thunderbolt, but then I think you’re saying it should be thunderbolt? Finally, I should use HDMI or DisplayPort to connect my ASUS monitor to the eGPU box.
I did some testing last night, measuring the time to output a full-size image. With the Mini, it’s taking about 90 seconds. To me, that’s acceptable. While I will also be using Final Cut Pro, I don’t expect to be creating 4K videos, only HD. One of the techs at Apple told me for HD there was not such a need for a eGPU.
Finally, from all the people I’ve discussed this with, you are the only person who has given me a full solution that will actually work with the Mini. That’s encouraging, but I expect it’s going to be very costly. I’m not sure that the time savings are worth the cost.
I would recommend at least a vega 56 or the newer generation 5700 this determines the enclosure you need
You are looking at £700
Exporting 1 image takes me around 10 seconds if it has something complex sometimes 20 if there is noise reduction. I have never waited 90 seconds for anything
Connection
Mac thunderbolt eGPU displayport/HDMI Monitor
" but a friend at Apple told me that was easily resolved by adding an inexpensive graphics card. Maybe someone here can advise me."
The only solution to gain speed on your Mac mini when exporting images is to connect a external GPU like Blackmagic.
The internal Mac mini graphic card cannot be replaced/ upgraded.
I do not know if an external graphic card is supported by DxO PL4.
So the statement of your friend is… at least miss leading. The new Mac M1 chip generation seems to be so fast that you should compare the cost for an external Blackmagic graphic card with the cost of a new M1 Mac mini imho.
I personally wouldn’t invest any money into the old Intel architecture of Apple devices.
Is there any way to use this along with the otherwise much more powerful Mini I have now?
Will it do anything else useful to me other than reducing the export time by perhaps a minute?
Thanks for your advice. That’s a whole new way of looking at this.
Will I need to buy a second license for PL4 in order to do this?
And as of now, PL4 isn’t yet compiled optimally for the M1 Mac computers.
Oh boy, what have I done? The new Mac mini can do the same things like the old one - just everything faster. The flip side is that used Mac gear based on Intel is getting cheaper. So what would be the use case for two Mac mini’s?
Here in Europe we can buy gear online, give it a try and send it back within some days if we don’t like it. Maybe you try a new M1 Mac mini and then go from that experience? Another option would be to keep your gear and wait some month until you know whats next in the Apple hardware pipeline - for example a iMac M1. If that would fit your needs better.
I’ve had Vuescan for what must be 20 years and I’m still using it with various scanners (Minolta 5400, Epson F-3200, and V-700). I’d hate to be without it.
BTW, I have the exact same Mac mini, except that I had to ‘downgrade’ mine to 10.14 Mojave in order to be able to continue using some of my audio hardware. The current version of PL4 runs fine on it.
Ralf
P.S.: Do note that this Mac mini on B&H only has 8 GB of RAM. Having it with 16 GB, half of what you have now as I understand, would set you back another 230 dollars. And, unlike your Intel Mac mini, there’s no way of upgrading the RAM inside the M1 once you’ve bought it.
If I knew then, what I know now, I would have preferred the new M1 Mac Mini, but the cost would have been so high I would have put it off for a while. Two Mac Mini’s? I was thinking of what I have now, plus one running on M1 chip, but what I wanted to do isn’t possible, so that idea is history. Waiting is a good idea, as maybe Apple will come out with a “pro model” with more ports, including an SD card slot. As for PL4, I’m going to stop thinking about this, and just use what I’ve got. I’m a lot better off than before, with four times the RAM, a solid-state 1TB drive, and I can use my 2013 iMac as a second display. Done. Thanks for all the advice to everyone.
The tech people at Apple told me I could plug in an external USB stick, install an old Apple OS on it for use when needed, but at other times continue to boot from the latest OS. That might be useful for you.
Viewscan - somehow I never searched for alternative software. Glad I found it! Very nicely done.
No, different people. The person who told me about the inexpensive GPU has yet to call back. Since there seems to be no good answer for me at this time, I’ll just live with things as they are. For PL4, the Mini seems to be doing what I need, with 1.5 minutes for exporting a full-size JPG image. I can live with that.
I’m not sure if “Cinebench” applies to my issue, but my 2017 iMac got a score of 3451, while my Mini got a score of 6521. The Mini has advantages, solid-state 1TB drive, three times as much RAM, and a faster CPU. My “bottleneck” might turn out to be Final Cut Pro, but for now my number one program is PL4, and so far I’m satisfied with the way it is now.
Was your audio hardware only compatible with 32-bit software?
The new Mac mini can do the same things like the old one - just everything faster. The flip side is that used Mac gear based on Intel is getting cheaper. So what would be the use case for two Mac mini’s?