Thursday, February 28, 2013

Editing, Childs play

Came across this post yesterday on Peta Pixel.
I bought the app Joystick Mapper mentioned by one of the commenters (NZ$6) and now have a Playstation controller set up to work on my MacBook Pro. 

Specifically to work quickly through edits in Lightroom.
You can pair the PS controller and the Mac using this procedure.
The right joystick now operates the mouse movements, the left joystick operates the mouse scroll wheel (left, right, up and down). The right shoulder buttons are the left and right mouse buttons. Digital Left and Right buttons emulate the Left and Right keyboard buttons. 
Digital up and down buttons increase and decrease the flag status. Triangle button is the 3 key for assigning three stars to selects, and the Circle key decreases the star rating. The R3 button is the return Key...
... But of course you could set up any combination you want.
Here is a screen shot of my settings in Joystick Mapper.

Now I can very quickly run through a days shoot, culling and selecting without having to take my eyes off the screen.
The Playstation controller has been ergonomically designed to be comfortable through extended hours of use and I happened to have one lying around. Actually not lying around so much as getting a pretty heavy workout most evenings.

One word of warning.
Be sure to shut down or deactivate the preset in Joystick Manager before disconnecting the bluetooth PS controller. Other wise weird stuff happens. My cursor tried to hide in the top left of the screen and couldn't be coaxed out of the corner with a magic mouse or Wacom tablet or trackpad or even a pretty please with sugar on top.

Friday, January 11, 2013

A bit wet?

So I had, what I thought, was a great idea for a series of portraits of the Emirates Team New Zealand sailors. Using composites of the sailors and water splashes I put together a few shots.
Unfortunately it has been deemed a little too adventurous.



Still, saved me hours of work putting together the dozen or so other shots I would have needed to complete the set.