Antrim rockers Therapy? sold out Dublin's iconic Olympia Theatre on Dame Street on Halloween night, while thousands gathered for the ghost parade on O'Connell Street.

Playing their iconic Troublegum album in full the band brought their usual energy to the scenic, and famous, interior of the Olympia to start their European tour on the 30th anniversary of its release.

This was my third time photographing Therapy?, both previous occasions in Belfast, this the first time in Dublin.

Here we take a look at a new feature in October 2024's Adobe Lightroom (formerly known as Lightroom CC - I know it's confusing) - How to Edit in third party / external applications in Lightroom so not in one of Adobe's products such as Photoshop.

This process has been made a little easier now, so here are the steps.

As you can see here, I'm interested in editing this image of Ireland's largest sea arch Great Pollet which has strong partial lighting across its face.

Now let's say you're not a Photoshop user but you do use Lightroom, you also use a non-Adobe photo editing application such as Affinity Photo.

In Lightroom, right click on the image and choose Edit in > Browse...

Edit in > Browse..."/>

Then choose your app, here I have chosen Affinity's Photo.exe.

A dialog opens up, showing how to proceed; (1)make your edits in Photo (my chosen app), keeping Lightroom open in background, (2) Save your work in Photo then (3) Return to Lightroom.

Here I make my edits in Affinity Photo, let's say using the healing brish tool to remove dust spots. Then File > Save.

After the application, in this case Affinity Photo, opens, the Lightroom dialog changed to (1) Be sure your photo is saved and (2) Choose Finish and of course there is a Finish button to click to ensure the image is brought back into Lightroom. So I click Finish here after having already saved in Affinity Photo in the previous step.

The file now appears in Adobe Lightroom's filmstrip, seen here alongside the original RAW file, in this case as a TIF.

After having edited in your app, it will now appear as an option in future when you Right Click > Edit in > ...

I usually write about Adobe Lightroom Classic but if you're a regular reader here on Panoramic Ireland you will probably have seen my recent articles on Adobe Bridge, Lightroom and Photoshop.

Why not join me to learn how to photograph, use software and create images and stories that matter in Ireland's fine countryside.

The green roads or lanes of Ireland are impressive but can often be quite hard to find.

They are unlike other small country roads in Ireland, they don't have a metalled surface, they weave between fields through the Irish landscape but often have become disused or paved over. These green roads often would have been routes between townlands, forming part of the cultural landscape of Ireland.

Today they are important for wildlife, with hedgerows providing wildlife cover, berries and seeds for winter and with limited traffic - usually walkers, cows and horses are the only passers-by now.

Green roads give character to an area and provide a link to our past as well as being incredibly scenic.

Adobe has released a raft of updates to Bridge, Lightroom, Photoshop and Camera Raw in recent weeks.

Here, a first look at Quick Actions in Adobe Bridge.

Bridge is interesting software, it's really for those who don't use Lightroom Classic, sitting between Lr and Ps, it allows for image management and editing using Camera Raw.

But it does have useful functionality, and the new Quick Actions will come in handy at times.

Here, I try a Quick Action to Remove Background in the above image with one movement - drag the image to the flyout panel.

The Quick Actions flyout window opens, and works away - this as you can see is powered by Adobe Express.

You are then left with the image with background removed, two options are possible here - Download the image to your computer or Open in Adobe Express.

The latter will open Adobe Express in your web browser where more functionality is possible such as adding the image to animations and videos. Subscribe to stay informed when I make a post on this very thing.

Here I have just decided to download, it's then possible to import the file into Lightroom or use in Photoshop.

You can of course remove the background, or inversely the subjects such as these cows, in other ways such as using Photoshop but this method using Adobe Bridge is quick and easy.

Here it has done a fine job of identifying all of the cows, including those sitting down and those in the background, removing everything else. Impressive, I would say.

Find out more about how to photograph, how to edit in software by subscribing to updates from panoramicireland.com

The year 2024 has certainly blessed us with plenty of opportunity to photograph the Northern Lights or aurora borealis here in Ireland.

Last night's amazing display coincided with my visit to a calm west of Ireland lake, photographing throughout the evening in different directions to make the most of the ever-changing celestial light show that is the aurora.

I wasn't in one of the dark sky locations, so I did have some light pollution at times, but the peacefulness of photographing the natural dance of colours across the sky with reflections recorded below.

Now, we can't predict the aurora very well here in Ireland but a typical photography workshop with me here at Panoramic Ireland can see you photographing such scenes.

To find out more, send me a message.

The much-maligned herring gull, Larus argentatus which is known in Irish as Faoileán scadán, seen here soaring and gliding above stormy waves on the Atlantic off the north coast of Ireland.

Seagulls in general may be associated with loud, aggressive food stealing behaviour but herring gulls are currently on the UK's Red List for endangered species.

In Northern Ireland, herring gulls experienced a population increase during the 1950s-1970s, in the Seabird Colony Register census from 1985-1988 there were 17,561 pairs of herring gulls in NI while in a follow-up survey, the Seabird 2000 census, only 722 pairs were recorded.

Ireland has lost large numbers of herring gulls in recent decades and it would seem that the western coasts of Ireland and Scotland have seen the largest declines in herring gull numbers in recent decades.

**Update** This issue should have been fixed by now, if you have updated to the latest versions of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop and you can return to editing in Photoshop rather than Photoshop (Beta) by changing back in preferences

September 2024 - Another Adobe update and yet again another problem with the connectivity between Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop 2024.

You might have had the pop-up warning dialog which reads "Photoshop Version Open Warning: Lightroom Classic and Adobe Photoshop 2024 are having issues connecting. Please reinstall Adobe Photoshop 2024 and try again."

This bug has affected me as well so you're not alone. I was trying to edit this image of Ireland's Cliffs of Moher in Photoshop after having made some Lightroom edits but I ran into the problem.

Here are the steps for a temporary fix for the moment:

1.  Go to Edit > Preferences

2.  Under Edit in Adobe Photoshop 2024 click Photoshop version: 

3.  Choose Adobe Photoshop (Beta)

4.  Then click OK at the bottom to make the changes.

CTRL+E or right click > Edit In > Edit in Adobe Photoshop 2024... should now work and allow you to edit your images in Photoshop (Beta)

This should work for now, the Beta version of Photoshop will work fine for all your editing and this workaround saves you having to uninstall and reinstall Photoshop 2024.

Given the level of complaints about this one I think there will be a fix along at some point but if not then it might be necessary to do an uninstall and reinstall.

Today, September 22nd 2024, marks the autumn equinox as the Sun passes Earth's equator at 13:44.

The equinox marks the point of equal night and day throughout the world although at certain latitudes, such as in Ireland, this won't happen for a few more days.

But it's fair to say that it's as close to the point of shorter days than nights in the northern hemisphere and lengthening in the southern hempisphere that we have, especially as the Sun is rising due east and setting due west.

The equilux is the actual point of equal day and night in any location and as mentioned it occurs a few days after the autumn equinox, in spring it occurs a few days before the spring equinox.

Hours of daylight will shorten until the winter solstice and then we will and lengthening again.

In the meantime, expect images of the colour that autumn brings to the Irish countryside.

Why not join me in September, October, November and beyond to photograph Irish landscapes.

A calm evening close to sunset with cloud obscuring the best of the western sky over the edge of Ireland.

Yet it's still a scenic view as a few breaks in the cloud allows the orange-red sun rays through to briefly illuminate the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

Panoramic Ireland's photography tours and workshops are running all through autumn, winter and into 2025 here on the west of Ireland Atlantic or in the urban streets of Dublin, Belfast, Cork and more.

It has been a late night here at Panoramic Ireland HQ (a field on the edge of Ireland) as the full moon, supermoon, harvest moon combo was partially eclipsed by Earth's shadow at 03:44 this morning.

Still processing images in the quiet of the cold night but here is the first from this fine celestial event, that saw clear skies across much of Ireland.

A small portion of the top of the Moon was cast into shadow as it moved partly into Earth's shadow.

There will be a total lunar eclipse visible from Ireland in March 2025.

Why not join me then, or between now and then for some astrophotography adventures in Ireland.