Palette Gear slider review is HERE!
Get yours here and re-invent your workflow!
Starter Aluminum: http://amzn.to/2qVf2cx
PRO Kit: http://amzn.to/2r4h9tM
Button: http://amzn.to/2sCg4M6
Slider: http://amzn.to/2s2rg7E
Multi Dial: http://amzn.to/2sBRZEV
I had been frustrated with my current workflow and searching the internet for a new, fresh way to work through images. You’re probably feeling the burn when you are in Adobe Lightroom with a mouse and keyboard, hunting keys, remembering shortcuts. I had been researching what to do with this frustration. I almost pulled the trigger on a mixing board and then researched a bit further into it. The audio mixing board was said to be difficult to set up and get past the initial curve of programming.
Back in August I stumbled onto a kick-starter that I regretfully did not invest my time in. It was sliders and buttons; it was Palette. It now has become my regret. I would have had them a bit earlier, but now into our busy season, I’m plugging the palette sliders and buttons in expecting the worse and it was a breeze.
Easy to set up – Plug and play with minor function assignments
Digital to analog digital
We’re turning back to analog every day. Haptic Touch, force feedback on screens and new phones are also giving dynamic touches to give users feedback and a feeling of touching. So the sliders and buttons do that as well. In addition to the physical touch, it’s micro adjustments or macro adjustments depending on your need. Even the dials have multi touch, spin for precise, press and spin to have the button perform faster.
Ease of use:
I thought I was in for a task for setting up the sliders and buttons today. It was literally a 3 fold 2×6 quick start guide. That was it! There is a very easy GUI (graphical), software and it translates your layout to visual on the screen. Setup took approximately 10 minutes, then 5 more adding functions to buttons.
Workflow:
When you’re looking for speeding up your workflow, you’ve found it. Palette Gear has done that. The programming and how the units function are a literal plug and play. It comes with a standard black. I have a white cable for a phone that I’ve replaced and hidden since my office setup is a light marble white color. It also allows for multiple inputs at once. Our conversion to black and white favorite image has been cut from 7 seconds to 2. General editing has been reduced down 20 seconds per image using palette. That translates into hours over the entire set of images.
Ergonomics and functionality:
They can be set up to your liking, your layout depends on how your workspace is. I have no doubt that there will be someone to make accessories like palette trays and an angular wrap around your keyboard so they will be in your face and look good. I found this portable desk on amazon
In summary, to me Pallet is music inspired. Let’s face it, we’re all creative and have music in us. This is MUSIC for your Lightroom. Sliders are a fresh new feeling for input directly into your computer and programs.
What did we think?
First impression with unbiased feedback. Jenn has been working with the sliders for about 3 hours now. She loves music, so it may be biased based on the coolness of her familiarity of being in the studio around mixing boards. I ask her every 20 minutes how she’s doing and she lets me know they’re pretty awesome. I had a configuration set up ready to go that I thought would work good. Basically, it mimicked the screen on lightroom. She quickly took apart the buttons and sliders and customized it to her layout. Which makes sense now while actually post processing/editing images. I actually go excited to edit again. When their website shows mouse cramp. It’s definitely a real thing.
Upgrading – easy-peasy! The software has firmware updates and adding sliders and blocks to your existing is a quick snap of magnets. As soon as you see the lights your set to go!
Jenn says:
“I can attest that my love of music had me very excited about the idea of using studio style equipment to edit my photos. After all, while I edit I listen to music, so to me it goes hand in hand. I’ve always been fascinated by the process of recording music. For example, my favorite music documentary is titled Tom Dowd & the Language of Music. The late Mr. Dowd was the man who under the employment of Atlantic Records in New York City re-designed the elements of music recording. Originally, there were large knobs that one would have to turn that were in front of the engineer about eye level. Therefore you would have to reach forward to turn them, so I can imagine it was uncomfortable and at worst, inefficient. So Tom Dowd created what are called faders today, and what you can see myself using in the photo below for photo editing. I give major accolades to the gentlemen who made this a reality not only for workflow enhancement and efficiency, but to make us, who appreciates music, have a chance to feel like maybe we’re just dropping the bass down a little, or adding in that extra background vocal.”
Color Coding
Palette allows to color code each block with a few colors in the software. We have ours setup as:
Temperature: Yellow
Tint: Magenta
Exposure: Blue
Contrast: Red
Highlights: Green
Blacks: Off
Shadows: Yellow
Saturation: Blue
Create Virtual Copy and our Favorite black and white preset: Blue
Flag/Reject: Green/Red
Our setup:
Setup files including one of mine can be downloaded here: http://palettegear.com/profiles
Price:
Price ranges from $199.99 – $499.99 and for the limited edition wood professional kit, $899.9 Palette Kits I went with the Aluminum Professional kit. It has everything you need to get started. As we’re going through the workflow I’ve placed an order for a couple additional modules for a quick button to open layers in Photoshop when we select multiple images and an additional slider and knob. Palette is an amazing company with a dream that came true for me. Post any questions you might have and I’ll give you my experience. Leave the keyboard for typing and the Palette for awesomeness.
Get yours here
Thank’s team at Palette! I love it!
