" It used to be the way you take better pictures is you learn to be a better photographer " -- Phil Schiller Senior VP Worldwide Marketing, Apple Inc. at 46:31 into the video for the iPhone 5C/5S announcements
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I've just published a new plugin for Adobe Lightroom, "Smart-Preview Support", which allows you to be alerted when a Smart Preview is about to be used for export. Exporting with Smart Previews can lead to very low quality output, so this plugin can help save you from doing that unintentionally.

Details and download are on the plugin's home page.

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In my post last week about a trip to a Kyoto temple last autumn, I wrote about some out-of-season cherry blossoms that bloom in November. Continuing with my recent theme of visiting my photo archives, I'm going back this time not to last fall, but just to the more recent spring, to a trip to the Ryouanji Temple (龍安寺) in northwest Kyoto.

I've posted a few times from that trip among the awesome blossoms, including:

"Weeping Cherry at Kyoto’s Ryouanji Temple" "Cherry Blossoms at Kyoto’s Ryouanji Temple, Part 1" "Subtle · Pastel · Tranquil" "The Effects of Aperture [...]

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Photo-buddy Damien Douxchamps came back from a trip to Finland, and sent me a huge care package of Läkerol, the not-available-in-Japan candy he introduced me to last year (seen on my blog in "Cornucopia of Tasty Läkerol Licorice" and then later in "Priceless: Candy and Pottery in a Surprisingly Tasteful Display").

The care package included 122(!) boxes of a dozen different Läkerol flavors (many new to me), plus a few extra odds and ends.

Some of the boxes were exceptionally colorful, and some were exceptionally colorless...

I'm also not sure what tastes these names ("Black Diamond" and "Sparkling") might represent. [...]

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Following up from yesterday's "Tea and Sweets in Front of a Temple Garden", where I'm trying to make a dent in my photo backlog from last autumn, today we take a look at the setting for yesterday's post, the Jikkouin Temple (実光院).

The same water basin, but from a different angle with the garden-viewing room in the background, represents this visit on last year's "A Long But Photogenic November in Kyoto" post.

I'd visited with friends Damien and Paul while on a trip to Ohara, a somewhat remote mountain-village area of Kyoto. We'd just come from the most-excellent Housen-in Temple [...]

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