Digital Photo Keychain

Official Google Blog: +1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results

Posted by Unknown on Thursday, March 31, 2011

Official Google Blog: +1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results

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5 Fresh Digital Media Trends to Watch

Posted by Unknown on Saturday, March 5, 2011

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The Modern Media Agency Series is supported by IDG. The line is fading between social media and traditional media. IDG’s Matt Yorke talks about the rise of social and how IDG helps marketers create social campaigns. Read more.

Digital media, as many a Mashable reader is aware, is evolving at a rapid pace. It’s three months in to 2011, and already we’re witnessing the realization of many of our predictions for news media, digital advertising and startups this year.

Social tools, such as Facebook and Tumblr, are coming to play a new role in news reporting and distribution, while brands are taking on the role of the media by creating and publishing content themselves. Meanwhile, consumers are beginning to access digital content across more devices, often simultaneously, and content creators are responding by creating content for multiple platforms and selling access to them in new subscription offerings.

Those are just a few of the trends we’re observing across digital media, which we explore in greater depth below.

1. New Tools for Reporting and Distribution
Twitter, YouTube and RSS, among other platforms, have long been lauded for their roles in news reporting and distribution in the age of real-time and social media. Now, a new crop of tools is emerging to help journalists tell stories, engage audiences and expand their reach.

Although hardly a new player, Facebook is playing an increasingly important role for working journalists, as Mashable’s Vadim Lavrusik pointed out in an article last week. During what has become known as the January 25th Revolution, Facebook helped journalists in North Africa and the Middle East identify planned protests, gather information and find relevant sources, among other things, notes Riyaad Minty, Al-Jazeera English’s head of social media.

Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, on the other hand, uses the platform as another distribution outlet, posting regular updates to the 200,000 fans of his page, and NPR regularly posts messages to find sources.

In some cases, Facebook itself is part of the story. In a recent article for The Washington Post, Ian Shapira used screenshots of Facebook status updates to illustrate the heartbreaking story of a woman who died from post-pregnancy complications, showing — rather than telling — exactly how much her friends and associates valued her.

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Boise commercial photography studio Tri-Digital Group carves a new niche

Posted by Unknown

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Greg Sims never leaves home without at least three cameras ? and that?s when he?s traveling light.

The 56-year-old Boisean, who has been a portrait and commercial photographer for more than two decades, is never really off-duty. He travels and captures images everywhere he goes, snapping unusual buildings, iconic cityscapes and military airplanes (a personal favorite because his father was a World War II pilot who later worked for Douglas Aircraft Co.). He finds beauty in the simple things, from cracks in the sidewalk to kids eating ice cream.

Sims? work at Tri-Digital Group, a commercial photography studio at 2340 S. Vista Ave., doesn?t end with photos. That?s just where it begins.

His specialty is melding photos into eye-catching digital photo composites and photo illustrations, creating images that might otherwise be too time-consuming, logistically difficult or prohibitively expensive to execute as a single shot. As co-owner of Tri-Digital with Jim Armstrong, he?s evolved into equal parts photographer and digital artist.

Sims began developing his new niche in 2005, a couple of years before Tri-Digital was dealt a catastrophic financial blow ? the loss of a $2.5 million annual contract with Albertsons to photograph food for its advertising circulars and manage the corporate photo database. After Supervalu bought Albertsons in 2006, Supervalu executives took that work in-house in Minnesota. Albertsons was about 80 percent of Tri-Digital?s business. The firm laid off 24 members of its 35-employee staff.

Today Tri-Digital has five employees, including Sims and Armstrong. The recession has hurt. But the company has stayed profitable, avoiding debt by paying for new equipment with cash, delaying computer upgrades and renting out half of its 10,000-square-foot building to United Way.

Tri-Digital has used digital-composite and color-filtering techniques on projects ranging from the Idaho-Eastern Oregon Onion Committee?s promotions for its 50th anniversary to Boise State University football.

An image can cost from a few hundred dollars to $20,000.

FROM REALITY TO FANTASY

Sims manipulates photos in Adobe Photoshop to achieve illusions not possible with pure photography. Want a sky-high view of A-10s flying over Bronco Stadium? No problem. Some who look at Tri-Digital?s images of a Bronco game flyover may wonder how the photographer got such a clear, close-up shot of the A-10s above the stadium, as if he were at the same level as the planes. He wasn?t. Sims shot the planes on the ground and then blended them with the stadium photo.

Sims can alter the mood of an image just by changing the sky. He has thousands of sky images in his digital library.

?Is it the right angle? Is it the right sun? Is it the right color? There are a lot of decisions that need to be made,? Sims said. ?There?s a lot of trial and error.?

Sims said he first began dabbling in Photoshop after a trip to New Orleans in 2004. He took a lot of photos of street scenes and was enamored of a sign on Bourbon Street. But he wasn?t happy with the photo. ?It was missing something,? he said.

So he used Photoshop to add light and color to re-create the feeling the sign evoked when he saw it.

As he accumulated more images of cityscapes from around the world, he began playing more with light and color. Then, he began adding and removing things.

In one photo he took of a building during a boat ride through Amsterdam, he added a sailboat in the foreground (a photo he?d taken in San Francisco), got rid of some industrial equipment and replaced some of the skyline with Manhattan buildings.

?I?m not trying to convince anybody that it?s something it isn?t,? he said. ?The question was, ?Can I make a compelling image?? ?

COMBINING THEIR TALENTS

Armstrong and Sims, both from Southern California, have eclectic backgrounds.

With a degree in geology, Sims worked as a crude-oil operator and later as a marine surveyor. But he had gotten into photography as a hobby in his early 20s, and he began to think of a career in it.

?I saw that first print develop, and I was gone,? Sims said. He converted a bathroom into a darkroom, took photography classes, developed a portfolio and began selling.

In December 1991, he and his then-wife moved their family to Boise. He bought a Boise photo studio.

?He?s the creative force, and I?m the business background,? said Armstrong, who studied photography long enough to realize that he ?didn?t have the creativity to tell stories in pictures.?

Armstrong developed his management skills in the restaurant industry, then worked at Western Color Print and American Color before moving to Idaho in 1998.

Armstrong and Dave Street, owner of Hi-Tech Color/Graphics Avenue, 4477 Emerald St., founded Tri-Digital Group in 2000. Sims came on later as a partner after Armstrong learned that Albertsons wanted someone local to do product photography. (Street is no longer a partner.)

?I was shooting babies one minute, asparagus the next,? Sims said.

The trio did their business plan on a napkin at the old Lock Stock & Barrel on Emerald Street. They tapped their savings for the $40,000 to get it off the ground ? $25,000 of which they spent on a Kodak DCS 560 digital camera. The camera came with a G4 Apple computer.

Then they faced a big learning curve.

?We realized we didn?t know the first thing about food stylizing,? Armstrong said. ?We worked with some chefs and realized they didn?t know anything either.?

They brought in Tracy Watts, a local food stylist. Before losing Albertsons,Tri-Digital was shooting 15,000 food products a year for circulars and magazine ads. It still does food photography for clients such as the J.R. Simplot Co. and Litehouse Foods in Sandpoint.

BEYOND SIMPLE BEAUTY SHOTS

The company has done composite images of Boise State athletes for The Blue magazine and has branched into posters, stadium banners and magnets.

?They put their creativity to work for us,? said Brad Larrondo, the university?s senior assistant athletic director for promotions and marketing. ?You can create emotion and energy through a composite piece, rather than just throw out an action photo of a game. You can feel the emotion and energy of the athlete.?

The images of Boise State players caught the eye of Nick Schenck, director of digital media and publications for the Houston Texans of the National Football League. When he needed a game program done on short notice, he sent Sims about 50 photos of running back Andre Johnson, along with stadium shots.

?We wanted that superhero cartoonish look,? Schenck said. ?They can do that hyper-real imagery. Everyone here was happy with the way it turned out.?

Tri-Digital did a whimsical series of composite images for the onion committee. The images represented different decades. The goal was to go beyond the simple beauty shots of produce or food on plates.

Sherise Jones, marketing director for the committee, said the first four images Tri-Digital created went over so well that the committee commissioned eight more that were used in ads and a calendar. In one image, girls in poodle skirts play with giant onion hula hoops in front of a diner.

?It was totally a collaboration,? Jones said. ?We all sat around a table and came up with ideas. It was a riot. It?s the most fun I?ve ever had in my life.?

Katy Moeller: 377-6413

Pulse: Turn your old laptop into a photo frame

Posted by Unknown

01 February 2011

(Credit: snille.net)

Even though digital photo frames sit near the top of the least-wanted gift list, an enterprising chap has turned an old laptop into a fully functioning frame.

Erik Pettersson has taken a 14-inch ThinkPad T42 running Ubuntu, switched on remote control software VNC, taken out all the unnecessary bits and pieces, and mounted it within an Ikea frame. He wrote a couple of scripts to alternate between images and to turn the monitor on and off, and placed the keyboard around the back for easy access just in case.

Though it might seem like an expensive proposition for some, it’s an excellent way to recycle an old laptop and get yourself a talking point way to display your images.

Tags: laptop, photo frame

Digital destiny

Posted by Unknown

By CLAIRE ATKINSON and KEITH J. KELLY

News Corp. launched its ambitious digital newspaper yesterday, The Daily, the world’s first iPad-only publication.

The paper, which features 360-degree photos and high-definition video with the usual mix of news, gossip and sports coverage, was designed in partnership with iPad maker, Apple.

The Daily costs 14 cents a day, 99 cents a week or $39.99 a year. News Corp. also owns The Post.

Not surprisingly, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs was extremely involved in the product’s design.

“He really pushed the big clean design, for a very clear single visual statement,” one source close to project said. “He really got into details, like no borders around the pages.” The cover of the debut issue, which features a striking photo of a protester in Cairo atop a statue, is an example of Jobs’s vision, the source said.

‘The Daily is the first app in the iTunes App Store that has a subscription billed directly to subscribers’ iTunes accounts — although the model will soon be available for other publishers. Currently, other news outlets link to publishers’ own billing systems.

“The iPad demands that we completely re-imagine our craft,” News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch said at an event to roll out The Daily. Murdoch noted that the company had invested $30 million in the venture that is costing less than $500,000 a week to operate.

“It will be judged two ways — usability and elegance of experience — but primarily it will live and die on the content,” said Andy Chapman, head of digital trading at Mindshare North America, who has been reviewing the product for the past six weeks.

Newspaper analyst Ken Doctor said he was impressed at the way News Corp. has taken advantage of the iPad’s touch screen in a way that other publications haven’t. “I think they’ve set a new standard,” he said. “They’ve passed their first test.”

The Daily’s six sections also include opinion, arts and life, and apps and games. Readers can customize their editions with settings to receive news about their favorite sports teams.

Thirty percent of the subscription revenue goes to Apple. Advertisers in the first issue included HBO, Macy’s, Paramount, Pepsi Max, Range Rover, Verizon and Virgin Atlantic.

When asked about The Daily’s political leanings, Editor-In-Chief Jesse Angelo said, “I think in the editorial page we are patriotic. We believe in free ideas. People will be perhaps surprised.”

The Daily will eventually be expanded to all major tablets and could be redesigned for smartphones.

catkinson

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Identify edited images with JPEGSnoop

Posted by Unknown

Are you looking at a digital photo in its raw, original state — or has it been edited? Under normal circumstances this can be very hard to determine. But if you really need to know JPEGSnoop may be able to help. Just open your image and the program will examine its compression characteristics, compare these against a database of thousands of cameras and photo editors, and deliver its verdict.

So if your image matches the signature of a camera, it’s probably an original shot; if it matches a photo editor, it probably has been edited, or at least saved in an editor; and if the signature isn’t recognized then JPEGSnoop won’t be able to say (though you can add signatures to the database manually to improve its accuracy).

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Create Customized Gifts With Your Digital Photos

Posted by Unknown on Monday, February 21, 2011

Over the last month, I’ve shared some gift ideas to help you get some digital photography goodies for yourself or others on your holiday shopping list. I’ve recommended some cameras and flash accessories, for example, as well as photo editing software and photo-oriented iPhone apps. This week I’ll finish off our look at holiday gifts with five ways to incorporate your photos into cool, interesting gifts for friends and family.

1. Photo Gifts at Shutterfly or Snapfish

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Frequently Asked Photo Questions for November

Posted by Unknown

As you might have noticed by glancing at the date, my month FAQ is a week late this time around. I wanted to be sure you had a chance to read my Digital Photo Holiday Gift Guide while there were still plenty of shopping days left on the calendar. But fear not, I haven’t neglected the mail bag.

Do you have a question about digital photography? Send it to me. I reply to as many as I can–though given the quantity of e-mails that I get, I can’t promise a personal reply to each one. I round up the most interesting questions about once a month here in Digital Focus.

For more frequently asked questions, read my newsletters from August, September, and October.

Resilient Memory Cards

I repair washers and dryers daily. I thought you’d like to know that I found a Secure Digital memory card that went through the wash and dry cycle stuck in the dryer’s bottom. It was not only clean, but it still works great! –Erik Rice, Richmond, Virginia

Thanks for the note, Erik. Indeed, memory cards such as CompactFlash, SD, and Memory Stick are uncannily resilient. You can drop them out of windows, leave them in the wash, even run them over with your car. A lot of the time, they’ll come out the other end just fine–but not all the time. I wouldn’t get in the habit of washing and drying your memory cards.

Photo Storage Suggestion

I have a suggestion about storing photos. In your October FAQ, you briefly talked about storing your photos in different folders. I suggest that you take that one step further. I store my photos in a new folder for each day of shooting. My naming convention for these folders is the year first followed by the month followed by the day. I also add a description. This way all the folders line up in order that they were taken.

–Lester F Shalloway, Warrenton, Oregon

Good suggestion, Lester. Indeed, many photo organizers let you specify a naming convention similar to this when you import the photos. An example of this might be 20101206_scuba_roatan. Of course, I do still highly recommend tagging your photos, so you can search for photos by keywords rather than browsing folders by date.

How Do You Remove Duplicates?

Often, my photos get duplicated on my PC. Is there any way to eliminate all the multiple copies of photos that waste computer memory?

–Gord Lawson, Van Buren, Arkansas

Sure thing, Gord. Before I get to the solution, though, I have to wonder aloud: Why are your files getting duplicated? There’s no technical reason for that to happen, so it sounds like you’re doing something in your workflow that results in duplicates. I’d think about that, try to figure out why it’s happening, and prevent it in the future. Duplicating photos not only wastes space, but it’s confusing and dangerous: Which version of your photo is the latest? Is it okay to delete other copies?

To clean up your computer, try Duplicate Cleaner. It’s a free utility that will scour your hard drive and identify your dupes. Depending on how you tell the program to embark upon its search, it can identify only files that are identical based on content, or it can just find files with similar titles.

Viewfinder Fails in Sunlight

I live in Florida and do or would like to do a lot of outdoor photos. The light is so bright, though, I can see nothing on the LCD. I just take shots in the light or literally point, shoot, and hope. Two questions: Why don’t camera designers recognize this? And what can I do about it?

–Joan McKniff, Queen Creek, Arizona

Camera designers do recognize this problem, Joan, and they try their best to make bright LCDs that are viewable in direct sunlight–but the laws of physics limit how well these displays can work. As a result, cameras with LCDs only are typically budget cameras and compact, highly pocketable models. Step up to moderately priced or bulkier, more full-featured models, and you’ll start to see a lot of optical viewfinders.

I’ve written about this before; it’s something of a pet peeve for me as well. If I may crib from some advice I’ve given in the past, let me say that I am a big fan of optical viewfinders, and wouldn’t buy a camera without one. If your digital camera has an LCD only, though, you might be able to get a shade that blocks the sun and makes the LCD easier to see. Delkin, for example, sells Pop-Up Shades for exactly this purpose.

The next time you plan to buy a digital camera that has an LCD but no viewfinder, I recommend that you visit a store where you can try it out beforehand. Take the camera outside the shop and see how the screen behaves in direct sunlight. Is it bright enough? For more camera buying tips, read “Getting Started in Digital Photography.”

Should My VR Lens Be This Noisy?

I have a Nikon D80 that I love. Unfortunately, I have a problem sometimes with my hands shaking, so I bought a 55-200mm VR lens, hoping this would help. I find that this lens makes noise when focusing, and the image in the viewfinder shifts when you release the shutter. Do all VR lenses do this?

–Denetiza Jones, Alabama

First, some terminology: VR is the name Nikon uses for its “Vibration Reduction” lenses. Canon’s “Image Stabilization” (IS) lenses work essentially the same way.

To answer your question, Denetiza, yes: All VR and IS lenses will make some noise and shift the image. Basically, there’s an arrangement of gyroscopes in the lens that drives motors to move optical elements around in the lens. All that makes a little noise, but it shouldn’t be especially loud. I own a handful of VR lenses and I have used Canon IS lenses. None of them have made significant enough noise to bother me. If yours is really loud, you might want to take it back to the store to get checked out. Likewise, the image will definitely shift when you release the shutter, since the gyros are no longer holding the image still. You should expect this behavior.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique.

Here’s how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don’t forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.

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Create HDR Time-lapse Video With a Digital Camera

Posted by Unknown on Sunday, February 20, 2011

You’ve seen time-lapse video footage. You’ve probably seen High Dynamic Range (HDR) digital photography too, even if you didn’t know it. For the past couple of years I’ve been combining these two bits of digital photo nerdery into one result–HDR time-lapse. Below are some examples of what I’ve produced and how, all with a digital still camera.

HDR shooting

HDR photography has been all the techie rage for the past few years. This article is really about how to shoot it for time-lapse, so check out a great blog called Stuck In Customs to learn the basics of HDR shooting. This Website has several how-to articles on shooting HDR stills with a digital camera that supports automatic bracketing–the ability to shoot a normal exposure, then also automatically shoot additional frames that are over and underexposed.

By using software such as Bracketeer ($30) or Photomatix Pro ($99), you can combine those bracketed shots into a single image that contains the shadow detail from the overexposed shots and the highlight detail from the underexposed shots all in one frame. This offers more shadow and highlight detail (also known as increased dynamic range) in the final image.

Time-lapse shooting

To shoot time-lapse, you’ll need an intervalometer–a device that takes a picture (or a bracketed series) at regular intervals. If your camera doesn’t have one built in, there are hardware intervalometers that plug into many cameras (about $40 and up). There’s also software for the Mac, such as Canon’s EOS Utility that comes free with your camera, that connect to and control the camera via USB. Nikon offers Camera Control Pro 2 for about $150, but it has a 30-day free trial. Breeze Systems offers auto bracketing time-lapse software for many Nikon and Canon DSLRs that lack those features. For extra nerdy points, BlueSLR makes a nifty bluetooth dongle that allows for iPhone remote control, and it plans on adding time-lapse capabilities.

Camera setup

Every camera is a little different, so here are some general steps based on how I set up my Nikon D300S.

1. Set up the composition and focus for the shot.

2. Set the camera to full manual control (white balance, exposure, f-stop, focus).

3. Turn off any image stabilization–you’re on a tripod; you don’t need it, and it’ll introduce its own misalignments.

4. Set baseline exposure, knowing that bracketed shots will gather more highlight and shadow detail.

5. Set the shooting mode to Continuous High, meaning it will rattle off the bracketed shots at its fastest 8 frames per second.

6. Set up the intervalometer appropriately (see below), start it up, and keep out of the shot!

Frame size and format

The camera raw format provides the best looking image, but it takes up the most space and takes the longest to record to the card. JPEG format can be smaller in pixel dimensions as well as file size, fitting more frames onto your image card faster–better for more bracketed shots per set and longer final movies. Unless you’re a pro, you’ll probably be satisfied with JPEGs–even at roughly 2000 pixels across, that is plenty of resolution to make a decent looking 1920-by-1080 HD video.

How many shots should you bracket and how much exposure variation should you use? Most cameras that bracket only allow for three shots, and most will allow two or perhaps three stops of latitude at most between each shot. Two stops is usually a pretty good spacing if you can only take three shots. More shots means more and finer dynamic range capture.

I make sure to set my shooting interval for longer than it takes to shoot and record each set of bracketed frames to the camera’s card. This is important because if the next set of shots begins before the last set is done recording, Things Go Wrong. So use a stopwatch to time how long it takes to shoot and finish recording a bracketed set, and then set the interval to something longer than that. Also, it’s essential to set the shots per set to the same number as in the bracketing controls, otherwise you’ll end up with a mess of misbracketed, mismatched shots.

How long should you set the interval for? The shorter you set it, the slower the subject (such as the sun or clouds) will move through frame. The longer an interval, the faster the subject will move across the frame, and the shorter your final movie will be.

Making HDR frames: Batch time

OK, now you’ve got a big pile of bracketed shots–what do you do with them? Batch ‘em! After you separate out your bracketed shots into their own folder on your Mac, both Bracketeer and Photomatix Pro allow batch mode operation. In batch mode, you tell the software how many shots in each bracket, point it to the folder where the frames are, tweak your settings, and the software will crank out HDR merged shots. Slowly. I often run these overnight. Bracketeer is dirt simple, inexpensive, provides satisfactory results, and is a good place to start–but it is very, very slow. Photomatix Pro is more expensive, but it’s faster, offers far more options and control, and if tweaked correctly, can generate nicer looking results.

Making a movie

Either way, you now have subfolders with a bunch of still images. There are many ways to turn those stills into a QuickTime movie, but here’s two to start.

Easy: In QuickTime Player Pro 7, choose File -> Open Image Sequence. Set a frame rate for playback, and once opened, you can Export As QuickTime Movie in the size and codec you want.

Advanced: Bring the shots into Adobe After Effects as an Image Sequence. Then place the sequence in a 1080p HD timeline to scale, crop, zoom, and/or pan as desired. Then render out to ProRes4444 (lossy video compression format) or whatever format you want for further work in Apple’s Final Cut Pro and/or Color, or tool of your choice. If you know how to use Apple’s Motion, you can do the same kinds of things with that program.

From there, edit and color correct your creation to your satisfaction. I’ve been doodling with this technology for a while. To get an idea of what you can do with it, check out my video below.

Mike’s 10-25-2010 HDR timelapse reel from Mike Curtis on Vimeo.

Mike Curtis has been pushing pixels for a living for more than two decades, and currently consults on Final Cut Studio and other post production issues in Santa Monica, California. He writes for Macworld, his own HDforIndies site, and ProVideoCoalition.com.

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More about → Create HDR Time-lapse Video With a Digital Camera

Digital Photo Keychain

Official Google Blog: +1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results

5 Fresh Digital Media Trends to Watch

Boise commercial photography studio Tri-Digital Group carves a new niche

Pulse: Turn your old laptop into a photo frame

Digital destiny

Identify edited images with JPEGSnoop

Create Customized Gifts With Your Digital Photos

Frequently Asked Photo Questions for November

Create HDR Time-lapse Video With a Digital Camera

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