Progressing Along Nicely

Office

My Linux Mint desktop replacement is settling in beautifully in the office, and honestly it's way quicker than the Windows 10 machine it replaced. I'm taking it step by step, loading and testing things as I need them rather than throwing everything at it at once.

The old Windows 10 Desktop PC had been with me since my consulting days, so it was pushing close to 10 years old. Over that time it had accumulated just about every piece of software I'd ever owned, and it had gotten painfully slow switching between programs. On top of that, I was dealing with complications from a corneal graft at the time, which made screen glare a real problem. I could only manage about 20 minutes of detailed computer work before it became unbearable. Safe to say I don't miss that setup at all.

For the hardware I went with my old Toshiba laptop, affectionately known as ICE because it's white. It's probably around 15 years old and had a rough patch with what looked like an internal disc corruption. Fingers crossed that's sorted now because it's cruising along nicely. It's also the only laptop I have with an Ethernet port, which means I can connect directly to the NBN router rather than relying on wifi. It's not exactly exciting hardware but it's a comfortable old friend and a reliable workhorse.

The main task now is figuring out what works well in Linux and what I might need to find alternatives for. I started with Firefox and webmail, but quickly switched to Thunderbird Mail for email and found it much more to my liking. I was also keen to reduce my dependence on Google where possible, but still wanted to keep using Gmail, Calendar and Drive. The answer turned out to be Ungoogled Chromium, a stripped back browser that follows the same basics as Chrome but without all the Google tracking. It works really nicely with Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs and Drive, so that box is ticked.

The last piece of the puzzle, for now, was finding a replacement for Microsoft Office. Fortunately LibreOffice was already installed and it's been great. It looks and feels very similar to Word and Excel, and it plays nicely with Google Docs and Sheets too. I haven't stress tested the compatibility yet but for my everyday needs it's doing the job perfectly.

A long way further along than I expected, and so far so good. Best of all, it's all completely free!

Luminar Neo update 1.8

Skylum has quietly slipped out an update to Neo without much fanfare. It has two features I’ve really wondered why they were never included. Both make a significant improvement in useability for me.

1. Before & After Sliders

This was pretty hard to believe because Skylum had this feature in Luminar Ai and PhotoLemur. I do find it much better to compare before and after on one screen than flicking the whole screen before and after backwards and forwards. The fact that this also works when you mouse-over presets leads to a better appreciation of their effect on your chosen photo. Finally having a slider to control the opacity of how the preset is applied makes this a real winner in my books.

2. Histogram at the top of the edit controls 

This was also a real puzzle because the histogram has always been displayed in Luminar’s catalogue screens, but was missing when using the edit tools. This is the time that I find the histogram gives its most useful feedback. Specifically, it changes as you apply different edits, so you can follow the tonal impact of them, You do need to understand how the histogram works and why it is a useful graph. It is activated from the main View Menu by ticking the Show Histogram option at the bottom of the pop out list.

Yet another update issue

 I have come to use OnOne Photo RAW as my go to RAW file editor of choice and when I use it I generally export a "finished" jpeg version but something has gone astray in the latest update. It often reports that the screen resolution has changed and I need to restart the application. I assume this is related to the fact that one of the two screens on my main desktop had died and I replaced it with an old VGA style monitor. The Microsoft update fiasco made this worse, the software would hang and clearly had rendering issues anytime I exported a finished edit.

Initially the response from their support was very non-specific (ie delete OneOne and reinstall it) but I had already done this 3 times. Yesterday I got a real reply it turns out this is a common bug when using two monitors. I had to physically unplug the old monitor and just use a single screen, Magic everything is fine again, albeit with less overall screen real estate.

Am I becoming too cynical or are companies just in such a rush to push out updates to their software they are forgoing testing, and using us as Alpha testers?

Suspicious behaviour, and a decline in trust

The news that Adobe was going to put the price up (actually doubling the price) of their basic Creative Cloud Photographic offering, was soon “retracted” as just a marketing A B test. That’s some test!

Then came the news that long time CC subscription holders would have to update and only be able download two of the most recent versions of the adobe apps. The reasons given escape me because I also found them a bit difficult to swallow.

Next a third strike for Adobe!  They were exposed writing to users warning them that using old version of the software (that those user paid good money to “rent” from adobe) would leave them open to a third party legal action. Again I find this unbelievable unjust. Like Adobe is happy to abandon them. What is going on at Adobe, don’t they care what their users think.

So I must admit I was feeling a bit smug that I resisted the subscription model (for purely cost reasons) Even though I still have to occasionally update my software. Many companies try to get that upgrade fee out of you often (eg yearly) I normally resist and upgrade on the second or third iteration and or when new features I would regularly use are rolled out. Generally I download the free trial versions first so I get a good idea of what I need versus could wait a little longer for.

Such an upgrade was the latest version of Corel Video Studio it performed way better with the 4K video from my new little Olympus and I like the multi cam synch capture. Suddenly I was  being annoyed by a nagging pop up messages every day (offering what seamed a reasonable discount). So I caved in and ordered the upgrade at the AUD$51 price. Even before I had finished and had only downloaded the initial setup program, another message popped up offering a slightly higher discount. Bummer, This is not clever marketing this is just annoying.

I do like the Corel Video Studio 2019 Pro by the way. It is a good upgrade.

What the heck are your heavily automated market teams up to software suppliers? Do you understand why you are loosing our trust?

Way too many subscriptions

I feel myself getting slowly painted into a corner. Many of the software tools I would like to use or upgrade are now only available via subscription. For a retired old guy that would have to come out monthly from a very tight budget, so I would have to sacrifice some other expenditure, some more important living expense just to use something I probably have already purchased or use for free. I do understand that software is generally licenced (ie you don’t own it) but most used to come with a licence for perpetuity. You might get bug fixes and minor update but significant upgrade would need to be purchase (upgrade usually being attractively riced compared with new purchases).

On the weekend photowalk I discussed this dilemma with others and one decent suggestion was to try and combine them (eg Going Pro on Flickr list discounts for Adobe Create cloud (and Blurb)) So I set about investigating going pro and my early recollection of an early join up in November seems to have evaporated (along with specific figure of the actual cost, which I remember, because I noted it down) of ~$6/month of USD$49.98 per year (the full price not the discounted one). It does mention 15% Discount Creative Cloud, but checking the Adobe site claims such a discount has expired. OK! Not encouraging.

Then I started looking in the Flickr Help forum for details, firstly see Don MacAskill thread, which is links to other threads. The thread is closed implying that direct feedback is not welcome. I started to read the Grandfather Pro pricing thread and There are many alarmed (aka Angry) folk, part of which was an unfortunately worded email to those on the $25/year deal, which seem to imply the new price was $50/year for the result of this year and then $100 in 2019. It really was saying they will have to pay the $50/year from now on of $100 for two years, but ouch!

None of this has convinced me to pay annual subscriptions, I’m going to stay away for any such deals and I am now certain I will have to stitch with a free account (and will have to reduce my number of photos posted)

Windows Beta of Luminar has reached 1.0.0

I have been testing the Luminar for Windows Alpha & Bets version for a while and they have clicked over from pre-release versions to version 1.0 so I’m expecting that they will be officially release very soon. The last updates are for specific tools, adding a radial mask and texture (tweaks to clarity & structure sliders). Without doubt the best filter is the Enhance AI filter with the single boost slider (its magic, you have to try it out to appreciate its power) A lot of very ordinary photos will be quickly made impressive with this single click filter and single slider. If you are on a Apple Mac you can get the free trial now, and Windows user will have to register for the beta in the short term. Visit Macphun for the details.

However there are lots of other filters in Luminar made up of numerous common adjustment sliders. Rather than have to set the slider individually or use presets (like lightroom) you have pictures of how the adjustments will look on your photo (like OnOne & instagram). Here I thought I saw a great photo with the dusk sky out to sea reflected in a sheet of shiny stainless steel (A public sculpture on the Coolum board walk, referring back to the seaside fun parks).Well because of the extreme dynamic range the photo ended up insipient and flat (such is life). However loading it into luminar and skipping through the filters I found “Dull no more”, it looked a bit dark but closer to what I was trying to photograph. One click and I as 95% there. I just added a fraction more clarity and I was done.

Luminar is currently a single image editor, it works with all the RAW & Tiff files I threw at it, but it doesn’t have a photo browser within it (ie it will not manage your photos). As a single file editor it really shines and gets the job done super fast.

Getting up to some Mischief

My disdain for workshop or trainers that just teach their “work flow” as the ultimate (perhaps only) way to use software and carry out various photographic or artistic tasks is continuing to grow. Such attitudes are a guarantee to remove originality, innovation and individual expression. Those that religiously follow the “work flow” rules end up producing much the same work over and over again and whilst it can be good, even excellent it is soon an avalanche of sameness, blunting our interest. If you don’t believe take a look at someone scanning their social media. they thumbs or fingers are barely allow more that 2 second to view any image. Swipe. swipe, swipe….

I favour a lightly slow more honest evaluation of the tools, workspace and characteristics of the material. You still need some instruction in the basics but ability comes more quickly if you just play with the media and tools. Its not unlike many of the early craft guilds (which included painters, or newspapers in the old days when they had staff photographers). Here you where probably apprenticed to a master and they expected you to grind the pigments, mix the inks, wash the brushes and even sweep out the work shop. You got to handle all the media and saw how it was used and eventually you where guided into doing it yourself. Some apprentices adhered to the methods of their master but fortunately for us enough students experiments and expanded on what they had learnt and their masters where wise enough to encourage them. I believe the same approach needs to apply in using the modern tools or art and photography. The masters, can be those guru photographers and the You Tube Stars, you no longer need to be in their workshop but the familiarity with the workspace and the tools is still down to us, the “modern apprentices”.

I’ve told you all this because I want to resume short blog posts about the work space in software and the key tools to use, so that you can understand the steps in the work flows you are taught but also have enough confidence to experiment and try something of your own. I happened upon the Mischief sketching software whilst looking at ways to prepare some composition/notan sketches. It was a it was a real relaxation, simple to use and powerful at the same time, no work flow required. There is a free version which is perfect to get started with, and is what I am using here, If you an make a mark with a pencil on paper you good to go.

The Mischief work space is a single screen and it normally starts in full screen mode. There is the normal windows style menus bar with drop down menu items that run all the programs function. The more commonly used are also shown in a vertical tool bar (normally over on the right). One very unique aspect of this work surface is the “canvas” you work on is that it is truly infinitely. You can scroll off the edge of the screen or zoom out to reveal more canvas. This an incredibly liberating feature. Start by drawing something that runs off the page, pan across a bit and keep drawing. The last two icons are for the the undo (another feature without a limit) and redo. All the tools and functions have keyboard short cuts, if you prefer those (look under help).

The next important set of tools are found in the brush panel (normally down on the lower left). The free version only has three brushes (aka pens) and they only have simple controls on size and opacity but this has been cleverly used to create a faint lines (pencil) for rough sketching a solid line (ink pen) and a thicker chisel style semi transparent line (Marker pen) These three pen will give you a decent sketching experience. probably the thing you will want to change most is the pen size, which uses the [ and ] brackets (for thinner & thinker) r the little slider pull out by clicking on the second bottom tab. the opacity can also be controlled by the number keys (again see the shortcut keys under the help menu.

The final on screen panel is the colour picker, normally on the upper left. Compared with many other packages this is a very simple format, but it does allow select for Colour (the slider under the colour square, Tone, the vertical position and Intensity, the horizontal position on the colour square. Unlike the paid version, the free version doesn’t have the ability to save your own swatch of colour, but size the canvas can be of infinite size you can place a small swtach of colours directly on just visible edge of the canvas, then return to that with the eyedropper to pick one of the few colours you have selected. So for simple composition sketch with 5 grey tone I have just used an approx 25% grey 50% grey, 75% grey & Black, using the white of the canvas as my 5th tone. You can either erase this later or just pan so that it is not displayed on the screen when you export a picture.

A really unique feature of this program (I haven’t seen another implement such a simple idea) is the ability to change the canvas opacity. This basically changes the canvas into tracing paper. By putting a suitable photo full screen and loading mischief over the top of it and either using the Window> Activate Window Opacity function from the menu or just use the slider on the side of the vertical tool bar. Moving the slider closer to 0% makes the canvas more translucent. You can trace lines of colour in the basic tonal shapes.

You really either need a Wacom style tablet of a touch screen with a pen, to get the natural feel of drawing. I have used it with the touch screen on my HP spectre and the touch mode on my old Bamboo tablet, but It is definitely wasn’t as good and trying to use the mouse is a little too fiddly. If you haven’t ever draw3 on a computer screen before the free version of the program is worth a trial. I’m already moving onto the Pro version (mainly to get layers & pins, more about those later hopefully. In the meantime never be afraid to experiment with your own “working methods” and occasionally just have a good “play”.

Shredding Software at a great rate

To be able to access the internet I have had to set up new accounts on my limp-a-long windows 10 laptop. Some software I had to reinstalled but the photo applications I am using OnOne, Corel After Shot, Picasa And lightroom kept working. However now OnOne & Aftershot keep wanting me to re-register. Oneone has now even stopped working the trial periods is apparently over. It must be just 6 days since that is when I set up the new account.  I have purchase both package and install them on this very same computer months ago (back when it was a well behaved Windows 7 PC). Ok under a different account name. So I went back to the original account (which can not access the Wifi system here on Norfolk and while Aftershot pro seems ok, One One is still refusing to work and now lightroom is having tantrums as well disappearing into silence. So I have a very sick windows 10 upgrade on a decent computer gobbling up the software applications I want to use. NOT HAPPY

At least Picasa and Paint.net have not deserted me (yet!)

To rub salt into the wound Dropbox has just sent me a message that it is not able to synchronize.

And of course I don’t travel with the registration keys and installation packages for all my software so I’m feeling very abandoned,

Finding creativity by using different tools

I’ve never been a big fan of set work flows and always using presets, I think that approach stifles creativity. However I constantly use a range of different software. So how do I manage to get a consistent style. Well in actual fact I don’t bother, I choose what seems to suit the image, each tools has it strengths and limitations. It was grey and close to dusk so he was flapping his wings to dry them, the movement combined with a telephoto shot low f-stop and low light, my set of photos thus have soft-ish focus and digital noise due to higher ISO. C'est la vie.
First cab off the rank was Picasa, which I normal just use to upload my photos and allows me to quickly review and cull the photoset and perhaps rank the top photos. I tend not to use it to enhance my images, unless i really want something to post on the web or email straight away. It’s jpeg rendering is fine but google’s, “I feel luck approach” often makes the RAW files look dull and perhaps overexposed. I like more tonal range. Here I am editing the JPEG version and using the tuning tab but just clicking on the magic wand to let Picasa set the tonal sliders. I’ve also used the straighten and cropping tools.
I have been using Aftershot Pro as my preferred first look at RAW files on my laptop and have a fairly standard approach of clicking on the perfectly clear filter, then tweaking the details slider and for this photo a little extra raw noise correction. In this case I have toned down the vegetation a little via the Colour Equalizer Plug-in to help highlight the darter. I’ve also used a desaturate vignette along with cropping & straightening.
The RAW photo I am processing with OnOne Photo 10 Suite doesn’t have the detail in the darter, which limits its success somewhat. However I used by very favourite Dynamic Contrast filter to manipulate the tones, opting to enhance the small scale contrast rather that larger scale (which help subdue the trees & reeds in the background) while backing off vibrance and lift the darter. I also used my very favourite vignette the Big Softy.

I ended up breaking my own rule here, using a SDR+ preset I made myself some time ago to stretch the dynamic range in a single RAW photo. To which I tweaked clarity (local tonal contrast) to the right and dropped down the vibrancy a little, Similar crop and straighten to the other photo and finished with a subtle post crop vignette.

The photos are different, not unlike using different media (oils vs acrylic) and have subtly different appeal. Despite the approach to post processing being largely similar. I think the exercise of doing this help become familiar with the tools and what can be achieve. It is a more creative approach than following a rigorous workflow within a single software package. Vive la difference.

Backup Your Photos NOW! BUT NOT to Google+

If you are a windows user now is an important time to back up your digital photos, only don’t back them up using google+ …!  The 29th. July & 1st. August are possibly two significant dates for digital photographers using Windows PC, Tablets and Phones.

The 29th is the date microsoft is planning to roll out free version of windows 10 to anyone with a valid windows7 or 8 licence. If you are one of those you will probably have already seen the little get windows 10 icon on your task bar. (if you think you should have received this invite but haven’t, then log on from the computer concerned to the microsoft window 10 site and find the reserve windows 10 button).  I doubt this is going to be a Y2K style non-event.

However I really do expect to see some heart ache and sad stories. Upgrading an operating system generally comes with some such hickups. So what should you do to avoid any grief?

1. Backup up all your photos now. It doesn’t really matter what software you are managing the photos with at least backup up all the original photos (be it .jpeg, DNG or other RAW formats) just make sure you have a viable copy on a separate media (ie not on your computers hard disk) I would strongly recommend a media that is easy to selectively restore from (ie avoid large compressed archives or cloud solutions) just use removable media (like CDs or DVD, probably lots of them) or better still USB style backpack drives (a 1TB drive should be less than $100, and will be a useful backup well after any upgrade). Why not make two copies and store one off site (ie a proper backup strategy)
2. Look at the key software you have and search out the original install disk and/or the registration codes for downloads and updates. Check the suppliers web sites because they are likely to have important driver updates or other advice. If the worst case scenarios eventuates and you have to reinstall, you are ready.
3. If you are still worried, wait a while. Even when to get the message windows 10 is ready you actually don’t have to update straight away (you have one year to do it) and might prefer to wait and watch complaints from other users. I have several PC and I am planning to just update one at a time, starting with the least used.

The 1st August is apparently the day google is planning to kill google+ photos. Ok there is a fair bit of hype around but I have already read Goodbye Google+ Photos, hello +Google Photos! What I can make of this is it really about the google+ android and IOS phone/tablet apps. They will be removed and soon stop working, yep stop working on the photo side. It doesn’t really go into what happens to the photos already in google+ photos (or picasa web albums). Still the mention of having to get them via google takeout (and thus shift through zip versions) doesn’t fill me with confidence. Right at the moment I know you can still access your photos  in the old picases web album interfaces (see te link in yellow below), I really want that ability to stay, However be aware that google+ Autobackup may not create that viable backup I’ve suggested in point 1 above. Again best to wait a while before you need to panic, but there is a google photos version, so updating now is a good idea if you want to use the backup feature .  I’ll be amazed if photos you have already uploaded can’t remain being access from the new google photos.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos?noredirect=1

Learning Workspace & Tools rather than Workflow

I have never been a fan of the idea of “the” workflow to control how you work on images. At least for a creative person this approach will guarantee that your work looks just like almost everyone else’s. Instead I prefer to think a better way to "learn" your own style and skills should be a self exploration of the workspace and the tools available.
I'm actually falling back on the way an artist might be expected to learn to sketch. Some of that instruction might be how to hold the pencil but most of the time will be dedicated to seeing the subject and making the appropriate marks on the page, sometimes using a HB pencil sometimes sometimes much softer like a 4B or charcoal and other times maybe coloured like a watercolour wash or crayons. To this end I began a series of simple post where I described the workspace available in common software (specifically software I have used). This was a lot like opening the page of your sketch book or perhaps a setting up a ready primed canvas and getting out your pencils, pens and/or paints. However once you are familiar with the workspace it is time to find out what tools are available and what they can do.
What I am going to tackle next is an exploration of tool types, by tool type. Not trying to cover everything  but definitely those which I consider the important photo editing tools. This is somewhat like using different media in the sketching but I will be focussing on specific tasks that most photographers and/o artists will commonly encounter. I have picked a dozen common tasks and the tools to do them and divided these into three groups

Basic Tools	Flourish Tools	Special Tasks
White Balance	Sharpening/Smoothing	Noise Reduction
Exposures	Selective Refinements	Red Eye Reduction
Tonal Enhancement	Layers, Masks, Gradients	Lens Corrections
Straighten	Filters, Presets
Crop

You probably don't need to learn all of them or even learn them in the order given. They are just a set of tools I think are important to learn. They are not a comprehensive list of tools to answer every possible modification of a digital photo. I intend to discuss each tool, one at a time, and generally one tool in one or just a couple of software package at a time. I don't intend to explain every possible option for each tools but I want to start you on the journey of learn new tools and which tools can be used for which tasks. I particularly want to leave you with a desire to experiment with those new tools and skills.
So next time you have a photo you think has potential, look at which task/tool is likely to deliver that improvement and start to experiment with just that tool. Shift the sliders both ways. Look at the extremes. Perhaps even try the same image in a different package or the same tool on an on-line service. Like any artist you should become skilled at making your mark in the way you feel comfortable.  You could wait for me to discuss that tools (you might have a long wait) but If you aren't comfortable yet just set aside some time to experiment with the tool, try every which way. The big advantage with digital images is it will cost you little more than your time.

There are dozens of expensive books that follow elaborate workflows but I don't think you can beat learning how to use one tool at a time on a task that is important to creating/enhancing your own image.

Once you know the way in which you want to use the tools and you find yourself doing the same tasks time and time again, then  this is the time to considered work flow, But it should be something that suits you and enhances your creativity.

The Anatomy of the Corel Aftershot Pro Workspace

This is a wonderful little program (it is about 1/8th the size of Lightroom) that is a repackage version of the popular raw image enhance post/processing program Bibble. It is very much in the shadow of other non destructive photographic management programs, particularly Lightroom. However I think it deserves better exposure particularly for less committed and/or new photographers. It is also worth considered as a fast pre-processing of raw photos (ie before loading into Lightroom Catalogue). As well as being fast it is easy to pick up. Hopefully a quick walk around the workspace and you’ll be ready to use the software in earnest,

The biggest difference with Lightroom is that everything is referenced from one screen, there are no different modules to move between. This has its good and bad points but screen real-estate becomes very important because a lot of options are available on the screen.
However editing a single or group of photos is very simple. Click on the file system tab on the left hand side and the browse through the file system navigation, to select the folder (sub-directory) containing your photos. Then scroll through the thumbnail and select your photo which will be displayed in the centre of the workspace. Now you can use the tools on the right hand side of the image and the standard Tab. Which contains most of the basic adjustments is normally display at the top of the list of tool tabs, there are a few extra tools to crop and rotate the photo on a toolbar below the workspace and some metadata and ranking tools on the tool bar above the works space. You can also easily add keywords (and keyword sets, found over on the tool tabs), making sure your photos are easy to find. You can easily save this in standards XMP file to load into other programs like lightroom.
In the example here I have just used aftershot pro to do a very of very standard enhancement (well my preferred ones) which involve a little bit of tonal adjust to lift the highlights a little and deepen the shadows, then ticking on perfectly clear and a touch of vibrance, Because the sky is a little washed out I have use the colour equalizer (a free plug in I’ve loaded, found at the end of the tool tabs) to reduce the luminosity of the blue (which deepen the blue sky). All done with a few clicks on a single screen.

The Anatomy of The Corel Printer Lite’s Workspace

I intend to write a little about the computer workspaces (what’s on the screen) that I use and how I use the tools provided (the way the software works). Too follow up on an earlier post about workspace not workflow, and some extra inspiration from Beyond Digital Photography. Rather than describing how to use each software package, I just want to show what’s there and where various tools can be found. I am not sure why I am beginning with the Corel Painter Lite workspace, it is not strictly a photo processing program but was included as a bonus with Corel’s Aftershot Pro. It is often available in such good deals, alternatively it is available as a 30 day trial.  It is now in my tool kit because its a really nice little program that lets you paint in a very natural way and it also allows you to work on photos. It is also a wonderful place to learn about brushes, colour mixing tools and layers.

Like almost all windows programs there is a Menu Bar along the top of the screen, this is set of pull down menus that can access all features of the program but I must admit I very seldom use the menus. In the centre of the screen is the work area onto which you load “documents”, which can be photos or blank sheets of paper or canvas. You can have a series of these documents open on your work area at anytime but you can only work on the top one. On the right hand side is the toolbox, which has paint brush, eye dropper to pick colour, bucket fill, eraser, selection and cropping fames, cloning dodge & burn tools. There are also controls for zooming and panning, paper surface and background colour. There is an amazing range of natural media bushes and brush categories, selected with the brush selector in the upper right. Without doubt the brushes work best with a decent quality tablet (such as a wacom tablet, I have both a bamboo for the laptops and Intuit for my desktop) so that the brushes can respond to sensitive gesture hand movement and pressure.The brush properties are shown in a context sensitive property bar on the left hand side, and can be easily customised on the go. In  the upper centre you can choose to display the recent brush list to help if you want to swap back and forth with the same brushes/tools.

On the right hand side is the default location for a number of palettes which you can chose to display. I like the navigator which give you a thumbnail and key data about your current image. The Layer Palette has been detached in my example, and all palette can be detached as floating dialogue boxes. This palette allows you to add one or more transparent layers that float above image or blank sheet (the canvas). Anything you paint on the upper layers covers up what is below, although you can also control the opacity of this entire layer. The Mixer Palette is a marvel, it has three tabs, Colour, Mixer and Colour Set Library (which is a matrix of standard colours, but not an exhaustive selection). The Colour Tab, shows a fairly typical colour wheel and is called the colour Hue Ring. Inside this is an Saturation/Value Triangle. To select a colour, dial up the hue in the outer ring and then the move crosshairs in the triangle towards the right, for full colour saturation, or upper left paler, as in adding white, or lower right to darken the tone. The sliders below the Hue Ring show the RGB values for the selected colour. Alternatively you can set the colour you want with these sliders. The second tab the Mixer work much in the same way an artists would mix colours on his palette. The brush icon lets you mix colours, the eye dropper lets you sample the colours as mixed on your brush in the main work area.

  

As an example of how I might use Corel Painter Lite’s capabilities, I have loaded a photo of some fish oil tablets shaped roughly into a fish shape as my canvas. I scrapped a few extra white lines into this photo to help emphasise an eye, mouth and fins, before I add a second layer and painted over it in greens and blues, rather than the originally over-powering mustard background, and a little red and dark blue emphasis on the fish. All easy steps once you are familiar with the workspace.

 

Bloating the Bandwidth

rapware is what I call it, and its getting worse. It has been a round for a while piggy backing on items you download from shareware and software distribution sites. Usually you have the opportunity to not downloaded them, but now you have to be diligent and deselect options to avoid then being auto installed or tick the no thanks item in very fine print. There is also a good chance these freeloaders might have a malware payroll. They are just simply to be avoided, a waste of time and are annoying.
   
However now a lot of legitimate software come with similar crapware items you probably don.t want. Like adobe sneaking in McAfee anti virus, Java adding Ask and Google bar to your browser or Internet Explorer changing the default search to Bing. Once it was buyer beware, now it is downloader be very careful.
  
If any software distributers are listening please stop!
With special thanks again to Jessica Hische of Daily Drop Cap for the wonderful cheese C start to this post.

Stop ASKing

I’m becoming a bit annoyed at those third party junkware things, that hitch hike on other useful stuff and sneak onto your system. I was looking at some the neat animations on the space weather site, suggested in the previous post, and got warned to update my version of java. Ok that's easy enough! Then horror of horrors, ask.com has weaselled it way onto my standard toolbar and a more prominent toolbars of its own beneath that. The problem is under chrome I can not unclick the enable box in the chrome extensions for this unwanted toolbar, unlike most after apps I have.  This toolbar can only be uninstalled via the control panel, ie Windows Start Menu > Control Panel > Programs (Add/Remove Programs for older versions) > Programs and Features > Select both ask toolbar and Ask updater and click "Uninstall".

Damn you third party sneaks!

To upgrade OR not?

It seems almost everyday my android is updating some app. Sometimes that has not been for the better (eg Google+), Windows and Java seem to want to upgrade monthly, even weekly at some times. Usually as a principal I like o keep at least one computer as up to date as possible, and its usually the computer I am using most. Most software suppliers these days provide “free” updates will you are within the same major version number but charge as you upgrade from one main version to the next, which is a reasonable approach. Some automatically notify you when an update is available, and prompt you to upgrade. For instance today lightroom has let me know version 4.3 is available. However other than “unspecified” bug fixes I can not see any feature I need. So should I even upgrade? Well, no suspense I will update, I like my software to be as up to date as possible.

The dark side of this automatic upgrading is that occasional an updated driver (or ”lack of” the appropriate updated driver on your machine) will cause something that was working to stop working and frustration set in, One way to minimize the likelihood of this is your have access to more than one computer is to Try the updates out on you secondary machines for a couple of days then upgrade your “production” machine. A second option is to wait a few days and look of the user forums for the software, problems usually surface pretty fast on forums. The final option if only update if you think its really necessary (you’ll be safe in the knowledge that what you have works, you might however miss out on faster processing, fantastic new features or just a general improvement if how things work.

Returning to Geotagging–seeing satellites & calibrating the time

I haven’t every stopped geotagging, just maybe I haven’t been talking about it much here. Ok, there was a little while back in Europe last year where I got slightly discouraged. I had been using Geotag Photos and loved it but one day java automatically updated itself on my PC and next one of the scripts for geotag photos promptly stopped working. The error message looked simple enough, it was trying to load a file from a location that didn’t exist. However, when you are travelling you don’t have time or energy left to ponder such bugs. So I keep collection my GPS tracks and photos, figuring I could post process the location later (as opposed to each night. Somewhere In Germany I discovered GeoSetter and downloaded it and wow what great features it offered. Now the interesting part of the story. My mobile phone, which houses the GPS automatically adjusts itself for the local time zone and if you are wandering around near Salzburg, sometimes the roaming on your foriegn phone finds a French telco and sometimes a German telco and for some very strange reason the German times were an hour ahead (no that wasn’t supposed to happen, it was some sort of roaming telco glitch). The result was a lot of my post processed photos where geotagged at the wrong location. I just lost patients before I found the time shift in my GPS tracks (months later). In actual fact that isn’t a problem with geosetter as there is a nice time change feature (providing you realize the time shift) which can be applied at the time you processing the data. It also maps out your route and photo locations on a google maps, providing you have internet access. Which is a great way to check your geotagging. A little later on in the Netherlands I found google code’s gpicsync, which is a bit clunky and old fashion (ie the user interface is very plain, but it works) and used it and the picasa/google earth approach whenever I had web access for the rest of that trip.  I definitely now prefer GeoSetter.

The other problem I had at the time was my phone’s GPS was not always working, basically the narrow street in old medieval towns effectively hid some of the satellites which should have been visible, but where hidden from my phone at street level. Worse still My Tracks, my personal favourite GPS tracking tools, just didn’t bother to record the point when there were not enough satellites found. Not only that the phone spent a lot of time looking and would quickly drained the battery. Again I only found this out after the trip. However at the time I did find GPSTrac (beta), a nice simple GPS app that promised to save battery life and basically it does report all it readings albeit with an error flag if only a few satellites are found. I now always run both My Tracks and GPSTrac and I suspect the fact that GPSTrac is running keeps My Tracks functioning better and less power hungry or is it we don’t have narrow medieval lanes between buildings here in the bush in Australia. There are dozens of alternative GPS tracking apps around, so I suggest you look for yourself and test out their suitability to your area.

When I tried to photograph the key events in the recent Transit of Venus I did carefully calibrate the time on two laptop computers, my phone and two cameras the night before but late the next day I checked again and to my dismay there was up to a 4 second difference across all of them. This is fine for geotagging I can't even run fast enough for that to make more than a couple of meters difference over that time interval.. However if I was trying to get precise measurement so I could work out the distance to Venus and the Sun I would have a few errors in my calculations. That’s academic because cloud cover meant I missed all the key events. The “problem” was that there can be non linear drift in your computer clock, and I haven’t yet found an explanation I believe, There are now no less than 7 million accurate atomic clocks on-line and there are also plenty of software to calibrate your computer and phone, but I haven't bothered trying them (yet!). What I have discovered is a great little site called TIME.is it give you a nice bold accurate digital clock and estimated the drift in time currently on your computer. The big bold numbers make synchronizing your camera and phone, within a second, nice and easy. I’ll leave sorting out the drift in the clocks and sub second calibration to you to figure out.

No Picnic

Google are closing Picnik on April 19, 2012 (very soon). If you use Picasa, Photobucket, Facebook or Flickr the chances are you have used and come to love Picnik. Google have in fact used many of the features of picnik in google+ photo creative kit but the users of the other packages might really miss picnic. Flickr has at least indicated they are working on an alternative, but I haven’t noticed an official notification of that yet.

For those looking for an alternative now, have a look at Aviary. It may not be as well integrated as picnik was but it does have a very comprehensive range of photo editing features available as standalone on PCs, web and mobile apps.

If you have photos still in a picnik account you can use the picnik takeout feature to download them to your computer (in a zip file).

Lightroom 4 Beta

A lot of people have been speculating about Lightroom 4, mainly because adobe has dropped the price on Lightroom 3. The speculation was justified because Lightroom 4 is now in beta testing release and available through Adobe labs for download (version valid until March 2012). This beta version is not the full feature beast that Lightroom 4 will become but is designed to give those wishing to test it or evaluate it a comprehensive feel of the new features. Most importantly it will run along side any previous version of Lightroom and not trash (or even touch) your existing catalogues!

As with any time you are testing out or trailing software it is a good idea not to use your original photo files. Make a copy and work on those … paraphrased from sound advice by Juleanne Kost

Julieanne does give a series of nice introductory videos, which will get you up to speed on several new features quickly.

Most other bloggers have focussed on the Book Module, which is is linked to producing photo books via the Blurb service, which is actually available in Australia but I have not tried yet.Something to look forward too.

I must admit I am trying out Lightroom 4 beta on a 64bit windows 7 machine, compared with a 32 bit vista machine running Lightroom 3 but it is much snappier. Perhaps also it is related to not having a big catalogue, My theory is adobe has finally taken out the go slow cards of the program (ok I’m being cynical)

The really big thing for me is the BASIC tonal controls are now  simplified and more like the way I go about sketching a scene. There are separate sliders for blacks, shadows, midtones (called exposure), highlights and white.  For colour & detail the three Presence sliders clarity, vibrance and staturation are a joy and the seem to stop before that weird “uncanny valley” style lurid effect a lot of (over) photoshoped images acquire. If you are having a look at the beta start with these few controls, These few controls really lift RAW images and I think this could be the key factors in more people shooting RAW.

The other (almost) gem in Lightroom 4 is the MAP which is a location based way to organize photos, it read gps details embedded with the photo (did you realize most smart mobile phones do this) or matches a gps coordinated waypoint file with your photos by time, or even drag and drop photos onto a maps. That location data is however only stored in the Lightroom catalogue and is not embedded in the images metadata.   That’s like using keywords, tags and labels and not including them in the photos metadata either. Oh hang on Lightroom doesn’t do that either. (You can include this metadata in a copy of the photo by exporting it or pressing Ctrl-S to storing it in the original, but I’ve gotten used to Picasa which updated the original with metadata straight away)

These are a couple of my personal observation after a day an a half or part time play. Don’t be put off by my cynical comments, Lightroom 4 is a great program. I’m sure there is more goodies to find so go check it out for yourself..