Getting back to Workspaces, where ever they are

 

I am getting more and more convinced that it is being familiar with your workspace and tools is much more important than following a specific workflow. For a creative, how is not an an artificial deadline, the key is being able to find what you want when you need it. That is what saves time and avoids distractions. In a recent status note on known, about the apparent need to “spring clean” my studio I strayed into the issue of roughly organized but not necessarily neat, I realized this applies to computer workspaces as well.

One of the biggest issues today with computing, information and photography becoming more mobile, is the really fundamental issue of where things are. They could be temporarily stored anywhere, on a phone, on one of several computers you have access to or even on the cloud (aka a web based service). The idea that they might be available from everywhere on everything is appealing but most of the offerings at the moment are not quiet magic just yet. I have found a few services that offer at least some rudimentary sharing across devices, my favourite is drop box its low fuss and automatic, The only draw back it is a free account so space is limited. I still like Box but it is a little more effort to use and find files.

I was warming to One Drive (aka SkyDrives) until a I ran into a security check, it would appeared access to my old skydrive stuff has been “quarantined” or lost. I can only assume this has happened in a recent “security” update in windows (and/or the OneDrive service) but it would have been nice to know it was happening, I’ve reconnected a couple of my computers but can’t seem to get the onedrive directory synched (although one note is synching perfectly and I can read my hotmail). So I thought I’d try connecting my older android (damn no longer compatible) C’est la vie. I won’t go into the details but google drive is in much the same camp for me, and surprising the android app is no longer compatible either. I no longer send photos its way, even though it is supposedly sharing the google+ photos space! So both these services fall short for me and I’m not using them either.

One refreshing trend, is that some Browser style software (like Perfect Photo Browser & AfterShot Pro) let you browse in these cloud location. Even File Manager lets you view them providing you have set up the little apps that create and synch directories on your computer. Providing you cloud places are not to large this is wonderful because you can visually scan what's there. Picasa lets you define how you an scan these drives. Other Software that has databases of images and metadata like Lightroom, have to import the images and this can be a hassle if your cloud place changes a lot.

  

This is all well and good for smallish numbers of files, a quick scan of thumbnails is normally all that is required to find the group of photos or photo you were after. It start to become unworkable if you have a lot of images on the cloud spread across several services. I had started to fall into that trap but I’m pulling back. Google+ photos attempt with autobackup to bring all your photos and posts onto their web server and adobe’s are not real solutions for me. Each has some nice features but keeping track of photos could be a lot better.

The cloud is a good place to shares and exchange photos, and browsers that let you see then in conjunction with larger photo collection are a step in the right direction, but storage on-line has a fair way to go, at least for me.

The best solution for me at the moment is still to have a logical network drive (I use the letter S: for Scrapbook, actually the directory name is photo Scrapbook) which I link on all the PCs on my network. (I haven’t figured a way to get my phone connected, but I am considered linking part of it at least to Dropbox.). Do have a scrapbook area on each of my traveling laptops, but I regularly synch these and my recent photos from Dropbox back to the share directory. This directory is backed up to my NAS, but I end up heavily culling this area, since my original photos are archived elsewhere. I only keep the better post processing, and special events stuff. I haven’t figured out the best way to archive this stuff (yet!) so the collection is growing.

Even More Mistresses

Not content with have a number of photo managers (aka Mistresses) that don’t really get along, I just noticed that I have a growing line of “cloud storage” courtesans vying for my attention, my files, many of which are photos and a bit more bandwidth demand for syncing (slowing start up). Whilst I used to use BOX and Google Drive extensively, I must admit I have moved to dropbox for things photographic, and specifically for syncing photos from my phone. Its really easy and automatic (I have set my android up to upload any photos whenever the phone finds a WiFi link).

Whilst in theory Google Drive is integrated with Google+ photos (& Picasa Web Albums) in practice I’m still a bit lost and haven’t use it for photos in quiet a while. The update of Skydrive to One Drive, seems to be in name mainly and a little bit of cleaning up the interface. Like Skydrive it does have photo friendly features.

I’m no closer to choosing one over the others and will probably keep using which ever is appropriate for my current needs on an ad hoc basis.

CNet’s Sarah Mitroff, has a good summary of the offerings of these four cloud storage services.

Skydrive to OneDrive is it only a name change?

I have been using, and liking the photo storage and sharing of SkyDrive for a long while now. However it has been an On/Off style relationship, DropBox has kind of taken over a lot of the uses I had been using Skydrive for. I was interested to see a little alert email to say SkyDrive will be changing its name To OneDive, so I went to investigate any likely changes. It looks just like a marketing issue to promote the Microsoft’s offerings as “One place for everything in your life” more than anything really new.

Reading between the lines and a few other blog posts I think OneDrive could easily be initially promoted as yet another on-line backup place. They will be offering ways to “earn” extra storage, either through referring friends (like drop box) or using one of their “camera roll backup” apps, which will take all the images from your phone into the OneSky cloud.   These offerings are unlikely to excite early SkyDrive adopters (like me) who already have a massive 25GB of storage, which I understand will not expire. SkyDrive already has some photo organizing features, so I’m interested to see if they can avoid rather than create the on-line mess phenomena.

Photos in the clouds

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list, just a starting point, prompted by the recent upgrades to skydrive & google+. The following services all offer free cloud storage, have a decent TOS (terms of service) that mean you still own the copyright to your files (unlike other  Social Net service like Facebook & Instagram who assume they own the copyright to anything you upload, others strip out your metadata) . They have private/public sharing options that you control.. All can be used from a variety of computers and mobile devices (apps are available for most devices) and all have the ability to mirror the cloud storage across your own computer device (desktops, laptops, phones, tablets). In other words all offer a decent service.

Drop Box	2GB
Box	5GB
GMail, Google Drive Picasa/Google+ Photo	15GB*
SkyDrive/Outlook/(Hotmail)	25GB*

* Shared space

Cleary Forty Seven gigabytes of space is a lot. How does that relate to how many photos you can save, its approximately twenty four thousand  (or more) jpeg files of the size taken by compact cameras and smart phones, Around three thousand three hundred full sized RAW files, as taken by recent high megapixel model DSLR cameras or four hundred & seventy five-ish HD movie clips (30second to 2minues) or eleven and three quarter eight gigabyte SD cards. So if your an occasional IPhone snapper that’s probably a life time of memories but for a professional photographer it could be just.a few days or a weeks worth of their photographic work. The rest of us will fit somewhere in between and I suspect it will be bandwidth that arbitrates how quickly our photos fill the clouds, but I’m now sure they will.

  

New features for photo display on SkyDrive

I have been struggling a little trying to use adobe’s creative cloud, to provide a “private” place in its cloud to collaboratively share some collections of art and photos, with a very select group of my colleagues. Of course keeping anything “private” (by which I mean only share with those I want) on the net is not a trivial issue. Some the complexity may or may not be “user” related (ie me not understanding). However the issues have been incredibly frustrating because this is exactly what creativity in the cloud is all about. Perhaps I’ll post more on this sad journey later. For now I just gave up and went looking for a better way to share a select collection of my work to just a few people, and there are plenty of options, drop box, google drive and even flickr. As part of this I had a relook at skydrive (after abandoning it for a while). What a surpise, not only is the UI neater and crisper, there are two new display formats that microsoft have snuck into skydrive!

 
The first is an All Phones option under the main menu on the left hand side. This shows all the photos on your skydrive (as an alternative to looking at each folder into which they are loaded). Organized as a date base timeline (not unlike the default way picasa organises your photos on your computer). Once you select an image there is a new, filmstrip dark style, a cross between lightroom and google+ lighbox view. Both these views are very neat and give you a better on-line experience with your photo collection.  The free 25GB of storage should be another encouragement to use SkyDive as your cloud based photo place.

The big advantage of going sky drive for your “private” place in the clouds is the number of ways that can you can share (or not) your folders. This is not a new feature, you have always been able to control access at the folder level, now you can also just give access to selected photos via email, or selected social networks such as facebook & twitter (but then the photo will no longer be “private”!)

An interesting catch 22

I was researching some updates to hotmail/outlook/skydrive, which involved logging into messenger. which is also to be retired soon (8th April) and replaced by skype, and I got this invitation on the right to upgrade to hotmail, which I seldom use and just set up originally to access skydrive. Hotmail is being upgraded to outlook.com. OK, sounds simple!What follows is an endless loop of swapping from one message to the other. Even when you select maybe later, you get to see Hotmail for a few seconds then “opportunity to upgrade”" pops up again.

At the moment at least skydrive doesn’t seem to be in the line of change, and the photo folders are still work very nicely. I feel that for the average person it is a very photo friendly solution, particular for those using windows 8. I maintain a small number of albums of photos I want to privately share, or access from whichever computer I’m using. I’ve also found that having a photo scrapbook area, which contains working projects and in-progress photo collections, both in the cloud and at the same time synced across my computers is actually simpler than having to move files around my network myself. Importantly I only have to delete the working copies in one location, and everything gets cleaned up in the background syncing. Unfortunately the new “official” sky drive app for android isn’t compatible with my older wildfire phone, so I haven’t tried that out

Uploading photos from a camera phone without a cable (or a computer)?

This is probably the most widely unasked question for new smart phone users. Well smartphone users over maybe 30, those with 20 somethings or teenagers in house possible already know how to upload to facebook or share with the world on twitter. Older folk generally only want to upload their photos so they can make prints and share with just a few family members, not the world. Looking through phone manual (if it hasn’t already been thrown out) often draws a blank look and frustration, perhaps even diverting attention towards some additional accessory cable and software.

Well if you have web access on your phone (via 3G or 4G on the phone or WiFi) you will be able to make use of one of many cloud based webservices to transfer  from your phone to where ever you want. The tricky bit is making sure your privacy is maintained. Most such services are free up to a certain storage limit and you need to read the terms and conditions carefully. The first options, which I have chosen to call the big three, really depend on which computer and software you want to use to store and manage your photo collection.

1. Picasa and Picasa Web Albums, (also known as Google+ photos to google+ users) its been around for a while now an is well tested and stable (ok the google+ apps are still in flux). You will need to download either the Official google+ app (best option if you don’t already have a picasa web album) or one of the picasa “tools” apps around (is you do have a web album). To be honest I removed the google+ app from my phone recently (read why) but picasa is probably the easiest place to start. If you don’t want google+ involved google also offer the Google Drive, a cloud based storage/exchange which is photo aware.

2. Windows Live Photo Gallery & Skydrive, which you may have already if you have investigated hotmail recently. Microsoft just announced today that they are phasing out hotmail to be replaced by outlook.com. Fortunately the skydrive connection, which is a cloud based exchange & storage, is also well integrated into that and with both mobile & PC based apps. This is a very nicely integrated combination and ideal for dedicated windows PC users.


3. IPhone, IPad, ICloud and apple MAC, despite the claims of universal sharing this is a bit of a closed shop for the apple fans. To be honest I’m not a fan and will therefore keep my opinions to myself, if you are apple oriented and have all these devices then ICloud is the way to go. If you just have an IPhone both of the previous choices are still valid, because free IPhone apps are available for those services.

If you want to stay away from the big three, there are still plenty of options. Flickr already has a comprehensive set of ways to upload photos from your phone. If you are using a free account remember you can only see the last 200 photos uploaded and there is a month size limit, but you have a lot of control about privacy and sharing and access to a range of print service via snapfish. Photobucket  also has several ways to directly upload from your phone, and again the free signup doesn’t give you access to all facilities.  Both give you access to on-line editing factilities, so you only need web access not a dedicated computer. Today even the local photo processor or photo kiosk at your local shopping centre can offer an upload service from you phone and remember that they can also write the photos to a CD or a web album, instead of or as well as printing the photos.

So stop worrying about all those photos on your phone, get them moving through the cloud, now!

A proper connection to SkyDrive

I must admit I have only just had a look at the on-line Windows 8 Consumer Review, but the one feature that did strike me as something they have finally got right is the integration of Skydrive. Right now you need to get to SkyDrive via Windows Live Gallery (if you don’t have it it can be downloaded for free from here) or use the Web based access via Hotmail/Windows Live Messenger. The windows Live Gallery is fine for photos and give you a web Album, but you have to remember and manage the two locations. The integration in Windows 8 appears to make the issue of weather you have the file on your computer or in the cloud irrelevant, their slogan is your windows, everywhere.
The other area that may be of most interest to photographers will be what apps are available, I expect there to be a great rush of Photocentric apps developed by third party, probably a lot more or the same as those currently available for the android or Iphone/Ipad. So do you really want to want to run something that runs on your phone on your PC as well? Probably yes because you really need more screen real estate to get the most out of most photo applications. Also a few apps might give you all the photo processing you want and needed and this will be much cheaper than a blotted photo/image software package that costs the earth and takes for ever to learn how to use.
There is a beta version of widows 8 (its a pre release trial rather than a true beta release) that you can download and test now. You can even create a portable version that can be booted from a USB key or external drive. This will be of most use for those wanting to develop apps for this new platform.
The interface, based on the Metro design language, looks a lot more tablet or touchscreen oriented than I expected and yet disturbingly familiar! Then I realised I had seen it before, its exactly like the XP version of Windows Media Center, which I actually still like and use because I can work it from the couch via a remote. I have an older PC connect to my wide flat screen TV and it is perfect to show family and friends Slide shows and home movie.

Less Stressful Uploading

One methods of uploading my photos as I travel that have proved much more reliable are Picasa's web album. I only have a small Toshiba netbook onto which I load my photographs, daily or more frequently if needed. The netbook works well with most Wi-Fi connections I have tried, even though most have been slow. I have Picasa on the notebook to organize the photos as I go and also daily make a copy of the photos onto a backpack style portable hard disk. I have also found that the Picasa's green upload button does reliably upload photo, albeit slowly, and it will also resize the file on the fly. I can also selected to upload by date or use a number of albums I have set up and control weather the photos are private or available to public view. The panorama album below is one of my albums

European Panorama

Heads in the clouds

Web Based Photo Editors and Organizers are coming of age. Over the past year it has become truly possibly to upload, fix up and share your photos without first transferring them to a computer.

On-line Photo Editors

The review of these 4 Web apps at Appstorm.net suggest that you might not always need the power of Photoshop, just to crop an image or do some simple adjustments and I whole heartedly agree. All these web based system give you a lot of power to enhance and manipulate photographic images. Either by an upload direct from mobile phones, webcam, photo directly off cameras, even your computer or possibly the URL of you cloud based album. Picnik is very well integrated into Flickr, Box.net and Picasa Web Album and I have used it from time to time. All four Web Apps have free offerings are all impressive, some have phone Apps you can download to your phone.

Web/Clouds based Albums & Storage

     

These three services have free starter versions and give you a lot for nothing. Further they have the things needed for Photo organization built in. Picasa web is probably the best choice is you also use Picasa on your computer, SkyDrive might be better for those using the Windows Live Photo Gallery, both offer a whopping 20 to 25GB of space free. Box.net a little different it only offers 5GB of free storage (and that’s for the personal account, that’s still a lot of space if you keep you images smallish), it is first and foremost an easy way to share conventional files, documents etc but photos are fine, between you personal devices, but it has nice collaborative sharing of folders, tagging files and preview of images and integrated picture editing via picnik and files can be linked to an embedded in other sites such as blogs facebook etc..

Instagr.am is a major hit on iPhones, It rates its self as fast, beautiful and fun. You just upload you photo, add some cuteness (aka filters) and publish on Facebook, Twitter or Flickr. My opinion is there is a lot of hype, little substance, it is as shallow as it sounds, but certainly enjoy it if that is what you want to do with your phone photos.

I have actually left out a lot of web album services, especially the commercial ones associated with printing your photo. It doesn’t mean these service are not worth using. For example I am warming to snapfish, it is fast and efficient and well integrated into the things I use like Flickr, Picasa and Live Photo Gallery ideal for everyday style prints. I still like the custom labs for blow ups and exhibition quality Prints.

Of course you do still need a computer, netbook, smart phone of iPad to access these services but that can be anywhere, a cyber cafe, library, WiFi hotspot you no longer have to be home and at your desk based computer

The exhibition is over

After admitting on Radio, to Lindy Burns, that I take lots of pictures each day, saying “I take anything my camera is pointed at at the time” which “disturbed” even Tony Moclair. Well it isn’t really that bad you should be able to see, looking back through this blog, that I still find time to investigate interesting things and exhibit my work. Normal photographer type behaviour.

Speaking of which. The Fractured Thread Exhibition is over. Despite all the photographers and friends at the opening (thanks for coming folks) there are only a few images mainly captured by accident, Enough to make a suitably fractured collage.

I also wanted to finally get around to testing out the Windows Live Photo Gallery share tools. It was really fast and easy, just had to do the Authorization thing for flickr first, and I took the opportunity to change the image size from original to max 1600pixel wide. Not only does this save bandwidth, it makes it less likely that you will find your image used in an ad campaign, without your permission.

The real GEM in these Window’s Live share tools is the SkyDrive upload. It is not as good as having your sky drive as a network drive letter, but it is simple easy to use and fast. Much easier and faster than the previous default methods, using old fashioned web pages with logins and “empty”upload dialogue pop up screens. Now it is select the photo (or photos) follow by two key clicks, on the Create & then Publish/Skydrive icons. Ok there is still one pop dialogue screen but you usually just have to click on the Publish key. For me at least this means that SkyDrive is now worthwhile using the 25 Giga Bytes that sky drive offers, for cloud based backup (not archiving) and sharing

New Windows Live Photo Gallery (Beta)

The new Beta is available for Windows Live essentials (its kind of hidden away so here is a link to download it now). One of the new items is a revamp of Live Photo Gallery. One thing I noticed straight away is that it is extremely fast (compared with Picasa & Photoshop organiser) and I mean lightening fast. Maybe I just haven’t loaded enough photos into it yet! Ok while writing this, I got live gallery to scan this PC and external USB Drive for photos, it did it in less than 10 minutes, around quarter of a million images, that’s really good (two hours faster than PSE organiser)  and it is still fast.

So “Is it a good Photo Manager?”

Certainly YES. Window Live Photo Gallery has all the basic editing functions (plus a decent noise reduction filter) It supports organisation by Date/Time (the default), People (but a manumatic face recognition) General Tags and Geotags, it even keeps track of what you have “published” to the web and where. It has tags, captions and a 5 star rating system. It also has nice features to appropriately resize for emails, to publish directly to facebook & flickr and even makes maintain backups and shareable albums on you own personal Sky Drive. It has a very simple easy to use camera import facilities and seems to handle of  the image and Video format I have tried. I did have to download some extra Codec for my Raw files (BTW the Pentax Supplied Codec only work in Vista or windows 7). So if you have a microsoft Vista or Windows 7 based PC, a new digital camera and/or a camera phone you should consider downloading it now, its free!

Is it as good as Photoshop?

Well NO, but… Photo shop has way more features,  PS & PSE are expensive and spoken of with great reverence by many bloggers and expert photographers. However I can also let you into an unspoken truth, the Photoshop family of photo editors, perhaps with the exception of lightroom are blotted, chronically slow and can be extremely tedious to learn and use efficiently. Yet PhotoShop can do some magic in the right hands and make other packages look ordinary in comparison. So for the vast majority of new camera user who don’t want to spend hours tweaking their photos or don’t already have Photoshop and one or more of those many glossy How to Photoshop books, Live Photo Gallery is much easier to use software to start with and its free.

Ok then “Its it a Picasa Killer App?”

Probably NOT. It doesn’t have a lot of the feature Picasa offers, like automatic face recognition, printing large posters, collages, HTML web galleries, screen savers, making movies from still images, backup & Gift CD/DVDs and the nice integration with the On-line Picasa Web Album, with its well thought out security/collaboration options. I’m sure there are more features I’ve overlooked, Picasa is an established and well liked application, something I would still highly recommend to a new digital camera owner. The one thing loyal picasa users are complaining about in all the forums at the moment is how slow picasa is getting, and I agree. The integration of Sky Drive into Live Photo Gallery gives you a personal place for photographic albums & archives in the Cloud, this is possibly its best and most important differentiating feature.  Live Photo Gallery does have a nice Panoramic photo stitcher built in and good integration with Photosynth.  So I think this upgrade to Live Photo Gallery is very timely and it has some great potentials and I for one will be running it on my desktop PC in parallel with picasa for a while to come.

Movie Maker, Live Mail and Messenger have also had decent overhauls and Live Writer, which I am using to make this blog post now has the new office style ribbon. So do they all. I’m not really sold on the Ribbon, I was quiet happy back in the office XP/2003 style menus.

Did I mention Live Photo Gallery is fast?