The Importance of the Physical

I’ve just been to the 25th birthday party of the monash gallery of art and shared some of the yummy birthday cake. Best of all the place was buzzing and not just with friends of the gallery, lots of kids where enjoying the photobooth and other activities or just running around in the wonderful surrounding outside. Not a soul with their eyes glued to their phone or iPad.The current exhibitions brings together some highlights of the mga photographic collection, which in turns includes many key photos in the Australian photography. The photos are hung in salon style and their physical presence is very powerful, and yet they display much originality and clarity in the essence of the subject captured. This is a very welcome change when so much of what is promoted as art is gobbled up on social media and small screens. Yet it is dominantly just look at me, wanna-be celebrity, copy cat stuff. It is a pleasure to step back a pace or two and contemplate good photography hung large (well 10” by 8” up) on a wall.

How many is too many?

This post on “Are There too Many Visual Artists Online?” by artpromotivate, touches on a few key issues that has been bugging me.  Flickr, Instagram & google+ are pumping out masses of imagery, …but

• How much of it is really art?
• Are there even enough collectors and collections to sustain the apparent explosion in artists and photographers?

The first key issues is that an image on the net is usually not the art work. So many think that once they see a small image on their screen they have seen the art. However this is not true the original art work has a physicality, that relates the scale it is produces and how its surface reacts in different lighting and position. A blown up photo hanging on a gallery wall will look quiet different to its reproduction on the net, no matter how much colour calibration has been done. I expect the true art and photography collectors and curators know this already and they are carefully about purchasing off the net. In other words physical art and brick and mortar galleries still have a place.

The second key issue is the decline of originality, this is really a personal view. The social web and the “look at me” celebrity obsessions are actually producing and facilitating an explosion of imitators, ok copy cats, and a lot of plagiarist (they just steal and  repost your work as their own). What was once original suddenly floods the bandwidth with lesser but superficially much the same works and boredom takes over. The general lack of attributions means that it is pretty much impossible to find the creative individual behind the avalanche of imitators. For a collector this is a real buyer beware situation. If you are a creative and have something really unique, but easily cloned, it might not be a place you want to set your work free within.

The final issue is simple exposure. Yes posting your art on the net can potentially get it seen by a much wider audience, even an international one. So go and join the online throng but remember the real buyers might be wary, and still prefer physical exhibitions and galleries. There is a real potential to have your creations copied into oblivion. Staying original and creative may be easier if you don’t join the crowd and support your local gallery.

Some extra thoughts on everpix

When I wrote up the previous post on everpix, it struck me that it might just be the right tool to give me a great way to create an easy to browse “thumbnail” catalogue (visual photo database) of my ever expanding expanding photo collection in two ways.

1. The first was to collect together my various on-line images in one place
2. The second was to tackle my archived collection, which is stored on an external USB

I quickly realised that one database wouldn’t really solve the two issues at once so I split my investigation into two parts. Firstly I tackled the on-line stuff which I have to admit everpix just lapped up, it was probably less than half an hour and I had the email your “collection is ready”. My main net sharng is on either flickr or blogger (and the images are stored in a picasa web album), these were both available along with twitter, gmail, facebook & instagram. I’m not sure if there are plans to be able to connect to other services, like photobucket or smugmug. However don’t get to excited yet everpix only syncs photos photos that are in named albums in picasa web album (or Google+) and defined Photosets in Flickr, not all photos! So far I like the Daily Flashback email, by default everypix sends you a retrospective  of photos you have taken (and in my case published) on that day in history (which may depends on how many bonus months you have if like me you are trying out the service via a free account). Perhaps the novelty could wear out soon. This everpix thumbnail catalogue is by default private, and so it should be, but it is very easy to share any photos you like (for example see my alleyways, gates & windows photo page). I will admit I have had a couple of glitches, like saying photos could not be displayed at the moment but I did opt to you used the WebP thumbnails and I do get a warning every time I log in to everpix.

I ended up adding another free account on a separate computer to tackle the issue of “taming” my private photo archive. In reality I already use and am happy with picasa to manage and view the jpeg versions of my photos, but I like the idea of being able to browse through a large collection, be guided to the highlights and have some smarts behind the scene grouping and refining what I see. The reality of everypix right now is it may promise something like that yet deliver something a little less utopian. I downloaded the Windows App and set it running.

Probably the most obvious problem I have run into is everpix is not fast (in fact it is very slow, after 10 days I have sync less than half my photos from two year (approx 47.000). I’m patient I’ll let it do its magic, I’d prefer slow and steady and low bandwidth needs anyway.

My photo collection is heavily key worded but I suspect the keywords (and possibly most embedded EXIF metadata) is not being included in the current syncing task, because the only grouping I can see are called moments (photos grouped automatically my time). Also all the photos are loaded in the original camera loaded format (see the tilted horizon lines in the screen capture below). This could be an issue for any “non destructive” photo manager.  Unfortunately everpix does not appear to read any of the picasa processing from the picasa.ini file in each folder in my archive. Since the PC version can not read lightroom I don’t know if the same issue applies with files processed with lightroom. Further at the current time everpix only syncs the jpeg format. When you click down to a single photo the extra information about the photo is on a “pull out” style panel on the left hand side and it only has a very limited set of details taken from the EXIF data, and surprisingly only the top directory level/folder so it is difficult to figure out actually where the photo is located. there are a few simple actions/option you can run and the paper aeroplane accesses the share options. I would like to see a bit more information here, like keywords and clickable links, such as to the original photo.

In the meantime I decided to try out Explore, everpix's “image analysis” which promises to group like photos and categories. The topic for PhotoFriday this week was Scenic Wonder.  So I clicked on the landscape and found that every photo had a dean flat horizon, not exactly wonder or even that scenic. Still I like the approach.

I was a little disappointed when I tried out the other categories (eg food shown below) Only two of the images actually included food and then only just, yet there are plenty of class plate shots in my photo collection to choose from. I was given the opportunity to help make everpix smarter by submitting feedback for photo that are not accurately analysed but it took me about 10 rejects before I got another picture of food (a fruit bowl). Still I’m keen to see if this is a “crowd sourced” approach that does actually bring real improvment.

So I think there is much promise here, only for me it falls short of my expectations. I’m still quiet puzzled why there isn’t a slideshow, an embeddable linking system, face recognition, geocoding, formal seach (or find) dialogue box    … ok I have a long list of desirables. Still I think everpix has great potential and for me on a chrome browser the photos where deiplays fast enough and smoothly, better than flickr at the moment. As a different way to collate, keep track and make sense of your on-line photo collection its worth a try now. To bring order to a mass of photos on your computer you will be currently better served but tradition photo management software like picasa or lightroom, and perhaps use everpix as a fun way to change your view.

One thing I did notice was that Michael Herf (one of the co-founders of Picasa) was a key investor in the everpix project and I get the impression that there is a deep respect and passion for photography in the everpix team. I wish then well but they have some work to do.

PS Unfortunately everpix is shutting down

What might Google+ mean for your Photos?

I know I wrote earlier, back in July,  about rumours that picasa web might be rebranded as google photo as it is bought into Google+.Then I kind of ignored the Google+ phenomena, but a few day ago I noticed my name, with a plus in front of it, at the top of the black menu bar in Gmail. If you have a gmail account I am sure you will see an secret invite like this has appeared in your account now that Google+ has good live. Clicking on that took be inside the new worlds of Google+. Actually at first look it is a relatively plain looking hybrid of twitter like posts (only longer) and something like flickr or tumblr. I have never seen the appeal in facebook so I will not make any comparisons to it. The three obvious enhancement are Photos (which is actually picasa web, viewed differently) Circles (a way to identify different grouping with your friend, family & colleagues and a very logical way to control your sharing with them) and Hangouts (a kind of private video/chat).

If you already have picasa, your will have a picasa web albums (and a lot of free photo space in the clouds) if you don’t it will be set up one for you. The only thing is it looks a bit different, lighter and some how cleaner in Google+ and now it has a special sub album for your phone photos.

The good news is when you upload from your phone, the photos are not shared with anyone, You have to explicitly choose to share anything. Be warned though sharing is easy.

You can make and share your own Circles so it also acts a bit like groups in flickr. Photographers have found this feature and already created a very bright and active community. To join in the vibe just offer to follow (a special type of circle where you read the public post of others without sending your post to them) a couple of photographers and just watch there posts.

The fact that sharing photos is so easy and their presence does liven up a very plain layout is probably why photographers have take so quickly to Google+ and why they quickly attract so many followers

There are also Hangouts these are small group video/chat conferences (usually about a specific theme, again watch out for some of the photographic hangouts. I haven’t really played with these much yet so no comment.


The main interaction with others in Google+ is view your Stream which is at the simplest level like a long twitter message and can be up to something like a full blog post. Pictures and links are super easy to add in. The whole thing is packaged around your Google Profile.


All of this you have probably already read somewhere, so here is a little extra I think was always design to be there but has been overtaken in the Hype. Google+ was designed with mobile devices in mind (not as an add on). The real sticking power for google+ may very well lie in the Google+ apps. Suddenly all those photos on your phone can be esily & instantly uploaded to your private photo album in the clouds and only shared with whom ever you want if you want. No more cables or card swapping. So forget the social network who-ha, at the very least Google+ is a very slick private smart cameraphone photo album that is free. (ok you must pay for network access but if you use WiFi that can be dirt cheap) and gives you good controls over whom and how your share those photos with others.

This short video probably will not help you find your way in Google+ but it will give a bit of insight into all the jargon above and why it was designed the way it is.

So where are the ads in Google+? I haven’t seen any yet.

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

Windows Live Update 2011, still fast

Windows Live 2011 update has already arrived in my computer, as an important update within the microsoft automated updates. Other than being a few months early (its still 2010 on my calendar) and only a few months after the last update I figured I probably should install and review it because it is the first non-beta version. Once the new Photo gallery was run it asked me again to download two codecs to be able to display RAW formats from my camera. The previous update had also ask for exactly the same updates and I thought I had installed them correctly, obviously not. Lets hope it works this time.

I actually I can not see a lot different to the recent beta update (it could be identical) it is still amazingly fast.


A big new feature I didn’t discuss before, is the face recognition, and particularly the batch people tagging which is simple, fast and efficient. Its accurate, except for baby and bride photos. A phenomena I had already noticed to myself in picasa’s face recognition. In my family at least cousins and old photos of their parents and even old photos of their grandparents as kids get muddle up a lot and each kid probably has two or three groups for them at different baby/toddler ages. An even stranger effect is with bribes. Whilst female family and friends have their own large clusters in the day to day photos, they will always have a different cluster for their wedding day. Does this mean the current state of face recognition thinks we all marry someone different on our wedding day.

At the more mundane level photo gallery does give you the right range of ways to organize your photos, ie by time, people,subject(tagging), rating and/or place (geotagging). At the moment only picasa also offers this flexibility (ok the old HP photo manager, now defunct, also had similar aspirations). Most of us are now collecting a large mass of digital photos probably rivaling iTunes if not exceeding it as the biggest disk space hog on our computer and it is very unlikely that we are keeping that collection organized. The traditional photo organizers, from Photoshop to the ones supplied with your camera are groaning, becoming sluggish if not failing under this glut. Combining the Organize features and Quick Find, right beside each other on the ribbon menu, will soon put you back in control.

If you want to get the latest version of Windows Live Essential 2011 use this link. You can just download the Photo gallery if you don’t want the other utilities. By the Way Windows 7 no longer includes utility photo manager or movie maker software in the operating system bundle, so it you are using windows 7 you probably should download it if you haven’t been encourage to do it yet.

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?

A much ado about nothing, or not!

Now that Microsoft's Vista operating system is rolled out expect to see a fair bit of hype about their "native" photo gallery/management features built into the software. They do look good but don't despair most of these features are already available in XP, or free downloadable packages like picasa. Seeing all the hype I feel a little series of post on what you can do now without vista is warranted. So watch this space for future posts



However if you want to follow the "official" vista story, check out Microsoft's own Photo Blog & Vista Blog