ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements © 2007
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Welcome to the 436th issue of the PC Improvement News. PCIN consists mainly of news highlights and tips. There is something for everyone, and if this is your first issue, I'm sure there will be something for you. If you give me two or three issues, I know that you will come back for more!
You can reach me at editor@pcin.net with any suggestions or comments.
Support PCIN at http://PCIN.net/donate.php
My family complained that my opening thoughts haven't been very exciting lately. Sorry! I guess I just don't have many exciting things to share. I think what they are actually concerned about is that I haven't mentioned them by name in a while. I can fix that... My dad Brian has a birthday next Wednesday. My mother Marsha would like to have a birthday party for him either Saturday or Sunday. I purchased a used laptop off my sister Andrea (the one who works at Best Buy). My sister Julia (the one who lives with us) still lives with us. Lisa had a long day today with Andrew and Matthew. They seemed to have an endless supply of energy and she put them to bed at 6:30 pm. My grandmother Muriel (we call her Nanny) made it to her 90th birthday last month, and is aiming for more. My sister Brianna is hard at work at university. And of course there is Alisa, Jason, Poppy, Jeff, Evy, Ryan, Lillie, and Lauren. Phew! Did I get them all :-)
A little more about the laptop... It's a Compaq Evo N600c that is 4 years old. It still runs well and will do what I need it to do. I thought about it and this is the 3rd laptop I've owned. Many years ago I had an IBM Thinkpad (486 CPU and 100MB hard drive). About 5 years ago I had a different Compaq laptop while I was at school. Now I have this one. I recently saw one in a Dell flier that was $4300! That costs a little more than I paid my sister for the current Compaq one.
Graham editor@pcin.net and Chris chris@pcin.net
U.S. servers slurp more power than Mississippi
It's no secret that the servers behind every Web 2.0 company, bank Internet site and corporate e-mail system are consuming ever larger amounts of power. But now a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study to be released Thursday has quantified exactly how much.
Servers in the United States and their attendant cooling systems consumed 45 billion kilowatt-hours of energy in 2005. That's more than Mississippi and 19 other states, according to study author Jonathan Koomey, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and consulting professor at Stanford University.
And the computers' electricity appetite is still growing fast.
Flame First, Think Later: New Clues to E-Mail Misbehavior
Jett Lucas, a 14-year-old friend, tells me the kids in his middle school send one other a steady stream of instant messages through the day. But there's a problem.
"Kids will say things to each other in their messages that are too embarrassing to say in person," Jett tells me. "Then when they actually meet up, they are too shy to bring up what they said in the message. It makes things tense."
Jett's complaint seems to be part of a larger pattern plaguing the world of virtual communications, a problem recognized since the earliest days of the Internet: flaming, or sending a message that is taken as offensive, embarrassing or downright rude.
How to avoid spam avalanche
The tech quandary for many small businesses isn't about building a better website or when to buy Microsoft's new Vista operating system. It's an old problem managers thought they'd already licked: spam.
Unwanted commercial e-mail has surged in recent months as online fraudsters, bogus pharmaceutical suppliers and others send billions of pieces of spam engineered to pierce defenses at companies of all sizes. The share of e-mail deemed junk rose as high as 80% last month from as low as 47% in September, says software security firm Symantec.
Set your White and Black Point - Digital Photography Tip of the Week
There are a few steps I do to almost all of my images after I have captured them. Over the next couple of weeks, I will go over some of them, step by step.
The first step to obtaining a great final image is setting your black and white points. Most, but not all photographs can be improved by modifying how the tones are represented in the image by adjusted the brightest parts of the image to pure white and the darkest to pure black, or very close.
In this first image, you can see how the image looked before any modifications to the image were made. The photo does not have a lot of impact, lacks the white tones we expect to see from a scene with snow and even the shadows lack impact. The first step to setting your black and white points is to create a Levels adjustment layer which I have begun to do on the right. Adjustment layers let you modify your image without changing the actual pixels. This is an important step to a good digital workflow as it allows you to make changes later to the decisions you make now on how you want your image to look. Also, your final image will be of better quality because you will only make one change to your image data instead of many. To add a Levels adjustment layer, click on the black and white circle above the layer in your layers palette (F7) and choose Levels ...
The Levels dialog box shows a histogram which displays visually in graph form where the tones in your image fall between black and white. Points on the left of the graph represent the dark tones of your images and points on the right represent the white tones of your image. To set the white point, simply slide the white arrow below the graph to the left. As you do so, your image will change to reflect the adjustment you are making. Holding down the ALT key on your keyboard can aid in deciding where to place your whites. When you hold the ALT key down, the image will turn black and as the slider is moved to the left, the pieces of of your image that are clipped to pure white will turn white. You may also see other colours, red, green and blue representing one or more channels of the image being clipped. If you let go of the ALT key, you can see the image with it's white point set.
Similarly, holding the ALT key and clicking on your black point slider will turn the image white and then the areas black as they are clipped. While the ALT method is a good indicator of where pure white and pure black will appear in your photograph, it is still best to visually determine where you want white and black. With this photo of drifting snow, the shadows of the drifts would be the first areas to become pure black, but that change would not help this particular photograph as it does better without a pure black in the photo. A word of caution: areas that have been clipped will not contain any texture, only a solid white or black and so should be selected carefully.
The final image as shown above now shows whiter whites and more natural shadows. A more pleasing image all around. There is still texture in the whites of the middle ridge and the only area's being completely clipped in this image are the specular highlights in the snow that do not show up in this small image.
Next week I will discuss using layer masks for selective editing.
I will be at the Holiday Inn on Grand Island, NY this weekend attending the annual Niagara Frontier Regional Camera Clubs convention. Featured speakers include Darrell Gulin, Jack Graham, Patti Rusotti and other. We have a great line up for the weekend and tickets are still available. For more information, visit the NFRCC website.
Until next time, Happy Shooting.
Leave a comment on this week's Digital Photography Tip of the Week
The digital photography tip of the week is written by the PCIN Assistant Editor, Chris Empey. Chris is a long time photographer and is currently the President of the Niagara Falls Camera Club. You can see more of his photography at his Photo of the Day website.
If you have a tip to send Chris, or a question about digital photography he can address in the newsletter, send it to chris@pcin.net.
Check out these new or updated pages on the PCIN.net site:
Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 and Adobe Premier Elements 3.0 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/photoshopEL5_Premiere3.phpExpoDisc White Balance Filter Review
http://PCIN.net/help/hardware/expodisc.phpParagon Software Group Partition Manager 8.0 Professional Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/ppm8.phpUpdate PCIN.net home page with "Top 10 Most Popular..." features
http://PCIN.net/Microsoft Digital Image Suite Plus Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/msdimagesuiteplus.php
Send To Toys 2.5
I read about this on Pirillo's Picks...
Send To Toys is an enhancement of the Send To system menu.
- Send To Toys Control Panel Applet allows you to manage the Send To system menu content, and configure the various Send To Toys settings.
- "Add to Send To menu" and "Remove from Send To menu" allows you to personalize the Send To system menu for drives, folders, and programs.It's got all sorts of great options. Check it out!
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom now for Sale at Adobe.com
Photoshop Lightroom, the much anticipated new software from Adobe is now available for purchase from the Adobe Store. Developed for professional photographers who need to manage and adjust large volumes of photographs, Lightroom allows quick and easy adjustment to a large number of images from a variety of formats.
Watch here for review of Adobe Lightroom in the future.
DVD Flick
I've seen this mentioned on several sites lately. DVD Flick is an open source DVD authoring tool:
DVD Flick aims to be a simple but at the same time powerful DVD Authoring tool. It can take a number of video files stored on your computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your DVD player, Media Center or Home Cinema Set. You can add additional custom audio tracks as well as subtitles of your choice.
Both of us have other sites other than PCIN.net. These are all sites that we are actively involved in (they aren't client sites). Don't forget to check them out from time to time for updates:
PCIN is brought to you by Graham Wing. The opinions expressed are those of the Editor, Graham Wing and the Assistant Editor, Chris Empey. Graham Wing and Chris Empey accept no responsibility for the results obtained from trying the tips in this newsletter.
Graham Wing can be reached at editor@pcin.net
Chris Empey can be reached at chris@pcin.net
Copyright 1998-2007, Graham Wing. All rights reserved.
This publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, as long as the author is notified and the newsletter is presented as is.
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