New, tips, and more
From Wired START:
Sure, you could fill your video iPod with episodes of Knight Rider from iTunes for $2 a pop. Or you could save some cash - and your soul - and fill it with files you convert from your DVD collection using freely available software. Problem is, you’d have to break the law. Though it’s theoretically OK to back up DVDs for personal use, it’s illegal to override commercial copy protection, a necessary step in the process. Proceed at your own risk.
From TechRepublic:
How do you bring the Internet to countries like Mali, where more than 70 percent of the population is illiterate and the telecommunications infrastructure barely exists?
You use the radio.
Equipped with dust-resistant PCs, digital audio broadcasting equipment and antennas assembled from salvage, local radio broadcasters are emerging as ersatz Internet service providers in the West African nation, thanks in part to a program initiated by Geekcorps, a U.S.-based not-for-profit organization dedicated to cultivating high-tech skills and businesses in the world’s emerging nations.
The latest LangaList newsletter talks about caring for laptop batteries:
Your best bet is to start with the laptop vendor’s site to see what the official recommendations are: Check their web site for detailed care-and-feeding info. But then cross-reference that info with an objective, third-party source who’s not trying to sell you anything. A general resource like http://www.batteryuniversity.com/ , or the more-in-depth sites it can link you to, may be useful.
Battery University seems quite helpful. Check it out!
Adobe has released Photoshop Elements 4.0 for Macintosh. We recently reviewed Elements 4.0 for Windows. Amazon.com is selling 4.0 for Mac for 79.99, and there is a $20 rebate for existing customers.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 for Macintosh Delivers Editing Magic to Digital Photo Enthusiasts
New version of No. 1 selling consumer photo-editing software* provides innovative tools to creatively enhance and share photos
SAN JOSE, Calif. ? Feb. 27, 2006 ? Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:
ADBE) today announced Adobe� Photoshop� Elements 4.0 for Macintosh, an all-in-one photo editing and creation solution for Macintosh users.
Consistently ranked as the No. 1 selling consumer photo-editing software, Photoshop Elements 4.0 maintains its popularity by merging powerful digital photo editing capabilities with easy-to-use tools, allowing photo enthusiasts to quickly and creatively enhance their photos for sharing.“Photoshop Elements for Mac delivers the features photo enthusiasts need to make their pictures stand out from the crowd,? said Deborah Whitman, vice president of product management for Digital Imaging at Adobe. ?The Magic Extractor is an example of the power consumers have to seamlessly extract one image out of a photo and easily drag and drop it into another photo, so it looks like it has always been there. Adobe?s continued investment in imaging innovation ensures our customers get the most out of today?s powerful digital SLRs and point-and-shoot cameras.?
Expert Adjustments in Less Time
New tools such as Magic Selection Brush, Skin Tone Adjustment, Magic Extractor and Auto Red Eye Removal easily correct common photography problems and continue the Adobe tradition of innovation in Photoshop Elements 4.0 for Mac.
The new Magic Selection Brush quickly selects specific parts of a photo for easy color, lighting, and contrast adjustments; Skin Tone Adjustment allows consumers to get more realistic skin colors in just moments; and the Magic Extractor easily removes subjects from photos and offers advanced edge de-fringing, for scrapbooking and fun composites like adding the pet dog to a family vacation photo. Improved Red Eye Removal instantly corrects red eye in any photo with one click.
For consumers who want more power, Photoshop Elements 4.0 for Mac offers a sampling of the more advanced editing options found in the professional level Adobe Photoshop CS2, such as expanded 16-bit editing and basic Camera Raw support for non-destructive photo editing. Photoshop Elements 4.0 ensures users will be able to open their precious memories for years to come without worrying about proprietary camera formats by supporting the universal Digital Negative format (.DNG).
Photos at Your Fingertips
The File Browser has been updated to the new Adobe Bridge for Elements to make photo browsing quicker and easier. Its Folder View simplifies adding, deleting or moving images in hard drive folders. Full-screen mode, which doubles as a slideshow, enables consumers to easily compare and choose favorite photos from a hard drive or other media.
Adobe Bridge for Elements also supports metadata searches for all photos taken with a flash, with a certain shutter speed or f-stop, or by the camera make and model. Smart search filters can also be created for commonly searched files or stored as reusable Collections.
Share and Enjoy Your Images
New to Photoshop Elements 4.0, integrated Adobe Photoshop Services make it simpler than ever to order professional-quality Kodak prints and beautiful hardbound photo books. A variety of printing options allow users to create contact sheets and customize picture package layouts for creative sharing.
Photoshop Elements 4.0 is part of a complete family of Photoshop products that meet the needs of a diverse spectrum of digital photographers: the free Photoshop Album Starter Edition for the novice digital camera user; Photoshop Elements for the digital photography enthusiast; and Photoshop
CS2 for the professional or the most demanding amateur and professional photographers. Each product offers customers more growth and creative control, giving them access to award-winning technology and options for more sophisticated editing, organization and sharing options for their digital photos.Pricing and Availability
Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 for Mac (Mac OS X 10.3 or 10.4) is available for pre-order at www.adobe.com and will be available in early March 2006 at other major electronics retailers, including Amazon.com, Apple Stores, Circuit City, CompUSA, CompuSmart, Fry?s and J&R, for an estimated street price of US$89.99. For Windows� users, Adobe offers Photoshop Elements 4.0 for Windows for an estimated street price of US$99.99.
Information about the other language versions, as well as pricing, upgrade, and support policies for other countries is available on www.adobe.com. For more information, customers can call 1-800-492-3623.
About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information ?
anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.# # #
*Source: The NPD Group/NPD Techworld, January 2003 ? December 2005
� 2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Photoshop and are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.
Macintosh is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries. Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
I’m sure you’ve all heard about the new Google Page Creator Beta. When I heard about it a few days ago, I went to sign up for an account, and as is usually the case, with their beta releases, they had stopped allowing new sign-ups. I went again today, and was able to login with my existing Google Account, and started to create a page. You can see it at http://gawing.googlepages.com/
It is nice enough to use, but I’m not sure what their target user base is. Who is going to use it?
From the New York Times:
Most people who use e-mail now know enough to be on guard against “phishing” messages that pretend to be from a bank or business but are actually attempts to steal passwords and other personal information.
But there is evidence that among global cybercriminals, phishing may already be passé.
In some countries, like Brazil, it has been eclipsed by an even more virulent form of electronic con — the use of keylogging programs that silently copy the keystrokes of computer users and send that information to the crooks. These programs are often hidden inside other software and then infect the machine, putting them in the category of malicious programs known as Trojan horses, or just Trojans.
From the New York Times:
It may well have been the best 99 cents Alex Ostrovsky ever spent.
Early yesterday, he paid that amount to download “Speed of Sound,” a song on the Coldplay album “X&Y,” from the iTunes Music Store, the Internet music shop that Apple Computer started less than three years ago.
He did not know it, but it was the billionth song the site had sold, and Apple was not about to let that go unnoticed.
So at 12:45 a.m., Mr. Ostrovsky’s phone rang. It was an Apple employee, telling him that in addition to the song, Apple was giving him a 20-inch iMac, 10 iPods and a $10,000 gift card for the iTunes store. It is even establishing a scholarship at the Juilliard School in his name.
Mr. Ostrovsky, 16, was still trying to absorb it all yesterday. His phone had been ringing all day, alternating between reporters wanting to know his reaction and friends wanting to congratulate him.
From the New York Times:
A recent federal court decision in California might undermine a pillar of defense for Google in its dispute with publishers and authors who are challenging the company’s right to scan books that are still under copyright.
Representatives of publishers and authors who have filed lawsuits against Google over its Book Search program said they believed that the decision raised questions about a case that Google had cited in its defense of the Book Search program.
Some intellectual property lawyers agree. “I think the judge’s decision completely sets up the case the authors have against Google,” said Karen S. Frank, a partner at Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin, a San Francisco law firm, who is not involved in the lawsuit.
From eWeek:
A small Canadian university has ruled out campus-wide wireless Internet access because its president fears the system’s electromagnetic forces could pose a risk to students’ health.
Lakehead University, in Thunder Bay, Ontario, has only a limited Wi-Fi connections at present, in places where there is no fiber-optic Internet connection. And that, according to president Fred Gilbert, is just fine.
“The jury is still out on the impact that electromagnetic forces have on human physiology,” Gilbert told a university meeting last month, insisting that university policy would not change while he remained president.
I have been discussing night photography in the past few tips, including helpful equipment and shooting techniques for great night shots. I will finish up the series today with some tips about when to shoot, using flash, a technique called dragging the shutter, and 2nd curtain sync.
Using flash for night photography can be helpful, but usually only for illuminating near subjects. The built in flash on cameras are only powerful enough to effectively light a subject up to 20 feet away at best. Using flash on automatic mode, you will end up with photos that exhibit ‘deer in the headlights’ syndrome. The subject will be illuminated nicely, but the rest of the photo will be black. So, how do you compensate for that? This is where manual mode pays off. But first, let me explain the two exposures that are happening in your photo.
The first exposure is a product of your flash and aperture. It is an almost instantaneous exposure (the length of the flash burst). The aperture controls how much light is being recorded on film. The second exposure is a product of your shutter speed. So long as you stay at or below your camera’s sync speed, usually 1/90th of a second or slower (more on that another time), the foreground will always be illuminated by the flash (up to the point when the shutter speed/aperture combination provide enough exposure for the main subject) while the shutter speed will affect the background. A longer shutter speed will allow more of the ambient light to be recorded, bringing detail out of the background shadows.
Dragging the shutter or slow shutter sync is simply using a longer shutter speed than the camera recommends when using flash to illuminate a night scene. Your photo will then have proper exposure for the foreground (because of the flash exposure) and the background will start to have more detail in it (because of the longer shutter speed). If you want the background brighter, use a longer shutter speed, and if you want it darker, use a faster shutter speed. If your camera features a night mode setting, that will also drag the shutter (though for a fixed time.)
This photo shows what can happen when you combine moving objects, flash and night photography.
Another feature many cameras have is called 2nd curtain sync or also referred to as rear curtain sync. This basically controls when the flash fires, either at the beginning of the exposure or at the end. For a static subject, it does not really matter, but for a subject that will move during the exposure, 2nd curtain sync has an advantage. When the subject moves, it will leave a trail in the image. If the flash goes off at the beginning of the exposure, the subject will appear to be moving into the streaks, whereas if the flash occurs at the end of the exposure, it will appear as though the subject is moving away from the streaks (which is what we would normally expect to see.)
When is the ideal time to photograph at night? Well, that depends on what you are shooting and what you want to accomplish. However, two times do stand out as worth noting. Just after dusk and just before dawn, often referred to as the magic hour. During this time, there is some light in the sky though not enough to provide enough to expose your subjects. Shooting at this time can yield some spectacular results. The shot below was taken within this timeframe.
Last week I also promised some links to some nice night photography. I’ll start with some of my own. The series of 7 shots (the first image and 6 days prior) was taken in Toronto, ON between 1:00 and 2:00 am, with exposures ranging from 1/8 second to 3.2 seconds. Lostamerica.com features many night photographs of abandoned places along roadways in the US. TheNocturnes.com features a gallery of night time images as well as resources for night time photography.
I hope this series on night time photgraphy has been helpful. Next week I will discuss keeping straight lines straight.
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 vice-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.
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