photography

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Hard Decisions for Photo Editing Apps

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        John Carter sends this report that will interest the photographers:  "Photoshop Elements 11 is out. The upgrade price is $79.99. Adobe has added a whole lot of new features. There is no student price. For some, there probably isn't enough to warrant upgrading from Elements 9 or 10. But if you're still at Elements 7 or below, it's time to upgrade!

        "Photoshop CS6 is out. Student price for the extended version is $249. For the serious photographer, there's nothing really to compare.
        "Adobe Lightroom 4 is another photo editing contender. Only $149. Student price is $79. Personally, I'm not that impressed with Lightroom.
        "Apple Aperture is $79. Aperture interfaces perfectly with iPhoto, but you can't have both open at the same time. The advantages over iPhoto are few, but some are quite useful. Aperture is definitely easier to use than Lightroom. If you already have Elements 9 or above, don't bother with either Lightroom or Aperture.
        "GIMP is free, of course, and it has almost all the features of Photoshop CS. The latest version (2.8.2) does away with needing X11 (XQuartz) and has a very nice interface — more like Elements and Photoshop.
        "Pixelmator is $14.99, designed to work with the Mac, has all the Mountain Lion features, and has many of the same tools as Photoshop CS." 
        John's conclusion:  "You might find yourself wanting more in a hurry, so moving up to GIMP might be the way to go. Some of the Pixelmator reviews aren't too encouraging, but then the professionals wouldn't bother with this app.
        "If you need to work with Layers and Masks, the only viable choices are Elements, Pixelmator, GIMP, and Photoshop CS, in that order of usefulness."
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Learning More About Photography

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        Interested in photography?  John Carter to the rescue.  He's now posted to the PMUG website this informative and illustrated report, "iPhoto for iPad vs. PhotoForge2."  Go to http://www.pmug.us/reviews/  and benefit from his research.
        Note:  John Carter will be at the PMUG Genius Bar on November 17, when Art Gorski and Bobbie Pastor will be our other "experts" for this meeting.

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Show Your Photography

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        Many of our PMUG friends are talented with their cameras.  Have you made a photo into a picture postcard?   
        Carlene Hardt took these photos and Peter tells us, "Small batches we print at Costco as 4x6 photos and then Carlene attaches a self-adhesive back to make it a postcard. The backings come from Photographer's Edge. They have a WIDE variety of products: http://www.photographersedge.com/Postcards-4-x-6-pkg-of-25/productinfo/A298PC/

        "They also have dozens and dozens of card frames you can put the photo in to make photocards: http://www.photographersedge.com/Blue-Mist-with-Raven-Black-Accent-Ink/products/103/

      "Larger batches we have commercially printed as postcards, with custom information on the back side. We use Prints Made Easy who do a great job, http://www.printsmadeeasy.com , but we do occasionally have issues with getting certain colors right."
        With a jpg of the postcard you can drag it to iPhoto and highlight it when it comes up on the album page.  Up comes a little arrow at the bottom right side, giving you several choices.  You can also click Create at the bottom right side of the iPhoto page, and find out how to order cards, albums, books, and calendars.  Under Share you can order prints, from 4"x6" up to 20"x30".  (Plan ahead for those creative Christmas gifts!)  

Pixelmator Is On Sale

        Here's what Ward Stanke says, "Pixelmator was written for the Mac, and it has a more intuitive Mac-like interface than GIMP.  I personally prefer it over GIMP or even Photoshop."
        Pixelmator is a Photoshop-like picture editor. It has many, but not all, of the same features at a tenth of the cost. He points out that it's currently on sale for $14.99 (normally around $60.00, and this is for a limited time).  The site does not say when the sale is over, but hurry, take a look.

Fix Photos: GIMP + Mountain Lion

        John Carter knows photography!  He informs us, "The older version of GIMP (<= 2.6) does not work in Mountain Lion because it requires the older version of X11.  However, the latest version of GIMP (2.8) works on Mountain Lion and all previous versions of Mac OS X."
        (Forgot what GIMP is?  John's previous entry “Fix Those Photos”  was posted November 14, 2011 which describes features in GIMP, a tutorial on Resynthesizer, and includes John's step-by-step,  how to install.)   

        "Get the latest version of GIMP here. If you really like GIMP and want to help keep its development going, make a contribution of any amount, preferably a minimum of $10, on that page."
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Travel the World from Your Desktop

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        Struggling photographer or an expert?  Either one, you'll enjoy these gorgeous 3-D aerial panoramic views.  Thanks to Jim Hamm we can click to see amazing sights from AirPano, a group of photographers who have 90 famous places in the world linked to their site.  Some views are available in iPhone and iPad formats; you can also choose high resolution or low resolution.

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5 Ways to Use an iPad for Photography

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It boils down to this:
   1. Editing On-the-Go
   2. Client Viewing
   3. Accepting Payments
   4. Handy Tools
   5. Marketing
   
 Here’s the full article at DigitalPhotographSchool
"5 Ways for Photographers to use an iPad to Jumpstart their Business."
        "You’ve been waiting for a good reason, now go out and buy an iPad!" John Carter exclaims.
        "By the way, the iPad camera connection kit (shown in the lower right corner of the image above) contains two adapters. One lets you connect a mini-USB cable directly to the iPad from the camera and the other lets you insert an SD card directly to the iPad. This is a very handy kit to have even for your iPhone 4 or iPod Touch. And of course you’ll also want the HDMI connector to connect your HD video camera directly to the iPad (or iPhone 4 or iPod Touch) or to connect your iPad (or iPhone 4 or iPod Touch) directly to your HD TV.
        "With so many connectors to do so many things with, let’s hope that Apple comes out with an iPad that has the ports built in so you won’t need all those gadgets."

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Your Photos on Display

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Today’s PMUG speaker, Les Stukenberg, photo editor of the Daily Courier mentioned having photos printed at CostCo. From mugs to mousepads, from cards to framed masterpieces your photo can be uploaded to the site, then picked up at the warehouse or have it mailed to you.  Read about it here. Thanks, Les, for an interesting and inspiring presentation of your outstanding photographs.Les also mentioned there are videos and photo galleries on the Daily Courier website.  Check it out  here. 

Photographers' Tips

        Want to see what Gimp can do?  John Carter sends this info:  "Here’s an image that has been slightly modified by GIMP - the corners of the image have been rounded and a drop shadow added. Click on the image to highlight it to see the original full size.

"Gimp makes it dead simple to round the corners of an image. To do this, choose Filters > Décor > Rounded Corners. A dialog will open. Select the Edge Radius, which is the amount of curve, and if desired, click to add a Drop Shadow and then set the Shadow Offset and Blur Radius. You can select to work on a copy of the image (rather than the original), and select whether or not to add some background behind the curved corners – the current background color is used for this. Click OK to round the corners of the image.
        "When it comes down to it, only ONE step was required to achieve the above results.  Now compare that with the similar task in Photoshop here.   For additional Gimp tips, look here.

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Using Your iPhone Camera

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        John Carter found an article that will interest both photographers and our iPhone users.  He begins, "I subscribe to Digital-Photography-School.com. Now and then an interesting post comes through. This one is from a guest post by Sarah and she gives her 10 tips for using the iPhone camera. It seems worth passing on. The highlights are:
 1. Hold the phone like you would a camera
 2. Don’t zoom in with the zoom on the camera, zoom in with your feet
 3. Shoot the same thing a few times
 4. Light
 5. Check out the resolution and picture quality settings – and set them on high
 6. Keep the camera still
 7. Move around and get in different positions
 8. Clean the lens… duh!
 9. Process!
10. Look for clutter-free scenes
        John concludes, "Read the full article here. And while you’re experimenting with photos on your iPhone, don’t forget about the video!"

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iPhone Picture-Taking, Shopping Benefits

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        Do you take pictures with your iPhone? was the question that started us off.  Jim Hamm willingly obliged and went into detail.  Apparently, the iPhone camera is a good feature when shopping.
        Jim explains, "For me, there are two big advantages to using the iPhone as a camera: first, I always have the iPhone with me, and I don't have to carry a camera around. Second, I find it particularly useful in the following situation: say I'm in a store and see something that I think might be useful/pretty in the house or condo. I know I don't dare buy something for the house or condo without Zee's approval (years of experience talking here), so I just take a picture of the item, email it to Zee, call her and tell her to take a look at it and call me back. This has been very handy.
        "Yesterday, for example, she wanted me to place some hooks in a certain place in our condo. I went to Home Depot, found two sets that I thought she would like, took pictures, emailed them to Zee, she looked and picked the set she liked and called me back.
        "From reading this—and other—articles on the iPhone's camera I've learned it is a pretty darn good camera. We've been pleased with the results of the pictures we've taken. And the camera in the upgraded iPhone 4S (which we don't have) is supposed to be even better."
        The article that caught my attention was from National Geographic.  Jim wrote, "Thanks for the link.  Interesting article.  In our house, Zee is the 'picture taker' on our trips, so she'll enjoy the article also, and maybe can add some comments."
        "Convenience, light-weight, decent pictures—all make the iPhone's camera handy to have around," Jim closes with a smile.

Maintain Your Memory Card

"What’s the big deal!" exclaims John Carter.  He goes on to explain, "I have one memory card in my camera and it works just fine - so far. What’s there to know about it? There’s a post in The Digital Photography School titled 8 Tips for Maintaining Your Memory Card, and it’s well worth reading even if you think you know all there is about memory cards for your digital camera. Getting refreshers like this is, well, refreshing!"

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Fix Those Photos

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         Got telephone poles, fire hydrants, dogs, trash, etc. in your photos?  John Carter describes a slight miracle -- how to remove them.  Read on:  "Photoshop 9 came out with a very nice feature called Content-Aware Fill."
        "Well, GIMP had that feature a long time ago. It is a plug-in called Resynthesizer. It takes a little more fiddling with than the Photoshop equivalent, but the results are exactly the same. The tutorial on how to use Resynthesizer is here.   Installing the plug-in in the Mac may not seem straightforward, so I’ll go through the steps.
    1. Download the plug-in . . .  found in your Downloads folder with the name resynthesizer.tar or resynthesizer.tar.gz. If the latter, double-click on it to convert it to the former.
    2. Double-click on the file resynthesizer.tar. It will create a new folder in the same location with the name resynthesizer.
    3. Copy the contents of that folder to ~/Library/Application Support/Gimp/plug-ins/ (the ~/Library folder is hidden in Lion, so you will have to make it visible by using Go->Go to folder (Finder hotkey: Shift-Command-G) and selecting ~/Library).
    4. Start up GIMP.
    5. Follow the instructions in the tutorial to use Resynthesizer.
          Is that all, you ask?  No, John Carter wants to add this info: "Just when you think Photoshop has it all, GIMP shows up with yet another feature buried in the works that puts it right up there with Photoshop. Starting with CS4, you get this really neat feature in the Content-Aware Scale tool where you can squeeze two people together in a scene or pull them apart.
        "When you install GIMP for Mac, that feature is also there, but renamed as Liquid Rescale and buried at the bottom of the Layer menu. Get the details on how to use Liquid Rescale at the Digital Photography School here. You will also find a link there to the author’s tip on how to do the same thing in CS4/5."

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A Simple Technique in iPhoto

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        He starts out, "Have you ever taken a photo that turned out to be, well, pretty drab?"  Well, it's John Carter to the rescue.  He goes on to say,  "There is a simple technique you can use in iPhoto for enhancing the color of a photo (Edit -> Adjust, increase Definition), but sometimes it just isn’t enough or give you the result you were hoping for. You can vastly improve the color of any photo using layers in either Photoshop or GIMP. One contributor to Digital Photograpy School has provided detailed steps in two different posts, one for Photoshop and one for GIMP. Give it a try on one of your photos."

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Managing Multiple iPhoto Libraries

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        "Here’s a dream come true for some people who have probably thousands of photos they want to keep in iPhoto!" exclaims John Carter.  (You can download a FREE trial; that got your attention?)
        "The problem with having a lot of photos in one iPhoto library is two-fold. One, it takes a long time to save it to a backup drive (like Time Machine), and two, it is much slower to access.
        "If you can break up your photos into smaller chunks and still keep them all under the management of iPhoto, that would be a plus.
        "There is a way. It’s called iPhoto Library Manager. There are way too many features of that application to explain here, but I’ll list them by name:
1. Multiple libraries
2. Info at a glance
3. Share and share alike
4. In sync
5. Automate it
6. Quick switch
7. Making copies
8. Doing the splits
9. Photo first aid
        John concludes with this, "There's one version, 3.6.8, and it works for all versions of OS X from 10.4 and up and all versions of iPhoto from 4.0.3 and up. The price is $19.95."

Free Photography Workshop

        A free 4-day intensive workshop on Photoshop CS5 is coming Tuesday, September 20 through Friday, September 23.  John Carter sends this link to CreativeLIVE.com with the notation that details are here.
        Here's more:  It’s only free if you attend the online presentation which runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on those days, with probably a break for lunch. You should register to attend (also free) to get the notification by email.  There will be a nightly rewatch (probably available only to those who register) that is also free.
        Synopsis:  In this special workshop, you'll dig into Photoshop CS5 with Lesa Snider, author of Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual.
        "There is so much to cover in Photoshop CS5 that we need almost a week to cover everything. In this special 4-day workshop (Tuesday - Friday, from 9:00-4:00, Pacific Time), you'll dig into Photoshop CS5 with Lesa Snider, internationally acclaimed instructor and author. Lesa is informative, yet entertaining with a unique way of explaining difficult concepts so you understand the 'why' behind the 'how.' Get ready to spend a fun, high-energy week digging into the power of Photoshop."
        Thanks, John, for this valuable info.  That word "free" always catches our attention!
        Oh, one more thing!  John adds, "Any lesson on any Adobe application applies to both Mac and PC. The only difference is between using the Command key or using the Control key (Cmd-C for Mac or Ctrl-C for PC to perform a copy, etc.) All other aspects of an Adobe application are identical between the two operating systems."