Picture That

I would like to tell you that the new Firefox 3 web browser is blazingly fast, full of new GUI features yet with great ease of use. And FireFox 3 has one of the best set of add-ons, themes and extensions. It leaves even the upcoming IE8(early next year likely) in the dust. But I won’t - instead I will let the Microsoft evangelist, Paul Thurrott tell you.

Now if you have an 5 minutes of time (it really is that fast for download and install), upgrade to the Web 2.0 browser of choice - its that good. Don’t go image browsing or finishing without Firefox 3.

Moore’s Law that see a doubling in capability for the same price in computing and memory chips every 12-18 months has arrived in the SLR camera world. And really that should be no surprise. In 2006, more than half the new cameras sold were digital and that market share has since swept to the 85-90% range. And because digital photo CPUs and Flash memory are two of the most important components in a camera, literally controlling all the cameras features including shutter setting and aperture openings for exposures plus storing ever larger images at ever faster rates. And the CPU controls many other functions such as filtering shots in a metaphor on how our eyes work depending on shooting conditions such as nighttime, sunset, shady, fluorescent or other common lighting situations. In sum, its getting harder to take a bad photo.

So go to our central website, thePhotoFinishes.com, which is featuring an article a)examining the latest features of the 2008 wave of new Prosumer SLR cameras and b)looking at the image quality one can expect when taking quick snapshots with such cameras. The capabilities of these new SLR cameras are quite stunning. One can now shoot at higher ISOs with less noise and greater sharpness than film cameras. Plus image stabilization both in camera and on the lens give users steadier shots at ever lower speeds or higher apertures. In short digital cameras are earning their keep - including now much closer to 100 year archival storage on appropriate CD/DVD media.

The following is one of dozens of Widgets available at Widgetbox.com:

Its a bit primitive but shows what can be done with new, faster ActionScript 3 animations.
You have to try these out.!

On the margin between bitmap photo editing and vector drawing/illustration, there is a new world of image composition that combines vector+bitmap in new and innovative ways. A lot of vendors have dabbled in this arena including Deneba(now ACDSee) Canvas, Adobe Fireworks and Xara Xtreme Pro - even hints of it in Adobe Photoshop with its styles and path manipulations.

But with Xara Xtreme Pro 4 with its non destructive editing of vector+bitmap image compositions, Xara moves way ahead of the pack in the arena of image compositions. This is where images are combined together in collage fashion. The big advantages

that Xara brings to the table is the ability a)to handle huge bitmap and vector files with speed, b)to do many operations interactively with drag and drop ease; and c)now to edit both vector and bitmap objects simultaneously and non-destructively. In the screenshot above note that the vector container in the lower image has been edited with the same effect applied to the inner bitmap. In contrast, the chip-off arrow at the upper right stays in its vector container with no changes. Let me suggest the creative opportunities are not to be missed. See the full review back here at thePhotoFinishes.com.

I have been telling readers that Casio EX-F1 is something special and now the appreciation for what the camera can do is really starting to to pour forth. It started probably with David Pogues article in the NewYork Times but notably Wired & DPReview except for blurbs from CES 2008 show, missed this beauty:
Chris Hardwick - Wired CES2008 show coverage
David Pogue - NYTimes Technology section
DPReview - like Wired, still mired in CES quick preview
Gizmodo - start of lavishings of praise
Gizmodo - a video sample just slightly over-produced
Luminous Landscape - best take on video and still image quality

Also I am surprised that reviewers have not picked up on the similarities and differences between the Casio EX-F1 and the new Nikon CoolPix P80.

Now Magazine is the free weekly entertainment rag along with Eye Weekly in Toronto. Now’s cover story featuring a bashed up Olympus OM3 body with wax blood is the type of smash contact photography that is designed to get readers inside. So of course there was a loss leader headline screaming IS DIGITAL KILLING the art of photography - and a really glossy debate within Now as lead article for coverage of the Contact Photo Festival. Unfortunately there was not much technical or even artistic substance in that debate. For really solid material go here for pro digital and here for the anti-digital points of view. But in the meantime, the story on the Contact Photo Festival was substantial, especially Now’s trademark voluminous listings of all the Contact events (200 places to go for photo shows in Toronto).

But the coverage and reviews of the photo shows was mixed - implying the Contact photo exhibits were of mixed quality. And Now should know because their photog corps constantly roller-coasters in quality of images delivered (or chosen??). Just take a look on the local stories inside Now. Sometimes it looks like a bunch of poorly paid coops and other times Now’s photos are truly a feast.

But if Now got you inside, it also got you to the essential business at hand - the Contact Photo Festival which is still a robust and agit-prop event. Given the explosion of digital camera precocity - photography is alive and well in Toronto. Just go to Fotki.com or Flickr.com and search on the tag Toronto - and you will see huge and diverse photo offerings. And Contact catches some of this vigour and activity as gallery-goers will see about 200 studios and boites putting photographers on display. If past Contact festivals are true to form there is a good show any time and any place.

However there is a disturbing trend - none of the Toronto area camera clubs like Beaches Camera Club, Don Mills Club, Etobicoke Camera Club, Toronto Camera Club, TGPA - all of which have splendidly talented members - none of which appear to be a part of the show. Obviously something has gone awry here. But I will let Eye Weekly’s David Balzer have the last word on the Contact Photo Festival -
“There is also a strong sense — in the work of Bert Teunissen, Luc Delahaye, Adi Nes, Alessandra Sanguinetti and Liss and Rubenstein’s coup, Nan Goldin (whose slide installation Heartbeat will be exhibited) — that the memorial and historical facets of the image might be reinvigorated through painterly composition.”

Grokking the Gimp by Carey Bunks, O’Reilly Press, Feb 2000 - $45
Anybody who has just read my Portable Gimp posting will know why I also have been perusing around for a “brush up your Gimp” skills book. There is a piece of software call Gimp Photoshop Layout which helps reconfigure the Gimp toolboxes and panel dialogs to mimic the Photoshop layout. Its nice, but just not close enough, so I make do with Grokking the Gimp and then just intuiting what Gimp can do.
However Grokking the Gimp certainly keeps me on the straight and narrow. The book gets users up to speed very quicvkly in the layout, toolbars, panels and help associated with GIMP. Then in Chapter 2 is 30 pages of layers, resizing, and other transformation. The first thing you notice is that the many illustrations are out of data not for functionality or the theory behind the Gimp process - no its the interface of the layout. Many operations like rotation, perspective, and scaling are no longer dialog driven. Instead users use the mouse to drag and drop the exact correction they want.

The same disconnect occurs in the chapters on Selection and Path tools. The tools’ icons are identically the same, the operations are identical but some of the process step have become draga and drop and/or added new clicking options. So when I came to the chapters on channels and layer masks - I thought this is going to be a replay. But it wasn’t - here the theory and discussion of the methods and trade-offs are first rate and very informative.

Ditto for the exercises done in the next two chapters on colorspaces and blending modes. Suddenly I am seeing the how and why of color blending, grayscale transitons, and channel mixer corrections in … a new light. Finally the next 3 projects pull all the elements together in a some engrossing exercises.

The book is 5-6 years behind Gimp but way ahead in the graphic design principles and explanations used. Though there are several newer and more up to date Gimp books ( see the Artist’s Guide to Gimp Effects for example) but I found Grokking the Gimp very interesting and very helpful. The book had stood the test of time in computing - remarkable.

Portable Apps has done something very nifty. It makes a lot of Open Source apps portable to any USB Flash Stick - for free. Most notably for Picture That readers, Gimp. This means that I now have a very polished photo editor that I am carrying around on my key chain and can use on any PC that has a USB port (1.1 works fine but 2.0 ports are faster)>

The list of applications available on Portable Apps is growing very fast - 13 new programs registered in April alone including Open Office, Notepad++, Toucan, MacOS Classic on a Stick, and about 70 other programs, games, utilities. This is great stuff - well worth checking out.

I did some timings of loads from my Flash Stick through the USB port of Gimp and Open Office - and I saw load times comparable with the hard-disk versions. Slightly faster from the hard disk, but occasionally the Portable App versions were 20% faster. In general this user is a very happy camper.

This means I can do very good photo-editing just about anywhere. Since I have a USB port for SD and Flash cards now I don’t have to lug my laptop everywhere I go picture taking. I just sneak in to the nearest Cyber Cafe , plugin, photo-edit in Gimp, upload to my PixofToronto blog and another photo essay tale is filed.

Finally this is not a neutered version of GIMP but full 2.4.5 with masking, layering, brush tools and an array of color and sharpening corrections tools. This will compete with some of the very good online tools (see here for 5 very good ones); but the advanatge is that I don’t need an online connection and I get to take my work with me which can be handy. I certainly like my Gimp, Portable.

I have been ranting about the Casio EX-F1 as a cross between a fixed lens SLR and a video camera. The fixed SLR format may have some attractions - fit one lens on with a broad zoom range like the Casio with 36 to 432mm at f2.7 to f4.6 and then take away the need to have interchangeable lenses with the consequent carrying bulk and risk of getting dust on the camera sensor. Of course the Casio then raises the stakes by having an unbelievable combo of picture taking at 6MPixels 60fps(frames per second) or in movie mode HD1920×1280 at 60fps or 432 x 192 (600 fps). And the camera has a lot of smart features to manage this prodigious shooting capability. See here.

So the recent announcement of the Nikon CoolPix P80 available today at $400-500 with a 27-486mm f/2.8-4.5 zoom lens and 10.1Mpixel still images certainly garners attention. It is at least half the price of the Casio and nearly double the Pixel capacity - and slightly better zoom range and f-stop settings. But the CoolPix also packs image stabilization within the lens so users get 2-3 stop better fidelity. The autofocus system uses nine points not the 40-50 points in the Nikon D300 and D3 top end SLRs; but still better than my Canon XT 6Mpixel standby.

Also the CoolPix P80 takes images at 13fps and movie images but I cannot find the details on that(see if you can find them at the Nikon site here). So here is the trade-off, Nikon has a light, Fixed 18xZoom SLR camera with some movie taking capabilities and 10.Mpixel images at 13fps for $400 versus Casio EX-F1 with nearly the same Zoom Lens but ability to take HD movie at 60fps and 6Mpixel images at 60fps. Image quality yet to be tested on both cameras but sample images from both are fairly good. Will speed and movies and ability to take pictures in new ways sell at $1000? I will tell you my choice at the start of early summer.

Adobe has finally released its entry into the Web or Online Photo Editing derby. Adobe is well behind some of the 5 major photo editing websites which I have reviewed in detail here. In fact one of those online photo editors, Splash-up, has emulated online the Photoshop interface with uncanny zeal. Splash up is one of the better online photo editors. So what will Adobe do ?

Well if Photoshop Express the beta is any sign - they are taking a completely different approach to online photo editing. First, Photoshop Express is actually two parts: 1)is a Adobe Bridge like image browser which is different than most of the other photo editors and quite useful; 2)instead of copying the features of Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Express takes a KISS approach. All of the major photo editing features use a simplifying approach of showing users 6-10 thumbnails of the kinds of changes they can make - and the user selects the desired change by clicking on the the thumbnail.

I don’t like this approach because in many cases like sharpening and subtle exposure or color corrections its darn hard to tell the difference among the thumbnails. True, if you select a thumbnail it is painted on the full image in reasonable time; but then why use the misleading thumbnails and not just use sliders or other GUI controls. Also there are very few settings and sliders in which the user can adjust the effects. It will be “interesting” to see what the feedback is in the Photoshop Express forums on this issue.

Of equal interest is the speed of the processing. I gave Photoshop Express some of the biggest files for online editing (easily double the size used by the other online photo editors). To my surprise Photoshop Express was able to load them in expected times and dynanmically edit them much more quickly than I expected. I have seen other online photo editors use AJAX scripts for these tasks and then were awfully slow on identically the same files. So kudos to Adobe and the Flash/Flex team for delivering software that can perform on line with real speed.

Adobe is beginning to fire more often on the web media front. Most interesting is the new media player. Its really oriented towards movies - but even there the restriction is that that the movies must be one of the following:
.FLV - Flash Video
.F4V - MPEG Flash Video
.MP4 - MP4 Movie
.MP4V - MP4 Video
.M4V - MPEG-4 Video
.3GP - 3GP Movie
.3GPP2 - 3GP Video
.MOV - Quicktime movie
Notably missing from this list is any Microsoft or Real Networks video files. This is really obnoxious. But what is interesting and can be seen from the screen shot is that Adobe has managed to get some major players including CBS, MTV, Universal Music, PBS, and 40 others. Not too shabby right out of the gate.

The other interesting aspect is that the AMP=Adobe Media Player is an Adobe AIR application. So any body that downloads AMP will also be armed with AIR. This may be in response to Microsoft getting the Olympic Games. Anybody who downloads a movie or video coverage of the Olympics in Beijing will also get the Microsoft Silverlight player downloaded to their machine.

Finally, this is an example of Adobe eating its own dog food. They developed in AIR which Adobe is trying to promote as the universal RIA=Rich Interface Application generation tool. It seems pretty solid and quick. I downloaded some pretty large files on DSL with no pauses in transmission I encourage readers to try it because the response time and configuration will become much more prevalent in the next years or so.
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By the standards of timeliness, Ning is late to market. WordPress and Google’s Blogger were among the first wave of social sites. Then Myspace and Facebook arrived - and set new standards for what could be done on a social website. Now Ning has arrived and set a new standard for how easily things can be done when inteligent Web 2.0 based processing is brought to bear on a website. But of even greater interest is that the whole Ning codebase is available to developers - though most users will find the four step, drag and drop, then launch process not just easy but satisfyingly quick.

One can see from the screenshot of the admin module above that Ning provides the website developer with a very rich set of options - music, photos, videos, events, forum and blog, activities, badges, RSS - all the major options one would expect at Facebook or MySpace with a little 3rd party help. But what took my breath away was how easy and intuitive it was to develop in Ning. I am just getting used to Joomla 1.5 and Drupal 6 - popular open source CMS apps - and it is sometimes like pulling teeth to get them configured properly (no problems with either on setup though).

So here was my test of ease of setup and configuration - setup a photo gallery site with Outing events and forum for discussion. Customize it to look halfway decent - and hopefully be done by the end of the day. Well, just two hours later this was what I had been able to produce in Ning:

Now the uploads of the images were slow - I could not get the Java bulk loader to run. And the simple individual file loader took about 15 minutes for 8MB of images. A bit slow. I also have yet to figure out how to get Photo albums posted like activities or blog entries in addition to the slideshows:

Find more photos like this on jbsurveyer
Also I could not tell the difference between a Blog with comments and a Forum … but maybe that is just my dim wits. However, I was impressed with how easy it was to set up a very functional website in such a short time. And when I saw all that Ning was prepared to expose to developers so they could refine their sites- all the templates with CSS and coding, huge insights into how to call and utilize the modules and APIs .. in short almost as good as getting the Joomla or Drupal code downloads. But also as sophisticated - not for the coding faint of heart.

But the bottom line is that Ning has targetted for Designers as well as Developers - you choose your level of interaction with Ning and you still ca get an awful lot done very quickly. Impressive on first run - hope they have enough server power, because Ning will get used.

I have been arguing that this year is the year of the SLR - as companies like Nikon and Canon contend for top spot as the conversion from film to digital reaches and goes pass its peak. Also Sony, Samsung, Olympus, and even Pentax strive for survival. All the vendors are worried about the Windows phenomenon. With so many new SLR users coming on board, they may just move enmasse to one or maybe two quality vendors and leave some very good products with miniscule marketshare to starve. This is what Windows did - prematurely clipping Apple Mac and destroying IBM OS/2. And then camera dealers will treat those also rans with disdain and simply not stock them for the additional costs, bookkeeping, and other hassles.

Lets face it I have already heard such notions from not a few big shops. And the economic downturn in the US and Eastern parts of Canada will just add to the pressure on camera vendors. But the also-rans have some recourse since web sales are still very big - and the margins are such that they lower prices on selected premium bargain models and sell them through selected camera website or their own onsite store. But the latter move would be pretty desperate because one does not bite the channel that sells your product by undercutting it at your own web store.

So two new cameras provide some tea leaves to make speculation on what is happening in the market.

Nikon D300
The Nikon D300 has been getting rave reviews as a semi pro camera that could easily act as a substitute for the top of the line Nikon D3. What marks the D300 are specs like these:
12.2MPixel images
6 to 8frames per second continuous shooting
51 point very fast auto-focus
3″ 922,000 pixel TFT viewer
Liveview through sensor for picture taking rather than eyepiece
Magnesium body and weather sealed buttons and joints
And reviewers from Camera Labs through to PhotoLife (May 2008 issue) are heaping very high praise on the D300. And its $1800US price for body only is considerably less than the top of the line Nikon D3 which has same basic specs but a full-frame sensor and 6 -11 frames per second continuoius shooting mode plus more shooting controls. This camera comes awfully close to a full pro camera at less than half the price - talk about aggressive.

Olympus E-3
The Olympus E-3 is the new top of the line DSLR from one of the earlier and more innovative entrants into the digital SLR sweepstakes. And its specs are also impressive - the ones better than the Nikon D300 are in bold:
10MPixel images
1-5frames per second continuous shooting
49 point fast auto-focus
2.5″ 230,000 pixel TFT viewer
Liveview through sensor for picture taking rather than eyepiece
Viewer pivots and swivels
3 stop image stabilization on board
unique super-wave dust removal
Magnesium body and weather sealed buttons and joints
On basic camera feel and function most of the reviews I am seeing give the E-3 fairly high marks (see the may 2008 issue of PhotoLife for example). The E-3 has three key features that set it apart from the D300 - better dust removal technology, 3 stop image stabilization (Nikon and Canon are putting image stabilization on each of their lenses), and Liveview viewer that pivots and swivels(its fixed on the Nikon D300). But the E-3 gives up 2MPixels on image size and much less quality in its viewer(its 2.5″ versus 3″ and 230K versus 922K pixels for the Nikon D300). Here is the kicker - the E-3 body-only is $1700 versus the $1800 price for the Nikon D300.

Hmmm - will customers think that the E-3’s superior dust removal and 3stop image stabilization balances out less megapixels and notably poorer Liveview viewer assuming image-taking quality is the same?? Time will tell. But clearly some of the agressive marketing that I mentioned at the outset is starting to appear in the DSLR marketplace.

Xara Extreme Pro 4 is now out - and this photo tool comes to market with a reputation for handling huge 20-100MB image files (TIFF, PSD, JPEGs) with unbelievable quickness and speed. At the same time most of its tools are live effects - that is users drag and drop the tool with different settings to see immediate transparency or fill or scaling changes.

In short, Xara Xtreme has a well deserved reputation for being the photo composition tool of choice whenever users are working with large vector or bitmap image files. Now Xara has added some additional font, styling, and Web development capabilities - so I shall try to get a review out to customers as soon as I have the goods.

With so many good online photo gallery websites available, why bother to roll your own? You have to get some web space and a domain name which together will cost $60-100 per year. Plus add in the “pleasure” of installing and maintaining your own gallery - who wants the grief ? Besides some great gallery websites like Flickr.com, Fotki.com , and Photobucket. com just to name a few have very generous free offerings. And photo edit programs Aperture, Lightroom, and Photoshop will generate great gallery sites and allow you to upload to your own website or some 3rd party web gallery hosters. So why fiddle ?

Your Gallery Website

Well if my concentrated dissuasion did not work - then all I can do is try to lead you to some very good and free software for establishing your own website gallery. Here are two simple but effective free website gallerys that are fairly easy to install, easy to maintain, and each have some added and unique extras.

Minishowcase
Minishowcase is a gallery creation program that is small, fast(except for IE browser which hiccups unexpectedly) and very simple to install and operate. Minishowcase does not use a database - so no hassles there.

Instead, Minishowcase has users load files to directories and the program then treats those directories as albums. Hence users can have multiple albums with titling for both albums, thumbnails, and fullscale photos. Its really barebones but also quite logical.

In fact Minishowcase, which handles creation also allows the user to choose a display size which may be smaller or larger than the original. The result is that adding, deleting, and creating new images in a gallery is trivial to do for anyone with FTP experience (use free Filezilla here for simple file uploads and downloads).

In addition, Minishowcase has a free plugin to manage your gallery files if you want to do it that way. In sum, Minishowcase is testament to less is more.

ZenPhoto.org
Zenphoto is a gallery site that uses PHP and MySQL database but you would hardly know it. You upload a zip file of images or a directory or individual images and Zenphoto takes care of getting the image thumbnailed and displayed according to your directions. It is easy to add comments, classify the images by category/tag, and display in sub-albums as desired. You can control commenting and contributors privileges. And the next version will have simple drag and drop re-ordering of images in an album.

But the two features I like best about ZenPhoto are the multiple themes or website stylings that are available and the WordPress plugins. Users with some CSS and php-savvy can modify or even create their own display themes - but there is already a library of nearly two dozen and growing. And these themes are fairly easy to customize for color and simple layout. Finally, the ability to use Zenphoto through a Wordpress plugin is attractive to this user (this blog, Picture That, uses WordPress) and potentially thousands of other users. So check the Zen out.

Its that time of year again, when image lovers get to see the latest works coming from the Art Schools.

April 3, Ryerson Institute has added its shows. They are posted in alphabetical order:

The Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary Alberta
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Canadore College Graphic Design
March 13 to 27th at WKP Kennedy Gallery
in North Bay Ontario
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Dundas Valley School of Arts
Full-time Studies Exhibition - March 28th to April 3th, 2008
Dundas Ontario
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Medicine Hat College Square Show
Medicine Hat AB
from April 7th to 13th
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Ontario College of Art and Design
May 9th to 11th at the School
in Toronto Ontario
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Ryerson Institute Maximum Exposure April 17-20th, 2008
THE GLADSTONE HOTEL - 1214 QUEEN ST. WEST
GALLERY 1313 - 1313 QUEEN ST. WEST
AWOL GALLERY- 76/78 OSSINGTON AVE.
OPENING GALA - APRIL 17th, 7-11PM at GLADSTONE HOTEL
EXHIBITION HOURS
Gladstone Hotel 12pm - 5pm .
AWOL Gallery 12pm - 6pm(Thurs-Sat) 1pm - 5pm (Sunday) .
Gallery 1313 1pm -pm (Wed-Sunday)

For more details visit www.maxex.ca
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University Of Calgary - Communications & Culture
Networking Gala - March 27th 2008
Calgary AB - MacEwan Centre
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University Of Victoria - Fine Arts - H*t Sh*ts
Friday, April 18, 2008 at 7:00pm
until Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 5:00pm
Visual Arts Building, University of Victoria
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University Of Western Ontario - Visual Arts
Graduation Exhibition - March 28th to April 10th, 2008
London Ontario
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