Over the course of the 2010 one trend from Apple has become clear - Apple is short-changing its Mac line-up of desktops and laptops in favor of its iPad and ilk [aka iDevices]. The evidence is compelling - from the Adobe Flash attack to no touchscreen or multi-touch on the [...]
Picnik is one of the best online photo editors - it is now a part of Google’s Picasa line of free online photo albums. The good news is that Picnik is fast and has some of the best online help and hints.
The system seems to be a bit slower on startup than benchmarks on the [...]
Xara has the fastest bitmap + vector draw program by far with Xara Designer Pro. Xara has had as one of its consistent virtues blazing speed. Xara is able to handle big bitmap 30-80MB files [great for the thunderously sized images being produced by top of the line Canon, Nikon, and other SLR cameras] [...]
Corel has long had one of the best Windows natural media paint programs, Painter 11. The program offers numerous brush+media types with master control over each brush+media and its effects. Artist colleagues use Painter 11 as a basic creative medium and tool. Photographers use it to refine photos with subtle brush effects and enhanced [...]
Whats a waste! Apple’s Steve Job is getting awfully close to libelous scamming of Adobe Flash Player.Adobe has made the critical mistake of not putting enough resources into developing for Linux and Mac. And so Steve throws out HTML5 as a solution - and walks right into 3 big punches. First, HTML5 is [...]
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This series of pictures shows that if you have any choice, err on the side of underexposure because everyone of the photos was underexposed by 1 to 3 stops as dusk became nearly full night. One can tell the more underexposed images by the amount of noise and/or blue [...]
The Warkworth Maple Syrup Festival’s Art Show was a real find with a range of excellent artworks from sculptures to ceramics as well as photos and paintings. The entries were not only top notch but often very witty as well. However, taking pictures of the photos did not work as the glass covering of the [...]
Newspapers have long lead the parade with cartoons and pictures as integral parts of their papers. The Web has changed that just a bit and now a broad set of media are starting to show up in the websites of newspapers and magazines. The problem of course, is that new media such as slideshows, animated [...]
Last year I wrote RIP: Corel PaintShop Pro on this blog and made the following comments:
Unfortunately, After Corel took over Paint Shop Pro - they appear to have applied their vaunted Corel Reverse Midas Touch [think PhotoPaint, Picture Publisher and Word Perfect franchises]. Right now, Paint Shop Pro V2 is in a contest [...]
Is this just a Photo?
Toronto Winter City Festival - Angel of the Apocalypse Exhibit by the Flaming Lotus Girls
I have been blithely producing this series of Olympic Plugin articles without asking a very relevant question - when is a picture more than just a picture? By that I mean in the process of doing photo-taking [...]
The Vancouver Winter Olympic Games have been a delight despite the warm weather. And the coverage in the Press around the world has been a lot more than I expected given that it is Winter events that just do not have traction in much of the warmer climes. What really surprised was the mixed coverage [...]
The Apple iPad has been called a big iPod iTouch - and with good reason. iPad supports a big, full touch screen operations with a high resolution color screen which is readable in ambient light - think outdoors
on a sunny day. The iPad will certainly be a good game machine and a better book [...]
The Winter Olympic games have been quite exciting and picturesque - inspiring this series of Olympic Plugins reviews that highlight some of the best free and for fee plugins available. The improvement in plugins capabilities over the past 3-4 years have been quite dramatic. Here are two from the AutoFX that are both free and quite compelling. [...]
Redfield is one of those small plugin companies like Flaming Pear and Mehdi that have offered a lot of value to photo finishers in 3 ways. First, they have a number of free plugins [more on that just below] which provide good value to users. Second, all of their plugins are available in a fully [...]
The last step in PhotoFinishing is to add a frame to your image - and this can be an extraordinarily dangerous business. I have seen too many very good shots diminished by overstated metal/wooden frames and mattes. And in the digital world , the ability to do great harm to a good image seems to [...]
Steve Jobs has been dissing Adobe’s Flash for the past 2-3 years for reasons public but still fundamentally unknown. Since the launch of the iPhone in 2008 Flash has been programma non grata on Apple iPods and iPhones. Various reasons have been supplied including not fast enough, buggy, and drains power. The legitimacy of these [...]
When I did my recent review of 3 NextGen Compact Cameras I could not help wondering where were Canon and Nikon. Well Canon has answered in no uncertain terms with its new Powershot line up. The top of the line Powershot SX210 IS is particularly impressive staking NextGen highs for MPixels and optical zoom:
Canon Powershot [...]
NYTimes David Pogue has a great sense for value - and this year’s choices for the best compact camera for under $300 are as usual quite good. As seen in this very helpful chart, 10MPixel or better storage and some prices well under $300 rule the roost. Many of David’s recommended cameras have 10x zoom, [...]
As a photo-artist I really appreciate always having a camera with me. Rather than taking a bulky, heavy SLR everywhere I have reverted back to compact cameras because they are certainly delivering on thin, light, wide zoom-range and gobs of features. They are also bound and determined not to provide a view finder - to [...]
Picture-taking - the new Forbidden Fruit
This is a story about the new forbidden fruit - picture taking at public events. After the Cobourg Highland Festival was washed out with a downpour, your PhotoFinishes editor wearing a PhotoFinishes cap and trying to rescue the day went down to the Cobourg Beach to catch the storm clouds over Lake Ontario. The graying [...]