Category Archives: comment

Jun
27
2010

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 [...]

By admin | Comments (0)
Aug
03
2009

Huck Finn from Google Books

GBS_insertEmbeddedViewer(’nJcPzcOQV5MC’,600,600);

Hope this is Huck and Friends

By admin | Comments (0)
Jul
27
2009

Popular Photography: Canon T1i Review

I have long been a careful reader of reviews in computer and photography magazines. Too often, the magazines become enmeshed with the interests of the vendors that advertise in their pages. In short, reviews of major advertisers wares can become evasive, omissive if not downright skewed. Just look at the the  reviews of Microsoft Vista [...]

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Jun
22
2009

RIP: Kodachrome Film

I can’t quite believe that Kodachrome film has come to its end. See the story here. This is the film of my grandfather, father and myself. I really expected, despite the dominance of digital cameras and media, that Kodachome, especially Kodachrome 25, would withstand the digital deluge. Superior grain, true colors and nearly archival slide [...]

By admin | Also posted in stillcamera, trends | Comments (0)
Mar
25
2009

RIP JPEG2000

JPEG2000 has shrivelled and not quite died but certainly is not what it promised to be as a replacement for the JPEG image format. Here are the ugly facts:

Graphics Support in the Major Browsers

Web Standard
IE8
Firefox 3.x
Chrome 1.
Opera 9.6
Safari 4

JPEG2000
No
No
No
No
No

SMIL
Dropped?
3.1
No
No
No

SVG (see here for browser tests)
None
60.4%
61.9%
94.2%
64.2%

Flash Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Browsers used in these tests (except SVG) [...]

By admin | Also posted in plugins, software, video | Comments (0)
Dec
04
2008

Welcome Back - Pix of Toronto!

Welcome to Pix of Toronto on WordPress 2.7.

Our Toronto blog was down out for the count for the past few days. But thanks to some help from the WordPress people we have been able to restore Pixof Toronto.com to its full resplendent state! In addition we have added some new postings long overdue.
Please tell [...]

By admin | Comments (0)
Jun
20
2008

The Best and Fastest Browser for Images

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 [...]

By jbsurv | Also posted in software | Comments (1)
May
02
2008

Now’s Contact Punch

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 [...]

By jbsurv | Also posted in stillcamera, trends | Comments (1)
Apr
18
2008

Adobe Photoshop Express

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 [...]

By jbsurv | Also posted in software | Comments (0)
Mar
17
2008

Kindle What

Publishers are desperate and converging. Books, newspapers, magazines, and a host of printed media are chasing a scarce and seemingly dwindling supply of attention, eyeballs, and readers. Oh and advertisers. All lost to that beast that almost everything is free on the Web including their publications on the Web. May eCash RIP.
And what is [...]

By jbsurv | Also posted in hardware | Comments (0)
Feb
02
2008

InDesign One on One

InDesign CS3 One on One by Deke McClelland - O’Reilly Press - $55 ($35 at Amazon)
I am not an absolute neophyte to DeskTop Publishing having used Microsoft’s Picture Publisher, early versions of Quark Express and Adobe Pagemaker from time to time. But for a project I needed to come up to speed in InDesign and [...]

By jbsurv | Also posted in design, software | Comments (1)
Dec
18
2007

Graphic Learning Curve

In an article on GUI Clumsiness, I argue that OS desktop vendors like Apple and Microsoft could learn not a few tricks from the world of graphics software where GUI innovation has really made photo finishing and 3D drawing much more approachable. One only has to see a movie almos inevitably digitally enchanced these days. [...]

By jbsurv | Also posted in software | Comments (0)
Nov
28
2007

Overview of Photo Editors

Adobe Photoshop CS3 has become clearly the best bitmap photo editor, wresting the last vestiges of better features from Corel, Ulead and others. And Photoshop continues to forge huge leads in HDR/32 bit image processing, photo retouching, panoramas + photomerge, plus first steps towards 3D and video integration. It also retains a wide lead [...]

By jbsurv | Also posted in design, software | Comments (0)
Nov
13
2007

Memjet Printer as UFO

Want to get photo enthusiasts worked up into lather - try mentioning the Australian printing technology called Memjet. This technology, which uses page wide 70,400 nozzle printheads using picoliter (one trillionth of a liter - you cant see it with the naked eye) that promises three things: 1)Unbelievably fast printing of color images - [...]

By jbsurv | Also posted in hardware | Comments (2)
Sep
10
2007

Visual Documentation

I have already commented on how good documentation, both in house and third party books and websites, can have on the success of a graphics product line. Now I would like to say a few kind words about Visual Documentation. This is documentation laden, page after page, with visual illustrations and screenshots throughout the book. [...]

By jbsurv | Comments (0)
Sep
10
2007

Corel PaintShop Pro X2

The screenshot says it all. At a time when Corel has greater competition in the mid range bitmap photo editing space - Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture, Gimp, plus a flock of other programs - Corel could not afford to release anything but a real winner update to its PaintShop Pro line. PSP [...]

By jbsurv | Also posted in software | Comments (9)
Jul
18
2007

Great Photoshop Book

Photoshop Restoration and Retouching by Katrin Eismann - New Riders Press

Don’t let the title fool you, this book really has a very broad scope Here are some of the chapter headings_ Correcting Tone, Exposure, and Color
Essential Restoration, Reparing, and Rebuilding
Portrauit Retouching
Rebuilding and Re-creating Images
And ech of these chapters is chock full of very concise examples [...]

By jbsurv | Also posted in design, software | Comments (0)
Mar
26
2007

CS3 takes a Second Seat ???

Adobe’s CS3 announcement tommorrow may still take second seat to the following:

Hunhh - you say. This is the Flash+PDF runtime upgrade called Apollo. It will be able to display both PDF and Flash and HTML output including all that rich multimedia such as video, audio, Flash animations plus images in a variety of formats but [...]

By jbsurv | Also posted in software | Comments (0)
Mar
10
2007

Photo Finishing Trends II

I have been using intensively the Photoshop CS3 beta and Xara Xtreme Pro prior to writing review of both. I have also highlighted the return in photo finishing software to the core workflow in digital image processing - refining and color/contrast correcting original raw images. One of the common features in all these new programs [...]

By jbsurv | Also posted in software, stillcamera, trends | Comments (0)
Mar
04
2007

Is it just me …. ?

I was just about to go off to Barrie’s Winter WindFest to take pictures there. WindFest features all sorts of iceboats, kites, and wind riders taking advantage of the ice on Lake Simcoe that has been generously applied this bitterly cold February. But as I was looking for directions I stumbled across this notice:
[...]

By jbsurv | Comments (0)