Online Photo-Editing sites have been covered by thePhotoFinishes.com before; but not a free online PhotoFinishing site. Befunky changes that - it is devoted to taking your photos and transforming them into works of art using special effects like Cartoonizer, Oil Painting, Inkify, Old Photo, Charcoal, Impressionist, and my favorite - PopArt. Then add some [...]
Update: the price per gigabyte for a HDD has sunk to $0.07/GB in approximately a year and a half. Also see this comparison of HDD vs SSD trade-offs. But the most important trend is a slowdown in SSD drive cost/GB reductions forecast out to 2014. The improvements in cost/GB have already started to slow and [...]
Apple is getting a stranglehold on the evolution of computing devices, particulary for consumers. iPod + iTunes dominates the media playing world. iPhone + iAppStore dominate the phone plus highly portable app and messaging world. But Apple missed the boat despite a huge technology leads on the PC desktop and laptop world back in [...]
The NYTimes technology section is getting to be one of my favorites for finding out about the last electronic bling. With the exception of Apple topics, the coverage is not breathless fanboy scrapings of every detail of the Palm Pre or HP Mini Netbook seen on many other gadget sites; but rather fairly well measured [...]
Video comes to SLR
Yes indeed, that is a Canon digital SLR with replaceable lenses - and it is a pretty good video camera. The Canon EOS 5D Mark II is probably the epitome of what has become a gold rush of digital SLR cameras that are currently supporting video capabilities. Nikon has the [...]
Video cameras are adding huge zoom capabilities. Optical zooms with image stabilization. The Pansonic SDR-H90 above is 70x true optical (think of it as a 37.9-2650mm (4:3) still camera telephoto range). The camera has a builtin 80GB drive and takes SD card with up to 32GB of memory for combined long play record of over [...]
It has been said many times before on this blog but the CES 2009 show in las Vegas made it big time official - Video is Going Still. Video cameras are now doing still photography in a big way as we can see in the camcoders above and below. For example the Sony CM1 line [...]
PictureThat has featured the accelerating convergence in functionality and features between still cameras and video camcorders. Still cameras are borrowing much wider zooms, low lux performance, and image stabilization from video cameras while providing HD video recording capabilities with interchangeable lens in cameras like the Nikon D90 or Canon Mark 2D and the new Kodak [...]
Adobe has just concluded agreements with Intel and Broadcom that assure that the latest Flash Player technology will be available on TVs that will deliver more online, Web based experiences. Why is this important to graphic artists - read the fine print here, but it opens Flash on TV to a potential 1 billion customers.
One can tell that Photokina, the CES of camera shows, is upcoming in Cologne Germany in mid-September. There is a proliferation of new camera announcements - particularly in the ultra competitive digital SLR business. Early this Spring, this site featured a story on the new digital SLRs. Yet already there are new cameras coming [...]
For the past few years I have been arguing that still and videos cameras are converging. Casio’s EX-F1 is currently the best example of that convergence. The Casio EX-F1 delivers 5 modes of still picture taking including auto-bracketing in four modes, multiple exposures from 2 to 60 frames per second, motion sensor triggered [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
This a quick look at 3 video cameras that glide up the price scale from just over $100 to $500 and then $1000. I have chosen these video cameras because they go beyond what you would expect in each case of a video camera. So without further to do:
The Flip
The Flip seems small and [...]
I have been arguing that the digital SLR cameras and video camcorders are converging. Casio EX-F1 shooting at 60fps-frames per second embodies that trend. Okay the Casio EX-F1 does not have interchangeable lenses - rather users are “stuck with” a 12x zoom lens that performs like 36 to 432mm 35mm equivalent. Not quite as [...]
Gizmodo tracks the latest geek gizmos, so it should be no surprise that they have picked up the first sightings of the prototype digital camera which will largely replace digital SLRs - the dual capable video cameras. These 3 cameras all offer the capability of not only taking HDTV video images - and directly onto [...]
Adobe PR had a lot of fanfare over what would appear to be a small item: Adobe Premier Pro, the top of the line video editor tool from Adobe, would be available on the Mac. What ?
I thought all Adobe software ran on the Mac. One of the attractions of the Macromedia buyout by [...]
The biggest treat for this observer in the new Adobe CS3 announcements is the continued refinement of Premiere Pro and After Effects. You Tube video artists already have the more then versatile Adobe Premiere Elements. But the semi to pro video crews have a lot to like in the new dynamic duo for [...]
Adobe is having a huge coming out party for its Creative Suite of products. And what a show!
There are over 20 new products and bundles being announced. A lot will be the first looks at what the merger of Macromedia and Adobe will bring to the market place. The products of particular interest to photofinishers [...]
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) [...]