this is blog
Here’s a great article that’s basically about JPEG compression artifacts: http://www.theawl.com/2014/12/the-triumphant-rise-of-the-shitpic
I like the idea of “counting the rings” to see how old a viral image is. This also opens up a question about tools like Google image search. I wonder if their algorithm takes decay into account when it searches for the “original” image.
Lightroom is a tremendously powerful piece of software, but there’s no way for Adobe to satisfy all the needs of every customer. That’s where plugins come in. There are tons of plugins for giving your photos a certain look, but there are also plugins for publishing your photos. Here’s the difference between publishing and exporting, as far as I understand it:
For example, if you export 0001.raw as 0001.jpg, then upload 0001.jpg to Flickr and then delete 0001.raw, 0001.jpg will remain on Flickr. However, if you publish 0001.raw to Flickr and then delete 0001.raw, then 0001.jpg will be removed from Flickr. Other development settings can be synced with publish as well.
Your workflow may not benefit from this functionality, but I like working this way, specifically while publishing to my hard drive. This gives me the option of having a mirrored set of smaller web-friendly JPEG’s (3200px at 60% quality) that stays in sync with my collection. I can then sync that directory with my cloud service of choice without paying out the nose to host the RAW files. This mirrored set stays synced even if I go back and delete or edit a photo from 2008.
Lightroom’s publish functionality doesn’t mirror your folder structure by default, so I use the Folder Publisher plugin from Jeffrey Friedl. He offers several other “goodies” for Lightroom including several other publishing plugins. Check them out and see if you can’t make your life a little easier.
Finally, the epic conclusion to my cloud photography experiment. In part 1 I laid out the details of the experiment in which I would pretend I was a photographer who had to live entirely in the cloud. Part 2 described the particular challenges of using a cloud based operating system for handling RAW files. In part 3 I discussed the various web-based photo editing software available today.
The world of cloud computing is moving fast. After I wrote part 1, Apple announced iCloud and Google began selling ChromeOS laptops. The argument could be made that cloud storage is pointless since hard drives have become so cheap, but cheap digital storage goes both ways. If it’s cheap for you to buy one 1TB hard drive, how cheap do you think it is (per hard drive) for Google to buy 10,000 of them? The biggest argument against cloud computing is the requirement that we hand over our trust to external entities (Google, Amazon, Apple, Dropbox, etc). The risks of remote storage are real and Dropbox users like myself were recently given a strong reminder of that fact. Dropbox had a small coding bug with the unfortunate effect that any password would work to log onto any account. Whoops. As always, the forces of security and convenience are battling each other. Do I really need access to my entire digital life from anywhere? Maybe not.
The cloud, it turns out, is best in moderation. Placing all of your data in the cloud and relying on web-based tools to process that data can be just as restrictive as working 100% locally. I ran into one difficulty after another trying to remain cloud-only. For now, I’d say I’m fully committed to working on my desktop computer with Lightroom. If you do want to try living in the cloud, here are some things I’d recommend to make things as painless as possible:
This is part 3 of my epic investigation into cloud computing for photographers. Read part 1 here and part 2 here.
As mentioned in part 2, I was unable to find a web-based photo editor that supports raw files and the size limits for all the editors prohibit the use of 16-bit TIFF files. After wrestling the files into JPEG format in Jolicloud, I was ready to apply some post-processing. The post-processing I’m talking about includes basic things like exposure, contrast, saturation, sharpening and cropping.
All of Them
Every single web app I tried lagged so far behind Lightroom and GIMP in terms of processing speed, feature set and file compatibility that I can’t recommend any of them as your primary photo editor. None of them work well as part of a multi-file workflow. If you choose to edit photos this way, you’re looking at a one-at-a-time painfully slow process. Also, the results I got were kind of ugly. A big part of that comes from trying to work with JPEGs instead of raw files. However, editing a JPEG with GIMP seems to yield better results than any of the web apps. All of the web apps I tried were free. Big plus.
Adobe Photoshop Express
Adobe is the big dog here and I was excited to use their editor. They clearly have the upper hand when it comes to photo manipulation software and I think that Adobe Lightroom is the best piece of software (not just photo software) I’ve ever used. Don’t worry about any bias towards Adobe though, because I think Flash and Reader are just plain awful.
What did I think of Photoshop Express? I don’t know. It’s got 2GB of free space, which is good. However, it crashed every time I tried to load a file, which is bad. I tried Chrome and Firefox and a couple different files, but nothing worked.
Let’s recap:
Picnik
Picnik is mostly free and it’s integrated well into Picasa, Google’s online photo gallery. The integration with Picasa makes Picnik the best web app by far in terms of workflow. Also, Picasa now offers unlimited space for photos that are 2048 pixels or smaller. Not good for backups, but great for online photo sharing and small prints.
First, the good. The interface is easy to use and includes enough control for small edits. I also like that you can export the results directly into your Picasa gallery with the option to overwrite your original file or create a new file.
On the negative side, Picnik is constantly bugging you to sign up for the premium non-free version which gives you more control and a few more presets for Lomo-ish effects. The free version gives you controls for exposure and compensation with a few finer controls for shadows and highlights, sharpness, and “local contrast.” Unfortunately, adjust any of the sliders more than just a bit and you’re going to end up with a muddy mess of a file. Also, “local contrast” is a checkbox and not a slider. Checking it makes your photo ugly. Unchecking it restores your photo back to normal.
Overall I found it pretty difficult to get decent results out of Picnik, but the direct integration with Picasa is worth a lot.
Aviary HTML5 Image Editor
HTML5 gets talked up constantly on the web, so I was excited to try this one too. This editor seemed more like a proof of concept than a full-fledged application. The exposure controls were way too simple. Also, they did nothing. Something was broken and none of the adjustments showed up on the photo.
Aviary Phoenix Image Editor
Phoenix is Aviary’s Photoshop-esque editor and was my personal favorite. The interface was great and the feature set was incredibly powerful. With patience and skill I’m sure you can achieve some great results.
Two things kept Phoenix from being my editor of choice for this experiment. First, it’s JPEG-only. Yes, all the other apps were JPEG only also, but the Phoenix editor is so powerful that it’s begging to be used with a raw file. All that power is wasted on the measly 8 bits of a JPEG file. The second reason is a lack of workflow integration. You can upload multiple images to Aviary, but it’s hardly a full-featured gallery or photo-sharing site.
The Winner
In the end, Picnik won out, but not because it was the best. Every single web app I tested was crippled by a lack of raw support. There’s only so much you can do to a JPEG, so you might as well use the software that’s quickest and easiest to access. Aviary has a complete suite of web-based image editing apps and they should be applauded for what they’ve created. However, for my purposes, it just wasn’t worth the hassle of leaving the Picasa bubble.
There was a lot of frustration, but it was fun trying out these web apps. It’s good to challenge our beliefs from time to time and to learn what’s out there. I now have a better feel for the state of the art in cloud computing for photographers. Everything I tried here was free, so I recommend giving some of them a shot and seeing what you can come up with. Coming up next is the thrilling conclusion where I’ll share the photos that I dragged through the mud just to get them on the cloud.
Small sensor compact cameras are a dying breed. I give them 5 years at the most before becoming a niche product. They’re being squeezed from both ends. From the smaller end, cell phone cameras are getting bigger and better every day with the current champ being the 8mp camera in the HTC Incredible phone. Obviously megapixels do not equate to quality, but at Facebook resolutions, the quality difference between a good camera phone and a compact is minimal. Meanwhile, the quality difference between a compact and a DSLR is huge, even at small print sizes. The larger sensors on DSLRs (and mirrorless large sensor cameras) enable low-light performance and a shallow depth of field that’s impossible to replicate with a tiny sensor. The danger from that direction is the flock of Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable-Lens (EVIL) cameras. Or, if you like, Digital Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable-Lens (DEVIL) cameras. EVIL cameras are almost pocketable and they can match the image quality of most DSLRs while beating the pants off of small sensor compacts. Pants, actually, are exactly the reason I bought the Canon S90 even though I can see that it’s a member of a dying breed. If a camera is small, but too big to fit in my pocket, then it’s not small enough. For example, take a look at the new Sony NEX cameras. The camera body looks pocketable, but the lens is huge. There is a 16mm (24mm-e) pancake lens option and I’ll admit to that combination producing a bit of drool from me. Maybe I’ll wait and ask Santa for one at Christmas.
For now, I’m happy using one of the best small-sensor cameras ever made. At the top are probably this camera, the Canon G11, and the Panasonic LX3. The biggest thing that sets these cameras apart is the ability to shoot RAW. If you don’t know what RAW is, this article provides a good explanation. Simply put, a RAW file contains the original data captured by the camera, while a JPEG file has been compressed and processed according to the camera settings. For me, the two biggest benefits to shooting RAW are the ability to rescue files that have not been exposed properly, and having more control over noise removal. I tend to prefer detail with some noise in my photos while Canon and other camera manufactures prefer to smear out detail in order to remove as much noise as possible. Yes, chroma noise is ugly, but it can be removed without smearing details. Luminance noise just doesn’t bother me very much. In use, the JPEGs from the camera look fine to me up to about ISO400, but in RAW I can get results that I’m very happy with up to ISO800.
One of the reasons the S90 has decent noise performance is that Canon wisely chose to sit out during this round of the megapixel race and focus instead on image quality. The S90 shares its sensor with the G11, which miraculously has less pixels than it’s predecessor with 10mp instead of the whopping 14.7mp in the G10. What this means is better low-light performance and an added bonus of about 40% smaller file sizes. The sensor is bigger than what is found in most compact cameras at 1/1.7″, but it’s still tiny compared to a micro 4/3 or APS-C sensor.
The lens is great, mostly for its f/2 aperture at the wide end. A larger aperture means a lower ISO, which is extra important when dealing with a small sensor. I end up using the camera as if it had a 28mm prime on it. As you zoom in, the maximum aperture drops to a very slow f/4.5, and the lens seems to be a little softer on the long end.
I love the minimalist design of this camera. There’s not a single unnecessary crease or bulge. I find that this is one of the very few digital cameras that is possible to admire as an object. Some have complained about the lack of a grip on the right side. While it would probably benefit from one, I can’t say that it makes that much of a difference on a camera this small and light. For such a small camera, the S90 is a pleasure to use. It has the control wheel on the front that got everyone buzzing when the camera was released. There is a second control wheel on the back that is adjusted using your thumb. Both control wheels and a custom button can be set to control just about anything. The front wheel has a nice feel to it and it clicks into place with discrete stops as you rotate it. Unfortunately, the back wheel has no discrete positions and spins freely. Be careful what you set this wheel to control because you will change it without meaning to. It’s amazing that such a small thing has caused me a lot of annoyance when using the camera. Still, if you fiddle with the settings enough you can set up the camera to be very usable.
Image quality is better than I’ve ever seen in a small sensor camera. That said, after editing images from the S90 for a while and being quite pleased with the quality, I was stunned when I returned to editing images from my A200. The S90 is perfect for a go-anywhere camera. It works great as a backup to my A200, but certainly not as a replacement.
Even though it’s aimed at enthusiasts, the S90 would make the perfect camera for the not-so-digitally-savvy. It works just fine in auto mode and it doesn’t have very many buttons and menus to clutter things up and confuse an inexperienced user. Plus, there is plenty of room to grow into more of the manual settings. If you are concerned more about responsiveness and image quality than size, look elsewhere (DSLR or EVIL). Otherwise, I highly recommend it.
This picture is from a hike I took last summer on Mt. Rainier. It was a clear day, so you could see far-off places like Mt. Saint Helens, which is almost 100 miles away. This hike was the first and only time I’ve used the JPEG mode on my DSLR. I knew the theoretical benefits of shooting RAW from the day I bought the camera, so I never bothered with JPEG. I wanted to try it and see if I could save myself some post-processing time by just taking whatever came out of the camera. Like a dummy, I didn’t use RAW+JPEG, I only saved JPEGS. The hike was on a sunny day with lots of snow, so nailing the exposure was a bit of a challenge. Rescuing the images that were off was made much more difficult than if I had simply shot RAW. This was a good learning experience because prior to that point, I hadn’t actually tried to edit JPEG’s from my DSLR. Now that I’ve done it, I won’t have to try it again. Nothing can beat getting the exposure right in the camera, but if you don’t it’s nice to have a safety net.
What I learned from this exercise:
As an aside, check out this photo of Mt. Saint Helens. It’s a 360 degree panorama taken by Gregg M. Erickson. Clicking on the photo will bring you to its Wikipedia page where you can download the giganto version (119 megapixels!). Download it, it’s well worth it. The tiny version below does not do it justice.
Bryan Takes Pictures 