June 11th, 2008
Between addressing mysteriously non-functional contact forms on this site and pulling my hair out because of a massive amount of corrupt image files, I’ve managed to upload a group of galleries of photos from Vilnius Lithuania. There is plenty more where that came from and sometime tomorrow (depending on where in the world you are), there should be a complete set of my photos from that beautiful city.
For those of you who are curious, those corrupt files of mine are, in fact, my Baltics photos. All the RAW files that I had sorted seem now to have corrupt headers and Photoshop won’t open them at all. All these RAW files are saved elsewhere, but they are unsorted and unprocessed, so this glitch is more than a little bit irritating. What’s strange about it though: All the files still open in Lightroom. I guess I’ll be learning that app pretty quickly! So, the data is all there - it’s just some messed up header or something that’s preventing the files from opening.
The files seem to have gotten corrupted when I (and apparently, this was a foolish mistake) renamed my folder from “Baltics” to “Baltics sorted.” After that, every RAW file in there got sick.
I don’t know if this is related to the problems people are experiencing with OS 10.5.3 and Photoshop CS3, but it seems like it might be the case (even though I wasn’t saving remotely). Either way, for all you users out there who have this combination of OS and software: back up now! Now!
To top it all off, since the forms on my site aren’t working, (cross your fingers for a good reply from my host!), even if someone goes to my contact page and mails me a miracle fix, I won’t get the message! Best to leave it in the comments. Any happy thoughts are welcome too.
Update: Why didn’t anyone tell me to update my Camera RAW plugin? That fixed it all up. No corrupt files, just a messed up plugin. Too bad I panicked when I saw my files wouldn’t open and immediately assumed they were corrupted. Rookie mistake.
Oh well. All’s well that end’s well!
June 3rd, 2007
Adobe has released version 4.1 of the Camera RAW plugin for Photoshop CS3. Mac users can download the plugin here and Windows users get it here.
This release adds support for a number of cameras, but it also has some helpful new features. Photoshopnews.com has a handy article detailing what’s new in Camera RAW 4.1.
December 14th, 2006
The National Association of Photoshop Professionals has a good, first look at some of the new features that will be in Photoshop CS3. Among the highlights are the improved functionality of Camera RAW and a big upgrade to the Bridge application.
There appears to be a lot of other potentially-useful functionality appearing in CS3, so hurry up and have a look!
December 13th, 2006
AppleInsider is reporting that Adobe will be releasing a public beta of PhotoShop CS3 this Friday:
“The Photoshop CS3 beta, which will be posted to the Adobe Labs website on friday, will include Adobe Bridge and Device Central components, and be available simultaneously for both the Mac and Windows operating systems.”
In addition to the feature additions that will be available, this release should get a lot of people excited for the fact that it will be a Universal Binary release meaning that it will be natively supported on Apple’s Intel-based computers. Unfortunately, for owners of those machines, they will have to wait a little longer to try out the UB PhotoShop CS3:
“People familiar with the Macintosh version of the editor confirm it to be a Universal Binary which ’simply screams’ on Apple Computer’s new Intel-based hardware. However, they tell AppleInsider that this week’s beta will include only the standard version of Photoshop CS3.”
For this Friday’s release, it’s only PhotoShop CS3 that will make its debut. Other Creative Suite applications will stay under wraps a little longer:
“…the San Jose, Calif.-based software developer does not plan to release or discuss details of other Creative Suite 3.0 applications, such as Illustrator, Dreamweaver and InDesign.”
Head to AppleInsider for more details.
December 6th, 2006
Thanks for all the traffic! It’s encouraging to have so many people check out the photoshop tutorial I posted yesterday. Thanks also to all the other sites that have linked the article - there’s too many to name here, but I do appreciate it. I’ll have to see about putting together more articles for you.
A few commenters here and on other sites suggested that the technique I posted had alternatives and they are right. Sometimes, it may be possible to use a small aperture and/or a neutral density filter to bring about a lengthy exposure time. The result will be that the people in your photo will be relatively invisible if they are moving - there won’t be enough hitting them in the same place at the same time for the sensor/film plane to pick up their shape.
The difficulty with this technique is that there is a high potential for streaks to appear in your images from where the people were moving. Especially if there is a group of people, you are likely to get a smear where the group moved through your image. And if anyone stops, there will probably be a blurred, ghostly figure showing up in your picture.
Another popular alternative on various sites was to physically eliminate tourists using, baseball bats, guns, or whatever weapon happened to be handy. As frustrating as it can sometime be to wait for people to leave your shot, I can’t endorse this technique. Especially considering the stories I’ve heard about some foreign prisons!
There are also the people decry the removal of tourists from photos altogether. Sure, some people want them in there, but some don’t. I wrote the tutorial for the latter. I shoot both scene with and without tourists. When I want a scene without tour groups in it, it’s nice to have this technique in my bag of tricks.
Lastly, on a non-photo note, I want to say a big thank you to my hosts, Hostrocket for successfully managing a colossal amount of traffic. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my site remained available while getting so flooded with hits.
December 5th, 2006
I have just posted a digital photography and Photoshop tutorial aimed at helping you get tourist-free postcard shots the next time you head out on vacation. It’s a handy trick that has served me well and I hope it can be helpful for you too.
I hope to write more tutorials related to photography and travel photography in particular, so please feel free to send the story to your favourite news and bookmarking sites like digg and del.icio.us. It will motivate me to do more!
October 31st, 2006
CBS News has an article about the current state of image alteration citing a number of famous photo manipulations that have made the news in recent years.
It includes this quote:
“‘The analogy I always like to draw is, imagine a pile of sand […] And when does it go from a couple of grains of sand to a pile? And surely, taking one grain of sand on and off doesn’t fundamentally change the pile of sand. But at some point, it’s no longer a mound of sand, and it’s just a couple grains. But where did that transition happen?’”
June 28th, 2006
Creativebits has a brief look at PhotoShop 1.0 that will undoubtedly spawn some sighs of relief that the product has come so far from its early days. Though, one screenshot does reveal that even in 1990, PhotoShop had support for 32-bit colour!
If you’re a Mac user and Software update hasn’t told you so yet, OS X version 10.4.7 is available.
Microsoft has announced the acquisition of iView media whose Media Pro software is an invaluable tool for photographers seeking to organize large collections of images. The iView line will continue develop under Microsoft and will likely serve as part of a larger Microsoft foray into digital imaging.
Lastly, DIY Photography, in this article, shares some musings on the art of photography.
June 20th, 2006
Though consumers can’t expect to see this kind of resolution in their cameras anytime soon, the new 111 megapixel sensor developed by DALSA Semiconductor lets the imagination run wild for photo enthusiasts. It’s the first digital photo sensor to break the 100 million pixel barrier and will ultimately be used for mapping the motions and locations of celestial objects.
The sensor is approximately four inches by four inches, so no amount of cramming will get it into today’s DSLRs. Besides, the power of the computer you would need to process the images is well beyond most people’s means. I think my powerbook might choke to death if I tried to manipulate a 10,560 x 10,560 pixel image in PhotoShop.
Previous Posts
Most Popular Tags on dsphotographic.com:
Weblog
