Category Archives: How to(s)?

Large Image Files – PSB vs TIFF

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I’m working on a very large image…

It is a panorama of (42) 10 MP captures, each between 8-10 MBs. merged into Photoshop CS5.1.

Photoshop CS 5.1 can not save anything over 2.0 GBs as a PSD file…

Photoshop CS 5.1 - 2 GB File Size error message

Photoshop CS 5.1 - 2 GB File Size error message

The TIFF file is 3.7 GBs…

File Properties - TIFF

File Properties - TIFF

and the PSB file is 2.7 GBs…

File Properties - PSB

File Properties - PSB

Open Questions

In this example above, there is approximately 1 GB (25%) loss in file size…

Where did it go?

  • File compress?
  • Color Data?
  • File Optimization?

Findings

  • Photoshop PSD (max) file size: 2 GBs
  • Photoshop PSB (max) file size: 4 exabytes (300,000 x 300,000 pixels – 350 x 350 feet)
  • TIFF (max) file size: 4 GBs

Observations

  • Lightroom is not “seeing” my 2.7 GB PSB file, but is “seeing” the 3.7 GB TIFF.

References

anyone got any ideas?

- Andrew
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HDR Cookbook by Klaus Herrmann (farbspiel)

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HDR Cookbook - Klaus Herrmann (farbspiel)

HDR Cookbook - Klaus Herrmann (farbspiel)

A couple of days ago, I found the link to “HDR Cookbook – Creating 32-bit HDRs the Right Way“, and basically, have NOT left the website since.

Klaus Herrmann (farbspiel) is a photographer out of Germany, who specializes in Interior HDR Photography.

On his main website, “HDR Cookbook“, you will find a wonderful collection of pages, that describe in vivid detail, the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of creating his beautiful images.

Topic include:

I have gone through many pages and videos on “How to do…” HDR, but this is the first site that I have found, that goes into ‘in-depth’ experiments explaining why certain steps are needed to achieve the final product.

Seeing the side-by-side effects of software and processing, has caused me to reconsider how I will view and process future images.

Recently, I have been revisiting some of my older captures, and processing them with new knowledge and techniques.

In reading Klaus’ suggested Workflow, which is highly recommended, he makes the following observation:

Let the finished file sit on your hard disk for a day or two. Don’t post it right away. I found that when you get back to it a day later, you will discover things that you might want to change, things that you did not discover while you were working on the details of the image very intensely. If you let you mind do other things and some time passes, you will look at the image more objectively, more like your viewers will. If you’re content with the image now, go ahead and post it.

Prior to finding this site, I had been going back into my collection of images, and have revisited and reprocessed some of my old captures with new knowledge, software and techniques, and reading this quote helped to affirm some of my recent tinkerings.

Needless to say, I highly recommend that if you are interested in HDR, Tone Mapping related photography, and are in search of some advanced tips, techniques and very qualified insights, then you should be rewarded with a visit to “HDR Cookbook“.

- Andrew
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flickr Award Counter – Backup, Restore and Transfer

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If you get involved with the Flickr photography groups that have awards, you will notice that there is no really good way to track what you have, until flickr Award Counter (fAC) by Andy Felton (PhazeShift).

flickr Award Counter can take some time to initially setup, because you have to enter in each Award Title (think of a naming structure), and the URL to the Award image for the greasemonkey/javascript counters to work, but once it is done, fAC works great!

But beware, once done, there does not appear to be a direct way to back up all your filter/counter work.

Backup

After some hunting, I found a thread on the Flickr Hacks – “Award Counter – backup?“, which suggested that one backup the Firefox “prefs.js” file, which can be found (example: Win XP):

C:\Documents and Settings\%profilename%\Application Data ¬
\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\dm24ria8.defaults\prefs.js

where

%profilename%

is the current user, and

dm24ria8.defaults

could be “any-name.defaults” within this path, and includes “prefs.js”, and all the more fun if there are multiple users! A-)

The simplest backup, is to copy/duplicate the “prefs.js” file within the same directory and adding the “.bak” extension (“prefs.js.bak”) or copy the file to another location, and leave yourself a reminder of where!

Restore

To restore, just replace the damages file with the backup from above.

Transfer

Many times, all you want to do, is to transfer your filter/counter information from one machine to another.

If you use the Restore method mentioned above, one of the immediate down sides is that the destination machine, will inherit the “prefs.js” settings from the source machine.

In some cases, this might be sufficient, but what if you ONLY want the filter/counter information.

about:config

On the machine that has the Main/Source of filter/counters, launch Firefox, and type about:config in the address bar.

You will get a warning screen, and just agree.

[Technically, you are on your own now, so...]

Scroll down to the following filter:

greasemonkey.scriptvals.http://www.phazeshift.co.uk/download//flickrAwardCounter.awards

Double click on the entry, and a new window will open up.

In the “Enter string value” window, copy the string value.

Move to the destination machine, and find the similar entry, and paste in the source filter information.

Quit your browser, and re-launch Firefox, and check your work.

This has been done transferring an existing series of Firefox 4.0 XPro filters to Firefox 4.0 Win7Pro (destination):

C:\Users\%profilename%\AppData\Roaming ¬
\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\x5lnhhwl.default\pref.js

with out issue (“x5lnhhwl” will change).

Your mileage may very.

Feature Request(s)

  • Ability to Export/Import filter/counters
    • These could be “traded” via Flickr

Please feel free to add Comments or Feedback.

- Andrew
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Why the move to WordPress (self-hosted)?

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After working with the DotNetNuke Content Management System (CMS) for over two years on my personal and several other websites, I finally made the decision to move to something a little less daunting.

Do not get me wrong, DNN is a very powerful system, but with the power comes complexity.

I needed something that did not require as much time to work with, so I started to look into WordPress.

I also realize, that the two systems are entirely different, and have two different audiences in mind.

DotNetNuke can be managed by one person, but that one person needs to be aware of several different underlying architectural environments. Having a programming background is also very desirable when tweaking in needed.

WordPress on the other hand, seems to be geared more for the casual user. Once set up, management of the software appears to be far easier than DotNetNuke.

In the following, I will attempt to do some illustrations in regards to the pros and cons DotNetNuke and WordPress.

By no means is this list comprehensive, but is based on over two years of working with DotNetNuke, and new installation of WordPress, as my new website environment. (I did run a WordPress.com (Free) site for approximately same amount of time… and I have a couple alter ego sites on WordPress…)

DotNetNuke

Pros

  • Free/Open Source
  • Very Powerful and Scalable
  • Supports many Microsoft development languages
  • SEO Friendly (w/Plug-Ins)

Cons

  • Complex
  • Windows Only
  • Requires Hosting Server
  • Simple Back-ups can be done w/Additional “Paid” Software
    - Depending on your Hosting company, Database backups may require additional purchased software.

DotNetNuke it is definitely geared towards an environment where there is someone or some folks that are willing to administer an environment where multiple technologies may be involved.

DotNetNuke is infinitely expandable with the various programming languages that are available to create modules and enhancements within this Content Management System (CMS).

When looking at the DotNetNuke homepage, you can see that many large corporations throughout the world use this CMS for their websites.

There is also a large development and support environment available for those that wish to use DotNetNuke, including SnowCovered.com, DNNCreative.com and the forums on the Main DotNetNuke website.

One of the things that I found very depressing about the DotNetNuke environment, was that every time I wanted to have additional functionality and something, it is it was either a great deal of work, or I had to pay for it.

I always felt that I was getting “Nickel and Dimed” for everything I wanted to do, including documentation and training.

A prime example of this would be the DotNetNuke blog module. Based in this day and age of blogs seems to be the quintessential format for all many websites.

WordPress.com (Free)

Pros

  • Free/Open Source
  • Very Powerful
  • No Hosted Needed
  • SEO Friendly

Cons

  • Limited Enhancement options
  • No Google Analytics
  • No Google AdSense
  • Might be Block by Firewalls

WordPress.com by far is the simplest of these three options presented, but what do you want?

There is no need to find a host, installation is nearly instantaneous, with a few clicks you can have your theme for your website, and you’re off and running.

With the free hosting version of WordPress, there is no advertising “things” that must be placed on your website, which I find very interesting, because I wonder how WordPress pays for itself.

Another Post, another time….

WordPress (Self Hosted)

Pros

  • Free/Open Source
  • Very Powerful
  • Google AdSense & Analytics
  • Very Powerful and Scalable
  • Multiple Platforms ( Wintel & Linux)
  • Very Low Hosting Fees
  • SEO Friendly (w/Plug-Ins)
  • Basic Back-up of the MySQL can be done with Free Plug-ins

Cons

  • Need a Hosting Server (Hosting Fees)

Because WordPress is open source, there are no cost associated with the base software, which does lower costs as one looks around at various hosting options.

I did research one vendor, that does have very low price, but what I found out was, the Advertised price was based upon an upfront one year obligation of hosting.

Once again the law of averages, for the hidden truth.

The ULTIMATE hosting environment would be comprised of Linux as a server operating system, Apache as your Web server, and MySQL doing the database backend, and the ability to use PHP scripts/language. Also known as, LAMP (or Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)…

There are thousands of Hosting Vendors that could fit this description… that is beyond scope of this post to really get into that issue…

Many of these Vendors also offer one-button installation of WordPress which for those that do not enjoy the fun of installation, one can just click… sit back and wait…

I did not do this so I cannot comment on the validity of these installs, but if there were an issue there would be far more complaints than what I was able to see in various forums.

Install – WordPress

I did a fair amount of reading to make sure, that I was moving in the right direction of a WordPress install..

I did my necessary backups of my DotNetNuke website…

I even converted many of the aspx pages to HTML, and then integrated them to my temporary WordPress.com blog site.

My WordPress.com site was my secondary backup, and served as my template for my new website.

Having been a Wintel System Administrator for 10+ years, I knew I needed to back up everything…

Several times over…

I confirmed with my hosting company, CrystalTech.com, that my hosting environment was able to accommodate WordPress…

I also confirmed the default structure of my hosting environment.

This was going to be a “Bare metal” / “Fresh” install.

I downloaded and unzipped the official WordPress installation package, and uploaded it to my webspace, and ran the installation script.

The installation ran extremely quickly… I was VERY surprised!

I was able to launch my website install the database etc. etc. etc. without issue…

Now it was time to customize.

Note – Another thing that struck me, was the fact that the administrator interface for WordPress is far easier to understand, then what one would face with DotNetNuke.

I am not going to get to each and every detail of the various ‘things’ that one can add to their web press environment, but needless to say there are thousands of different combinations that one could create to fit their personal taste.

Conclusion

WordPress (Self Hosted), in my opinion, is the most flexible of the three environments presented, but this is dependent on how much you want to be involved financially or through development.

For a Single User with some General knowledge, but not willing to deal with the test technical aspects, WordPress.com (Free), would be your best bet.

For a User with some Advance knowledge, but not willing to deal with the test technical aspects, WordPress (Self Hosted), might be a consideration, but be aware, the technical aspect, might become addicting…

For accompany willing to invest the time and finances, DotNetNuke can be an excellent platform to build from, they can easily grow as your requirements do.

Additional References

Because I installed into a mixed environment, Microsoft IIS (WinTel) and MySQL (Linux), I was confronted with several unique issues with my host that were easily resolved with numerous pre-published documents.

As part of my website reconfiguration plan, I set up on a aseymour.com, with a HTML page, that included a metadata redirect to my WordPress.com site, so I was never really “down”, my content was always available.

But in doing so, I choose to install into a sub-directory of my main website…

At first, when one went to aseymour.com, there would be a quick redirect page, then to the new Main.

I had to get around this pause…

The Crystal Tech support folks were able to point me to the following document, which also used to redirect but at a domain level, which I hope to use, later as I look into Drupla and Joomla.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory

Updates

At the moment, there are no Updates.

- Andrew
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FTP – PhotoShare-MakeOver (PSMO) projects

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In setting up of the “Chester County (PA) Photography” Facebook page, and the Introduction of the “PhotoShare-MakeOver” (PSMO) projects, I may have overlooked some details…

So this Post, is the First in a planned Series, of short FAQ style articles, based on feedback from this Blog, Facebook and Flickr groups that I belong to.

Here goes…

Table of Contents

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What is FTPing files? – RE: “PhotoShare-MakeOver” (PSMO) projects

FTP is a fundamental protocol of the Internet, as the name implies “File Transfer Protocol“. It has been around since the inception of the Internet. It is a base protocol for how things work on the Internet. It is your Friend!

- You could also think of it, as the phone line coming into your home, your voice(s) are nothing more than data passing back and forth.

In the good old days, one would have to get into a command line session, maneuver to the various directories, start a PUT/GET, and continue.

Allot of typing, mistakes, etc…

Finally, someone put a GUI (Graphical User Interface) to the protocol, and created an application as an easier way to move files!

Those FTP applications, also known as Clients, are available for EVERY platform, and I believe every OS still has the ability to FTP form the command line…

FTP Clients are the way to go, but deciding which one…

It is my nature to be frugal, so Free is good, and Good Free software that is reliable is even better!

So I offer up FileZilla as my personal choice.

“FileZilla is open source software distributed free of charge under the terms of the GNU General Public License.”

Well worth the price!

FTPing – RE: “PhotoShare-MakeOver” (PSMO) projects (Downloading)

This is the easy part!

Most modern Browsers allow FTP downloads with a simple click of a link, and following the various download dialog boxes and screens.

Once you have the file(s) locally on your hard drive, now have fun putting your “touches” to the images!

Don’t forget to Re-Post your efforts to the Group(s)!

FTPing – RE: “PhotoShare-MakeOver” (PSMO) projects (Uploads)

If you would like to be considered for a “PSMO Project“, please contact one of the Group Admin‘s.

For illustration, I am going to use aseymour.com, if you are going to use another website/domain, please contact that Admin for details on Directory, Username and Passwords.

It is estimated that the PSMO files are going to be approximately 50MBs+ in size per image, and need a Common Area for the files to be stored so others can access/download them for the projects.

In the case of aseymour.com, I have setup a Dropbox for the “Chester County (PA) Photography” groups, which is Password Protected for Uploading.

For Username and Current password, please contact the PSMO Admins.

The “CCPP PSMO – Dropbox” can be found here: <http://www.aseymour.com/CCPaPhotography/dropbox/>

Again, you need a Username and Password to Upload, and if files are NOT invited, they will be deleted!

If you have the Current Username and Password, you launching your FTP Client, in this case, FileZilla (WinTel).

First Time Setup – FileZilla & aseymour.com

The first time that you use aseymour.com, you will need to follow these steps. but once done, but once Saved, you can return to the Site without the need to go through all these setup steps:

<- These instructions are for the Windows Client ->

Launch/Open FileZilla;

  • Go to the File menu, and select “Site Manager…“;
  • In the “Host Name:” field, Enter “ftp.aseymour.com” (without the “Quotes”);
  • In the “Logon type:” drop-down, select “Normal“;
  • Enter in Username and Password;

On the General tab -

  • In the Site Manager window, on the Left side, look for the “New Site” button;
  • Name the new site “CCPaPhotography_UL” (without the “Quotes”);

On the Advanced tab -

  • Nothing needed at this time

Then Click the Connect button at the bottom of the dialog box.

Once you have connected, you should see a index.html file, please do NOT touch this file!

From here you should, find the file(s) that you wish to upload with FileZilla and than Upload (FTP “PUT”) your invited files!

Once you are completed Uploading your files, please let the Admins knows so that an announcement can be made!

If you have any questions or comments, please let us know!

Thanks in advance (TIA),

- Andrew
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