Categories
Ideas Note to Self Reference Thoughts

Dalai Lama on Man

I just found this on the internet today…

‘Somebody once asked the Dalai Lama what surprises him most. This was his response:’

Man, because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived.

– Dalai Lama

Need to remember…

Categories
00 - Alerts Blogging Information Online Life Photography Reference Thoughts

Camera and Cops… Be Careful!

I have been seeing more and more of these types of articles, so I decided to start keeping track of them:

These along with others, should cause all those with a camera, to stop for a moment, and consider what you are capturing.

Normally, my work does not include publicly published people without consent, but after reading about “Esthetic Value”, I have to think about some of my other work.

Another thought, since I do HDR, I normally take several pictures, and the “Art” comes out later on the computer, but would that mean anything handcuffed in the back of a squad car?

When I was doing my “Cloud Hunting“, I did notice a Police car slow down, and take a second look…

More updates to follow…

– Andrew
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Categories
Adobe How to(s)? Information Photography Reference Software Tips

Large Image Files – PSB vs TIFF

In this post, I am going to explore some basic differences between the various Photoshop file formats: PSD, TIFF and PSB

I’m working on a very large image, and 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?

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Categories
Blogging Camera Gedankenexperiment HDR How to(s)? Information Online Life Photography Reference Reviews Tech Talk Tips Tone Mapping Website

HDR Cookbook by Klaus Herrmann (farbspiel)

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:

Over the years, 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.

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“.

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Categories
Add-Ons Backups Browsers Flickr Hacking How to(s)? Information Reference Tech Talk Tips

flickr Award Counter – Backup, Restore and Transfer

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 ¬
MozillaFirefoxProfilesdm24ria8.defaultsprefs.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%AppDataRoaming ¬
MozillaFirefoxProfilesx5lnhhwl.defaultpref.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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