Facebook: Image sizes are changing
Filed under: Facebook, Web | Tags: Facebook, images, photos, Social networking
Leave a Comment If the number 604 is stuck in your head as the maximum size of an image that Facebook will display, it’s time to reprogram your brain (and maybe your Photoshop actions/Lightroom presets for Facebook, too). The Inside Facebook blog reports that the maximum photo dimension on Facebook is going up to 720 pixels on a side, but the maximum size of profile pictures is going down to 180 x 540 pixels.
This feature is being rolled out gradually, so you might not see it right away.
If you already uploaded photos and want them bigger, those probably won’t change. Since Facebook has no way that I know of to replace photos, the only way to make photos in an existing gallery bigger is probably to trash all the existing photos and upload them again, losing existing comments, Likes, and (probably) links in the process.
Color Management without the Jargon video: now available!
Filed under: Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Photoshop, Color management, Digital Photography, Printing, Training videos | Tags: Adobe Creative Suite, Color management, DVD, linkedin, Photoshop, training, Video
Leave a Comment Are you a photographer or designer and still not quite sure how color management works? Confused about how to use color profiles? Have you tried to read books and articles about color management, but are overwhelmed by the terminology?
Now you can better understand color management with my DVD and online video, Color Management without the Jargon: A Simple Approach for Designers and Photographers Using the Adobe Creative Suite. I created this video as an approachable introduction to the ideas behind color management and the basics of a good color management workflow. While there’s a lot of good material about color management out there, I feel that much of it jumps into jargon and abstract concepts too quickly. I saw an opportunity to explain color management in the simplest possible terms. I intend Color Management without the Jargon to prepare you for and to complement the deeper, more comprehensive, but also far more challenging material out there.
What you’ll learn
This 1½ hour training video helps beginning and intermediate Photoshop, Bridge, InDesign, and Illustrator users understand the basics of color management, including how to profile monitors and create consistent color in a production workflow. This video provides technical background without being overwhelming, and presents concepts and steps that are easy to follow.
How to watch
You can order Color Management without the Jargon as a DVD from your favorite bookseller or store, or you can watch it online as a streaming video from Peachpit Video. Here are some links to get you started:
DVD on Amazon.com
DVD on Peachpit.com
Watch online at Peachpit.com
More info
Below is the publisher’s marketing copy if you want to learn a bit more…
Every digital photographer or graphic designer knows that color management is important, but many still do not calibrate their computer monitors or understand how color works in different spaces. This 90-minute DVD will help beginning and intermediate Photoshop, Bridge, InDesign, and Illustrator users understand the basics of color management and how to create consistent color in their workflow.
Highlights of this accessible and easy-to-follow DVD video include:
- Calibrating your monitor and digital SLR camera
- Tackling color profile detective work in Photoshop and InDesign
- Assigning, converting, and embedding profiles
- Managing color output for print and the Web
- Integrating raw files and Lightroom into your workflow
- Handling color conversions between video-editing software and Photoshop
The supporting 48-page printed reference guide provides additional links and content.
Canon 7D: Optimizing DSLR video dynamic range
Filed under: Cameras, Canon 7D, Video | Tags: Canon 7D, Canon Picture Styles, dynamic range, Video, video capture
Leave a Comment There’s a great tutorial over at Vimeo on controlling the dynamic range of digital SLRs when capturing video. It turns out that the video mode of digital SLRs is tuned like a typical JPEG mode: To get a contrasty, “finished” look right away. But like JPEGs, this means a lot of tonal and color information is tossed out before the capture is saved, which can be limiting if you need a look that’s different than what the camera gives you. If highlights are blown or shadows are plugged, you may be left with nothing to work with at the high or low end when you try to adjust the image quality.
The technique covered in the video linked below involves using Canon Picture Styles (presets for how the camera processes images) to dial down the contrast and color in an attempt to squeeze as many of the original scene’s tones as possible into the range the sensor can capture. A file captured this way looks flat and lacks contrast, and isn’t something you would show as finished. But that’s because, as with raw capture or like Ansel Adams shooting film, we are at a step in the process where we’re not trying to create a perfect picture at the moment of capture, we’re trying to capture enough of the right data from which we can produce a perfect picture in post-processing. That’s an important difference.
It’s also important to understand that this capture technique isn’t quite as good as actually capturing video in raw format, but video cameras that do are pretty rare and I think most of them are expensive and called RED. This technique is about doing the best you can with the non-raw capture you have.
This capture technique is often called increasing or maximizing the dynamic range, but I prefer to call it optimizing. You’re not making the sensor capture more tones, you’re rearranging the tones you’ve captured before they’re recorded. I suppose you could call it maximizing the available dynamic range.
Here’s the URL to the video:
http://vimeo.com/7256322
While the video talks about the technique in terms of the Canon 7D, Canon Picture Styles can be used with the 5DMkII and others. And the principle can be applied to other brands of cameras that give you control over the image quality of the video.
List of Canon SLR error codes
Filed under: Cameras, Digital Photography | Tags: Canon, error
Leave a Comment The Tallyn’s blog has posted a list of error codes you might see in Canon digital SLRs:
Canon Error Codes Revealed
What, no Error 99? (Actually, the post says the list is for the 5DMkII and later models.)
Mac OS X: The Dock or Application Switcher stops working
Filed under: Apple, Mac OS X | Tags: application switcher, dock, Mac OS X
Comments (4) Today I tried to press the Command-Tab shortcut for the Application Switcher but nothing happened. Another thing that wasn’t working was moving the mouse to the edge of the display to make the hidden Dock appear. The keyboard shortcut to display the Dock wasn’t working either. If this happens to you, the way to fix all of these problems is to restart the Dock. Open the Activity Monitor (it’s in the Utilities folder), select Dock in the list, and click the Quit Process button (or choose View > Quit Process). In the confirmation dialog box that appears, click Quit. The Dock is one of those processes that restarts itself if it’s quit, so that’s all you should have to do. The Dock and Application Switcher should both work now.
Not everyone is aware that the Dock hosts many processes in Mac OS X. For example, in addition to running the Application Switcher, the Dock also runs all of the Dashboard widgets. That’s why the way to make all Dashboard widgets quit is to quit the Dock. (When you simply exit Dashboard, its widgets don’t actually quit—they keep running invisibly in the background, taking up RAM and CPU power.) You can see how processes run within each other in Activity Monitor if you click the Show pop-up menu at the top of the window and choose All Processes, Hierarchically.
Now, of course, you can also fix this by logging out and back in, or you can restart the entire computer. But I often work with a lot of programs and documents open, and that’s why I look for ways to fix problems without having to close all my programs and windows and then set up the entire workspace again.
Adobe Bridge: Workspace not saved on Mac OS X
Filed under: Adobe Bridge, Adobe Creative Suite, Apple, Digital Photography, Mac OS X |
Leave a Comment You want to save a workspace in Adobe Bridge in Mac OS X, but it won’t “take.” The next time you start Bridge, the workspace isn’t available or doesn’t apply when you select it. It just does nothing.
The fix is to open Apple Disk Utility, select your startup volume, and click Repair Disk Permissions.
Now, I know that in theory, repairing permissions shouldn’t fix it. You can count me among those who think that repairing permissions is generally voodoo and that you really oughta be going down other roads first, to fix a problem. But for this particular problem, repairing permissions has worked every time. One time a person walked up to me after one of my conference talks and asked this question and brought the laptop on which it was happening. We tried deleting Bridge preferences and all the other usual troubleshooting techniques, but saved workspaces simply didn’t work until I repaired permissions. It doesn’t make sense, but hey, don’t knock it if it works, right?
I know this is true for Adobe Bridge CS4 on Mac OS X 10.5. I’m not sure if the problem exists or if the solution works on other versions of either software.
Canon announces PowerShot G11 and S90 compacts
Filed under: Cameras, Digital Photography | Tags: camera, Canon, G11, linkedin, LX3, Panasonic, S90
Leave a Comment 
I don’t write about every camera announcement, but these two are noteworthy. While Canon announced six new compact cameras on August 19, there were two in particular that I knew my friends and I would be interested in. The PowerShot G11 is the successor to the G10, a rather large compact with professional features. The PowerShot S90 resurrects the S-series that had more manual control and capabilities that most other point-and-shoots. These announcements affect me since I’m in the market to replace my 5-year-old Canon point-and-shoot, but there’s also quite a bit of intrigue behind this particular set of upgrades.
Please note that this post is not a review, but a commentary on the announcement. The cameras will be available in September 2009.
The Megapixel Wars: Over?
For several years, Canon ratcheted up its megapixel counts like all the other camera companies: 12 megapixels in the G9, 14 megapixels in the G10. But photographers increasingly complained (and rightly so) that not only did more megapixels not guarantee better images by themselves, in some cases they hurt image quality through increased noise. And at the same time making file sizes larger, which reduced the effective capacity of memory cards, hard drives, and CPUs.
Then last year, Panasonic came out with the Lumix DMC-LX3. Many were surprised that it held the pixel count to just 10 megapixels while all other companies raced upwards. That, and the fact that it has a relatively fast lens, may be the reason it also produces images that are thought by many to be better than the G10 in low light. It also has a wider wide end than many compact cameras, which makes it more useful for indoor use. For these reasons plus its raw output capability, many photography enthusiasts embraced the LX3 and it’s been back-ordered for many months. I thought it would be my next compact camera, but I can’t get one. The specific improvements to the Canon PowerShot G11 and S90—faster lens, better low light performance, more reasonable megapixels, and a shocking drop down to 10 megapixels—resemble the strong points of the LX-3 so much that one has to ask: Did the apparent popularity of the LX-3 make it enough of a threat for Canon to have to defend against the LX3 directly? Did Canon believe that they could not continue to maintain image quality from such small sensors if the pixel count went up further?
I think there may be more to it than that, since Canon also decided to bring back the swivel screen to the G series and the raw format to the S series. Now that more people use their camera phone as their point-and-shoot, did Canon feel they had to provide (or restore) more value in the compact range so that serious photographers would have a reason to buy a camera between a JPEG-based point-and-shoot and a digital SLR?
Comparing the PowerShot G11 to the PowerShot S90
With all that context in mind, you might want to compare the G11 and S90 since they’re so curiously similar. These two cameras use the same extended dynamic range sensor and new Digic 4 processor going up to ISO 3200, and both can save in raw format. Here are a few of the important differences between them.
Reasons to get the Canon PowerShot G11 (list price USD$499) over the S90:
- Hotshoe that supports Speedlites (and hopefully wireless triggers)
- Longer telephoto range
- Slower lens (f/2.8)
- Better face detection
- Closer focusing distance (1cm)
- More ISO steps
- Shutter speed up to 1/4000
- Slightly faster frames-per-second burst rate
Reasons to get Canon PowerShot S90 (list price USD$429) over the G11:
- Smaller size is a lot more pocketable
- Faster lens (f2) for better low-light shooting
- Slightly bigger LCD screen (same number of pixels, though)
- Interesting control ring around the lens to which you can assign a function, such as ISO speed
The Canon Shell Game
With their point-and-shoots, Canon has a really annoying way of taking features away and adding them back in a later version with no apparent rhyme or reason. As the G series progressed, people noticed that the swivel screen went away. When the S80 came out, raw format support disappeared. Now both are back. The swivel screen has returned in the G11, and the S90 brings back the ability to save images in raw format.
So what’s missing? Both cameras are capable of only 640×480 30fps video, a strange underachievement in an era of at least 720p HD video on competing cameras. One imagines that video will get a boost in the next generation, but that Canon might once again take away something useful in exchange. Maybe one day Canon will put out a compact where all of the right features actually exist in the same model, but that hasn’t happened yet.
The Details
I’ve only talked about the aspects of these two new cameras that I found to be a notable departure from Canon’s usual pattern. For full details, check out the info at the Canon USA site:
Voting with Dollars
Which one will I choose? Good question. Canon now has two cameras which in theory should keep people from going over to the LX3. But in addition to the fact that we should wait for the reviews to roll in, the LX3 is a year old now, and with all the fall photo expos just around the corner, is Panasonic about to play their next card?…
The good news is that with the expansion of choice, it’s now harder to pick the wrong advanced compact camera.
(Update: I bought the Panasonic LX3 because the fast aperture is nearly constant throughout the zoom range, for the hot shoe, and for the 720p 16:9 video capability. And I’m pretty happy with it!)
Mac Pro: Annoying hard drive vibration fixed
Filed under: Apple Hardware | Tags: hard drive, Mac Pro, vibration
Leave a Comment For a while there had been an annoying buzz emanating from my Mac Pro. I knew it had something to do with a new hard drive I installed, and for a while I thought the drive might be defective, like an earlier one I had that was extremely loud before I returned it.
In this case, it turns out that I had not fully tightened one of the screws on the metal sled that you mount the drive on before sliding it into the case.
The way I found out was that I pulled the drive out of the computer and lightly rapped it with my finger; I could hear something slightly loose and thought it might be the bracket. After I tightened all the screws and slid the drive back into the case, the noise level was back down to normal.
Photoshop CS4: Restoring pre-CS4 channel shortcuts and curves
Filed under: Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Photoshop | Tags: linkedin
Comments (3) In Adobe Photoshop CS4, the keyboard shortcuts for viewing channels changed, and the Curves adjustment layer was implemented as a non-modal panel rather than a modal dialog box. While these changes were done for good reasons, many people are unhappy with them and wish they could do things as they did in Photoshop CS3 and before. Since Photoshop CS4 shipped, a couple of tools have emerged to roll back the changes to some extent.
Use Old Shortcuts plug-in. You can download and install a plug-in that restores the pre-CS4 shortcuts for viewing channels, where Command-1/Ctrl-1 is the composite view of channels. (In Photoshop CS4, Command-2/Ctrl-2 displays the composite channel view, and accordingly, the single-channel viewing shortcuts were all moved up one key.) The link to the plug-in is available on this entry on Photoshop product manager John Nack’s blog. To install it, first unzip the downloaded file, identify the plug-in for your system (Mac or Windows), then drag it into the Plug-ins folder inside the Adobe Photoshop Cs4 application folder. It doesn’t matter where it is inside that folder.
Curves-Dialog panel. This is a panel that lets you add a new Curves adjustment layer or edit a selected Curves adjustment layer using a dialog box, as it was before Photoshop CS4. This panel was built as an extension using Adobe Configurator, and is again downloadable from John Nack’s blog. To install it, first double-click to unzip it, then double-click the unzipped .mxp file. It should open in Adobe Extension Manager, which should install it into the right location automatically. You may need to download and install (or update) Adobe AIR for the extension to work.
Important: It’s still recommended that you learn the CS4 shortcuts and Curves adjustment panel workflow and shortcuts, because it’s the way future versions of Photoshop are likely to work. There is no guarantee that the plug-in or extension will still work or be upgraded to work with versions of Photoshop beyond CS4. Even though I’ve used Photoshop for many years, I’m using the new shortcuts, partly because I agree with the decision to make the Actual Pixels (100% magnification) shortcut (now Command-1/Ctrl-1) match other Adobe and Apple software.
InDesign: Watching for overset text on the last page
Filed under: Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe InDesign | Tags: InDesign, layout, linkedin, overset, story
Leave a Comment When you’re writing within a specific page count in InDesign, you probably want to know if you’ve run out of room at the end of the document. While InDesign provides an overset text indicator in a story’s last threaded text frame, you aren’t going to see that indicator as long as you’re writing on another page somewhere in the middle of the document.
On the last page of the document, there is overset text, but you want to fix it by editing many pages further back in the document.
The slow way to check that overset text indicator would be to go to the last page, look at the indicator, then choose Layout > Go Back to return to the page you were on. You may find it faster and easier to open a second document window displaying the last page of the document, and keep it around behind the window containing the page you’re actually editing. To set this up, choose Window > Arrange > New Window. Now you’re seeing the same document in two windows. In one of the windows, go to the last page in the document. You won’t be changing that window’s view.
The New Window command gives you a second window on the same document, which can display a different page.
Now switch to the first window; as you edit the text you can check on the last page at any time by switching to it and switching back. Of course, this is very fast if you use the Command+` (Mac) or Ctrl-` (Windows) keyboard shortcut to flip through the open windows in InDesign CS4, because InDesign won’t lose your text insertion point in either window. Just flip back to the original window to continue editing.
I use this so often that I used the Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box to create a keyboard shortcut for Window > Arrange > New Window. When I want to create a last page window, I just press the shortcut for New Window, press the End key to get to the last page, and press the window switch shortcut to get back to editing. Once it’s set up, whenever I want I can press the window switch shortcut a couple of times, once to check my story length and again to return to editing.
If you want to simultaneously view both the page you’re editing and the last page of the document, you can use the window management commands in InDesign. If you using floating (not tabbed) documents in InDesign CS4 you can choose Window > Arrange > Tile. If you’re using tabbed documents, you can click one of the n-up options in the application bar to instantly display both views tiled side-by-side. The only reason I first talked about flipping between two overlapping windows is because I usually prefer to use the entire monitor to see a double-page spread at once, but if you have own a very large monitor you might prefer to tile your documents so you can see them together.
When you're using tabbed documents and Window > Application Frame is on, you can click the 2-Up button on the Application Bar. If you're using floating windows instead, choose Window > Arrange > Tile.
With two views, you can edit a page in the middle of the document (left) while watching for the overset text indicator to go away on the last page (right).
