Monday, May 30, 2005

Photographer Matthew Mahon's fabulous web site (w/ thanks to Lianne)

This is a site that I just had to post, it was posted by Lianne on her blog Liannes Lair, which is a source of some excellent weblinks and great entertainment. Lianne is a friend, who remarkably, although I've known her for about 14 years, I've only met a few of times. Lianne is also a co-contributor to kickstartnews.com - an online source for reviews of the latest hardware and software for your personal computer and PDA. I have her bookmarked and encourage you to do so as well. - Lianne writes:



This is the site of Matthew Mahon, New Jersey Photographer. Matthew has worked for Time Magazine and a host of independents but I think his claim to fame will be his site. Without question this is the most interactive site I've seen without it being some kind of game site. Scattered before you are several of Matthew's photographs along with bits of paper (receipts and such) that give us some information about Matthew himself.

Zoom in and pan around the site to get a closer look at each piece and pay special attention to those that bear icons in the lower right hand corner. An arrow will allow you to flip the photo and get information on the subject and the little sketch of Matthew's head will bring Matthew and his assistant gum chewing "Hodger" into the shot with either additional information on the photo, or some goofy repartee. Truly an original site, designed by a very creative mind.

Sunday, May 29, 2005

AGFA PHOTO files for Insolvency

This one hits close to the heart ... many times in the past I have worked with Agfa and many of their different divisions. The insolvency filing by AGFA Photo Gmbh is a big one. Now lets clarify issues, AGFA Photo is not AGFA (Agfa-Gevaert), AGFA Photo was sold to an invesment group composed of senior management a few months back by the parent company. Agfa-Gevaert provides AgfaPhoto with distribution and order fulfillment and other services. The loss of this company will be keenly felt, so there is hope that they could recover, given the right combination of factors.

Raw Issues

Riddle me this, why promote the benefits and flexibility of the digital photography concept and then try to handcuff the user with the use of potentially limiting proprietary file formats?

One issue about OpenRAW stands out more than any other. All pundits of the RAW concept extol the benefits of using RAW format in your workflow. But nothing the camera companies have done in the past, has had as far reaching an effect on how easy it will be to get the best of OUR work using their equipment, as has the encryption of certain parts of each companies RAW formats.

All photographers, professional or otherwise, only wish full access to what is in essence their data. Certainly the technology creating it belongs to the manufacturer, but the use of an open format doesn't do anything to limit their profitability. I would counter that such openness will only encourage Camera Buyers, who have a enough of a long view of investment in their tools, to continue buying their favoured brand.

I favour Canon with my custom, and have done so for about 20 years, but this could change if they handcuff my ability to access my data. Let's hope they reveal their stance on this issue and are more forthcoming with their information.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Canon SLRs and Lexar card incompatibility issues

Canon and Lexar have both issued media alerts detailing some issues between several Canon digital SLRs and Lexar Pro 80x CompactFlash cards. Lexar says that this problem only occurs under extreme conditions. In their alert, Canon also mentioned a problem with the EOS-1D(s) Mark II, which can lead to the loss of buffered images. Canon have indiciated that a Firmware updates to fix these issues should be available by the end of this month. DPReview Article here

Monday, May 23, 2005

The RAW Flaw

By Michael Reichmann and Juergen Specht
May, 2005

Some Background

For most of the past 10 years (effectively, the entire geological age of digital SLR cameras) photographers have been almost oblivious to a lurking danger. This threat – and it is no exaggeration to call it that – can best be understood by analogy.

Imagine that you were a photographer working with film, some time during the 20th century. Many of us don't have to make too great an effort to imagine this, because we were.

You shot your transparency or negative film, had them processed (or processed them yourself), made your prints, and then filed the negatives safely away in acid free storage boxes, so that the next time you or your clients needed a print the negatives were be safely available.

And, sure enough, whenever needed – even ten or twenty years later, we'd go back to our negatives, put them in the enlarger, and make a new print. And often, because over the intervening time our darkroom skills had advanced, or maybe because we had a new enlarger or we were using an improved paper or chemistry, our new prints turned out to be superior to what we had been able to produce before.

Now, imagine the following scenario. We retrieve our files, find the negative or slide that we want to reprint, and then discover that it has become opaque. The image is gone or otherwise inaccessible. We still have the piece of film that originally went though the camera, but the image itself cannot be accessed!

Good Lord – what could have happened? Well, imagine if the answer was that the company that made your original roll of film had manufactured it so that the film only fit into one type of enlarger, and that those enlargers aren't being made anymore. Or that the chemical properties of the dyes used to make that roll of color film were such that they would only interact to form an image with matching dyes in a printing paper from that same company; but – sorry, that company was sold a few years ago and the new owners decided to stop making that type of paper.

Totally unacceptable of course. But really, this is a pretty far-fetched scenario – isn't it?
No. Actually it isn't, because this is exactly the situation that we now face with our digital camera's RAW files. Let's see if we can understand what's going on and why the current situation has come to a head.

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What is a RAW File?

Here is a detailed article explaining what a RAW file is. Simply put, it's the output of the camera's sensor with minimal processing. This means it contains all of the data about the image captured. Regard it as a digital negative. A negative though that has not yet been processed. The image is therefore latent; there, but undeveloped. This offers huge advantages to the digital photographer, because it allows us to re-visit our unprocessed files at any time in the future, and reprocess them again, as we find appropriate.

Developing the RAW File

You've pressed the shutter and taken the photograph. It might be of aunt Millie eating a piece of chocolate cake at the July 1st BBQ, or possibly one of the alien mothership landing on the White House lawn. In any event, it's precious to you, aunt Millie, or maybe to world posterity. Only time will tell.

But it's your photograph. You took it, and it belongs to you. But first it needs to be developed (to use that easily understood word).

You have two basic choices. You can have the camera process it, or your can do it yourself later on the computer. If you choose that the camera does it, you set the camera to output a JPG file. This means that in a fraction of a second the camera will process the image, permanently setting the linearity, matrix processing, white point, color balance, color space, sharpening, contrast, brightness, and saturation, and then will save the file to the camera's memory card in an 8 bit compressed format – ie: a JPG file.

If you've shot a JPG file, and if this is what you want and need, that's fine. You've got a fully baked image. One that might accept a bit of correction later in Photoshop, but which is essentially complete in itself. Once the camera creates the JPG file it throws away the sensor's data, and its ready to take the next shot.

But, many photographers aren't happy with in-camera JPGs. Just as serious photographers and working professionals always liked to develop their own film, or at least have a pro-lab do so rather than simply trusting it to the drug store lab, so to do photographers now want to do their own processing of their camera's files.

So, they set their cameras to shoot in RAW mode. This means that the camera isn't processing the sensor output (other than to provide an LCD review image), but instead saves the image data to the camera's memory in what is called a RAW file. This file has not had any linearization, matrix processing, contrast, brightness or saturation processing. It has not been sharpened or lossily compressed, and it is still in 16 bit format, with no color space clipping. (All cameras do some image processing, because image sensors are analogue devices and the output needs to be turned into a digital file).

But, what you get is a virgin image (if you will). One that is ours to turn into a photograph that best reflects our memory or vision of what we wanted to record.

Once you transfer the RAW files from your camera's memory card to the computer the RAW file needs to be turned into something usable. It needs to have everything done to it that the camera does when it produces a JPG. But now, you are in control. You can set all of the parameters yourself, and can do so in 16 bit mode and a large color space, to avoid clipping colors and compressing tonalities. You can set your own sharpening, your own white balance, and more. The file is yours, and you can do with it as you wish, both technically and artistically.

But can you?

You can if you have a copy of the manufacturer's proprietary software for decoding the file. And herein lies the problem. What happens if you've lost your software disk? What happens if you change computers and can't find the CD any longer? What happens if the Megaflex Company (the makers of your camera) goes out of business, and no longer has a copy of the software on their web site for you to download?

What happens when your new Quantum Cube based computer no longer can read CDs, or DVDs, or its operating system can't deal with something as old and arcane as Windows XP or Mac OSX?
Far fetched you say? We'll, how many of you have a stack of 3.5" floppies somewhere in your desk drawer, and when was the last time you had a floppy disk drive attached to your computer? Still do ­– you say? OK. How about 5.25" floppies? Bet you don't have one of these sitting around anymore, except maybe moldering away in the basement somewhere.

How about being able to play those Sony Betamax tapes, or the 8 track cartridges you used to love so much? Can your current computer still understand Visicalc files from your Osbourne computer? I thought not.

What are the implications then for RAW files? Are the above examples relevant to the current situation?

YES.

You as a photographer have two issues to deal with. One – is the preservation of your RAW files in a physical format that will be readable into the future. There are many strategies for this that basically involve making multiple copies of your files on different media, and keeping those media safe from physical damage. If these files are copied to new media and new media types on a regular basis then you have a strategy for physical preservation.

The second issue is that of being able to actually make use of the data that's in the RAW file, and this is where we run into trouble.


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The Tower of Babble

The digital camera industry is very young; less than 10 years old. Because of this each camera maker has developed their own RAW formats. And, as their ability to improve the way in which information from the camera's sensor is recorded improves, these manufacturers have changed their formats continuously, usually with each new camera model.

How many RAW formats are there? Believe it or not, as of mid-2005 there are more than 100 different RAW formats in existence.

This alone is cause for concern. Companies come and go, and even those that persist often orphan old formats. There are in fact RAW formats in existence for which no manufacturer's software is currently available. And that's after less than 10 years.

Then there's the ugly matter of encryption. This was brought to the fore when in early 2005 Nikon released its flagship camera, the D2x, with encrypted white balance data.

Now, Nikon isn't the first, or the only company to encrypt their RAW files. But because they did so in such an intransigent way it has acted as a tipping point for the entire industry. Nikon owners are furious with the company, and quite a backlash has developed.

But let's apportion blame fairly. Other companies have done the same. In late 2003, for example, Sony encrypted the RAW files for its then new F828 digicam. It took only 3 days until the encryption was broken, but that's beside the point.

Companies like Canon and others are not free of guilt. Most camera makers use tricks to hide their data. Fortunately there are some very smart programmers out there, and to our knowledge none of these software tricks remain more than a trivial annoyance to anyone that really wants to crack them.

But, in the US at least, with the Millennium Copyright Act, the game has changed. Simply put, anyone that cracks encrypted or otherwise protected intellectual property is subject to criminal prosecution. And, since it possibly can be argued that the code (not content) in an encrypted or ÒprotectedÓ RAW file belongs to its creator (meaning the camera maker), any company or programmer breaking that code needs have liability concerns.

Similarly the proposed European Software Patents Protocol could mean that RAW formats will be patent protected and therefore not freely usable, even for interoperability purposes. If this comes to pass, European photographers could lose free access rights to their own photographs.
Now we all know that there are quite a few companies that write generic RAW converters. Many of these are small cottage industries and are highly unlikely to be prosecuted by the likes of the large camera makers. But there are larger companies, such as Adobe and Phase One, which are much more tempting targets for lawsuits, and who have litigation and liability lawyers who try and look after their best interests.

This is what has happened in early 2005. Both Adobe with Camera RAW 3.1 and Phase One with Capture One 3.7 have refused to decode Nikon's new white balance encryption on D2x and D50 camera files. Not that they couldn't (individual programmers did it days after it was released), but because it exposes these corporations to liability.

This is an unacceptable situation. We can't fault Adobe and Phase One. They're simply looking after their own best corporate interests. But who then is looking after our best interests? Apparently no one, and certainly not the camera makers.

We write camera makers (plural) because while Nikon has put itself in the bull's-eye of consumer scorn, almost all camera makers are guilty of promoting a seemingly never-ending succession of proprietary RAW formats.

This has to stop!

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The Solution?

There are two solutions – the adoption by the camera industry of...

A: Public documentation of RAW formats; past, present and future
or, more likely...

B: Adoption of a universal RAW format

Proposal A simply requires that camera makers recognize that they are doing their customers a disservice by hobbling RAW files with various layers of proprietary processes and encryption methodologies. Once I, as the photographer, have pressed the shutter, the image file belongs to me; not Canon, not Nikon, not Pentax, or anyone else. Me! And by putting up roadblocks to my unfettered access to these files, they are acting against my needs and my interests.

Proposal B is a request that camera makers adopt a universal RAW file format. Adobe has put forward the DNG format as an open standard. Is this the one to adopt? We really have no axe to grind, one way or the other. If DNG is seen as a suitable standard, that's great. A large number of independent software makers have already embraced it, and Leica has adopted it as their native standard for their new Digital Module R for their R8/R9 camera bodies.

But if there's a better way, please propose it and get the rest of the camera industry to adopt it.
Listen to us. We don't care who wins the corporate battles. The only winner we care about are ourselves and our fellow photographers. And, in this matter, if you're not with us, you're against us.


The OpenRAW Working Group

With this as background, the OpenRAW Working Group was founded.

The goal of OpenRAW is to encourage image preservation and give creative choice on how images are processed to the creators of the images – us – photographers.

This group is an amalgam of photographers and other interested people founded to create awareness of these issues, suggest a solution, and provide coordination for these efforts.
Some photographers might ask "Why should I care about OpenRAW? Somebody will always figure out the file formats." OpenRAW replies:

Third party processing alternatives only very slightly increase the probability that today's images can be processed at some future date. Third party developers are often small, and more likely than camera manufacturers to disappear. Image processing software must be continually updated to work on current computing systems. Just because Brand X can do it today, doesn't mean that Brand X will be usable 50 years hence.

Third party software producers, just like camera manufacturers, aren't publishing the file formats they have deciphered. They each hold that knowledge to themselves for competitive advantage.

In important and related issues, no one currently is producing software that can recover data from damaged RAW files. Files can be damaged by media deterioration or by software bugs. Only by knowing what the parts of the file are, and what those parts mean, is there a hope of recovering useful data from damaged files.

Third party software producers don't always decipher all parts of RAW files, only the parts they need to make their software work.

Having open RAW documentation speeds up the development of new methods of conversion. Having formats closed inhibits growth and maturing of digital photography. One of the most visible results is that we still do not have decent camera profiles, because camera profiling should be done in RAW mode.

The more camera companies "hide the data," the more time and resources are needed by third party developers just to decipher it – let alone add features to their programs. And, at some point, it becomes no longer economically feasible to do so.

The OpenRAW Working Group believes that open file formats encourage innovation. OpenRAW is not asking manufacturers to disclose the trade secrets of their sensor construction or their firmware, only the structure of the RAW data recorded when the photographer presses the shutter button, because:

1. There is no guarantee that manufacturers won't change their camera software support policies and abandon older cameras from current software.

2. There is no guarantee that manufacturers will exist in the future. (Consider Contax and their groundbreaking full frame Digital N camera of just a few years ago – now completely orphaned. Could your camera suffer a similar fate one day?)

3. There is no guarantee that a software program will execute correctly in the future. So even if we keep old hardware and software around, there is no guarantee that it will work properly on future computer systems.

4. There is no guarantee that support will be added to new conversion software for older and discontinued models.

The bottom line is that if only the manufacturers' software can fully edit RAW images, photographers and consumers of their images are captives of the manufacturers' software strategies as they change with time.

You should also consider that as RAW processing software improves (and it is improving every year), photographers with orphaned proprietary RAW files will be left behind. For example, Canon's latest DPP software does not support the Canon D30 camera, which is just a few years old, and which is still in use by some photographers.

Finally, consider the problems of digital asset management and the cataloging of files. Many pros as well as amateurs have literally Gigabytes of RAW files. The various asset management programs can't hope to keep up with the ever increasing number of proprietary formats. And as time passes and these programs are enhanced, what are the chances that they will still be able to read your older RAW files? If Canon can no longer do it with one of their own formats from just a few years ago, how can we expect third parties to do any better?

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Act Now!

The time has come for us as digital photographers, and purchasers of equipment from the major manufacturers, to speak out. Historically, when people with a common cause, a just cause, speak out, their combined voices are heard.

Below is an open letter to all of the major digital camera makers. If you agree with its basic premise, we urge you copy it off the screen and paste it into an email to the camera maker of your choice, or to each of them for that matter. Just copy the text of the letter, click on a manufacturer's e-mail link, and past the text into your mail program. If you prefer you can print it out and mail or fax it instead.

This petition is being posted on a large number of web sites; sites with a combined readership of more than one million photographers from every country in the world.


Add your voice today.

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to add my name to the list of photographers from around the world that are requesting that your company, as well as the other major digital camera makers, adopt a policy of open documentation of RAW formats, past, present and future.

I am also requesting that your company adopt a universal RAW format. The DNG format has been put forward as such a possible standard, but we are willing to accept any truly open standard as the industry may agree upon.

I support the position on this taken by the OpenRAW Working Group (http://www.openRAW.org/).

Please add my voice to those that are against proprietary and encrypted RAW file formats. I urge you to act swiftly to support your customers so as to ensure our continued loyalty to your company's brands and products.

Sincerely,

(Your name)




Please copy the above text and then click on the link below to see a page of e-mail addresses for most of the major digital camera makers

__________________________________

Camera Maker's E-mail Addresses
__________________________________

An Invitation

This is an invitation to all web site authors and publishers, as well as camera clubs and those in the print industry, to freely copy and republish the contents of this page. We only request that you leave the text unchanged, though you may of course add whatever additional commentary you wish. You may also translate this text into the language of your choice.

The more voices that are raised on this issue, the sooner that the camera makers will hear us and act upon our needs.

For further information on this initiative, please contact either Michael Reichmann at The Luminous Landscape or Juergen Specht at OpenRAW.

Versions of this page in MS Word as well as PDF format may be downloaded.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

PixelGenius Update Plug-ins to Support Photoshop CS2

PixelGenius LLC have announced updates, which include support for Adobe Photoshop CS2, to their PhotoKit, PhotoKit Color and PhotoKit Sharpener plug-ins. Updates are free for all registered users and available for download from: pixelgenius.com.

Pixel Genius, LLC. was founded in 2001 by digital imaging, design and photography luminaries: Martin Evening, Bruce Fraser, Seth Resnick, Andrew Rodney, Jeff Schewe and Mike Skurski.

Nikon releases updated firmware for D70

Nikon have released the v2.0 update for their D70 firmware. This update which supports the D70 and the new D70s includes the following improvements: Performance improvements to the AF system, Changes to menu system, Page-size settings can be applied from the camera for direct printing via PictBridge, there are also changes in the date/time system, Nikon Capture Camera Control and file handling. The update is available for both Windows and Macintosh.

Minox goes it alone...

This bit of news from dpreview.com; Minox Gmbh. has severed ties with Leica Camera AG. General Manager, Thorsten Kortemeier took in 2001 and this current move is to allow MINOX to focus development and products for new sales channels and niche markets. It will be interesting to see how this affects Leica.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Fred Miranda Plugins and Actions updated for CS2

Fred Miranda has updated all his Plug-ins and Actions so that they are now compatible with Photoshop CS2. In addition to these updates, his website has also seen some improvements. If you are not familiar with Freds website pay it a visit and have a poke around, it is a great resource for reviews, hints and tips and for digital imaging tools. For a list of all FM software products go to fredmiranda.com/software.

Monday, May 16, 2005

Painter IX Review

Reviewed by: Mario Georgiou, May 2005
Published by: Corel Corporation
Requires: Windows 98 OSR2, NT4.0 and above, 2000/XP home and professional, Pentium PC 700MHz or faster, 256MB RAM; Mac OS X 10.2.8 or higher
MSRP: US$429, UK£293 (upgrades starting at US$125.00, UK£116)

Many years ago I came across two very cool and exciting programs. One was Fauve Matisse and the other was Fractal Painter. They both promised so much and, funny enough, they delivered. Unfortunately Matisse passed into the history books as yet another innovative creative tool which died before it's time. Thankfully Fractal Painter and all of its subsequent versions and upgrades survived. It's been many years since I've actually played with Painter on a regular basis. Painter is now owned by Corel and although many folks initially groaned when Corel acquired the package, the company has done justice to this very powerful natural media application.

There are now several natural media programs on the market. I have over the last few months played with Dogwaffle, PD Pro and Open Canvas. They all do a very good job of emulating natural media and contain some innovative technologies and approaches. But Painter has reached a level of maturity in its design and features which lead many in the art and design community to ask what can possibly by next?

For those of you who haven't heard of it, Painter IX is a tool which emulates the use and feel of natural media art tools. With it you can draw, paint, ink, sketch, water color and apply painted effects to your art and photos. It is a digital canvas which can be used with a mouse but really comes into its own when used with a pressure sensitive tablet and stylus.

For the release of Painter IX, Corel has very effectively concentrated on Painter's functionality and made marked improvements in speed, usability and features. The noticeable lag that was present in certain brushes is now unnoticeable except when you're using larger ones. The improvements that have been made to brushes and their parameters are immediately noticeable due to the introduction of Brush Control Palettes allowing for instant access and modification to your settings.

The handling improvements to the oil and water brushes are immediately obvious. For Oils you can define parameters such as the amount of paint on your brushes, brush type, mixed color brushes, paint removal, blending and texturing with palette knives and a dirty brush mode for keeping your media more realistic for color mixing and natural effects. The Water Color modes allow you to specify how long the paints stay wet and also to effect changes to the brush stroke fringes after the stroke has been applied.

The Snap-to-Path brush is one of my favorite features and obviously allows you to paint along a predefined path while retaining all the parameters you've assigned to the brush—great for calligraphy and illustrative work.

The improvements to Painter's user interface has added much to the user experience, which although still a heavy undertaking, now doesn't really get in the way and allows you to easily access the features you need. The program's underlying logic is also now reflected in an orderly and commonsense interface which reflects this awesome program's true power.

Painter does a good job of supporting many of the features found in Photoshop files and this compatibility is quite comprehensive in both directions with few exceptions. Corel has taken a feather out of Adobe's hat with the addition of a feature which allows you to save multiple iterations of any project you're working on (a notable absence in earlier versions).

The animation features in Painter have also been improved with controls for defining the number of frames per second. When combined with onion skinning, rotoscoping features and the ability to export to GIF, AVI and QuickTime, you have a great animation platform.

Painter's other existing features have also been improved and include an air brush, cloner brushes, magic markers, crayons, image hoses, pastels and many others along with the ability to define custom brushes.

Painter has an excellent support network that is handled both by Corel and by third parties. The program's help file is fairly comprehensive and users should have no problem following it. Corel provides some free telephone support and several levels of paid support for services, individuals and corporate accounts. Corel also hosts newsgroups where you can get answers from other users and Corel staff but I prefer some of the other sources like the online tutorials from Lynda.com and extensive forum support and tutorials available from sources such as the Painter Feedback forums on ConceptArt.org, CGTalk.com, paintercreativity.com and the many other graphics communities online. The users of this great program provide an enormous amount of online support ranging from tutorials to an extensive knowledge base.

Cons: At the beginning of this review I mentioned that many people in the art and design community are wondering what can possibly be next for Painter. The answer is that even though none of the competition has the scope and consistency evident in Painter IX, Corel can still learn something from PD Pro and OpenCanvas. There are some shortcomings including limited levels of undo, a few more crashes than we like, and a heavy feature set that usually means a steep learning curve. The addition of a paint-to-path mode is very cool but I'd really like to see some brushes which are vector based. No support for 16-bit color images.

Pros: For serious work or play (yes, I said "play" because Painter is such a well thought out tool that using it sometimes feels just like freely creative play). Clean user interface. New oil brush features and Quick Cloning are excellent. One of the most useful feature for digital imageers may be the Quick Clone mode for adding painterly effects to photographs. Excellent Photoshop compatibility. Tablet support is excellent. The inclusion of several Power Tools plug-ins is cool.

Painter is the king of the natural media emulators. The power inherent in its rich feature set more than makes up for the steep learning curve. With its support for Photoshop files, tablet friendly tools and powerful color capabilities you really can't go wrong. I enjoyed using Painter IX and have no qualms about recommending this great artistic tool. Go buy, upgrade, play, draw and paint to your heart's content.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Epson release the Stylus Photo R2400

The R2400 is the long awaited successor to the 2100/2200 that has been a favourite with many photographers. This new model promises superior black and white and colour prints with added longevity. The Printer uses the Epson UltraChrome K3 ink set and Epson that they've extended the lifetime of the prints over 108 years for Colour and 200 years for black and white. It supports printing up to A3+ and comes bundled with a variety of software and colour management options. I'm gonna have to look at this baby....

Monday, May 09, 2005

GimpShop : a photoshop makeover for The Gimp

Many fans of the opensource world have long used Gimp for doing their photo and image editing. It is a quite powerful and fully featured application. A talented and resourceful individual called Scott Moschella of Plastic Bugs has rerendered the gimp to more closely match Photoshops functionality. What's more is that in the tradition of all good opensource it's all free. It is called GimpShop, It is well worth a look and for those of you who dare to try it you'll be no doubt impressed by its performance. Mac and Linux ports are here. A Windows port is being worked on as we speak, but an unofficial version is available here..

Adobe make available Adobe Camera RAW v3.1 and DNG Converter v3.1

On Friday Adobe announced version 3.1 of Camera RAW, which now supports the Canon EOS 350D (EOS Rebel XT/EOS Kiss Digital N), Nikon D2X, Olympus EVOLT E-300 and the Olympus C-7070 Wide Zoom. This new version of the Camera RAW plug-in replaces the original plug-in that was installed with Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Photoshop Elements 3.0 software. Adobe has also announced version 3.1 of its DNG Converter. DNG is a open standard proposed by Adobe that allows photographers to archive RAW files in a single format for future compatibility.
Download Here - only compatible with Adobes Photoshop CS2 and Elements 3.0

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Inspiration and Creativity

A day or so ago I was visiting one of my favourite art communities; deviantart whilst on the site I was visiting the page one of the photographers whos work I like, she is a young lady from the UK who despite her youth has show some remarkable talent and a natural eye for creating very beautiful images. In her journal for the day she indicated that she was suffering from an ages old curse - namely a lack of inspiration. I responded with this letter which I have rewritten slightly to correct some spelling errors...

Hey Lara, you're dealing with an age old artists curse ... many artists make the mistake of looking at artificial means of stimulating their imagination and inspiration and therein lies the road to ruin ... look deep in yourself and use other works to give you that kick.

Do you have any books that you read or poetry ... Do you keep a notebook or diary, look to this for little triggers, all your inspiration needs is something to feed it ... look farther afield than your passions and research some other genre for new blood. One of the tricks is to look at other work which interests or inspires you, while being careful not to become a consumer rather than a producer.

A very effective way is to pick up a book of poetry and to look at a poem which catches your minds eye ... take key elements in the poem and use them as elements, props or dressing in your photos. You can also start looking at altering your compositions by changing your viewpoints and the dynamics in your photos. You're already doing a lot of this, maybe not consciously but you are ... your work is already belies your age. Which is why I and others like your work so much.

One factor above all which stimulates the artist is experience and when you temper that with patience you have a winning combination. Ideas come from ones surroundings and experiences, if you actively pay more attention to what's going on around you, then inspiration will often spring from it.

For the young, it is often difficult transcending the limitations of their personal experience, this lack of experience can be compensated for by reading and doing so with an open mind. Try not to get bogged down into a particular genre, but read all kinds of stuff. Look to your favorite artists and musician and find out what makes them tick, this is a lot easier these day because of the internet. As I hinted at above, watch your time, you want to avoid the consumer mind by only allowing a portion of the time for this. Creativity often thrives under pressure but imagination needs feeding or it will become jaded.

"For a creative person, the secret for stimulating inspiration is reading widely, traveling extensively, storing ideas in the bottomless receptacle of the mind, and finding joy in the process of imagining."

One last thought ... Think of your mind as a series of lenses which can be focused, try changing the focus and intention behind the focus.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Patent Pirates and Damaging Lawsuits

I joined the OpenRAW group because I like many others are sick and tired of legal chicanery and the obesession many corporations have with owning the markets they are in. I like that open discussion in encouraged and that there is a healthy balance between personal and professional perspective. Corporations must reaalize that the bottomline will only carry you so far and that trying to stifle the competition through expensive Lawsuits and chicanery throught coding does nothing but hurt the market and peoples perceptions of it.
What I hope for is that sooner rather than later someone puts a stop to all these stupid and expensive games which makes no one but the Legal advisors rich. The recent spate of patent suits filed is an example of this ... there should be more of a sense of logic placed in the process of patent filing and the use of real industry pundits in the assesment process. Maybe an independent body who's job it is to assess the concept of prior art and to curtail the granting of sweeping and potentially damaging patents for which Prior art exists.
With OpenRAW and concepts like Opensource the idea is to encourage a healthy atmopsphere of development and to prevent the hijacking of ones personal intellectual property. In the Case of RAW files the technology and software may belong to the developer and manufaturer but the content doesn't and anything which may interfere with the owners ease of access is to be considered suspect. I for one like the idea of standards, and things like the GIF and Unisys debacle in the 90's and similarly the whole JPEG thing involving Forgent does little to foster goodwill to an industry already burdened by suspicion.
Open standards must prevail and bodies like ISO must be encouraged to adopt new formats that are truly open in scope and application. We as consumers need to start flexing our muscle and getting our respective governments to respect us as voters and as their bosses rather than the other way around. For too long business has had the ear of government and the policy makers, time for a change don't you think.