Using RAW Files

Professional and advanced enthusiast photographers often shoot their pictures using the RAW format because it doesn’t compress the images. This results in pictures that still contain all the data that was captured by the camera, usually a Digital SLR. The photographer can edit the images from there. The format provides more possibilities. It is like being able to reshoot the picture even though you are no longer at the site where it was taken.

It cannot work miracles with things like blur, or when images are so over-exposed that only white shows up, or even so under-exposed that patches are only black. However, things like White Balance can be changed from sunny to cloudy, or the photography can correct color and other things to make images look better than they would if they were shot in JPG format.

Notice the Canon RAW file extension below this thumbnail in Windows Explorer

Until now, thumbnails of files shot in the RAW format could not be viewed natively in Explorer without a patch from camera makers like Canon or Nikon. The 64-bit version of Windows required a paid version of a third-party patch to view RAW images from Canon. With Microsoft’s updated Camera Codec Pack, such third-party or camera manufacturer patches are no longer necessary.

Should You Use RAW Now?

Does this mean you should start shooting in RAW just so you can use this new software from Microsoft? Probably not! RAW images take up much more space. Hard Drive space is cheap these days, but moving those images around takes more effort. Also backing the originals up to a cloud service will take forever because your photo library will be, at minimum, twice as big as those with only JPG files. Finally, working with RAW files is a little more complicated. Even using Windows Photo Gallery editor requires the user to convert the RAW file into a format it can use for editing. The patch only lets users view files. Editing still must be done in the compressed JPG format.

Open a RAW file in Photo Gallery and this box will ask you to convert to JPG in order to edit

Microsoft Video Detailing Camera Pack

Here is Microsoft’s video about the new camera pack and its capabilities and limitations:

Limitations

Advanced photo editing programs like Photoshop, or its younger brother Photoshop Express, will handle RAW files. But you have to go through the digital version of developing the photo by opening them in Adobe Camera RAW software, which then makes the file editable in Photoshop. As you can see in the video above, you still have to convert RAW images to edit them in Windows Photo Gallery too.

Good News for Photographers

This is a wonderful development for advanced amateurs and professional photographers who use Windows computers for their workflow. I know I will enjoy being able to quickly take a look at my images in Explorer to see what they contain before opening them for editing in Photoshop. Most advanced or professional Photographers uses applications, like Lightroom, which have always shown thumbnails of RAW files. Sometimes you want a quick look without opening another application. Occasionally you want only to crop a photo without doing a lot of heavy editing. The ability to open a RAW image in Photo Gallery might help. Seeing the thumbnails in Explorer is a huge plus.

You can learn more about thew new codec pack and download it at the Windows Team Blog.

View and Edit RAW Photos in Windows Explorer and Live Photo Gallery is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

Besides using it for school, he also is a photographer and works with his pictures. He takes video of his Parkour and edits them. Being so far from home he also uses the computer to keep in touch with family and friends home in Russia.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Z Series comes in three screen sizes, 13.3″, 14″ and 15.6″. They are designed as multimedia notebooks with multiple colors that are attractive but not flashy. They come with the Lenovo Enhanced Experience with fast booting technology as an option. This feature was demonstrated at CES as our own Xavier Lanier put his MacBook Air up against a Lenovo being operated by race car driver Danica Patrick.

The Z Series also comes with Intel Core iX Sandy Bridge processors and NVIDIA Optimus graphics. Blu-ray is an option on some of these. They start at $669 for the 13″ model, $899 for the 14″ model and $699 for the 15″ model. Below is a video from Lenovo about the series:

Lenovo IdeaPad Z Helps Student & Parkour Fan with Work & Play (video) is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

QuickShot is a great photo app that uploads to DropBox

Functionality of QuickShot

Open QuickShot and it immediately engages the rear facing camera. In the upper left there is a button to switch to the front facing camera. The front camera is not as good as the rear camera, which isn’t saying much since the iPad 2′s rear camera is not that great either. We haven’t found an app that overcomes that, but as photographers say, the best camera is the one you have with you. If you take your iPad everywhere like we do, then QuickShot and the iPad 2 camera can be quite useful.

At the bottom center are three buttons. The middle button is the shutter release. Tap it and the photo is taken and immediately uploaded to DropBox. DropBox is a freemium backup and syncing service. Install it on all your computers and any files in the special DropBox folder will be synced. There is also a free DropBox iPad app. The iPad app allows users to access their online backups on the go. DropBox is free if all you need is 2GB of storage. More storage costs more.

QuickShot settings box is where you enter DropBox account info

In QuickShot, use the bottom left settings button to store your DropBox account information. You can select which folder in DropBox to use to store the pictures. From the settings screen you can also choose whether to save the photos to the iPad’s Library also called the Camera Roll. QuickShot supports geotagging. Geotagging is used to attach the GPS location data from the built-in GPS of a 3G version of the iPad. Either of these settings can be toggled on or off.

QuickShot Photo Quality settings - pick Photo for best results

There is an option for confirming when the upload succeeds. We turned that off because it slows your shooting down. The last setting is Capture Quality. The options are Photo, which is the highest setting, High, Medium and Low. Those labels are a little confusing, but they explain it in the text below the settings box. Unless you are starved for space or on a really slow data connection, we recommend you choose the Photo quality setting to get the best photos.

QuickShot Camera Roll feature lets you upload camera photos

The third button at the bottom of the screen is used to access the Camera Roll on the iPad. In the upper right corner of the pop-up is a share button. Tap it and then select which photos you wish to upload to DropBox. Hit upload and you have a quick way to upload photos taken while the iPad was out of range of Wi-Fi or a good 3G connection.

Review of QuickShot

Below is our video demonstration of QuickShot:

We love this app and use it over the built-in camera the majority of time. It is fast and simple to use. The resulting pictures are as good as those taken with the built-in camera app. And the $.99 price is a steal. It is great for taking quick snaps of documents while at a meeting. The DropBox feature means you can store the documents for later use. With the DropBox app you can also open the snapshots of the documents and export them to other applications for markup.

QuickShot doesn’t take video, which is one weakness. And we wish that the shutter release button was on the left or right side of the iPad so that a user could tap it with the thumb while holding the iPad in landscape mode. Holding the iPad with two hands is the best way to frame your shots and keep them steady. Holding the iPad 2 with only one hand often results in blurry photos. The shutter button is too far away from the thumbs while holding the iPad 2 in landscape mode.

Pros:

• Quickly uploads photos to DropBox
• Simple
• Uploads Quickly
• Uploads Camera Roll Photos

Cons:

• Camera Shutter button in an awkward place
• Can’t overcome weak iPad 2 camera
• No video capability

iPad 2 App QuickShot Uploads Photos to DropBox Instantly is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

I recently attended an event where I met up with a lot of friends from around the world, this of course means cameras were out capturing the memories. One of the things you worry about is if the photos will come out great when you load them on your PC.

When taking group photos, this can be a chore especially since you always have someone doing something when you are about to snap. So, either an eye is blinking, a person who was smiling perfectly before started frowning or something out of place just happened.

If you have the free Windows Live Essentials 2011 installed, a cool feature included in Windows Live Photo Gallery allows you to correct such mistakes by simply using similar photos with the perfect attributes. In this article, I will show you how to use it.

Launch Windows Live Photo Gallery and locate the picture you would like to fix

Please note that this requires that both pictures to be almost identical. The way I guarantee this is, whenever I take a group picture, I usually take a couple more pictures in case one or a few don’t turn out perfect or contain attributes I want to make up the photo such as everybody smiling and looking at the camera.

Here is the photo I want to correct, of course, it looks perfect, there is just one problem, someone blinked, see below:

Lucky enough, I had another picture snapped with the right facial gesture:

What I will do is use Photo Fuse in Photo Gallery to merge it with the first Photo.

In Photo Gallery, select the photos you would like to merge (fuse together with the right facial expressions.

Go to the Create tab and click Photo Fuse in the Tools group

Preparing to apply the Photo Fuse effect

Use the mouse and drag and draw a square over the facial expression you would like to correct.

Photo fuse will then display a gallery with available choices with the best facial expression, the more photos you take, the more choices. Select your photo and Photo Fuse will automatically apply it.

If you don’t have Windows Live Photo Gallery installed, you can download it free from Microsoft. 

How to Fix Bad Group Photos with Photo Fuse [Fix a Face] is a post by Andre from Notebooks.com.

Below is a sample photo taken without the lens attachment (right) and with it (left).

Owners of the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS can take advantage of this unique accessory. We think it might be a novel idea, but  you would likely do better to save your money and get a dedicated digital camera with a very high zoom. But at $35 this is tempting.

Photojojo Brings Telephoto Lens to iPhone is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

Now, with Direct Mode the card can also connect to a mobile phone with the right software installed and share images or video using the handset.

Direct Mode will send any photo you wish from your digital camera, with an Eye.fi card inserted, to your mobile phone. The user can more easily view the photos or upload and share them over their mobile broadband connection. The files can also be sent to the customers Eye-Fi View Account, which is an online storage space reserved for customers.

While Eye-Fi is announcing this at this year’s CES, the upgrade will not be available till later this year. It will be free to all current and future customers.

Eye-fi Direct Mode Connects Camera with Mobile Phones for Wireless Sharing is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

Take your photo editing on the go with Adobe Photoshop Express. This new app allows you to take advantage of a number of basic photo editing features such as crop, flip, rotate, as well as adjust color, exposure, and saturation. Additionally, you can add borders, vignettes, and various photo effects.

Once your photos have been edited, you can organize them inside the application by creating different albums that can then be shared. Also, you can upload images straight to Photoshop.com, Facebook, and other websites.

Photoshop Express is available as a free app in the App Store.

Via The Mac Observer

Adobe Photoshop Express Released for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad is a post by Carter Sprunger from Notebooks.com.

If you’re not familiar with Eye-Fi, it’s the Wi-Fi enabled SD card that allows you to upload pictures via wireless immediately after taking them with your digital camera.

“Eye-Fi will unlock hundreds of thousands more Wi-Fi networks globally through a partnership with Devicescape. By the end of May, X2 users can upload in thousands more open networks around the world, such as universities and cafes, and through Wi-Fi hotspot providers.” (Eye-Fi press release)

The result of this new partnership means that users of the cards can …

• Upload photos via Wi-Fi hotspot providers like Boingo, BT Openzone, T-Mobile, SFR, Orange and Vodafone

• Use their school and university campus Wi-Fi network credentials with their Eye-Fi account, and

• Bypass splash screens at thousands of open hotspots like Easy Wi-Fi since the card can navigate through the login screens.

This will make the card much more useful when traveling out in public with your digital camera and Eye-Fi card. Just today I tried to upload some photos with my Eye-Fi card at a Panera Bread store with Wi-Fi, but was unable due to the annoying login required to get on their network.

In addition to the partnership with Devicescape, Eye-Fi is also announcing a new product sold exclusively at Apple stores. The Eye-Fi Geo X2 will be sold starting sometime in May. Here are some of the features of this new card:

• Faster uploading of photo and video with an 802.11n transmitter

• Uploading directly into iPhoto

• Uploading to other services like MobileMe, Picasa, Facebook and YouTube

• Integration with Apple products like MobileMe and iPhoto

• Automatic geotagging will work with the iPhoto ’09 Places feature, which allows users to browse their photos by location name or maps

• Endless Memory, a feature that make space on your card when it starts to get full by deleting photos that are already safely uploaded to an Eye-Fi account

The cards are class 6, which guarantees a minimum of 6 MB/second, and have 4 GB of space. They will sell at the Apple store for $69.99.

Eye-Fi announces More Hotspots, Eye-Fi Geo X2 for Apple is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

The new features of Adobe Creative Suite 5 are already impressing the pro’s that use this software on a daily basis and Adobe gave a small group a sneak peak at some of the really cool features in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and After Effects; recorded their reactions and put it together in this short clip below that highlights new features and how excited it has the community.

Now that you’ve seen the user reactions and a few of the cool things that Adobe Photoshop can do to save you time and make your life easier we want to highlight a few other new features that will help users in Photography, Video Production and Web Design; as well as how some of these features come together to create a really cool product.

Photography:

Possibly the most mind blowing feature I have seen in the new Adobe CS5 release is the ability to remove an object or a person from an image and automatically fill in the background behind them. In the demonstration, which you can see below, the act of removing an object from a photo is transformed from a time consuming process into a simple select and click model. You can see the Content Aware ability at the 4:25 mark in the following video which includes several other great tools in CS5 for photographers.

Before you go decrying that Adobe has made graphic designers obsolete, take note that while this feature works like Magic on a simple background; it does have its limitations which CNet Asia confirmed with Adobe.

“We checked with Adobe regarding Content-Aware Fill’s restrictions, and found out that it works best if the background is uncluttered. For complex scenes, the firm suggests that users remove the elements by components. For example, if you’re removing a dog from a busy street scene, you should remove the head first, followed by the body, limbs and tail. This ensures the software can accurately fill in the blank spaces.” Leonard Goh CNet Asia

Content Aware limitations aside it is a cool tool and the addition of several new or enhanced features really adds to the usefulness of CS5.

• Enhanced HDR handling for deleting a blurred area.
• Lens correction based on the type of Lens used.
• Paint a photograph from scratch and now mix colors with a special “mixer brush tool”.
• Easily snap Dashed Lines to corners in Adobe Illustrator.
• See animations and videos directly within Adobe InDesign 5.

Another cool tool for Adobe CS5 users is the Puppet Warp tool. This new feature lets you set points of articulation on an image and rotate and move it in a natural way to change positions. It’s a bit like moving the arms around on a GI Joe. If my description still leaves you a little confused check out the demo of Puppet Warp below.

Video Production:

In addition to these features, when it comes to production, Adobe After effects is now a full 64-bit application and can make use of the full amount  of RAM on your system and rotoscoping is now easier.

You can see a selection of the top 5 Creative Suite 5 features for video production in the video below.

Web Design:

If you use Adobe CS for web design, you’ll really appreciate the new tools and features that make your work easier and more efficient. When you’re using Adobe Flash Professional CS5, now you can link textboxes together and text will flow from one box to another.

In Adobe Dreamweaver CS5, there’s no more leaving the application to use a third party tool to see what your creation looks like in other browsers thanks to BrowserLab. This new tool lets you see what your pages look like right inside DreamWeaver.

For closer look at the top 5 features for web design, check out the video below:

Adobe CS 5 was announced on April 12th and is currently available for pre-order to be shipped in mid-May and customers who pre-order by April 29th can get free shipping on Adobe CS5. There are several Adobe CS 5 packages, listed below, including a student and educator edition which is discounted by 80% off retail for individuals with educational credentials.

Adobe CS5 Packages

• Adobe Design Premium CS5 – Upgrade from $599 Full From $1,899
• Adobe Web Premium CS5 – Upgrade from $599 Full From $1,799
• Adobe Production Premium CS5 – Upgrade from $599 Full From $1,699
• Adobe Master Collection CS5 – Upgrade from $899 Full From $2,599
• Adobe Creative Suite 5 Student and Teacher Editions – up to 80% off

In addition to the current free shipping offer on Adobe CS5 with coupon code ‘adobecs5‘, if you purchase Lightroom 2 with a CS5 package or update you can save 30% off!

A Closer Look at Adobe CS5 is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

You can now browse your pictures based on the date the picture was taken in the software’s calendar view. You can also customize the settings for your Eye-Fi wireless SD card and tell it where to upload your photos. Photos are also tagged by location so now you can find them based on where they were taken on a map view. You can also keep track of where you uploaded a picture by selecting the picture to view where it was delivered. And now, you can drag and drop files to easily share with others via a large number of photo storage or social networking sites.

You can see the new software in action below.

Eye-Fi also announced that they are partnering with Starbucks to offer Hotspot Access service in 21,000 AT&T locations all across the country. You can upload photos via hotspots at Starbucks, Barnes & Noble and many hotels and restaurants. If you don’t already have this service as part of your account, you can add it for only $14.99 per year. They have a map of available hotspots online.

Finally, Canon and Eye-Fi are partnering to offer special Eye-Fi functionality in their PowerShot and T2i cameras. Canon’s Powershot SX210 IS, SD3500 and EOS Digital Rebel T2i cameras will now stay powered until uploading from Eye-Fi cards is finished. You can disable or enable the card’s wireless functionality from these cameras’ menus.

Eye-Fi Wireless SD Cards Get New Software, Hotspots & Canon Support is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.