Picasa 3 beta: Make Your own Movie

Today I downloaded the new Picasa 3, and ran it through some paces. I have always used Picasa to organize my photos. Having thousands of photos on three drives, it's been been quite an organizational endeavor! Picasa has helped me with this gigantic task, and I really like the quick search functions. I have, though, rarely used the editing tools.

Now Picasa 3 is out and with it new features. Things that I liked:

1) A very fast download, and it integrates quickly with Picasa 2.

2) New features with photo editing tasks,all in a very straightforward format.

3) Improved collage tools that have considerably more functionality than of those found in Picasa 2.

4) An easy way to Geo-tag pictures.

5) A smart facial recognition tool, that finds photos with faces, and can find faces by name.

6) The ability to make movies, quickly and easily from stills, that can be posted on both uTube and Flickr.

Well, I was anxious to see Picasa's movie-making abilities and tried it out immediately. It was quite easy and worked flawlessly. The simplicity of the process amazed me - it happened with one click. I am already thinking about using it as a marketing tool for my photos.


The main drawback at present is that you cannot add audio to your movie, but that will soon change. Picasa 3 is still in beta, and adding audio is planned but not yet implemented.

On the whole, I recommend the Picasa 3 download. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Photography News: "Photosynth" 3D Image Panorama

One thing I have not had the patience for is doing a panorama with photo stitch programs. I have made some lame attempts but have not had the success I wanted. Now that may all change.

Photosynth is a new program from Microsoft Live Labs, and it promises to offer the photographer a remarkable ability to build 3-D panorama shots that can also be seen with their individual shots. This looks very promising and is similar to what Google has done with Google Earth's Street View. In Google Earth you can take a 360-degree panoramic trip down a road in many parts of the world. I have done this in Yellowstone National Park and it is beyond awesome.

Photosynth takes this one step further with the ability to piece pictures together in a remarkable fashion. You can even take close-up shots and they will integrate with the mix of pictures that you post. I rarely use a tripod, and stitching would be an extreme hassle. But what I have seen of this program is that a tripod will not be necessary. And the program will be able to stitch the scenes together for you.

Now for the Photosynth review:

Well, if you look at the screenshot above, you will see that the green progress bar is stuck and not going forward. I took two days to process about 120 photos to try the 3-D rendering software. I think I lost my mind in the process of over 30 hours of processing. Then it came to the test. I uploaded about 80 of the photos to Photosynth, and it took 4 hours to process and ended with a server error. A000000B. Hmmm. I read the error report and tried again (as Microsoft Labs suggested), another four-hour process that took me to the publishing stage. I thought all was going well, but the publishing bar just stopped making progress.

Well, now I am thinking of the 40 hours invested in trying to do the 3-D rendition. And I am not up to trying, in the near future, another upload process that takes four hours.

This is what I read from the Photosyth staff that commented on the publishing problem four days ago:

Alex D, Official Rep, replied 4 days ago

"Photosynth has been under incredible demand since we released late yesterday evening. Getting ready for the launch we did massive amounts of performance testing, built capacity model after capacity model, and yet with all of that, you threw so many uploads at the service we had to throttle them back for a few hours.

At the same time, we tried to tweak a few database settings to allow us to handle more uploads and inadvertently introduced a bug that is causing a small percent of synths to fail with an error code or hang right at the end. We're rolling back that change now and that should fix the majority of those errors.

While that is being fixed, we are adding capacity as fast as we can and letting in more and synthers. Keep trying, but it might be a few hours before we can get everyone in. In the mean time, we hope you will check out our "How to Synth" video (http://blip.tv/file/1190926/), grab a camera, head outside and start taking pictures for the next awesome synth.

No excuses; just the facts on why you are seeing these issues. We really appreciate the enthusiasm and are hard at work ironing out the issues and adding more capacity."

I am thinking of putting my images away for another stab later, when they might be ready for prime time. If by chance the synth does get published, I will add a link. As a teaser, this is one of those eighty images which I uploaded.

I suggest you might want to wait until Microsoft irons out the problems, unless you have the patience of Job.

Photoshop Tips,Tricks and Advice

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Adobe Photoshop to me is a constant learning process. I have only scratched the surface of what can be done with this fabulous program. As a constant student, I am always interested in new ideas of how people use the program. And even if I do not use their technique myself, some of what is done is fused in my mind, more on a subconscious level.

And when I look at an image and see where I want to go with it, I have more of an intuitive, and counter-intuitive approach of how I reach that result. After all, if we all used the same techniques, all our photos would have the same monotonicity. They would lose impact. You may become the master of the technique but at a loss of your creative edge. And ultimately, your images would drift into the sameness of the collective whole.

An example of this is when everyone was using the flood program,

It was catchy for awhile, and I even have some photos that I applied this to in my Flickr Archives. This photo at one time had reached number 1 in interestingness, had over 2,600 views, and 95 called it a favorite. At most it was a cheap trick of an easy program to use.

I have had better photos, and perhaps my best, Foggy Wood, has had over 1,100 people call it a favorite, and nearly 67,000 views. Why? Because this photo has genuine impact. It separates itself from the pack of any my photos, and perhaps many other excellent photographs. This in part was a fluke. Foggy Wood is 90 percent the composition and the shot, and 10 percent processing. I remember when I processed that shot it took less than five minutes. And believe it or not, I did not even have Photoshop. It is the kind of picture when "God presses the shutter," as Ansel Adams would say. At least it felt that way to me.

The point is to gain impact, to absorb what others are doing and then strike out on your own. When you take that great shot, and you will, the processing will fall just in place, like falling dominoes.

Now, I am going to recommend a site that has some excellent Photoshop videos. I recommend that you just watch them and absorb. Don't worry if you don't get the technique down pat. Remember you are adding this to your creative intuitive reason, and when you get into the flow of processing you will use what you need naturally.

By the way, the book below is my favorite Photoshop Book.

Photo Editing: The Best Programs and Filters

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If you are like me, photo editing is always a quest for finding the best tools. We just want each of our images to be more impressive than the one before. We strive for excellence.

And that quest can empty your pockets pretty quick. Soon you learn, though, what works best for you and find that many of those expensive filters you have bought have remained unused.

Now, I have some recommendations. These are the programs and filters that I use time and time again. And some of the recommendations might surprise you.

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The essential list:

Photomatix: This is the standard HDR (High Dynamic Range) program that everyone uses. It's one of the best and if used properly can really enhance the colors and details of your image.

Photo Impact Pro: It's a program that is very similar to Adobe Photoshop. The advantage of this program is the cost factor. It is much cheaper than Adobe Photoshop CS3 but has many of the same functions. In some ways I prefer this program over CS3 for editing some of my images. The photo above, and this photo, were edited strictly in Photo Impact Pro and Photomatix. I like Photo Impact Pro because sometimes the edited pictures have qualities that I cannot achieve in Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended: This is the premier photo editing tool, at least until CS4 arrives. You can take a lifetime learning all the things that can be done with this fabulous program. The major cons of this program are the expense and the steep learning curve.

Filters I use most frequently:

Imagenomic: I use their pro noise reduction program. They do have a free community program that I used for awhile. The only problem I see with the community program is that it greatly reduces the size of the file you are working on.

Nik Software Color Efex Pro™ 3.0: This is a great program for making those photos pop. I love this program and all the filters that are included.

Viveza: It's also a program by Nik Software. Its ability to selectively adjust light, color, and contrast by control points is essential for the pro photographer. I use this program often.

Tiffin Dfx software: This product is sold by the same company that makes excellent filters for lenses. I highly recommend this this comprehensive suite of useful filters, and I use their filters often.

Nikon Capture: This is a great program for editing raw pictures non-destructively. I shoot in raw, and this is the program I use to tweak my photos before editing in Adobe Photoshop or Photo Impact Pro.

Lucis Art: This product adds a very creative unique touch to your photos. It does not work with all photos, but you can get spectacular results. I would add that if you are on a budget this should be the last program that you buy.

These are the programs that I use. You do not need them all at once. I would suggest starting with Photo Impact Pro and the community version of Imagenomic, which is free. Then as you learn and develop skills, start ramping up to the next level. You will know when it is time.