iPad and Online Albums

For clients with photos we scan them and then create an online photo album. This is great for sharing images and we know from stats that friends and family from all over the world (including China, India, Sri Lanka, Canada, Australia and many more) enjoy access to these albums.
One feature of the albums is the ability to download digital copies of each photo. This facility has been used many, many times over the last 18 months. Unfortunately we have run into a glitch with the iPad. While users can use the iPad to view images, because Apple iOS on the iPad doesn’t support Flash, you can’t download directly from the web to an iPad.
The way round this is to download images to your PC then copy the photos across as part of the sync process.

Travel and Landscape Photography

School reunion at the weekend, too many years since we last met up, all too many years since we were young, keen and innocent. Amazed and impressed by what many of my school friends have achieved in particular one your lady, Marion Bull.
She’s become an acclaimed travel and landscape photographer with work published all over the world. When I got back I took a look at her website. There are some great images - take a look - Marion Bull - creative & editorial photography.

Snow

Can’t remember the last time we had snow before Christmas, but this year we’re making up for earlier mild years. The snow hit us on Tuesday and at varying rates its been falling since then with no sign of a thaw. Today (Thursday) we have about a foot of snow between the house and the hutch.
Post has been delayed, although we’ve had a couple of deliveries today and yesterday its been nothing like normal volumes. Parcel post and courier deliveries have disappeared which is probably just as well as between here and the nearest main road we’ve got a lot of snow. Judging by past experience we won’t be gritted here until tomorrow at the earliest.
We have been able to get through a lot of work, but not as much as in normal days. Might sound wimp but its just been so cold even though the heating has been going full blast. We are hopeful that we’ll be back to full production from tomorrow.

Aperture Updates

If you have a Mac and use Aperture, either in connection with your own digital photos or with photo scanning, download the latest update to Aperture. I’ve noticed a few problems of late, particularly corrupting images as they’re loaded. The update seems to have fixed this.

iPhoto Trash

Busy week, photo scanning like crazy. Even did some for clients, not just friends and neighbours. Then there’s the “Could you just ....” which in this case was “knock up” a couple of slideshows. So I spent a few evenings using iPhoto and Aperture to create something impressive. That’s by the by, the point is I suddenly got a message on my MacBook suggesting I was running out of disc space.
Quick run around the usual places to free up space yielded little, then I remembered that neither iPhoto nor Aperture actually delete files from your hard drive when you move them to Trash within the application. If you look under the File menu in each there’s a command which does delete unwanted images. I guess it’s a double failsafe function but one that’s all too easy to overlook. Me included.
What struck me was all the scanned photos that were lurking in purgatory - nearly 3000 in iPhoto and a massive 7000 in Aperture. Now all gone, permanently.

Re-thinking jpg compression

Mention the term jpg and in some quarters you can hear the disapproval down the phone line. Why? As all too many people know jpg compression ruins photos.
Really?
I will accept that if you want the maximum, in terms of available data, then a TIFF file is better. However we charge more to scan to a TIFF, reflecting the time taken, impact on data storage costs, number of DVDs we burn and the time that takes too. But ask yourself, is it really necessary? Will you really edit your photos that much?
The received wisdom against jpg goes back a long way, IT is a fast moving field. A slide scanned today into a jpg file can’t be compared to one made 5, 10 or 15 years ago. Today’s jpgs are much better than their critics believe, if you doubt it give it a try. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

What can be done?

When it comes to negative scanning the vast bulk of our work is scanning 35mm material, but we do get many other formats - including some that are smaller. It’s a basic rule that the smaller the original the poorer the enlargement (all other things being equal). What can be done to make the best of small source files which appear excessively grainy?
We use a great piece of software that can be used as an add-on to Photoshop and Aperture. This reduces grain and at the same time improves sharpness. It can work wonders on grainy scans, or scans with excessive noise, and it gives good results just using the default settings. It’s called Neat Image, and I believe you can download a trial version at no cost.