Landscape, Nature And Travel Photography

JPEGmini is a company that has a unique approach to optimizing your JPEG format images in an effort to help you save storage space. I took a quick look at their offering and shared my thoughts on it with Sarah Perez in a recent TechCrunch article New Startup JPEGmini Reduces Photos’ Size, Not Their Quality. I thought I would share a little more about my take on the service in the event it’s something you feel is worthy of trying or using.

Test1 – Web sized image (800 px x 500 px)
Test2 – Full size image (5616 px x 3744 px)

What is JPEGmini?

• JPEGmini is NOT a new file format.
• JPEGmini is a re-compression engine with a twist:
  

  JPEGmini works by analyzing the input image using a unique quality detector which imitates the human visual system, and based on this analysis applying the maximum amount of compression which will not cause visible artifacts. For further details, see the technology section

• JPEGmini is an online service… for now

Does It Work?
The quick answer is yes and no. JPEGmini excels at compressing larger images versus smaller images. Compression gains are also made most significantly on “first-generation photos created by digital cameras”. In other words if you’ve edited a photo already in photo editing software you may not see huge file size reduction namely because the file has already undergone some level of compression.

I was a skeptic when I learned about this site. I ran a quick test to compare the following:

I tested two images of different types.

• An image with not a lot of detail and similar tones. Such images have a lot of similar data that is easily compressed resulting in higher compression savings.
• An image with a lot of detail and varied tones. Such images do not have a lot of similar data to compress resulting in less compression savings.

I also tested two different files sizes for each image:

• Web sized image (800 px x 500 px)
• Full size image (5616 px x 3744 px)

The results were notable with file size saving from 67% to 87%. But I also ran each image through Photoshop’s “Save for Web & Devices” at 60% quality to attain savings from 71% to 85%. Bottom line Photoshop reduces file size for web sized images better in this simplified test by 4-7%. On the other hand larger images attained greater file size reduction with JPEGmini over Photoshop by  4-7%.
Note: Photoshop is not optimized for compressing very large images with their “Save for Web & Devices” function and JPEGmini states they perform better with larger images.

Full Test Details

Pros, Cons & Thoughts
The pros clearly are that you can reduce the size of your large image files with the JPEGmini. In scale this could help you save money by reducing your demand for new hard drives. You can compress images without buying expensive software like Photoshop. All metadata is preserved.  Image quality suffered very little when comparing the original image and the JPEGmini version of the image at 100%. In fact most people would not notice a difference. That being said I did not run print comparisons of each file before and after JPEGmini compression.

On the other hand the service is only available online requiring you to upload images, wait for the compression engine to process your files (can range from minutes to hours) and then spend the time to download them. It’s also important to note that the service only works with JPEGs. The significance of this is that you’re compressing your image files multiple times and each compression ultimately results in loss of data. Compress an image repeatedly and you can impact image quality. For more on this refer to my previous article (pre-blog) guest written by Oskar Breuning JPEG Compression: Data Loss & Image Impact. Lastly the biggest concern I have surrounds the JPEGmini Terms of Service (TOS) namely the following User Submission section:

You hereby grant ICVT and our designees a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable (through multiple tiers), assignable, royalty-free, fully paid-up, perpetual, irrevocable right to use, host, store, index, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, and display and perform your Content on the web and on mobile devices, solely in connection with our provision of the Service

Uploading an image places the image on their server. While files are only kept for roughly 1 week, images can be used by JPEGmini’s parent company to market their service. Personally the broad nature of this section makes me too uncomfortable to use the service beyond testing. Of specific concern is the right claimed to sublicense images that they deem irrevocable. Not very photographer friendly in my eyes. Note: Dror Gill the CTO of the company has stated that photos are not used for promotion without confirmation from the owner in a comment on the TechCrunch article.

My hope is two fold for JPEGmini…

1. Clarify Modify the ToS to be more photographer friendly and less JPEGmini-centric
2. License their technology so it can be utilized in established programs and mobile applications or launch their own desktop & mobile applications.

Technorati Tags: photography, technology, JPEGmini, Photoshop, compression, JPEG

If you use Adobe Lightroom then let me warn you, the following dialog box is the last thing you want to see when all is configured correctly (permissions are correct and another application is not using the catalog). Why? Because it means that your catalog file is inaccessible and may have big problems. The net result being lost work and time to fix the problem. Alas there is something you can do before this ever appears that will save you from spontaneously cursing late in the evening and/or instantly turning your hair white, but first a short story…

Learn From My Experience
This past Friday night at 11pm I was that guy in a darkened room being warmed by the glow of my monitor and cursing at the dialog box pictured above. Innocently enough I thought I’d work on an image or two before bed and brought up Lightroom 3.4.1, but the Zen-like activity of working on an image or two (cue the sound of water trickling over a cascading slope of river rocks with birds chirping above) was abruptly cut short (cue sound of a needle scratching on a record). Panic didn’t set in right away because I backup my Lightroom library on an external hard drive (see my drive setup) and I also employ Apple’s Timemachine backup function for my primary hard drive that houses my Lightroom catalog.
Note: It’s best practice to not keep your working Adobe catalog on an external drive due to degraded performance.

Remembering that I had these two backup mechanisms in place I thought, “Keep it together Jim. Let’s see if we can retrieve things to make this a quick fix before bed.” Then 30 milliseconds later my inner voice countered, “Shit! You’ve avoided backing up your Lightroom library for a at least 2 weeks so you could shut down your computer more quickly. Good job Jim, considering you just made a bunch of new smart collections and keyworded hundreds of photos.” Sure enough I looked and my last catalog backup via Lightroom was made to my external hard drive over two weeks before all my recent work had been completed. Backup plan #1 was a failure purely because I was lazy and impatient.

I then started sorting through my Timemachine drive to find my Lightroom catalog date stamped Thursday (the day before this mess happened). There were multiple backups for Thursday and Friday so I was starting to feel relieved, but then I noticed the file size was half what it should be.  I loaded the catalog and sure enough it was what my Lightroom catalog looked like not days or weeks ago, but several months ago. I’ll spare you the cuss filled thoughts that were shooting through my brain at this point. I opened backup after back up for the past week or two and Timemachine had not updated my catalog for what seems to be months…seemingly  just duplicating an older copy.

As you can imagine the thought, “Holy shit!” kept repeating in my mind. Instantly I opened a browser window and I started searching on Google “Lightroom cannot use the catalog named” and what I found was limited, very limited in fact. Most of the posts were for version 2 and not version 3. The one thing that was consistent advice was to delete the lrcat.lock file that comes up next to your catalog file ending with lrcat. (Note: Do not delete your catalog file ending in .lrcat that is having problems!!!!) I deleted the lrcat.lock file and reloaded Lighroom but kept getting the same result, seeing that dreaded dialog box. I was resigned to having to eat the loss of a lot of work at this point. At best I’d have to copy and paste metadata from exported files made the past 2 weeks  to get back to where I was before my catalog had problems.

Finally as a last resort I decided to restart my computer. The lrcat.lock file was removed and the catalog file didn’t show any signs of corruption you might visually see on a Mac. After my restart I loaded Lightroom and…

everything came up normal. So with out any hesitation I quit Lightroom and at the prompt backed up my catalog via Lightroom’s backup function. I then made a triple backup by copying the verified working catalog to a thumb-drive I carry on my keychain.

Lessons Learned, Please Take Note:

1. Don’t be lazy and regularly backup your Lightroom catalog especially after completing a lot of work.
2. Have a backup of your backup catalog
3. Don’t rely on Timemachine as a backup for your Lightroom catalog. Period.
4. Verify that your backup catalogs work
5. Seriously don’t be lazy and regularly backup your Lightroom catalog!!!

Left Wondering
Granted I didn’t look at every forum entry when searching for a solution to this problem, but those that came up at the top of the search results were not helpful and dated. I was surprised I couldn’t easily find something in the Adobe Labs forum about this that was relevant to version 3.x either. While things are working again I’m not 100% satisfied and I’m going to be researching further what exactly caused my catalog to become inaccessible. Seeing that my Lightroom catalog now spans content on 4 drives and contains information for 110,000 image I’m not keen to risk losing it all.

Addendum
I should have noted that I do convert all my RAW files to DNG and save my metadata to the DNG file. So worst case in this scenario I would have had to rebuild my catalog recreating smart collections and regular collections.

Note: The reason for DNG use is to save metadata to my files without juggling 2 files (RAW and XMP). This makes it easy to keyword in the field while on my laptop and to transfer the files and my work into my workstation master Lightroom catalog.   For more on why I use DNG read DNG, RAW and JPEG: What I Use & Why

Technorati Tags: Adobe, Lightroom, backup, error, best practice

Don’t get me wrong I love social media and I enjoy interacting with friends, family and fans on Twitter, Facebook and Google+, but there are days I do need to remove distractions and get down to the business of work. Well I found a few solutions to hit the social media mute button and tested them out this past week. In case you’re looking for a virtual (working) cone of silence you may find the following solutions of interest.

• Anti-Social (Mac) – Block specific sites for up to 8 hours, you choose the sites and the duration.
• Freedom (Mac) – Block Internet access for up to 8 hours, you choose the duration.
• StayFocused (Chrome extension) – limits time you spend on distracting web sites that you set in the extensions configuration.

Personally I prefer bringing my laptop out to the beach to unplug and work, but that’s not always possible. In the meantime these applications seemed to do the job I needed. As you’ve guessed I’m a Mac guy so if you have PC or Linux equivalents you use that are recommendable add them in the comments so others can find them.

Technorati Tags: technology, social media, software

Today Adobe has opened a pop-up store called “Photoshop & You” here in San Francisco near Union Square. The store is open from Saturday, July 23 through Saturday, August 6 and is going to be a hub of some amazing events:
Photoshop & You Schedule of Activities

I was able to check out the “Photoshop & You” store at the VIP opening last night and it’s really cool. See photos below.

The pop-up store is home to some very cool image installations including a large display of Bert Monroy’s “Time Square” famous for being the largest Photoshop file containing 750000 layers! (Pano of it with Robert Scoble saying “Hi”) In addition the store will be a central hub for educational events and social activities. The back room is dedicated to Russell Brown’s Extreme Imaging Lab where there is laser etching, t-shirt screening and large format printing.

You can check out the Photoshop & You pop-up store at…
Location: 550 Sutter Street, San Francisco CA 94102

Extreme Imaging Lab

Technorati Tags: Photoshop, Adobe, activities, San Francisco, California

Easy Release

A month ago quite a bit of buzz started to circulate with in the Twitter photography community about Easy Release (iTunes Link), a program that enables you to create model and property releases on your iPhone incorporating a digital signature of subjects and/or property owners. The potential immediately grabbed my attention and I approached the application publisher for a review copy. The review of the application was the easy part, but my background research on the acceptability of “digital signatures” in the form of an electronic touchscreen signature took much longer. Now that my research is complete here is the review…

Easy Release is just that… easy to configure, easy to use and easy to see its value. I give the team behind Easy Release a lot of credit as creating an application that is simple to use is quite a difficult task. The added perk to Easy Release is that it makes obtaining, logging and sending releases a very cool process. The out of the box thinking to obtain releases digitally is exactly the type of application I’ve been waiting for to maximize the business potential of my iPhone.

The Process (Ex. For a Model):

1. Click the “Plus” sign to create a new model or property release
2. Enter the “Shoot Name” and “Shoot Reference ID”
3. Enter Shoot location information “Shoot Country” and “Shoot Region/State”
4. Enter the Shoot Date
5. Enter the Model’s Name
6. Take a photo with your iPhone of your model
7. Enter the Model’s date of birth, gender and ethnicity.
8. Enter the Model’s address
9. Enter the Model’s Parent’s name if a minor
10. Enter the Model’s Email address and phone number
11. Enter the name of a Witness
12. Review the Release summary
13. Sign your signature (the photographer) with your finger on the screen
14. Let your Model review the agreement. They tap to agree.
15. Model signs the release using their finger on the screen.
16. Click to create a PDF of the signature and send it to your model & yourself via email

Fully written out the process seems long, but it takes only a few short minutes to complete.

Easy Release

Additional Features & Real-World Experience
The application allows you to customize your releases with a logo, specify a default language from 12 translations or add your own custom release text.

Of course it would be easy for me to just idly claim Easy Release is easy to use, but having tested this in the field I can attest that not one subject I asked to use the application had a problem or showed any confusion when reviewing the release or signing it. Logistically using Easy Release was much simpler than dealing with a paper release and fumbling for a pen. The convenience to email the release in PDF form to both the model and the photographer is also a huge time saver. Lastly and most importantly the biggest benefit was speeding up the process to obtain a signature.

Easy Release

What to Be Aware of…
The one weakness of Easy Release is that some stock agencies might not yet accept “digital signatures”. At the time I received my review copy of the application it was unclear to me if Getty accepted “digital signatures” in the form of an electronic touchscreen signature. Right off the bat I was able to confirm with Rasmus Rasmussen (@theprint) that iStock does not yet accept these type of “digital signatures” and prefers pen on paper signatures. I had to wait a few weeks to hear back officially from Getty as to whether “digital signatures” in this form were currently accepted. The response: “…the Getty legal team is reviewing this, but at this time digital signatures are not allowed on releases.” That being said the people behind the application are former Getty employees and are aware of this. If you’re outside of the Getty sphere and/or work independently then this is a non-issue.

Rating:

Easy Release is a solid application that is ultra intuitive to use. Not only did it live up to my expectations, it surpassed them. Whether you’re a semi-professional or full-time working pro photographer this is a must have application to have at your fingertips. For those that have been holding off on upgrading to an iPhone, this app alone might be reason enough to do so.

Technorati Tags: photography, release, iPhone, app, Easy Release, model release, property release

Adobe today is releasing the full creative suite of CS5 products including Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended ($699 and $999 respectively with CSx upgrades costing $199). The newest features added to PS CS5 include:

• 64-bit native code for Mac and PC (Mac had been 32-bit previously)
• Content-Aware Fill … “magically removes any image detail or object, examines the surroundings and seamlessly fills in the space left behind”
• Refine Edge… “makes nearly-impossible image selections possible.”
• HDR… “next-generation high dynamic range (HDR) capabilities”
• Mixer Brush… “blends an infinite combination of colors onto a single paintbrush tip”
• Bristle Tips… “offers lifelike brush strokes”
• “Puppet Warp gives users the power to precisely reposition or warp any image element, such as straightening a bent arm in a photo or manipulating the landscape to generate a new perspective.”

Photoshop CS5 Extended includes…

“Adobe Repoussé technology, users can easily create 3D logos and artwork from any text layer, shape or mask, as well as twist, rotate and extrude designs for different looks.”

SAN JOSE, Calif., — April 12, 2010 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended software, must-have releases of the professional industry standard for digital imaging. With millions of users celebrating the product’s 20th anniversary this year, Photoshop CS5 builds upon a rich history of innovation and leadership with groundbreaking features and performance gains that boost creativity and workflow efficiency. Packing in more technological advancements from Adobe Labs than any other release and incorporating enhancements to everyday tasks requested by the Photoshop community, the software has greater intelligence and awareness of the content within images, allowing for complex and magical manipulation in just a few clicks. Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended delivers everything in Photoshop CS5, as well as advanced tools for 3-D which address the unique needs of the video, Web, medical, manufacturing and engineering industries.

Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended will be available as stand-alone applications or key components of the Adobe Creative Suite® 5 family.  (see press release)

More on Adobe Photoshop CS 5 and  Adobe Creative Suite 5

Technorati Tags: Adobe, Photoshop, CS5

The 34th episode of EXIF and Beyond has been released (duration 16:54 min.)

This episode of EXIF and Beyond features interviews of Russell Brown, John Knoll and Kevin Connor (Adobe Senior Director of Product Management) from the Adobe Photoshop 20th Anniversary Celebration held in San Francisco on February 18th, 2010. Discussed are topics ranging from recollections of Photoshops earliest beginnings, the impact of its release to creative professionals and hints of what’s to come in Photoshop CS5.

Related Posts

• Full Video of the Adobe Photoshop 20th Anniversary Celebration
• Photoshop 1.0 on the iPhone!
• Photoshop 1.0.7 iPhone App Review
• Video: A killer Photoshop space odyssey (A Must See!)

Listen To The Podcast
EXIF and Beyond: Russell Brown, John Knoll & Kevin Connor

If you enjoyed this episode please be sure to rate and comment on the EXIF and Beyond podcast on iTunes.

You’ve found my blog and EXIF and Beyond podcast, but you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg… follow me on Twitter and FriendFeed.

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Technorati Tags: photography, podcast, Adobe, Photoshop, 20th Anniversary, Russell Brown, John Knoll, Kevin Connor, EXIF and Beyond

I consider myself lucky to have been include in a select group of folks randomly selected at the Adobe Photoshop 20th Anniversary celebration to receive a copy of Photoshop 1.0.7 for the iPhone. Thanks to Adobe’s Russell Brown for the creation of this retro application for the iPhone (or at least announcing the news of it… seeing as it was actually made by development firm named Corona).  So what’s the fuss about this app?

First let me burst most people’s bubble…

• This app is not a full version of Adobe Photoshop 1.0.7 and only provides basic levels adjustments. (No cropping, no image rotation, no resizing, no curves, etc.)
• Touch screen controls on the iPhone are quite clumsy to use
• It’s not being distributed beyond the select pool of people who were given the opportunity to receive it at the 20th anniversary celebration
• The app is not being further supported
• The app is tied to specific iPhones ID’s.

Now that I’ve laid the ground work as to why you shouldn’t be upset Photoshop 1.0.7 is not widely available let me tell you why it’s cool.

• For those who used the first or early versions of Photoshop the user interface is a real flashback
• The startup sound is another great flashback and reminds Apple/Adobe fan of Pavlov’s theory of conditioning.
• Adjusting levels by color channel (red, green and blue), in addition to a master adjustment is nice be able to do.

Really? That’s it?

Yup that’s it. This app highlights one function of the original Photoshop app. Nothing more and nothing less. Other photo apps that are currently available do tons more. This app hardly will become a part of my standard iPhone photo editing workflow. But if you’re a tech geek… meaning you grew up using Photoshop & old macs and still hoard old equipement and software (please don’t tell my wife) then you’d love this app. How long I’ll be inclined to show my buddies this app at bar-b-q’s and various tech events I don’t know. The shelf life might be quite short, but the inner geek in me loves it.

Technorati Tags: Adobe, Photoshop, Photoshop 1.0.7, iPhone app, iPhone, app, technology, photography, geekery, review