You see like most people when we go away I tend to take a lot more photographs than normal, but I also take a lot more scenery photographs and it’s probably about the only time that I would try and take panoramic shots, yes you know we’ve all been there, your looking out across a scene and the angle of view is much wider than the angle you have available to you with your camera. So with all good intentions of stitching the photo’s together when you get home, you do your best to pan around the view taking and overlapping shot, thinking this will look great!
But when you get back you go through your photo’s and you see the individual shots, and on their own they look great but you don’t have any easy software enabling you to put them together, so they just end up sitting in your photo library, because your also not sure if the scene shots either side of the panoramic photo’s were also part of the Panoramic.
OK So I’m not going to solve all of your problems here, such as staying level, it is easier with a tripod, but you’ve just climbed to the top of the Hill and well who was likely to carry that tripod all the way up there. So all I can say is use the far horizon and pan round using the horizon as a level, not always that simple if you have mountains in the distance, so I’d also advise sweeping round and look at the shot first and then take your shots in one full sweep, also make sure you give yourself plenty of overlap, I’ve heard that about a third is best but I often go down to about a qtr overlap. Try and be level all the way round, sounds simple that one but believe me you got to make sure your not stood on a ledge or that there are any other obstructions waiting to trip you up when your doing your sweep.
One other quick tip is at the start of the panoramic I take a shot of the back of my hand and after the last shot I take a picture of the palm of my hand, you could do anything of course, but this just informs me that the photo’s between those shots are the panoramic shots.
Continue reading about HP Photosmart Studio: Free Photo Stitching
I know I join all the other listeners in wishing you a healthy recovery, we’re all worried about you. but what better way to take away worries than to play with a fun piece of Mac freeware? I have to say it’s getting harder and harder to find things that have never been reviewed here before though. I found one good one I was excited about – only to run a search on surfbits and found that it had been mentioned THREE TIMES! I had to resort to some serious digging but I’m pretty sure this one is new to the Mac ReviewCast.
When Leopard came out, they said that there were really cool features under the hood, things we wouldn’t realize were there but that developers would take advantage of eventually and then we’d understand that we had something cool. I know other things have come to light but the application I’m going to tell you about today clearly has taken advantage of what’s called Quartz graphics. I wasn’t clear on exactly what Quartz Graphics is, so I looked it up in Wikipedia, here’s an exerpt:
Continue reading about LiveQuartz: Free Photo Retouching for Leopard
It wasn’t so long ago that I reviewed Creaceed’s High Dynamic Range (HDR) application and Aperture plugin, Hydra. If you’ve never heard of HDR before, it is the process of taking multiple exposures of a subject and combining them into one picture that more closely resembles what you see with the human eye. When done right, it is wonderful. When overdone, it looks bizarre. Wikipedia explains it quite well.
Anyway, I was impressed with Hydra when I last reviewed it but recommended using the stand-alone application over the Aperture plug-in. At that time, the Aperture plug-in hadn’t caught up with the stand alone application feature set. With version 2, it does now.
I know I’m supposed to be objective as a reviewer but I just have to say this plug in rocks. Have you ever seen those photoshop svants that can take a picture and then work their black magic on it. I’ve always admired it but at a certain level accepted that I’m about as likely to learn how to do that as I am to build a fission reactor in my attic.
This is where Color Efex Pro steps it up. It installs as a plug in for Aperture or Photoshop and it has a pile of digital filters that enhance your photos with the touch of a button. I’m not just talking black and white here. This is 52 filters with over 250 effects that make your photos look professional.
This is Robert Lachman from PhotographyAndTheMac.Com. This week I’m going to review Adobe’s Lightroom 2.
Lightroom 2 is a powerful photo-editing software, that is used to import, organize and make some adjustments to your photos.
Most consumers who are happy using iPhoto on their Macs for photo editing, are probably fine, and may not be quite ready to take the leap into Lightroom 2. iPhoto is like driving a Ford and Lightroom 2 is like driving a Ferrari to get to the same location. It’s a ramped up, supercharged, photo-editing machine with a multitude of features.
When you do need the high performance of library modules, dual-monitor support, web-gallery exporting, great control over Raw image import, color correction, gradient tools and adjustment brushes and smooth integration with Photoshop, Lightroom 2 from Adobe is your best choice. The Apple product in this category is Aperture 2.
Lightroom 2 does have a fairly steep learning curve, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not an abundance of ways to learn about the software program. There are plenty of seminars, tutorial videos and books on the subject. A quick check on the Amazon site gave me the name of ten Lightroom 2 book titles which include: The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers, The Serious Photographer’s Guide to Lightroom Efficiency, Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure, Workflow not Workslow in Lightroom 2 and Lightroom 2 For Dummies.
Most people are way too critical of their own photographs and they tend to compare their photos to top professionals. Even my 91 year old Mom does this. I want everyone to stop this. Did you hear me? Stop being so critical of your own work. Back off, relax and enjoy your photography.
Kelby says on the cover that his book is the step-by-step secret to make your photos look like the pros! His description is pretty accurate. While this book will help, you still need the vision to pull off great photos.
It wasn’t so long ago that there were very few options for Mac users in the graphics department. There was 800 pound gorilla, Photoshop, and Adobe Photoshop Elements for the rest of us. Adobe was behind on its product cycle and for Intel Mac users, Photoshop in any iteration was a slug.
In just one year, this space has completely turned around. Adobe finally got its act together and released CS3 and an Intel friendly Adobe Photoshop Elements version 6. Likewise, Apple beefed up the core animation, core graphics, and other elements of OS X to allow developers to create their own graphics applications. In short, there has been a boom of quality graphics software including Pixelmator, Acorn, and now Iris.
Continue reading about Iris Graphical and Photo Editing Software
Posterino from Zykloid Software is another one of those programs I love using, but no one I know uses it. You see it mentioned on a few websites but I don’t think enough people really dig in and actually use it. It’s a great way to a make poster.
The style of the posters is where you see lot and lots of photos on a page. If you were to try and do it in Photoshop, it’s not that easy. You would need to have advanced Photoshop knowledge, you would need to use the rulers and match everything up. There’s a lot of cutting and pasting. It can be done in your normal photo editing programs, but who has the time? Posterino, which can be found at http://zykloid.com
