Many folks in class are likely going to get Photoshop Elements or her big sister, Photoshop. Some people have been asking about how to learn the tricks. Well, getting a good book is one way, and as suggested before, take a hike to your local library or bookstore and snuggle up to a few. Buy the book that feels the most usable and understandable. Next, trek over to the magazine rack and pick up a few, see if there are any techniques you’re interested in that are covered in this month’s issue. If so, pick up those.

For the aspiring Photoshop’er, there are two magazines you might be interested in :

Photoshop Elements User

• gear towards the Photoshop Elements enthusiast
• this is a new magazine and hopefully fills a real need

Photoshop User

• geared towards the professional, but accessible enough for the enthusiast
• Photoshop only, but many tricks apply or can be adapted to Elements
• you have to be a member of NAAP ( the National Association of Photoshop Professionals), which is $99/year, but you don’t have to be a “Photoshop Professional”, anyone can join!

Good luck, and keep clicking!

In class we’re always talking about finding the light, looking for an interesting shot and just shooting it. I was digging through some shots from my point and shoot from back in February and found this gem, I had nearly forgotten about. I was at Union Station waiting for a bus, and saw this guy standing against a pole waiting for the bus as well. The lighting and timing was perfect – it was near dusk, so the cobalt blue skies of Colorado were transforming to a midnight blue just before nightfall. I remember thinking when I took the first shot, “aw, this will just be a blurry image and not worth much”. Then I found a ledge, shot a few more shots, then decided to drag the shutter way down ( like 8 seconds ), and push the ISO to 100 to avoid noise. At just the right moment, a man walked across the road and I captured this interesting “snapshot” which has now made it to one of my favs for February with my Canon A700.

The point? Be adventurous, take the shot, take it again and again. Sometimes it won’t feel right, but then shoot again until it does. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t but you have to get used to just shooting it and dealing with the consequences … in this case a rather favorable one, IMHO.

I’ve been searching far and wide for a “smart” way to store and easily access archived data. In the past few years most of my data has been stored on 3.5″ internal hard drives and I’ve been using an enclosure made by Vantec called the EZ-Swap. Great product on serveral accounts – the most interesting being (1) locking on/off mechanism, (2) fan, temperature and disk hours usage information, and (3) lower cost. The downfall of the Vantec enclosure for me : (1) doesn’t fit in any standard external 5.25″ enclosure – the back is too big! Until recently this wasn’t a problem since the enclosure was mounted internally on my PC or a large chassis with room enough for the back.

Alas, I’ve *finally* found THE solution for this problem – the IcyDock External Rack. Interestingly enough, the IcyDock uses the SAME tray enclosure as the Vantec or visa versa ( I can’t tell who makes the original product, or if even a third vendor supplies these to IcyDock and Vantec ). The nice thing about this fact is that all of my IDE-based Vantec drives will fit into the IcyDock enclosure without me having to buy a new tray. The cooler thing is now I have the freedom to move to SATA drives, which are faster, more reliable and cheaper than their aging IDE/ATA brethren!

Way to go IcyDock! Thanks for building a smart enclosure for my archives – and my existing Vantec tray enclosures to boot!

Check out the IcyDock review that tipped me off here :

IcyDock MB452 eSATA/USB2.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure Review – PCSTATS.com

I’m not quite sure where all the time went, but May is National Photo Month. There are a number of sites out there promoting it, and providing tips as well for taking great photos this Spring and Summer. With the amount of snow and rain we’ve had down here on the Front Range, the wildflowers are going to be excellent – and in some places they’ve already started coming out in glorious color.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and start shooting!

Resources

• TakeGreatPictures.com’s “Let’s Get Out and Take Spring Photos” campaign
• Office Max celebrates National Photo Month

K:M

As a follow on to the previous post, attached is a little primer on metadata.

It should provide a sound foundation for covering the basics and getting you started. If I get a chance, I’ll cook up a screencast example of how PhotoInfo works. For now enjoy the article :

“Metadata 101 : Create Image Metadata With Ease in Windows XP” [pdf:835K]

K:M

In class last week, we talked about photo metadata and editing it. I have a primer prepared and will have that up later in the evening, but for starters visit Microsoft’s page for the tool :

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/photoinfo.mspx

If you want to get started directly and install the application, click the link :

Photo info download ( click to go directly to the download page )

Look out for an update this evening!