PhotoWalkPro

As you have probably already heard or read, Adobe released their new online version of Photoshop yesterday.  The product was designed to work hand in hand with sites such as Photobucket, Facebook, and Picasa.  This is a very easy to use program that has some very cool features which are very visual in nature.  If you are going to sharpen your image, they show you thumbnails with different levels of sharpness that you can choose from.  You just click on the one that looks best to you.  I like visual, it means less thinking on my part and lately, less thinking would feel great.  So here is my first peek under the hood of the new Photoshop Express.

First of all, I won’t complain at all that I am having problems running the program in my Firefox Ver. 3 Beta.  After all, running a beta version within a beta version isn’t really fair, now is it.  I had to download FlashPlayer Ver. 9 just to get the login screen to come up.  When I tried to upload images, it completely crashed my Firefox every single time.  Fear not, Safari to the rescue.  So far the program has functioned flawlessly using the Safari browser so I will stick with it for the rest of my tour of duty.

So here is Cool feature number 1, Adobe is giving all registered users 2GB of free storage space.  I’m not going to be storing a lot of RAW files there but I could squeeze a bunch of web sized jpegs into that much space (actually the truth is that you can’t upload raw files anyway. This program likes jpegs).

Cool feature numer 2 – The interface, it’s just slick as anything that I have seen come along in quite some time.  First of all, you can run it in a browser window or take it full screen! I don’t know how they do that but I don’t really care because it’s just really nice to use all my available screen realestate.

Cool feature number 3 – Sharing images was never so easy or visually cool as it is in this program (ok, maybe it was but Adobe really brings it all home together in one nice package).  First, there is the obvious method of emailing, but even this has been taken to the “no-brainer” level by removing any options, you just select an image, type in an email address, and add a message.  That’s it, no figuring out what size to send or opening a mail program, just pure simplicity (I am loving the simple life).

And here is the message that is received.

If you click on the “Click here to view this photo” link, it takes you to a full-sized version of the image in your web browser.  Very cool, very simple.

Sharing of your pictures can also be done by creating galleries that are visible by other Express users, or you can create links to your galleries by clicking the Link button which automatically copies the hyperlink for your album onto your clipboard where it is ready for posting to your web page or email or document.  You can also embed a gallery into your webpage.  An image and link are embedded and will take you directly to the Express page to see the full-size gallery slideshow.

Flowers

Also available is a nice slideshow feature that gives you flexibility in how you display your images, how large, how long, etc.  All of the features are just a single click away and are all straightforward and easy to apply and change.

The final way to share your images deals with Photoshop Express’ ability to deal with other social sites.  If you own a Facebook, Photobucket, or Picasa account(s) you can access them directly from within the Express window.  Not only can you access the image files that you have stored on these sites, you can also edit those images as well as add to them from images you have imported into your Express account.  Drag-n-drop doesn’t get any easier than this.

Cool feature number 4 -  Editing images just got so easy that your mother will actually enjoy it.  Now I am not talking about the pure power of CS3 or even Elements for that matter, but for Gen-X or Granny-X, this is probably as much as any general user will ever need.  It’s easy to forget sometimes that everyone doesn’t love Photoshop CS3 like I do and all they want to do is fix their picture a little and move on.  Well, the Edit mode is just what that segment of the population has been waiting for (and I think there are more of them then there are of us geeky types).

The Edit tools are broken down into three easy sections: Basics, Tuning, and Effects.  The Basics section contains the tools that let you fix the little things that you would want to fix first in an image, things like cropping and straightening, removing red-eye, lightening or darkening, make the colors brighter, or even fix a little imperfection (think healing function in the current version of Adobe Camera Raw).

Tuning is a little bit more in-depth  and adds that extra bit of image tuning that you would need but most often isn’t available from a basic editing program. Remember at the beginning of the post when I said it’s a visual thing, well check out the White Balance tool.

Just click the box that gives you the best white balance.  It’s that simple.  Each thumbnail will show you a different version, in this case, you get to choose from Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Shade, Incandescent, Fluorescent, or Flash.  And as you pass your mouse over the thumbnail, it instantly applies the effect to your image so you can see it full-sized before committing to the change.  I am telling you this is really slick.  Now if you are feeling really bold, go ahead and click the Advanced Controls icon and now you can click on a neutral tone in your image and play with a Temperature and Tint sliders.

So as nice as those adjustments are, the tools that I really liked were in the Effects pallet.  Pop Color does some really wild stuff and the Sketch tool is like a fast Rotoscoping tool.  It does an amazing job of applying this popular effect you your images.  I wish that Adobe had included more of these effects filters and hope that maybe it’s in their future plans.  If nothing else, they are just fun.

Super Cool feature number 5 – So now here is the part that just really blew me away.  After you have done all of your editing and you save your changes….you can go back in to the edit function and undo them or change them (even after logging out and then logging back in again).  I was totally shocked that this feature would be in a free online image editor.  This is straight out of Lightroom.  Non-destructive online edits.  Well now I’ve seen everything.

So here is my bottom line, this is definitely aiming at a few key portions of the population, those that use social networking and image storage sites, and those that want to do fun stuff with their images but are intimidated by full-blown, expensive imaging software.  I can also see some great potential for bloggers that want to post images without all of the hassle of using several programs to get images on their sites.  This application is full featured enough to make it very usable but not to the point that you would ever confuse it with Lightroom, Elements, or Photoshop.  There are no layers, no channels, no Smart Filters, no plug-ins, just nice basic image editing that will satisfy the needs of a lot of folks out there.  So will I use it?  I am guessing that you will see content on my blog from time to time that has made its way into Photoshop Express because it’s just that good.  My hats off to Adobe for building one of the best online applications I have ever laid eyes on.

There is a lot more to this program than I have had time to go over but I encourage you to go check it out.  They even have a Test Drive mode so you can play without signing up.  Just click here to start your fun.

One of the great mysteries in digital imaging is that of resolution and how it differs for printing and your monitor. I have had more than one person ask me to print a poster from a PowerPoint slide where the end result is great text and highly pixelated images. Their big question is always, “why does it look so good projected on an 80″ screen but so bad when I make a 30″ print?” This is usually the point where I try to explain the difference between screen and print resolutions. I don’t even bother with the whole raster vs. vector issue.

The same issue is found in reverse on many photoblogs that I have run across. Many times a photographer will take an image with their multi-megapixel camera and just upload it to their server without thought to actual screen resolutions and optimal sizing. The average 5-MP camera has a resolution of about 1600×1200 pixels. From looking at my user stats, I can tell you that the most common screen resolution is still 1024×768 pixels. In other words, why upload more image than the average user can fit on their screen? Not only are the images too large for standard monitors, but they are using up more server storage than is really needed. So here is another consideration, if you are writing a blog, the actual space the blog text occupies is somewhere between 500 and 750 pixels depending on the blog software and theme you are using. If you are uploading images to live in your blog post, you probably don’t need anything larger than that pixel width for any of your images.

Maximum Image Width for my blog is 720 pixels

There are exceptions to this rule. If you want to provide a higher resolution image for the reader to view, either using Lightbox or having the image open in a separate window, then you will probably want something larger than 600 pixels. Even so, you should still consider not exceeding the limits of the average reader’s screen. So how do you go about making sure your images are of optimal size? There are a couple of easy solutions.

First off, don’t just dump your images straight into your website (this includes Flickr). First of all, it will take a long time to upload but it will take even longer for someone with a dial-up connection to download. I know as a cable user I sometimes get spoiled by my fast connection and forget that there are those who still connect at 56K and are just as valuable a reader as someone using FIOS. Don’t make them suffer waiting for images to load. Sooner or later, they will just stop visiting your page because they get tired of waiting. Those big images are also resource hogs taking up space on your server. I know that lots of people actually have their blog images hosted on a public storage site like Flickr or Picasa but hey, storage is storage. Why use it if you don’t need to (I actually have other reasons why I don’t host my images via Flickr or Picasa but that’s a subject for a different post.)

Resize the image prior to uploading. This makes sense for a few reasons, not to mention the ones that I just listed above. As with anything having to do with your images, if there is a way to control what happens to them, you should. Why let an automated process resize your images when it is easily done by yourself prior to uploading. The tool I use for resizing is Photoshop. This is a fairly easy process but usually renders really nice results for me.

To resize in Photoshop, it’s just a matter of clicking the Image menu and then on Image Size (you can also use the keyboard shortcut Cmd + Opt + I) The nice thing about the Photoshop resize is that you get to choose which method is used for interpolating your data from large to small. That’s the trouble with downsizing your images, you are effectively throwing out information so you should be careful which information is being tossed.

I typically choose the Bicubic Sharper which, as you can see above, is also recommended by Adobe for reductions. I also use this one for enlargements but once again, more info for a future post. You also have the ability to input which resolution you would like your image to be and, as long as the dimensions are linked, it will maintain your aspect ratio for you by changing the dimension of the other axis (change height and width is automatically changed for you).

There are other methods that will allow you to resize for web in Photoshop, another one to consider is the Save for Web & Devices option found under the Image menu.

This option will allow you to resize and choose your JPEG, PNG, or GIF file options while comparing several different options at once. Above you can see the 4-Up option (no, there is no 7-Up option). This box will also let you deal with slices for making those larger web graphics load even faster. I have to admit that I don’t use this dialog very often but sometimes it is nice to see some comparisons, especially when you want to see how different JPEG compressions will effect your image.

Finally, this brings us to JPEG. If you are running any sort of photoblog, then you want your images to look good. That immediately rules out GIF for your images. Save that for your graphics files. The PNG format isn’t bad and will allow you transparent areas but you can’t set the compression level so there is diminished control over the final image size. That leaves us with JPEG. JPEG, which isn’t actually a file format, it’s a compression algorithm, has been around for years and still works as well today as it did 10 years ago, if you use it right. I’m not going to explain how it works (I really ought to wrie down all these ideas for future posts) but I can tell you what you should and shouldn’t be doing.

Here’s a BIG DON’T for you. Don’t just compress your images to a very small size without resizing them first. They will look like crap when they re-open in a browser. I am always surprised by the number of files that people email to me that are less the 300K in size but open to 20MB in Photoshop. Here are some definite DO’s:

Do use as little compression as possible for your image. There is usually no need to go less than Medium on the quality scale.

Do keep the Preview checked on. This will give you a real-time view of how destructive the compression is being to your image.

Do keep an eye on the file size of your image which appears below the Preview Checkbox (see image below). This will tell you how large (or small) your image will be with the current jpeg settings. I try and keep all of my web images under 300K if at all possible. The majority end up around 200K or slightly larger.

So to summarize:

• Don’t use more image then you need on your site. It will load faster and your readers will be happier.
• Know what your optimum sizes are and resize using your favorite image editor (control the destiny of your images).
• Choose the appropriate file size and compression for your images.

I wrote this up for one of my buddies at work. He was trying to organize some images and was having some issues with his images not being organized in the order that he wanted.  I found this to be a pretty simple solution to his problem.

So here is the problem, you have a large group of images that you want to deliver to someone on a disk. The problem is that you may not have shot them in the order that you want them to be viewed in. This may be no problem for you but your clients may not have the software or prowess to rearrange them. The other problem is that computers are logical machines and like to have their files listed in a logical, sequenced order. That means it will look at the file name and start listing the files in an alpha-numeric sequence. You may have noticed this when looking at a file list and saw the following:

Image_1.jpg

Image_10.jpg

Image_2.jpg

Image_3.jpg

Image_4.jpg

Obviously Image_10.jpg shouldn’t be listed after Image_1.jpg and what if you wanted Image_9 to come after Image_3? Well here’s the answer to your problem, the Adobe Bridge.

The Bridge allows you to resort your images by dragging and dropping your thumbnails into whatever order you choose.

Once you have them arranged, you can utilize the batch rename tool to re-sequence the images.

Make sure that you select a digit sequence number that will cover the number of images you have. If you have anywhere from 1 to 99 images, you can use the 2 digit sequence, from 1 to 999, use the 3 sequence number and so on. This sequence number will put zeros in front of your numbered file names so that a computer will list them correctly in the sequence that you want like so:

Renamed_Image_001.jpg

Renamed_Image_002.jpg

Renamed_Image_003.jpg

Renamed_Image_004.jpg

Etc., etc…

When renaming, you can also choose to rename the files in their current folder; move them to a new folder; or copy them to a new folder. Also, you can include all types of data in the file name such as metadata, the preserved file name, the date/time, or the folder name. Just click on the plus sign to the right of each naming option to add a new one.

The bottom of the dialog box will display an example of your current name and what the new name will look like.

A pretty useful tool, indeed.

Now scroll down for a little special alert news items for the traveling photographers out there.