I’ve previous posted about using PixVue to edit image metadata directly from Windows Explorer. I just stumbled across Microsoft Photo Info while going to download Microsoft RAW Image Viewer so I could see thumbnails for CR2 files (Canon RAW images) in Explorer.
Microsoft Photo Info enables easy editing of “metadata” for […]
This weekend has been much warmer than last weekend. I went for a walk.
I braved the cold weather to wander around with my new Canon 50/1.4 USM lens.
It’s a visible upgrade from the 50/1.8.
I prefer chilly, clear days to mild, rainy days, so the last couple days weather has been a treat.
It feels like a nice, brisk fall day in New England.
Meanwhile, it has been unseasonably mild in […]
Microsoft Research Group Shot can be very handy when attempting to create holiday family photos with everybody looking presentable.
I’m sure it’s handy for other kinds of group shots, too. It’s obviously nice to get everyone looking natural and nice in a single photo the old fashioned way but having this in the bag can be […]
I gave the 500mm spotting scope another shot. I put it on the 20D, stuck the tripod plate on it, and hauled it out to one of the bird watching decks in Baylands park. There’s a few more on photos.xythian.com. After a bit with the stationary spotting scope, I […]
I browsed through archives for Stevey’s Rants a bit and came across Saving Time, a post about automating things. I’m pretty passionate about automating tasks. I don’t think people should spend time doing things that computers can do, especially when automating those things is easy. I have, in […]
MSR Group Shot is neat. I used it to assemble a Christmas family shot where everyone was smiling and looking at the camera.
The MSR page also links to the Interactive Digital Photomontage paper that Group Shot is based on, including a bunch of GPL, cross-platform software to play with. […]
This morning I read a message saying that a 9am meeting for January 20 was cancelled. I didn’t make the connection that January 20th is today until I dialed into the conference bridge and nobody was there. Time flies, I guess.
The end of the year is always busy and usually involves […]
After the walk along Moss Landing State Beach, I continued down Route One to the 17 Mile Drive. This was the first time I had driven along the 17 Mile Drive. There are some spectacular views, but being surrounded by a golf course was strange. Spectacular untouched Pacific Coast, […]
My 5D arrived late yesterday. I took it down to Monterey via Santa Cruz along the coast to get a feel for it.
It’s sort of anticlimatic to hold — it feels just like the 20D. The viewfinder is nicer and it’s nice that I can use all of the lens now. […]
I was curious about some statistics about the photos I’ve been shooting over the past few years and finally got around to begin writing a script to gather the stats I want.
I knew virtually all of the digital camera photos in my tree were from some Canon camera, so I focused only on decoding Canon […]
I’ve been working pretty steadily on Singleshot 2.0 and, more directly, a new revision of my photos web site. As soon as I’m sure things are running smoothly, I’ll package up the new Singleshot code and make release 2.0.
I’ll be turning the old gallery.xythian.com site into a bunch of redirects into the new site.
What’s […]
I’ve been wrestling with how to update my web photo gallery for a while now.
I finally have a plan:
Take all the photos from my gallery install and ‘recent photos’ singleshot install and put them into one directory tree.
Tag the files that were in gallery albums with XMP metadata indicating which album they […]
I took a walk through a piece of the Palo Alto Baylands Preserve this evening. I was mainly out for a walk but I did bring a camera.
I parked at the end of San Antino road and walked in along Shoreline lake. It was a sunny beautiful day […]
I’ve read on sites like Luminous Landscape about how much of a problem sensor dust is on digital SLRs. Periodically, I’ll shoot something suitably smooth textured and look for dust. I still haven’t found any.
I haven’t decided yet if this is because I’m very careful (and lucky) about when I […]
Two image processing tools I recently added to my Photoshop CS plugins folder:
FocalBlade — fancy image sharpening tool.
PTLens — free Photoshop plug-in that automates correction lens pincushion/barrel distortion, vignetting, and white balance
I’ve been eyeing PhotoKit and PhotoKit Sharpener too. I decided to go with FocalBlade because it seems easier to use and is cheaper […]
I had a slow pan of this building as well as a bunch of stills intended to be stitched.
The still shots (15 shots):
The video stitch (57 frames):
I say “unfairly” because I apparently mangled the exposure of the still shots and shot it from a different position. I also avoided past the sign while […]
I finally got around to testing out my theory that a decent panorama could be made from frames pulled out of a slow pan using a camcorder.
I used Premiere Pro to extract all the frames and AutoStitch to stitch a selection of them. Photoshop’s Photomerge was unable to automatically place all the frames correctly. […]
Via MAKE: Blog I found Adobe Photoshop Tip: Comic Art Effect which describes a series of steps to approximate a “comic book” look from a photo in Photoshop.
While experimenting with it, I made a Photoshop actions file to automate some of the steps. The tutorial uses a displacement map made from a […]