Proud Parent

So we went out and braved the crowds at a few stores on Black Friday. This is usually not the way I like to spend that day but at least I was with my wife and daughter so it was fine.

Lily, our two-year-old is an avid reader--at least she thinks she is. I have wanted to snag a photo of this for some time and I finally got it yesterday so here it is.

Carefully inspecting a Finding Nemo book.

iPhoto...

I mentioned in my last post that I'd be blogging about iPhoto. I realize that the majority of those reading this blog are not Mac users, but this is worth some discussion in my humble opinion.

Every new Mac comes with a suite of software called iLife. This software package is meant to help people document and share their memories. It has a video editor called iMovie, a music creation app called Garageband, and last but not least, a photo manager called iPhoto. These are all tightly integrated and allow you to get creative with you photos and your music.

iPhoto offers a lot of truly compelling features to let you manage and make great things with your photos. Like Picasa, iPhoto has a feature called faces that will scan through the photos you add to your library and  analyze them. It comes back with suggestions based on your feedback and will get "smarter" every time you use it. This is a really neat way to sort your images and allows you to looks back over time and almost have time flash before your eyes. It also has the standard features of albums, keywords and events to help you keep track of your photos. If your camera shoots video, those clips will automatically be added alongside the photos you add.

If you go for weeks or months before you import your photos off your camera you have the option to split the events as they come into your computer by the date they were shot. iPhoto also looks for information about the location where the photo was taken. Many smartphones and some of the newer cameras on the market embed this information in the file. iPhoto will bring up pins on a Google map and show you where your photos were taken.

iPhoto sports a full spread of image editing tools all of which are non-destuctive, meaning you cannot accidentally edit the original. You may not know that every time a JPG image is opened, edited and saved it loses quality much like photo copying a photocopy.

For being a piece of bundled software this is a really nice image manager and editor. If you have a Mac you should give this a look.

Photo Management vs. Photo Editing

In my last post I wrote about dipping into Photoshop. But long before we even get to photo editing we should talk about photo management, because there is a HUGE difference. With digital cameras having been in the mainstream for almost a decade there hundreds and often thousands of images in any one person's library. When was the last time you looked through your images to see what you have and where you've been?

The idea of photo management is that you sort, group and share your photos. Even the best photographers don't have perfect photos with every shot. They go through their shoots and decide which pictures are junk, which ones are worth taking a second look at and which photos are definitely the keepers and will be sent to Photoshop for further editing to make them perfect.

There are several ways of going about this task. I'll go over some options in order of price point. Let's start with FREE.

Google has made a pretty good piece of software called Picasa that works almost seamlessly with you Gmail and Blogger. It's completely free and you don't even need a Google account to get it.

Picasa will search through all of your computer (or just the folders you want if you prefer) and will load them into folders. From these Picasa will search for faces and uses some pretty advanced computing to find all the similar faces so you can created groupings of photos of the same person. Pretty cool. It will also let you so some basic editing like red-eye removal and brightness/contrast.

For being free this software is really a good deal. If you're not using anything to help you keep track of your pics. Give it a look. You just might find it handy.

Tomorrow: iPhoto and Photoshop Elements

Entry to Photoshop

If anyone is looking into dipping into Photoshop but don't want to fork out the big bucks to buy the app and then have nothing to do with it, may I recommend a piece of hardware. The best part is that Photoshop Elements comes bundled as well as a few other apps depending on the level of product you buy.

The device in question is called the Wacom Bamboo. The Bamboo is a small, entry-level graphics tablet. It comes with a stylus but no mouse. It leaves out the mouse because it is also a touch device, much like a trackpad, iPhone or iPad. It features a technology called multi-touch which is explained in the video below.

Multi-Touch Explained

The Stylus
A stylus is similar to a pen without any ink. The surface of the tablet and the stylus itself interact to make over 1,000 levels of sensitivity. This sensitivity can be used to make a brush more or less transparent as it's applied or to increase or decrease the size of the brush.

In some programs, the stylus can be used as a handwriting device. While it's not as fast as typing it can be a more natural approach for certain people.

The best description I have ever heard about the difference between using a stylus as opposed to the mouse is like drawing or writing with a fine pencil or writing with a bar of soap. It really offers a level of control that is simply impossible with a mouse. Now, depending on how hard you push or how far you tilt the pen you will get reactions from brushes that let you paint or apply effects to your images.

There are several benefits to using a tablet outside graphics and multimedia. Wrist strain and carpel tunnel syndrome pain are greatly reduced when a trackpad and/or a stylus is used. It takes some time to get accustomed to pointing with the stylus but it often becomes something most users cannot work without.


I mentioned bundled software. Each of the Bamboo tablets comes with a few pieces of software to help you get the most out of your tablet. The entry level Bamboo comes with an app called Sketchbook Express from Autodesk This app mimics real world brushes and paper and is a really fun way to get ideas on paper (pixels actually).

The top level, Bamboo Create come with three apps: Sketchbook, Painter Essentials and Photoshop Elements. If you were to go buy all the bundled software separately you would spend much more than the cost of the tablet.

The Bamboo offers three models: Connect, Capture and Create and is priced at $79, $99 and $199 respectively.