Underexposed

Microsoft's improved photo-hosting site offers slide shows, but images don't fill the screen.

(Credit: Microsoft/CNET News)

For a company that's trying to take on the online might of Yahoo and Google, Microsoft has had a decidedly inferior photo-sharing site. Now that's changing, though.

As part of an overhaul of its online properties, the company announced a number of improvements to its Windows Live Photos site.

Among the new features:

• 25GB of storage space and no more 500-shots-per-month limit on uploads.

• A what's new feed to show what photos your contacts are adding, part of the social side of Windows Live.

• A new slide show view.

• Better permissions for controlling how photos are shared.

I found the new site workable but still imperfect.

The photos.live.com site bears a strong resemblance to Yahoo's Flickr.

(Credit: Microsoft/CNET News)

The most glaring ugliness to me was that the slide show is limited to small versions of the images. That's no problem on an 800x600-pixel screen, but even Flickr, which still hasn't figured out how to dynamically scale images on its regular photo pages, has full-screen slide shows.

Another hitch was that it's apparently impossible to rename your photos. So pick a file name you like before you upload. And you can't change the order of photos shown unless you want to diddle with the photos' "date taken" metadata, which sounds like a bad idea for any number of reasons.

As a fan of keyboard controls, though, I do like the fact that I can use the arrow keys to cycle through photos in an album, though it works only intermittently.

Nikon's GP-1, a GPS tracking device that fits into the company's cameras and writes location data into image files, is starting to go on sale for a price of about $210.

The Nikon GP-1 lets people record location data directly in their photos.

(Credit: Nikon USA)

Nikon announced the GP-1 in August along with the D90 SLR, saying it would arrive in November, but didn't give a price at the time. Now it's on sale: J&R.com lists it for $209.99 and Adorama for $209.95.

Don't expect to get one immediately, though. Adorama lists it as out of stock, though it lets you order it. J&R just describes it as "coming soon."

Although it costs more than many handheld GPS units that offer maps, waypoints, and other navigation features, the GP-1 is specialized for photography. It plugs into a Nikon SLR's flash hot shoe and adds latitude and longitude data to photos as they're taken, a process called geotagging.

Although geotagging is only a niche technology today, it holds some promise for photographers. For one thing, geotagged photos can be located on a map, helping people remember where they took a particular shot or find out what a certain region looks like by browsing with a map. For another, it can help people organize photos by searching for a place name on their computer or a Web site hosting their photos. But geotagging can be a hassle.

The GP-1 and similar devices mean geotagging gets a lot easier: there's no need to download track logs to your computer, make sure your camera's clock is synchronized with the GPS clock, run software to write the location data into files, or worry that doing so will cause problems with the image file itself.

The GP-1 is compatible with Nikon's D90, D200, D300, D3, and D3X cameras, Nikon said. It comes with two cables, one for a dedicated port on the D90 and another for the other Nikon cameras that use a Nikon 10-pin connector.

Nikon has been bitten by the geotagging bug. Its compact Coolpix P6000 has built-in GPS technology, too.

This frame of a woman toasting shows how video from newer digital SLRs lets people blur backgrounds to emphasize a particular subject, something that's harder with conventional video cameras.

(Credit: CC Joi Ito)

The photography world is beginning to adapt to a new phase in the marriage of cameras and computing technology: the arrival of SLRs that can shoot not just still images, but video too.

The change began with the arrival of image sensors, the light-sensitive microchips that replaced film. Now, two new SLRs--Nikon's D90 and Canon's EOS 5D Mark II--are taking another step away from the film paradigm, following in the footsteps of point-and-shoot cameras by recording continuous video and not just still images. Doubtless video will gradually spread to other SLR models and makers.

"This camera is the ultimate 'equalizer'--you no longer need half-million dollars' worth of high-definition video cameras and lenses delivered by a truck with its own driver to shoot a high-definition film in low light--you just need a $2,700 camera and a few lenses," gushed professional photographer and Canon adviser Vincent Laforet in a blog post about a 5D Mark II prototype.

But not everything will be simple for Laforet wannabes excited by the new possibilities. Hardware, software, Web sites, and perhaps most of all, technique all must catch up to the new technology.

Though how-to book authors have yet to weigh in, there are signs the adaptation has begun. Take the case of video hosting.

Mike Horowitz, product manager for Google's Picasa software for managing photos and the Web site for sharing them, has left the company for Fetch Technologies.

"Mike was a valued member of the Picasa team and Google, and we wish him well in his new endeavors. We have a talented team working on Picasa, and we're excited about the future," Google said in a statement. The company didn't say who would replace Horowitz.

According to Horowitz's LinkedIn profile, he began his new role in December as chief product officer at Fetch, an El Segundo, Calif.-based company founded in 1999. The company sells an artificial intelligence product called Fetch Agent Platform "for extracting and integrating information from multiple Web sources, and transforming the data into a form that is useful for business applications," according to the company.

Horowitz has held a variety of high-profile positions at Google, including the product manager for Google Apps and for AdSense. He also launched AdSense for Domains and Google's personalized start page.

In September, Google launched Picasa 3 with a variety of photo-editing features, including better retouching and the ability to make slide-show videos and big collages. On the Web end, the new service groups similar-looking people to make them easier to identify. And the software and Web site can stay synchronized so editing changes on a person's computer are mirrored on the Web site.

(Via The Inquisitr.)

I'm a big fan of Adobe Systems' camera profiles, which when editing the raw images that higher-end cameras can produce imbues photos with what I find to be more natural hues. So I was glad to hear camera profiles are moving out of Adobe Labs and into Photoshop and Lightroom.

I apply the "camera faithful" profile by default when I import photos from my Canon SLR into Lightroom. But when I tried to use the profiles on some photos I took with an Olympus E-3, I found I couldn't.

Now seemed a good time to find out exactly which models are supported, and Adobe obliged with a list.

All SLRs from Canon and Nikon, which dominate the SLR market, are supported in the profiles that ship with Adobe Camera Raw 5.2, and that's a good start. But things get thinner after that.

The Pentax K10D, K20D, and K200D SLRs also have profiles, as does Leica's expensive and somewhat exotic rangefinder, the M8. Only two compact cameras, Canon's PowerShot G9 and G10, have profiles.

There are no profiles for Sony, Olympus, Samsung, or Panasonic SLRs so far. No doubt Adobe is working on it, though. I'll update this post if I hear further details.

Adobe Systems on Monday updated its raw-image processing software for Photoshop CS4 with support for Canon's higher-end EOS 5D Mark II camera and building in support for the camera profiles that can give images more realistic colors.

Raw image files from Canon's EOS 5D Mark Mark II now is supported by Adobe Photoshop.

(Credit: Canon)

The camera profiles, which I strongly recommend people employ, let you change image tones and colors to better match camera settings such as neutral, portrait, and landscape. They'd been released on the Adobe Labs site, but now are officially built into the Adobe Camera Raw 5.2 software and an accompanying utility, DNG Converter for changing cameras' proprietary raw files into Adobe's Digital Negative format.

The support for Canon's new 5D Mark II SLR is arriving just in the nick of time for the camera itself. Photographer and blogger Rob Galbraith, citing the company, Canon will begin shipping the new cameras to U.S. dealers on Tuesday. The $2,700, 21-megapixel camera, with a full-frame sensor the size of a frame film and a 1080p high-definition video mode, will help Canon counter Nikon's increasingly competitive models, and it's a hotly anticipated model.

The new raw software also supports several higher-end compact cameras: Canon PowerShot G10, Panasonic DMC-G1, Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX150, Panasonic DMC-FZ28, Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3, and Leica D-LUX 4, Adobe said. Additionally, people can save adjustment settings for future use.

The software (for Mac OS X or Windows) can be downloaded from Adobe's Web site.

A correction was made to this story. See below for details.

DxO Labs, a French company with deep experience measuring cameras' technical performance, has launched a Web site called DxOMark.com that features detailed information on the performance of the image sensor at the heart of many higher-end digital cameras.

Many Web sites and magazines measure camera image quality with varying degrees of rigor, typically examining either the JPEG that the camera produces or a processed version of the camera's raw. But with its DxOMark Sensor measurement, DxO takes a new approach by judging the sensor performance based on the unprocessed "raw" image file from higher-end cameras such as SLRs.

That's significant, because raw images typically must go through a conversion process called demosaicing before they're useful for viewing. Most digital cameras capture only a single color--red, green, or blue--for each sensor pixel. Demosaicing fills in the gaps in this colored checkerboard pattern so each pixel gets all three color components, but this processing stage can disguise sensor performance.

The detail-obsessed camera crowd has begun eagerly chomping on the new data. On Sunday, there were 220 mentions of DxOmark on the Digital Photography Review forums, a popular location for impassioned technical discussions.

Nikon's D90 sensor beats out the one in Canon's 50D, judged on the basis of the raw files it produces.

(Credit: DxO Labs)

New tests coming
More measurements are coming, added Nicolas Touchard, vice president of marketing for DxO Labs' image quality evaluation business. First, in two or three weeks, will come measurements for medium-format digital camera sensors from companies including Hasselblad, Mamiya, Phase One, and Leaf. Then will come more high-end compact "bridge" cameras.

DxOMark Image Processing for the camera's computer, whose job it is to perform tasks such as converting raw images to JPEG, and DxOMark Optics for lenses.

The latter measurement will go beyond most lens tests by showing how well each lens works on each camera rather than one or two reference models. DxO takes that approach because lenses behave differently because different cameras have different attributes such as the geometry of the microlenses that help each sensor pixel gather more light, Touchard said.

DxO makes a business out of detailed measurements of camera performance, selling the data to camera and chip companies and incorporating it into its own DxO Optics Pro raw-processing software for photographers. So why give some of the data away for free on a Web site? Publicity.

... Read more

Until Apple blesses the iPhone with a camera worth talking about, you're just going to have to improve photos by transferring them to your desktop to edit.

Not so fast, slick. Picoli for iPhone ($4.99) is a handy little photo editor that does a great job touching up entire photos--you can color-correct images by using a slider, flip the image, and apply a few effects, including converting to sepia tones.

Watch our First Look video to see how Picoli works and see if you should download a copy for yourself.

Related:
>>All iPhone apps

Only two and a half months after announcing Picasa 3 beta, Google has done the uncharacteristic and on Thursday has issued Picasa 3.

Here's the clincher:Picasa 3 is the exact same desktop organizer and editor it has been under the beta flag. (This is a good wagon for the Gmail team to climb aboard--Google's e-mail service has been in beta since 2004 and its latest releases have been earthshaking themes and emoticons.)

Although Version 3 beta users won't see changes in this release, those switching from Version 2.7 will enjoy the substantial boost in features. Version 3 stacks on over a dozen more tricks to refine the editing, creative, and sharing options in what has for years been a solid consumer app. Highlights below.

With a little creativity, you can make gorgeous collages like this in Picasa 3.

(Credit: Tara Morrison/Google)

Syncing and sharing
Instead of manually uploading new photos to Picasa Web Albums from Picasa 3, you'll be able to click "Sync to Web" to keep the folder automatically updated. You can exclude photos by right-clicking and choosing "block from uploading" from the context menu.

Sharing has also gotten much easier. In previous versions, you would upload the photos from Picasa and then click within the Web album to e-mail the link to friends. The 'Share' button next to Picasa's syncing button helpfully auto-uploads the album and sends the Web link without compelling you to go online.

No more leaving Picasa for the Web to update or share photos.

(Credit: CNET)

Movie Maker
A terrific but light addition, Picasa 3's new movie maker can take videos from your digital camera and other clips and intersperse them with any other file Picasa supports. You can then upload your video to YouTube or to Picasa Web, or share via e-mail.

Bare-bones editing tools will trim the clips and add a song for background. However, they don't do fading and there's no template to carry your caption style from frame to frame. Video output is currently only the WMV format, and encoding takes a little time--be patient while it renders.

Drop Box
Drop Box is the new default storage locker for newly uploaded photos, for pictures you don't want to assign to an album, and for multitaskers who tell Picasa to take it easy on the bandwidth so they can simultaneously surf and upload. The Drop Box also holds photos uploaded via Orkut, ShoZu, and other third-party photo uploading services that integrate with Picasa Web Albums. This is one of those features that some users will love and many will ignore.

Screenshots
Picasa 3 hooks into your keyboard's PrintScreen key to index captures of your screen, Webcam input, or a video. For casual users, this feature may replace independent screen-capturing software like Gadwin PrintScreen, Capture.NET, and SnagIt. Those who continue to use those apps may find the cataloging amusing or mildly annoying.

You can upload photos to the drop box and start making a movie from Picasa 3's toolbar.

(Credit: CNET)

Other notables
Picasa 3's red-eye reduction tool detects and auto-corrects all the red-eyes in a photo. This substantially cuts out the hassle of clicking and dragging over individual eyes to wipe out the redness, and it works well most of the time. For blotchy faces and other minor blemishes, the retouch tool will awkwardly but fairly effectively let you blot out problem areas.

Finally, the collage tool has gotten more customizable. Before Picasa 3, you couldn't delete, drag, angle, or print in full resolution. Now you can. These substantial additions make the tool an easy way to get really creative (see photo).

There's always room for improvement, especially with the movie maker and red-eye tool, which could use some more precision controls, but this Version 3 release is an excellent effort that will give people much greater control over their photos and Web albums without sacrificing simplicity. All without clinging to beta.

>>Want more detail? See the full list of additions and changes in Picasa 3.

Colin Smith of PhotoshopCafe.com has released a proof-of-concept tutorial for Photoshop selection techniques using Configurator. A final version is due soon.

(Credit: Adobe Systems)

After a slight delay, Adobe Systems has begun shipping Configurator, an application that lets people create customized Photoshop CS4 control panels and share them with others.

Configurator runs on Adobe's AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) foundation and lets people use a drag-and-drop interface to produce the control panels. Adobe's Creative Suite 4 applications use Adobe's Flash technology for its control panels, and Configurator is a way to produce those files. The company announced it Tuesday during its Adobe Max conference in San Francisco.

Adobe expects the software to be useful for those who want to customize the sprawling Photoshop interface so only a specific set of features is highlighted--for example those that crime labs use to process forensic images. It also expects that tutorial authors will flock to the technology to produce interactive step-by-step guides, perhaps with videos included.

John Nack, Photoshop's principal product manager, said earlier he hopes the Configurator technology will be brought to other Adobe CS4 applications later. For more details and some sample panels, check out Nack's blog announcement of Configurator.

Click here for more news on Adobe's Max conference.