Articles about Photography

Nokia targeted hipsters with #2InstaWithLove a couple of days ago, and now the Finnish smartphone manufacturer has shifted its focus onto narcissists. Nokia Glam Me allows users to take enhanced self-portraits for later adulation and, obviously, sharing across various social networks.

There's a catch though. In order to take advantage of the benefits that Nokia Glam Me touts, one has to own a compatible Lumia smartphone running Windows Phone 8. And, for the best results, users might want to look towards a higher-spec'd model in the front-facing camera department, like the Lumia 920 or the recently-introduced Lumia 720.

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Windows Phone users have many of the apps they need -- though not always the official ones. However, one noticeable service is lacking -- Instagram has yet to release a client for Microsoft's mobile platform. Given that the software giant spent $240 million to purchase a stake in the social network back in 2007, and that Facebook now owns Instagram, that has to sting a bit. Then again, Microsoft writes the Facebook for Windows Phone app, but let's not chuck salt on wounds by going there.

Nokia, the flagship handset maker for Windows Phone, is apparently so desperate to right this perceived wrong that it wrote an app to fill the gap. "Many of you have asked when Instagram will be coming to Windows Phone, and the #2InstaWithLove app was created as a way for you to have your voice heard. The app allows you to take a photo using the classic polaroid filter and automatically adds the hashtag #2InstaWithLove".

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By now most of you have likely heard of Photosynth, the Microsoft Labs project that made the mainstream, first as a web app and then on mobile. Now the mobile version has finally been ported to Windows Phone 8 devices as version 1.5 lands in the Windows Phone store today.

Photosynth is a panorama app that can take multiple high resolution images and stitch them together into a fantastic picture that users can pan around -- you can see some great examples on the website (it requires Silverlight).

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Today, 500px launched a new Chrome web app that, while available for browsers running on OS X or Windows, brings something extra to Chrome OS: Touch natively-supported and optimized for Chromebook Pixel. Take a look, because this little ditty is the computer's future and hints at what Google means by the "For what's next" marketing tagline.

Chromebook Pixel is Google's pricey -- $1,299 or $1,449 laptop running Chrome OS. Pixel's naysayers -- and, whoa, there are many -- gripe about a high-priced browser PC that is useless offline and for which there are no real programs. But that's not so. Developers can, as Google has done, create "packaged" web apps that can run when disconnected from the Internet. The 500px Chrome app is one of them. Then there is the functionality fine-tuned to Chrome Pixel's magnificent 2560 x 1700 resolution touchscreen. If you can understand 500px, you might grok Google's plans for making the Chrome OS flagship truly competitive with Mac notebooks.

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HTC’s new flagship smartphone, the HTC One, comes with an "Ultrapixel" back facing camera (it’s technically a 4-megapixel camera, but HTC refers to it as an Ultrapixel sensor because the pixel sizes are larger and can capture more light and, apparently, produce better quality images). It also comes with an impressive new live capture mode called Zoe Camera.

Zoe Camera automatically captures content through the camera’s lens when the app is active. Pressing the button will take a picture, but the app will automatically record the action before and after that moment. Zoe Camera can then mash together videos, images, effects, themes and a soundtrack, to produce what HTC calls a "Zoe". And if you want to see what these look like, the online hub for sharing them has just gone live.

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Adobe’s Photoshop Touch app for tablets is a great photo editing tool and now it’s available for handsets running iOS and Android, so you can polish up your snaps before sharing them online, or do something even more creative.

The app is packed with powerful features such as layers, selection tools, adjustments and filters, and there’s even a clever Camera Fill function which will let you use your device’s camera to fill an area on a layer. The app can handle images up to 12 megapixels in size and you get 2GB of free Adobe Creative Cloud space to store your pictures in.

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Today HP announced Live Photo for the iOS platform -- an app that claims to bring the user's photos to life using "augmented reality". The company claims the app will bring "a new consumer printing experience by embedding short video moments into printed photos".

According to Annie Weinberger, a general manager at HP-subsidiary Aurasma, "augmented reality is the new medium for bringing the physical world to digital life and HP Live Photo puts the power of this technology into the hands of everyday consumers". The free app purports to merge still images and short videos utilizing Aurasma. Once the app has been downloaded from the iTunes App Store the user can choose a video of up to 45-seconds in length and then select an automatically generated still image. From there it is a matter of choosing a template and sharing the new creation. The new photo/video can be shared via email, Facebook or by printing to any AirPrint-enabled printer.

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Enhancing a regular digital photo isn’t too difficult, at least at a basic level. Even an editing newbie will quickly get used to tweaking brightness, contrast, color balance and so on, and these image-wide adjustments alone will often be enough to make a huge difference.

Scan some old photos, though – maybe some ancient family shots which have been in someone’s attic for 50 years -- and you’ll face a very different challenge. Issues now are likely to include spots, scratches, dust and other defects. And while you could in theory clean these up with just a basic paint tool, life will probably be very much easier if you install Retouch Pilot Lite.

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The team behind CyanogenMod 10.1 announced a new camera feature for "(almost) everyone" running the popular custom Android distribution on their smartphone or tablet -- support for HDR mode.

The CyanogenMod 10.1 implementation for HDR mode "captures multiple pictures, and then renders them together to form one HDR image", similar to the functionality currently available on the LG-made Google Nexus 4. The software snaps three photos, at minimal, neutral and maximum exposure, and displays a single image at the end of the process, through "some fancy algorithms".

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Valentine's Day is all about romance, but whom -- or what -- do you really love? The stereotypical geek fawns over his or her gadgets and spends hours on PC (smartphone or tablet) instead of being with family or friends. Surely that describes you, and me, for that matter.

On this day of Cupid's arrows, I confess where they struck gadgets and other goodies and bound us in everlasting love. Take my wife, please, but leave my tech toys. She'll understand -- ah, right?

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Popular open-source, cross-platform image editor GIMP 2.8.4 Portable has been released for Windows PCs alongside the Mac binary of GIMP 2.8.4 FINAL. The updates appear less than a week after the Windows and Linux binary builds were released.

The update was a minor one, but many of the changes applied to the Mac build, including the moving of the program’s gimpdir to the ~Library\Application Support folder.

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It may be Friday evening and, according to Jimmy Buffett it is always five o'clock somewhere, but Dropbox has not finished its work week, pushing out one final update. So put away the beer or wine and pick up your Android. Late today the company announced an update that "makes it super easy to share collections of photos with friends and family".

Dropbox has been busy lately, given the stiff competition the cloud service is suddenly receiving from all sides -- Box, SkyDrive, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive and others. This update is all about photo sharing. From the Photos section, users can now tap a button and choose the pictures they wish to share with friends and family. You can add them to a shared album or even do it via an emailed link. In fact, you can even utilize Facebook or Twitter for the process.

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There has been a great deal of enthusiasm about making indie movies on Digital SLRs (and even some television -- Joe Wilcox of this parish reminds me that an episode of “House” was filmed on a Canon 5D, as was one of the BBC’s “Wallander” episodes). There are two main reasons for this enthusiastic adoption -- firstly, both camera body and lenses are incredibly low-cost compared to a conventional digital TV or movie camcorder, and secondly, they have full-frame (35mm size) sensors to give that shallow depth of field “film-look”.

While I’ve followed all this with interest, I’ve never personally been fully convinced.

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Angry users say they will ditch Instagram over policy changes granting the service the rights to use their photos. Of course, what people say they will do in the heat of the moment isn't necessarily what they eventually do, especially when extra effort is required -- in this case, recovering images from the service. Still, among respondents to a BetaNews poll, the number planning to keep Instagram is statistically zero (5 votes). Forty percent will stop using or cancel the service. However, a much larger number, 60 percent, already aren't users.

The Instagram backlash is nothing but fierce, for terms like these: "Instagram does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service. Instead you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service". The photo-sharer later claimed misunderstanding and poor wording, but you tell me what's unclear here.

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By now most of us have read or heard that Instagram (now part of Facebook) proposes a change to its terms of service to allow the company to use your pictures and mine in any fashion it chooses, including selling the pics to third parties. So if you don’t want your baby pictures to risk being used in a beer ad, we’re told, you should close your Instagram account by January 15th. One pundit called this move Instagram committing suicide, but I think something else is going on.

Can’t you just see the meeting at Facebook in which this idea was first presented? ”It’s a whole new revenue stream!” some staffer no doubt howled. “If our users are oblivious or stupid enough to let us get away with it, that is. Maybe we can sneak it through over Christmas”. We’ll see shortly, won’t we?

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