Recently I updated my imaging software from Photoshop CS3 to Photoshop CS4. The main feature of the update for me was the addition of a neutral-density graduated filter “mimic” within the RAW input: something that is very useful to me for all those older slides and pictures taken when I didn’t have a suitable range of filters.

One thing that wasn’t as welcome though was the changes Adobe had made to the Bridge part of the program. They’ve rearranged the output to web gallery feature so that it took me ten minutes to find it, and they have amended the feature so that it no longer has the option to include the metadata in the jpegs output for the web which is ridiculous. I can understand that a few people may want to squeeze every last bit of data to get their jpegs down to the absolute minimum size but there are plenty of other people out there who’d want the choice, especially when websites such as Panaromio and Flickr can take the metadata and use it to automatically complete photo titles, descriptions, geotagged co-ordinates and tags.

There are Flickr users who like to examine the EXIF information to learn how good pictures have been taken as well.

I find Adobe’s tinkering in removing features I make much use of infuriating to say the least, and this isn’t the first time I’ve found this with Adobe either!

Because of this I’ve learnt to keep older versions of software installed on my machine and I see that I’m going to be chopping and changing between CS3 and CS4 for a while.

Hope you’re all enjoying the No Turn On Red mixtape. It’s on Datpiff and imeem, along with way too many free file download sites (megaupload|rapidshare|sendspace|zshare|limelinx|filefactory)!
This is just an update with the improved, OFFICIAL No Turn cover.

It just needed some slight improvements. We were set back a bit trying to decide what felt the best, but I think this cover really matches the spirit of the tape and InfeRed’s music in general.
Keep listening and let us know what you think about the music. We’re also looking to do shows so if you know of something and would like to feature InfeRed contact us!

Peace, and no turn on love, cover.

Now that I have a mini photo studio, I thought of giving the camera (a Canon Powershot SX1) a fair chance. I took some pictures and decided to compare the power of RAW against normal JPEG pictures. And woah, RAW really can make a LOT of difference. I did the following:

1. Take a picture of a figure (in this case Miku… I really should have dusted it off XD; ) in the wrong setting (I chose daylight) in raw.
2. Convert the RAW image to JPEG without changing the settings.
3. Convert the untouched JPEG in Photoshop to make it look right.
4. Convert the RAW image to JPEG with the settings tweaked to make it look right.

Below you see steps 2, 3 and 4. See for yourself why RAW is such a nice feature to have for photography.

Third one does look the best, right? I just couldn’t get the colours quite right in the second picture, and the figure doesn’t really pop out of the background, like in the third. Okay, I know there are lots of people more experienced with Photoshop than me, but don’t forget that changing the RAW didn’t even took half a minute, while the Photoshopped one did take quite a while longer.

So, should you only buy a camera with RAW? Oh no, those are way too expensive for regular consumers. I really saved up for one because I really wanted a real good camera, because it turned into a hobby of mine. Just don’t forget to always check the light setting

This was one of the many request that I have gotten, to edit and publish their wedding photos and stories. I was at first taken aback as I had never actually thought of processing  jpeg photos taken by others. Then I thought what the heck, might as well try it then.

 So this is the first time where an orginally photo taken in a normal point and click cameras to be post processes and of the course , the love story began…

The bride is Gomathi hails from Kuala Kubu Bharu met her Prince Charming, Sasidaran on October 2005 in Rawang. This is what we called ” love at first sight” – the groom actually fell for her when she was getting on the Public Transportation Bus. So those of you not married yet looking for the ONE, please use the Public Transportation.

From there on, deeply smitten, the groom went to find out  who was this pretty maiden.

Lady Luck was by his side , the bride’s brother-in-law was a close firend of his. As rest we can imagine how it went… The lovely couple got registered on December 2005, that was 2 months after the love at first sight incident.

Their wedding was held one year latter, as the groom had to travel a lot. Why? He is Malaysia’s Profesional Golfer (Touring Pro). They tied the knot in Bukit Beruntung Golf Resort. The bride claims that the venue was beautiful , holding 1,200 guests and ample of parking. The wedding theme was gold (the wedding car, the deco and etc…) you get the idea!

The happy couple went on to live happily ever after…and yes they have been blessed with a beautiful baby girl, Tamilchelvi on 2008. May they be happy forever.

I would be interested to post other loves stories and photos in my blog. Please email at cshini@gmail.com your stories, details of the event (preferabley names,tel no) and photos.

eye-fi drahtlose Bildübertragung VI – Fotografie in der Zahnarztpraxis
von Dr. Andreas Habash

Gestern noch haben Frank Cendelin und ich Karten in USA bestellt ….

Und jetzt die Meldung, dass es zukünftig die Karten bei Gravis Deutschland geben soll.

Mal sehen wie sich dann die Preise hier entwickeln werden.

Im Moment gibt es eine interessante Lösung mit passender Software bei Schafflhuber.
Damit ist die Übergabe der Fotos in die Bildverwaltung und die Verschlagwortung gleich in einem Arbeitsgang möglich.

Scanning:

When you’re scanning something, what file-format is best to use? Your scanning software will usually offer the choices of JPG, TIF, GIF, and PNG (or, PNG-8 and PNG-24). Or it may hide these behind the more generic “Document” or “Photograph” settings. The rule is simple, but most scanning software doesn’t really help to guide the user.

I generally use PNG-24.

About these formats..

The JPEG format yields files that end with the “.JPG” extension. This format compresses images to a smaller size (by “size”, I mean how much space it takes up on your disk). This is useful, but it comes at a price: it’s lossy. It dumps some information from the image, in order to squish it down. It works okay for photographs, depending upon your intent, because it’s designed to dump those parts that your eye won’t miss (much).  Are you going to do things to this image in Photoshop or other graphic progam? Then you do not want to use this format. It’s like recording audio onto magnetic tape in analogue format: with every generation of recording, you lose more information and it becomes increasingly degraded. In this case, it can be quite visually obvious very quickly.

The GIF file-format is not lossy in the same way. But it only captures the colors to a depth of 8 bits. That’s 8 bits total, not 8 bits per color. This is appropriate only if you’ve less than 256 colors in your image, and those are easily represented. Here, a sheet of white paper, with black lettering, is a good candidate. The GIF format will happily compresses all that white space. And it includes an ability to encode one of those 256 ‘colors’ as a transparency bit, meaning underlying colors will show through.

The PNG format is a successor to the older GIF format and is not a proprietary format as GIF is. It comes in two flavors: PNG-8 and PNG-24. PNG-8 is analogous to the GIF format in that it uses 8 bits to represent each pixel of the image, meaning it too can only encode 256 colors at a time.  But PNG-24 offers a full 24-bit range of colors for each pixel. It also offers the ability to display transparency, but now it’s a full 8-bit “alpha”, meaning it can show varying levels of transparency.

So which to choose?

If you choose PNG-24, your files will be larger. But they’ll contain all the image color information. They’re not “squished down”. You can open them in your favorite image-editing program and produce a highly-compressed JPEG from it anytime you want, with no ill effects on your original .PNG file.

I’d only save your original images in the JPEG format if you don’t really care about keeping or manipulating them in your image-editing program. If you’re scanning a photograph, and it produces JPEG files that are already small enough to send by email or post online, and that’s all you’re ever going to want of them, then have at it. Save it as JPEG. But if you use JPEG for your non-photograph documents, you’ll see ‘artifacts’ of the compression process around the lines and letters that degrade it’s appearance.

So in general, use PNG-24.

What about Dot Pitch?

For the same reason as above, I usually scan images at a pixel-resolution that is a bit higher than I’ll ultimately need, in order to have a more perfect ‘source’-image that I can then down-sample when needed.

For documents, I sometimes scan at 200dpi (dots per inch) if it’s a clear paper with easily-legible fonts, but generally I go to 300dpi or even higher if it merits the higher resolution.

When scanning pictures from a printed media such as a magazine, actually 75dpi or 150dpi would usually do except that you have the possibility of the moire effect messing up your image file. That, is an interaction between the scanner’s resolution, and the dot-pitch on the printed page. That can really make it ugly!

Thus for magazine photos, I avoid that by using an overly-fine resolution like 600dpi to scan the original, then I down-sample in Photoshop to reduce the resulting huge file. This is “over-sampling”. It does cure the problem. The caveat being that scanning is slower at this resolution, and the file sizes can be rather large. Even newspaper articles have this moire-effect problem and you may need to over-sample, even though the newspaper is only printed with a dot-pitch of perhaps 75 dpi. Some scanning software has a ‘compensate for moire effect’ option, which you may want to try out. Otherwise, it is a waste of disk space to scan at more than twice the resolution that the image was originally printed at.

Yes, it is an extra step – to fire up your image-editing program to down-sample your image file, or convert it to JPEG, etc. But usually you would have to do this anyway, to do a reasonably-precise job of cropping it, making it perfectly horizontal (ie, not tilted), and other processing tasks.

For other scanning tasks such as simple posters, or large photographs that don’t have a lot of fine detail or aren’t extremely sensitive in nature, it is a waste of disk space and time to scan at an excessively fine resolution. Tinker a bit, and find the resolution that gives you the results you want, and no higher.  For a large crude photograph, perhaps just 75 dpi and save it as JPEG. For a poster that has only a couple of colors, the PNG-8 format will do fine and often can yield a smaller file.

Higher Color-Depths

In this discussion of color depths where I state that PNG-24 will capture your full range of color information, I’ve bypassed the issue of color depths higher than 24 bits-per-pixel. 24 bits provides 8 bits per color, and is generally fine for a photo-realistic result. But some digital cameras are now yielding more than this. The newer Nikon and Canon DSLRs, for example, produce 14 bits per pixel in their sensors. As soon as you save it as JPG, you lose that extra information. The only option to preserve that image information is to save it as a ‘RAW’ –format file, which is the camera manufacturer’s own file format that preserves all the original color information. You can bring that into Photoshop CS4 and still preserve that higher color-depth, because Photoshop is capable of using 16 bits per color channel.

Similarly, some scanners now can save an image in a high color-depth format. In general, your workflow should depend upon your need. For common business-usage, you’ll never have need of more than 24 bits per pixel. If you’re scanning your great-uncles’ masterful oil painting that’s been hanging in a museum, you do want to preserve the full range of color information. For other images, that extra depth becomes useful only if you’re planning to manipulate the image extensively in Photoshop such that the higher color-depth stands up against loss of color information that comes from numeric rounding-errors that result from every processing step. But that’s a topic for a real Photoshop article.

Hi everyone, welcome to my blog and thanks for looking. Here you will learn the truth about dpreview.com, well some of it anyway. I don’t have the time to point out everything that’s wrong with that site and some of the idiots in the forums there. If you think I’m making up anything here please feel free to go to dpreview and see the truth for yourself.

So, to get started about dpreview I’ll say that it is one of the biggest fanboy sites on the web. In this case, fanboys (including fangirls) are people who are in love with a certain brand or model of something and will promote and defend it way beyond what any sane person would do.

Some or all of them are probably paid by a manufacturer to be a shill (viral marketer) for their products and to attack and insult anyone who doesn’t say the absolute nicest things about that brand or model. Where dpreview comes in is that they allow and encourage the fanboys and will ban people who speak out against them.

Dpreview makes a lot of money from the manufacturers of the camera gear they review through advertising dollars and they also get free camera gear on loan from the manufacturers. Their so-called reviews are blatant examples of bias and favoritism and I’m sure it’s based on which manufacturer pays them the most or loans them the most gear. I wouldn’t be surprised if they take bribes too.

The dpreview forums are run by gangs of fanboys who viciously attack and try to silence anyone who doesn’t agree with them or blindly praise the brand or model they love and are promoting and defending, and especially Canon products, which are plagued with many inexcusable defects by the way. I think that dpreview may even pay some of the fanboys to help promote and defend certain products or to stir up controversy so that there are more hits on the forums, which generates more clicks for more advertising dollars. Either that or some (or all) of the fanboys could just be regular employees at dpreview.

Dpreview has a big monetary interest in promoting and defending brands and models so that interest in those brands and models is high and more people may go to dpreview and either click on the reviews or go to the forums. Of course people love to see a train wreck, which is just what the dpreview forums are, and the fanboys always seem to outnumber anyone who speaks realistically about brands or models and it makes it appear that the fanboys are always right.

The fanboys work hard to silence anyone who doesn’t agree that their beloved brand or model is the very best and dpreview will ban people who don’t submit and agree. dpreview also selectively deletes posts that reveal the truth about fanboys and camera gear.

If you go to the dpreview forums take a good look at how the fanboys argue endlessly that their beloved brand or model is perfect and way better than all other brands or models and they will use the most inane and nitpicky things to bolster their maniacal, idiotic claims. Fan comes from the word fanatic and it certainly applies to some of the people on dpreview, and especially in the Canon DSLR and lens forums.

If anyone says anything negative about a Canon product, even when it’s true, they are attacked as though they deliberately insulted the fanboy’s mother or kids. I think some of those fanboys value their cameras or lenses more than their mother or kids and that at least some of them sleep with their cameras or lenses and I really don’t mean sleep.

Fanboys must have very low self esteem to depend on owning or lusting after a camera or lens to make themselves feel like they’re important. Some of those people virtually live on forums, promoting and defending their beloved brand or model and rarely if ever take any pictures. They think that just owning or lusting after a certain brand or model will automatically make them a great and world renowned photographer.

If or when they actually do post pictures, the pictures are almost always junk, or mediocre at best. Many of them go on and on about how perfect and awesome a certain brand or model is but the next day they’re often asking which lens they should buy or which settings they should use for their vacation in Disneyland. Anyone who doesn’t know which lens or settings to use for certain things isn’t in a position to promote or defend any brand or model.

The dpreview forums are full of wannabe photographers whose self esteem is based on being in a brand or model cult. They have the cult, mob, gang mentality and dpreview encourages it by letting them stay and banning people who speak out about it.

dpreview is a joke, and I’m apparently not the only one who is figuring that out. Amazon bought dpreview in May, 2007. At that time dpreview had over 7 million unique visitors per month. Last month (OCT. 2009) they only had about 1.3 million even though new, popular cameras (to fanboys) were announced or released, which usually generates more hits on any camera review website. dpreview deliberately lies on their site and they still say that they get 7 million unique visitors every month.

They say: “These days the site is one of, if not the, premium digital photography site with an audience of seven million unique visitors a month..”

Here is where they say it:

http://www.dpreview.com/misc/about.asp

See here for the real facts:

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/dpreview

I wonder if Jeff Bezos regrets the purchase?

It won’t surprise me if dpreview or Amazon do everything they can to get this blog removed. If it disappears, you’ll know why, and if it does I’ll just start it somewhere else on the web.

I feel like that at some point, every photographer has to answer this question. Some of the best photographers I know hate talking about gear. They just don’t like it. I envy them. I constantly wish that I wasn’t naturally such a sucker for shiny things with buttons, but unfortunately for my wallet, I am.

So, moving along…

I get asked multiple times a week questions along the lines of, “What camera do you use?” and “What camera should I buy?” and “What’s your take on the new SuperGlam 5000?” So this is my best attempt to give a broad, general purpose guide to gear (in a completely subjective, Mike-tainted way) that covers as many of those questions as I can.

The first thing you should buy is the new Train album. It’s grand. I personally haven’t bought it yet, but I stream it (Jesus answers prayers through Spotify) at least four times a day. Seriously. It’s glorious.

Warning:
If you don’t want to read any technoblabber, go buy the album and have a nice day. This is where the techie side of me comes out.

My main set up right now consists of a Canon 5DmkII, Canon 35mm f1.4L, and Canon 135 f2L. I could (and probably do) 90% of my work with those three things. The benchwarmers include a Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 EX, a Canon 50mm f1.8 mkI, and a Canon 580EX Speedlite. Memory cards are all of the relatively quick (133x-300x) Sandisk and Lexar variety. I’ve seen far too many cheap cards go bad, so I try and stick to those two brands when loading up on memory. I personally like the Sandisk best; they look prettier.

What’s next on my list? Canon 45mm f2.8 TS-E. I’ll try and scoop one up once I get back to the States.

So now that we got me out of the way, let’s talk about you.

“I don’t currently have a DSLR, but want to pick one up and start taking some better pictures. What should I get?”

Anything. Every camera that Canon and Nikon currently makes will take some absolutely stunning images. You really can’t go wrong choosing any camera between those two companies. While some people are big Pentax and Olympus fans, I generally find that their cameras are a generation or so behind the latest and greatest Canon, Nikon, and Sony equivalents. And while they have a great selection of old-school manual focus lenses, they don’t have the huge range of current autofocusing glass that Canon and Nikon offer. Sony is the new kid on the block, and I think they’re on to something. They’ve come out with some great cameras, superb lenses, and innovative flashes in the past couple years. They’re whole system is still in its beginning stages, and they can’t match Canon and Nikon’s big range of lenses, so I don’t currently recommend them. However, give it a few years and that may change.

Go into a store, and try some cameras out. Go see which camera fits in your hand best. Figure out which one is easiest to operate. Then buy it. For most people’s purposes, any DSLR camera under $800 or so will do just about everything that the one sitting next to it will. Don’t get sold on megapixels. They’re not important. I promise.

If you are really thinking about getting serious about photography, then there are a couple more things to consider. The lower end Nikons (D40, D60, and D3000… maybe even the D5000) don’t autofocus with some lenses, and so I would avoid them. If I were stepping into Nikon and wanting to be serious about my photography, the minimum I’d grab is a D90.

“Ok, I have a DSLR, I’ve been taking photos for awhile now, and I’d really like to step up my game. What now?”

Learn to shoot in manual. Understand what the camera is doing. Be active in determining how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO effect your shot. If you really want to spend money, get a few photography books (I’ve heard that “Understanding Exposure” by Bryan Peterson is a good one).

“Check. Call me the manual master. I’ve got it down.”

Pick up a 50mm f1.8 for around $100. Both Canon and Nikon make them. They are cheap little primes (fixed focal length; they don’t zoom in and out) that are awesome for the price. I still use mine. They are great for teaching you about depth of field, shooting in low-light situations, and forcing you to be creative in your compositions.

“Sweet. I can take good pictures and I now own $918,494,843 worth of photo gear, but my photos still don’t look like yours! What gives?”

You can take great photos, but many times they need a little extra zing to top it off. This is where post processing comes into play. I process all of my photos through Adobe Lightroom and occasionally Adobe Photoshop CS4. Sometimes photos need some extra contrast, more saturation, or some cropping to really make them come to life. For what it’s worth, my “style” of processing usually includes lots of contrast, lots of clarity (or microcontrast), lots of vibrance, and warm colors, sometimes with green and magenta undertones thrown in. Grab a copy of Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture, or Adobe Photoshop (either Elements or the real deal) and a good Photoshop book or techie friend and play around a little.

It’s worth noting that shooting photos in RAW format will make a big difference when you process your images. You will be able to tweak the colors, exposure, and noise reduction even more than if you shoot in JPEG format. However, RAW files look much worse straight out of the camera, so I recommend shooting in RAW if you’re going to post process the images. I nearly always process my photos, so I nearly always shoot RAW.

“Gear: Check. Taking good pictures: Check. Knowing how to process: Check. My photos still don’t look like yours. What the heck?”

Duh. I’m me. You’re not. Your photos shouldn’t look like mine! Take photos that know one else sees, and process them in ways that people don’t think of. We call this style. Go get your own.

If you guys have more photo questions, email me, comment, text me, face my book, flik my r, twit my ter… Just ask.

Look for Scotland pics tomorrow, they’re all exported and ready to roll.

Peace.

Using Imagemagick it is easy, just do: convert *.jpg output.pdf

The problem is that my scanned files and using version 6.5.1 of Imagemagick on Kubuntu just gives me a Segmentation Fault error, and no valid pdf.

Well at least this way it works: convert *.jpeg -compress Zip output.pdf

Intro

Since I have gone over the basic structure of the jpeg file, I now need to show some of the headers needed to parse a jpeg file. I will include their byte signatures and structures as well as their names from the official JPEG standard. That way when you read other literature it wont be as confusing.  This will probably be a boring read, but it will be useful for reference purposes later. (I’m half writing this for myself so I have it written down somewhere)

Headers

Start of Image:

• Abbreviation – SOI
• Length – 2 bytes
• Byte Value – 0xFFD8
• Description – The simplest of the markers. This marker is the first two bytes of every jpeg file and has nothing following it. These two bytes imply that this file is most likely a jpeg file.
• Example:

Application Data:

• Abbreviation – APP1 – APP15
• Byte Value – 0xFFE0 – 0xFFEF
• Description – Not to be confused with comments, this marker identifies applications information that is not defined in the official standard. The APP0 marker is special however and holds information specific to the JFIF and EXIF implementations of the jpeg. From what I can tell the jpeg standard was too vague so some guy came up with the JFIF standard and it stuck, EXIF is newer but definitely sticking, especially with digital cameras. Other than the APPo segment the data is application specific, so just skip the data unless you want to write a lot of parsers for it. Otherwise the structure of the APP0 segment (as defined by JFIF) is below.
• Structure -
  1. Marker – 2 bytes
     1. Byte Value – 0xFFE0 – 0xFFEF
  2. Length – 2 bytes
     1. Again, this includes the length bytes
  3. identifier – 5 bytes
     1. 0×4A46494600 (“JFIF” in ascii) (if this was an EXIF image then this would be “EXIF”)
  4. version – 2 bytes
     1. the most significant byte is used for major revisions
     2. the least significant byte for minor revisions
  5. units – 1 byte:
     1. Units for the X and Y densities
     2. 0 => no units, X and Y specify the pixel aspect ratio
     3. 1 => X and Y are dots per inch
     4. 2 => X and Y are dots per cm
  6. Xdensity – 2 bytes
     1. Horizontal pixel density
  7. Ydensity – 2 bytes
     1. Vertical pixel density
  8. Xthumbnail size – 1 byte
     1. 0 = no thumbnail
  9. Ythumbnail size – 1 byte
     1. 0 = no thumbnail
  10. Thumbnail data – 3n bytes
      1. packed (24-bit) RGB values for the thumbnail pixels
      2. n = Xthumbnail * Ythumbnail

Example:

Filled in:

Huffman Tables:

• Abbreviation – DHT
• Byte Value – 0xFFC4
• Description – This segment defines the Huffman tables to be used to decompress the jpeg data. More information about it can be found here.
• Structure -
  1. Marker signature (2 bytes)
     1. 0xFFC4
  2. Length of data (2 bytes)
     1. Remember length of data includes the 2 length bytes

     Everything after this point is repeated (usually for 4 tables) until the length is exhausted

  3. Table Identifier (1 byte)
     1. The 4 high bits determine the class: 0=DC table, 1=Ac table. The 4 low bits specify the table identifier (0,1,2, or 3).
  4. Number of values for each bit length (16 bytes)
     1. The position of each byte represents the bit length of the Huffman table and each byte value is the number of values for that bit length. For example, if the data is 0×000105 then there will be 0 values with a bit length of 1, 1 value with a bit length of 2 and 5 values with a bit length of 3.
  5. Actual values (*Sum of values above* bytes)
     1. Length is equal to the sum of the values in # 4. So for the example above 0×000105 would translate to 6 bytes.

0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
FF	C4	#2		#3	#4
#4 cont.					#5 …

Quantization Table:

• Abbreviation – DQT (Define Quantization Table)
• Byte Value – 0xFFDB
• Description – This segment defines the Quantization tables to be used. All of the Quantization tables are defined in this one definition, there can’t me multiple DQT headers. The data almost always consists of 3 tables which are made up of 1 table information byte and 64 table elements. The byte length of the table elements are determined by the information byte.
• Structure -
  1. Marker signature (2 bytes)
     1. 0xFFDB
  2. Length of data (2 bytes)
     1. Remember length of data includes the 2 length bytes

     Everything after this point is repeated (usually for 3 tables) until the length is exhausted

  3. Table Identifier (1 byte)
     1. The 4 high bits determine how many bytes make up an element
        1. 0 = 1 byte per element so 64 bytes per table
        2. 1 = 2 bytes per element, so 128 bytes per table
     2. The 4 low bits are the number associated with the table (0-3)
  4. The 64 elements of the table (64 or 128 bytes depending on #3)
     1. Each element is used to fill in the table in a zig-zag formation as shown below.

Table Layout

Restart Interval:

• Abbreviation – DRI  (Define Restart Interval)
• Byte Value – 0xFFDD
• Description – This market specifies the number of MCUs (Minimum Coded Units) between restart markers. If the value is 0 then there are no reset markers. This can be used for parallel processing of jpeg images.
• Structure -
  1. Marker signature (2 bytes)
     1. 0xFFDD
  2. Length of data (2 bytes)
     1. Always = 4 (Remember length of data includes the 2 length bytes)
  3. Number of coded units between restart markers

Frame Header:

• Abbreviation – SOF  (Start of Frame)
• Byte Value – 0xFFC0
• Description – This is a marker to indicate the start of a frame. There can be only one.
• Structure -
  1. Marker signature (2 bytes)
     1. 0xFFC0
  2. Length of data (2 bytes)
     1. Remember length of data includes the 2 length bytes
  3. Data precision (1 byte)
     1. 8 or 12 bits
  4. Image Height in pixels (2 bytes)
  5. Image Width in pixels (2 bytes)
  6. Number of components (1 byte)
  7. Component 1-N
     1. Component ID (1 byte)
        1. JPEG defines it as 0-255 but JFIF restricts it to 1,2,3
     2. Horizontal Sampling (high 4 bits)
        1. Values: 1,2,3, or 4
     3. Vertical Sampling (low 4 bits)
        1. Values: 1,2,3, or 4
     4. Quantization table ID (1 byte)
        1. Can be 0,1,2,3

Comment:

• Abbreviation -COM  (Comment)
• Byte Value – 0xFFFE
• Description – This is a marker to indicate a comment.
• Structure -
  1. Marker signature (2 bytes)
     1. 0xFFFE
  2. Length of data (2 bytes)
     1. Remember length of data includes the 2 length bytes
  3. Comments
     1. Any information, often application specific

Start of Scan:

• Abbreviation -SOS  (Start of Scan)
• Byte Value – 0xFFDA
• Description – This is the last header before the compressed image data.
• Structure -
  1. Marker signature (2 bytes)
     1. 0xFFDA
  2. Length of data (2 bytes)
     1. Remember length of data includes the 2 length bytes
  3. Component Count (1 byte)
  4. Component Descriptions (2 * Component Count) (Note, the order these components appear is the order in the compressed data)
     1. Component ID (1 byte)
     2. DC Huffman Table ID (4 high bits)
     3. AC Huffman Table ID (4 low bits)
  5. Spectral Selection Start (1 byte)
     1. 0-63
  6. Spectral Selection End (1 byte)
     1. 0-63
  7. ‘Successive Approximation’ (two 4-bit fields, each in the range 0-13)

End Of Image:

• Abbreviation – EOI  (End of Image)
• Byte Value – 0xFFD9
• Description – This is a marker to indicate the end of an image. These are the last two bytes of a file.
• Structure -
  1. Marker signature (2 bytes)
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That took forever to make but now that it’s over I hope to get more motivated and post something more interesting.

und es wundert mich doch immer wieder…

ein fast weisses Bild mit ein paar grauen Schneeflocken:

-rw-r–r– 1 root root  41659 Nov 15 10:32 bkgrd_holiday.jpg
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 259974 Nov 15 10:32 bkgrd_holiday.png

Optimiert usw.. als png 6mal so gross wie als jpg.
Und bei anderen motiven ists genau andersrum.
Fazit: Probieren statt immer png nehmen

Hello all,

My name is Zach, and I intern at Bikiniwax. My assignment for today was to revamp the BW blog, which seemed like a no-brainer.

Zach’s Inner-Monologue: “How hard could it be to make a blog look nice? Not that hard, right? Right?”

It was actually kinda rough. WordPress is a great blog platform, one of the better ones I’ve used, but they’re not very into customizing their layouts unless you’re into paying for extra features, which, as an independent record label we’re not entirely too keen on. So Leah and I set about choosing the most agreeable pre-fab layout, and 10 minutes later, Ta Dah! The blog went from looking like a plain Jane “I blog about indigenous frog species’ of Arizona!” blog to a “Hey, I’m a hip young record label that happens to also run a blog” blog. Rock.

And yet there was still one element missing: a breath-taking banner for the top of the page. The banner is the one truly customizable component of the layout for us, so Leah and I took finding the perfect banner image very seriously. We searched the internet with unbelievable scrutiny and thoroughness, trying every single viable search phrase we could think of on Google Images. We found some really amazing artwork out there, but everything was either too small or too low-resolution for our uses. So what’s a lowly intern and his direct superior to do in this situation? A thought occurred me…

Today I am proud to announce the first Bikiniwax Records “Help Us Make A Sweet Blog Banner” Contest!

Here’s the details: The dimensions of the banner must be 760 x 151 pixels. We love artsy stuff around here, so if it looks like someone in a great deal of emotional pain made it, all the better. Ideally the banner will involve bikinis, music, turn tables, things of the like. Leah wasn’t really feeling the color red today, so let’s shy away from that pigment. Also, included in this post is a JPEG file of our logo, winning banners will include this logo, ladies and gents. Sound good? Let’s talk about what you get if you win, cause I know that prizes are important.

IF YOU WIN!!! You’ll get a copy of the new Bikiniwax Records 8-Track Compilation, BW’s clever little throw-back to the glorious era of the 1960’s. The Bikiniwax 8-Track Compilation is a monthly mix featuring 8 songs from the Bikiniwax catalouge, and the winner of the banner contest will get a copy of the very first 8-Track Comp. Pretty sweet huh?

Submissions should be emailed to info@bikiniwax.com with the subject “Help Us Make A Sweet Blog Banner” Contest Submission.

In the mean time, I’ll leave you lovely people with a video that blew my mind last night when I got back from Optimist Club and did the requisite drunkenly-playing-around-on-the-computer-before-passing-out deal:

-Zach

View Sonic, a manufacturer and provider of visual technology, has introduced its new VPD 400 MovieBook, all-in-one portable entertainment player that enables users to watch HD movies, listen to music, view photo albums, read digital books or even record voice memos at a very affordable price.

 Stylish and ultra thin Viewsonic VD400 comes with 4.3-inch screen (800 x 480), larger screen format with HD 720p. It has wide range of video, photo and audio format compatibilities, which includes JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, AVI, RM/RMVB, FLV, MP4, MOV, PMP, MPG, VOD, DAT, H.264, H.263, MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, APE, OGG

 The device comes with internal memory (NAND Flash Memory) of 8GB. In addition, Viewsonic VPD400 also supports micro SD cards slot for expandable storage.

 The VD400 has long battery life (1800mAH Li-Ion), which supports playback of up to 12 hours (audio), 6 hours (video), and 3 hours HD video on a single charge. The device weighs only 0.3 lb. (140 g).

 The VPD400 MovieBook is compatible with Windows® 98/2000/SE/ME/XP/Vista and available at a price tag of $129.99.

 The firstreporter

url2jpg | URL to JPG Screenshot tool

URL2JPG – Screenshots von Webseiten: URL2JPG erstellt Screenshots von Webseiten , die man anschließend als JPG-Grafiken herunterladen kann. Vorab kann man die Auflösung der Webseite einstellen (800×600, 1024×768, Fit Everything). Stellt man “Fit Everything” ein, wird ein Screenshot von der kompletten Länge der Webseite gemacht. Zudem lässt sich jeder Screenshot in der Größe zoomen.

Link : http://www.url2jpg.co.uk/

App Box Pro: Eine weitere App mit zahlreichen kleinen Helfern wie Datumsrechner, Lineal oder Batteriezustand. Die App kostet Fr. 2.20.

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Air Sharing: Die App ermöglicht es, unterwegs Dokumente zu öffnen. Es können unter anderem Festplatten erstellt, Dokumente eingesehen, Dateivorgänge vorgenommen, Dokumente per E-Mail versendet oder Dokumente gedruckt werden. Die App kostet Fr. 5.50.

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Canoo Net: Wer mit Sprachen arbeitet, sollte sich diesen Helfer merken. Das Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache bietet Daten zur Rechtschreibung oder zu den Wortformen. Laut Hersteller enthält die Software 250′000 Wörter. Im Open Thesaurus kann man nach passenden Synonymen suchen, in LEO nach der Übersetzung in fünf Sprachen und in der Wikipedia nach einer Beschreibung des gesuchten Wortes. Die App ist kostenlos.

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Daylite Touch: Mit dieser App kann man Termine im Querformat darstellen. Ausserdem kann auf die Terminkalender der Kollegen zugreifen und Aufgaben an andere «Daylite Touch» Benutzer delegieren. Die App ist kostenlos.

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Evernote: Mit dieser App hat man alle Informationen zur Hand – PDF, Notizen, Sprachnotizen oder zum Beispiel Fotos. Egal, ob man etwas am PC, Mac oder iPhone hinzufügen, Sie können sie an jeder anderen Stelle wieder herausholen. Die App ist kostenlos. Gegen ein Monats-Abo bekommt man eine SSL-geschützte Übertragung, mehr Datenvolumen und die Möglichkeit, viele Dateiformate in Evernote zu laden (z. B. doc oder jpeg).

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Viele Anwendungen für Apples Smartphone können den Arbeitsalltag erleichtern.
Quelle und weitere Apps unter: Tagesanzeiger.ch/Newsnetz

]]> http://jesterarts.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/jesterarts-free-image-go-to-the-ant/ Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:01:16 +0000 leoblanchette http://jesterarts.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/jesterarts-free-image-go-to-the-ant/

Ants just may be the most exceptional creature on the face of this planet! Perhaps I’m biased, because they have always been my favorite insect. One day I’d like to make a perfect 3d model of an ant, complete with every small anatomical detail, hair, etc.

This ant however was rendered just for the sake of making cool illustrations to depict concepts of human society. I hope you enjoy these images. Larger print quality images can be found on http://www.jesterartsillustrations.com/. These are free for web use under the JesterArts Illustrations license agreement.

See also the ant posing test animation below. Its pretty cool.

done

We where talking about different sort of bitmap files (jpeg,png,gif  and vector) and the disadvantages and advantages of jpeg and vector in particular  (more then the png & gif ) and in what case you should use what (like the jpeg isn’t the best for images with allot of color or that gif is the bitmap file to use if you want transparent background for like websites and that vector files is good cause the quality is always the same when you resize.
We also had beginning about semiotics we talked about:

1. Introduction
2. Signs & Signifiers
3. Advertising
4. Ideology
5. Activity

This week we looked at bitmaps and vectors.

A bitmap (raster) is a large grid where each square is filled with a colour.  Each square is a pixel and the more pixels the higher the resolution. Pixel is short for pixel element. The higher the resolution of an image, the more dots of colour, the better it will look.

Bitmap file extensions are: .gif .png .tff and .bmp.

Gif: Maximum of 256 colours, can be animated and are transparent.

Jpeg:  Capable of displaying millions of colours.

Png: Similar to a gif.

Vectors are made of points rather than pixels and so can be made any size without losing quality. They are great for logos but not for photographs and can be very small file sizes.

We then had our first look at photoshop and its effects.