Recently in Post processing and workflow Category

You probably know the saying: don't put all your eggs in one basket. Now, using Pretec's newest Compact Flash cards would be doing exactly that. These cards sport an amazing 64 and even 100 Gigabytes capacity. 100 gigabytes! That's equal to the hard disk capacity I have in the notebook computer I'm writing this on.

I wouldn't even be able to empty that card onto this computer, if it was filled. I'd run out of disk space long before having all images in safe harbor.

"Come on", I hear you say, "There is no such thing as nice noise! Noise is bad and we don't want it!"
And you are right. Noise is bad, and we don't want it. But sometimes noise is inevitable, and something we have to learn to deal with. Sometimes it might even be something you want - to create a special mood. And in that case it really helps if the noise is nice.
I have seen nice noise before - when introduced by myself to obtain a certain effect. Plugins like Alien Skin Exposure and Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro can produce some beautiful and controlled noise to an image, adding an ambiance or feel, which wasn't impossible without noise or grain.

Nik Software is the company behind the U-point technology used in Nikon Capture NX, which is also available in the comapny's own Viveza software - a plugin for Adobe Photoshop and Apple Aperture.
Nik has its own products, mainly in the form of plugins for photo editing programs such as Photoshop, Capture NX and Aperture.

Nik has just released Silver Efex Pro, which is an advanced B/W conversion program, that can take your color or existing B/W photos and transform them into exceptionally beautiful B/W photos.
I have downloaded the 2 week trial and taken it for a ride, and while it's fun to make Cyanotypes and Holga versions of your pictures, the program really excels in recreating the tonality, grain and colorcast of certain film and paper types. You can create your own profiles by adjusting structure, paper color, silver grain color and many other aspects, and of course select and adjust film characters from a list of the most common current and old B/W films. This adjustment includes such exotic features as fine tuning the color sensitivity of each of six colors and setting the tone curve of the "virtual film".

It's an amazing piece of software and for an old film buff like myself, going down the Tri-X or HP5 lane again does bring out a lot of memories. And if I want to add a yellow filter and press it a stop or two in development? Well, Silver Efex Pro lets me do it - as close as I can get in this digital world.

And now I'm on Technorati too

No, it's not like I shoot film. I did go 100% digital the moment I acquired my first DSLR. But my photographic upbringing was in film, and that still marks my way of thinking and shooting.

I come from a film background. My photo career has consisted of 30 years of shooting film and 5 years of shooting digital. So my deep dwelling shooting habits are film-habits.
Of course the arrival of the digital age has changed the way I shoot quite a lot. Today I don't bother nearly as much about the number of frames I shoot. I know that each frame will not cost money, eat into my film stock or leave me with significantly less images in the camera. Back in the old days, I would constantly glint at the frame counter, and like a western gunslinger, I would count my shots and always know how many bullets I had left in the drum.
Think about it. You started out with 36 frames, and could be down to 10 within minutes. In situations where things were happening fast, you had to think about every single frame you exposed. And sometimes you had to skip a good moment in order to save images for an even better one that could come... or not.

I have been following the company idée for a while and had fun with their fascinating TinEye search system. The system requires an invite to use it, but it seems to be pretty easy to get one. I registered and have been using the image search a few times since.

You need to try it to really understand it, but the essence is that you can search the web for images similar to one you choose or upload. There's an extension to FireFox, which allows you to just right-click an image and launch a search on TinEye. The thing is that TinEye uses an image-comparison algorithm to match pictures. Not filenames, tags or anything bland like that. This means that TinEye will find scaled images, cropped images and images altered in other ways - even retouched. It even has a way of comparing them right in the search results. Amazing.

Scott Kelby and his latest guest blogger Matt Kloskowski have been blogging on Photoshop Insider about stuff that people want in Photohop, and there's a host of great ideas to new function, extension of dialogs and great ways to get Photoshop to do its job even better.

But in all the serious suggestions you've gotta love this "Fix all" entry by Dave Cross. That's the kind of functions we want in the coming versions of Photoshop !

You can see many more - serious - suggestions here.