Did I mention broadband?

My digital life with photos was unbearable until I got a DSL connection. Sorry if anyone has bumped into this site without it. (Now I'm trying to figure out how to move posts into archives so the page isn't so heavy.)

Where I lived -- East Coast

Lived on the island connected by a causeway at 9 o'clock. Still love the West Coast nonetheless.

Where I live -- West Coast

Make the most out of a tenth of an acre somewhere in the middle of this!

SimpleStar digital slideshow (Photoshow)

I think this is kind of cool. It's a digital slide show synched to music that also includes transitions and effects -- via the web. It's from SimpleStar, and it's my parent's recent visit to California:




Click here for Gib's PhotoShow

Brit in Puerto Vallarta

Hacking around with watercolor effects which is weird with people. Put both pictures together using "Picture Pile" within Picassa2.

Lighthouse at the entrance to Sydney Harbor

Used a stained glass feature in Photoshop Elements:

Instant Watercolors

Watercolor effect of a neighbor's house using Photoshop elements.

Spell my name (Gib) with Flickr

Found an interesting Flickr application, where you can spell any word using Flickr photos. Here's me:

Click here to turn your name into photos!

Adding the Flickr Zeitgeist

Look over at the top of the right column. Here's the link to create it:

Get Flickr Zeitgest

I know the page is getting kind of heavy, but I'm having fun!

Adding a Flickr Badge

If you look down the right side of the page, you will see ten random stamp-sized photos. Here's the link to do this using Flickr:

Get a Flickr Badge

Enjoy!

Too much text, and not enough photos!

Here's one:

Sharing photos using EasyShare, Shutterfly & Snapfish

Below is a link to the "Betsy & Bruce Visit California". Really only small differences between Ofoto (now Kodak EasyShare), Shutterfly and Snapfish. All are fast and easy to use. In the "Devil is in the details" department:

Shutterfly "choked" on Jpeg images it said were not Jpeg. They were simply too large, so I had to save them as smaller files using Photoshop Elements.

Shutterfly let me quickly edit both photo names and comments at the same time. With EasyShare, I just named the files something appropriate with no additional editorial.

Shutterfly cropped things a little differently, which is the reason I eliminated my composite "title" slides. It cropped the text.

Snapfish couldn't handle my panoramas because of file size -- wide format. Wasn't immediately obvious how I could view the slide show before sending it. Other minor interface issues that made it a little harder for me to use.

You can judge the aesthetics and presentation yourself:

Bruce & Betsy's Visit (EasyShare Slideshow)

Shutterfly Slideshow

Snapfish Slideshow

Shutterfly Sharing of Bruce & Betsy's Visit

Here are photos I posted to Shutterfly -- family photos from my parent's visit to California. I used Picassa to pick the pictures, then clicked the order button within Picassa to initiate the upload. It's a lot faster than using Shutterfly's tools. The time-consuming part is editing the captions for the slide show, but it's a very easy way to share pictures -- people are used to getting an email with a link.

You can compare this presentation, to the Photoshow presentation, which I think is more compelling because it has sound and visual effects, though I think the titles are a bit hokey.

Here's the Shutterfly slideshow:

Bruce & Betsy Visit CA

And as a comparison, here's the Photoshow:

Bruce & Betsy on Photoshow

Gib's Family Photo Network (click here)

This was a bit of an experiment. Tried to find the easiest way possible that my family could share photos with each other, and the solution was to provide an email address they all could send photos to where they would all be automatically uploaded to a PhotoBlog.

Family members could put the title of the photo in the subject line, and any text in the email, would be posted, as well. At the time, I implemented this through Flickr using RSS to post to a Blogger account. Today, there are easier solutions -- I'll futz with that later.

Gib's Family Photo Network

See my PhotoShow Digital Slide Show

Here is my first attempt with the software. It is a slide show of my parents visit to the Bay Area and is synched with music, has transitions, etcetera:

http://www.photoshow.net/view/VEyjGiEde

It should work well for you, but the download and purchase process was a bit of a bear for me.

The Digital Slide Show

My oldest daughter is now 9--there have been 9 years of resurgence in our picture-taking life. The first two were traditional photos, where all the photos went in the "drawer from hell." The next two were the transition to digital, where we took lots of photos, and did nothing with them -- no prints, sharing, etc.

Then, finally, I found some time for puttering with all the different sites and tools. I take zillions of photos, downloading them on my computer, then use Picassa to occasionally pick the best ones and produce digital slide shows for friends and family. I add title screens, back them to music (running iTunes as a separate application), and even go retro with an old slide show screen and a computer plugged into a projector. Impactful for the audience, too much time and effort for me, but I like building things and this was a fun creative outlet. Over time, the producing got faster and faster, but you still have to come to my house to see the show.

So what I am looking for now is a good application that will let me share digital slide shows synched to music that is fast and easy. Any suggestions? As an adjunct, I'm also puttering with iDVD on the Mac, but unfortunately none of it is fast and easy enough.

So here's where I am now.

Picassa2 v. iPhoto

Cracked me up to see Picassa describing itself as iPhoto for the Mac. Here are the strengths of both:

Makes it easy to organize your photos on your computer -- even if you're not organized.

Lets you easily post photos to web sites, email, etc.

Has nice built-in image editing features, so you really don't have to use something like Photoshop very often.

Picassa is wonderfully "light" which means it's quick to load and boot up, unlike most other Windows equivalents.

Relatively easy to use, although both have anomalies.

The anomalies:

Picassa is clever in that it never changes the original -- just keeps track of deltas. This gets tricky when you want to have a folder full of your "new" images which you take somewhere else. For this, you need the "export" function, which is a little tricky.

I had to relearn the Mac after being away from it for 15 years. There was stuff that drove me crazy: 1.) It didn't ask me if I wanted to confirm changes. My color photo is now black and white and there's no way of getting it back? 2.) For all its integration of multimedia features, why can't I play more than one song when I play a slide show? Or, why is there a 48 picture limit when you post to the web -- or why doesn't someone tell you this first? Devil's in the details when you are trying to make things both easy and robust.

I can't recommend to anyone that they get a Mac, as Picassa does a great job. The thing that I cherish about the Mac, however, is its ability to do lots of different screen affects and transitions on its gorgeous monitor -- something you can't do on a Windows-based machine.

Britney's Fun with a $20 Camera...

Britney's Toy camera -- yet again.

Photo Fantasies

Found myself responsible for a bunch of friends 40th birthday slide shows. Invariably, there aren't enough good photos, so I have to make up a few. I used PhotoFantasy 2000 -- something that came with one of my cameras. It's wicked fast, though I'm sure you can do the same with Photoshop, and a lot of time. This is the photo that convinced my young daughters there Mom really was a princess.

Fair is fair, so I included one of myself, too

Gib and Kristen's early years of marriage.

Kristen's life as model and water-skier

Kristen takes on yet another new sport.

Using the Collage afffect in Picassa2 and a $20 camera

Britney has a digital camera with ridiculously poor resolution -- and a wandering eye when it comes to centering the subject. Making a collage of the images was kind of fun for her.

Using the Collage tool to create slide show titles

I used the Collage feature in Picassa2 (Picture Pile), then opened the result in Photoshop Elements (nice integration in the File menu-- open file in an editor) to add the type. This was for a slide show from our Christmas at Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood in Oregon -- Santa really came down the chimney.

Collage effect in Picassa2

Using Picassa2's effects (saturate and black & white) with the Collage feature (2x2 grid). I used Photoshop elements to create "flips" of the images, too. Note: posting this log using the blogger integration in Picassa2, though I wish there was a feature where I didn't need to go in and edit the title later, within Blogger.

Building a Panorama using Photoshop Elements

This is a panorama created from a bunch of pictures I took from the beach in Puerto Vallarta in April. Take a bunch of pictures in succession, then open them in Elements, and select New: Panorama. Note the banding showing different exposure -- I didn't bother to fix. Note: You don't need to use your camera's panorama setting to do this.

An example of the new features of Picassa2

First used Effects (saturate) to create multiple colors of the same photo (that's me!) and then created a composite of the 9 photos using the Create Picture Collage feature.

Google's Picassa 1.0 v. 2.0?

It's a no-brainer (it's free!), but if you haven't upgraded to Picassa 2, the upgrade is seamless, and here are the new features that really stand out for me after a few months of use:

- Well-integrated image processing tools (black and white effect, redeye reduction, etc.)
- New creative tool that lets you build composite photos (place photos in a 3x3 grid, etc.)
- Tighter integration with other services (upload to Shutterfly, open Adobe Photo Elements)

Still the best way to keep track of the photos on your computer -- easy and inobtrusive.