The Saga of the Digital Picture Frame

A few years ago, I tried a Ceiva Digital picture frame as a test-drive for my parents. I concluded it worked and was relatively easy to operate, so I gave one to my East Coast parents for Christmas. The price was $100, the subscription was $60/year, and I thought it might be worth it to help the grandparents stay in touch with their new grandkids.

Unfortunately, it was a lot of work for me. I had to upload images to two different web sites and I felt like a fool using the Internet to load images into a digital frame in the room next door to me.

My next attempt was to buy a discontinued Kodak digital frame on eBay. This required no internet connection or subscription -- it let you insert a memory card into the frame directly. It was a lot of work, though, as I had to bring all the photos down to a relatively low resolution in order to get reasonable performance from the frame. (If I didn't change the resolution, it took a minute or two to load each image.) The frame now clutters the corner of my kitchen where we keep the broken capachino machine, and three years worth of school bulletins for the kids.

The odd thing was once you introduced a digital picture frame to friends and family, they suddenly found it unacceptable to have the same images in the frame for more than a week-- "Aren't those the same pictures as last week?" Or, "Don't you have anything new?"

I'm back to the old-fashioned approach; I've printed and framed my favorite photos on the wall. Some of them have been up there for five years and no one has complained yet.

For a more thoughtful discussion, read David Pogue's review of Digital Picture Frames.

Wildflower Triathlon Photos

I posted these photos using Yahoo! Photos. Service was fast and easy to use, though I wish they would let me sort the photos by file name, instead of manually rearranging them after the upload. There were three photos Yahoo! Photos wouldn't accept -- one was too large -- but there was no reason stated for the other two. It took me a bit to learn that if I selected all photos, then used edit, I could rename all the photos at once.

It will be really cool when Yahoo! and Flickr are integrated, though Yahoo! will still be short a desktop photo organizing solution ala Picassa.

Wildflower Triathlon Photos on Yahoo!

(Look for the "view slideshow" button towards the top right once you get there.)

An (auto)stitch in time, saves nine

There is a free download called Autostitch that lets you quickly and easily create panoramas. It does, however, require you have some image editing software that lets you select the final result and crop the rough edges (if you care). Here are the results of five photos of the nearby Burlingame train station stitched together using Autostitch:




Here are the results using Photoshop Elements (under New-Panorama in the file menu). I typically use this because it is easy for me to put the pictures in the Picassa photo bin then open Elements within Picassa -- this saves me the time of searching for the files within Elements. Here’s the result:




The main advantage of Autostitch is that it automatically takes care of exposure issues (there is some banding in my second version where I didn’t bother to fix the sky using a clone or blending tool). Autostitch is also very fast, and occasionally Elements can’t figure out how to fit the puzzle pieces together and asks for manual help. Photoshop Elements, does, however, allow me to "straighten out" the perspective issues, and handled the colors a little better -- with Autostitch things occasionally look a little muddled.

If you visit Flickr, and search the “Autostitch” tag, there are lots of good examples of panoramas. Note that neither Elements nor Autostitch require a panorama, per se. They both accept a patchwork collection of photos so you don’t need to meticulously hold the camera at the same level while you pan the horizon.

Montage Mania

I've grown to love the "create poster" function within Picassa. Here are some related montage tools on the web. With the first, you search any keyword using Google, then build a montage using the images found. The second shows you a montage, then asks you to guess which search term was used. (You won't find me on the high scores list.)

Montage-a-google


Guess-the-Google

Why I use Photoshop Elements 3.0

For the most part, I can do most of the things I need within Picassa2. I open Photoshop Elements for:

- Creating a panorama
- Adding text to a photo
- Cropping photos (infrequently, but Elements has good selection tools)
- Clone tool
- Artistic effects not found within Picassa (watercolor)

For the most part, Picassa gives me maximum bang for the buck. When I try to do even simple things within Photoshop Elements (reducing to Black and White) I find it tricky to use.

Kelsey on "Pioneer Day"

All effects within Picassa2 (Black & White, Sepia, Soft focus, film grain).

My (underwater) Digital Life

This was taken with a digital disposable camera, then I played around with the image using Picassa2. Also had a one-time use digital video camera, but I didn't dare to submerge it.

What I want from Picassa's next revision

It's one of my favorite tools, and it's free! Wow. Nonetheless, here's what I would love in the future:

- the ability to publish to a web page in a format where it is easy to view an album full of pictures. This is one area where iPhoto surpasses Picassa. Here is an example of an iPhoto album that is instantly exported to a web page: Gib's .Mac photos
- some easy image processing tools that I still go to Photoshop Elements for (but where I hate the time required to open the application). These include flip vertical/horizontal and adding text to a photo.
- Ability to play more than one song when playing a slideshow. Also transition effects.
- Ability to "caption" photos in a format that everyone else (Shutterfly, Kodak EasyShare, Flickr) can understand. I find myself renaming and recaptioning for multiple web photo applications.

Yahoo! Photos

I am uploading my California Triathlon pictures to Yahoo! Here they are:

California Triathlon photos on Yahoo!

Pictures from the 2004-2005 Triathlon season.

I had concluded that all the photo printing services are equal, but here's a few little things I noticed about Yahoo!

- Lacks a "sort by" function. With Shutterfly, for instance, I could sort by name. I had an album in a specific order, and it was different after the upload. Needed to do a manual sort.
- Lacks a global editing function for picture name and comments. Need to do it one by one.
- Little details like mispellings--"relase" instead of "release" for instance.

I'm sure Yahoo! photos is the most popular, nonetheless, with a recognized brand and plenty of natural traffic. Gets the job done, and overall, it's a clean, simple design. Here's the show:

California Triathlon photos on Yahoo!

Fake or Foto?

With Photoshop and other digital imaging programs, it's getting harder and harder to distinguish computer-generated art from real photos. Here are ten photos that challenge your ability to differentiate the two:

Take the Challenge

(I got 4 of 10 right, which should be easy to beat!)