Where Art & Engineering Collide

Windows 7 Tips & Tricks

Posted on 31. Aug, 2010 by Terry Reinert.

Many years ago I was a happy PC user who never had the desire to switch to an Apple Mac computer. Then one day tragedy struck and that lack of desire went away pretty quick. That tragedy was called Windows Vista. Being a technology guy I really hate having out of date software or even out of date hardware for that matter. Imagine buying a Lamborghini and within a year or two that once sleek high speed low drag machine of perfection had the performance of a 1970′s VW bug. That is how I feel about technology so I continually help the various Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the world continue to afford their fancy houses and black turtleneck sweaters. But, as usual, I digress…

My disdain over old software goes double for an operating system which is why I ultimately switched over to OS X on a Mac Book Pro shortly after Vista came out. I really like OS X for a lot of reasons but there are a few things I don’t like about it. I’d list them out but then I’d be inundated with internet traffic originating from every Starbucks on the planet so MFBs (Mac Fan Boys) can scream how wrong I am. Needless to say I’ve always kept a Windows and a Linux machine around the house for various other uses.

When Windows 7 came out I was a little hesitant to get on board but finally took the plunge and made the switch up from Windows Server 2008 (basically Vista without all the bloat and annoying UAC messages). I have to say Windows 7 is pretty sexy. Maybe not as sexy as OS X but it is definitely the best Windows OS Microsoft has ever released. But it still has some issues that make it slightly less than a shiny star of user experience greatness. Luckily we have the power to tweak many of the things under the hood to bend it to our will.

Here are some of the better tips and tricks to make Windows 7 less annoying and more sexy…

1. Remove Password Expiration

Do you find it annoying when Windows tells you that your password is about to expire and you have to change it? Never again! Check out this article on  how to turn off password expiration in Windows 7.

2. Taskbar Icons Have Keyboard Shortcuts

To open these applications through shortcut keys, simply hold down the Windows key and press the number on the keyboard that corresponds with the icon, working from the Start “orb” button to the right (or down if you set your taskbar to appear on the left or right side of the desktop). For example, if Internet Explorer is the first icon, press Windows-1 to open IE. Or do that smart thing and uninstall IE and install Firefox or Chrome instead.

3. Quickly Turn On and Off Windows Apps

To turn on and off built-in apps such as Internet Explorer, DVD Maker, and Media Player, type features in the Instant Search bar and select the Turn Windows Features On or Off link under Control Panel; then locate the feature you want to hide or display. Just do yourself and computer security experts a favor and don’t turn on anything you don’t know what it is!

4. Find Out What’s Causing Reliability Issues

If your PC has issues every once in a while, such as crashes or application hangs, type reliability in the Instant Search bar to open the Reliability Monitor; it will show your system’s reliability history over a period of time and what seems to hit your reliability the most.

5. Shake Your Desktop Clutter Away

Have you ever had so many applications open at the same time you started to lose track of everything? The solution is simple. Press WINDOWS + HOME keys to minimize every window except the active one. Press WINDOWS + D to minimize all windows and show the desktop (referred to as “Boss Mode”). Or, for a more fun way to do it, click on the title bar of the window you want to keep on the desktop and shake it back and forth slightly.  Ta-Da! Its magic! No wait… its just the Aero Shake feature.

6. Enable God Mode

Yes, there is a “God Mode” in Windows 7. Its pretty useful too although I still cannot find the commands to flood the world or send a swarm of locusts into the nearest Starbuck’s. Yet another instance of Microsoft trying but not quite meeting user desire. Sigh. Anyway, go to any directory you want in Windows Explorer and create a new folder. Name it as follows:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-9912043E01C}

Once you hit enter the folder icon will change to the control panel icon and inside of that folder are all sorts of settings combined into one location. Sort of a one-stop-shop for all your user customization needs. No more surfing through the many pages contained in the control panel to find the setting you’re looking for!

7. Google It!

Yes, my final Windows 7 Tip is to go to Google (using Firefox or Chrome Web Browser of course) and enter the search term “Windows 7 Tips”. You’ll get a large number of returns to browse through and you’ll find all sorts of cool stuff you can do with it. Heck, you might even see a link to this article in there somewhere… probably around page 30 though.

HDR Photography Contest Update

Posted on 29. Aug, 2010 by Terry Reinert.

Just a quick update about Unified Color’s HDR Photography contest. They are currently accepting submissions for Cycle 3 which ends on October 25th, 2010. This is the last cycle so if you want to get in on the killer prizes they are offering, this is your last chance!!

Details Here: http://www.unifiedcolor.com/contest-submit-photo

DEFCON

Posted on 29. Jul, 2010 by Terry Reinert.

Yesterday I hopped on a plane and after a short stop in Atlanta found myself in Las Vegas, Nevada for DEFCON 18. DEFCON is one of the hacking / computer security conferences in the US. I wish I could tell you more about it but I can’t since this is my first one.What is a photographer doing at a hacker conference you ask? Well, I am not here in the capacity of a photographer. In fact, from what I have heard conference attendees don’t take kindly to having their picture taken anyway. I am here because I am a hacker. I’ve always been a hacker. I’ve been hacking computers ever since my Dad brought home a Commodore 64 when I was young and hacking electronics and just general life parameters ever since. Please note however that I am referring to the positive use of the word hacker and not the bastardized version that the media uses to talk about cyber criminals. Read the Wikipedia definition of hacker for a better understanding of the term and how it has evolved over time.

Riviera @ Night – Canon 5D – Canon 24-105mm L @ 35mm – f/4 – 1/10 sec - ISO100

I doubt I will be blogging much while I am here but I will write something up post DEFCON as well as post photos I take while in Vegas. I went on a photo excursion yesterday just before sunset and after jumping a few fences and sneaking past a security guard, I photographed the sunset and the northern part of the strip from the top of a 14 story parking garage. It wasn’t until afterwords that I found out that I didn’t have to do the ninja sneaking to get up there had I walked around to the front of the place. Oh well. It’s always good to practice your skills anyway.

On that note, if you’re interested in DEFCON or hacking you should check out the DEFCON website. If you’re interested in what I am doing around here, follow me on Twitter and keep an eye on my Flickr photostream. I will be updating them sporadically but not too often since I will be keeping my iPhone in airplane mode when around the conference area. One of the talks during the show is about intercepting GSM transmissions and a new application for breaking GSM encryption was released last week so it is definitely a good idea to keep your phone off when in the area!

Las Vegas Hilton – 3 Exposure HDR Image Processed In HDR Exposure

And yes, this is my renewed effort to bring engineering and technical topics back to my blog seeing as how it is “Where Art & Engineering Collide”. I just got away from that when I re-branded it as my photography site. Hopefully I can get back to the hybrid nature that I originally intended!

WWPW Indialantic Information

Posted on 24. Jul, 2010 by Terry Reinert.

This post is for all the photo walkers going to my photo walk in Indialantic, Florida on July 24th.

Upload your best image to the Worldwide Photowalk Page by July 31st if you want to be in the contest. There is information on that site on how to upload your image to be included in this world wide contest.

Photowalk are meant to be social events. For that reason, there are multiple flickr groups set up by various people to share your images and comment on others. You can upload up to 5 photos per day to the WWPW3 flickr group which is run by the NAPP crew. You can upload any number of your photowalk photos to my local photowalk flickr group, Photowalk Brevard. Uploading to flickr is optional but recommended. You will get to see the same things you saw during the walk through other peoples eyes.

See you all tonight!

HDR Expose Review

Posted on 17. Jul, 2010 by Terry Reinert.

In March of 2009 I wrote a review on a new HDR application released by Unified Color called HDR PhotoStudio. HDR PhotoStudio offered many new features that were not present in other HDR processing applications. Last week the scientists and engineers at Unified Color upped the ante again by releasing their next generation HDR processing application that takes the features of HDR PhotoStudio to a whole new level. While this is a new application, there is a lot of overlap with HDR PhotoStudio in terms of features. However, I’ve found that many of the features are better and faster in HDR Expose. Is there a big enough difference to justify launching a new product name instead of an incremental update release? I believe so and after using the application yourself I think you’ll agree with me. Let’s dig in…

User Interface

HDR Expose offers a completely new user interface for processing HDR images. The right hand side of the main application window contains the Brightness Histogram and Operations panels. The brightness histogram shows a histogram of the image brightness along with an indication of the visible range of the image and the values for common image components like RGB values. The operations panel contains icons for all of the tools that you can use to process your application as well as an editable working history of all the operations you have performed. I will go into greater detail on the editable working history later in this review as I find it to be one of the best features this application has to offer.

Merging to HDR

HDR Expose has a standard dialog for merging images into an HDR image. It gives you the options to select the files you want to merge and settings for aligning the images, setting the white balance, and reducing ghosting artifacts. One of the problems I have found with just about all HDR processing applications is that their merging algorithms aren’t as good as the algorithms contained in Adobe Photoshop. I’ve also found that none of the anti-ghosting algorithms work very well although Adobe Photoshop CS5 is pretty good. While HDR Expose’s merge and anti-ghosting algorithms are pretty good compared with other popular HDR applications on the market, I think more work could be done in these areas.

Processing Operations

HDR Expose offers the same processing operations as HDR PhotoStudio but in a more evolved form. I found that all of the operations are faster than before especially the Halo Reduction features. Some of the UI dialogs for the various operations have been improved upon and are easier to use and easier to get the settings that you want. The series of screen shots below are of various operation dialogs as I applied them to an HDR image.

The first image shows the Free Rotate operation which allows you align the image to a line that you draw on the image. This makes rotating an image to make an uneven horizon perfectly horizontal very easy!

The second image shows the Brightness and Contrast operation. This dialog gives you the option to use the eye droppers for automatic adjustment of these two settings and the sliders that you can use for manual control over them. Additionally, deselecting the Keep Local Contrast box as seen in this screen shot allows you to adjust the local contrast independently of the contrast power.

The third image shows the Shadow and Highlight operation. Similar to the operation dialog above, this one gives you the eye dropper and the sliders so that you can determine how much control you want over these settings. This dialog lets you adjust the mid-tone point, highlight power, shadow power, local contrast, and halo reduction settings. When I first used the Halo Reduction feature in HDR PhotoStudio I was absolutely amazed at how powerful it was. I must say they made it better in HDR Expose with increased settings and increased accuracy. I’ve noticed that I can set this a lot higher without decreasing the quality of the image around the edges where the algorithm is reducing the halos. Its fast, its powerful, and it is mandatory for any HDR processing application!

The fourth image shows the Saturation dialog box. This dialog breaks out the various color channels for individual saturation adjustments as well as a  combined saturation slider and a hue slider. Having this level of control over the saturation of the image is extremely helpful especially since I have noticed that a great deal of my images could out of the merge a bit too desaturated. So I spend a few minutes in the saturation operation tweaking the image to get back to the colors that I remember seeing in the field.

In addition to these operations, there are also operations for image rotation, image resize, image cropping, noise elimination, veiling glare, white balance, color tuning, and sharpness. Each operation does exactly as it says. The color tuning operation is an advanced operation that gives you complete control of how colors appear in the image. Additionally, there is a dynamic range mapping wizard that will perform an automated range mapping on the image to give you a starting point if you so desire.

Editable Working History

As you process the image using the different operations the panel below the operation icons stores each one in chronological order. This is the history of all the operations that you’ve performed. At any time you can go back to any one of these and change the settings without losing any of the operations you’ve done since that point. In the screen shots below you can see the history (left) and the editing of an operation within the history (right). Notice how the operations below the operation I changed are grayed out (right screen shot). This indicates that those operations have not been applied to the image yet after making your change. Once you click on the bottom operation in the list, all those operations are applied showing you the processed image up to that point with your changes applied.

Recipes

I’ve never been one to use presets or recipes because I don’t think I have ever processed two images, even very similar ones, with the same settings. But with the editable working history in HDR Expose, I decided to give it a shot. I processed the first barn image (left screen shots above) and saved the recipe for it. Then I created a new HDR image of the same barn from a different angle and applied the recipe I created from the first one to it (right screen show above). With those settings it was looking pretty good but not exactly how I wanted it. So I went back into the history, made a few slight changes, and was done. Quick, easy, and I got the end result I wanted in much less time (below screen shot).

File Handling

HDR Expose handles a wide range of image types; JPEG, TIFF, RAW, HDR, BEF, and EXR to name a few. If you are not familiar with HDR PhotoStudio, BEF is the file format that Unified Color invented to hold the true color of the scene without any loss of details. Think of it like a RAW file but with more data with little size increase. Based on images taken with my Canon 5D, a RAW file is roughly 12.9MB and saving an HDR image out of Adobe Photoshop in Radiance (.hdr) or TIFF format is roughly 38MB. Using the BEF format from HDR Expose gives an 18MB file. More data and better compression means photographers can store their images without having to buy more hard drives!

OpenCL

HDR Expose implements an emerging technology called OpenCL or Open Computing Language. This is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPU’s, GPU’s, and other processors. In other words, it allows applications to distribute their processing to your computers CPU and GPU to speed up their operations. OpenCL was initially developed by Apple and refined into a proposal in collaboration with AMD, IBM, Intel, and Nvidia. Throughout 2009 and 2010 graphics card or processor manufacturers have been adding OpenCL to their hardware and software. While this is really nothing for an HDR Expose user to know about, it is good to see that the application is staying at the forefront of distributed processing technology.

Conclusion

What more can I really say about HDR Expose? Its awesome! Unified Color has come a long way with their technology in the last year and they are definitely have a power house HDR processing application for those that want the highest level of quality in their photographs. The color quality in HDR Expose rivals every other HDR processing application on the market to include Adobe Photoshop CS5! The application truly is simple to use and produces great results. It will definitely remain in my HDR work flow for a long time to come.

Without a doubt Unified Color has changed the HDR game with the release of HDR Expose.

Free Trial & Discount

Don’t take my word for it, try it out for yourself. Unified Color is offering a 30-day free trial and a limited time $50 discount if you purchase a license before July 31st. In addition, use the coupon code TKRPHOTO to get an additional discount off the full price of the software. Click here to go to Unified Colors Website

Note that licensed users of HDR PhotoStudio get a free upgrade to HDR Expose!!

Thoughts?

I am interested in hearing what you all think about HDR Expose, how it compares with other HDR processing applications, and anything else you feel is important about it. Drop a comment and let your voice be heard!

HDR Expose Is Out!!

Posted on 13. Jul, 2010 by Terry Reinert.

For those of you that love Unified Color’s HDR PhotoStudio, you’re really going to love to hear this… Unified Color just released their latest product HDR Expose. This is a follow on to their popular HDR PhotoStudio 2 application with a lot of new features, brand new UI, and more. All current HDR PhotoStudio customers get a free upgrade and new users of this HDR photography software can take a 30-day free trial and purchase it at a discounted price from now until July 31st.

I’ve been digging through the application since I got my hands on it and will be posting a full review of it soon. Keep an eye out!

EDIT: Read my full review of HDR Expose here!

Scott Kelby’s 3rd Annual Photowalk

Posted on 07. Jun, 2010 by Terry Reinert.

On July 24th, 2010 the 3rd annual Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk will be held in cities all across the globe. This year I will be leading my own photo walk in Indialantic Beach! All the details are available on the official photo walk website located here: http://worldwidephotowalk.com/walk/indialantic-fl-united-states-indialantic-beach-boardwalk/

Please join me for a fun photo walk in the cool evening hours!

Adobe Patches Security Flaw in Photoshop CS4

Posted on 01. Jun, 2010 by Terry Reinert.

Last week Adobe released a patch to fix a security flaw in Photoshop CS4 that could allow an attacker to gain control of your computer. The vulnerability was found within the code that allows users to download and install brushes, gradients, and color swatches. Read this CNet article for more information.

This is another reason why you should be very careful about who you download add-ons from. Randomly downloading free stuff from “Top 20 Best Photoshop Brush Sets” posts is a great way to get your computer infected, your personal and financial data stolen, and have your computer turned into one part of an extensive botnet that can be used by the bad guys to distribute malware and attack other networks.

It is also a good reason to ensure you update all of your software on a regular basis to ensure you’re protected from known exploits.

My STS-132 Image on Flickr Blog

Posted on 17. May, 2010 by Terry Reinert.

I just got word that one of my images taken of the Shuttle Atlantis STS-132 launch was included in a Flickr blog post. I thought was pretty cool! Here is the link to check it out.

http://blog.flickr.net/en/2010/05/15/last-flight-of-the-space-shuttle-atlantis/

STS-132 : Space Shuttle Atlantis

Posted on 14. May, 2010 by Terry Reinert.

This afternoon Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on its way to the International Space Station. My wife and I checked our daughter out of school, grabbed some sandwiches, and went over the causeway to Satellite Beach to watch the launch. The sun was out in full force but the sea breeze and a cooler full of bottled water kept us comfortable. It was a really nice day and the launch was beautiful!

Congratulations to the entire NASA Space Shuttle crew for a beautiful and successful launch!

Shuttle Atlantis Liftoff

Shuttle Atlantis Pushing Towards Orbit

Shuttle Atlantis Pushing Towards Orbit – Cropped

Shuttle Atlantis SRB Separation

Cloud Pattern after Shuttle Launch for Dale Earnhardt Fans!

All images shot with a Canon 5D and Canon 100-400 L IS USM lens.