aaron_w.
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Posts posted by aaron_w.
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Ian, no that's not necessary. It's perfectly ok to diy as long as the photo meets the current requirements.
Colin, thanks for the offer but I'm not desperate, I'm just using this opportunity to learn a little about editing. I'll play with it in PSE5 using your suggestions. If I still can't get it right, I'll follow Eric's advice.
Thanks to all for the help.
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Yes, I know I can have passport photos taken for $10 or so, but I thought I could learn how to do it myself with the software that I have (IrfanView and Photoshop Elements 5).
If reducing the size of my jpg image is not straight-forward, just let me know and I'll have one of those outfits take my passport photo.
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Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but I'm a noob who needs some help.
Needing passport photos, my wife shot my portrait with our 5MP digicam. My
face in the resulting photo is 1/4" bigger than the US Passport Requirement
(maximum of 1 3/8" from bottom of chin to top of head). I would simply retake
the picture, but my son dropped and broke the camera, so I need to know how to
reduce the size of the photo I now have (the jpg file is in my PC) in order to
satisfy the stated requirement?
Thanks
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Don, analog input is necessary for an analog monitor (ie., CRT), while digital input is best (although not necessary) for a digital monitor (ie., an LCD flat-panel). In the latter situation, using digital input avoids an otherwise required analog to digital conversion in firmware.
But as has been already mentioned, it's a moot point if your video (graphics) card doesn't have a digital (DVI) output.
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Just to add a couple of items to the many good suggestions you've already received...
1. The latest trend in notebooks (laptops) is a wide aspect-ratio screen, which I find does NOT work as well for digital images as the standard aspect-ratio screen. The standard laptop screen has a width-to-height ratio of 4:3, whereas a wide laptop screen has a ratio of 16:10.
2. If battery life between charges is important to you (very important if you travel with your laptop, but far less important if its use is mostly around your home), definitely get one with either Intel's Pentium-M or AMD's Turino processor. Either one is an excellent choice. Unlike the 32-bit Pentium-M's, the Turino's are more 'future-proof' as they are 64-bit compatible (although I don't believe that's a big deal for your intended use).
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Fwiw, here is a tabular summary containing just about every cataloging software product...
http://www.impulseadventure.com/photo/flow-catalog-compare.html
Enjoy, Aaron
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Bob may feel differently, but as far as I'm concerned the major downside of PhotoFiltre (as well as its sister-product, PhotoFiltre Suite) is that they are poorly documented/supported in English. I can not read French (unfortunately) to comprehend the more extensive support available in French... Compounding the issue is that using PhotoFiltre is not nearly as intuitive as Picasa or FastStone.
Cheers, Aaron
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Ted~
I seriously doubt we will see that... Adobe intends to preserve the PS product gap - between serious photographers and rank & file amateurs... ;)
~Aaron
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Why not start with free software? Check out the recent thread 'Digital Photo-Editing for Seniors' (even though you may not be close to being one)!
Unless you aspire to be a pro, don't be pushed into Photoshop - it's overkill for most of us amateurs! Yes, I agree that it's The Standard in professional photo-editing, so anyone moving in that direction shouldn't consider anything else. However, if you just want a viewer-editor for personal use (family and friends), go for something else, and imho the best place to start is with freeware!
So do yourself a favor and check out the thread I mentioned...
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While several of the above suggestions may be doable, given the circumstances of seniors with low-income, I would only consider Picasa and Faststone for the following relevant reasons:
- Both are easy to learn and use.
- Both feature a very nice viewer/organizer.
- Both provide basic, but quite capable editing functions.
- Both are free (so there should be no reluctance on the part of the seniors to download/install either one).
Picasa (now owned/distrubuted by Google) has a unique GUI - perhaps the most user-friendly GUI I've seen in any such product (which should facilitate a very short learning curve)! However, Picasa's folder/file concept ignores hierarchical file strucures that may be in place and as an IT man I personally find that disturbing. Finally, Picasa is quite resource-hungry, so it will run like a slug on older PCs!
Faststone Image Viewer (don't be put off by its name - it's much more than just a viewer!) uses a more generally accepted approach for its GUI, a hierarchical file structure, and standard editing procedures. As a result of the latter, editing in Faststone is somewhat more technically-oriented than with Picasa, but not so much so that it would be difficult to learn. Finally, Faststone is far less resource-hungry than Picasa and will run on most older PCs.
After considering the pros & cons (and hopefully I haven't overlooked anything important), I believe Faststone is the overall best pick for the situation.
Picasa: http://picasa.google.com/index.html
Faststone: http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm
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All that I can add to what has already been said is that in my last job (retired now) I used a Dell Latitude notebook on over 60 commercial flights (typically at 30K -35K feet) without any hardware failures whatsoever.
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Lex~
If your problem is spyware, give Ewido a try.. It won't cost you anything and it has helped me find and delete spyware that some other products couldn't find...
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Phil: Thanks for the tip on DCE AutoEnhancer, I'll try it out.
Lex: That's very helpful (I can't wait for 'chapter 2')!
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Lex~ Thanks for those suggestions - they are much appreciated... As I indicated in my reply to Paul, I had already downloaded and installed Photoshop Elements 3 and now I've done the same with Picassa 2.
All things being relatively equal, I would naturally prefer the free software, but so far I don't see how to do batch corrections in Picassa. If that's doable, please explain how... I also find it confusing at the very get-go; for example, how do I get it to open the image-folder I'm interested in (which is on another disk-drive)?
I have a relatively powerful PC (2.8GGz P4 with 1GB RAM), so I'm not really concerned about Photoshop Elements' or Picassa's performance but I'm curious if there are other reasons you don't particularly care for Photoshop Elements 3?
~Aaron
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Paul~ I'm pretty sure that the problem is in the image itself and not my monitor, because I've examined quite a few images on pbase.com and there's no green-tint when viewing them on my
monitor.
Since I learned (on the PWP forum) that PWP does not facilitate batch processing, I've just installed the Photoshop Elements 3 tryout, but at this point I don't know yet if that's the best software for the job.
~Aaron
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While 35mm photography has been my hobby for many years, digital
photography is very new to me. That said, I recently took a Sony
Cybershot with me on vacation shooting about 500 pictures. Upon
returning and transferriing those images to my PC, I noticed that a
great many of them have a greenish tint when displayed on my
monitor.
My objective is to to share the best of my pictures with family and
friends (via a 'digiital slide show'), which they can view on their
PC's monitor (or TV). But before doing that, I really need to
correct the greenish-cast. Therefore, I'm looking for an easy-to-
use editor that would facilitate my making the necessary correction
in a batch manner (ie., correcting all of the images within a given
folder at the same time). Any advice or recommendations would be
most appreciated.
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Sai~
I've been using (and very happy with) a Canon i950 over the past 2 years. It produces wonderful colors, is relatively fast and the inkjets clog much less than my prior Epson printer! That printer has since been superceded by newer and even better Canon models.
Do not even think about doing your own photo-printing IF the reason is to save money; it's actually more expensive! However, I do it because of the fun and satisfaction I derive from doing it. If that element is missing, you are much better off taking your film/files to a place like Costco, Sam's Club, or Walmart.
~Aaron
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With similar thoughts in mind, this past December I bought a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-V1 -- a great little 5MP digicam with a very sharp Zeiss Vario-Sonnar lens. It's not as tiny as some, but it is small enough for a jacket pocket or fanny-pack... I really love this digicam!
When Sony replaced the V1 with the V3 last year, several stores, including Sears, started blowing out their V1's (I got mine for $299)... If you can still find one around that price, I would grab it. ;)
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Unless you are looking to use your laptop for other purposes, such as browsing the internet and email, I second K. Patel's recommendation for a Kanguru FC-RW burner... I have one and it works great... While thieves will take anything they can get away with, at least your risk is only $100 (so you might even buy and take 2 of them, just in case)!
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I echo Ted's comments (above) re Dale Labs, whose services I've used for a good many years. While their processing is very good (and their slides from negs are nothing short of remarkable), from time-to-time, I have also experienced long delays with their mail service (on both ends)!
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John~
For someone at your level of photographic awareness, I highly suggest that you bring/send your 35mm film to a quality processing lab (definitely NOT the typical market or drug-store variety) that provides a PhotoCD in addition to your processed film. That way, you don't have the expense of a decent film-scanner and its learning-curve (not to mention the associated frustration). The PhotoCD is capable of providing very good image-files (that is, as good as your exposures allow) which can be viewed directly or edited in the same manner as you would a scanned image-file.
I happen to use Dale Labs of Hollywood, Florida... http://www.dalelabs.com/ ...and would not hesitate to recommend them (although there are many other good film-processing labs),
~Aaron
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While Neat Image is quite good, I prefer Noise Ninja. Here is a comparison of most the competing products in this arena (it's somewhat dated, but still a good read):
http://www.michaelalmond.com/Articles/noise10.htm
Noise Ninja Website:
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Ely~ I believe this will answer your question. ~Aaron
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I use a Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III with Minolta's scanning software to scan color negatives and slides. Last summer, I played around with a trial version of Vuescan and found that it didn't offer me any added benefits over Minolta's utility (but that may be because of the following qualification)...
Early on, I found that no matter what I did to correct/change the image during the scanning process, I still (usually) found the need for addtional post-processing in PS. Therefore I concluded, why not just use the scanner to create the image-file (as best it can) and do all editing in PS?
Reducing an Oversize Passport Photo
in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing
Posted