Sydney PC User Group
Digital Photography SIG
2010-08-26
Introduction
Administration
Evacuation Procedures
Next meeting 23rd September
Updated Software
Gimp 2.7.3
beware of Fake USB storage from eBay etc.
Photography Exercise
Review of this month : Brick walls
Next Month : Letterboxes
Send to Roger or bring on a thumb or USB adaptor.
It is suggested that you take photos rather than get some from your archives, especially if we introduce a new technique.
Future topics (to be done in the order suggested unless you want otherwise)
Sport
Circles / Curves
Rain
Radio antennae
Sunrise / Sunset
Fireworks
What topics are you interested in PRESENTING or leaning about in future meetings? If suggestions stay on this list a long time it means I don't know enough to present a session, so feel free to jump in and volunteer. Suggestions are -
The new GIMP menus - we'll wait for the upcoming v2.8 which runs in 1 pane.
GIMP or Photoshop tutorials / videos
Making photo albums - August ? OfficeWorks, ClickOn, Snapfish etc.
Raw image processing - Ian is preparing.
Video tutorials - GavTrain as time permits
September - Roger reviews : Wearable Cameras - GoPro Cameras
Q & A
New computer monitor LED illuminated LCD - very bright. Colour good, pictures look very good. Easy to read. 20 inch.
Does anyone calibrate screen to match printing? You can get an (expensive?) “spider” to view and calibrate the screen. You can download profiles from manufacturer's site for “Display Properties | Settings | Color Management” but LCD displays are much better and consistent than CRT ones of the past. LCD / LED better then LCF / CCFL.
LibreOffice Montages very easy to make. Drawing module allows many manipulations. Rated A1 by Oscar.
Email attachment with small print - we don't know what sort of file it is. Bring along so we can advise further.
Red X in email - indicates an external image. You could right-click and select view image. Best not to allow automatic download of such images for security.
Sending a montage as JPG could be up to 20MB. Convert to PDF is smaller. Or send on CD by snail mail. Or tell them to bring their usb drive to collect it.
Photos printed from TV broadcast very sharp. Digital TV to HD recorder at highest resolution.
GIMP 2.7.3 preview - We brief had a look at the portable version in single window mode. The toolbars on either side can be re-sized. It still has a quirk of opening dialog windows behind the main window. If it seems nothing has happened then look behind the main window, or on the taskbar for the dialog. To try it, download here. Maybe a better look in October.
On the topic of backup and archival storage, how does one preserve the photos 'forever'? There are 2 main considerations -
Image format - JPEG, TIFF, DNG etc. I recently had to retrieve a 15 year old file in Windows 3 .WRI format. NO current wordprocessor could. I had to find the old WfW3.11 install disks and extract write.exe, which luckily ran in XP. So, in 10 years will you have a computer that can read your image format? Those listed above will probably be OK, but others may lapse into history.
Storage medium - Luckily my .WRI file was archived on a hard disk, not a 5¼ in floppy. But will a USB 2 or sATA connection be available in 10 years, or will it have gone the way of serial and parallel ports? Will CD and DVD drives be extinct like Beta and VHS? There are archival gold CDs and DVDs that guarantee to be readable after 100 years, but by what? The consensus is to copy everything to the latest technology every 5-10 years. Free cloud storage is equivalent to 2-5 DVDs capacity. How long will the company last? This is perhaps an encrypted backup of a backup of your most valuable data.
With all this copying you must check each time for errors, as media degrade and copying is not always perfect. The suggestion is an MD5 checksum and immediately correct errors detected. [see below for more detail *** geek speak warning ***].
Now you can be sure that your photos will outlive not only your ancestors but also your descendants. I hope they care for your old party snaps as well as you do!
Archival Storage - www.cambridgeincolour.com
Image Storage - www.nikondigital.org
Photo books, mouse mats and coffee mugs
We had a brief look at the sort of photobooks that can be made. There are dozens of on-line suppliers, some listed below. They are also available from retailers like Ted's, Officeworks, Harvey Norman and others photo/camera oriented businesses. A look at a work-in-progress using Xbook showed how the book is created. This software seems typical of the creation programs. Page backgrounds can be colour, texture or photo.
Leo showed us some examples he has made. He recommends ClickOnPrint for the quality of binding - no wrinkling. He says it is cheaper to make a photobook than to print the photos and mount in an album!
Along with albums you can order gifts with single images. Mouse mats, keyrings, coffee mugs, stubby holders and fridge magnets seem common. Canvas prints, calendars, greeting cards, iPhone covers and snow domes are amongst the things you can order. Plan now for christmas.
Peter
MD5 Checksums
I use md5deep and Swiss File Knife in batch files to check for errors when copying to backup storage. Download and unzip to folders (change the batch files o point to where you put them).
The first batch file is run in the source folder before copying, and creates a file of the original checksums.
del md5.txt
C:\Programs\md5deep\md5deep.exe *.* > MD5.txt
C:\Programs\sfk\sfk addcr MD5.txt
exit
The files are copied, including the checksum file, then the second batch file is run in the destination folder to produce a file containing mis-matches.
del MD5_bad.txt
C:\Programs\md5deep\md5deep -x MD5.txt *.* > MD5_bad.txt
C:\Programs\sfk\sfk addcr MD5_bad.txt
exit
Any mis-matches listed in MD5_bad.txt can be corrected now. (Note that the 2 .txt files will appear in the mis-matches list, ignore these. You could change *.* to *.jpg to avoid this if you only have .jpg files.) The Swiss File Knife makes entries appear on 1 line in Windows, so the list is readable by humans. Keep the original MD5.txt so that if you copy again you can check again.