The thing about useful stuff is

Stitching up panoramic views for free Monday, February 02, 2009

It's not uncommon to want to take a panoramic shot of scene / place / event only to believe that you're not carrying the right equipment or don't possess the right software to even try. Thankfully, the software to do the job is now freely available both as an online service and as a download, with clear guidance on how to take suitable shots.

Whilst housebound today thanks to London's heavy snowfall, I wanted to grab a panoramic shot of our snowy garden to send to my family in various locations in the UK and overseas. Having taken a sequence of overlapping shots whilst keeping the camera in roughly the same spot [height and position], I tried out two free services both of which gave excellent results.

The first was Clevr which is a downloaded application that utilises the Adobe AIR framework, which automatically installs itself if not already present. Shots are imported into the applications, re-ordered if necessary and stitched together within the application, from where the generated panorama can be both uploaded or saved as a new file. Uploaded versions may be shared or embedded in other websites with zooming and paning features as standard. It was amazingly easy to use which has encouraged me to consider taking more panoramic shots in future.

I also tried MagToo, which is an online service that not only assist with creating panoramic views, but can also create photo slide shows. Both facilities are free and are impressively integrated with a huge number of social networking and blogging sites to which results may be sent. Furthermore, there is neat Google map location tagging facility provided as standard to add "meta-location data" about your shots. The process to create a panoramic image was remarkably similar to Clevr, with automatic stitching of the photos and it was just as quick to use, with great results that could be embeded or downloaded.

I confess I found it difficult to choose a particular favourite between them but ably performing the required task easily, quickly and effectively. There are other similar packages out there, including the Microsoft Photosynth offering, but both of these apps are definitely worth bookmarking for future use.

Labels: Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth, Panorama, photography, photos

posted by John Wilson @ 9:12 PM Permanent Link ,

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Byebye Hello Friday, May 09, 2008

There may be many alternate ways to achieve the same thing, but I liked the photo-messaging service from Google called Hello, which formed part of the Picasa suite. Why? Because it was the easiest way for me to send photos to my parents and reliably ensure that

they saved to their hard drive without them having to do anything
I could offer a commentary as she went through them because the application allowed you to see which photos the other person was viewing

Now Google have apparently announced they are to close the service on May 15th. It's a great shame they don't simply allow the service to continue to operate, even if it was on an unsupported basis with no further development, especially since it operated on a peer-to-peer basis as far as I understood it, albeit with centralised log-on.

Labels: Google, photos, Picasa

posted by John Wilson @ 4:20 PM Permanent Link ,

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Piclens - A better perspective on web images &photos Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Delicious is an online bookmarking site that I use, as do many others. Unfortunately I've got so many bookmarked sites I can rarely remember what I have stored. Whilst the site allows you to apply tags to pages, hence permitting you to classify them, I am inconsistent in how I classify and hence two similar sites can end up with very different tags. This makes finding stuff tricky, but this is compounded when I can't remember the name of the site and so have to trawl through the links.

I've often wished for a visual thumbnail wall of my delicious sites, simply because I find it visual prompts of what the site looked like a quicker way of locating what I am looking for. Sadly, I've yet to find such a service.

In the same way, hunting for photos or images of my own or online tends to be very hit and miss. Classifications of tags work to some extent, but the reality is that nothing beats viewing the images. So I'm always on the lookout for tools to enable rapid browsing of images. On my laptop/desktop I use Picassa, the Google application which is excellent.

Well, today I found PicLens. It's a free browser plug from Cooliris, which provides astonishingly good image browsing facilities on the web. Clever use of zooming, panning and 3D style presentation not only improves your ability to scan, but is also visually stunning. It works on many photo/images sites inc Flickr, Photobucket and Picassa Web albums, as well as Google Image search.

Check the intro demo here.

Labels: flickr, photobucket, photography, photos

posted by John Wilson @ 9:05 AM Permanent Link ,

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Photo collages Sunday, December 09, 2007

Having been strongly encouraged by my wife to write the Wilson family 2007 Xmas letter (annual recap on the past year sent to people when never see and with whom the only contact is Xmas cards and the annual letter), I was instructed to also produce a photo collage of some pictures of our kids from the past year.

Trouble was that my software inventory came up lame on the collage generation
- GIMP, which is an open source product, almost certainly can produce collages but you need a PhD to use it
- Picassa from Google has a collage feature but with no controls and doesn't allow you to size it to a normal photo size - you either get a square 2x2 or 3x3 grid. This was important as I didn't want to use my colour printer, preferring to use the local photo shop which churns out high quality shots for 20p each.
- Any of the Adobe or Microsoft products I have didn't make it easy to mesh the photos together with out lots of unnecessary and time-consuming fuss
- Online application FlauntR did lots of great stuff but also came up lame with photo size collages.

Thought I'd struck gold with Collagr, a free online app, until I found that there were no controls you could use to adjust the collage and it only took photos from folders on either Flickr or Photobucket.

But then a further search on Google located Picture2Lite. It was free to use and provided a wealth of facilities to edit your photos which could either be uploaded or taken from online sites. It also had large suite of collage templates to produce your desired look at feel, each of which could be customised to suit your particularly requirements. It was incredibly easy to use and the results were great. Definitely one to add to your armoury of photo editing tools and facilities.

Labels: photobucket, photography, photos

posted by John Wilson @ 7:14 PM Permanent Link ,

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Easily add wifi to your camera Friday, November 02, 2007

18 months or so ago I bought a compact flash GPS device, for about £40 which quickly transformed an old dell PDA I had into a portable satnav device.

Today I saw this on Photojojo - the Eye-Fi Wireless memory card adds Wi-Fi to any camera that uses SD memory. It’s orange. It looks like a normal SD camera memory card. It holds 2 GB of photos. And it wirelessly uploads your photos to your computer and to Flickr or one of 16 other photo sharing sites

Check here for details

Labels: photography, photos

posted by John Wilson @ 9:29 AM Permanent Link ,

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If you've got it FlauntR Saturday, September 29, 2007

FlauntR is a free online photo editor and effects software. It's got loads of photo effects that are easy to apply to photos - one click. I found it incredibly easy to use and you can easily get absorbed when you start playing with shots you've taken. It's still alpha but remarkably stable in my experience, with a stylish UI. Registration was simple and unintrusive - definitely one to bookmark.

Labels: editor, photography, photos

posted by John Wilson @ 3:25 PM Permanent Link ,

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Animoto - Brings life to your photo Thursday, September 20, 2007

I went to a Wedding at the weekend, and as has become custom, I trot round taking a large volume of pictures of the event and their guests, which I then give to the couple to supplement their official photos. Allowing for some polishing up time (cropping, light enhancing etc), they usually get to see their photos in 24hrs or so, via an online photo gallery service. It also means that other guests can have a look and if they wish, add their own photos to the collection.

The online service I use tends to vary based upon a few factors
- who has the easiest upload mechanism
- who provides unrestricted uploads
- best photo browsing features and download capabilities

Hence, over time I've used several services including Photobucket and this time I used Zooomr. I only use free services as I don't use them enough to warrant a premium service eg I may post 6 batches of photos a year, but when I do post I load several hundred pics. This is where Flickr proves to be of no use to me, despite its many excellent features, since it has a small monthly upload limit on the free accounts.

But, I am always on the lookout for better photo services and I was delighted with this one from Animoto - not because it was a photo hosting service but because of the excellent output in the form of a professional looking "music video", which took less than 5 minutes to create. See below.

It's free to use for short clips, and an option to pay for longer "movies exists". Brilliant way to pep up photos.

Labels: photobucket, photography, photos

posted by John Wilson @ 10:04 AM Permanent Link ,

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