Established in 1949. The Society exists to further the skills, interests and enjoyment of all types of photography. It provides a forum for the exchange of information and ideas on photographic techniques, and encourages an appreciation of the artistic and creative side of photography. Members of all levels of achievement are encouraged to show and discuss their work. No photographic knowledge required - just enjoy viewing photographs and the night out!

Tuesday, 22 April 2008

Leeds AV Group Website

Photobucket

Leed Audio Visual Group

A-V or Audio-Visual is the name given to presentations where projected pictures and music or words are combined together to tell a story, evoke a mood or explain something. It is an art form that lies between still photography and movie making. For many years it was known as "slide-tape" because people linked projected slides with soundtracks on tape. That tradition continues but in recent years a growing number of people use digital photographs and computers to create their shows, or sequences, as they are known. There is a large community of enthusiasts in Britain with strong links to similar groups in Europe where it is often referred to "Diaporama". Leeds has a long tradition of excellence in this art and we try to keep that alive in our annual Colour & Music Spectacular.. We are a friendly group who meet regularly in Cookridge, why not come and join us.

http://www.leedsavgroup.co.uk/

Ripon City Photographic Society Main Page Google Groups

Friday, 18 April 2008

Bloglines - UK man hassled by cop for not having a "camera license"

Sad state of affairs.......


Misc Pipe
Pipes Output

UK man hassled by cop for not having a "camera license"

A quick-thinking police officer spotted a 49-year-old man taking photos of Christmas lights and busted him on the spot for not having a camera license. When the photographer failed to produce a license (which would have been a neat trick, since there's no such thing as a camera license in England or any other free nation) the officer kept the world safe from terror by making the man delete all the photos in the camera. "People were still taking photos with mobile phones and pocket cameras, so maybe it was because mine looked like a professional camera with a flash on top," he says. "I wasn't very pleased because I was taken through the crowd and through the barriers at the front and people were probably thinking 'I wonder what he was doing.' "To be pulled out of a crowd is very daunting and I wasn't aware of my rights. "It's a sad state of affairs today if an amateur photographer can't stand in the street taking photographs." Here are Flickr photos of the Christmas lights of Ipswich, every one taken by terrorists no doubt. Link...



Thursday, 17 April 2008

Bloglines - Stitch Photos Into Panoramas with Free Software [Feature]



Life GH Com
Pipes Output

Stitch Photos Into Panoramas with Free Software [Feature]


You can get decent photos out of a standard, consumer-grade digital camera, but a little post-processing can turn them into fantastic wide-angle landscapes. You don't need to be one of those people who can explain the concept of lateral chromatic aberration to get truly eye-catching digital pictures. With a few shutter clicks and some free, cross-platform software, you can easily mesh standard digi-cam shots into true landscapes, fix one photo's deficiencies with another, and create layered photo collages. Let's take a look at how to use the free, open source application Hugin to make two basic kinds of panoramas.

What you'll need

  • A digital camera that embeds EXIF data in its pictures (that's basically all of them)
  • A copy of Hugin (available for Windows, Mac, and Linux). If you're on Windows or Linux, you should also grab a copy of the AutoPano tools; Mac OS X users should have AutoPano tools built in. Follow the instructions at the Hugin site to install your copy.

What you'll get

Here's an example of the kind of photo you'll get from this process. Even though I shot this three-frame scene at Niagara Falls (from the U.S. side) in automatic mode, it still came out pretty spiffy, if I do say so myself. (Click for a larger version.) Now let's get started making your panorama.

Shooting for panoramas

With Hugin's software, you can blend two side-by-side photos together, or you can cram 138 multi-angle Grand Canyon shots into one mega-vista. Whatever your project, here are some guides and tips on how to shoot to best take advantage of Hugin—and most any panorama-stitching software.
  • awb.jpg
  • Use consistent settings—If possible, change your "white balance" to a manual mode and set it to a plainly white or gray spot; if not, at least change from "auto white-balancing" to an another setting that works. Better still, if you can set exposure to manual, meter it for the brightest or most average spot in the scene. Neither is a requirement, but they'll help your finished product blend more evenly.
  • Choose a center point—Find the feature or area you think would look good in the center and take steady aim, at the same zoom level you'll shoot the rest. It'll help you align your pictures later and ensure you've got space to build on.
  • overlap.jpg
  • Shoot overlapping shots in ordered rows—If you're going for a horizontal-only panorama, go left to right, in a steady row, with 20-30 percent of the picture overlapping the last one, then do the same for higher or lower rows. Not only does it help you keep your shots organized, it counters the sometimes fuzzy or unfocused data many consumer cameras get at their exposure edges.

First steps: Merge a few pictures

We'll start simple, with two, three, or four pictures, shot in horizontal order. Load up Hugin, and you'll notice a series of tabs. Hit the "Load Images" button on the first "Assistant" tab, select your pics, and hit "Open." First-timers might get a prompt asking them to locate an AutoPano program—go ahead and point inside the folder you downloaded, but don't worry if you don't have it. Ignore the "Panorama Preview" that pops up and head for the second tab, "Images."

lensstuff_cropped.jpgRemember that center image we took? Find it in the list, then hit the "Anchor this image for position" button, and, assuming it's a well-lit shot, "Anchor this image for exposure." Next up is an optional step, for those who know a fair deal about their camera—head to the "Camera & Lens" tab, click on the center image, and fill in what you know about your gear's degrees of view, focal length, color offsets, and other photo-pro stuff. You can save your information here for future panoramas. Once you're done (or lost), let's head to the meaty stuff at the "Control Points" tab.

You'll see two panels here, each set (at first) to display the same picture. Click the "1" tab on the right-hand panel, and you'll see your overlapping pictures. If AutoPano launched when you loaded your pics, you'll also see a good number of colored dots on the photo. Those are our "Control Points," spots that appear in both frames that Hugin uses to align and combine them. bad_control_points.jpgAutoPano does a decent job sometimes, but it often picks out clouds, cars, blown branches and other moveable objects, which doesn't help anything. For a seamless meld, I wipe out the automatic points (select the first in the list at bottom and jam on the "delete" button on the right) and start fresh.

Zoom in on the photos (select "100%" or the like from the "View" menu in the lower-right) and move the sliders so you're looking at mostly overlapping areas. Find stable points that have a lot of contrast, such as building and window corners, road markings and signs—anything you're reasonably sure didn't move from one frame to the next. Repeat this process for each set of side-by-side frames. You only need a minimum of two pairs for each photo, but adding a few more ups Hugin's accuracy. Here's how I pinned the Niagara Falls (Ontario) skyline:

Click the "Optimizer" tab and, unless you want to get tweak-y, hitting the "Optimize now!" button, which starts lining up those Control Points and shifting photos around. preview.jpgTo see how Hugin did, hit the "Preview Panorama" menubar button, and you'll get a rough look at your creation. (It won't turn out exactly the same, but basically close). If it looks warped and off-base, you can head back and re-pin or add Control Points, move the crosshairs or use the "Center" and "Straighten" buttons in the preview mode to finesse it. Whenever you make any changes, however, head next to the Optimize tab and re-optimize—you can also change optimization settings to see if that nets any benefits.

stitch_settings3.jpgWe're almost there, seriously! If the preview looks decent, head finally to the "Stitcher" tab. The "Projection" setting is the heart of Hugin, telling the program how to bend and shape the output. For a few overlapping photos, "Equirectangular" usually provides the fullest view and best blend, but "Rectilnear" seems best when photos are tightly lined up. Hit "Calculate View of Field" next, keep the Quick Stitcher setting to "with custom settings below," and then hit "Calculate Optimal Size." The numbers will be ludicrously big, so knock one of them down to a standard size. Keep the stitching engine on "Nona," and make sure "Image output file" is "TIFF" and that "soft blending" is checked so the Enblend engine can work its stuff. Tell it where to save, and Hugin gets to work. If you're prompted to point to "Enblend," it's located in its own folder right inside Hugin's directory. Hugin will create temporary TIFF files and work your system pretty hard while it runs, which can take anywhere from seconds to a few minutes, depending on your system.

If the resulting image file is discolored in spots, it's likely due to camera settings or stark lighting differences, which, with only a few photos, can be fixed only in post-processing.


Shooting full panoramas

If you followed the basic steps above, shooting and stitching a wider-angle panorama scene is much the same, with a few exceptions:
  • pana_glitch.jpg
  • Shooting—If you're covering a wide area and shooting many more snaps, it's important to stay and pivot in one place and focus on keeping a 20-30% overlap. You'll also want to watch for inconsistencies like cars, pedestrians and other scenes that change, unless you're going for a more artistic paste-collage look
  • AutoPano—You'll have to rely on this to create your Control Points, changing them only where you see problems in Preview or want finer control. Of course, you can line up matches for dozens of remarkably-similar pics by hand, but that's up to you.
  • Frame pruning—If you've shot a lot of overlapping pictures and want to get rid of a phantom arm, half-car, or anything else, you can easily remove entire frames and likely not damage the scene. Head to the Preview window, click the numbered buttons to toggle frames on and off, hold the mouse on the button to get the file name, then head back to the "Images" tab and remove the file with the right-hand button.
  • Stitching—Set the "Projection" setting to "Panorama" if you've covered a wide area, horizontal and vertical, or try other settings, like "Fish eye" for that "Paul's Boutique" look.
After just a little frame-pulling, and having shot with manually-controlled light, I got a panoramic streetscape (my third attempt) to come out pretty decent (click for larger view):

Once you've got the basics down, Hugin has much, much more for you to explore, including tutorials at the home page that show you how to use the app with scanned documents, to create true 360-degree panoramas, and how to get real geeky with the settings.

This is the method that worked most consistently for me with different sets of photos. I chose Hugin over previously-posted AutoStitch for its cross-platform nature. But I want to hear how your own tips on how you work Hugin (or similar panorama-making apps) to make big, breathtaking scenes—with image links, naturally. Share your tips, questions and photo pride in the comments.

Kevin Purdy, associate editor at Lifehacker, is going to be even more annoyingly shutter-buggy around his friends now. His weekly feature, Open Sourcery, appears every Friday on Lifehacker.



Friday, 11 April 2008

Annual Dinner

From the club's annual dinner.









Thanks to Jim for the images.

Ripon City Photographic Society Main Page Google Groups

Friday, 4 April 2008

100 Photoshop effect, with tutorials

How can we define what’s a photo effect? The final result has to be quite different from the original picture and be recognized as a post production photo manipulation. So, with that idea in mind, I gathered what I consider 100 of the best photo effects Photoshop tutorials available on the web.

read more | digg story

Ripon City Photographic Society Main Page Google Groups

Tuesday, 1 April 2008

Give you images more punch

This page has a video tutorial on how to give your images more punch in Photoshop.

Layers magazine video tutorial
Add some punch to your photo by adding new layers and using the brush tools with a combination of blending modes to bring out detail and brighten things up.

Ripon City Photographic Society Main Page Google Groups

Photie, for your huge photo upload needs

Thinking about getting your photographs online? This new site looks good.


Life GH Com
Pipes Output

Photie, for your huge photo upload needs

Filed under: Photo, Web services, Beta


Does the world really need another photo sharing website? Maybe, if that site is Photie.com. Photie's design is strikingly simple. It's easy to navigate, signup is a snap, and there are plenty of interesting photos to check out on the front page. The main attraction here, though, is the ability to upload photos of any size.

Photie doesn't have all the pro features that sites like Flickr and Smugmug offer, but there are plenty of users out there who think of those as frills. A free service with a nice, clean design and no cap on file sizes looks pretty good if you don't want to deal with stuff like social networks, mobile uploads, and signup fees. This is just uploading and tagging, like nature intended it.

The site is still in beta, so we'll keep an eye on it and see how it evolves. Frankly, we're hoping it stays with the friendly "less-complicated-than-Flickr, much-classier-than-ImageShack model". Before you start with the "not another photo site!" comments, give it a look. We think some users will find it's just what they needed.

Warning: Because Photie displays recently-uploaded photos on the front page, you might not want to click through at work. There was nothing controversial up front when we took the screenshot above, but it's best to be careful. Thanks to readers Alex and Todd for catching this.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments


Squash Batch Image Resizer

Good if you need to resize a lot of images, like for our competitions.


Life GH Com
Pipes Output

Squash Batch Image Resizer

Squash is a lightweight fast batch image resizer. I could end the article here because the previous sentenced is a good summary of what Squash is able to do. Add multiple images to Squash, select a new size for them, and click on Resize images. That's the process in detail.

It's possible to specify a destination directory for the resized images, add a suffix to the filename - something like thumb or small would do - and if you want to overwrite existing images in that directory.

There is no preview of the output images, no information on file size, no choice of file extension. As I said it's lightweight and does only one thing at the moment. I still like Squash because it is easy to use, mainly because of the missing options of course.

squash

Squash is available for Windows and Linux. [via Genbeta]

Related posts


Get email updates

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner