Digital photography: Learning the Histogram

I'm browsing all the old posts in Derrick Story's new site. This one is excellent: The Digital Story: "Learning the Histogram" - Podcast 13.

The tendency when joining a new blog is to only look at the new stuff. If the volume is not huge, I prefer to find the best of the archives.

This article also told me what "gamma" means. Who would have guessed? Gamma refers to the midpoint of a tonal range.

Huh?

What's hard about that?

I wonder if 'monitor gamma' refers to how a particular display deals with middle tonal ranges. Mac vs. Windows gamma is a big and insoluble problem in digital imaging -- I don't think color profiles adjust for differential gamma management (I could be wrong). I set my Mac displays to mid-way between Mac and Windows gamma -- it muddies the UI but my images are more viewable on Windows.

Aperture Workshop Notes - free

A great offer from Derrick Storey, who turns out to have a blog I didn't know about -- you can download a tutorial on Aperture.

The Digital Story: Aperture Workshop Notes PDF

For my recent Inside Aperture Power Tools workshop that I led with Scott Bourne at Macworld SF '06, I compiled class notes to accompany the workbook. I promised the class that I would make those notes available online. I'm also offering them to everyone in The Digital Story community.

These notes are in PDF format (5.8 MB download -- 30 pages). Topics include importing images into Aperture, comparing and rating, editing tools, vaults and backup, exporting images, and printing. In part, I'm releasing these notes because there are many misconceptions about Aperture, such as limits on export configurations (based on the presets Apple provides that are totally editable)...

iPhoto Library Manager cannot merge iPhoto 6 Libraries

I don't know if the hacks I've written about will work with iPhoto 6, but IPLM won't:

iPhoto Library Manager: Manage multiple iPhoto libraries in Mac OS X

iPhoto 6 update (1/14/06): Apple released an update to iLife at Macworld last week, including iPhoto version 6. iPhoto Library Manager 3.1 and earlier are partially compatible with iPhoto 6. You can still use iPhoto Library Manager to create new libraries and switch between them, but the album copying, merging, and importing features are not currently functional. An update for iPhoto Library Manager will be forthcoming in the next couple of weeks to provide full compatibility with iPhoto 6.

If IPLM can't be made to support iPhoto 6, then anyone upgrading will lose the limited ability to consolidate iPhoto libraries that we have now.

I do seem to be alone in my concern about this however. My guess is that people who would feel as I do generally use Photoshop/Bridge or Aperture. I think I'm the wrong customer for iPhoto. (Not the first time!).

Safari finally renders nested bullets correctly

Wow. This only took about three years. Safari 1.3.2 now renders nested menu items correctly -- for years they were garbled.

This isn't CSS or AJAX or DHTML. It's basic HTML 1.0.

IE, Mozilla, Opera, Firefox, Netscape, Mozilla -- every other browser I've ever tested could handle this. Safari couldn't.

My ancient and chaotic Credit Card Fraud Page showed scrambled headings for years in Safari. I gave up checking after each release came out without a fix, but I suddenly thought to check with the very latest 10.3.9 compatible version of Safari.

I wonder when they fixed this. It took long enough!

Flip4Mac WMV: Play WMP audio in QuickTime

Now that Microsoft has discontinued WMP support on OS X this is the only option: Products - Flip4Mac WMV.

It's free, but there are problems at the moment with recent Mac updates. I'd wait a week or two.

I suspect Microsoft's WMP discontinuation was based on DRM fights and issues.

Mac OS X VoiceOver

Apple - Mac OS X - VoiceOver is a reasonably complex set of capabilities. I found it poking around the utilities folder. It can read the interface or text.

I need to play with this more. I know a few people it might be useful for.

For example:

To read the character where the VoiceOver cursor is focused, press Control-Option-C. Press C two times to hear the character spoken phonetically. Then press Control-Option-Shift-Right Arrow or Left Arrow to move the VoiceOver cursor to the next or previous character and read it.

To read a word at a time, press Control-Option-W. Press W two times to hear the word spelled, and three times to hear it spelled phonetically. Then press Control-Option-Left Arrow or Right Arrow to read the previous or next word.

To read a line at a time, press Control-Option-L. Then press Control-Option-Up Arrow or Down Arrow to read the previous or next lines.

To read a sentence at a time, press Control-Option-S. Then press Control-Option-Page Up or Page Down to read the previous or next sentence.

To read a paragraph at a time, press Control-Option-P. Then press Control-Option-Shift-Page Up or Page Down to read the previous or next paragraph.

It's not trivial to figure out, but with practice it makes sense. In VoiceOver mode there's a black selection box that appears over the part of the screen that's being inspected. It didn't work in a Firefox window, but it worked in TextEdit. I suspect it only works with Cocoa applications.

I wonder how it compares to commercial Windows screen readers.

OS X Digital Color Meter

Aperture tricks is mandatory reading for anyone using Apple's photo management app. This tip points out an OS X utility that could be used in iPhoto too.

Aperture Tricks: Aperture Trick#20 READING RGB VALUES IN APERTURE:

... Go to your Utilities folder and open DigitalColor Meter. It's a slick
little app included with Mac OS X. In its preferences, set the
magnification factor to 8X, and check the box next to 'Float window
above other apps.' Move the diameter of the meter (called Aperture
Size) to its smallest setting. "

Update 1/12/06: It turns out DigitalColor Meter has a help file. Here's one topic:

Copying a color into an HTML or graphics document

You can use DigitalColor Meter to copy the color value of any pixel on your display into an HTML or graphics document. For example, you may want a background color on an HTML page to match a color in a graphic that overlays it.

Open DigitalColor Meter, located in /Applications/Utilities.

From the pop-up menu, choose the type of color value that matches what you need in your document. For example, if you want to use a color in an HTML page, set the type of color value to RGB As Hex Value, 8-bit.

Drag the Aperture Size slider to the desired size. Reduce the aperture size until you can accurately pick a single color without including other colors. If more than one color is within the aperture, the color value of the pixels will be averaged.

Point to the color that you want to copy, then press Shift-Command-C to copy the color values of the pixels.

Open your document and set the insertion point where you want to place the color value, then choose Edit > Paste.

To hold the current color as you move the pointer, press Shift-Command-H. Press Shift-Command-H again to release the hold. You can also use the arrow keys to move the aperture in single-pixel increments.

You can also use the preferences to tell DCM to display your mouse pointer coordinates; they update as you move across the screen. Version 3.4. Where the heck did this little thing come from? It feels like a labor of love. I'll use it with iPhoto starting now!