Flect is a simple device I developed to take photos through glass without reflections or glare from the surrounding environment. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how to make one for yourself.
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Just in case you’ve been wondering: yes, the latest versions of Adobe’s photo-editing programs are all compatible with the new Microsoft Windows 8. Adobe product manager Jeffrey Tranberry writes,
We’re happy to announce that Photoshop CS6, Lightroom 4 and Elements 11 are compatible with Microsoft Windows 8. The only issue customers might see is with document window transparency/flickering in Photoshop CS6 caused by video drivers. The drivers that ship with Windows 8 may not be the most recent available from the card vendors [...]
I recommend that customers make sure they have the lastest drivers from either AMD or nVidia. If you still have problems with the latest drivers, try setting the Advanced Settings for OpenGL Drawing/Graphic Card Processing in the Photoshop’s Preferences>Performance… dialog so that Drawing Mode is set to “Basic.”
Microsoft has already ensured that Windows 8 is fully backwards-compatible with Windows 7 software. Adobe is just confirming that photographers can upgrade with peace of mind knowing that their existing workflow can still be used on the other side.
Windows 8 and Photoshop [Photoshop Blog via John Nack]
Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond of NOTsoNOISY created this amazing stop-motion animation titled “Animated Tower.” He found students and staff volunteers to turn an 11-story-building at the University of Health Sciences (HESAV) in Switzerland into a giant 10 by 11 display, with each window serving as a single pixel.
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This news might not be very relevant to most of you, but Adobe has announced that future versions of Photoshop will not be compatible with Windows XP. In a post published to its blog late last week, the company writes,
The Photoshop team would like to provide advanced notice that Photoshop CS6 (13.0) will be the last major version of Photoshop to support Windows XP. (Photoshop CS6 does not support Windows Vista.) In addition, all subsequent Photoshop feature updates specifically for Creative Cloud members will no longer support Windows XP. Leveraging advances available on newer operating systems and hardware allows us to deliver significantly better performance, and focus our innovation efforts around the areas of the greatest benefit to our customers.
As the post states, CS6 already doesn’t support Vista, so you’ll need to have at least Windows 7 from here on out. It says that relying on the latest operating systems allows the software to receive better improvements in its features, since the eliminating backwards compatibility gives the developers one less thing to worry about.
(via John Nack)
The photographs in photographer Gail Albert Halaban‘s series Out My Window are unsettling and beautiful at the same time. Each of them shows people framed by open apartment windows in New York City — quite creepy if the images are actually of unsuspecting strangers. At the same time, the voyeur is quite a photographer, as each shot perfectly balances the lighting of the subject inside with the cityscapes and brick walls outside.
The scenes were actually all staged, and are intended to share something that Halaban says New Yorkers can relate to: “connecting” with neighbors through apartment windows.
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If you’re a Windows user that preordered a Lytro light field camera, here’s some terrific news: your expensive paperweight is now a camera. Lytro announced the Windows version of its desktop application today, more than half a year after the “shoot-now-focus-later” camera was first unveiled. To free your photos from their camera prison, you’ll need to be running Windows 7 with at least 2GB of ram.
(via Lytro Blog)
Image credit: Lytro 16GB & 8GB versions by laihiu
For Windows users who frequently need access to Creative Commons photography, Abelssoft’s free desktop app CCFinder can help streamline the hunt for a good image.
While the web-based searches of CC images through Flickr and Creative Commons’ CC Search have improved over the years, CCFinder offers a smoother user interface for searching multiple CC sources, viewing and downloading images, plus the same features with licensing explanations and options. Also, for those so inclined, CCFinder has a feature to add color filters if you upgrade to the pro version for $10.
CCFinder (via Lifehacker)
Recently, Microsoft has been showing off many of the new features we’ll be seeing in the much-anticipated official release of Windows 8, and the most recent sneak peek Microsoft gave us was of the new Photos app. The app offers a native way for Windows users to organize, view and share all of their photos regardless of what they were taken with or where they’re stored. Read more…
Cinemagraphs, or still images that have a dash of movement, have become very popular as of late. So popular, in fact, that Microsoft Research is jumping onto the bandwagon. The company has released a new tool for creating cinemagraphs, which they call “cliplets”:
A still photograph is a limited format for capturing moments that span an interval of time. Video is the traditional method for recording durations of time, but the subjective “moment” that one desires to capture is often lost in the chaos of shaky camerawork, irrelevant background clutter, and noise that dominates most casually recorded video clips. This work provides a creative lens used to focus on important aspects of a moment by performing spatiotemporal compositing and editing on video-clip input. This is an interactive app that uses semi-automated methods to give users the power to create “cliplets”—a type of imagery that sits between stills and video from handheld videos.
Their free new Cliplets app lets you easily turn a 10-second video clip into a Harry Potter-esque cinemagraph.
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Nikon shooters: Nikon Camera Control is a new open source Windows application that lets you remotely control your Nikon DSLR using a PC and a USB cable. Features include tethering, remote control over camera’s basic settings, remote shutter triggering, an intervalometer for time-lapses, and fullscreen review.
