NVMUG eNews 3/10/2007
Last updated 3/12/2007
Digital Photography and Macintosh Info
A discussion circle produced loads of digital photography and Macintosh information.
1. Digital Photography
Members at the Meeting
This statement is true. One of these two pictures has been doctored to show all the members who were present.
Which one?
(Answer at the end of this eNewsletter)
Member News
Kathy Manns of Danville, Vermont joined us to see the people and listen to the meeting. Someone reported that Verizon DSL is now available in Danville.
Norm Johnson is moving to Florida. He had an old G3 Lombard laptop which needs a new battery and a hard drive. It can do word processing, but it is not fast enough for many of today's programs. If no one wanted it, he was going to throw it out. Stephen Farber knew where you can get a new battery, but it would cost about $130. He gave the laptop to Ron Lay-Sleeper who said he would like to fix it up for his son who is going away to school.
New Pentax DSLR Camera
Warren Walker bought a Pentax K10D digital SLR camera which not the same as the K100D camera reviewed in the April Macworld magazine, The Pentax K10D camera has a 10.23.5 x 15.7 mm sensor with 10.75 million pixels. He will bring next month and take the picture after it he has had enough time to figure it out. It came with a thick manual.
Warren selected it because he could use his existing lenses. It has 72 rubber seals and gaskets which will make it tight for field use. It is the largest and heaviest of the 4 under $1,000 digital single lens reflex cameras, but he likes the handling of a larger size. It is also noisier at high ISO speeds, but that is not important for the kinds of photography that Warren does. Its shake reduction is sensor based which May not be as good as units in the lens, it should work with Warren's other lenses.
Warren wanted access to RAW processing, especially after reading the NVMUG library Preventive Workshop book and the Pentax can save in Adobe RAW.
The Pentax has 11 point focus, meaning you can select the distance you want to focus at from 11 points shown on the screen. The trick to great photos is to learn all the settings and make one you want auto setting
.Adobe PhotoShop CS2 Warning
Stephen Farber warned members who use Adobe Photoshop CS2 to check the Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS2/Legal.localized/ and /Applications/Adobe Illustrator CS2/Legal.localized/ folders for a file called Tient Viet.html. If you find this file delete in immediately. It can cause damage to your drive's directory that even Disk Utility cannot fix. If you already have this damage and run Disk Directory's First Aid you will probably get an error message. The underlying task reported failure� -9972 error code. If this happens try another repair utility such as Alsoft's $100 Disk Warrior or completely erase your drive and start over. (page 89 April Macworld)
Norm asked why an iPhoto thumbnail picture is sometimes a question mark.
I found this answer by looking at iPhoto Help and its Service and Support. This took me to Apple's iPhoto Support where I found Apple Discussions, and the iPhoto category. There I selected the Forum: Editing & Organization in iPhoto as the most likely to look into, and found this answer:
The ! or ? turns up when iPhoto loses the connection between the thumbnail in the iPhoto Window and the file it represents.
The most common cause of this is User Activity in the iPhoto Library Folder. Have you altered, moved or renamed anything in the iPhoto Library Folder?
If you haven't, then try rebuilding the database. Hold down the apple and option (or alt) keys and launch iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild.
Remember look in the Help menu and use its options when you need an answer to your questions.
Finding Photos, Images, Whatever
How do you find a photo in the Finder where the hierarchy is sometimes set up by date? Stephen Farber suggested using the column view to see a thumbnail image.
Photo 6 has a calendar you can use to look for photos by date. You can set up albums or, as Gene suggested, smart albums to organize your photos to find them.
In your workflow, add information in the info box, with words you will search for when Spotlight searches the contents.
Neil puts the month and year of the date with everything, 3-07, because he does a lot of repetitive stuff. (I use year-month-day, 7-03-07 with name.) He sorts by name using Find within project folders.
Gene said that Spotlight creates a concordance, and does not do everything. Leopard will have an update. Stephen recommended copying and pasting your search word into Spotlight so it will go directly to it without searching for the first few letters.
2. Internet, Applications and Apple TV
iWeb
I described how I used iWeb without doing any HTML coding to create a web site on Verizon
Here is a summary of the whole process for making a Web site with iWeb.
- You select a template, and then select a page from within that template set that you want to start with as your home page.
- Edit the name in the Site Organizer on the left side of the screen.
- You use a small set of Pages commands to create your individual page content. Edit its name in the Site Organizer.
- If you want more pages on your web site, select another page template. Create its content and Give it a name in the site organizer. It will automatically be linked to your original home page, and the link will show in a row at the top of every page.
- Repeat 3 until you are done.
- In the File menu, Publish to a Folder unless you have an .mac account. iWeb will create a folder with your content and an index file.
- Use your favorite FTP program, like Fetch, I use Captain FTP, and upload the folder and index file to our web site.
It is as easy as that. No HTML coding required. It took me a couple of days to create the web site including all the content. Part of the time was in learning, and part of the time was in studying the file formats (that you really do not need to know).
For example, in HTML proper links to bring images in from other files include the size of the image and an ALT text description. iWeb uses these reference statements with no image, so the ALT contains the text you put into a text block, and the size is defines the size of the text block.
Gene Levine added that the format for each optional page in iWeb is different kind of multimedia: Welcome, About Me, Photos, Movie, Blog, Podcast, or Blank. If you want to create a photo album, a podcast, or a blog, you select the page template and iWeb does the work. In the Help menu you will find Getting Started and a link to Apple’s support page which includes help guides and tutorials.
He said Apple has gone beyond just similar menus to provide the learn one program learn them all experience. Macintosh programs share the same philosophy of software engineering so that programs actually work the same way. What you learn in using Pages pretty much applies in iWeb and vise versa.
Most Internet connections, or servers,which you can use for your email provide web space, usually about 10 megs, where you could upload your web pages. Some like .mac give you a decent URL to identify your space, others like Verizon provide a name that almost requires pasting in unless you pay an additional fee.
Web Sites, Email and Bandwidth
Ron Lay-Sleeper asked whether it is better to upload photos to your own web site or use some other site like Yahoo. Many people, including Small Dog, use flickr which is free. When we sold our home, we used a commercial For Sale By Owner site because it would get more hits, and it worked.
Some users in our rural area have only slow email connections while many providers have high speed broad band. One member has set his computer to reject anything greater than 100K, and then sometimes when he is where there is a faster connection he checks his server for messages.
Neil Raphel sends out an email to people who have signed up to request it. Neil said that making sure everyone could get your message is probably important for personal politeness. A business may make a conscious decision not to contact some small number of potential customers as part of their business plan.
Some readers want eye-candy if their machines can handle it, others who do not have wide bandwidth and the latest software options cannot access it.
Warren Walker said that his employer, a gun parts manufacturer, has hired a guru out of high school who prides himself in having all the latest features on their web site which turns away anyone whose software is over two years old. He said, can you imagine a business who would turn away any customer whose car was over three years old.
PhotoShop gives estimated download times when you Save for Web, and iPhoto provides options for email sizes. Learning Web Design
, O'Reilly, says gives an estimate of 1 second per KB for the slowest telephone connections.
Latest Version of Exploring Pages
I provided copies of Exploring Pages with Pages at the meeting and donated two CDs for the NVMUG library. You may borrow a CD from the library by contacting Midge or Richard Lubot, copy the book in pdf and pages form to your computer, then return the CD to the library for others to use.
Apple TV
Gene was asked how the Apple TV would work. I could not understand my notes, and asked Gene to explain it.
The Apple TV ship date has been delayed approximately one month. I am hoping the system will work like this: Apple TV synchronizes with the Macintosh via iTunes, just like an iPod. It contains an internal 40GB hard drive that should allow it to stream video direct from the computer even if you don't have the fastest networking hardware.
All of the Intel Core 2 Duo Macintosh models have "802.11n" wireless networking built in; Apple TV has the same hardware, so the connection should work seamlessly. However, even if you have an older Mac--with slower "802.11g" networking built-in--the Apple TV hard drive should smooth things out, so that the effect will be the same--virtually instantaneous and trouble free communication between the Mac and your high definition television system via the Apple TV hardware.
I think the Apple TV hard drive is not large enough to store a lot of video - I think you'll want to use external hard drives to store a lot of really big files. The internal drive is just a very efficient way to smooth out Macintosh to-TV communications so that the video is not jerky when transmitted through Apple TV to your high definition television set.
I intend to use it this way: since I do not have cable or satellite or broadband at home, I will download programs to my MacBook at the office, then bring them home and transmit them via ethernet cable (because I have an older Mac that lacks the "802.11n" wireless capability) to my Airport Extreme router (which DOES have 802.11n capability) and then transmit the video wirelessly to the Apple TV appliance. The Apple TV will be attached via HDMI cable through my AV receiver to my HDTV, where I will be able to watch TV programs in 720p resolution, and with high quality digital sound.
Could Not Send Gmail
Midge said on her last trip she could download gmail email but could not send gmail email to her home and wondered why. She could compose a message but not send it. Stephen said gmail looks at your authorization when you send and probably questioned it because it was from a different location.
Recording
Ron said a new Griffin iMike takes out pops and hisses so you can record from your old LPs. Neil said that Audacity is a free recording program for the Macintosh to save files which can then be convert onto MP3. He uses it for recording a speaker phone. Stephen said that StreamRipperX is a free program that can record sound, such as Internet radio streams, going through your computer and save it as MP3 files. HandBrake is a free program to rip and convert from a DVD to MPEG-4. Check for these programs on VersionTracker
New Computer Room and Monitor
The computer room we are building in our basement should be finished before the next NVMUG meeting. I plan to buy a 20” Apple monitor to connect to my PowerBook G4, and expecting to be able to see two pages on the monitor and the Pages Inspectors on my laptop at the same time. I am excited about it.
Stephen said I should look at the 24” iMac before I do. Warren said it helps to be able to see Help and Photoshop at the same time, otherwise he needs a manual.
Gene said, The advantage of having a very large display is that you can work with (and see) many windows at the same time: the main project window, a web browser/communications window, some reference materials (dictionaries, encyclopedias, help files, databases), and anything else you need for your projects. A big, high-res screen allows you to see them all without having to waste time juggling because of display space limitations.
In addition, Leopard, the soon-to-be-released OS X iteration, will permit easy switching between multiple saved work environments. For example, you might have a research environment (Westlaw, a law dictionary, some treatises, etc.), a graphics environment (Photoshop, Aperture, iPhoto, Flickr, iStockPhoto), a publishing environment (Pages, Quark Xpress, iPhoto, etc.), and a video-editing environment (iDVD, and other video editors whose names escape me). Each would have different desktop arrangements, different communications setups, and different programs running, and switching between each environment will--hopefully--be as easy as toggling between simultaneously running programs is on the existing desktop.
I have tried using a 37" HDTV display with a 10 foot cable running from MacBook to television. The display looks like a huge mac screen--very clear, correct colors, minimal "fringing" along edges, etc. Like most things Macintosh, just plug it in and it works. You need a DV-I adapter for the mini-DV plug on the MacBook ($20), and you need the correct cable connectors to work with the TV. There are some fine points in doing this, so check with Small Dog before buying parts, or you may up with a few things you don't need, and needing a few parts you don't have.
Neil is going to learn how to blog, and will make a presentation at a future meeting.
Tip
I do not know where I saw this one. Using Mac OS 10.4 you can select some text and drag it to your desktop and the OS creates a new file containing the text. You can do the same with images. Compare that to the process of saving text in Windows where you select the text, copy, go to your desktop, right clicking, new text file, rename the text file, open the text file, paste the text and then save it. If any one process sums up OSX when compared to Windows, its this one.
3. Pictures Answer
It was a fraudulent question. It is true that one picture has been doctored to include all the members. It is also true that the second picture was similarly doctored. Both are fraudulent and Gene Levine who did the PhotoShop would not let me send them to you if I did not tell you this.
If you would like one or both pictures sent to you separately in a medium size, please go to Contact, click on Hartley Jackson, Newsletter Editor to send me an email, and indicate whether you want the first picture, second picture, or both.
The first picture was taken by Neil Raphel, and the second by Hartley Jackson.
