Eventually,
or so I keep being told, there will be no more stand-alone,
computer-based programs.
We will all be doing everything online that we once did
on our PCs, people constantly say. I remain skeptical.
This sounds too much like what the bleeding-edge alpha
geeks (and I mean that in the most affectionate way possible)
want
and very little like what the average computer user finds
comfortable.
I remember being pitched on this very idea about eight
to 10 years ago by a determined little company that eventually
sold
out to Microsoft and it has yet to become that common. If
online computing were all that inevitable, it would be in
common use
by now.
But, hey, I’ve been wrong about these things too many
times to count and seemingly wiser and obviously much richer
folk than I are now rushing word processing and spreadsheet
suites online. Their hope, I guess, is to catch early adopters
(teenagers and those still in elementary school most likely).
Following that, everybody else will eventually be dazzled by
the inevitability of abandoning today’s PC and then move
all their previously computer-centric activities to the Net.
And this, it is said, will also be true of digital photography,
where image processing has hitherto been dominated by the
likes of Adobe Photoshop and now RAW processing programs
like Bibble
along with workflow software like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
and Apple’s Aperture.
So far, though, online digital editing capabilities seem,
well, a tad rudimentary.
 When it comes to processing (and I use the term lightly)
digital images perhaps the best-used site on the net is Picnik,
which does have a lot of built-in features, including, a
la Photoshop, unsharp mask, which was added
recently.
I gave it a quick run through, uploading a jpeg of my granddaughter
that I’d taken when I was testing a Nikon D40. The uploading
procedure (at least with a jpeg) proved to be quick and simple.
The first thing I learned was that the auto settings at
Picnik were, at least in the case of this photo, to be avoided.
Auto-fix
and auto-fix colours and exposure produced, very odd choices,
giving my granddaughter’s lively pink face a distinctly
greenish cast, as if she had just stepped off a whirling carnival
ride.
I had a lot better success making adjustments manually,
although, to be honest, the sliders aren’t the easiest things to
use in my browser. I often overshot the settings by a wide
margin and then had problems making them stick once I’d
decided on them.
However, after a while I became quite adept at making the
adjustments with my mouse. And I was particularly impressed
by the sharpening,
which did improve the photo considerably from my original
shot.
All in all, the image that I then downloaded to my computer
was a moderate to medium improvement over the one I had uploaded,
but nothing I couldn’t have done far better in about
30 seconds in Photoshop Elements or any other PC-based photo
editing program.
One thing I realized, of course, is that, as it presently
stands, Picnik, is not truly meant as anything more than
a way of allowing
the photographically inexperienced to get somewhat improved
images on to sites like Flickr and Facebook, with which it
integrates well.
After all, most people don’t really seem to care all
that much about their images when it comes to getting them
quickly online so friends can add comments and relatives can
admire new additions.
After that, I tried another site, Cellsea which
offers far more options than Piknik. However, it took so
long to make changes, at least for me, that I soon grew tired
of
waiting and trying to figure out how to make the adjustments
accurately. Again, the result was not bad (actually better
than the one from Piknik) but at the expenditure of far too
much of my time although the price, free, was right.
To give it the benefit of the doubt, this one is aimed,
seemingly, at those who know so much about photo editing
that they probably
already own at least Photoshop Elements and don’t even
have to guess at the settings they want and then wait, drumming
their fingers, for the results to appear.
It’s early days though, and sites like Picnik, Celsea
and can’t help get better. I’m amazed that they
work as well as they do.
And, just maybe well all be using Adobe products exclusively
online in another five years.
Oh, and, yes, I do know there are at least a dozen of these
sites out there, but who has that much time (not me, certainly)
and, a couple of them I tried restricted file sizes so much
that they weren’t worth the effort. 
Every June I get at least one terrific birthday card. It
comes from a professional artist friend whose works are
almost always
photography-based.
These cards usually include an image of me, altered with
the addition of satirical captions, cartoon speech balloons
sprouting
from my mouth, odd bits of type floating around in the background
and objects (like, say, golf clubs) he thinks are appropriate
to whatever is happening in my life. He’s a master of
Photoshop, so this comes easy to him.
With his combination of talent and skill, it probably takes
him half an hour or less to come up with one of these.
If I were to try the same thing I’d have to (a) acquire
some artistic and design talent and (b) know a heck of a lot
about Photoshop than I do, even though in my time as a journalist
I’ve had demo after demo of the latest versions of Adobe
software – the last one being of CS3.
Along with the talent and the Photoshop knowledge, I’d
also have to set aside at least three hours, if not an entire
day, to come up with something useable.
I care deeply about my friends, but not enough to do that. Call me selfish,
my wife certainly does.
 Now, however, there is a quick online
alternative to this called Live Studio.
There you can upload photos and, using various tools,
create your own photo collages. Well, photo collage is probably too artistic
a term. Mash-ups might be a better way of putting it.
I gave Live Studio a whirl, using one of the sample photos
they provide for those who want to make a trial run. I added
a word-filled speech balloon, a picket
sign, hearts, a bulls-eye, etc. to a photo of a man who looks like everyone’s
idea of the impossibly unaware employer.
The site offered a variety of captions, objects, bubbles,
words and doodles from which I could choose.
I did have a few failures. I turned a sign I’d made upside down and couldn’t
figure how to get it the right way up, no matter how I manipulated my cursor.
Even so, I’m sure with a little more time learning the way to do things — most
of it appears intuitive — that wouldn’t be a problem.
At the time I used it, Live Studio had only a free version,
but was intending to offer a paid one, which would allow
for more storage and a greater selection
of effects to add to the photos.
Silly, but fun.
 Another distinctly odd (well, to old codgers like me) site
that popped up recently online is called Blabberize and it
lets you add a moving mouth and sound to photos so, for example,
you can have your cat complaining
about getting beaten up by a neighbouring feline. Or you could, as the introductory
talking alpaca suggests, use a photo of yourself chattering away to invite
that impossibly beautiful girl out on a date, if you are
really and truly that geeky
and enjoy being rejected.
From the examples I saw, some people catch on quickly about
using the tools on the site and others don’t. Particularly hard for some seems to be getting
the mouth to move with the sound.
Even if you never use Blabberize, it’s still fun to visit and try out a
few of the blabbers, as they’re called, to see what amuses others.
If you think that real men use digital SLRs and women use
point-and-shoot cameras then you’re living in the past,
at least if you live in the United States.
This year’s PMA survey shows that the majority — although just barely
at 51 per cent — of U.S.-based DSLR users are women, and they’ve
got more money than most camera owners. The survey found that in households
where women own a DSLR, more than 50 per cent have an income of $75,000 US
or more.
Oh, and no surprise here, the female DSLR owners are almost
twice as likely to live in households with children under
six years old.
And that’s only logical since the survey also reveals that women are
more likely to use DSLRs for family photos than are men, who are too busy out
taking
shots of something really masculine like abandoned factories, explosions and
grand prix auto races (okay, I just made that last part up.)
Of course, the usage of DSLRs is miniscule compared to
that of camera phones, which, according to Strategy Analytics,
sold a jaw-dropping 500 million units
worldwide in 2006, up from a mere 85 million just three years before.
I’m not sure that means all that much, however, since almost all phones
now come with cameras, whether their owners use the photographic capabilities
or not.
The last time I shot a photo with a camera phone was the
year the first ones made their appearance in Canada and I
was sent one for testing. But then, of
course, I’m extremely old and not exactly a member of the Flickr-using,
Facebook-inhabiting, madly-uploading target market. Neither am I out prowling
the streets looking for candid shots of destruction and human misery to upload
to news websites.
Just as startling, the saturation point with camera phones
doesn’t yet
appear to have been reached, according to Strategy Analytics, which predicts
that by 2011 a third of the population of the world will own a camera phone.
Lucky them.
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