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January 07, 2010

[THE SOFTWARE OF OUGHT NINE]

The famous 19th century “green” philosopher, H D Thoreau, writes in Walden that “We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.”

Well, he may scoff, but news of royal chest infections is infinitely more interesting than anything that my “friends” have posted on their Facebook pages this year. What would Thoreau have made of “OMG only 3 days to Xmas and I haven’t done any shopping LOL ):”?

Having resisted the Facebook phenomenon as an enemy of human discourse and sensible reticence, in ’09 we yielded. Under pressure. We said to ourselves: “Well, why not? It can’t hurt. We will put up some amusing photos and an occasional witty review of book, concert, opera or film. Our ‘friends’ will be delighted and will tick the ‘X likes this’ box.”

As it turned out we would have been better off with “OMG IMHO the Princess has a cold LOL.” Does anyone respond to our photographic mini-masterpieces? Nope. But do they respond to the Christmas shopping cri de coeur? By the hundreds!

So, put Facebook down as our dud PC tool of the year.

For sharing photos we use Jalbum and in ‘09 we moved up from the cheapskate free service (30MB) and started paying real money ($26) for 1GB of space. We know that there are plenty of free on-line photo sharing sites but we like the cut of Jalbum with its many customisable interfaces (skins). And it is Swedish, which is a refreshing change from the all-pervasive American offerings. You can have a look at one of our Jalbums at tinyurl.com/yjx2hmd

The new software that has had the most use since we installed it late last year is the black and white conversion tool from Nik Software, called Silver Efex Pro. This is the most versatile B&W converter we have tried but sadly it is fiendishly expensive at $280 from www.niksoftware.com.au (There is a time-limited trial version for download).

Silver Efex Pro will simulate different film types, filters and developer as well as adding effects such as sepia, aged photo, pinhole and so on. It is superbly conceived and developed software, just a pity about the price.

In 2009 PhotoAcute was added to our software suite. This image manipulation program performs several specialised functions. It will merge a set of images into a single high dynamic range photograph, extending the detail visible in shadows and highlights; it will merge a set of photos taken at different focus points to produce one image that is sharp, front to back; and it will merge four or more identical images to produce one with double the resolution of the camera sensor. You can find it at www.photoacute.com -- $134 for the full version. Well worth downloading the trial version which is watermarked.

Happy digital new year.

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Posted by terry at January 7, 2010 07:16 AM

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Posted by: Barry at January 10, 2010 07:38 PM

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