Editing exif infos, sorting, browsing, storing and backing up photos

As you probably know, I am a backup maniac. I have multiple physical and online backups of all my data, particulary of all my photos and camera clips. And I also use Flickr service to backup all of them and share some of them too. So what happened let me decide about a lot of issues regarding my photos’ management.

Recently I had turned 35 years old, and for my birthday I made to myself an important gift: a Canon Eos 550D. Thanks to 550D photos’ resolution and size, and of Flickr Exif Page, I discovered that all vertical oriented photos of my collection have been modified with quality loss by iPhoto, also photos from the past, and I have uploaded to flickr not the originals but the modified ones. Moreover, now that I shot about one thousand photos for each month, iPhoto library was increasing in dimension very much because of a main big database file. And everytime I modify, add or delete a photo, an album, an event or simply I change something inside iPhoto management, iPhoto rebuilds this file. And this file takes a lot of time to be backed up online with Memopal because was around 10Gb the last time.

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Gmail new look

Surprise!! At the opening of my email, this morning there were a lot of changes in layout and structure of the Gmail account. Infact Google Team announced these changes:

Overview of what’s new in Gmail

A new look for Gmail
We’ve pruned our pixels and made it easier to get to Contacts and Tasks.

  • Mail, Contacts, and Tasks links have moved to the top left of Gmail.
  • Compose mail is now a button rather than a link.
  • A smaller header area puts the first message in your inbox about 16 pixels higher on the screen.
  • The Select All, None, Read, Unread, and Starred links that used to be above your messages are now options in a drop-down menu, next to the Archive button.

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Color Accent post-processing software

It was a long time I was looking for Color Accent software because all the Canon cameras I got, don’t have Color Accent feature. Today I found it, but it is for windows users only. I hope to find something similar for Mac. Before this tool, I used to apply black and white to the whole photo, and used redo brush to get back colors on the portion selected. I will continue to use that method only for multicolor subjects, but for one color or color range it is faster the tool below.

Install Paint.Net and this set of filter from Kris Vandermotten in which you can find Color Accent. Just use the tool “Pick a Color” and apply the effect “Color Accent” pressing the arrow button or adjusting levels manually.

I have uploaded some samples on flickr (look at the window on the right) and I’m sure I will use this tool a lot.

Samsung DVD-H1080 Player firmware upgrade

Today I solved a big issue for all the owners of the dvd player in subject: firmware upgrade. Infact about 5 minutes ago I upgraded mine. My version is the european black version but I think the procedure is identycal for all models.

Yesterday I bought it because it is cheap, performant and first of all, it is beautiful, not squared like all the others dvd player. It is perfect for my LCD TV in the kitchen.

As soon as I arrived at my home I downloaded the firmware and tryed every way to upgrade my unit following instructions on manual and also trying to put the file in a pen drive. I burnt a couple of cdr only because I used cdrw and one dvd+rw but there were no reason: it didn’t work.

But today I tryed something different: thinking about Samsung LCD TV firmware upgrade that worked well from a pen drive, I worked on it also for the player… and I DID IT!!!

All you have to do is:

  1. rename the long name file with H1080A.bin.
  2. copy it to the main directory with some media files and insert it with the player turned off.
  3. turn on the player and wait for the prompt to check if you have already the last version installed.
  4. push play and wait.
  5. the unit will shut off automatically at the end.
  6. if you want to be sure you have upgraded your unit leave the pen drive and repeat point 3 checking versions’ comparison. If versions are the same, turn off the player, otherwise go on to point 4.
  7. remove pen drive and delete the firmware file in order to use the pen for multimedia files.

I hope this procedure will help all of Samsung fans.

PS: My pen drive was a FAT32 2Gb with some media files like jpg, mp3, avi, divx, mpg, etc..

Leggi questa notizia in ITALIANO.

A lot of news from Apple

Apple announced some updates of its products at WWDC 09:

  • iPhone 3GS, a more powerful version of iPhone, with 16gb or 32gb internal memory, 3Mpixels camera, HSDPA, integrated GPS, more powerful CPU and lower price.
  • MacBook Pro new generation 13″, 15″, and 17″ with higher ram capabilities, bigger hard disks, and more powerful CPU and graphic cards.
  • A more powerful and cheaper Macbook Air.
  • Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, a refined and more powerful version of Leopard, available in September 2009.

Apple is the only IT company I know that let its products be available after few weeks and even days after announcements. You can check these news right on the official Apple site (scroll down the page to choose your country/language).

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