27August2009
RSS + Google Reader = You Own Personalised Photography Magazine
Posted by Rob_Nunn under: Uncategorized; tutorials.
Ok, so you’ve probably heard the term RSS, and have see the “subscribe” links on various blogs and websites, but if you’re not using them YOU NEED TO BE!
Honestly, RSS (Really Simple Syndication), combined with free online software like Google Reader, will transform the way you find and read information on the Internet. Instead of having to bookmark your favourite sites, then visit them every now and again to look for new articles, by using RSS all those interesting articles will be delivered straight to your PC or Mac so you can read them when you want to.
RSS isn’t limited to just blog or site articles. You can subscribe to podcasts this way, peoples photostreams in Flickr, comments on sites, and countless other forms of content. It’s brilliant!
By choosing to subscribe to sites, podcasts, and photographers you like, you’ll build your own online Photography Magazine – with the content you want (and like), and best of all, it’s free:
Lets get started. First up, sign up for a Google account. You might not want to use Gmail (but I don’t see why not, it’s the best!), but you will want access to Google Reader.
Now you’ve got your Google account, just look for the “Reader” link near the top left hand corner of your screen, check it out, but it’ll be empty at the ‘mo.
Excited yet? Now we can start collecting RSS feeds. Why not start at Joe McNallys Blog?
On most sites, like Joe’s, you’ll see an obvious link somewhere on the page to click – but notice the orange square on the right-hand side of your browsers address bar? Click there and you can subscribe to his posts too. (You may get get a choice of feeds – go for RSS, and posts, not comments. Unless you want the comments of course!)
When we click on the “RSS Feed” link on Joe’s site, we’re taken to this complicated looking page, but don’t worry, just click on the “Google” logo – or if you’re lucky it will just say “subscribe with Google”.
Next we have to tell our browser to add Joe’s feed to Google Reader:
Then we’ll find that Mr McNallys latest posts are in Reader, ready to be read, and whenever he writes something new they will appear here, without you having to visit his site again!
So what? I can hear you thinking – all that effort when I could have just visited the site and read the post. You’re right – when you’re building up your subscriptions this might seem a hassle, but just think, for every RSS you add, you’ll never have to hunt through your book-marks again!
Now you need to go and add some more RSS feeds to Google Reader, in the same way we did in the above example. Try The Luminous Landscape , Scott Kelbys Blog and Photofocus to start off with.
What you’ll notice is that in some feeds you don’t get the whole post, just a snippet or title with a link that’ll take you to the site to read the rest of the article.
You can also use RSS and Google Reader to subscribe to peoples YouTube Channels, so you get all their latest Video uploads. Have a look at Cameralabs Channel, and click the orange RSS icon in the right-hand side of your browser address bar. (Not the Youtube Subscribe links on the page).
Maybe you’ve got some favourite Photographers you like to follow on Flickr. Why not subscribe to their photostreams?
(The above is Andreas Øverland’s photostream, highly recommended!)
We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of the power of RSS and Google Reader – delve a little deeper in Reader and you’ll see how easy it is to organise your feeds into folders or groups, email and share them, let alone all the different content you can subscribe to with RSS feeds.
Keep building your subscriptions, be pro-active in deleting the ones you don’t like or seldom read, and build your own, constantly updating, free, online Photography Magazine!
Cheers, Rob.
(PS Don’t forget to subscribe to this sites RSS feed!)
11August2009
Adding A Full Screen Flickr Slideshow Gallery To Your Photography Blog Or Website
Posted by Rob_Nunn under: building blogs; tutorials.
As I mentioned last week, I’ve never been happy with the way I’ve shared my images on this site, but with Flickr’s slideshow widget I’ve got something that I think is actually quite good – check out my gallery to have a look.
What’s great about using a Flickr full-screen slide show for your gallery is that all you need is a Flickr account, and the code will work on Wordpress, Blogger and any other type of website. Here’s what you do:
First up, it may be worth creating a new “Set” of images in your Flickr account that will feed into your slide-show, so that you’re sharing your best photographs. Simply sign into your Flickr account, select a photo, then above the photo click “Add To Set”, then “Create A New Set”:
Then just go through your photostream and add the photo’s that you want in your slideshow gallery to this set. If you’re using a free Flickr account and have used up your free sets, you could use your whole photostream to drive the gallery.
Once you’re happy with the photographs in your set we need to go and get the html code for our new slideshow.
Go to one of the photographs in the set, and look for the name of the set on the right side of the screen, and click on it:
You should find yourself in the thumbnail view of this new set:
Click on the “Slideshow” icon in the top right hand of the screen, and Flickr will launch the slide-show. Waggle your mouse around, then click on the “Share” link in the top right-hand corner, then the “”Customize This HTML” link:
You’ll then be directed to the next screen where you can customize the size of your slideshow. “Medium” is a good width for most photo blogs and websites, so click on that, then highlight the code in the text box, right-click and “copy”:
Keep the window open that’s got the HTML code for your slideshow in it, then we need to open the editor your use to add pages or posts to your Blog or Website. If you’re using a static site (non cms) that you edit locally, say on Dreamweaver or Frontpage, open those programs, create a new page from your template, switch to the HTML editor, and simply “Paste” the code for the slideshow into the page, then upload it to your server.
If you’re using a Content Management System, such as Wordpress or Blogger, log into your admin page and create a new post or page, which will become your slide-show gallery.
In Wordpress make sure you’re using the basic text editor (which allows insertion of HTML), then simply paste the Gallery HTML into your post or page:
If you preview the post or page, and seem to have trouble with text wrapping round the slideshow box, add this code snippet right after the code for the slideshow:
<div style="clear:both;"></div>
If you’re using a Blogger site, just add a new post, click on the “Edit HTML” tab, then paste the slideshow HTML into the box. (It might be a good idea to also add the above code after the slide-show HTML):
So, there we go, you should now have embedded into a post or page on your Photo Website or Blog, a great looking full-screen Flickr slideshow. (Your visitors simply click the play icon and the the “Full-Screen” box). All you’ve got to do is just keep adding pictures to your Flickr slideshow set, and your gallery will be continually expanded and updated.
Cool, easy, and best of all, free!
Cheers, Rob.
1August2009
Beating Bloggers Block: New Categories And To Do Lists!
Posted by Rob_Nunn under: building blogs; tutorials.
If you’ve got your own blog or website (and if not, check out my post on how to do it, it’s easy!) the main problem, after an initial flurry of content, is coming up with new ideas for posts and articles.
Without new work, even the best blogs will start to dwindle and die. In my experience the most important thing is to base your blog or site on something you’re passionate about (photography!), so you won’t get bored writing about it too quickly. Even then though you’ll get to a point where you’ll be scratching you head about what to do next.
The next point is that Google, and the other search engines, love sites that get regularly updated, and will index them in their results faster, leading to more visitors and a higher search-engine ranking.
It may sound simple, but I’ve found the best way is to keep a simple to-do list. Then what I do is as soon as I get an idea for a post, or a new category on my blog, I quickly make a note of it. Then, when I’m stuck for ideas but have some spare time to write, I’ll look at the list and get inspired. (I also do a similar thing for my podcast).
You could use a pad or just a piece of paper, but hey, we’re probably going to be writing our articles on our PC or Mac, so let’s keep our list on our computer!
At the moment I’m using Google Tasks, which is an add-on widget for Google Mail, and it looks like this:
I’ve blurred my mail account, but you can see the Google Tasks box in the bottom right-hand corner. To turn it on in your Gmail account, just click on the tasks link on the left-hand side of the screen. You can even make it pop-out and open in its new window.
Google tasks is pretty basic, its just a list, with no different types of tasks, but you can re-order them and remove completed things.
If you’re not using Gmail, you could just use a text editor and save your list to your desktop, but if you want a really great to-do and task manager, that’s web-based, consider Remember The Milk.
RTM offers a comprehensive tasks manager in their free web version, plus applications for the iPhone, Gmail, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and much more. If you’re after a task manger with serious horse-power, Remember The Milk is a good way to go.
The key to these services is to keep it simple, and to actually use them. Whenever you get an idea, no matter how far fetched, make sure you add it to your list for future posts. Believe me, if you don’t have lists, you’ll forget so many great ideas and will end up writing less and less.
Another tool for for keeping fresh content flowing for your website and blog is to write down, and add, new categories or sections to your site. For example in my blog, I’m considering (they’re in my tasks list), new sections on Lens Reviews, Video Creation, Building Websites and Blogs, and Lensbaby. You’ll come up with more, and by have these sections or categories that’ll need filling with posts and articles, you’ll find new ideas just popping into your head.
So, in summary, find a Task or To-Do list manager that’s simple and works for you – and make sure you use it. Record all your ideas for new posts and articles in your list, and then use it when you’re suffering from Bloggers Block.
Think about new sections or categories for your blog / website, then start to populate them with articles and posts. Before you know it you won’t have enough time to write your content, you’ll have so many great ideas, and writers block will be a thing of the past.
Hope this helps, Rob.
23July2009
Improve HDR’s By Merging Different Versions In Photoshop Using Masks And Auto-Align Layers
Posted by Rob_Nunn under: tutorials.
Sometimes when you’re creating HDR images, whether in Photomatix, Photoshop, or other software, you end up with parts of the photograph that just aren’t right. Normally it’s something to do with movement – either in the camera, or in your scene. It could be people moving, plants waving in the wind or waves on a sea.
One way you can correct this is by using Photoshop (in this tutorial CS3) to align different versions of the same scene, then easily use masks to reveal (or hide) the parts of the scene that you want to use (or correct).
In the above photo, I’ve used three images. Two tone-mapped HDR’s (processed differently in Photomatix), and one of the original exposures. Lets see why.
In my first HDR, tone mapped in Photomatix, I liked the sky and greenery on the beach, but the boundary between land and sea had become blurred (I’ve zoomed in a little to try to show this):
I changed the settings in Photomatix, and although the join between land and sea was better, the people, and greenery, were worse. (Again, I’ve zoomed in a little):
So, I know that I’ve got something OK here, but it’s spread across two images, and that I’ll been needing one of the original images to make the people to look ok. Time for Photoshop!
I open all three images in Photoshop, then copy them all into the same document, “Edit”, “Select All”, “Copy”, then “Paste”, so they’re stacked above each over in layers:
The next bit is where we get Photoshop to line up the layers. It’s a bit tricky to see in the image, but first control-click each layer in the layers pallet so they’re all selected, then go over to “Edit”, “Auto-Align Layers”, choose “Auto”, then see what happens.
What Adobe Photoshop CS3 has done is to examine the contents of the different layers, then shuffle them about a bit so they line up almost perfectly. If you click on the eye’s on the layer’s palette to turn each layer on or off, you should be able to see how well they match up. Brilliant!
Next up I’m going to work on the people in the bottom right-hand corner. In my image, the top layer in the stack is a “normal” exposure, and it’s the only one where the walking couple look ok.
I’m going to click on the top layer in the layer palette, so Photoshop knows that’s the one I want to work on. Then I’m going to click on the little square with a circle in it (at the bottom of the layers palette) to add a mask:
Masks are an incredibly useful tool in photoshop. They allow you to hide, or show, different areas of an image by simply painting on the mask with the brush tool. If we started to paint in black on the mask, parts of the photo would disappear, and the image on the lower layer would show through. However, with this shot, all I want to do is have the people from this top layer, so instead of painting out everything else apart from the people, we actually do the reverse!
If I click on the layer mask in the layers palette, then press ctrl-I on the keyboard, the mask will invert and turn to black, hiding the layer, revealing the photo underneath. I now select the brush tool from the tools palette, and make sure my foreground colour is white.
I zoom in (ctrl and +), then carefully start painting on the dodgy people, and you’ll see the “good” people from the top image start to appear. If I make a mistake, I’ll just change my brush to white and paint over the mistake:
I’m happy with the people, but the transition between the land and sea is still all blurred:
So what I’ll do this time is click on the middle layer to select it, then click the mask icon at the bottom on the layers palette.
I’ll leave the mask white, select the brush tool, make sure my colour is black, zoom in, then start painting along the dodgy boundary:
Once the sea / land boundary is sorted, the image is ready for final editing – curves / levels / b&w etc – it can be helpful to click in the top right of the layers palette (not the cross!) and “flatten image”.
We’ve used Photoshops superb “Auto-Align Layers” and masks tools to fix a HDR, but you can use it for all sorts of other images. You could use your auto-bracketed shots to create your own HDR, or how about this – use it to make people or moving objects disappear from a scene – I’ll let you think about that one.
Here’s a black and white version of the HDR:
Cheers, Rob.
4July2009
Using The Masks Feature In Noise Ninja
Posted by Rob_Nunn under: tutorials.
Noise Ninja, the noise reduction software and plug-in for Photoshop and Elements, is great, but an often over-looked feature is it’s ability to apply a mask to the noise filter. You may want to prevent NN from touching parts of the image to avoid loosing texture and detail.
It’s incredibly easy to do, so if you’re using, or thinking about using, Noise Ninja, have a practice and pretty soon you’ll become more selective on the areas of your photographs that you’ll let Noise Ninja filter for noise.
To start off, load an image into Photoshop or Elements, then fire up Noise Ninja, “Filter”, “Picturecode”, “Noise Ninja”.
Before we start masking, it may help to increase the size of the preview frame – in NN, “Noise Ninja”, “Preferences” then click the “Other” tab, and choose a bigger preview Window size.
Now click the “Noise Brush” tab, and take a look at the buttons:
What we’re going to be doing is painting a mask in the preview pane, in effect stopping NN from changing the pixels behind the mask. You can change the size and hardness of your brush, look at the original pixels, see the mask, erase parts of your mask, or “Erase Mask” and start again.
In my image, I don’t want NN to work on the road, which is naturally “Noisy”, so I choose a large brush and simply paint over the road in the photograph. Easy.
Once you’re done, just click OK, the Noise Filter will be applied (as will your mask) and you’ll be sent back to Photoshop to finish your editing.
Have a play, experiment, and learn to get more out of Noise Ninja!
Cheers, Rob.
PS You could of course get a similar effect by duplicating your image on a different layer, applying NN to one of the layers, adding a layer mask, and then by “painting in / out” the NN filter.
