TidBITS#851/16-Oct-06
=====================
Issue link: <http://db.tidbits.com/issue/851>
Just when you thought Eudora might never be updated, we have
surprising news: the venerable email client is becoming an
open-source project built on Mozilla's Thunderbird. Read on for
details, staff commentary, and a MacNotables podcast with Adam Engst
and Macworld's Jason Snell. Also in this issue, Apple releases a red
iPod nano whose sales will contribute to global AIDS relief, Google
buys YouTube for $1.65 billion, and 3D-XplorMath makes scientific
fine art. Plus, Glenn Fleishman notes the first set of ExpressCards
coming to the Mac, and Charles Maurer returns with a review of
Photomatix.
Articles
New iPod nano Sees (RED)
Mathematical Art from a Mac
ExpressCards Issue Forth
Google Buys YouTube for $1.65 Billion
Eudora Goes Open Source with Thunderbird
Photomatix: A Virtual Magic Wand
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/16-Oct-06
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New iPod nano Sees (RED)
------------------------
by Mark H. Anbinder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8706>
Apple will donate part of the proceeds from sales of a new, red-hued
iPod nano model to the global fight against AIDS. The $200 iPod
nano (PRODUCT) RED offers 4 GB of storage, just like the other
colored iPod nanos the company announced last month (see "Apple
Updates iPods, Introduces Movies, Previews iTV," 18-Sep-06). Apple
will donate $10 from each sale to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in
Africa.
<http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/red/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8676>
The iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED Special Edition joins red Motorola cell
phones, red Armani wristwatches, and red American Express charge
cards among special products aimed at raising AIDS awareness along
with funds that will help buy and distribute anti-retroviral
medicine. The (RED) movement was created by U2 singer Bono and
political activist Bobby Shriver to engage businesses in the fight
against AIDS.
<http://www.joinred.com/>
The (RED) manifesto states, "We believe that when consumers are
offered this choice, and the products meet their needs, they will
choose (RED)." Apple says they'll also offer a special edition (RED)
$25 iTunes gift card beginning next month. The new iPod nano model
is available worldwide immediately.
**Staff Roundtable** -- Is this activism or is it marketing? The
TidBITS staff weighs in on the iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED Special
Edition:
[Adam Engst] Perhaps I've never noticed anything quite like this
before, but I'm quite intrigued by the implications of what appears
to be a tightly integrated marketing campaign that simultaneously
enables companies to sell multi-branded products and raises money
for a worthy cause. There have been plenty of time-limited fund
raisers in which companies donate some of their profits to a
particular cause (even we did that in the immediate aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina, donating 10% of the proceeds from Take Control
ebook sales in September 2005 to the relief effort), but this is
different. By combining the brand power of a product like the iPod
with a new brand - (RED) - both Apple and the (RED) project boost
each other, Apple gaining the prestige of helping to fight a global
crisis and (RED) becoming associated with an ultimately (at least
for the moment) hip product. Call it capitalactivism or
activicapitalism, but it would seem to be a new breed of
convergence.
All that said, the capitalization and punctuation of (RED) is
driving me crazy.
[Mark H. Anbinder] In this post-silicone-wristband world, activism
and awareness are all about brand recognition. I love the idea that
consumers who want to support a cause have the opportunity to
purchase recognizable products from iconic brands, demonstrating
their own support while at the same time directing corporate
philanthropy. The consumer wins, companies like Apple and Motorola
win, and important charities win.
[Jeff Carlson] Of course, you need major brands and major influence
(in this case, Apple and Bono) to accomplish this type of deal at
such a large level. What next? Just think of the publicity value if
Microsoft were to donate $10 toward AIDS relief (or some other
charity) for each copy of Office sold. The company can certainly
afford it, and can always use the positive publicity. But will this
approach scale down? Would (RED) be interested in working a
conglomeration of Macintosh shareware companies? As can happen with
big charity endeavors like this, the (RED) program will hopefully
also serve as an example and encourage others to support other
causes in similar ways.
Mathematical Art from a Mac
---------------------------
by David Elliott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8707>
The cover of the journal Science for 22-Sep-06 features a beautiful
artwork titled "Still Life: Five Glass Surfaces on a Tabletop" by
graphic artist Luc Benard and mathematician Richard Palais, but the
image is neither a photograph nor a Photoshop illustration. Instead,
the five objects pictured are famous mathematical surfaces produced
by the free Macintosh program 3D-XplorMath. The objects were then
exported into Bryce, a 3D-rendering program, where Luc Benard gave
them a glassy texture and placed them on a virtual glass-covered
wooden tabletop.
<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/313/5794/1729>
<http://rsp.math.brandeis.edu/3D-XplorMath/Surface/a/MathCollection.jpg>
<http://rsp.math.brandeis.edu/3D-XplorMath/>
<http://bryce.daz3d.com/>
The image is the first-place winner in the illustration category of
the 2006 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, jointly
sponsored by Science and the National Science Foundation.
<http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/vis2006/>
Richard Palais, a well-known professor of mathematics at the
University of California, Irvine, has worked on the mathematical
visualization program 3D-XplorMath (previously known as
3D-Filmstrip) since 1997. Users can view a gallery of interesting
mathematical objects in it, plus modify various parameters and
viewing options for further experimentation. 3D-XplorMath runs in
Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X as a Carbon application and is a free 12.3 MB
download.
<http://rsp.math.brandeis.edu/3D-XplorMath/TopLevel/download.html>
ExpressCards Issue Forth
------------------------
by Glenn Fleishman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8708>
We've been predicting a gusher of ExpressCards, the new slot-loading
expansion cards for the MacBook Pro and high-end PC laptops, any
time now. Any time now appears to be today. This week, three
ExpressCard offerings bring SATA2 storage, gigabit Ethernet, and a
new kind of dock to laptops.
Most significant is WiebeTech's TeraCard Express34, which offers 2.5
gigabit per second (Gbps) support for SATA storage, including both
SATA1 and SATA2. SATA2 is one of the best methods for directly
connected high-speed disk access, typically involving real-time
video editing or recording, or extremely large data sets used for
heavy computational tasks in life sciences. The two independent
eSATA (external SATA) ports are nominally rated at 3.0 Gbps, but the
ExpressCard single-lane bus runs at 2.5 Gbps. The card comes with
Windows and Mac OS X drivers, and retails for $120.
<http://www.wiebetech.com/products/TeraCard_Express34.php>
The MacBook Pro has gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet)
onboard, just like all current Macintosh models. However, those who
need the highest of high-speed networks might prefer having two
separate gigabit Ethernet ports, as are found on the Mac Pro and
Xserve, either to use the laptop as a connector between two networks
or to pump out the maximum amount of data. Small Tree Communications
has introduced the PEG34m, an $80 ExpressCard for the MacBook Pro;
Windows drivers are also available. The Ethernet connector folds
out, enabling the card to lie flat when not in use; like CardBus
cards, ExpressCards are thin enough that any port would stick out as
a large bulge.
<http://www.small-tree.com/Laptop_pcie.html>
Call the $200 Belkin Notebook Expansion Dock a vision of things to
come for MacBook Pro users. You're probably familiar with the
concept of a laptop dock, such as the BookEndz docks, or the Duo
Docks that Apple offered for my late, lamented PowerBook Duo, long
ago. Laptop docks provide a whole host of jacks that marry with a
laptop's DVI or VGA port, USB and FireWire ports, audio ports, and
even the power jack so you don't have to connect and disconnect
every piece of office equipment whenever you come in or leave with
your laptop. But instead of attempting to mate numerous jacks with
their dock equivalents, Belkin's new dock simplifies that marriage
by routing everything through the ExpressCard slot - but it works
only with Windows laptops for now.
<http://www.bookendzdocks.com/>
<http://www.belkin.com/pressroom/releases/uploads/10_10_06NotebookExpansionDock.html>
The Belkin dock uses the ExpressCard slot to carry data back and
forth to five USB 2.0 ports, a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet port, VGA and
DVI video connectors, and a 5.1 surround-sound audio input and
output (analog and optical digital). Its monitor port should allow
the use of two monitors in addition to the MacBook Pro's built-in
LCD display - the MacBook Pro natively supports an external monitor
already, and the dock would thus allow a second external monitor.
A Belkin representative said that the company was working on Mac
support, but wouldn't commit to a release timetable. If you think
you might want this particular product available for your MacBook
Pro, letting Belkin know might help raise its priority.
Google Buys YouTube for $1.65 Billion
-------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8709>
Search engine giant Google announced last week that it is buying the
popular video sharing site YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google
stock. Although Google has its own video sharing service, Google
Video, traffic statistics from Hitwise show YouTube with two and a
half times more hits than Google Video back in August 2006, and more
than four times the visits in September 2006. YouTube will keep its
name and will continue to operate independently from Google, and
Google claims that YouTube will complement Google Video rather than
replace it.
<http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/google_youtube.html>
<http://weblogs.hitwise.com/bill-tancer/2006/08/google_youtube_and_myspace_an.html>
<http://weblogs.hitwise.com/leeann-prescott/2006/10/google_youtube_rumor_-_hitwise.html>
Does the acquisition make sense? From Google's perspective, it gives
Google the lion's share of the fast-growing video sharing world, and
another vast source of pages on which to display contextual
advertising. Google has said it won't run ads before videos, but I
have to assume that people at Google are thinking hard about new
ways to turn user-contributed video into a serious revenue stream.
It's even easier to see why YouTube would want this deal. The
company has been losing money and hasn't come up with any reasonable
way to reverse that trend. Bandwidth and server costs and
maintenance must be insane for YouTube, but those are problems that
Google has already solved. Plus, YouTube was facing threats of
lawsuits from the major movie studios, and Google announced deals to
display music videos from Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner
Music Group. Those deals indicate Google may have the negotiating
clout to make licensing happen more broadly, and Google certainly
has the money and legal firepower to fight any lawsuits that do
ensue.
<http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/google_sonybmg.html>
<http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/google_wmg.html>
These music videos will be made available for online viewing for
free (select music videos from Warner Music Group will also be
available for purchase as downloads for $2), and the studios will
gain revenue via Google's normal ad model. That may hurt Apple's
ability to sell $2 music videos via the iTunes Store (see "iTunes 6
Gets Video," 17-Oct-05), although it remains to be seen if the audio
and video quality of free music videos on Google Video/YouTube will
be comparable to downloads from the iTunes Store.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8288>
Google's press releases also note that the company is working with
content companies to allow people access to music and video for use
in their "creative user-generated productions," which presumably is
meant to cover user-created videos, but makes me wonder about sample
and mixing of music as well. But the most interesting statement in
the Warner Music Group press release is: "Once Google's technology
is implemented, content companies such as Warner Music Group will
have the opportunity to monetize the use of music in user-generated
content, or if they choose, have the content removed from the
platform."
There's clearly a dance going on here, but it's unclear who's
leading or where it's headed, and it bears future scrutiny. Google
may or may not always live up to its motto, "Don't be evil," but
companies like Sony BMG Entertainment and Warner Music Group have
definitely thrown their lot in with the devil in the past, as with
the scandal surrounding Sony BMG's surreptitious distribution of
spyware on audio CDs as a copy prevention mechanism.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Sony_BMG_CD_copy_protection_scandal>
Eudora Goes Open Source with Thunderbird
----------------------------------------
by Mark H. Anbinder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8710>
Qualcomm announced last week that future versions of the venerable
email program Eudora, which the company has sold for many years,
will become an open-source collaboration with the Mozilla
Foundation. Steve Dorner, vice president of technology for
Qualcomm's Eudora group and the software's original developer, says
he'll lead a group that will "build an open-source mailer with
Eudora features on top of Thunderbird."
<http://www.eudora.com/faq/>
<http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/>
First created in 1988, Eudora was a popular Macintosh email client
in the early days of the Internet, and it still enjoys broad use,
especially at academic institutions and among Mac veterans who
refuse to give up its power-user capabilities in favor of newer
software. In 1992, Qualcomm (otherwise known for developing wireless
phone technologies) acquired the software from the University of
Illinois and hired Steve Dorner, and has continued to develop Mac OS
and Windows versions.
"I was getting really tired of maintaining Eudora's elderly code
base, as well as working on extremely boring things like HTML
rendering," Dorner told TidBITS. He looks forward to "using
Thunderbird as a base," allowing him to focus on "the things that
make up the core productivity parts of the Eudora experience." The
company picked the cross-platform Thunderbird product because, he
says, "it has strengths where Eudora has weaknesses, and will
complement us quite nicely. Mozilla is also happy to have us
developing for their platform, and has made it very clear to us that
they welcome our effort." He hopes "that improvements [will] flow
freely between the two mailers."
Qualcomm plans to release the first freeware, open-source version of
Eudora in the first half of 2007. In the meantime, the company has
released the final commercial versions (6.2.4 for Mac OS X and 7.1
for Windows), which will continue to be available, now for $20, with
support provided for six months. Existing support contracts and site
licenses will be honored until the end of the current terms, and
paid and sponsored-mode versions of the current software will
continue to work "in perpetuity."
Steve Dorner admits he doesn't know which parts of Eudora are most
useful to its proponents, and asks users to speak up and offer input
"on what our priorities should be." Users who wish to weigh in, or
developers who'd like to pitch in for the open-source effort, should
visit the Eudora developer page.
<http://eudora.com/developers/>
The just-released Eudora 6.2.4 is a minor upgrade, offering mostly a
new importer for the Tiger version of Apple Mail (as much as it
seems somewhat unlikely that many people would be switching from
Mail to Eudora until progress is seen on the open source version of
Eudora), updated SpamWatch definitions to help Eudora keep up with
spammer tricks (available only in Paid mode), and a variety of minor
tweaks and bug fixes. Since it costs $20 to keep using Eudora in
Paid mode, the decision of whether or not to upgrade is mostly a
matter of whether you've been having trouble with now-fixed bugs.
It's a 12.3 MB download.
<http://www.eudora.com/download/eudora/mac/6.2.4/ReleaseNotes.txt>
<http://www.eudora.com/download/>
**Staff Roundtable** -- Although not everyone on the staff currently
uses Eudora, many of us still do, and our long experience with the
program generated some opinions.
[Adam Engst]: I've already had numerous people asking me what I
think of Qualcomm's announcement, often with what seem to be ominous
undertones or the assumption that this announcement means the end of
Eudora as we know it. But in fact, I'm happy to hear that Qualcomm
will be working with the Mozilla Foundation to build the next
version of Eudora on top of Thunderbird. It's a relief to have a
strong public statement of direction after watching Eudora exist in
a kind of corporate limbo for several years, never receiving the
resources that were necessary to give it a modern code base.
Although I don't have any particular experience with Thunderbird,
open source projects generally work well under the hood, so a
combination of open source underpinnings and Eudora's power-user
feature set could be great. Plus, although Eudora has been available
for free in various forms over the years, having the full program
become freeware will enable it to compete better with bundled
applications like Mail.
That said, I do have some reservations. First, will Eudora attract
developers who will make substantive contributions? I'd guess that
Eudora has a disproportionate number of developers in its user base,
and universities that desperately want to avoid Microsoft Outlook
(and they do) may well be interested in contributing development
resources. Second, will the Eudora team be able to create something
compelling in a reasonable time frame? I'm sure it will be plenty of
work just to get a basic set of Eudora's current features working,
but email is crying for a complete rethinking.
What I'd really hope to see is a plug-in capability in the new
Eudora that enables developers to create innovative plug-ins, much
as has happened with the open source Firefox Web browser. Firefox
itself isn't particularly unusual, but the numerous plug-ins extend
its functionality in a wide variety of ways. Plug-ins for the new
Eudora would seem likely, since Thunderbird already offers this
capability.
<https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/>
I encourage anyone interested in the future of Eudora, whether or
not you're a developer, to participate in the open source project.
Goodness knows that open source software could use more user
interface designers, documentation specialists, and normal users to
provide real-world feedback.
Also, Jason Snell of Macworld and I discussed the Eudora
announcement with Chuck Joiner on a special edition of our
MacNotables podcast. It's a hoot, so give it a listen!
<http://www.macnotables.com/archives/2006/681.html>
[Glenn Fleishman]: I have to ask, as a loyal user of Bare Bones
Software's Mailsmith, what Eudora becoming free and open-source does
to the cosmos of email clients for Mac OS X. It's pretty clear
there's a very small market to sell email clients to Mac OS X users
based on Qualcomm exiting the paid market - and you could use Eudora
in one of two free modes, anyway - and the paucity of unbundled
commercial email clients.
<http://www.barebones.com/products/mailsmith/>
Apple's Mail is part of Mac OS X. Eudora has a free and paid mode.
Entourage is part of Microsoft Office. AOL's mail is part of the AOL
client. Thunderbird is free. PowerMail and GyazMail are commercial,
and although I have no idea of their user bases, neither shows up in
my email with any frequency. And Mailsmith is commercial software.
<http://www.ctmdev.com/powermail/>
<http://www.gyazsquare.com/gyazmail/>
Of course, most Eudora users I know used the free Sponsored mode,
which means that switching to free, open-source (no sponsor) as
their only method of release isn't as profound a shift as switching
from a commercial client. This may not, therefore, affect Bare Bones
or any bundled/free mail clients' market share or mind share.
What will be interesting is whether the open-source community and
existing projects merge into a Eudora/Thunderbird code base, or even
fork from Thunderbird into something completely new. I have long
said that open-source can't make decent graphical user interfaces,
and that's still been generally true, with projects under the
Mozilla Foundation (which is heavily funded by corporations and
donations) being the biggest exceptions.
[Mark H. Anbinder] No doubt because of its origins in higher
education, Eudora enjoys a bigger market share in academia than
anywhere else. That share has been dropping, though, as Eudora's
ability to keep up with modern mail habits has fallen behind. At
Cornell University, for example, Eudora users (especially on the
Windows platform) have complained about inadequate IMAP support, and
Steve Dorner would be the first to admit that the software's
capability to display HTML-encrufted email is stuck in the 1990s.
Even though many users, looking for a more modern user experience or
better IMAP handling, have migrated to Thunderbird or Mail over the
last couple of years, Eudora's power-user contingent is holding on
as long as it can, unwilling to give up years of perfectly tuned
filters, fast and powerful searching, and comprehensive support for
multiple "personalities."
Filters and personalities are certainly the key reasons I still use
Eudora; it lets me handle mail to and from a dozen separate
addresses in a way that no other clients I've tried can offer,
including both Mail and Thunderbird. Combine that with over a decade
of mail stored in Eudora, and you can imagine I'm looking forward to
a new Eudora that will let me migrate effectively, gaining modern
email features without losing the core capabilities I'm accustomed
to.
Photomatix: A Virtual Magic Wand
--------------------------------
by Charles Maurer
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8711>
Imagine you are staring at a magnificent mountain scene - blue sky,
dramatic clouds, glaciered peaks, rocks of varied hue. You take a
picture but when it's processed you are disappointed. The sky and
glaciers show up clearly but everything else is dark or black.
Every photographer has experienced this kind of disappointment. It
happens because the range of brightness of objects outdoors is
usually higher than a camera can capture or a sheet of paper can
reproduce - typically a thousandfold higher or more - so the
photographic process must squeeze and truncate the tones to make
them fit. Digital processing can dodge some of this problem (see
"Reality and Digital Pictures," 12-Dec-05) and now an application
can tackle it directly: MultimediaPhoto's Photomatix. As you can see
from the before-and-after photo of just such a scene, it works like
magic.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8365>
<http://www.hdrsoft.com/>
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/851/IMG01004demo.jpg>
**Dynamic Range** -- The range of brightness of a scene or an image is
called its dynamic range. A sunny scene will likely have a dynamic
range of at least 100,000:1 and its range can exceed 1,000,000:1. In
contrast, image sensors can record on the order of 1,000:1 (DSLRs)
or 100:1 (other cameras), and paper can display a range of only
about 100:1. The range of computer monitors is roughly comparable to
that of paper.
Note that these are two different problems: (1) the dynamic range of
a scene can be greater than a camera can capture and (2) the dynamic
range of a digital image can be greater than paper or screens can
reproduce. Both of these are problems of high dynamic range ("HDR"
in jargon) but the meaning of "high" depends upon the context. There
are no established conventions for the use of the term and there is
no standard HDR format.
In principle, the first of these problems has a simple solution. If
one exposure records too narrow a range of tones, first take enough
exposures to record the entire range then tell a computer to combine
the overlapping exposures. To combine them you can take some form of
average, or you can take light tones from one file and dark tones
from another, or you can create an image with sufficient bits to
describe every tone in both. In practice these solutions may need
some fiddling because the tones in an image are neither perceived
nor recorded in neat steps, but in principle they are
straightforward.
The second problem is incomparably more difficult. Consider what it
might mean to compress tones tenfold. It happens that photographs in
newspapers display a range of reflectance from highlight to shadow
of about 10:1. Let's say that you photograph a man reading a paper.
If all of the photo's tones are compressed tenfold, then you are
likely to see a man reading a sheet of grey.
**Tonal Compression** -- High tonal compression is quite a trick, yet
Photomatix does it. Photomatix performs its magic like a magician,
by directing the viewer's attention. The eye cares little about
subtle gradations and minuscule detail; the eye looks for clear
contrasts between adjacent tones. "Local contrast" is the jargon.
Most of the information we take from a scene comes from local
contrast. Photomatix makes sure that we notice this local contrast
and slips through the compression on the side. Where it finds clear
contrasting tones, first it enhances them and then it compresses the
rest.
To see how this works, look at this picture of buffalo herders. The
dark image shows the raw file. It is exposed to retain detail in the
highlights. To make the picture in the middle I lightened the
shadows using Photoshop's shadow/highlight control. For the picture
on the right I used Photomatix. Both versions I finished to make as
naturalistic as I could. (Note: the herder's beard looks unnatural
because he dyed it with henna.)
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/851/IMG05432demo.jpg>
Although this function is intended for squeezing HDR pictures onto
paper - well, any magician who can saw a woman in half can also pull
a rabbit from a hat. Local contrast carries most of the information
in every picture, not merely in pictures with a high dynamic range
but also in pictures with a low dynamic range. Enhancing local
contrast within a dull photo can increase its apparent dynamic
range.
For an example of this, look at these three pictures. All of these
carry the same range of tones. The top one shows the raw file. It
contains the highlights and shadows needed to show
three-dimensionality, but the lighting is so flat that the
highlights and shadows are difficult for the eye to see readily or
for ordinary manipulations to bring out. In the middle picture
Photomatix has enhanced those contrasts to turn a dull photo into a
decent one. The new contrasts I was able to enhance further by
conventional means to make the finished picture at the bottom.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/851/IMG06150demo.jpg>
**Combining Exposures** -- Photomatix's developer sells a plug-in
($70) that does only tonal compression and a stand-alone package
($100) that also provides several ways of combining different
exposures into a single image. Currently the plug-in works only with
Photoshop CS2 although it will probably also work with Photoshop
Elements 5. (It also works with Photoshop CS and Photoshop Elements
4 for Windows.)
I usually use the plug-in, because I work with Photoshop CS2 and
rarely combine exposures. I have combined some photos to stunning
effect but the Foveon sensor in my DSLR has a sufficiently broad
dynamic range that I seldom want to do this and when I do, usually I
cannot because the camera is not on a tripod or the subject is not
dead still.
Images from cameras with a smaller sensor would benefit from this
treatment more often, as might scans of film, but I would not expect
it to be an artistic panacea, not even when the camera is on a
tripod and the subject is stationary. That's because if a scene
shows extremes of contrast, it will likely look unnatural if the
photo replaces the extremes with moderation.
You can see an example in these photos of a rain forest. On the
left, a single exposure captures the extreme contrast of the forest
but loses the range of colour in the shade. It shows the forest but
not the trees. On the right, a combination of two exposures shows
the trees but not the forest.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/851/ForestDemo.jpg>
Since I seldom combine images, I cannot compare Photomatix's
combining functions with the equivalent features of Photoshop or
other products. I can say, however, that Photomatix's tone-mapping
strikes me as more sophisticated than the equivalent functions in
Photoshop or in any other plug-in I know of. Sometimes the
tone-mapping from Photomatix seems too dramatic, but I have found
Photomatix to be so helpful so often that I have learned to try it
on almost every picture I take, to see what it will do.
**The First Step** -- An image re-mapped with Photomatix is a starting
point, not a finished product. After re-mapping an image - which
must be done before anything else - I still need to adjust it in all
the usual ways, just as I need to after adjusting it with
Photoshop's shadow/highlight control (see "Editing Photographs for
the Perfectionist," 27-Sep-04). Also, enhancing detail in shadows
and highlights enhances noise as well, so the image ends up needing
an unusually thorough cleaning. A specialized noise-reduction
package like Noise Ninja I find to be essential.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/7832>
Although Photomatix is an excellent product, it is still a young
one. The developer is still tinkering with the algorithms and the
user interface. On my computer the plug-in and application have both
been stable, but occasionally they have not behaved quite as
expected and the processed image does not always look quite like the
preview. However, the developer is a single person who handles sales
and support as well as programming, so she does not sweep problems
under a corporate rug; she deals with them. The latest releases (1.1
for the plug-in and 2.3 for the application) appear to be
significantly cleaner than the last ones. Demo versions are free for
the downloading.
<http://www.hdrsoft.com/download.html>
PayBITS: If Charles's recommendations for improving photos
helped, he asks that you make a donation to Doctors Without
Borders: <http://www.doctorswithoutborders-usa.org/donate/>
Read more about PayBITS: <http://www.tidbits.com/paybits/>
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/16-Oct-06
------------------------------------
by TidBITS Staff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8712>
**cross-platform: Visual Basic** -- With Visual Basic disappearing on
the Mac, what options exist for cross-platform scripting? (18
messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/973/>
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<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/974/>
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<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/975/>
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(16 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/976/>
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<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/977/>
**Eudora goes open source** -- Speaking of Eudora, readers react to
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<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/978/>
**UK Mac accounting software** -- A reader in the United Kingdom is
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<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/980/>
$$
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