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How-To: Edit RAW Photos on a Budget (or for Free!)

Mark Edward Soper — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:30:00 -0600

Why Shoot in RAW Mode?

RAW mode, a feature of virtually all digital SLR cameras and an increasing number of high-end point-and-shoot cameras, enables your camera to capture all of the image data in your photographs in full quality without distortion caused by JPEG data compression. RAW files enable you to repair white balance and color temperature problems, solve exposure problems, and adjust color intensity and other settings far better than you can with JPEG files. Unfortunately, you must use software that supports RAW files to optimize your picture and export it to a format you can use for other purposes, such as JPEG or TIFF.

Thankfully, you don't need to spend a fortune on software to edit RAW images. In this article, we'll put three popular solutions to the test:

Canon Professional Digital Photo
Google Picasa 3.5
Adobe Photoshop Elements with Adobe Camera Raw

Professional Digital Photo and Google Picasa are free, while Adobe Photoshop Elements v8 runs around $80-100. Can you get by with a freebie, or should you cough up some bucks? To answer this question, we turned all three of our contenders loose on discolored, underexposed and overexposed Canon RAW (.CR2) photos taken with a Canon Digital Rebel XTi camera.

Google Picasa 3.5

Google Picasa is easy to download and uses the same interface for editing RAW images as for editing other supported image types (JPEG, TIFF, and so on). Picasa supports most digital camera RAW codecs (see this reference) and is updated frequently as new digital camera RAW file types are introduced.

Locating RAW Images in Picasa

RAW images are displayed in Picasa's image library window the same way as JPEG images. To determine the image type, click the image, and the file extension, size, and other basic properties are shown in the blue bar between the image browser and the action buttons.

Picasa and Automatic Photo Repairs

As soon as Picasa locates photos, including RAW images, it automatically applies fixes to those photos. This is very handy if you don't want to worry about making a lot of changes yourself, but if you don't agree with Picasa's changes, it can be frustrating, since you can't undo automatic fixes.

Fixing Color and Exposure Problems with Basic Fixes

To make manual changes, double-click the photo in the Picasa image library window. Picasa uses three tabs in its editing space. The Basic Fixes tab opens by default. For a quick automatic repair, click I'm Feeling Lucky. Sometimes you're lucky, but in this example, we've traded dark poor color for lighter poor color. Thankfully, you can undo changes made on this tab by clicking the Undo button

Using the Tuning Menu

For greater control over the image, click the Tuning tab. The Tuning tab enables you to use sliders to adjust Fill Light, Highlights, Shadows, and Color Temperature (the third tab, Effects, provides a dozen special effects). By using the Tuning tab, we achieved better color and exposure.

Once you make changes to a RAW file, the changes are stored in Picasa, but the RAW file itself is not changed.

Applying Changes to Multiple RAW Files

If you have a number of RAW images that have the same color temperature (white balance) or exposure problems, or if you want to apply the same special effects to a group of photos, you may want to make the same edits to each photo. Here's how Picasa does it.

1. Select the fixes desired from the Basic Fixes, Tuning, and Effects tab.

2. Click Edit, Copy All Effects.

3. Click Back to Library.

4. Use Shift-click or Ctrl-Click to select similar photos.

5. Click Edit, Paste All Effects.

Unfortunately, because you pasted the effects to the files, the sliders used to adjust exposure, color temperature, and effects do not show the actual settings on the target files.

Saving a JPEG File in Picasa

To create a JPEG file (which can be used for printing, emailing, websites, and so on) from your edited RAW file, click File, Save As, and select JPEG from the pull-down options. Unfortunately, Picasa does not provide options for file size/quality.

Picasa matches the image quality of the original photo, and uses a quality level of 85% when it cannot determine the quality level.

Saving Other File Types

If you need to convert a RAW file into a file type other than JPEG, current versions of Picasa can't do it (this feature was available in earlier versions).

Picasa 3.5 Summary

Pros: Free, supports most cameras that shoot RAW images, easy to use interface

Cons: Automatically makes changes to photos that can't be undone, more limited controls than others, can only export photos in JPEG, can't control JPEG quality levels.

Our take: Use Picasa 3.5 if it's all you have, but you'll probably be happier with your camera vendor's RAW image editor, or with Adobe Photoshop Elements with Camera RAW.

Canon Digital Photo Professional

Canon actually provides two ways to edit RAW files: ZoomBrowser EX and Digital Photo Professional. ZoomBrowser EX is clumsy, provides very limited editing features of RAW files only through an additional Canon-provided program called RAW Image Task, and is excruciatingly difficult to update. Our advice, after trying both: use Digital Photo Professional instead. You can install it from the CD packaged with your Canon camera, or download it from the Canon website.

Using Digital Photo Professional to Edit RAW Files

Digital Photo Professional (DPP) bears a striking resemblance to Adobe Lightroom. And, you can consider it a sort of "junior Lightroom" for Canon RAW files. Here's how to get started:

1. Open DPP

2. Select a RAW image created by a Canon camera (.CR2 or .CRW).

3. Click Tool to open the Tool palette.

4. From the RAW tab, use sliders to adjust brightness, white balance, picture style, contrast, color tone, saturation, and sharpness.

6. Use the RGB tab to adjust tone curves for RGB or separate channels, brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, and sharpness.

7. Use the NR tab to adjust noise reduction.

8. Click Tool to close the Tool palette.

Note: If you prefer to work with full-screen images, double-click the image in Step 2.

Using DPP to Save Changes to a RAW File

1. After editing a RAW file, click File, Save As.

2. Navigate to a different location if desired.

3. If you don't choose a different location and you don't want to overwrite the original file, enter a new name for the file.

4. Click Save.

5. A new RAW file is saved to the specified location.

6. If you have selected multiple files (see "Processing Multiple Files" for details), you will be prompted to save each additional file.

Saving a RAW Image as a Different File Type

1. Click File, Convert and Save.

2. The saved file uses the same name as the original file. Enter a different name if desired.

3. Select the image type (Exif-JPEG is standard; you can also select 8-bit or 16-bit TIFF, with or without JPEG image).

4. If you select an output option that includes JPEG, the image quality defaults to 10 (best). To decrease file size (and reduce quality), use the slider to select a smaller value (1 is smallest/worst quality).

5. Select the desired resolution.

6. Click Save.

7. The file is converted and saved.

Processing Multiple Files with DPP

To work with multiple files in DPP, you can choose from several methods.

Interactive Processing

1. Click each file you want to process to select it.

2. Click a check mark (check 1, check 2, or check 3).

3. Repeat Steps 1 and 2 until all files you want to process have been marked with the same check mark.

4. Click Edit, Select Check Mark x Images Only (x=1, 2, or 3).

5. Click Tool to open the Tool palette.

6. Make adjustments as needed using the RAW, RGB, and NR tabs.

7. Save or convert each file as desired, using File, Save As or File, Convert and Save.

Create a "Recipe" for File Editing

DPP also enables you to create a "recipe" from an edited file and apply it to other, similar files.

1. Make the changes as desired to the photo.

2. Right-click the photo.

3. Click Save Recipe in File.

4. By default, the name of the photo is used as the name for the recipe (.vrd) file. Enter a different name if desired.

5. Navigate to a different folder if desired (recipes are stored in the same folder as the source photo by default).

6. Click Save to save the recipe.

Applying a Recipe to a Different File

1. Select the file you want to apply a recipe to.

2. Click Edit, Read and Paste Recipe from File.

3. Select the recipe desired.

4. Click Open.

5. The recipe is applied to the selected file.

To apply a recipe to multiple files, select the files first as discussed in "Interactive Processing" earlier in this article.

Digital Photo Professional Summary

Pros: Free, powerful interface, able to save changes to a RAW file, doesn't make any changes for you, enables you to output both JPEG and TIFF files in a single operation, can save recipes to make the same changes to similar files.

Cons: Need to read the manual (available on the Canon camera CD or online) to learn all features; only works with Canon RAW files.

Our take: If you use Canon cameras that work with RAW files, DPP is a bargain – but read the manual to learn everything it can do.

Adobe Photoshop Elements with Camera Raw

Adobe Photoshop Elements can't work with RAW files unless you use Camera Raw to process the files first. However, once you install Photoshop Elements and Camera Raw, you're ready to work with Raw files. Camera Raw is available from the Adobe website at no charge.

For Windows

For MacOS

Cameras supported by latest Camera RAW version

Using Camera Raw to Edit RAW Files

You can open any RAW file recognized by Camera Raw with Photoshop Elements, once you install the appropriate version of Camera Raw. Here's how to get started:

1. Open a RAW image file from File, Open in Photoshop Elements, or drag the file to the Photoshop Elements window.

2. Camera Raw opens.

3. Use the Basic tab to adjust white balance, color temperature, exposure, fill light, contrast, and other settings.

4. Click the Advanced tab if you need to adjust sharpening or noise reduction.

Using Camera Raw to Create a Digital Negative

Adobe's digital negative (DNG) format provides an industry-standard file format that retains all image information, making it a useful replacement for proprietary RAW files. In fact, a few digital cameras store their RAW files as DNG files. Here's how to save a DNG file with Camera RAW.

1. To create a digital negative (DNG) file, click Save Image.

2. Enter the image name and select other options, then click Save.

Saving a RAW Image as a Different File Type with Camera Raw and Adobe Photoshop Elements

1. After making changes with Camera Raw, click Open File.

2. The file opens in Photoshop Elements.

3. Use File, Save as to save the file as a JPEG, TIFF, PSD, or other file type.

4. If you select JPEG, you will be prompted to select the desired image quality (1-lowest, 12-highest).

5. Click Save to save changes.

Processing Multiple Files with Adobe Camera Raw

To apply the same changes to multiple files, you should open the files at the same time:

1. Select the files you want to edit with Camera RAW.

2. Drag the files to the open Photoshop Elements window.

3. Click Select All to select all files.

4. Use the Basic and Advanced tabs to make editing adjustments as needed.

Adobe Camera Raw Summary

Pros: Great preview, makes most changes with a single interface, works with both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements (which provide the most flexible file output options of any program in this roundup, can make the same changes to multiple files, works with virtually all RAW file types.

Cons: Requires you to buy Photoshop Elements (or Photoshop); if you buy a new camera, you might need to upgrade Photoshop Elements/Photoshop, as the newest Camera Raw versions support only current Photoshop Elements/Photoshop, can't save settings for reuse later.

Our take: If you already use Photoshop Elements (or Photoshop), Camera Raw is a no-brainer; it's also the best of the three solutions if you plan to make a lot of additional changes to your photo afterwards. However, if you are looking only for a RAW converter, your camera vendor's software may be satisfactory – and it's usually free!

Mark Edward Soper is the author of The Shot Doctor: The Amateur's Guide to Taking Great Digital Photos.

Check this Out: Nighttime Video Shot with Canon's EOS 1D MK IV

Bart Salisbury — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:04:06 -0500

On the very day that Canon introduces the EOS-1D Mark IV camera, filmmaker Vincent Laforet releases the first movie produced on the camera: Nocturne. What’s amazing about Laforet’s short movie is that it was shot at night, in an urban setting, making use only of available light. On his blog Laforet writes: “Here is the main point that I hope you take into account: the short film you are about to watch was shot in pretty much the very worst light that I could possibly find in an evening urban landscape. I did not chose “pretty lighting” in a mall or under neon signs. That would have been cheating in my book.” The result is impressive.

But then so to is the EOS-1D Mark IV. It comes with an Advanced Photo System High Definition (APS-H) sized 16.1 megapixel CMOS sensor, dual DIGIC 4 image processors, and--wait for it--ISO speeds from 100 to 12,800. The ability of the camera, which is primarily for taking still pictures, to handle low-light situations and provide high quality noise reduction is evident from Laforet’s film. (Although Laforet does confess to cleaning it up a bit with Stu's Magic Bullet Colorista software.) The EOS-1D’s video ability includes HD movies with manual exposure control, shooting between 1080 at 30 frames per second, down to 480 at 60 frames per second.

Equally impressive is the EOS-1D’s price-tag. Canon’s suggested retail price is $4,999, and that’s only for the camera body. I’m thinking my hidden Scorsese is going to have to remain hidden a bit longer. In the meantime a 1080p version of Nocturne can be found at SmugMug.

Image Credit: Vincent Laforet

Canon's New EOS 7D: Bigger, Faster, Smarter, Stronger

Mark Edward Soper — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:46:42 -0500

Canon fired the latest salvo in the hotter-than-ever digital SLR wars this week, introducing its new EOS 7D. The $1699 (body-only) EOS 7D includes some now-familiar features, such as APS-C image sensor size (1.6x crop factor), 3-inch LCD with Live View, and Full HD Video.

The $1699 (body-only) EOS 7D includes some now-familiar features, such as the APS-C image sensor size (1.6x crop factor), 3-inch LCD with Live View, and Full HD Video. Here's what's new and different.

Bigger - The EOS 7D cranks up the size of several subsystems, including

18MP image sensor
Two DIGIC 4 image processors for faster image processing and better low-light performance
ISO expandable to 12,800
100% viewfinder coverage
19-point autofocus
63 zone dual-layer metering that uses AF and color information for better exposure and image quality

Faster - Shoot faster with the EOS 7D, thanks to

8 fps burst shooting (up to 126 large JPEG or up to 15 RAW; requires Ultra DMA Compact Flash Card)
1080HD video mode now offers frame rates up to 30 fps and includes adjustable frame rates for all supported video resolutions

Smarter - The EOS 7D provides a smarter viewfinder and AF system for better information and composition

New toggleable LCD overlay for better framing and focusing even in total darkness
New Spot AF mode for focusing on tiny areas of a scene
AF Point expansion (borrowed from the EOS 1D series) automatically shifts to adjacent focus points if the selected manual focus point loses focus
Improved automatic AF point selection and Zone AF

Stronger - The EOS 7D is designed to stand up to protracted use:

Magnesium body with dust and weather resistant features
Shutter rated for up to 150,000 cycles

Lens Options, Accessories and More Information

The EOS 7D will also be bundled with Canon's 28-135mm EF IS lens, which provides framing comparable to a 45-215mm lens on a full-frame 35mm camera. The kit will sell for an estimated $1,899.

Wide-angle fans will want to consider Canon's new 15-85mm EF-S IS (24-135 35mm equivalent) and 18-135mm EF-S IS (28-215mm 35mm equivalent) lenses.

Canon's new optional WFT-E5A Wireless File Transmitter ($699.99) provides a variety of storage and backup options for the EOS 7D, including the ability to record to a USB external hard disk and an Ultra DMA Compact Flash card inside the camera at the same time, and it also supports geotagging through Bluetooth. Learn more about the EOS 7D and WFT-E5A here.

Learn more about the EOS 7D's new AF features here.

Are you excited about the new features in the 7D? Wishing it had a different mix of goodies? Click Comment and sound off.

Photo courtesy Canon USA.

How to Buy an SD Card for Your Digital Camera

Gordon Mah Ung — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500

There’s possibly nothing more confusing than trying to buy a new SDHC card. Do you buy Class 2 or Class 6. Do you care about the “X” rating and should you pay for spring for a premium card? Frankly, even geeks can get confused when faced with a selection of 14 different SDHC cards of varying sizes and ratings – none of which readily make sense. Fear not, we waded through the specs and grabbed a selection of cards for testing to see what really matters.

Classless Society

First up is the most confusing and possibly useless rating system I’ve seen in a while. You’ll recognize these on the face of the SDHC card with the typical Class 2, Class 4, or Class 6 designation. This is nothing more than a designation for what the minimum write speed is for a card. A Class 2 card guarantees a minimum write speed of at least 2MB/s. A Class 4 guarantees 4MB/s and Class 6 means writes of 6MB/s a second. The new Class 10 cards (which are not quite on the market yet) would support minimum writes of 10MB/s.

The class rating was created to help the camcorder makers shoot for a minimum speed for their AVCHD cams. The current AVCHD specs maxes out at H264 High-Profile at 24Mb/s. That pretty much makes anything beyond a Class 4 (4MB/s or 32Mb/s) overkill for any current AVCHD cam. In fact, many AVCHD cameras still haven’t even adopted the higher quality profiles and are still down at 17Mb/s bit rates -- something most Class 2 cards (16Mb/s) can support.

This is my primary problem (and Sandisk’s which has recently been going public with its displeasure over the Class rating). It doesn’t serve the primary audience of SD card users: still photographers. Since it’s pretty clear that anything above Class 4 is overkill for AVCHD, what about still photographers?

That’s where the X-rating or pure write speeds can make the difference between sitting there waiting for the light to stop blinking and getting the shot of a lifetime.

X-Rated

The X-rating is nothing more than a write-speed strangely based on the old read speed of CD-ROM drives. So, 1X is 150KB/s. A Class 2 card equals writes of 13x, a Class 4 equals 26x and Class 6 is 40x. Some manufacturers such as Sandisk, simply skip the X rating, and express write speed in the most plain language that nerds can understand: MB/s. The company’s Extreme III SDHC cards, for example, are rated at 30MB/s. Again, that’s the disconnect that will confuse buyers: a high-performance card that writes at 30MB/s will carry the same Class 6 designation as a card that writes at possibly only 6MB/s.

The Tests

For our tests, we obtained three 8GB Kingston SDHC cards each rated at either 2, 4 or 6. We also looked at a Class 6 Sandisk Extreme III 8GB card as well a Verbatim 16GB Premium Class 6 card that’s rated at 60x writes or roughly 9MB/s. Our first test involved using a Canon Rebel T1i to first shoot video at 1080P and 720P modes. The camera does not write to AVCHD, instead it writes H.264 in .MOV container files with a monotrack audio. It’s no surprise, but every card had no issues with the video mode.

For our still image tests, we had no such expectation. To maximize the file size, we shot at the highest rated ISO of the body (12800) and in RAW mode. We also shot with a fixed white-balance, shutter speed, aperture and with auto focus off. We shot until the camera’s buffer was full and then timed how long it took to write those nine 22.7MB files to the memory card.
The results were not exactly what we expected. First, on the predictable front – the Sandisk Extreme III premium pricing bought us premium performance. The Rebel T1i’s Digic IV CPU took but 10 seconds to write the roughly 159MB of data to the card. That’s half the time of the majority of the other cards here such as the 16GB Verbatim Class 6 card and the 8GB Kingston Class 6 card.

Now for the interesting part. The worst performance was not the Class 2-rated 8GB Kingston card, it was the Class 4-rated 8GB Kingston card. The lowly Class 2 Kingston card turned in the same write performance as the Class 6 8GB Kingston card and the 16GB Verbatim Class 6 card. That dog slow Class 4 8GB card though, took 30 seconds to clear the buffer. Woof.

Our second round of tests measured how long it takes to copy the file from the card to a backup device. For that, we used the highly rated and incredibly fast Nexto Extreme portable backup device that we reviewed in our September issue. To hopefully increase the performance of the Nexto Extreme even more, we removed the 5,400 RPM Fujitsu 160GB hard drive and installed a Corsair P256 256GB SSD. This SSD features write speeds in excess of 100MB/s. The test file was a single 4GB video file captured on the Rebel T1i.

The results were again quite interesting. For the most part, we saw very little difference between all five cards. The previously dog-slow Class 4 Kingston card was actually the fastest by a hair. The Sandisk Extreme III was a close second with the 16GB Verbatim and the Class 2 and Class 6 Kingston cards coming in next. The takeaway here is not to worry too much about reading from the cards as there seems to be fairly insignificant differences between them to care. Certainly, card readers can impact the but we’re not too worried about how long it takes you sitting at your desk to copy the photos.
A final test was performed with the slowest card and the fastest card using old equipment. We took a Canon PowerShot SD950 IS, set it to its highest ISO and shot continuous frames and measured how long it would take to record the images.

The Sandisk Extreme III could shoot 15 images at 1600 ISO in 31 seconds. That previously dog slow Class 4 Kingston card? Just 34 seconds. At lower ISOs of 100 with a resulting smaller file, it took the Sandisk Extreme III 17 seconds to shoot 25 images while the Class 4 Kingston took 21 seconds. The upshot is don’t pay for pricey performance cards if your camera can’t use it. It is no different than putting super unleaded into your Toyota Yaris – you’re just giving Exxon mo’ money.

	Kingston	Kingston	Kingston	Sandisk Extreme III	Verbatim Premium SDHC 60x
Capacity	8GB	8GB	8GB	8GB	16GB
Class	2	4	6	6	6
X-Rating	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	60x write/133x read
Speed Rating	n/a	n/a	n/a	30MB/s	n/a
Time to Write 9 22.7MB RAW Files	20	30	20	10	19
Time to Copy 4GB.MOV file to Nexto Extreme w/ Corsair P256	4:08	3:47	4:09	3:49	3:57

Buying an SD Card for Video

If your primary focus is video for AVCHD you don’t need to pay for anything more than Class 4. Again, any Class 4 card will easily surpass a 32Mb/s write speed. Since AVCHD tops out at 24Mb/s, anything else is wasting your money. It’s better to have a bigger, slower card (but more than fast enough for your video camera), than a faster, smaller card for consumer AVCHD.

Buying an SD Card for Still Imaging

Buy what your camera can shoot or what you intend to upgrade to. It’s clear that the high performance Sandisk Extreme III SDHC is the king of the hill for performance and if you have a modern DSLR such as Canon’s Digital Rebel T1i or Nikon’s D5000 or even the older Nikon D90, paying for the fastest card you can afford will pay dividends in how fast you can shoot images, especially if you shoot in RAW mode.

However, that doesn’t mean everyone with a digital camera should pay the premium pricing for a high speed card. Our tests with the two-year old PowerShot SD950 SI bear this out: even the slowest card in the round up turned in reasonable performance compared to the premium card. Only those with the newest cameras with faster CPUs (or those with an eye toward soon getting one) need invest in premium cards. For those, a card in the 60x to 100x will find reasonable performance for the price.

Live Photo Gallery Vs. Picasa: Digital Photography in Windows 7

Mark Edward Soper — Fri, 15 May 2009 22:00:00 -0500

Windows 7 has the potential to be the most imaging-friendly version of Windows yet developed. Windows 7 makes viewing JPEG and other common file formats easy, displays exposure metadata, and supports more viewing options than Windows XP, while offering better performance than Windows Vista. However, to get the maximum benefit from Windows 7, digital photographers will want to make two additions:

Installing RAW image support for their DSLR
Installing a photo organizer and editor

Wondering how to get RAW support for 64-bit versions of Windows 7? Not sure which free program (Windows Live Photo Gallery or Picasa) is better at fixing common digital photo problems? Looking for the best solution for organizing your rapidly growing digital photo collection? This article helps you find the answers you need.

Adding RAW Image Support for Your Camera

Windows 7's Pictures Explorer shows thumbnail views of JPEG and other supported imaging formats when you select the Medium icon, Large icon (default), or Extra Large icon views. However, RAW files (which are camera-specific) display only icons if you have not already installed the appropriate codecs for your camera. To install RAW file support for your camera:

Open your favorite web browser.
Navigate to http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/codecs.aspx
Click the link for your camera.
Verify that the codec works with your camera and Windows release (32-bit or 64-bit)
Download and install the codec.

After installing the appropriate codec, you will be able to see thumbnail views for both JPEG and RAW files in Pictures Explorer:

Flling the Missing 64-bit Version Codec Support Gap

Unfortunately, some digital SLR vendors do not provide 64-bit codecs. However, Ardfry Imaging, LLC offers 32-bit and 64-bit versions of its independently-developed codecs for Canon CR2, Nikon NEF, and Adobe DNG file formats ($29.95 each). 15-day free trials are available. Because I'm currently using the 64-bit version of Windows 7 RC Ultimate, I was unable to use the Canon-provided codec. However, the Ardfry codec worked fine on my 64-bit system.

Using the Built-in Windows Photo Viewer

In Windows 7, Microsoft replaced the Windows Photo Gallery (now superseded by Windows Live Photo Gallery), and replaced it with Windows Photo Viewer. To use Windows Photo Viewer to view your photos in a resizable window, right-click the photo and select Preview.

You can rotate, zoom in, print, burn your photos to CD or DVD, and view your photos in a slide show. From the File menu, you can view Properties, which opens the Details tab to display image metadata, tags, and similar information.

However, Windows Photo Viewer lacks tagging, repair, and filtering tools. To get these, consider adding Windows Live Photo Gallery or Picasa 3.0 to your system. How do these free products compare? First, let's look at the major features of both programs.

Major Features of Windows Live Photo Gallery

Works in individual picture mode or gallery mode
Gallery mode organizes photos (and videos) by folder, date, and tag
Easy "drag to tag" image tagging
Zoom and pan control while viewing individual photos.
Easy, useful auto adjust image repair
Repair tools for white balance, tint, exposure, tilted photos, and red-eye
Cropping to common print sizes, widescreen, or custom page sizes
Image sharpening
Various black-and-white conversion effects, plus sepia and cyan
Multi-level undo/redo
Revert to original image
Integration with Flickr photo sharing
Plug-in support to enable integration with Facebook and other popular photo-sharing sites
Can use Windows Live Skydrive for online photo storage

Major Features of Picasa 3.0

Can scan entire system for photos or only typical locations
Basic photo fixes: crop, straighten, redeye, "I'm Feeling Lucky" auto tuning, auto contrast, auto color, retouch, text overlay, and fill light
Tuning menu: fill light, highlights, shadows, and color temperature, and a neutral color picker.
Effects menu: filters, sharpening, and black-and-white effects
Creates and prints collages
Designs banners
Integrated with Blogger, Picasa Web Albums
Tagging
Batch processing
Can edit and save RAW files as JPEG
HTML Export
Integration with TiVo
Integration with Google Earth for geotagging
Contact sheet printing

As far as features are concerned, Picasa packs plenty more than Windows Live Photo Gallery (WLPG). But, how well do these programs do at repairing problem photos?

Windows Live Photo Gallery Fix (Repair) Menus

Picasa 3.0's Repair Tools

Performing Common Photo Repairs

Although Picasa offers more photo repair tools than WLPG, that doesn't necessarily mean they're better. Compare the results when repairing an underexposed and off-color photo using auto repair tools Auto Adjust (WLPG) and I'm Feeling Lucky (Picasa):

WLPG's Auto Adjust provides a more natural, less harsh repair.

A much tougher repair task is trying to darken an overexposed photo. For this type of repair, I used WLPG's Adjust Exposure menu and Adjust Color menus and Picasa's Tuning menu:

Again, WLPG does a more natural job.

Picasa has two big advantages over WLPG,though:

Picasa can perform batch editing of selected photos.
Picasa can edit RAW files and convert them to JPEG. By contrast, WLPG can only view RAW files.

Here's Picasa's batch edit feature in action:

Saving and Undoing Photo Repairs

WLPG saves changes automatically as soon as you view another photo. Picasa's photo repairs aren't saved until you click the Save to Disk button at the top of each folder listing. Unfortunately, Picasa doesn't display any icons to show which photos have been edited. However, Windows Live Photo Gallery places checkmarks next to each editing tool you have used for the current photo.

Windows Live Photo Gallery offers a multi-level Undo feature at the bottom of its menu structure. Picasa has undo buttons on each of its menus, but doesn't display all of the edits in a single location.

Both programs save previous versions and permit reversions: WLPG uses the shadow copy feature built into Windows 7's system protection (restore points) feature, while Picasa retains the previous version internally.

Tagging Photos

By tagging photos, you make it possible to find photos of a particular person, place, object, or event quickly, no matter what folder they're found in. Both WLPG and Picasa support tagging, but how they do it and what they use tags for is very different.

Windows Live Photo Gallery now supports two types of tags: People tags and Descriptive tags. It is also compatible with tags applied with older versions or with Windows Vista's Windows Photo Gallery. Those tags are placed in the Descriptive tags category, but tags for people can be dragged to the People tags category. To create a tag in WLPG, click the appropriate Add a New Tag button and enter the tag name. To add the tag to matching photos or videos, select the photos or videos and drag them to the tag. It's a system quite similar to what Adobe's been doing with Photoshop Elements' Organizer and other products:

To view photos matching the tag, click the tag. In this example, photos from two different folders are displayed with a single click. By signing into Windows Live, you can also see if this person is sharing photos.

You can add multiple people and/or descriptive tags to a photo using the same technique: create the tag, select the photos or videos, and drag the media to the tag, repeating as needed with different tags

In Picasa, you must select each photo, click View, Tags, and enter the tag or tags for the photo. Picasa Web Albums makes extensive use of tags for organization, but Picasa itself does not use tags for filtering.

Sharing Photos

Windows Live Photo Gallery now integrates with Flickr as well as Windows Live albums. To set up integration with Flickr, you select your photos, click Publish, Publish on Flickr, and follow the prompts to authorize Flickr to work with Windows Live Photo Gallery. Once the integration is done, select Publish on Flickr, and Windows Live Photo Gallery sends the photos to the Flickr account you specify, adds them to a photo set you specify, resizes the photos as you specify, and sets the permissions you prefer:

To add support for other services, open Publish, More Services, and Add a Plug-In. You can choose from plugins for Facebook 2.0, YouTube, SmugMug, Picasa Web Publisher, Drupal Publisher, Pixelpipe, and Ipernity.

Picasa supports Blogger (no surprise there, as both are Google products), but it has no support for other photo sharing services. You must use their clients to share from photo folders, with no help from Picasa.

Which One's For You?

As you can see from this comparison, both programs offer a lot to the digital photographer who's not ready to jump into Photoshop Elements but wants decent tools for working with digital photos. Here's how I see it:

Choose Picasa if you're looking for a "Swiss Army Knife"-like set of photo editing and effects tools, especially if you use both JPEG and RAW file types, or if you want special photo effects without moving up to a full-blown photo editor. However, Picasa's tagging and file management tools are clunky and aren't well implemented. Picasa also offers MacOS and Linux versions if you want to use it cross-platform.

Choose Windows Live Photo Gallery if you're mainly concerned about photo and video organization but want high-quality photo repair tools for JPEG images. While WLPG's doesn't offer the effects and creative tools that Picasa does, it often makes better photo repairs - but sadly, only for JPEG files. WLPG, unlike Picasa, also displays videos and can tag them for easy access.

Can you use both? If you're using only JPEG photos, you certainly can. However, I noticed that when I installed Picasa after installing Windows Live Photo Gallery and codecs, I could no longer view RAW thumbnails in Picture Explorer or other folders.

Where to Find Them

The easiest way to get Windows Live Photo Gallery is to open the Getting Started menu in Windows 7 and click Get Windows Live Essentials. You can select the programs you want to install. To obtain Picasa, visit http://picasa.google.com. If you are also using older versions of Windows, both programs also work with Windows XP and Windows Vista. To download Windows Live components for these versions of Windows, go to http://download.live.com/.

Mark Soper is the author of the forthcoming book The Shot Doctor: The Amateur's Guide to Taking Great Digital Photos.

Time for a New Tech Preview of Deep Zoom Composer

Mark Edward Soper — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:35:05 -0500

Microsoft has released an updated technology preview of its cool Deep Zoom Composer tool for Silverlight 2. As we reported back in July, Deep Zoom Composer gives you the ability to display multiple high-resolution thumbnails, zoom in for a closeup, and pan back again. You can use Deep Zoom Composer to create mosaics (as in our original story), or to bring a new level of interactivity to online collections (as the Hard Rock Cafe has done).

If you want to give it a try, install the latest version of Silverlight 2 beta first, then install the Deep Zoom Composer technology preview 0.9.0005. Deep Zoom Composer runs on Windows XP SP2 or SP3 and Windows Vista, and requires a 2GHz Intel or AMD processor, at least 1GB of RAM, and a Microsoft DirectX 9-capable video card with at least 256MB of video memory.

See the Teaching Ideas and Resources blog at MSDN for more information about this and other imaging tools from Microsoft.

Hit the Comments button to share links to your creations!

Haven't Flickred Lately? Time to Log In and Enjoy a New Home Page!

Mark Edward Soper — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:29:44 -0500

Flickr's rolled out a new home page design that's intended to make it easier to see what's happening with your Flickr account and on Flickr in general.

Here's what's new:

The Your Photostream section now shows your five most recent uploads
Your Photostream also has a toggle to show recent activity (such as comments from friends, your replies, and pictures selected as favorites). Don't want any more comments on a particular item? Click its Mute button.
Click More Recent Activity to see other activity and change activity settings.
The Your Contacts section now shows more photos.
The Your Groups section now shows the most recent photos from your groups.
Want to reduce page clutter? Click the double arrow icon next to a section title to close it, or click it again to open it.
There's now a new Explore module on the home page that displays the latest activities.
The latest entry at the Flickr Blog and the latest Flickr Tip occupy the right margin of the page, along with more ways to use your photos.

Haven't logged in for awhile? I think you'll like the changes. Hit the Comment button and let us know if you agree - or not.

Flickr logo courtesy of Vectorlogo.blogspot.com.

DSLR Compact Flash Users, Get Into the SD/SDHC (and Eye-Fi) Game with CFMulti

Mark Edward Soper — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:32:52 -0500

If you're a Compact Flash user, life's not been fair to you lately. You've seen CF stalwarts like Nikon and Canon turn their backs on this longtime favorite in favor of the new kid on the block, SDHC, in their newest DSLRs. Buy a new camera, and you make your collection of CF cards obsolete. Meanwhile, you've watched SDHC and its kid brother, SD, dominate the deals in your favorite big-box electronics superstores' weekly tabloids. And, just to add a cherry on the top of your cake of frustration, you've been thinking about how cool it would be to use wireless file transfer with Eye-Fi cards, but Eye-Fi is also in the tank for SD. Oh, and did I mention that "Compact" Flash is now the bulkiest flash memory format?

For all these reasons, Synchrotech's introduction of the CFMulti CompactFlash Type II to Eye-Fi + Multi-Card Adapter has come at a very good time. While CF adapters for SD cards have been around for awhile, the CFMulti also supports newer flavors such as SDHC and MMC+ as well as SD and any old MultiMediaCards (MMC) you have floating around. Plus, it's the first adapter to support Eye-Fi cards, albeit with a reduction in range. See the CFMulti and Eye-Fi FAQ for details and a list of tested cameras.

In addition to enabling some CF-based cameras to use Eye-Fi cards, this adapter will be helpful to users of Nikon and Canon DSLRs that use a mixture of CF and SD/SDHC cards. At $28.00, it takes some of the sting out of making the move from CF-based cameras such as the Canon Rebel XTi or Nikon D70 to SD/SDHC-based cameras like the Canon Rebel XSi, Rebel XS or Nikon D90. You can still use high-speed UDMA Compact Flash cards when you need the absolute best speed on your CF-based cameras, but you can now take advantage of numerous deals on easier-to-tote SD and SDHC cards. Sweet!

Hit Comments to tell us if CFMulti's going to make your digital photography life easier.

CFMulti illustration courtesy of Terry White's Tech Blog.