Monday, October 10th, 2011

Recover images from a damaged SD card

A friend turned up recently with a curly question. She’d been using a SD card in her point and shoot camera for some time and now the card had stopped functioning. If she put it in her computer she was told to format the disk to use it – sensibly she didn’t do this. However, she was sure she’d lost the shots she’d taken on her recent vacation.

She took the card to a camera store and was quoted $25 to look at the card and then $15 for every 25 pictures recovered from it. Even though she only wanted the most recent images – some 30 or so – she’d have to pay for all the images they recovered. As she had over 1,000 images on the card – the math wasn’t pretty – over $600 to get her images. The shop owner explained the process was time consuming and complex – hence the cost.

For my friend, the thirty or so photos just didn’t justify the expense. Luckily she called by to ask if she should she simply put the disk in the trash or was there an alternative? I grabbed the disk and sent her to get coffee – before she got back I had her images off the damage disk and burned to a DVD.

Here’s what I did:

The program I used is called Zero Assumption Recovery or ZAR. You can find it at www.z-a-recovery.com. I opted for this program because it allows you to recover digital pictures from digital camera memory free of charge – for other uses it is a for fee program.

Start out by downloading an installing the ZAR Recovery software. Insert the damaged disk in the card reader and launch the software. When prompted that antivirus software may impact performance, click to accept the warning and go and disable your antivirus software.

When prompted, click the Image Recovery (Free) option.

The program looks for devices that are installed. This is probably the most confusing portion of the exercise because you’ll need to identify which of the devices in the list is your camera card. It’s not really that difficult and, in my case, Disk 4 shows as an SD card with 1,876 MB of data on it – pretty clearly it is the SD card. Select the disk and click Next.

Wait as the program analyzes the disk. You’ll see a list of the recovered files. In my case I wanted all of them because not only did I not know which images she wanted but this dialog really isn’t the place to start getting fussy about which images you want and which you don’t – it’s simplest to take them all. So click the Root checkbox to select all the images.

Click Next and you can then select the folder into which the recovered files will be placed. Because I selected the Root folder on the SD card these images will all go automatically into a subfolder called Root. Make sure you always recover files onto a disk other than the one they came from – it sounds self-evident but the busted SD card is not the place to put the recovered images.

I left all the options set to their defaults and simply clicked Start Copying the Selected Files. The software copied 1099 files to my hard drive in a few minutes.

Open the folder in Windows Explorer and set it to view thumbnails to see what you have. I found a handful of images were unreadable and a few images were only half full of data with half the image missing but well over 1000 of the files were there and most of those my friend remembers taking on her vacation.

The moral of this post is to never throw out a camera card until you’ve tried to recover the data from it. There is good and free software out there that can do the recovery for you and it isn’t difficult or time-consuming to attempt it yourself. Oh! and don’t format a card if it has images on it that you want to download –  even if your computer prompts you to do so – it’s not being helpful and the results might reduce your chance of recovering your  images.

 

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 12:54 pm2 Comments links to this post

Friday, October 7th, 2011

Round tripping with Lightroom

One of the most confusing things for new Lightroom users is understanding how documents get round tripped from Lightroom to Photoshop and back.

Step 1
To start, open Lightroom with the image displayed in the Develop, Library, Slideshow or Web modules. Right click the image and choose Edit In > Adobe Photoshop.

If you chose a raw file then the image is sent direct to Photoshop.

Step 2
If you chose a jpg or tiff file, then other options are available. You can choose Edit a Copy, Edit Original or to Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments. If you want to take the changes that you’ve made to the image in Lightroom with you to Photoshop, then use the Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments option.

This is exactly what happens if you are working with a raw image – you don’t see the dialog – and the image is sent direct to Photoshop with the Lightroom adjustments in place.

Edit Original ignores any changes that you have made in Lightroom and sends the unedited original image to Photoshop.

Edit a Copy sends the image direct to Photoshop ignoring any changes you’ve made to the image in Lightroom but at the same time it creates a copy of the image so you won’t be editing your original.

Step 3
When you’ve finished editing the image in Photoshop, click File > Save to save the image.

The one thing you should avoid when saving a photo that you have taken from Lightroom to Photoshop is to rename it when you save it. If you rename an image by choosing File > Save As then the link between the image in Lightroom and Photoshop won’t be retained and the edited saved version won’t appear in Lightroom catalog. To get the image back into Lightroom you have to find it and then import it into the catalog. This is typically the step where new Lightroom users fall foul of the process and get understandably frustrated.

Step 4
When you return to Lightroom, if you were editing a raw file or if you chose to Edit a Copy, you will find your original file and the edited version in place in the Lightroom catalog. The edited version of the file is stored in the same folder as the original.

The edited version has the same file name as the original but with -edit added to it. In the case of a raw file, the edited version will be saved by default as a tiff file.

If you chose Edit Original then only the original file with its edits will appear in Lightroom.

Step 5
If you wish to do so, you can send also send an image to Photoshop as a Smart Object by right clicking it in Lightroom, choose Edit In > Open as Smart Object in Photoshop.

This opens the document in Photoshop with the image on a layer converted automatically to a Smart Object. You can do this for tiff, raw and jpg images.

When you save the file it is saved as a tiff with –edit added to the filename – the tiff file format supports Photoshop Smart Objects so the Smart Object will be there when you edit the file again.

Step 6
You can determine how Lightroom sends files to Photoshop by choosing Edit > Preferences and click the External Editing tab. Here you can select the file format to be used, the color space that will be applied to the image, the bit depth, resolution and any compression available for the chosen file format.

From the foot of the dialog you can also configure the file naming convention used for files sent from Lightroom to Photoshop. By default, it will be the original file name with –Edit attached to it, although you can change this if desired.

Here too you can add other programs to the shortcut menu so you can take your images from Lightroom direct to programs such as Photoshop Elements or your favorite editor.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 6:01 amNo Comments links to this post

Thursday, October 6th, 2011

Switch between open documents in Excel and Word

Hmmm … I am fussy, I want my cake and I want to eat it too!

I want to have a clean task bar so I don’t want to see lots of files lined up there so I love Windows 7 and its clean task bar. But I find the new panel that opens when I right click an icon on the task bar to be just a little bit too free with information. I really want it to show me a list of currently open files – not everything that I have open or have recently opened. Actually I could live with the information it gives me if I didn’t have to actually use it to switch windows.

So, problem is… how can I switch between open documents in Excel or Word, for example, without having to use the Windows task bar? Solution is to use the Switch Windows button. I add it to the QAT (Quick Access Toolbar) and it totally makes sense to me.

In Excel or Word, click the Customize Quick Access Toolbar button and choose More Commands. From the list which currently shows Popular Commands choose All Commands and scroll to find the Switch Windows button and click Add.

Now it is on the QAT and it will show you all your open files and you can use it to switch between them by just clicking on the one to go to. Repeat the process for both Excel and Word and you’ll be happy – at least until something else bugs you!

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:58 am3 Comments links to this post

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

Batch resize images in Photoshop Elements

Some time ago I wrote a post on batch resizing images in Photoshop. You can find the link here: http://projectwoman.com/2009/09/batch-resize.html. I also wrote an article on resizing in Lightroom which you can find here: http://projectwoman.com/2009/10/resizing-images-in-lightroom-2.html.

Someone then wrote to me explaining that they are using Photoshop Elements and that the resize feature in Photoshop does not work in Photoshop Elements. They are correct, but there is a way of batch resizing in Photoshop Elements and here’s how to do it.

Step 1
In Photoshop Elements, choose File > Process Multiple Files. This opens the Process Multiple Files dialog.

Here you can select which images to process. You can select either a folder of images, all opened files or you can click import and import images from an external device such as a camera card.

Typically, the best option will be to place all the images in a folder and process the files from that folder. To do this, click the Browse button opposite the Source box and choose the folder to process. Enable the Include All Subfolders checkbox if desired.

Step 2
Select the destination folder for the resized images (you can create one from this dialog), or, if desired, select Same as Source.

In the file naming area, select Rename Files if this is desired. You can then choose the naming convention such as typing a document name and the sequential numbering system to be used.

Step 3
In the image size area, select Resize Images as that’s what we came here to do.

Select Constrain Proportions as you will want your images to be resized in proportion and not skewed or distorted out of shape.

Now type the largest Width or Height to use for your resized images. If you enter 600 for the Width you will be unable to enter a value for the Height and vice versa. This is because you can only set one value – width or height (in this situation this resizing tool works differently to the corresponding tools in Photoshop and Lightroom).

So if you enter, for example, 600 as the Width all images will be sized so their width is 600 and their respective heights will be adjusted in proportion. Portrait images will be taller than 600 pixels and Landscape ones will be shorter.

Here too you should set the resolution for the images. If you plan to send your photos to an online sites for printing, you may want to match the resolution to what that site requires. For the web select 72 dpi.

Step 4
To convert the files to a different format or to compress them, from the File Type dropdown list, select the file format to use. For JPEG format images, you can choose Max, High, Medium or Low quality.

Step 5
You can also apply a Quick Fix to your images as you process them. These fixes include Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, Auto Color or Sharpen.

You can also apply Labels to your image such as adding a watermark or caption by configuring the options in the Labels area.

When you are done, click Ok to process the folder of files or the group of files that you had selected for processing.

Tip
If you want to resize images so their longest edge is a set value such as 600 then you will need to presort Landscape and Portrait images into separate folders and process them separately.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 5:51 am2 Comments links to this post

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

Go To a cell in a formula in Excel


Consider this scenario – you have a cell which contains a link to data in another cell on another sheet. The link might be the only thing in the cell or it might be a link in a formula which contains references to data in lots of other cells too.

If you want to go to a particular referenced cell you could read off the cell details – its sheet name and its cell reference and navigate there yourself or you could get smart and have Excel do the work.

To do this, click in the cell containing the reference and choose Formulas > Trace Precedents. When you do this you will see a small sheet icon and an arrow with a black arrow head pointing at the cell. Hold your mouse cursor over the arrow until the mouse cursor turns into a hollow white arrow. Double click and the Go To dialog will open. In it will be references to all the cells in the formula. Click the reference you are interested in going to and the cell reference will be highlighted – click Ok and Excel will take you direct to that cell.

If you have both workbooks open the same process will work to take you to a cell in another workbook if it is referred to in a formula in the current workbook.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:45 am1 Comment links to this post

Friday, September 30th, 2011

Secrets of the Lightroom toolbar

If you’ve seen items come and go in your Lightroom interface and if you’re confused about what exactly is happening chances are you hit a keyboard shortcut that displays or hides one of the interface features. When I was new to Lightroom it was the Toolbar – I could make disappear in a heartbeat – problem was it took a lot longer to work out what had gone and how to get it back.

As I soon learned, the toolbar can be hidden and displayed using the T shortcut or you can choose View > Toolbar. The toolbar is visible in Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print and Web view – but here’s the catch – there is a separate toolbar for each module and hiding one doesn’t hide them all – likewise displaying a toolbar only does so for the current module not all of them.

That said, you’ll want to have the toolbar visible in most of the modules most of the time because it has some handy features that you will use regularly.

The toolbars in the Library and Develop modules are customizable – those in the other modules are fixed in what they display. To add to the general confusion, the toolbar you see in Grid view and the one you see in Loupe view in the Library module are both toggled on and off as if they were the same toolbar but they are separately customizable so you can select which tools appear in which view and they can look very different in each view as shown in these images of firstly Loupe view then Grid view:

To customize a toolbar click the down pointing arrow at its far right and select the options to display and hide. When you are working on a laptop, for example, and where screen real estate is a valuable commodity, you’ll need to be judicious about what tools are visible and which are not.

One option on a laptop that I like to disable is the rotation tool in Grid view in the Library. The reason is that I can set the thumbnails in Grid view so they show rotation icons so I don’t need the additional tool on the toolbar. However, in Loupe view this rotation tool doesn’t appear so I add it to the toolbar.

If you often resize your thumbnails then including the Thumbnail Size slider is a good idea – if you need the space it takes up for other tools then hide it and learn the = and – shortcut keys for managing the thumbnail size instead.

One gotcha that is a guaranteed disaster in the making for new Lightroom users is the apparent duplication of rating, color and flags on the Toolbar and on the bar across the top of the Filmstrip. These are NOT duplicates and instead they are each very different options. The tools on the Toolbar are used to apply a flag, color and rating to images in the Grid or Loupe views. Those above the filmstrip are filters that you use to filter your images based on the flags, colors and ratings you have applied to them. It is important to understand the difference. If you get into trouble and some of your images disappear, selecting Filters Off from the drop-down list above the filmstrip will display all your images again.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 5:36 amNo Comments links to this post

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

iPad 2 – Delete multiple emails at a time


There are a few ways to delete multiple emails at a time on the iPad, none of them particularly intuitive and there is no big Select All option so it has to be done individually:

Start by turning the iPad into landscape mode and click the inbox. If you click the Edit button (top left) then you can select multiple emails to delete very quickly. Then click the Delete button which appears bottom left.

To make sure I don’t have too many emails to deal with at a time, this is how I have my email account configured:

First of all, because I deal with email on my desktop, I don’t want the iPad to delete emails from the server so that option, in Settings > Email is set to Never. To find it, click your account name and click Advanced.

Then I set the Remove option in this same dialog to After one day.

All these settings and actions make checking emails on the iPad a fairly simple process – but I, like you, wish there were smarter Select All and Delete All options.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:49 am4 Comments links to this post

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

Timeline in Microsoft Word 2010

The new SmartArt feature in Word 2007 and 2010 helps you create timelines very easily:

Step 1
Choose Insert -> SmartArt -> Process and select one of the process options such as Basic Timeline and click Ok. Type the text into the textboxes in the SmartArt object. Alternately, click the arrows at the far left of the object and add text via the dialog.

Step 2
To format the timeline SmartArt, select the object and choose Format -> Design on the Ribbon and then select one of the SmartArt Styles. Click Change Colors to alter the colours used in your SmartArt object.

Step 3
From the Shape Effects list you can customise an effect such as reflection or shadow for the art. In addition, as the look of a SmartArt object is controlled by the document theme you can choose Page Layout -> Themes and select an alternate theme for your document.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:01 am2 Comments links to this post

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

Color Correction in Photoshop

One of the most difficult things to do when you’re starting out in digital photography is to recognize and remove a color cast from an image. Not only do you need to work out that you’ve got a color cast, but you also need to find a means of fixing it.

One method of color correction is one that I learned from Photoshop gurus, Dan Margulis and Taz Tally – any errors in this process are mine and not theirs. The process relies on reading data from the image and then adjusting the numbers that the image provides. It’s a way to remove a color cast that is relatively simple and which involves reading and setting RGB values rather than making objective decisions about an image. I’ll show you how to do this using an image shot in the early morning and which is hazy, underexposed and which has very poor color.

Step 1
To get started, open an image that you think has a color cast. Choose Window > Info to display the Info palette. This gives you information about the pixels in your image and, if you’re working with a standard photo, you’ll have RGB mode displayed in the upper left corner of the dialog.

Step 2
To make the color correction I’ll use the Info palette to display information about the image. To do this I’ll need to make some color sample points on the image and I’ll do this using the Color Sampler tool which shares a toolbar position with the Eyedropper. Click the Color Sampler tool and, from the toolbar, select the 3 x 3 Average Sample. This is important as you’ll want to sample a larger area than just a single pixel.


Step 3
Now locate a place on the image which should be white or a light neutral gray in color. Click on it with the color sampler tool and you’ll see a marker appear on the image with the number 1 beside it. Make sure the point you select is one which should be white or light gray and don’t select an area of the image which is blown out such as a light spot.

Repeat the process, this time clicking on another point which should be either white, black or a neutral gray. This gives you a second sample point. You can continue and add a total of four markers if desired. Each should be placed in an area of the image which should be white, black or a neutral gray.

Step 4
Check back in the Info palette to read the color information for each of these points. For the lightest points you should see values of around 245 for the R, G and B channels. For the darkest points the value should be around 15 for each of the channels. For gray points you should have equivalent values of R, G and B, although they can be any value, they just need to be roughly the same for each.

Step 5
If your image has a color problem you’ll find that the numbers at each point are not within a range of 2 or 3 values of each other. To color correct the image what you’ll do is adjust the curves for each of these channels to bring them closer to each other. Choose Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves and click Ok. You’ll be correcting individual channels so from the Channel dropdown list select Red and then Ctrl + Click on the first point that you marked in your image. This adds a small marker on the curve line which shows you where this point in the image appears on the curve.

Identify whether you need to increase or decrease the value at this point. To increase it, drag upwards and to decrease the value drag downwards. You’ll see that you’re not making subjective judgments here; you’re simply adjusting the curve to bring the numbers closer together and closer to the desirable value of 245 for a white point and 15 for a black one.

Step 6
Repeat this last step for all the sample points that you created on the image and then repeat it for the Green and Blue channels so that you end up with all the sample points containing values that are within 2 to 3 values of each other.

Step 7
When you’re done, click Ok to close the Curves dialog. You can now apply other fixes such as adding contrast to the image with a further Curves adjustment or use the new Brightness/Contrast tool in Photoshop CS3.

Using the Info palette combined with sample points on the image makes it easier to remove color casts by reading and adjusting numbers.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 5:27 amNo Comments links to this post

Saturday, September 24th, 2011

iPad 2 -Blog to a self hosted WordPress blog


Ok, the challenge is how do you blog from your iPad to a self-hosted WordPress blog and how do you do it with images from your iPad?
Well, the actual blogging part is simplicity itself. Just crank up Safari and log in to your WordPress dashboard. From there you can do almost anything you want – except the one thing you really want to do – add images from your iPad to your post!
Ok. So, Safari is a great place to work in but we have to solve the image problem and for that we use the WordPress app for the iPad – good news is that it is free so download it from the store and get it started.

Then in the WordPress app you can add your blog – you just type its URL including the /wordpress/wp-admin bit and type your ID and password. You only do this once.

Here you will likely encounter a problem that your blog isn’t configured to allow this type of editing. You will get this message that XML-RPC services are disabled.

What you need to do is to go to your computer and log in to your blog using an admin account – if it is your blog, then chances are you are an admin anyway. Then go to the Settings group on the left and click Writing. Then, locate the Remote Publishing area and enable the “WordPress, Moveable type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols”. Once you have done this you’re ok to go and your blog will be added to the WordPress app. If you have multiple blogs you can add more than one, which is smart.

Now, the big reason why we’re using the WordPress iPad app is that it lets us get images up to our WordPress blog so you don’t have to write your content in the app but you do have to upload your images using it so you can get them from the Gallery later on.
So, first of all crop your images and rotate them – I find it easier to do this on the iPad and you can use any program you like – I use Photoshop Express but you can use anything.

Now click on your blog name to get access to your WordPress site on your server.  You will see some links at the foot of the screen which take you to the various parts of your site – click the Posts button to view your posts and click the little Add button at the top of the panel on the left to add a new post. Here you type the post content.

To add images, click Done and then find the little icon in the bottom right that looks like a landscape image – click it and add images from your Camera Roll.

Regardless of where you are when you do this all the images go one after the other into the post… this is the sucky part but it really is a small issue – at least they are there!

Before you leave the WordPress iPad app, click Done and click the Settings button (bottom Left) and set a Schedule for the post – I make this a day or more but at least an hour so ahead of time so I have enough time to fix the image issue back in WordPress in Safari before everything goes live.

 

Now, still in the WordPress app, go ahead and Upload and Update everything. Then go back to Safari and log in to your blog.

By the way, I haven’t mentioned it yet, but it really helps to have one of those bluetooth keyboards so you have arrow keys and you can use shortcuts to copy and paste and select stuff. It beats working with your fingers on the screen – if you’re serious about blogging on the iPad you really need one. I use the Zagg one which I really like.
Back in WordPress on Safari I just delete all the code which has been added for the images as they are seldom where I want them to be. Now I move into position in the post and add the images using the regular WordPress Add Image button – the pictures are all in the Gallery – thanks to the WordPress app.

In WordPress in Safari I can do things like add Captions and descriptions and scale any image that need resizing.

On a scale of 1 to 10 it would be easier to be able to do everything from inside Safari or inside the WordPress app but I wouldn’t call this difficult or unnecessarily cumbersome. I can live with the slight workaround for the sake of being able to blog with images from the iPad in WordPress to a self hosted blog.

I’d rate it around a 7/10 ease of use and functionality and I love it. In fact this is the last big issue I’ve had with the iPad and not being able to blog to my WordPress blogs would have been a deal breaker for me. I need to be able to blog on the road and I want to do this with images – in particular as I am doing an apple a day blog over at my design site and looking at heaps of cool iPad apps so not being able to include images would be horrible!

 

 

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:45 am9 Comments links to this post

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