Digital Photography

Focusing on Creativity Sydney

GIMP adds interest with Creative In-picture Frames

Frames This simple technique using the free GIMP image editor can quickly create in-picture frames to highlight or apply a 3D focus to enhance an image's subject. Easily add focus and interest to the subject of an otherwise lifeless picture. Be creative and try it now - you can view or print this easy to follow tutorial here...
Note: GIMP 2.6 was used for this exercise - the procedure may vary with earlier versions.

Report - September 2009

Introduction

Administration

Next meeting 23^nd October, last 27^th November.
Reports - mail list corrected, uploaded to website.
Next year - Bill will book 4^th Friday January to November. Combine with Seniors in December (and December this year). April is Friday 23^rd, before long weekend.
Updated software this month

FileHippo Graphics Page

XNView	v1.96.5 from .4	http://www.xnview.com/en/history.html
Picasa	v3.5 from 3.1	http://picasa-readme.blogspot.com/

What topics are you interested in presenting or learning about in future meetings ? If the suggestions stay on this list for a long time it is because I don't know enough to present a session (that was a hint). Suggestions are:

The new GIMP - menus changed.
sessions on GIMP / Photoshop (video tutorials?) on techniques general
fireworks photography w/digital? Worked well on film.
recording in raw on larger cards is now an option
do we still need the old-fashioned light meters to do a better job, or can the camera do this for manual mode.
Picasa 3.5 features.
Using live histogram display - October

Photography Exercise

Discussion of Topic : Reflections
Topic for September - Our City
It is suggested that you go out and take photos specially rather than get some from your archives, especially when we introduce a new technique. Suggestions for the future include : Trees, Birds (in flight), Sport (For November - Sculpture by the Sea)
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Q & A

RSI from mice as well as keyboards (touch pads?)- beware.
Batch cropping - FastStone is better than IrfanView for this.
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Cataloguing … including - sorting / filing / naming photos - batch rename & sort into folders

There are a lot of sorts of information about photographs that you might want to use in cataloguing or filing them. Besides the 'subject' of the photo, the location, date, and 'occasion' are fairly obvious. The digital camera records technical data in the EXIF blocks, and technical photographers may want to use some of this in their catalogue. So your first step is to decide what is important to you.
The next consideration is to decide where you want to keep your photographs - in the same folders that they come out of the camera or filed by date, location etc. Professional photographers seem to prefer filing by date. You may also want to keep the original filename or rename the file, again professionals seem to chose date/time. The idea is to avoid duplicate filenames when they use several cameras.
I keep the filenames and directory structure from the cameras, making a new folder (in camera) at each change of location. I then create a spreadsheet to catalogue the information. Others use a program that uses the internal EXIF/IPTC data to sort and catalogue the images.
There are several blocks of “meta-data” defined for JPEG image files.

EXIF stores information from the camera at the time of shooting - date, exposure, shutter speed etc. It can also hold GPS data.
IPTC stores copyright and caption data (including location). This is entered after shooting.
Thumbnail is created at shooting time but not modified with the image. Many image viewers use this thumbnail rather than create their own, so if the thumbnail may not match the image after cropping - use the regenerate thumbnail function. (XNView shows tags in the thumbnail display to indicate the presence of a thumbnail, IPTC or EXIF data).

I have taken a lot of the following information from the impulseadventure site, which contains much more detail, please read those pages for a more detailed discussion. Here the author recommends setting up your file system and renaming BEFORE your cataloguing software. This ensures that the software doesn't lose track of the images, or get duplicate entries. He suggests renaming the images AS you upload them to the computer, using a program Downloader Pro ($30us). It downloads the images, creates the folder hierarchy and renames files automatically (by date and camera). The amateur photographer, with fewer photos, may do the filing manually. Renaming by date is easy with XNView or FlexibleRenamer. Remember - it is a good idea to make a backup NOW.
The real work begins at this point. The information about the image has to be entered manually (but can be done in bulk for several images with the same data). So you could enter location data for a batch of photos in one step, then individually enter the subject information. You could add this to the filename, but it would soon become unwieldy - and impossible to sort or search. The best place is in the EXIF/IPTC blocks. This ensures that the information remains with the image, and can be accessed by your cataloguing program even if you move or copy the file.

There are several free programs that can help with this entry and cataloguing.
Mapivi - is ported from Linux and hard to install.
Picajet - keeps nagging you to buy an upgrade, said to be better than Picasa 3.1
Picasa 3.5 - now with face recognition and geotagging - would be my choice.
If location data is wanted (location name, country) then IrfanView can be used to add this to individual images in the IPTC block, or DGManager or Geotag will extract information for geotagged images from the geonames.org database on-line.
Also look at FotoTagger & iTag for bulk editing of IPTC data and ImageQuery for searching based on EXIF/IPTC data. I have not used these but the websites show they may be useful.

Paid software (Adobe, Corel etc.) is compared in the links below. This is usually in the $hundreds, but a few below $50.

So … Here is a procedure you could follow.

Upload the images from your camera/card to the folders of your choice.
Rename as you want by XNView, date in yyyy-mm-dd format if used.
Use Picasa 3.5 to enter metadata and tags -
add a Folder Description - in the thumbnail view.
add a Caption - at Make a Caption in the image view.
identify faces in the People pane.
geotagging with the help of Google Earth/Maps in the Places pane.
add search keywords in the Tags pane, you can bulk tag multiple files in the one folder.
set thumbnail caption to Caption or Tags by View | Thumbnail Caption.
search for faces in the left side People drop-down or the People pane.
search for tags & captions in the search box.
use XNView to edit EXIF or IPTC data if needed (you can't remove wrong tags in Picasa).

P.S. I've since found that face data is not stored in the image, but split between picasa.ini with the file and the Picasa Database in C:\Documents and Settings\(yourname)\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Picasa2\db3 These are not able to be moved easily. See the response from Google

DEMONSTRATION of

XNView batch rename with EXIF/IPTC metadata.
IrfanView EXIF/IPTC fields by Image | Information.
Picasa face and caption tagging - face finding may take days for a large collection!

LINKS

Next meeting on October 23^nd

Peter Collard