Software & Computers
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DCF Full Spectrum; Does It Bridge The Gap Between RGB And The Eye?
Software & Computers
George Schaub • Apr 01, 2006 • 0 comments

According to the folks at Tribeca Imaging Laboratories (TIL), digital cameras (and I might add many types of film) "can't see purple." They go on to say, "The digital color model generates a limited spectrum. Any user can confirm this by simply pointing a camera at a deep blue or purple object and comparing the colors on the camera's LCD or computer...
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Dell UltraSharp U2410 LCD Display; They Call It Premier Color…And It Is
Software & Computers
David B. Brooks • Jun 10, 2011 • Published: May 01, 2011 • 6 comments
A Shutterbug reader, Tracy Valleau, e-mailed me, suggesting that I take a look at the 24” widescreen Dell UltraSharp U2410 LCD display with 1920x1200 pixel resolution. What makes it suitable for digital photography and professional graphics is its wide color gamut of 96 percent of Adobe RGB and the fact that its white luminance is adjustable from 80.0 to 90.0 CD/m2, both of which provide a high reproduction screen image quality. Its 12-bit internal processing assures a smooth rendition of tones on screen. The screen is in a bezel and stand that is sturdy but light, with an excellent design that’s carefully manufactured. In all respects, this Dell U2410 is quite affordable at a list price of $599, while entirely competitive with more expensive brands favored for a color-managed digital photography workflow.
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DigiEffects Web Euphoria 1.8; Add Real, or Surreal, Effects To Your Images
Software & Computers
Howard Millard • Jul 01, 2004 • 0 comments

Are you ready to ramp up your photos with striking special effects? Web Euphoria (I love the name) offers more than 20 effects that you access from 19 plug-ins within Photoshop compatible programs such as Adobe Photoshop (Versions 2.5 through CS) and...
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Digital Imaging Computers; A Dedicated Setup For Your Work
Software & Computers
Joe Farace • Sep 01, 2004 • 0 comments

These days, digital minilabs from Agfa and Fuji have made producing inexpensive, good looking prints directly from memory cards as easy as shooting film, but just as the person who wants to create more expressive film images needs the creative control...
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Digital Innovations Speed Photographers’ Workflow; Not Your Grandpa’s Ordering System
Software & Computers
Steve Bedell • Mar 01, 2006 • 0 comments

I'm going to take you on a trip to the not so long ago past, maybe about the year 2000 BD (Before Digital). Let's watch a photographer from Snap Studio go about his wedding order. First he shoots the job on two cameras, the "big" medium format camera for color and the little 35mm camera for his artsy black and white shots. He's careful to number his...
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Digital Innovations
Blurring The Lines; Software Solutions For Soft Effects
Digital Darkroom, Digital Innovations, Software & Computers
Joe Farace • Mar 01, 2006 • 0 comments

"There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept." --Ansel Adams

It could be that the sainted Adams meant a fuzzy image of a brilliant concept, but we'll never know. This month's column looks at using imaging software to blur an image and was inspired by a letter from reader Carol Baker. As a movie buff you gotta know...
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Digital Innovations
Is There A Correct Way To Make A Photograph? Of Course Not, And Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Otherwise!
Digital Innovations, Software & Computers
Joe Farace • Feb 01, 2006 • 0 comments

"Crankshaft: I want to buy a camera. Photo clerk: Digital? Crankshaft: No I plan to operate it with my toes."
--"Crankshaft" comic strip

Steve Kennedy is a photographer, automobile expert, and author of Jaguar: The Classic Marque (

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Digital Innovations
New Year’s Rockin’ Software; Treasures From Around The World
Digital Innovations, Software & Computers
Joe Farace • Jan 01, 2006 • 0 comments

This month's column contains practical and creative software from around the world, including something new from Greece's gift to the imaging world, Panos Efstathiadis. It's rare to see artists working together, but Efstathiadis' Stamp, that appears at the end of this column, is part of Frank Hatcher's WZ2K Cork Board Photoshop Action set. Some of...
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Digital Oil Painting In Corel’s Painter X; A Step-By-Step Guide To One Of Its Many Tools
Software & Computers
Susan Ruddick Bloom • Jan 01, 2008 • 0 comments

Corel's Painter (now in Version X) started years ago as a black and white program called Sketcher, which came in a cigar box package. Over the years it was owned by a variety of companies and was even sold in a paint can. The program has matured and is unrivaled in its ability to mimic natural artistic mediums like pastel, oil paint, charcoal, watercolor, and more.
...
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Digital Storage Solutions On The Road; Options Galore For The Traveling Photographer
Accessories, Software & Computers
Jack Neubart • Jan 01, 2008 • 0 comments

How can you make the most use out of that limited quantity of memory cards when on the road, especially on a long trip? The answer: a portable drive. When connected to a host computer via USB 2.0, all these devices are recognized as an external drive--but not immediately in some cases: it may require activation of a USB function on the device. Adding to the utility of many of...
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DxO FilmPack 3.1: Variations On A Theme
Software & Computers
George Schaub • Sep 05, 2012 • Published: Aug 01, 2012 • 0 comments
The question is—does anybody really know what a given image would look like if they shot it on Kodachrome 25, or Fuji Acros, or some obscure color negative film that even in film’s heyday was little used or appreciated? Perhaps the more pertinent question is—how many people have made photographs using film? But film references are what a number of so-called film emulation software programs use for describing presets that can be applied to a digital image. Half academic and half nostalgic, the programs use film brand names to describe saturation, contrast, color nuance, and grain structure variations that are then applied to an image. Perhaps using film names is better than poetic fantasy terms, like “misty blue dawn,” but then again entirely subjective descriptors, rather than supposedly clinical ones used in these software programs, might be just as handy for today’s photography crowd. In any case, I recently tested one such program, DxO’s FilmPack 3.1, to see if it offered up creative variations that could be used as is or as foundation images when interpreting subjects and scenes.
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DxO Optics Pro 5.3; Raw Converter & Image Enhancer With Auto Or Manual Transmission
Software & Computers
Howard Millard • Mar 01, 2009 • 0 comments

Whether you shoot raw or JPEG, whether you’re on the Windows or Mac platform, the latest edition of DxO Optics Pro, Version 5.3, offers sophisticated automated image enhancement and raw conversion.
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DxO Optics Pro 7 Elite: A Powerful Raw Converter/Nondestructive Editor
Software & Computers
Jack Neubart • Jul 19, 2012 • Published: Jun 01, 2012 • 6 comments
DxO Optics Pro Version 7 is a Raw converter for Mac and Microsoft Windows with some nifty tricks up its sleeve. It offers its own brand of nondestructive image editing, with tonal, exposure, geometric, and optical corrections that make it stand apart from the crowd. As was true of Version 6.6, Optics Pro 7 supports the company’s new FilmPack 3 film emulator plug-in (see sidebar below). We will have a more complete review of the film emulator in a future issue.

Optics Pro Version 7 is a dramatic departure from earlier releases. The Select pane is gone, so you no longer have to deal with tedious Projects (unless you want to). Now you go straight to work after opening a folder. Double-click on an image and that takes you right to the nondestructive editing phase, in Customize. Beyond this point the Mac and Windows versions part ways in one key respect: the Windows version runs faster than the Mac version, which continues to be laborious.
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Easy E-Mail With Win-XP
Software & Computers
Darryl C. Nicholas • Jul 01, 2006 • 0 comments

For those of you who have Adobe's Photoshop installed on your computer, I'm sure that you know all about re-sizing pictures down and converting them to JPEG before attaching them to an e-mail.

This short tip is for everyone else.

Microsoft Windows XP has made the job very easy. All you need is to be using the Win-XP operating system and the...
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Extend The Limits Of Film Scanning; LaserSoft’s SilverFast Multi-Exposure Increases Effective Dynamic Range
Software & Computers
David B. Brooks • May 01, 2008 • 0 comments

In the summer of 2007 I received news about a new version of SilverFast scanning software that included additional and improved features, most significantly for this report something dubbed Multi-Exposure. This is a strategy involving two scan passes: one with normal exposure and a second with amplified exposure applied just to the shadow regions of the film image; then these two...
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