| March 2003 | Issue 250 |
MEETING STARTS - 09:30 - MAR 8 th
MAIN LINE COMPUTER USERS
Last time, we took a swing at the massive topic of: "Images" or "Imaging" - all you ever wanted to know but were....
Our intent was to hit many high spots of the subject to 1) wet folks appetities and 2) bring out potential topics of interest to aid in deciding what is of interest to the members. As the minutes noted, the leading interest was about scanning, apparently since quite a few of us have the devices and would like to get much better results from them. We can't guarantee results, but we hope to show some of the basics, hopefully a step on the road to getting better scans, having to do less work on the result and making you a bit more productive.
Layton Fireng will bring in his laptop and scanner (the club does not have one) to provide the basic tools for a demo. As one of his samples last month, the hundred+ year old photo that was amazingly restored after scanning and image enhancement, showed - a lot can be done with apparently pretty sad starting material! So, come and get scanned ...
Oh yes, if you have a print, B&W or color negative that is of special interest to you, bring it along and we can perhaps give some indication of what you could hope to do with it.
With the recent shuttle disaster, the much-viewed failure of Columbia during its landing, we were bombarded with all kinds of comments, views and opinions related to the incident. Importantly, there was much (some pretty frenetic) on dis-continuing the manned space program itself, as being too dangerous.
I am taking the chaoce to reprint here one of the most thoughtful views that I saw. Since it appeared in the weekly Kennett Paper, I'm sure it did NOT get the readership that I think it deserved. So, with permission from the author, I'm bringing it to your attention. I sincerely hope that you will give it a serious read: [cont'd]
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THE EMAILING LIST - for those members who have provided an email address, we have subscribed
them to the MLCUG listserver (operated most graciously by Pete Whinnery and the UPenn system).
This is a way to catch early announcements, hear about problems (and solutions?) between the
meetings. You can get (and give) help. A useful tool we feel; so when renewing, consider
including your email address in that spot on the form.
REGULAR REMINDERS: - 1) attendees know that we have a very fast internet connection from the VU
meeting room! So, if you have a very large download, you could bring along a zip disk (or a CD-
R/RW) and get it done there, either before or after the main meeting.
and 2) a half dozen or so of the regular attendees, usually partake of lunch at the Villanova
Diner after the meeting. Why not join us? It is a good time to get a little more help (or give
it) and just to have fun talking about our common interests. The food is quite good, too!
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With the assistance of Mayo Productions (you ALL know who that is!) and Charles Curran, Inc., we
have some tutorial videotapes for member loans. Each tape is a lecture on one of the topics:
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The MARCH issue of Smart Computing magazine has a 20-page section on various aspects of digital
photography. By the time you read this, it will be getting scarce: so you'll have to pop right
out to get it!
But, if you have, or are likely to have, an interest in digital photography it has a very wide-
ranging introduction to the subject. For a few bucks, you'll not likely find a better starter.
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If you are interested in creating PDF files (and who isn't, these days!), I would call your
attention to the February 2003 issue (#199) of PC PLUS, sold at Micro Center, $13.95 with CD,
$14.95 with DVD. It has a PDF creator program on the disk. The program can be seen at
jawspdf.com. Not a bad price for a $100.00 program!!!
This English magazine has a habit of offering full, working versions of programs. While perhaps
not the current version, they do work and get the job done. [Layton Fireng]
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For our February meeting, we had 18 attendees of record, who generated some lively
conversation!
Our announcements and questions were, purposely, briefer than usual; so as to allow time for the
main topic - Images and Imaging.
The topic is a very complex one; so I started the discussion by noting that this meeting was
aimed at showing MANY aspects of imaging - without digging deeply into any of them. The
objectives being to: 1) determine if there was interest in the group in tackling the subject and
2) gain some idea as to what subjects had the highest interest.
The presentation was mainly done by Layton Fireng, who had brought along a variety of images and
imaging tools - aimed at showing us some WOWs!!
Layton started out with a before and after display of some old family photos, dating back to the
1880's!, that he had restored to excellent viewability. He was able to recover an incredible
amount of detail in the restored image - much more than one might believe the old photo
technology could capture.
He discussed some "calibrated" images that can be used to test the capabilities of your printer.
The images have been placed in the club's download website (see note on p.ZZ) where you can
download and print them to see how your hardware does. The files are quite large; so webmaster
Pete Whinnery has provided both the original tiff images, and jpeg versions of them. The latter
necessarily sacrifice some of the fine detail and we're not sure how well they will serve. So,
if you can be patient (or have a high speed connection), go for the big tiff images.
Next, Layton showed some forms in which you can get digital images from your existing film
camera. Altho, they are not real cheap, most photo processing folks have the option to get a
Kodak Picture Disk (a floppy) or a Kodak Picture CD with digital versions of the photos on your
roll of exposed film. He also showed a Kodak PhotoCD which has extremely high resolution
digital images - the kind the pros go for. These products have built-in image viewers, but most
image massaging products, including the two mentioned above can display and manipulate the
images.
He also passed on a few fundamentals concerning the two basic image types: raster (or bitmap)
and vector. The latter are most familiar when you work with true type fonts in your word
processor. With them, no matter how large the point size, the letters are always smooth and
sharp - since there are no pixels in the font (it's all done with mathematical algorithms). The
bitmap images (like the familiar .bmp .jpg .tif .gif) will all break up and become "pixellated",
if they are magnified enough.
Most of what us average citizens will be using for images are the latter type and we have no
plans to further deal with the vector image class.
Unfortunately, things were marred by our not having had the opportunity to test out the club PC
with the new software - on the exhibits that Layton had pulled together. In most cases (and
with some help from Layton's laptop), the difficuluies were overcome. BUT, if there are
followup questions on any of this, we urge folks to bring them up this month.
One caveat, the only "tools" used were Irfanview and Adobe Photoshop Elements 1.0. The former
is freeware (and very good freeware at that!), while the latter is a powerful, but relatively
INexpensive image processing application from Adobe, the producer of Photoshop, the acknowledged
#1 in the professional image folks arsenal.
After working our way thru this (and other) material, we posed the questions to the group: 1)
does any of this have interest? And, if it does, 2) what is the most interesting? Aimed at
defining possible future meeting topics.
There was definite interest from the group, and they suggested: scanning images, digital
cameras, image correction.
This summary was also posted to the email list; so ANY members who did not make the meeting
could also offer suggestions, ideas or other input.
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Speaking of images, two very special such have been uploaded to the MLCUG's download site. They
were provided by Layton for member use, and his comments, following their posting, were:
"You all received a notice that Peter had posted several calibrated images in our download area.
These images were prepared at great expense to be printer standards. As you may or may not know
Photoshop and Photoshop Elements provide a measuring device to measure the exact color in a
specific pixel, or set of pixels. By placing a pointer on a specific area, the exact color
value of the selected area can be read. In eight bit color each pixel can have a value of from
0 to 255; so in RGB that allows for 0 to 255 in each of Red, Green and Blue. So, if one wants
to create or find a true neutral, one has but to look for an area that has the same value for R,
G, and B. So, even if the monitor is way out of calibration, if you see the three equal values,
you can know with certainty that it is a grey area. Similarly, if the color value of something
else is known, as in matching a color from another image, an exact match can be achieved.
However the real purpose of the files was for printer checking. Since the colors in the files
are exactly known, any deviation, must of needs be in the printing process. By reducing the
variables, the process is simplified, since the other values are constant. So where to look is
in the relationship between the printer driver, a given printer profile, the ink and the
particular paper.
The grey io the border of the files, is a pure grey, it has no color tint. There are flesh
tones and solid patches of known colors. There is also a step wedge. Every step should be
without coloration. It is possible to have a wedge that has a clean white or black, but the
midrange have a color tint.
The purpose of providing these images, is not to make someone wrong. If everything is not
perfect, this is a tool, if correction is desired, or there is a problem. If your prints are
poor, but these files print well, you would look for an answer in a different place than if
these files also printed poorly. They are a fixed point from which to gauge where things are.
I hope you find them useful. If you have questions, of something is not clear, please ask.
[Layton Fireng]"
If any members try them out, how about bringing the results for folks to review and see what
limitations of various printer systems show up? [ejv]
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A recent issue of the Inquirer had John Fried's Sunday column, entitled: "GoBack may be
devouring your hard-drive real estate". He suggested how to deal with that specific point and
mentioned some other hoggers.
Recently, I became aware of just how much hogging can go on, unbeknownst to the average (and
especially newer) computer user. Windows Me and XP have become the leader in this respect.
You can note yourself that most new, mid to low-end computers come thru with a 40 GB hard drive.
And, as it turns out, some of the hogs determine their useage based on a % of the TOTAL hard
drive space.
Examples:
The only way to control is by discipline and some careful attention to settings that will cap
some of these space hogs.
BTW - associated with this space situation is the need to clean these things out BEFORE you do
a DEFRAG on your hard drive. It is sort of pointless to nicely arrange and compact crap!!!
So, before you do a defrag, you should:
Then you are ready to run scandisk and, finally, defrag itself. This would, then, be a good
time to check the status of your backup routine and make up-to-date backups.
If you use something like Drive Image or Ghost, then this is also an ideal time to run them
That's probably enough said about space hogs. BUT, if anyone is aware of other offenders,
please let us know; so this advice can be appropriately modified.
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Just a reminder, John Fried, the computer support columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. This
is a subset of ALL the FAQs that he has responded to over the years.
He describes these as his VERY frequently answered questions (so, I reckon he should have called
them VFAQs, right?). There are now 92 of them! So, this is likely to be a good first spot to
look for info on a problem you are encountering. And, if you do not get the Inquirer, it is
definitely a place to bookmark...
As a reminder, the URL is:
http://go.philly.com/faq/
If any members find an FAQ of particular value, how about sharing your good fortune???
ANNOUNCEMENTS & COMMENTS
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Tutorial videotapes
They are all introductory presentations and not aimed for the experts. If you have an interest
in any of them, let me know. They'll be available at all of the upcoming meetings, stored in
the "closet".
Digital Photography
PDF Files
LAST MONTH'S MEETING
Calibrated images
Hogging disk space
There are probably more, but you can get the idea, namely; you can lose a major fraction of your
hard drive's acreage to stuff that you are likely to be unaware of!! (and Microsoft certainly
doesn't make any effort to tell folks about this technical stuff!!).
(Except do NOT remove temp files created on the day that you are working, some of them may still
be in use)
C:\Windows\Temp or
C:\Temp
John Fried FAQ