Archive for 'Software'

We recently featured a gallery of photos which included a selection of the best HDR images. High Dynamic Range Imaging or HDR is a technique which allows for a far greater dynamic range of exposures than normal digital imaging techniques. This can be achieved by modifying a set of photos with Photoshop using the Merge HDR function.

This technique may seem a little advanced for novice users but with a little patience, even a beginner has hope of creating a master piece HDR image.

So first off, you will need to take your pictures. The idea is to take a photo of the same scene several times with different exposures.

If you’re new to world of manual exposure then don’t worry, follow the main steps and you should still end up with a nice looking image. People with knowledge of manual exposure settings will be able to better produce the specific image tone that they require.

If possible set your camera so that it shoots your photos in RAW format. This will capture more dynamic range data than a JPEG file and it also gives a great deal of temperature latitude.

You should make sure you camera is stabilized on a tripod so that it doesn’t move.

Now set your camera to manual exposure setting. Meter your scene and select the aperture you would like. If your camera has an ISO setting, choose a low setting to reduce noise.

If you are not sure about the metering and aperture settings; it is possible to use the automatic metering and aperture modes to estimate your values, you can then input these values into the relevant manual exposure settings.

The HDR technique requires at least three (but can be done with more) photos of the same scene to be taken at different shutter speeds.

In this example there are three pictures taken at -2EV, metered EV and +2EV. To achieve these different exposures you change the shutter speed accordingly.

A slower shutter speed allows more light to pass though the lens. If a quicker shutter speed is used, less light will pass through.

Professional photographers are able to trade off shutter speed and aperture by using units of stops. A stop up and down on each will halve or double the amount of light regulated by each.

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This post started life as few random ‘stumbles upon’ some great Photoshop images. Our search turned up way more than was first expected so we decided to share with you our pick of the bunch.

As well as some funny Photoshop pics, we also found a collection of great non-digital photos that may indeed inspire you to start clicking.

35 Amazing Photoshop Images

Credits for this set of amazing Photoshop images goes out to the guys over at Worth1000, Fark, Kjun, Photoshop Talent, Artist-3d, Devotion Graphics, Adegen, Benoit.P. Plus Okizoo Graphic Designer Hecto.

35 Photoshop HDR Images

These HDR images were all picked up off a group from flickr.

High Dynamic Range Imaging or HDR is a technique which allows for a far greater dynamic range of exposures than normal digital imaging techniques. This can be achieved by modifying a set of photos with Photoshop using the tone-mapping function. We’ll be covering this technique later on this month so watch this space for a step-by-step guide on how to make HDR images.

30 Classic Non-Digital Photos

Aneta Kowalczyk

Antony Chambers

Cosmin Bumbut

Jan Von Holleben

Leigh Perry

Lina Scheynius

Micheal Kenna

Rodney Smith

Stefan Rohner

Todd Hido

Sorry to all those who didn’t get credit for their work. If anyone has any idea who was responsible for the anonymous images, please let us know and will update the post where applicable.

We just reviewed the latest installment in the Guitar Hero series – Guitar Hero 3, Legends Of Rock. Despite the realistic game play, even if you’re using the guitar-shaped controller gameplay is not quite the same as actually playing a guitar.

For those who don’t play the guitar, this is probably a good thing but for those who are seeking an even more realistic version of the game, you should check out fourth coming rival game, Guitar Rising.

Guitar Rising is basically the same as Guitar Hero with one major difference, you can use any electric guitar, yes a real electric guitar to control the player.

Check Out The Video Promo Of Guitar Rising.

Stumble Upon is a collaborative web search tool that utilizes a growing Stumble Upon community to help you cut down on Googling and get better directed to what you are looking for.

Developed by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance, and Eric Boyd,“StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. As you click Stumble!, we deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences.”

This web search tool comes in the form of a browser add-on which can be found for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera.

Click Here To Download StumbleUpon

How StumbleUpon Works

StumbleUpon finds a new site every time you click the ‘stumble!’ button; once you find a page that you like, you can rate the page by giving it a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down.’

The pages which StumbleUpon send your way are based on your ratings of previous pages, as well as ratings from your friends and other users with similar interests. In this way, websites with great content get recommend for the next user by real people – not heartless machines.

The StumbleUpon community is extremely large and continuing to grow. In July 2006 StumbleUpon had around 1 million users and as of December 2007, the community had grown to over 4 million. The rising number of the stumble upon community was something that eBay noticed back in May 07 when they acquired StumbleUpon for a whopping $75,000,000 (75 million) USD.

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The newest version of the Guitar Hero series hit the stores late last year and has been causing a storm ever since. Developed by Neversoft and Aspyr Media, and published by Activision and RedOctane, Legends of Rock is the third full installment in the Guitar Hero series and the fourth title overall.

The game is available for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360, PC, and Mac platforms. Xbox 360, Wii, and Playstation 3 users can also connect online to rock out with others anywhere in the world.As with the previous Guitar Hero games, the player can use standard controllers or a new wireless guitar-shaped controller specially designed for the game.

The gameplay in Guitar Hero 3 remains essentially the same, with the player guiding the guitarist through the varying genres of rock music by hitting the notes in time as they scroll across the screen.One notable addition to the game is the new cooperative career mode. The co-op mode is arranged similarly to the single player career, with one player on lead guitar and the other on bass or rhythm guitar. In this mode you’ll find just 6 tiers of songs - each encore song is unique to the co-op mode but the boss battles have been removed.

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There was never really any doubt the X-Box’s favorite master chief would return in another episode of the Halo series, especially with the cliff hanger we were all left with at the end of Halo 2. Well, avid fans (who haven’t already completed the game) will be please to hear the final chapter in the Halo trilogy continues the story and concludes it brilliantly.

For those who didn’t get caught up in “one of the most popular games in history,” the Halo story centers on the interstellar war between 26th century humanity, led by the United Nations Space Command, and a collection of alien races known as the Covenant.The player assumes the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier, as he wages war in defense of humanity, assisted by human Marines as well as allied alien Elites.Following the events of Halo 2 - The Covenant is on its way to Earth, continuing its universal ethnic cleansing and attempting to activate the floating space weapons known as Halos, which could destroy civilization as we know it. The Master Chief and the other Earth forces of the UNSC are in hot pursuit to stop them, with newfound alien allies such as the Arbiter coming along for the ride.

The third and final part of the Halo trilogy was released in September, 2007. During the opening day, over one million people connected to X-Box live to play Halo 3 and by the end of the day, Halo 3 had broken the record for the highest grossing opening day in entertainment history, bringing in $170 million within the first 24 hours. The game then went on the sell over 8.1 million copies by January 2008.

So now this is officially the most popular game to date, let’s take a look at the new features Bungie Studios have added.

Continue reading this article for a review on the game, lots of screenshots and a video review.

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Point based motion capture has become the industry standard procedure to capture the movements of the human body and convert the data for use in 3D animations. Reflective markers are placed at many points of the body, as the person moves around the data is recorded and can then be transferred to the animation. Both movies and games use this technology to give characters lifelike movements and actions.

However when it comes to realistic facial work, even setups that use of hundreds of reflective dots leave the developers with rough blocky data the requires a lot of post processing.

Enter motion capture company Mova. Mova’s Contour Reality Capture System uses multiple cameras that create 100,000 polygon facial models that are accurate to within one tenth of a millimeter.

Mova founder, also the man behind Apple’s QuickTime and Microsoft’s WebTV, Steve Perlman said,

“This pushes Unreal Engine 3 to its very limit … it’s about as photo-real as you can get in real time.”

Check out the video of the Unreal Engine 3 running real time on a dual NVIDIA 8800 GTXs with SLI.

Perlman says the company has been working privately with developers for some time to adapt the system for video game use.

“People have never had this kind of data available before in a game context … their heads are spinning,” he said. “What you’re seeing right there is the result of, having time to wrap our heads around this thing and see how we’re going to use it, and yes, we can in fact get a face that looks almost photo-real — you know, not quite, but almost photo-real — running in a game engine today.”

“You can see the difference then between what’s achievable in cinema and what’s achievable right now in video games…….But next generation game machines, they’ll be able to essentially show in real time what we can do currently in non-real-time using renderers. … Next generation, you’re going to have interactive sequences where people think there’s a live person in the game.”

The Unreal Engines abilities doesn’t stop there, the contour system can also create even more detailed animations if real time processing is not necessary. Below is another video of how reality capture data can look when pre-rendered.

Perlman says that the cost of a Contour motion-capture session isn’t much higher than traditional marker-based capture session, somewhere in the region of a few thousand to a few hundred thousand depending on the length and complexity of the shot.

The real savings come in post production, Perlman explains,

“Unlike marker-based capture, which has a big manual clean-up process before you see results, with contour it’s purely computational….
“We’ve talked to people and one of the reasons when they announce delays for complex games is because they’re fighting to try and make the faces look good. With Contour, you send the guy in, he does a shoot, and we send you a face that looks nearly perfect. It’s no longer one of the risk issues for your schedule.”

The Contour system generates so much data, Perlman says, that the full value of the rendering won’t be apparent until hardware speeds improve.

“With markers, you kind of get the resolution of what those markers are and that’s it……
“When a next-generation game system comes out, or they decide they want to do something for a feature film, you can’t really use the data. With Contour, it’s actually capturing the data at much higher resolutions than any system in the world, even for feature films, can currently use. What we do is we store that data away … and when a next generation video game machine comes out and they want the data at higher resolution, they can.”

Perlman wouldn’t reveal which companies are currently using this technology, but said he expects the first games with Contour captures could come out in 2008, depending on developer schedules. He hopes the system will be in wide use by 2009.

MojoPac is great new piece of software which allows you to install anything on a portable USB Mass Storage Device - whether it’s Photoshop or World of Warcraft - then take the drive to a host computer and use the programs on the guest drive.

MojoPac conveniently allows you to switch between the host and guest drive and also keeps practically everything personal including bookmarks, documents, history, etc.

View More MojoPac Demos and Guides >>>

MojoPac makes it possible to:

• Listen to your music library, watch videos and download podcasts from any PC
• Watch downloaded video like movies or TV shows with your media player of choice
• Play PC games such as World of Warcraft, Everquest or Half-Life from any PC and take the game and its current state with you
• Use expensive PC software you have limited licenses for, like Microsoft Office or Photoshop, from any computer
• Surf with your preferred browser, store your passwords and other sensitive data separate from an untrusted host PC
• Backup working copies of your essential software so that if your computer crashes or hard drive fails, you can plug your MojoPac into another PC and have a working environment ready to go

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Tired of getting out of the lazy boy to change games in your PS2? Well now you might not have to……A new firmware update for Memor32 – the PS2 modchip on a memory card – promises to allow your none chipped Playstation to play an entire library of games direct from the comforts of your own USB hard drive.

A group of Russian hackers named Memento are responsible for the firmware handiwork. The memory card chip mod couldn’t be simpler to use, now all that’s left is to get our hands on one to see how well it actually performs.

For those of you who own an older PS2 (the bulky version), there is another equally simple hack. HD Loader comes in the form of a DVD and can also hack your Playstation without the need for a chip mod. Using the PS2’s 3.5″ IDE slot and a network adapter, simply hook up your hard drive and run HD Loader in PS2.The HD loader has been around for some two years now but it may not have gained great popularity due to reports of compatibility issues; let’s hope the new update from the Russians will run a little smoother.

Defragmentation of your hard disk is a necessary task that should be done regularly to ensure the efficiency of your PC.

It is extremely common and almost certain that over time your PC will slow down. This is caused by the way files are stored on a hard disk and is directly related to the amount of files you manage.When you save data on your hard drive the file is split up and stored in sections which are adjacent to each other. Small files are easy to store because they can be placed efficiently next to each other.

As you continue to use your computer performing tasks such as editing, adding and deleting files, changes occur in these sections of data and some areas will become empty pockets. These areas are referred to as fragmentation.

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I am sure everyone has heard about it, but what exactly does it meant to have your identity stolen and how much of a threat is it actually.

What is Identity Theft

Identity theft is a catch-all term for crimes involving illegal usage of another individual’s identity. The most common form of identity theft is credit card fraud. While the term is relatively new, the practice of stealing money or getting other benefits by pretending to be a different person is thousands of years old.

According to the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center, identity theft is sub-divided into four categories:

* Financial Identity Theft (using another’s identity to obtain goods and services)
* Criminal Identity Theft (posing as another when apprehended for a crime)
* Identity Cloning (using another’s information to assume his or her identity in daily life)
* Business/Commercial Identity Theft (using another’s business name to obtain credit)

Identity theft may be used to facilitate crimes including illegal immigration, terrorism and espionage. Identity theft may also be a means of blackmail. There are also cases of identity cloning to attack payment systems, including medical insurance.

How Much of a Threat is Identity Theft to Me?

Surveys in the USA from 2003 to 2006 showed a decrease in the total number of victims but an increase in the total value of identity fraud to US$56.6 billion in 2006. The average fraud per person rose from $5,249 in 2003 to $6,383 in 2006.

Defense Link Article About Military Member Identity Theft Battle

The 2003 survey from the Identity Theft Resource Center found that :

* Only 15% of victims find out about the theft through proactive action taken by a business
* The average time spent by victims resolving the problem is about 40 hours
* 73% of respondents indicated the crime involved the thief acquiring a credit card
* The emotional impact is similar to that of victims of violent crimes

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Staying up to date with the latest software and applications can be expensive. Professional applications like Photoshop and Microsoft Office certainly don’t come cheap, even the Windows operating system required to run your PC is costly.

Many are unaware of expensive applications’ free open source and online alternatives.

Click To See The Battle Plan of The Software Wars

Open source products comprise the work of many collaborators. Each person works on small portions of a project, and anyone is welcome to contribute. The finished product is available freely for anyone to download or even modify.

After the jump is a list of fourteen free open source applications.

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Most computer users quickly get to grips with the software and applications that are used on a regular basis. However there is one application included in every version Windows that many people over look, the Task Manager.

The Task Manager’s purpose in life is to provide computer performance information along with details about currently running programs and processes. It also provides the ability to monitor your network traffic if you are connected to a network.

Savvy computer users will know that a couple of quick short cuts can take you to the task manager; Ctrl + Alt + Delete and Ctrl + Shift + ESC. The task manager can usually be accessed even when other programs have crashed, enabling the user to quit an application or process, or shutdown the PC.

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Google is a name synonymous with bettering someone else’s idea. But we should certainly not be the ones complaining, as they steam roll the competition they continue provide us with more user-friendly and lets not forget ‘free’ services and applications.

A new Google service, dubbed “Knol,” is set to compete with the Web’s largest data base of reference work, Wikipedia. The firm revealed that the new website project will invite individuals to write “authoritative articles” on their areas of expertise.Google hopes that Knol (the name derived from “knowledge”) articles will cover “all topics, from scientific concepts … to entertainment.”Significantly, the project will see Google help generate new editorial content, a process its executive have previously said it is “philosophically opposed to.”In a Google blog posted last month, Udi Manber, Vice President of Engineering wrote,

“The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content”

As on Wikipedia, the content will be free to access. However, one major difference is that Knol’s authors will be able to attach advertising to their work and take a share of revenues.

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Google are always up to something, and we could dedicate a whole blog to them if we simply had the time on our hands! In what seems to be their never ending quest to take over the Information Technology World they have announced yet another FREE application, language translations for the Google Talk chat client.

Using the same technology as, the translation application is delivered as a series of chat bots. These tools can quickly translate a phrase or paragraph for you, and they can also be added to group chats to act as real-time translators.Google lists out about 30 total language bots with which are all logically named according to their translation duty, such as en2ko@bot.talk.google.com, signifying English to Korean translation. English is the dominant language across the translations; however there are some non-English bots available such as fr2de.

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