|
Technical advances for members of Outdoor Writers Association
of America |
| TOP |
|
| FEATURES
TIPS
|
EMERGING
NEWS
TECH-E REVIEWS
SUPPORTING
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
|
Digital camera tips
It's not too late to make digital photography work for you
Remember the hassle when we snapped nothing
but color on that Canadian fishing trip then discovered that the only market interested
was a regional magazine, which only accepted black-and-white prints?
If you’re about my vintage, you remember those days.
Some writers bought a 35-mm copier while others, reeling from sticker shock, made their
own color copier using a board, a camera mount and a small viewer. After all that trouble,
we discovered that the end results left much to be desired. Those copies didn’t look just right, no matter how we
manipulated the print in the darkroom.
Today, when I visit the newspaper where I
toiled until my retirement nearly a decade ago, I find that the darkroom is long gone,
replaced by a battery of computers. Chemical darkrooms are a thing of the past, and so is
film for news photographers. Even my home darkroom is under plastic, and enlargers,
developing tanks and chemicals sit like dinosaurs.
Not wanting to miss out on new technology, I
embraced the digital age. I can do just about anything I did in the past with my digital
wonder and a computer – yes, even black-and-white prints, which are much better than
the best I printed in a darkroom.
I have a Nikon Coolscan that I use often to scan 35-mm color
images into my computer. I send images across the country to potential customers in an
instant, and they can request the originals or pass, saving me time and money.
I’ve discovered that the digital device is
versatile. Like many other writers of my age, I have hundreds of 2-1/4 color
transparencies that still have value. If I needed to have any of these larger
transparencies scanned, it would cost me dearly. Here’s a neat trick: that digital camera is an
excellent scanning device. That’s right – you can copy larger images
using a digital camera and then download them to your computer. I have some 4x5 color
transparencies that I could copy if needed, as well. I also have copied some large 4x5
black-and-white negatives, reversed them in Adobe
and printed them via computer.
Some writers say they have good luck scanning
large transparencies on a flatbed scanner. I’ve tried this only to find that a flatbed was
never designed for scanning transparencies and my end result, unprofessional. I have
better luck with my digital camera, which equals what I can get from my Coolscan. I did
make my own copy device, refurbished from one that I used to make black-and-white copies.
I have a small daylight viewer that slides along a wooden track to bring images closer or
farther back.
If you’re in the same boat as me and want to make
use of large, color transparencies that are gathering dust in some forgotten file, try it;
digital cameras can do anything imaginable. They also make a great scanner - but make
terrible martinis.
An
OWAA member since 1967, Henry F.
Zeman lives in Grand Rapids, Mich. A freelance writer/photographer, he publishes his
work in periodicals such as Michigan Hunting & Fishing, Michigan Out of
Doors, Outdoor Life and Field and Stream. If you have questions or
comments about this article, feel free to contact him.
TOP
Buying computer software
Beware of online auction fraud!
By Kevin Rhoades
I
should have trusted my instincts, but I’ll chalk it up as another lesson learned.
Recently,
I purchased page-layout software QuarkXPress 5.0 on e-Bay. I’d checked Quark’s Web site but thought that the
$899 price tag for the full version (Windows) seemed steep. Two independent retailers
listed on Quark’s Web site offered the same product for $60 less, but the price was
still high, especially since the holiday season had left some “red” on my Visa
bill.
On
eBay I perused prices for Quark advertised as “NEW, UNREGISTERED” ranging from
$305-$410. For obvious reasons, I avoided the $65 “USED” versions. Compared to
$800 plus, $400 seemed like a bargain, but I wondered, “How do they do this?”
I
followed all the usual measures to ensure my safety:
- My seller had a 100-percent
positive feedback rating. All responses from buyers (of Quark, Photoshop and other
software) were excellent.
- My seller had used this account
for more than three years.
- I opened a PayPal account to avoid revealing credit
card information to an individual. PayPal protects for purchases ranging from $200-$500.
- I paid with Visa, knowing that I
could demand a reversal of charges.
I
waited until the auction ticked down to the last minute and entered my bid – I won at
$325. I felt elated and nervous. “Great deal,” I thought. “But how do they
do this?”
| How to protect yourself from software piracy If the price seems to good to be true, it probably is.
In advance of the purchase, ask the seller for the serial
number.
Look closely at the labels and serial numbers.
Auctions: An excellent “feedback rating”
doesn’t mean the software is legit.
Don’t pay with a money order or cashier’s check.
Pay with a credit card through a third-party service.
Buy software from authorized dealers.
|
Three
days later I received my shrink-wrapped box, CD-ROM, serial number – everything
appeared authentic. I installed Quark, entered the serial, registered online and went to
work.
“Fast
delivery. Thanks for the great deal! A+,” was the response I typed for my seller on
eBay.
A few
days later I received an e-mail warning from eBay. My seller had been barred from doing
business on eBay because of “suspicious activity.” eBay recommended that I
contact my bank or credit card company and arrange for a refund.
“What?”
I felt that slow, sinking feeling. …
I
called Quark and offered my serial number, hoping that the customer-service rep would say,
“This software is registered to Kevin Rhoades.” Surprisingly, I was told that my
serial number did not exist and that all Quark software is preregistered. To confirm, I
scanned the box and serial and e-mailed it to Pam Coonts at Quark.
You
know the rest of the story.
Coonts,
an avid eBayer herself, offered this valuable tip to avoid online fraud when purchasing
software from auctions or individuals: Get the serial number before the purchase, call the software manufacturer
– like Quark or Adobe Systems
– and ask if the serial is legitimate and to whom the software is registered.
Since
my pirated software works, should I keep it? I can play dumb and use it, but I can’t
contact Quark if I have problems. I won’t be able to upgrade to the next version.
Plus I’m in violation of Quark’s user agreement. Consider this: Some clever
software pirate duped Quark (and me) by creating serial numbers that work. During
installation, information went from my computer over the Internet – somewhere.
Wanting
to rid any “ties” from my computer to the unknown, I uninstalled Quark 5.0 and
restored my computer to an earlier date (I love that feature of Windows XP). Then I gave
Quark the name and address of my pirate.
I
should have trusted my instincts.
OWAA member Kevin Rhoades is OWAA's
webmaster and editor of Outdoors Unlimited. Rhoades' freelance work entails
designing books for individuals and consulting for self publishers.
TOP
OWAA's Online Directory
Half have registered so far...Have you?
By Lisa
Carter
OWAA Membership Services Manager
As of the first
week in January, more than eight months after OWAA launched the Online Directory, 56
percent of individual members and 50 percent of supporting members had registered.
Although 89 percent of you have e-mail addresses listed, only slightly more than half have
registered and updated your business information.
All member
information can be corrected and/or updated online, therefore we will not send out
Directory update forms, (except to those few individual members who do not have
Internet access). The information for the 2004-2005 Directory will be taken directly
from the Online Directory. It is up to YOU to make any changes to your listing. If you
leave it incorrect in the Online Directory, it will appear incorrect in the print Directory.
If you have not already done so, it is important that you register right away!
If
you haven’t registered at the Online Directory yet, go to the home page and click on
“Click Here To Register Now.” At Step 1, search for your name by LAST NAME ONLY
(supporting members put the company name here). Don’t put anything in the first-name
or zip code fields. Once you’ve initiated the search, the Directory will list all
members with that last name. Click on yours. Then it will ask for your ID number.
We’ve sent several e-mails with links to the Directory and your unique ID number. If
you can’t find one of those, e-mail us and we’ll send you your ID number. Then
follow the directions to finish the registration process. Make sure you opt to have your
user name and ID sent to you by e-mail. BE
SURE TO SAVE THE E-MAIL!
Lisa
Carter has overseen member services at OWAA headquarters for four years. She will be
leaving her job at headquarters at the end of February, much to OWAA's dismay.
TOP
Submitting
digital files to editors
In the last issue of the Tech-E-Letter, Karen Lee commented on problems in identifying digital images submitted by
photographers:
“The photographer might identify his or her
image as 'slide MG-V11X.’ I know it as a slide of deer eating acorns
in the fall. By the time it reaches the graphics department, the code means nothing.”
Adobe Photoshop (and some
other, less-expensive programs like PhotoMechanic) allow adding extensive information such
as title, author, caption and copyright, which becomes part of the file. Click on “file info” in Photoshop to see these fields. Selecting
the EXIF field shows information the camera captures like lens focal length, f-stop,
exposure time, color space and date and time the photo was taken (if you set the date on
the camera correctly).
If photographers
use this capability then everyone in the production process will know what the photo is
of, when it was taken and who took it.
By
Bill Becher, becher.com
E-mail
confidentiality
When you send an
e-mail to several people at once, remember that some recipients may want their e-mail
addresses kept confidential. Furthermore, you may not want someone on the recipient list
to know everyone else who has received the e-mail. To prevent e-mail addresses from being
captured by a receiving party and to keep them confidential, move the list of recipients
to the “bcc” (blind-cc) location in your e-mail program before sending the
e-mail. In MS Outlook, for example, highlight all the e-mail recipients in the
“To” box and drag them to “Bcc.” Each will receive the e-mail, but
their e-mail addresses will not be listed for all to see. Put your own e-mail address in
the “To” box. Only your e-mail address will be displayed.
By Bob Knopf, www.outdoormarketing.com
Explorer shortcuts
Here’s a
trick when surfing the Internet. Hitting “Shift” + clicking a link on a Web site
opens the linked page in a new window. This can save you time if, for example, you’re
searching via google and want to
investigate links to search results without losing track of the search page. For further
surfing ease, hit “Alt” + “Tab,” and a thumbnail diagram of your
taskbar will appear. Holding down “Alt” and hitting “Tab” then allows
you to select a window; releasing “Alt” then will display the selected window.
By Katie McKalip
Web site ownership
If you’ve
ever wondered who owns the Web site (domain) name that you’ve always wanted, you can
find out at Who
Is. Simply enter the domain name, i.e. webimages.net, and the name and contact information of the domain name
owner will appear. In this case, it’s OWAA member Laurie Lee Dovey.
By Laurie Lee
Dovey, www.webimages.net
TOP
Spokane
conference info online
OWAA's
annual conference will be held in Spokane, Wash., in June of 2004. Want to find out more
about Conference? Need some information about hotels, seminars and speakers? Looking for
ideas for a side trip to go fishing after Conference is over? Visit OWAA's conference Web site. Full of
tips and details, including updated agendas and critical contact names and numbers, recent
additions include pre- and post-conference trips, all of which are discounted or free and
up for grabs to OWAA members!
By Katie McKalip
Test your editing skills
Dennis Cecil, student
of the North American
School of Outdoor Writing, told me about the Web site of the American Society of Copy Editors, which features a
comprehensive quiz guaranteed to test your writing and editing skills. I usually come away
mightily humbled by this type of quiz – this one is no exception. Check it out by
going to the section titled Site Features then click “Editing Booklet.”
By Roger Brunt, www.linksnorth.com/outdoorwriting
Learn
Photoshop -- at a discount
Want to enhance
your PhotoShop skills? Seminars co-sponsored by Adobe Systems are held in locations across the
country and are taught in a user-friendly style. Adobe’s newest offering
is PhotoShop
for Photographers. This one-day seminar
teaches tips to help you perfect images quickly. Plus, you’ll learn photo-editing
techniques for retouching, restoration, color correction and more. Six or more people from
the same organization may attend the same seminar for only $89 per person. Team up with
fellow OWAA members for a discount!
By Laurie Lee Dovey, www.webimages.net
Hunter
education goes online
In Wyoming,
hunter education is required for anyone born after 1965 to hunt with a firearm or for
anyone, regardless of age, who hunts elk in Grand Teton National Park or the National Elk
Refuge. The majority of Wyoming’s Hunter
Education Course is available online at Wyoming
Game and Fish Department’s Web site. Both prospective hunters and
seasoned veterans can take most of the written portion of the course by reading the manual
and taking quizzes online. Nonresidents can complete the online instruction and work the
range day into a Wyoming vacation trip. Wyoming’s online course
already boasts of one graduate, Gov. Dave Freudenthal. The governor “field tested” the course to
qualify for a Colorado hunting license. Go to hunter education under the “What’s New” sidebar on
the upper-right side of the page.
By Katie McKalip
TOP
Photoshop CS:
Adobe's latest offering
By Michael Furtman, www.michaelfurtman.com
Photoshop CS, the
all-new upgrade to Photoshop 7, recently hit the streets. If you’re wondering if it
is worth the price of an upgrade ($169), read on.
This new version
is Adobe System’s first
move toward satisfying the needs of digital photographers. The most significant is RAW
support, which allows you to not only view RAW files in the File Browser but also
manipulate the RAW file in Photoshop before saving it as a TIFF, JPEG or PSD file. This
significantly smoothes workflow – no more switching between Canon’s or
Nikon’s dedicated RAW programs and Photoshop! Within this RAW-support dialogue box,
you can reduce image noise, make white-balance and exposure corrections and use all the
tools you’d find in the camera manufacturer’s dedicated software. Or you can do
as I do – make only modest corrections in this step then do more significant editing
in Photoshop.
The improved File
Browser is FAST, FAST, FAST. It is also a stand-alone tool now, with its own file, edit
and preference menus, making it a much more usable feature. Many tasks that formerly had
to be done in Photoshop, such as making batch corrections and running actions, now can be
done within the browser feature.
With Photoshop
CS, Adobe introduced several new adjustment tools, the most significant ones being
Shadow/Highlight Command and Photo Filters.
The
Shadow/Highlight command is by far the best tool I’ve used for correcting photos
taken in demanding light, such as highly backlit subjects, allowing you to sharpen detail
in the shadow areas while not blowing out the highlights. Simple to use, it works better
than Curves or Levels and does it all in one quick step. Once you have a feel for the
correction level to apply to photos with a certain exposure problem, you can easily build
Actions and apply that correction to individual or batches of images. In my opinion, this
feature alone is reason enough to upgrade!
Ever wish you had
attached a photo filter to your lens before taking a shot? Now you can add filters after
the fact by using the Photo Filter command. This option lets you apply a preset such as an
81-warm or 80-blue filter and modify it using the Edit>fade option or by adjusting
luminosity. If they’d only add a polarizing filter!
Although
Photoshop 7 had 16-bit processing, the number of tools available in that mode limited its
usefulness. In CS, all tools are available in 16 bit, which helps in retaining the
original photo’s full spectrum of colors. While this feature requires a very fast
computer processor (at least two gigabytes), 8 bit is still default.
Finally, Adobe
has improved its interpolation tool (used to upsize or downsize your image). Bicubic
Smoother works as well as any “up-res-ing” tool I’ve tried.
This newest
Photoshop offers other advantageous tweaks and additions. I’ve tried most of these
new features on scanned photos originating from film, and they seem to work as well as
they do with digital images. Whether you shoot film or digits, I believe Photoshop CS is
well worth the price of the upgrade.
An OWAA member since 1985, Michael Furtman lives in
Duluth, Minn. In the November/December 2003 Tech-E-Letter, he wrote a piece that compared
the costs of digital cameras and film cameras. Furtman designed his own Web site, which he uses to market
his books and photos.
TOP
K2
Sports
Does winter seem
like it’s never going to end? Make time fly by trying a new sport: snowshoeing! K2 Sports manufactures the Atlas
and Tubbs snowshoe lines. Tubbs
Snowshoes gives you every reason to experiment with this growing trend and makes
finding the right shoe easy. Lines designed for hiking, racing and backcountry expeditions
are available, as well as styles designed especially for women. The “choose your
shoe” quiz asks a few questions then details styles and sizes of snowshoes that best
match your interests. The Trailfinder searches for snowshoeing trails in your area and
offers trail descriptions, including length and difficulty of terrain. Take a moment to
visit the Tubbs Web site – you just might get a few ideas for your next article!
By
Katie McKalip
TOP
Questions/Comments: Let the editor know what you think of OWAA’s Tech-E-Letter.
Editorial Guidelines for OWAA’s Tech-E-Letter: OWAA welcomes your submissions of features (500
words or less), tips (150 words or less) and emerging news/links (50 words or less).
E-mail your articles or story ideas to Technology Committee Chair Betty Lou Fegely.
Technology Committee:
Betty Lou Fegely, John
L. Beath, J. Leslie Booth, Carolee Boyles, Mark Chesnut, Richard Day, Susan Day, Laurie Lee Dovey, Mike Fine, Michael
Furtman, William H. Geer, Richard Grost,
Adela Grace Jackson, Bob Knopf, Brady W. Kolden, Matt Lindler, Kevin Rhoades, Karen Lee, Tammy Sapp, Dan Small, Jay Michael Strangis, Mike Walker.
OWAA Staff:
Executive Director,
William H. Geer
Tech-E-Letter Editor/OU Assistant Editor, Katie McKalip
Outdoors Unlimited Editor/OWAA Webmaster, Kevin Rhoades
Member Services Manager, Lisa Carter
Administrative Assistant, Dawn Biery
Intern, Lucia Stewart
Subscribe a friend to OWAA’s Tech-E-Letter.
Interested in becoming a member of OWAA?
OWAA
HOME
SITE INDEX
CONTACT US
JOIN US
TOP
|
