Seen at Magic Kingdom, bumper of yellow taxi car.
When co-workers attack
I felt a bit like the guy in this ad before Christmas. The SharePoint farm at work was down, and I stayed up for about 76 hours to bring it back up. Thankfully, I did my work remotely, so short of guided missiles, they couldn’t touch me… 🙂
Photoshop erases EXIF and IPTC data when saving for web
A couple of weeks ago, after carefully editing the IPTC information for one of my photos in Photoshop CS2, I was shocked to find out that it disappeared when I used the Save for Web option.
I thought I was alone, till I discovered others are aware of this problem; see this Google search for plenty of links. Apparently using ImageReady to save the image preserves the EXIF data, but it does not preserve the IPTC data. Saving the image directly from Photoshop preserves both EXIF and IPTC data, but robs the user of examining and tweaking the quality and resolution of the JPG file before pressing the Save button. But, neither option preservers vendor-specific EXIF tags, like the ISO tag writen by Nikon cameras.
Seems to me users shouldn’t have to dance around Photoshop and ImageReady in order to preserve the vital information present in the EXIF and IPTC data of their photos. It’s pretty sad that Adobe hasn’t standardized the photo data options in Photoshop and ImageReady. Why is it that only ImageReady has the extra option for the meta data, and why does it only save the EXIF data instead of both EXIF and IPTC data? Furthermore, I can’t believe an easy option for preserving EXIF and IPTC data isn’t made available in the Save for Web option. Don’t tell me it’s because of file size, because I’m not going to buy that argument. A few kilobytes here and there simply don’t matter nowadays, and besides, users should be able to make that decision, not the software. And don’t tell me it’s too expensive to do it. Exifer is free.
Bottom line: we deserve to have the option to preserve the extra data in our photos.
Winnowing my photos
I seldom keep more than 50-60% of the photos I take. There’s no reason to waste my disk space with digital trash. It’s funny, the more photos I shoot, the less of them I keep. Lately, only about 10-20% of my photos manage to survive deletion. It’s an inversely proportional relationship.
When I decided to share my photos online, I whittled down my collection of over 18,000 photos (already winnowed) to about 7,000 that I wanted to upload. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been winnowing even those photos. I was a little too enthusiastic at first, and uploaded some photos that should have stayed on my computer or gone straight to the trash bin because they missed my initial winnowing. It’s been a painful process, and it’s very bruising to the ego, but it’s got to be done. It’s really hard to delete a photo when it’s had 10, 20, 30, even 50 or 60 views, but if it’s inferior, there’s no reason to let it stay.
I’ve reached a point now where I’m sharing thousands of photos (over 3,500 are public, with a total number of over 5,800), so there’s no reason not to winnow. If someone’s going to take the time to go through my photos, I don’t want them to see chaff, I want them to see substance. I know I’m sick of chaff. With time, my eye has gotten better at spotting good photos. And it’s also gotten more sensitive and easily disgusted with crappy snapshots that don’t deserve to waste disk space. I see so many of those when I hunt for good photos, that I can’t stand to see any in my own collection.
If you’ve been looking at my photos, and wondering how it’s possible that the total number of photos stays constant and even goes down while I upload new photos every day, now you have your answer. If you’re an experienced photographer, and you’ve seen some photos in my collection that you think are terrible, let me know. I’ll have a look and gladly delete any inferior photograph.
Impressions from Walt Disney World – Part 4
This post is part of a series on Walt Disney World. Click on each link to access Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
There’s a ride called the Backlot Tour at Disney MGM Studios. At first sight, it seems like nothing fancy: just a tour bus that takes you around various places. But if you assume that and never go on it, you miss out on a whole lot of fun.
The Backlot Tour is actually made up of three segments: a pre-ride special effects show (with audience participation), the actual tour in the buses, and a very nice post-tour walk through the on-site AFI (American Film Institute) Museum, which is packed full of actual movie props and costumes.
The special effects show involves mock action sequences from Pearl Harbor, and the audience is shown how stunts like the ones in the movie were created. You also get a sense of the scale of those special effects, and of the incredible effort and planning that went into creating each action scene, even if it lasted only a few seconds.
The backlot tour gives the visitors behind-the-scenes glimpses at the work that goes on at the studio, which is supposedly in use for various movies from time to time. As the tour guide speaks, the bus snakes its way among various cars and objects used in past and recent movies.
There are rare gems, like Walt Disney’s personal plane. He used it to fly over the Florida Everglades when he surveyed the land he would later purchase for Disney World. Toward the end of the tour, you’ll be taken through the costume department. There’s a tunnel built right through the building where the staff works on costumes, and large windows line it. You’ll be able to look right in and see them at work on the various costumes worn by WDW cast members.
You’ll get an unexpected shock as you experience a fire and water stunt at a specially-designed canyon. Tens of thousands of gallons of water will rush past you. It’s quite a sight to see!
But what I thought was really interesting was the AFI Museum, available at the end of the tour. There was no time limit, and we could look at the various movie props and costumes as long as we wanted. It was a treat!
Raoul Pop 