Moving from Flickr to SmugMug

Over the last couple of years, I've been storing my photos online @ Flickr. But I fear that time has come to move forward. Forward to another service for the next couple of years. The main reason for moving is that Flickr doesn't seem to innovate. No innovation basically means going backwards, in these days.

Flickr is a WYSIWYG environment. What you see is what you get, and not in the way this term is usually used on the Interwebs. There's no way of changing the coloring or appearance (white only). No way of integrating into another website (e.g. changing the URL).

Click to read more ...

Lousy Adobe Reader 10.0.1 Update

Earlier this week I got the announcement (I opened an Adobe application) that there was an update for the Adobe Reader app. Security-conscious as I am, I fired up the update process.

Each time, this process stopped at the (near??) end of the installation with the following error:

The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.adobe.ARM error 1807.)

The error also suggested looking at the log file. Examination of this file showed nothing out of the ordinary. At least not that made sense to me.
There were some lines in the log that made me try to do a work-around (in bold);

Click to read more ...

Adobe Coldfusion 8 and 9 Vulnerable to Hijacking

Adobe released a security bulletin regarding the Coldfusion web engine. Upgrade / patch your Coldfusion server if you like to stay in control of your webserver. The patch has been classified as important.

An important vulnerability has been identified in ColdFusion 8.0, 8.0.1, 9.0, 9.0.1 for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX. This directory traversal vulnerability could lead to information disclosure (CVE-2010-2861). Adobe has provided a solution to the reported vulnerability. It is recommended that users update their product installation using the instructions provided above.

The patch/update get be downloaded here.

Installing Adobe Coldfusion 9 on OSX Server 10.6.4

Updated on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 11:08 by Willem

Updated on Friday, July 30, 2010 at 7:53 by Willem

After Apple updated the Mac mini to it's current form (mid 2010), I decided that it was time to start replacing my 'faithful' Windows 2003 server with something a bit less power consuming. The original Mac Mini was basically a consumer device, but a while back, Apple released a server version of the device. The main differences are:

• Only 1 CPU model available (2.66GHz at this moment)
• No DVD drive
• 2 * 500GB internal disks
• OSX 10.6.4 Server edition (unlimited clients)

Basically everything you could ever need for a server with a very small footprint.

The installation of Coldfusion is not straight forward. Not that I expected it to be [1], [2], [3], but one keeps hoping on an installer that actually installs the complete package, and where you don't have to edit files yourself to get it to work. It's not that it's the very first version of the scripting engine......

Anyway, the installer guides you through everything needed to INSTALL the software. Getting it to work comes next....

Click to read more ...

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Released

Adobe released Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 into the wild. The application can be downloaded from the Adobe website. The trail can be upgraded to a fully functioning version when you enter a valid serial number.

New features are;

• Flickr integration
  Really nice feature. I do wonder how (and if) it works across multiple computers.
• Easy sharing
• Lens correction
• Support for DSLR video's
• Image watermarking
• Tethered shooting
  For Nikon and Canon Cameras
• etc.

After I downloaded the new version I installed it on my MacBook. The 'old' Lightroom v2.x can be used besides the new version.

Click to read more ...

Droplets in Photoshop CS5

Every photo I upload to Flickr goes through a watermarking process. To do this, I created a watermarking action within Photoshop (started this in the CS3 days). These actions can be 'converted' to so-called droplets. These are 'shortcuts' you can place on e.g. your desktop. Every image you drag onto this droplet gets opened in Photoshop and the preconfigured actions are applied.

This worked in Photoshop CS3, and CS4 (after some modifications to the original action). But in Photoshop CS5 the droplets won't execute. The action itself runs smoothly within Photoshop, but when you export it as a droplet, the action won't start. You have to start the action manually.....

I even tried to create an action / droplet from scratch in Photoshop CS5, but that one won't run either when I drop a JPEG on the droplet. This is a reason for not upgrading to CS5 on my main machine (which also still runs Leopard for compatibility reasons).

According to the online Adobe Photoshop CS5 helpfiles regarding droplets, the droplets should still function. So I write this of as a bug in the initial release of Photoshop CS5.

Update on Friday, May 7, 2010 at 6:51 by Willem

I posted a bug report @ Adobe after I found out that I'm not the only one having issues with this.

Update on Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at 19:44 by Willem

The discussion on the Adobe Forums have attracted the attention of Adobe employees. So hopefully, we'll see a bugfix soon. I don't want to modify every action I have a droplet for. Especially since I use several actions made by others, which I 'converted' into droplets.

Update on Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 8:05 by Willem

Adobe released an update for Photoshop CS5 (v12.0.1), which fixes the droplet problem in the 32bit mode (I haven't tried the 64bit mode yet). Just launch the Adobe updater and the update will be installed.

And now; continue to evaluate the new features of Adobe CS5, and hope I don't run into more annoying bugs.

HDR Processing in Adobe Photoshop CS5

The new CS5 edition of Adobe Photoshop has refined the HDR (High Dynamic Range) processing. Now, you won't need the Photomatix plugin (in theory).

After selecting the 'Merge To HDR in Photoshop' option in Lightroom, the images get exported to Photoshop and it starts doing its magic. Normally (in the earlier versions) you would end up with a 32-bit image, but now you have the option of manipulating the 8 or 16-bit version of the image. Just like in Photomatix.

Photoshop CS5 HDR interfaceInitial experiences are not really positive, but that can be related to my experiences with Photomatix. A quick glance at the controls available, it should be able to produce similar results.
Talking of Photomatix; The plugin used in CS4 won't work in CS5. You need to download the CS5 version of the plugin at the HDRSoft.com website (Mac / Windows). The new version is universal (32 and 64-bit), free of charge to registered users, and works only in CS5.

One thing I didn't expect was that Photoshop started downloading a lens database from the Adobe website during the creation of the HDR. No idea if this is used in the HDR creation, or that this is done only once and used in other Photoshop CS5 plugins / filters

First Contact With Adobe Photoshop CS5

As most of you will know, Adobe release its latest Creative Suite (CS5) a couple of days ago. Personally, I only use Photoshop and Dreamweaver. For the casual photographer, the CS2 or CS3 version of Photoshop is probably more than you ever need. So are there reasons for upgrading (or reinstalling)?

First, Adobe doesn't really support the older versions of Photoshop anymore, or the operating system you run at this moment has some issues with an older version. So an upgrade will happen sooner or later. But apart from compatibility issues with the OS, there are some new features available for the (casual) photographer. The following features are the ones I'm most interested in;

• Easier ways of doing complex selections
  Basically a tedious job in every earlier version, so I have my reservations on this feature.
• Content Aware Fill
  Create-photos-in-Photoshop-instead-of-by-using-a-camera feature.
• HDR Imaging
  Let's see if it beats Photomatix Pro.
• Automatic Lens Correction
  I now use PTLens on the photos that need the correction.
• 64bit support (!!!!)
  A feature that's long overdue.
• Better Black and White conversion
  I mostly use Nik Silver Efex Pro at the moment.

In this post I'll be evaluating Photoshop CS5 on some of the points I mentioned above. Others will become a separate blogpost later on. For the moment, I'll be starting with 'upgrading' from CS4 to CS5, and see if that goes well (after I've cloned my MacBook disk with SuperDuper! to make sure I can always go back if things go sour).

Another thing that I need to check out is compatibility with earlier versions of Action scripts, and (older) plugins. Just check the CS5 or Photoshop tag for all the related posts about Photoshop CS5.

Click to read more ...

Adobe Coldfusion 9 on CentOS 5.4 (x64)

Updated on Monday, April 5, 2010 at 18:53 by Willem

A while back I figured out how to install Adobe (could have been Macromedia back then) Coldfusion MX on an Ubuntu linux server. This config still runs as it should, but in the mean time several things have changed in the world of software. I've been leaning towards Centos 5.4, and Adobe released Coldfusion 9 somewhere in 2009. These two 'events' made me decide to combine the two.

Before I continue, I must warn you that the Coldfusion installer is still broken..... So there's some manipulation of code involved.

Since the new 'server' is going to run in a virtual environment I started in a VMWare Workstation. This way I could make snapshots of my progress. This made it easier to start from scratch. The problem with Linux and me is that I tend to reinstall the OS when things go haywire. So VMWare is a safe way out in this case.

Click to read more ...

Adobe Flash Player Problems

Updated on Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 22:26 by Willem

Since I encountered some problems with flash on certain websites, I decided to check if my Flash player has been updated since 1972. Normally you can check the Flash settings (incl auto-update functions) through a page on the Adobe/Macromedia website. Which is weird, since you would think that this is a local setting (incl. privacy settings and audio functionalities).... But no. Macromedia/Adobe decided that you have to do that through their website.
The reason being that they can check whatever you are doing with your player.......

Click to read more ...