18th March 2007
After reading an article in the latest issue of PC Plus, I got curious about the world of content management systems again. I went over to OpenSourceCMS to sample the CMS demos that they have got on there. Mambo and Joomla! (I wish they dropped that exclamation mark; it messes up automated grammar checking) are fully fledged CMS’s and look impressive too, though how they would fit into my online presence is something of an open question. Since I spied that PHP-Nuke uses themes, that is an attraction; I am already used to that mindset thanks to WordPress. While Drupal is seemingly less slick than the others, that could be an attraction in itself; it does offer themes but no rich text editing is available.
Though all of the above are built on top of PHP/MySQL, I ignored them for some reason when I last looked at open-source content management systems. That does seem a strange thing to do, but this was a while ago and the moderate cost of adding database functionality to my website was not something that I was willing to pay, though I have done so since for HennessyBlog.
Therefore, I ended up seeing what Plone (built on Zope and using the Python programming language) could do. What I was had in mind at the time was a replacement for Perl-powered photo gallery, and a CMS was never going to fit the bill; it still doesn’t. In any case, Plone left me with the impression that it was an all or nothing affair when I like coexistence of website components on a single server. Things may have changed since then, so giving it another go remains an option.
Now that I have decided to have a look at Drupal, the emphasis this time is not on using it as a photo gallery platform; if I wanted that, I’d go with the API for something like Flickr or Zooomr. This time, the emphasis on using a CMS to manage the visitor information directories on my website. It does coexist with the other website components, including WordPress and the aforementioned bespoke built photo gallery. Interestingly, Drupal does offer blogging functionality if I wanted it.
Set up involved a spot of work with MySQL before moving onto other things:
mysql -u adminuserid -p /* logging in*/
create database drupal; /*creating new database*/
grant ALL on drupal.* to adminuser identified by “**********”; /* granting access to new database */
quit; /* exiting */
Because it is easier to see what’s going on (not wrong, hopefully), I prefer command line working with MySQL. For some reason, Drupal comes only in tar.gz archives, so I extracted this into the web server directory and opened up the site in Firefox. Installation only requires the set-up of database access and is soon completed. A few things turned up in the status report that needed attention: cron, this can be run manually; activation of PHP Unicode and GD library (PHP’s gd_info function is a real help in testing this) extensions, editing of php.ini to remove commenting semicolons activated them and restarting Apache made them available; having a place to store uploads, the directory called files got created.
Since then, I have set about bending it to my will, not always an easy thing to do with software. The first thing to do was to give it a static home page. By default, Drupal places tasters for any nominated pages and stories on its home page and shows configuration instructions until you allow some content to filter through. However, adding the Front Page module allows you to override this behaviour and have something more static. It was an entry on Kehan’s Blog that set me heading in the right direction.
The next steps were to persuade the thing to allow external links to exist in menus (though patches exist, I have yet to learn how to apply them other than finding the nefarious piece of code and replacing, a considerable challenge that makes me wonder if there is not a better way to do it: with a module, perhaps?) and carry on the theme editing until it ties in with the rest of my site. Then, I’ll make the decision whether to replace my current workflow (Perl-powered pre-processing of XML into PHP/XHTML using XSLT and the Saxon parser followed by FTP upload to the web server) with this one. The automation of the former argues in its favour. We’ll see how things pan out…
16th March 2007
We have seen the beta come out, an unprecedented move for Adobe, and now we are hearing about the new professional editions of Photoshop: Photoshop CS3 for digital imaging and Photoshop CS3 Extended with tools for processing digital video. Together with Photoshop Lightroom for digital photography and Photoshop Elements for the consumer market, it appears that Photoshop is moving from a single application to becoming a big family of them. Adobe is hosting an online launch for the CS3 suite on March 27th so the appearance on the market of the new Photoshop must be very imminent. In the light of this, I think I’ll hold off on a decision to purchase either Elements 5 or its CS2 until I have tried out the latter’s successor.
Update: I’ve just perused both .Net’s and Advanced Photoshop’s initial appraisals of Photoshop CS3. Since they seemed impressed, it should be worth a look then. Another tempting idea is to have a taste of Lightroom, so I went and downloaded the 30-day trial version. I may well have a go with it in my own time; I’m not wanting to install it and let the 30 days run out before I get to use it in anger.
15th March 2007
If you ever potter over to Adobe's online software store, a curious anomaly awaits you: electronic download editions of their software are never cheaper than the equivalent boxed versions. In fact, there are cases where the electronic version costs more than the boxed one. One would have thought that ditching the box, the disc(s) and whatever accompanies them would save Adobe money, and they would pass this onto you, yet it does not seem to make its way into the pricing for some reason. Another thing is that selling direct should allow Adobe to undercut retailers and make more money from their software, but it is the likes of Amazon that have the better prices. Whatever way you look at it, you have to admit that this pricing model doesn't make a lot of sense.
14th March 2007
If you ever go into a bricks and mortar newsagent and peruse its shelves with an eye out for references to data imaging software, you might find Adobe’s Photoshop as predominant there as it is in the digital imaging world. And the same trend seems to continue in to the bricks and mortar bookshops as well. Online, especially within the vaults of Amazon, it is not as much a matter of what gets stocked as what gets published and my impression is that the bias, if that’s the right word, continues there. That said, I didn’t realise until recently that Elsevier’s Focal Press has been covering Paint Shop Pro, once branded the poor man’s Photoshop, from at least version 7. That discovery, if it had come earlier, may have made a big difference to how I have been using PSP. That said, I have seen some opinions that PSP is easy to use and that may explain the lack of attention from publishers. Future Publishing did put out a monthly guide to PSP but that seems to have disappeared from the shelves and it does lend weight to that argument. Or it could have been Corel’s purchase of JASC that changed things…
Of course, without books and magazines, it is not as easy to see the possibilities and it is here where Photoshop really scores. The digital photography revolution has ensured the software’s escape from the world of computing and the digital arts into photography magazines and beyond. These days, even conventional photography titles feature Photoshop how-to articles. In fact, such is the level of digital content in titles such as Photography Monthly, Practical Photography and Outdoor Photography that you hardly need to pursue the specialist digital photography titles at all.
Speaking of photography, this is and has been my main use of digital imaging technology, be it the scanner that I use for digitising the output of my efforts in film photography or processing RAW files from my digital SLR. I have been using scanners since 1998 and am on my second, a CanoScan 5000F. The colour rendition in the output from its predecessor, a UMAX 1212U, deteriorated to the point where a replacement needed to be sought. As it happened, the Canon proved to be light years ahead of the UMAX, even with the latter operating properly. Incidentally, my first scanning outing was in the then current version of Photoshop (I booked some time on a scanner at the graphics centre of the university I was attending at the time and sneaked in the scanning of a photo with the journal graphic that I needed to do) - a limited affair, it has to be said - but I then reverted to things like Corel PhotoPaint and Paint Shop Pro. And PSP was what I was using in the main even after encountering the copy of Photoshop Elements 2 bundled with my EOS 10D. Elements’ cloning capabilities did tempt me though and I did acquire a Focal Press volume on the application but I somehow never took it further.
At the end of last year, Corel and Adobe launch new versions of PSP and Elements, respectively. That got me tempted by the idea of giving the whole business another look, this time in detail. My look at PSP XI regrettably suffered from the lack of time that I could devote to it and seeing what a book on it might have to say. I had more of a chance with Photoshop Elements and came away impressed with the way that it worked. Since then, I have been making my way through Scott Kelby’s latest Elements book and the ideas are building up. At the same time, I have been making good use of a Photoshop CS2 try-out and I am on the horns of a dilemma: do I splash out on CS2, do I get Elements 5 or do I await the now imminent CS3? You’ll notice that PSP doesn’t feature here; the amount of literature pertaining to Photoshop simply is too much to ignore and I have loads more to learn.
8th March 2007
I am in the process of adding new photos to my online photo gallery at the moment and the exercise is giving my Photoshop CS2 trial version a good amount of use. And the experience also adding a few strings to my bow in graphics editing terms, something that is being helped along by the useful volume that is The Focal Easy Guide to Photoshop CS2.
The most significant change that has happened is that to my workflow. Previously, it took the following form:
- Acquire image from scanner/camera
- For a camera image, do some exposure compensation
- Create copy of image in software’s own native file format (PSPIMAGE/PSP for Paint Shop Pro and PSD/PSB for Photoshop)
- Clean up image with clone stamp tool: removes scanner artefacts or sensor dust from camera images; I really must get my EOS 10D cleaned (the forecast for the coming weekend is hardly brilliant to I might try sending it away).
- Save a new version of the image following clean-up.
- Reduce the size of the digital camera image to 600×400 and create a new file.
- Boost colours of original image with hue/saturation/lightness control; save new version of file.
- Sharpen the image and save another version.
- For web images, save a new file with a descriptive name
- Create JPEG version
- Copy JPEG to Apache web server folders
- Create thumbnail from original JPEG
The new workflow is based upon this:
- Acquire image from scanner/camera
- For a camera image, do some exposure compensation; there is a lot of pre-processing that you can do in Camera Raw
- Create copy of image in software’s own native file format
- Clean up the image with the clone stamp tool and create a new file with _cleaned as its filename suffix. I tried the spot healing brush but didn’t seem to have that much success with it. Maybe I need to try again…
- Add adjustment layer for level correction and save file with _level suffix in its name.
- Add adjustment layer for curves correction
- Add adjustment layer for boosting colours with hue/saturation/lightness control
- Flatten layers and save new image with _flatten suffix in its name
- Sharpen flattened image and create a new version with _sharpened suffix in its name
- For web images, save a new file with a descriptive name
- Create JPEG versions in Apache web server folders; carry out any resizing using bi-cubic sharpening at this point.
Some improvements remain. For instance, separation of raw, intermediate and final photos by storing them in different directories is perhaps one possibility that I should consider. But there are other editing tricks that I have yet to use as well: merged and blended layers. Bi-cubic smoothing for expanding images is another possibility but it is one that requires a certain amount of caution. And I am certain that I will encounter others as I make my way through my reading.
7th March 2007
My other blog is experiencing what feels like a deluge of comment spam. All that I can say is thank goodness for Askimet. And that is with visitors having to subscribe in order to post comments. It seems that a way has been found around that. I did have a spurious user with obdolbin.com as their website address and got rid of them but the flow still continues. Blogger does seem to have a way around this: entering the letters from an image to stop bots from doing their thing. Maybe we'll see WordPress doing the same?
Update: It seems that the torrent has now slowed to a trickle. Maybe getting rid of the spurious user has worked after all and it just took a while for the effect to kick in.
5th March 2007
Having had my main PC's case hot to the touch last summer, I was wondering what was causing it. Components like CPU's and graphics cards would need to generate a lot of heat to manage that. However, my main suspects are the hard drives in the machine: they do run hot after all and sit in a drive cradle connected directly to the case framework. As it happens, I was in Manchester's branch of PC World yesterday and spotted Akasa hard drive coolers in stock for just £7.99 each. These dual fan units screw onto the base of your hard drive and their power connector can couple between a PATA power socket and a PSU power cable so that they can draw the power that they need without adding clutter. I bought two of the things and installed them; I'll now see how they get on.
28th February 2007
Having exhausted the trial time on Photoshop Elements 5, I am now having a look at its big brother, Photoshop CS2. That has got me thinking about Photoshop books so that I become more of the possibilities and how to use them. Having a Safari subscription as I do, that naturally became my first port of call, and I seemed to find two that answered my needs: both are by Scott Kelby; they now lie on my Safari bookshelf: The Photoshop Elements 5 Book for Digital Photographers and The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers. Even so, I am tempted to get a dead tree version of one of them and that presents a chicken-and-egg dilemma: the books could help choose which software to buy and the software dictates which of them will be the more useful. That said, I suspect price and features will swing it the way of Elements 5; paying over £400 for software whose capabilities I may never need does not sound financially sensible.
Update March 5th, 2007: Now, I have got my hands on the dead tree edition of Scott Kelby's The Photoshop Elements 5 Book for Digital Photographers as well as Brad Hinkel's Focal Easy Guide to Photoshop CS2. Now for some reading...
26th February 2007
My installation of Firefox seems to have stopped listening to the target attribute of hyperlinks. Thankfully, the middle mouse button comes to the rescue. Clicking on a link with the middle button opens it the destination page up in a new window or tab, depending on how you set your defaults. The behaviour goes even further than this: the trusty middle mouse button does the same for bookmarks and the Google search bar; all very useful. And it is not just a Firefox thing, either. IE7 does the same thing for web page hyperlinks and bookmarks while in Opera, it is limited to links on web pages.
25th February 2007
Firefox 2.0.0.2 has made its appearance and the CPU usage bug seems to have gone away. We'll see how it goes... Also, a new version of the Accuweather.com powered ForecastFox plug-in has come out. It was when I was using it that I noticed heavy CPU usage, but the behaviour has yet to make its reappearance and I hope it never will. Now, I can get back to enjoying this very useful widget.