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Issue 420 - November 01, 2006

ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements © 2006
==== 1540 Subscribers in 50 Countries ====

Welcome to the 420th issue of the PC Improvement News. PCIN consists mainly of news and tips. There is something for everyone, and if this is your first issue, I'm sure there will be something for you. If you give me two or three issues, I know that you will come back for more!

You can reach me at editor@pcin.net with any suggestions or comments.

Support PCIN at http://PCIN.net/donate.php

CONTENTS

Opening Thoughts

I told my sister that I needed some ideas for my opening thoughts, and she listed off a bunch:

Chris has an extensive tip today in the Digital Photography Tip of the Week. I'm sure it will be another big hit!

Graham editor@pcin.net and Chris chris@pcin.net

The NEWS

A banner year for security bugs

It isn't over yet, but 2006 is already a record year when it comes to security vulnerabilities.
There is, however, a silver lining: A smaller chunk of the flaws are high risk.
Last year, researchers at Internet Security Systems identified 5,195 vulnerabilities in software. On Monday, the count for this year stood at 5,450, according to the Atlanta-based company's survey, and the projected total for the whole of the year is almost 7,500 bugs.

Read the TechRepublic article...
Leave a comment...

How Google's Garden Grows

Those predictions that Google's stock would hit $600 aren't looking quite so outlandish any more. Not after a blockbuster third quarter and optimism that buying video downloading site YouTube will help Google conquer a whole new area of Internet search. The stock price has surged 11% in the past five days alone, closing at $473.31 on Oct. 24.
Still, there's reason to ask exactly what's driving the stock and how much further it has to go. After all, Google, valued at about $145 billion, dominates a market-online advertising-that will generate only $16 billion this year.

Read the BusinessWeek article...
Leave a comment...

Is it important for IT to be environmentally friendly?

Green issues are climbing the IT agenda as power costs escalate and legislation such as the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive begins to bite. IT professionals were this week in unanimous agreement that green IT is important, both commercially and environmentally.
A report by technology analyst firm BroadGroup highlighted power costs as a high priority for IT. It said power was now accounting for 30% of datacentre operating costs on average, following the recent sustained rise in electricity charges.

Read the ComputerWeekly article...
Leave a comment...

Web reaches new milestone: 100 million sites

Are your Web surfing fingers getting tired?
There may be a reason. Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company that has tracked Web growth since 1995, says a mammoth milestone was reached during the month of October.
" There are now 100 million Web sites with domain names and content on them," said Netcraft's Rich Miller.
" Within that, there are some that are busy and updated more often, and that represents the active sites, which are at about 47 or 48 million," he said.
Bloggers, small businesses, and simplicity have combined to create the dramatic growth of sites, much of it just in the past two years.

Read the CNN article...
Leave a comment...

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Digital Photography Tip of the Week

The Orton Effect - Digital Photography Tip of the Week

Image editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Gimp and Microsoft Digital Image Suite offer a wide range of tools that can be used to create beautiful photographs, many of those tools and the effects they crete originated in the world of film photography. One such tool effect is the Orton Effect.

Gull on Rocky Beach

The Orton Effect is named after Michael Orton who first used the technique is a sandwich of two images, one in focus the other out of focus. Freeman Patterson and Andre Gallant have both used the technique successfully in their work as well.

The Orton image has traditionally been done using slide film with the first, sharp, image overexposed by two stops and the second, out of focus image, over exposed by one stop. It is important to use a tripod for this type of work to ensure your photographic elements remain in register on the film. The shots were then sandwiched together in single slide mount to produce a beautiful, impressionistic image. We are beyond that now and with so many things in the world of digital photography, we can now duplicate the same effect in multiple ways.

For purists, you can use the same technique as with film, two images, overexposed the same way, and in your image editing program place your out of focus image on tip of your in focus image as a layer and choose multiply as your blending mode. Of course this means always taking at least two images of your scene and always using a tripod. Another method is to use a single image a create a layer, now opening up the effect to any image you have in your collection.

I will be using the new Adobe Elements 5 for this tutorial and a photo of a Wake-Robin I shot this past spring..

  1. Open your image (Image 1)
  2. Duplicate the background layer (Right click on the background layer and choose duplicate) and name that layer Sharp
  3. Create another duplicate of the background layer.
  4. Change the Blending mode of the Sharp Copy to screen
  5. With the Sharp Copy layer selected, right click and choose Merge Down (Image 2)
  6. Right click on the Sharp layer, choose Duplicate and name this layer Out of Focus
  7. On the Filter Menu, choose Blur - Gaussian Blur (Image 3)
    Depending on the resolution of the image you are using, the amount of blue needed will change. Use enough that the shapes are still visible, but detail is not. For this 6.1 Megapixel image, a value of 15.9 was sufficient.
  8. Change the blending mode of the Out Of Focus layer to Multiply. (Image 4)

Open image for editing
Image 1

Create Duplicate layers and set blending mode to screen
Image 2

Apply gaussian blur to out of focus layer
Image 3

Change Blending mode to multiply
Image 4

Final image after some levels adjustments
Final image including levels adjustment and cropping

Once you are complete, you may find it necessary to adjust the opacity of your Out of Focus layer and/or apply a levels (or curves) adjustment layer to the Sharp layer if some tweaking is necessary.You can also adjust the amount of blur you apply to the out of focus image, as well as adjustments such as level, brightness and contrast and it is good practice to apply sharpening to your image Sharp layer. (Image 5)

Not all images work well with this effect, but digital photography makes it easier to try it out on wide range of photos. I have included a few examples here of other photos with the Orton Effect applied, though the effect is lost on the small images. You can view another on my personal site, or view the Orton flickr.com group.

Until next time, happy shooting.

HeadStones - Orton Effect

The digital photography tip of the week is written by the PCIN Assistant Editor, Chris Empey. Chris is a long time photographer and is currently the President of the Niagara Falls Camera Club. You can see more of his photography at his Photo of the Day website.
If you have a tip to send Chris, or a question about digital photography he can address in the newsletter, send it to chris@pcin.net.

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PCIN.net UPDATE

Check out these new or updated pages on the PCIN.net site:

Update PCIN.net home page with "Top 10 Most Popular..." features
http://PCIN.net/

Microsoft Digital Image Suite Plus Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/msdimagesuiteplus.php

Omega One Software Battery Pack Pro 2.1 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/bpp2.php

Makayama Interactive DVD to Pocket PC 3.0 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/dvd2ppc3.php

Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/elements40.php

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THE TIPS and OTHER STUFF

Microsoft Expression

microsoft_expression_logo.gif

Microsoft has quite a few products that they are beta testing now, or have just recently come out of beta. I came across one that I don't remember hearing about before (I must have missed it). Microsoft Expression isn't a single product, but a suite of products that let's you work with graphics, create web pages, and other applications.

I've tried the Web Designer application, and it was quite impressive. It seemed to have every option available for viewing your designed page in different ways. It seems to need a lot of system resources to run, but ran well enough on my system. If you've got a system with enough power, you might want to give it a try.

Leave a comment...

Robocopy GUI

Do you use batch files at all to copy files from one place to another? If so, you know that you can use copy, xcopy, xcopy32, and other commands to do this. In the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools there was also a utility called Robocopy. The latest edition of TechNet Magazine talks about this utility, and a new GUI front end to help you use the utility.

Some people prefer the command line and for those people, the Robocopy tool as it ships is great. However, others are more point-and-click oriented, and for that crowd, there's Robocopy GUI. This welcome add-on to Robocopy comes to us from Derk Benisch, a systems engineer with the MSN Search group at Microsoft. Derk's utility allows users to customize their Robocopy scripts using a simple and very familiar-looking graphical interface.

Check out Utility Spotlight: Robocopy GUI

Leave a comment...

Gickr: Create animated GIFs online

I read about this on the Download Squad site...

Gickr is a cool web app that lets you quickly created animated GIFs without leaving the comfort of your web browser.

You can upload files or read directly from your Flickr account.

Leave a comment...

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PCIN.net AFFILIATED SITES

Both of us have other sites other than PCIN.net. These are all sites that we are actively involved in (they aren't client sites). Don't forget to check them out from time to time for updates:

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DISCLAIMER and OTHER STUFF

PCIN is brought to you by Graham Wing. The opinions expressed are those of the Editor, Graham Wing and the Assistant Editor, Chris Empey. Graham Wing and Chris Empey accept no responsibility for the results obtained from trying the tips in this newsletter.

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Graham Wing can be reached at editor@pcin.net
Chris Empey can be reached at chris@pcin.net

Copyright 1998-2006, Graham Wing. All rights reserved.

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