Programs I like and use every day
I include below software that has in one way or another made me significantly more productive. I focus on free tools if they do the job. I introduce commercial software that is either a very good bargain, does something that other software does not, or software that is new and has features that distinguish it in one way or another. It's my goal to include only software that will A) provide the professional photographer with a free option to expensive shrink wrapped products, and B) identify cost effective software that might fill a niche in the professional digital photographer's arsenal, as it did previously in mine.
- DIR2HTML from PC-Tools.net is a nice freeware program that will help you creates an HTML version of your nested subdirectories and the file names in each that can be saved and used for reference, hyperlinked (natively), or printed. This solves the problem of: "how do I print the contents of subdirectories and contents of multiple subdirectories beneath specific directories. You can download DIR2HTML at
http://www.pc-tools.net/win32/dir2html
-
Karen's nice, free directory printer also prints the contents of subdirectories and nested subdirectories. It provide concise printouts suitable for storage in a 3 ring binder and has been a great help to our office organizing tens of thousands of new digital files across several servers.
-
We found the indispensible Advanced Batch Converter (ABC) program when we were frantically looking for a simple program to restore several thousand compressed tiffs to un-compressed tiffs. Now we find new uses for the program weekly. We use it to convert from archival TIFFs to high-res, water marked jpeg comps, display jpegs, and thumb Jpegs. The program will happily iterate through nested subdirectories and preserve directory structure even when the converted files are saved to another disk. The program also makes it easy to rename a batch of files, place a watermark on them, and run them through a rich set of filters that includes sharpening. It also provides options to batch adjust colors, a professional range of useful filters and conversion options that include black-and-white, along with less useful morphing and distortion options. All may be incorporated during batch processing, but we only use the sharpening feature going from Tiff to Jpeg and the watermarking to brand our large, publically available comps.
ABC converts between a very wide range of graphic formats. It uses bicubic interpolation filters to resize files to exactly the dimensions you want and provides three resizing batch schemas that meet any situation I can imagine. The program sells for $44.95 for home use and $74.95 for business use. I strongly urge you to download a copy of the trial the next time you have a bunch of images to process. You can kick the tires and check it out before pulling out the Visa card.
- Graphic Workshop Professional (GWP) is a unique file conversion tool from
the rather strange forge of the peculiar, but highly talented programers at Alchemy Mindworks. Graphic Workshop Professional (list price $44.95)
and available for trial download is the only program that I know of which will accurately convert tiffs into the Kodak CD format (.PCD) that splits one large image
into five different image sizes from wallet to poster size. The PCD conversion also achieves some mighty impressive compression, especially on
tightly wound TIFF files that don't usually get small. GPW takes a 20 meg Tiff down to a ca. 5 meg PCD file. You can blow it back up again by choosing poster size when you open the
PCD image and then save as TIFF. I have not been able to spot a bit of degradation in the back and forth transfer.
GWP converts over 50 file
types and will display every one of them in native format which is unique in my experience. It supports JPEG 2000 and RAW (Nikon and Olympus)
with Plugins that may be purchased separately. The program comes complete with standard image editing tools that work well making it a one stop solution for much of the initial image editing process.
Do you need a free editing and conversion program for RAW files. If so, check out Raw Shooter Essentials Their first free RAW editor came out in 2005 and was an immediate hit with photographers experimenting with the RAW format. It works with most digital cameras including Nikon, Olympus, and Canon. Pixmantec spent a year refining their product from feedback provided by users of their free ware and incorporated it into their world class RAW editor and work flow Premium versionwhich sells for $89.95 and is a bargain at that price.
Infranview makes a free RAW editor and Jpeg 2000 editor and convertor that I find useful, especially when confronted with Jpeg 2000 images. The program also handles conversion of a large number of other file types.
I like ABC for file renaming during other processing functions, but it doesn't have the complex features I need when I am trying to change up the base name, numbering scheme, extension, and case of s subdirectory or more of files I need to rename. I have found a free, intuitive renamer that my new employees can learn in 15 minutes. It's
CKRename from CKSoft. It is in the category of program that I cannot live without. I had to shell out for another renamer when I needed to get more complex and rename a bunch of folders and files at the same time. The somewhat non-intuitive, but also rather hard to find solution I came up with was Quick File and Folder Rename Professional Edition from SkyJuice. It costs 29.95 and has a restricted trial version that lets you determine if it does what you need. It has such a simplified interface, that I find it difficult to use. However, after a brief struggle with the help section, I can get it to do what I want. However, I generally only use the product if I have to deal with mass folder renaming. Otherwise, I use CKRename.
Corel sent me a copy of Print Shop Pro X that I was ready to hate, but which ultimately surprised and pleased me. Goodness only knows why they bought Paint Shop when they already have a great photo editing program, Corel Photopaint that I actually prefer to Photoshop for many operations. But they did and I had to try it to see why. The program has a full range of high end editing features including layers and scripting that satisfied the demanding pro in me, but what intrigued me were several auto fix "push here dummy" features that appealed to my lazy side. I worked with them quite a bit, long enough to determine that either render an image unusable by apparently injecting it with LSD, or they work pretty well and can be included as a script to clean up a batch of images.
I used the program to convert a bunch of US Army Corps of Engineers aerials that included some really messed up 300 meg TIFFS. They were REALLY dark and no gamma filter I'm aware of was up to the task of bringing them back from the dark side. Paint Shop Pro X corrected them just fine; I was frankly amazed by the results, so I ran the set again and got the same results. Nope, the program hadn't gotten lucky, it was doing the job consistently and well. The push here dummy (PhD) features are gathered together under a single tool bar and include the following options: 1) one step photo fix; 2) smart photo fix; 3) one step noise removal; 4) color balance; 5) clarify; and 6) a high pass sharpen. Working carefully with these previous options provides a one-stop filter for batch processing that is quick to set-up and effective.
I was especially taken with their clarify filter. It saturates the image, increases contrast and gamma slightly, and in my collection of huge aerials, it dropped out the haze very nicely. I think of their clarify filter as the "Magic" filter and use it to tune dull, washed out, hazy pictures when nothing else seems to work. I'd advise you to download the trial version of this program the next time you get back from a shoot with a few thousand new digital pix to see how it works. I suspect that the clarification benefits will be mush more useful on the Web than to a printer, but the degree of clarification may be very finely tuned, so with care, it could become a professional tool for preparing images prior to printing. It retails for $99/copy. It is a bargain at that price because it combines the features of professional photo editing software with effective "push here dummy" features. I have used Corel Photopaint, Adobe Photoshop, Dream Suite's Auto FX Auto Eye, Adobe's Photoshop Elements, and adobe ImageReady since the products became commercially available, but I have yet to encounter a filter quite like the clarify filter I've raved about.
Hardware notes (from experience):
Hard Drive Failure:
Non-SCSI drives common in PC's were simply not built to run hot and continuously for 24-48 hours. I don't think they wee made to work with huge files that we routinely store on them either. They can be formatted to include larger sectors, but none are large enough to make much of a difference on a drive full of 70 mb images.
After killing several of the more common "top hard drive brands", two of which died the very first time I copied data onto them, I switched to more robust Hitachi drives and have not had a problem since. I have no preference for IDE or SATA and use several dozen of each, which I purchase in the 250 - 400 gig range.
Environmental conditions are very important and can help ensure hard drive health and well being. Keep your office as cold as you possibly, I'd say no warmer than 70 degrees, but be sensitive to your employees who have to work in the arctic environment. If this does not work, then consider moving your servers to another space that you can chill without affecting anybody. Nothing burns up a hard drive like excessive heat. Once their threshold temperature tolerance is reached, every additional degree adds an exponential increase in the likelihood they will be damaged by heat. Heat becomes a problem as you encase more and more high density hard drives in your computers.
More anon.
