digital pictures

Take Great Panoramic Pictures With Any Camera

2:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Panoramic software has come a long way toward making panoramic images child’s work. Great software or not, there’s no substitution for good source material. Take better panoramic pictures with these tips.Photo by Diego_3336. More »

JPEGSnoop Sniffs Out Signs Of Editing

11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows only: JPEGSnoop is a small and portable application that sleuths through images determine if the image has been altered or edited. JPEGSnoop starts by reading a JPEG/JPG file’s EXIF data to give you a wealth of information about the photo: time it was taken, what kind of camera, lens settings, and so forth. Then it compares the compression patterns in the image against the patterns of known image editing applications—the program has a feature where you can report new patterns to the app database, if you find ones it is unfamiliar with. The tool reports an enormous amount of data, but if you’re not interested in the fine details, you can scroll to the bottom of the report for a simple assessment, such as “Class 1 – Image is processed/edited” or “Class 3 – Image has high probability of being original”. I took an original image straight off my camera and ran it through JPEGSnoop, and it returned all the EXIF data and an evaluation that it was highly probable that the image had been unaltered. I then threw the image in Photoshop and made a small alteration, taking a few seconds to add fake “steam” to the latte. JPEGSnoop changed the assessment to indicate the image had been processed and reported the fix was made in Adobe Photoshop. In fairness however, the application doesn’t have the capacity to judge the difference between a photo being cropped and getting a contrast adjustment in Photoshop versus, say, being cropped and having Godzilla added in, but it is a strong indicator of whether any editing has occurred. You may find yourself learning more about your old friend’s headshot than you’d trusted in before. JPEGSnoop is a free and portable tool, Windows only. JPEGSnoop [via gHacks] More »

Think Of Megapixels In Terms Of Cupcakes

10:30PM Kevin Purdy | It’s been noted that cramming more and more megapixels into consumer-grade digital cameras isn’t really giving everybody better pictures. These days, in fact, cameras with more than seven or eight megapixels per picture are seeing more noise and grit because too much information is passing into too small a sensor. One New York Times writer explains the phenomenon using a cupcake analogy: The mechanics of this can be understood by thinking of a digital camera sensor as a flat sheet of material pocked with millions (hence “mega”) of cylindrical, cuplike pixels. In other words, picture the digital sensor as a tiny cupcake tin … Larger pixels (cups, remember), with larger surface areas, capture more photons per second, which in electronics-speak means a stronger signal — and in camera-speak means less noise and cleaner colors. The article recommends those seeking better shots for less cash not worry about grabbing the latest MP-busting digicam and focus on getting a decent, lower-end DSLR. Got a high-megapixel camera and feeling a bit of buyer’s remorse, or are you seeing better shots these days? Tell us in the comments. Photo by jslander. Pixels Are Like Cupcakes. Let Me Explain. [New York Times] More »