By the way, does anyone know what kind of tree this is?

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Obviously you will need a series of photos from a single vantage point. You can have two photos up to as many as you like.
Here are some tips to remember when taking your photos:

• Make sure each photo in your series has a bit of overlap so the software will know where the stitching points are.  It is safer to have too much overlap than none at all.
• When taking the photos, try to keep your camera in the same position and at the same angle as you rotate. A tripod or monopod will help for larger shoots.
• If you have the know-how and a capable camera, set the exposure manually. Doing this will prevent different exposures on the various photos. If you don’t know what this means, then don’t worry about it – just shoot!

Let’s get started.
Open WLPG and find the photos you want to stitch together. Select these photos. As you can see in the screen shot below, I am using a series of seven photos from the interior of Boone Pickens Stadium. The photos were taken with a camera placed on my knee and span 180 degrees from end-zone to end-zone. (These are old photos from April, 2008 before construction was complete.)

 

From the menu, select MAKE > CREATE PANORAMIC PHOTO

This process could take a few seconds to a few minutes depending on how many photos you are trying to stitch together. After this process completes, you will be prompted to give your panorama a file type and name. This is the ONLY OPTION you have in the process.  The default file type is JPG which is sufficient for emailing, posting to Facebook, etc… However, if you wish to do serious editing or print this professionally you will need to save the image as a TIFF.  TIFF files are not compressed and are much larger than compressed JPG files. Typically, photo editing software gives you the option of how much compression to apply but for some reason it is a fixed level in this software. Remember, more compression equals more degradation of the original image.

That’s it!  Your image may have some strange edges as a result of the stiching processing compensating for the placement and angle of your camera. If you don’t like these edges then simply use WLPG or any other photo editor to crop it square.

What started as seven individual images from a camera balanced on my knee is now an end-zone to end-zone view of Boone Pickens Stadium.

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Click here to see the panorama.

Tips:

• You can zoom in and out very quickly using the scroll wheel on your mouse.
• Use your arrow keys or mouse to navigate around.
• Since this is a 360, you can pan one direction continusoly as if you are spinning in a circle.

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When Vista was released, this functionality was not included in the box, and Microsoft didn’t produce new PowerToys. Now, there is an open source clone of the Image Resizer PowerToy that works on Vista and Windows 7. It is identical in nearly every way. If you run Vista or Win7 and need a simple way to resize images check it out.  It doesn’t get easier or simpler than this:

http://www.codeplex.com/PhotoToysClone

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8/20/08 Update: In the last panorama there are several cows near the pond. See if you can find them. You will need to view the photo in full size.

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I was reluctant to advertise on these pages, but I thought I would give it a try and see what happened. Please note that I would never consider placing an ad on her main web site.

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think. Do you think the ads are too obtrusive? While you’re there, feel free to click on an ad and put $.07 cents in my pocket. Or, if you’re feeling nice, click on the large footer ad and Google will generously give me $.12 or maybe even $.13! By the way, I tried the Google competitor “WidgetBucks” and got $.01 for my first click. I went back to Google — $.07 sounded like a fortune!

Here’s the first wedding to use the new ad-infested proof viewer.

Thoughts? Comments? Do you know of a better ad provider?

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–Joey

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Gentry had bridal and engagement shoots in Stillwater Saturday and I never turn down an opportunity to visit my college stomping grounds. While she was working, I took a walk, checked out the stadium progress, found my old percussion instructor and grabbed some shots at Theta Pond.  The ducks and geese were cooperative today and I got some good photos. One goose was a little too aggressive and pecked my jeans a couple of times.

My favorite photo in the set is the black & white of “Blue & Rust.” That sculpture brings back a lot of good memories of good friends. Even though I was a horrible drummer (didn’t apply myself to drumming like I did actual school work), my best memories from college revolved around being in the OSU drumline. Before each game, the drumline would meet in front of that sculpture to warm up.

By the way, hit refresh and my blog’s banner image will change. Refresh enough times and you’ll eventually see the panoramas I made of the inside of Boone Pickens Stadium and the Library/Student Union areas.

Click on each image below to enlarge.

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Should I backup my computer?
I’m surprised how often someone asks me if they should backup their PC. The answer is always YES! Think about this… Of the gazillion parts that comprise your PC, only two are mechanical: 1. The cooling fan, and 2. The harddrive. You can recover from a fan failure, but losing your hard drive is like being robbed. You may be able to recover all of your documents/photos/MP3 files, but chances are they are gone forever. As co-owner of Gentry Photography, we have a responsibility to our clients to make sure their images are protected. You can reshoot seniors, but since we specialize in weddings we have a policy that states wedding images cannot “live” on a single disk. After all, you cannot reshoot a wedding.

There are many free tools and methods for backups. In the old days, people would simply copy files to a backup disk. On the other extreme are large systems which copy data from servers, then use robotic arms to shuffle tapes around. We’ll shoot somewhere in the middle for home and SOHO users.

Get an external disk.
The easiest way to get started is to simply plug an external USB (or Firewire) drive into your PC. As I stated in an earlier post, I connect multiple drives to my home server, but the concept is the same. Don’t simply buy an external disk the same size as your internal drive thinking you will just keep an exact replica. Shoot for 3x-4x of your current drive capacity. Why so large? Regular backups are not simply for mirroring your disk, but you can use backups to offload data from your internal disk to keep it clean. You may also want to use your backup program to keep multiple copies of your data.

Keep this in mind. If you off-load data from your PC to an external disk, you are still at risk of the external disk crashing. For the photo biz, I actually have two scheduled jobs: 1. Backup the PC to external disk once per week. 2. Synchronize the backup disk with another disk once per week. This ensures that someone’s wedding images never exist on one disk at a time.

Select backup software.
Microsoft Windows includes a basic tool for performing backups and restores. In 2000/XP, Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Backup. With this tool, you can use the simple wizard interface to schedule backups of your PC or even selected folders. You can select your external drive as the backup drive if you have it mapped to a drive letter. Microsoft Backup places all files in a compressed BKF file. The BKF files make good use of compression if most of your files are documents, spreadsheets, etc… However, since many video and photo formats are already compressed, you won’t see much benefit from the BKF compression. I have not used the backup tool in Vista yet, so I’m not sure how it has changed – if at all. This is a good tool. As RonCo says, set it and forget it!

If you need more flexibility than what Microsoft Backup can give you, then check out 2BrightSparks SyncBack. This is the tool I use for personal and photo backups. This tool allows very flexible configurations. You can select whether to backup a folder, synchronize two drives, include/exclude files or folders, and practically any other option you can imagine Unlike Microsoft Backup, SyncBack does not compress files or group them into larger collections. Based on your settings, SyncBack simply copies the file structure from your PC to the backup drive. Be careful, in the rare event that you create a new file in a folder with the same name as an existing file on your backup drive, then you will have a file conflict and could lose data.

I like SyncBack because it allows me to access backed up files directly from the backup disk. (Remember, files are not grouped together based on backup job). However, this same feature is also one of its drawback for some enterprise users. The tools works great for me, but for larger installations, SyncBack needs the option to copy individual files as it does now, or as compressed groups like Microsoft Backup. Furthermore, SyncBack needs the ability to keep X versions of a file on the backup disk. In the corporate world, we use our large backup system to retain three versions of every file backed up. When a file is changed, the oldest version is simply deleted. There will always be three versions of this file. SyncBack could use this functionality

There is a new class of “cloud” type services that host your backups securely on the Internet. There are kinds of new features and pricing models available. One such serivce is Microsoft’s SkyDrive. Currently, they are giving users 5GB of free online storage. One benefit of hosted services is the ability to access your files from any Internet accessible computer, including your mobile devices. SkyDrive doesn’t have any automation tools that I am aware of.

There are several other tools for making backups and they all have similar features. The most important thing is not what tool you are using, but that you are performing scheduled backups. Let me know what tool/techniques you use to protect your data.

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I’m not going to go into a deep dive, but below are the high-level ideas on setting up your own home server.  Without writing a book, these steps should get you started.

Why would you need a home server?

• To centralize a printer/scanner
• To run scheduled backups from your workstation computers
• Share common files between multiple PCs
• Free-up space on your laptop or desktop PC
• Create a media-server
• A place to put unsightly wireless gear

We use our home server for several reasons:

• Our house doesn’t have a dedicated office, so we de-cluttered our living area by placing the server in a closet. As mentioned above, it’s an ideal place to hook our printer and scanner.
• For our photography business,we owe it to our customers to make sure their wedding images are safe. Thus, we connect external drives to the server and run scheduled backups. On top of that, we syncronize two backup drives so that the images always exists in multiple locations.
• Out closet is a central location for all coax and ethernet (Cat-5) cable.  This is a great place to put our cable modem and wireless router. Out of sight!

Select a Location:

There are several factors to consider when selecting a server closet:

• Location: If your house or apartment is small, then location is not critical.  However, if you have a LARGE house then consider a central location.  Of course this only applies if your wireless router is in the closet.
• Keep it cool!  The more equipment you stuff into a room or closet, the hotter it is going to get.  The last thing you want is your server to overheat. A small fan may be required to exchange outside air with hot closet air.
• Power:  You will need power and most closets don’t come wired.  I was somewhat fortunate that my closet is in the utility room which is off the garage. I was able to easily run an extension cord and surge protector without setting off the wife’s ugly alarm.
• Shelving: It’s not a good idea to keep your equipment on the floor if you have carpet.  This impedes heat dissipation and could cause extra static. It’s also not a good idea to stack equipment on top of each other.  Put in shelves for your server, monitor, disk drives, and whatever you decide to cram in.
• Wiring: As I mentioned before, I picked my closet because that’s where I had ran all my Coax and Cat-5. This made it very simple to get my cable modem and wireless router out of sight.  If you use something else like DSL, you should look for a nearby phone jack.

Selecting Hardware:

This may seem counter-intuitive, but you do not need to use your best hardware as a server. You want to save your best hardware for the machines you use everyday as your workstations. Use what’s left-over for your server since you will possibly go days without even seeing this machine. For my server, I used my dad’s OLD Compaq desktop. I had to add a USB 2 card to support our external drives, but other than that, it’s straight from the factory.

Selecting the Server Operating System:

Don’t get hung up on the term “server.” You can use any operating system (even a desktop OS) that you are comfortable with which allows file and printer sharing.  You would think with my old hardware that I opted for a slimmed-down, GUI-less Linux distribution. However, I had an unused copy of Windows Server 2003 that I wanted to try. The install went very smoothly, but took about an hour. Believe it or not, the machine is very usable (this is probably due to the componentized nature of Windows Server).  I’m using Windows Server 2003, but you can use XP/Vista/Win7, Linux, whatever. There is also a new product from Microsoft called Microsoft Home Server. I haven’t had a chance to use it yet, but the idea is that it is loaded with tons of automated tasks for backups, file recovery, etc… For now, I’ll stick with my poor-man’s version.

Once you’ve got the server installed (see the next section on network settings), you will want to make sure it is fully patched. For Windows, Visit Microsoft Update and apply the latest patches/drivers before you begin using the server.

Networking:

In my “server closet” I have my server, a scanner, a printer, four external backup drives, a cable modem, and my wireless router. (Like I said, I am using the server to consolidate clutter to one out of sight area.)  You will need to make sure you have connectivity between the server and your client machines before you attempt any file sharing or transfers. For simple home installations connect the server to one of the Ethernet ports in your wireless router. During the server install process, the simplest option is to allow an IP address to be assigned to your server automatically through DHCP. In corporate environments, servers typically have a hard-coded IP address but you won’t need this since you will be accessing your server via its name most of the time. So, be sure to assign the server a simple name which you can remember. In my house, mine it is called “server.”

Once everything is connected, all the software is installed and patched, you need to test basic IP connectivity:

1. From the client machine, click on Start > Run
2. Type “CMD” in the run box and hit enter. You will be presented with a command prompt.
3. Type “PING YourServerNameHere” and hit Enter.

If your PC responds with a series of successful pings, then you have established proper connectivity. If you get a message like “Host not found” then there is a networking problem. IP troubleshooting is a topic to itself that I won’t go into here. However, make sure the server and the client have the same Subnet mask and Default Gateway by typing “IPCONFIG /ALL” in the command prompt of each machine.  Sometimes home routers get confused when new machines are added and IP addresses change. You may want to shut down all computers, unplug your router, wait a few minutes, then start the router, then all the machines connected to it.

Since you’ll now be sharing files across a wireless network, security is a must. Follow your router instructions and make sure you secure your network with a “Network Key.”

Sharing Printers:

Note:  This got incredibly simple with the Windows 7 Homegroup feature. However, the following instructions still work with all versions of Windows:

If you are not using a Win 7 server and Win 7 clients, then these are the basic steps for sharing a printer:

1. Plug the printer into your server. In Windows, you’ll hear the “bing-bong” confirming a USB device has been detected.
2. If Windows (or your preferred OS) doesn’t have a built-in driver, then it will prompt you for one. Supply the driver. (You do not need to install all the junk that comes with printers. You simply need the driver.)
3. Print a test page from the Printer section of the control panel to confirm it is working.
4. In the printers section of Control Panel, right-click on the printer you just installed, and select “Sharing.”
5. Select “Share this Printer” and assign a name that makes sense. (For example, “HPLaserJetColor”)
6. Click “OK” and you’re done sharing.

You must install the driver on your client machines now:

1. From the client: Start > Run
2. In the command prompt type \\YourServerName  (you must include the backslashes)
3. A list of shared printers and folders will appear. Double-click on your new printer.
4. The driver will install automatically and you’re done!

Sharing a file folder is a similar exercise. Right-click on the folder you wish to share, assign a name, and assign appropriate read vs write permissions.

Other activities you can do with a server:

• Use a backup tool to schedule backups. I use SyncBack which will be documented in a later post.
• Install a scanner. All scanned documents can be saved to a shared folder on the server and accessible via your client machines.
• Off-load all those large photos, videos, and music files from your laptop. Your media can live in multiple places, and cool new products like Windows Live Photo Gallery can keep track for you. (See my list of free software for info on Windows Live Photo Gallery). When you want to access a photo from two years ago, you may not know which machine the photo is on, you simply click on the thumbnail and it appears from your network.
• You could even use a DVR on your server to record TV shows for playback on your laptop later. (You’ll need a TV tuner and DVR software for this. I use Windows Media Center as one of my DVR.)
• Run an internal web or mail server. Not sure, why most home users would do this, but you can easily do it. Most operating systems have built in web servers.

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Let’s start with a software category I know very well. As co-owner of Gentry Photography, I spend a lot of time using different photo editing packages. Photoshop is the commercial standard, but is loaded with obscure features that I don’t even use. There are several free alternatives to Photoshop for an average home user:

• Not my favorite, but one of the most popular is The Gimp. Originally available only on Unix/Linux, and eventually ported to Windows, this open source project started as a student project at Berkley. This is a very popular tool among the open source crowd. It has evolved over the years but takes some time to figure your way around. The interface is a different than what you may be used to. It is worth looking into.
• Paint.Net started as a student project at Washington State University. It is a Windows only program written on the .Net platform. Paint.Net is extensible (meaning anyone can write plug-ins) and is very easy to use for hobbyist. This program is updated frequently and I recommend it to anyone wanting to get started with photo editing. Here’s a quick article I wrote on the new beta.

Just for fun, I restarted the three browsers listed here and loaded my homepage. This page has a good dose of JavaScript & PHP. IE7 is using 58.2MB of memory, last night’s build of FF3 is occupying 58.6 MB, and Safari is the heaviest at nearly 61MB. I figured Safari would be the lightest.

• Backup Software
  • SyncBack is a free backup/synchronization tool. I use this utility to schedule backups of my wife’s photo work. This is very easy to use and can handle about any type of backup job you can conceive.
  • There is a new class of “cloud” type services that host your backups securely on the Internet. There are all kinds of new features and pricing models available. One such serivce is Microsoft’s SkyDrive. Currently, they are giving users 5GB of free online storage. One benefit of hosted services is the ability to access your files from any Internet accessible computer, including your mobile devices.
• Everyone seems to be looking for good DVD rippers. I’m sure you guys only use this software to make backups of your personal DVDs, right?
  • DVD DeCrypter is the defacto standard. Lots of options, but lots of people have published pages on how to use it.
  • DVDFab is also a nice tool to use when Decrypter won’t rip those dual layer discs. There is a free version and a premium. The premium has presets to rip to IPod, Zune, PSP, etc..

There’s a lot more coming including blog tools, audio/video editing, backup software, etc. If I left off your favorite tool let me know and I’ll add it.

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Along with the normal bug fixes and enhancements, is a noticeable UI clean-up. If you’ve ever used Paint.Net in the past you undoubtedly noticed the large dialog boxes that sometimes extend beyond your screen. The author has done a good job cleaning up these boxes. Check out this example comparison below. In the top image, is the old UI. You can can see all the ugly “Reset” buttons eating up space.  In the bottom image, the buttons have been replaced and moved to gie the UI a much cleaner look. The are screen-shots running on XP. Paint.net has a much”fresher” look running on Vista.

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