Additional Fun with HDR Photography

Previously I’ve discussed the steps in configuring your DSLR camera for taking a series of photographs of the same scene with different exposure in order to begin crating a HDR image. I went back to my photo library within Adobe Lightroom and decided to let the software recreate the various exposures needed for that first initial step. One among many advantages of shooting RAW is that you’re free to manipulate your original shot image without actually compressing and destroying pixels that compose your photograph. Each time you apply additional modifications to your jpeg images within Photoshop, and continue to resave your changes, you’re actually deteriorating the quality of your image. The act of saving your image as a jpeg actually compresses the pixels within the image.

HDR Photography and Workflow

If you Google search HDR photography you’ll be absolutely amazed by what you’ll find. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. It’s a process of taking simultaneous photographs with your DSLR camera, while having each photo set with a different exposure. Depending on your DSLR camera, there are a variety ways of setting your camera to shoot under a different exposure. Personally, I choose to utilize a tripod, take 3 consecutive photographs with the first one set to -EV 1, second to EV 0, and the third EV, 1.

1 Billion Apps downloaded off iTunes

Just a few minutes ago, 1 billion iPhone/iPod Touch applications were downloaded off of Apple’s iTunes. That’s pretty impressive considering that the iPhone 2.0 software upgrade enabling developers to build applications for the device only happened 9 months ago. I myself have downloaded quite a few of them, as well as bought a couple which I found either useful or entertaining. I’m still addicted to TouchGrind, which I wrote about a few weeks back.

Image Rollover with CSS

If you’re a novice web designer or perhaps you haven’t had the time to brush up on CSS in the past few years and prefer of designing websites directly in a WYSIWYG editor such as Dreamweaver, then I’m sure you’re familiar with creating rollovers. I bet you’re also aware of the bulky javascript that ends up generating in your HTML file.

The image at left shows a completely javascript free rollover. It’s accomplished with just a few lines of code, 1 image containing both the normal and the hover state and a single pixel transparent GIF file which will act as place holder for the effect.