Sure, you just use online photo editing tools in Flickr for a quick crop, color adjustment or the like but if you need real Photoshop Power? What if you need to clone your ex out of a photo on Facebook pronto? Or paint in some well placed horns?

Now there’s an alternative online alternative to Photoshop. It’s name is Pixlr. Layers, cloning, painting, type and even filters.

Crazy great, right? Non-photo friends, trust me here. It’s crazy great.

You Want Your Damn Lightroom?

Disdain cloning and painting? Are you a purist who only danes to shift colors and exposure and make a perfect crop? Then check out the beta of MugTug Darkroom.

So for this week’s post I thought I’d share a collage. These are just quick grabs off my hard drive. The only thing in common is that these snaps tend to make me smile. Apologies to those who didn’t want to be included but hey, it’s only pixels! Plus I’m not naming any names. If you’re not in my collage and you should be then we haven’t been spending enough time together. Sorry, life goes fast, no?

This past week I had the opportunity to team up on shoot with my good friend Karl from Dimension Three Architectural Illustrations.  Karl was actually working while I was hard at play working on a shot for my latest #p52 post.   Karl does amazing architectural illustrations and hopefully he’ll let me share his finished work here when he’s completed it.

But back to playing.  Karl’s not missing a twin but here’s what they would look like if they were weird enough to dress exactly the same.

I also shot a quick 5 image panorama.  It’s stitched here.

Here’s my contact sheet for shoot.

Self portraits are just uncomfortable business. But then again so is putting up a blog and sharing imagery and thoughts. All part of this experiment’s learning process.

I like this shot ok.  But it’s only just passable.  And really it’s only passable because I put four shots together and created the frame to make it semi-interesting and passable.  So again another learning experience for me but not a shot I’m particularly proud of.

In my next post I hope to be sharing something that works out better.  Perhaps I can someone to let me take their photograph. I also want to comment that this one photo post per week for this year is a little harder than I thought.  Or at least harder to get great images that I’m proud of.  So it maybe it’s time to mix things up a little more.

I think that shooting with a purpose is a good way to mix it up here.  And maybe also adding in more fun.  Photography is fun, dammit.

Photo by RonAlmog

Geek Side Note:

This is one my first shots with a gorilla pod which looks like a robot but even better than that works really well.  Thanks for the recommendation Mr. Nada and a double helping of gratitude to my wife for the Christmas gift.

These images were shot a few months back when a good friend was in town with his son. His son Jakob didn’t have much experience with the beach and so it was great to watch him interact with it and have some fun. Fortunately Jake agreed to confine throwing sand at his father and I was let off of the hook since I had camera in hand. The lighting was absolutely horrible and I hate to shoot mid-day but I’m glad I decided I tout along the Nikon.

Jake’s dad mentioned to me this past week that he really liked the shot below and so I cleaned it up a bit in Photoshop and added some effects. You’ll notice the coloration difference. It actually has a gradient color cast from one end to the other also with a touch of the diffuse glow effect. The other other change is cleaning up some of the sand that I found distracting.

This is the contact sheet from the shoot. Something I’ve missed since switching to digital is contact sheets. I used to come out of the dark room and lupe ‘em and try to find the shots to enlarge. The digital work flow is much better and easier to find the shots to work on but I still like seeing all the shots together. It gives a different sense of the shoot somehow and helps identify where I might have done something different next time.

I love panoramas because there’s something a little magical about them to me.  Perhaps because they’re a better substitute of human vision than more standard sized images because of the wide field of view.  Whatever the reason, you’ll likely see more of them here in the next 12 months.  By the way, click on the thumbnail image above in the post to get a pop-up of the full size image.

This panorama was created from 6 images shot with generous overlap with my D70 hand-held and then stitched in Photoshop CS4.  Here’s how Photoshop divides up the images which is surprising but yields a nice smooth result.  I have access to a pano head thanks to my friend at Dimension Three but I may never need to borrow it again.

Unfortunately the lighting is less than I hoped for.  Some foreground interest would be helpful also.

Hello new iPhone user.  Killed that Crackberry and moving over to iPhonedom? I am what’s known as the seasoned iPhone user.  Okay, no one calls me that.  But perhaps techie or “West Coast Tech Support” is throw around in my direction.  Whatever the name I keep getting new iPhone users asking what apps they should install.

The application store does a fairly decent job of spelling out the options but then again it’s handy to have recommendations.  So here are my current top 9 or so free iPhone apps every new user should install:

1. Install the Google app and try out searching by voice recognition (just tilt the phone up and wait for the beep) and also check out the free 411 service under the “Apps” button.  Finally use the reader!  Refer to this article to see why you need a reader.
2. Install the Facebook app because let’s face it if you have an iPhone then chances are that you’re on FB also.
3. Install Showtimes.  This movie app beats Fandango in my book.  It’s actually better than looking for movies on a computer because it automatically searches the theaters near you.  Plus it’s just laid out nicely.
4. Install Epicurious. You’re going the store and you don’t know what to make.  Problem solved and you get the ingredients (shopping)  list to boot. If you use this one too often then you may wish to install Lose It.  Great program to track your weight, look up calories for food.   I don’t use it often enough but that’s a different blog post.
5. Install Yelp.  Unleash the power of social media to find out which restaurants are sought after and which ones are better off left unknown to you when you’re traveling.  (Ok some people say Urban Spoon.  Both about equal but I like Yelp.)
6. Install Photoshop mobile for great image editing on the iPhone.  You’re going to need this app because the camera on the iPhone sucks big time.  Ok, it’s actually great as a video camera but it still sucks as a regular camera.  This program is super intuitive and a joy to use.  I may be slightly biased as a long time photoshop user but I’ve always thought Adobe makes some of the very best interfaces to be found.
7. Install Card Shark because some day someone will want to play solitaire on your phone and this is a very nicely put together app.  By that I mean that it’s intuitive and fast.
8. Install PenguinLite to entertain your niece.
9. Install Tumblr and post your crappy iPhonography to your web page.  Mine is here although I’ve learned from the web-Jedi that I work with I must leave Tumblr immediately in  favor of Posterous.  These web-Jedi are never wrong about such things by the way so I’ll have to ditch it.

For better (and more advanced) advice on iPhone apps I suggest you check out Luke’s blog on Mobiah.   He’s got a new post on TED.  Gotta check that out!