Design Talk

The subject of copyright is always high in photographers' minds, especially in light of Orphan Works legislation & rampant image "borrowing" online. Consequently there's an ongoing burning desire for secure metadata that can't be stripped away from images.

Via Daring Fireball I caught this little blurb from Panic's Cabel Sasser:

Having a wee man in the house certainly cuts into the time I'd otherwise put into scouring the Web for good bits to share; hence the dearth of illustration, photography, and type links lately.  On the other hand, it exposes me to books and illustrations I'd never otherwise see (not, y'know, being in the typical Pat the Bunny demographic).

Woot, there it is!  The subject line pretty much says it all: you can now browse and edit your photos stored on Flickr right from within Photoshop Express.  I've just given the integration a whirl and, yep, it works like a charm.  Similar hooks are available for photos stored on Facebook, Photobucket, and Picasa.  (I've been uploading just to my own site since becoming, uh, photographically obsessed with one little subject, but maybe this will draw

No, it's not a low-res portrait of an "alcoholic, whore-mongering, chain-smoking gambler"; rather, "Pixel Bender" is the official name for Adobe's new scripting language for writing fast imaging filters.  Engineering manager Kevin Goldsmith explains,

A number of interesting Ansel Adams-related bits have popped up recently:

If it's in Photoshop and it goes fast, there's a very good chance that Chris Cox has had something to do with it.  Chris is, among a great many other things, the go-to guy for optimizing many functions in the app.  (At various times we've known there's some kind of crazy-exotic Apple hardware in Chris's office--something that would emerge many months later as the G5, etc.--and that he's busily tuning the app for it but can't tell us any of the details.)  In any case, he has started a blog on
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Last Thursday Adobe held a day-long event at which the execs briefed members of the financial community.  A couple of us spear carriers (Steve Heintz, Karl Soule, and I) were recruited to help show off some new technology that's baking "in the labs" (i.e. none of this stuff is promised for a future version, your mileage my vary, void where prohibited, professional driver on a closed course, etc.).

Hats off to all the Apple folks responsible for Time Machine: I'm pleased to report that restoring my Mac from the data stored on my Time Capsule went off without a hitch. Performing a synch with the drive was easy, and after a couple of hours everything was just where I left it--right down to my Dock icons, desktop picture, and app preferences.

I hope never to verify the effectiveness of an airbag using my face, or the completeness of my life insurance at the cost of my life. I guess I won't get a pass on testing the promise of my new Time Capsule, however.