I love Picasa, a free photo management tool, and Flickr, a great (also free) online photo sharing/storage service. Picasa, now owned by Google, does have its own photo sharing service and it is quite good. However, I give Flickr the nod because it has more professional features that I use and seems more mature in it’s development. So, if you’re like me, you want a way to integrate the capabilities of Picasa on your computer (it runs on Mac and PC) with your online Flickr account, there’s a solution. It’s a Picasa plugin called picasa2flickr.

If you watch the video above, you’ll see how to install and use it, but essentially it gives you another button allowing you to perform the uploading action on a given photo or photos. You will need to also have the free Flickr tool Flickr Uploader. Once Picasa and Flickr Uploader are installed, you can click on the picasa2flickr link and it will add it to the Picasa button along the bottom of the program’s screen. Now uploading photos to your Flickr account is as easy as finding them in Picasa and pushing a button.

Let’s start with the computer setup, which is a Mac Mini that has a Hauppauge HD-PVR. What this little beauty does is allow me to connect component cables from my FIOS set-top box to my Mac (via USB). Yes, I did say component and not composite, so I get full HD quality up to what the programming is broadcast in. I can get up to 1920×1080 pixels in an image from 1080i video. I can record any HD content from FIOS using the Eye TV software from Elgato. There is also more simple recording software (but not as feature rich) known as HDPVRCapture that could be used. For $30 you get basic recording from the HD-PVR, and conversions to QuickTime compatible files.

Once you have your Eye TV recording*, you need to transcode it to a non-proprietary format for the Mac, typically an h.264 QuickTime video. This is not a full blown conversion so it doesn’t take hours (like a Handbrake conversion). Now that the video is in a QuickTime compatible format, you open it in the VLC media player, play the video to the point where you would like to grab a frame, and then choose Video>Snapshot. This will save a .png image file on your desktop, ready for you to post to whatever website you choose.

Now the actual procedure that I followed was needlessly convoluted however. The Colbert clip was crashing VLC, and so I couldn’t even get to the snapshot step. So I decided to use a combination of QuickTime Pro, and Preview. VLC is definitely the preferred way to go because it is free, and as it turned out, upgrading VLC to the latest version fixed the problem. However, if you do have a registered version of QT Pro you can do it. You open the video file in QT Pro and then navigate to the frame of video that you want. Click on the File menu and choose Export… then select Movie to Picture. Unfortunately, no matter what you change in the Options area, the file will be saved as a .pct file (a “pict”). You should be able to open it with the Preview program and then save it out (File>Save As…) as a .jpg or .png. Then use it how you wish. However, a 64-bit issue read its ugly head. In Snow Leopard, Preview is a 64-bit program, but it gave an error (see below) when I tried to view the .pct file that suggested I open the file in “32-bit mode”. To force Preview to run in 32-bit mode you need to go into your applications directory, click the Preview icon and choose File>Get Info from the Finder menu. Check the box labeled Open in 32-bit mode and then close the window. I could now open the file and save it out as a jpeg image. There, that was easy wasn’t it.

* I have since discovered that the Eye TV software has a snapshot feature, so I just find the frame I want in the original recording and make a snapshot. In other words, never mind. Still, the feature in VLC to take snapshots is applicable to many other projects. As I stated in my post from long ago, Hi-Def television is a great resource for high quality images, keeping in mind copyright issues, of course.

Oh, and I fully expect people to comment on other programs that can play the video and take a snapshot from a frame, so let’s have at it.

cc licensed flickr photo by Tyler Howarth: http://flickr.com/photos/tylerhowarth/484208783/

Let me start by answering when and why you would want to resize a digital image. The most common use of digital images is to post them to a web page for others to see. The most common images that we have to share are digital images from our cameras. We see images on web pages all the time and often they are images that came from a digital camera. People upload images to web pages all the time and the images look fine. So why is “how do I resize images for the web” a difficult question to answer? Well, the process of uploading an image hides the step of resizing the image. It is taken care of behind the scenes automatically. That original size image, if it came from a digital camera (one over 5 megapixels or so), would overwhelm a web page. You would have to scroll up and down as well as left and right to see all of the image (unless you have a super-high resolution, and physically large, monitor).

If you’ve ever uploaded an image to Facebook, Flickr, or any other image sharing site, your image may be resized several times. In the case of Facebook, you get what’s known as a thumbnail, an image that is literally not much bigger than your thumb. Your image also gets resized to a normal size image that is intended for your friends or family members to see. Flickr, on the other hand, goes a bit further, so they resize a given image to a thumbnail size as well as small, medium, and large. They will even include the original size image.

The next obvious question might be then, why wouldn’t you just use the image sharing sites to house your resized images. For most circumstances that is exactly what I recommend. For applications such as WordPress blogs (you know like UMW Blogs) there is a Flickr plugin that allows you to easily insert your images in a post or a page. However, if for some reason you need to resize you image to specific dimensions, here are some options for you. Keep in mind that not all image resizing algorithms are created equal. Some tools will simply do a better job at resizing than others.

• The standard bearer program of image manipulation is Photoshop. However, at several hundred dollars for the full version, it is certainly overkill for doing simple image resizing. However, if you have the program anyway, you simply load your image, go to the Image menu, and choose Image Size… you can then change the width and/or height of your image.
• If you are on a Mac, you already have a great image resizer built into your OS. It is the program Preview. You know the one that displays your images when you double-click on them (it displays your PDFs as well). If you open an image using Preview, you can go to the Tools menu and choose Adjust Size… You can then change the width and/or height of your image, then choose File/Save As… Note that the quality of using Preview for resizing images is on par with Photoshop, and you can also do batch resizing (which means you can select multiple images and resize several at a time.
• On the PC, I recommend you use a free piece of software called VSO Image Resizer. With this handy program you will now have resizing capability a the click of a mouse, or rather a right-click. After downloading and installing the program, find the image you want to resize on your computer and right-click the file. From the menu choose VSO Image Resizer. The program is free for personal use, but you will have to click the Continue button to get to the resizing screen. Now you can choose to resize using one of the listed Profiles or type in a custom resolution. Once installed it is a very handy program. VSO resizer works on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 machines. Note that this program will attempt install the Ask Toolbar. If you don’t want it, make sure to uncheck the appropriate boxes.
• Picasa, my favorite image management program, does an OK job of resizing images. You use the Export button and then select the dimensions for your files. It will also batch resize several images. Picasa runs on Mac (Intel Macs only), PC, and Linux computers.
• Shrink O’Matic is a program written as an Adobe AIR application that runs the same on a Mac, a PC or a Linux machine. You simply drag and drop one or several images in the program’s window, choose your settings, and shrink away!
• ResizeYourImage.com is one of many websites that allow you to use a web service to resize images on your computer. Upload your original image and then resize it however you like. There is some inherent caution that should be taken with any website that you upload images to. This one seems to be harmless.

Here’s what you need. An iPhone, using its built-in camera. An app called AirMe, which you set up to upload the image you take, to an account of your choice. In our case we use the Flickr service. I’ll talk about the Flickr piece in a moment, but I don’t want to gloss over how AirMe works. I grab the iPhone and start the free AirMe app. It works on top of the camera app and it allows me to take a picture, if I like it I use it, or I retake it. I can also use an image that is already on my iPhone. As long as I’m connected to the AT&T network, it will instantly start uploading. In 30 seconds, give or take, it’s done.

Now it’s available on Flickr. So, similar to the audio recordings on AudioBoo, the image is instantly hosted on a photo sharing site. However, like we also did with AudioBoo we are going to republish it to a WordPress blog automatically. We again employ our good friend FeedWordPress. We use the RSS feed from Flickr using the tag iPhone. In no time at all the image is up on the blog.

I have a preset title of “Latest iPhone Photo” and it posts the thumbnail that links to the Flickr page for the photo.

Caution, of course, needs to be exercised because it will publish whatever photo you send. The current iPhone has even better quality than the one I own, and network coverage is getting better all the time. This will only get better and easier with time. I was hoping to have this procedure worked out in time for my MS Ride this year but . . . better late than never.

Just a quick post on a new discovery – Photoshop tutorials from a deeply disturbed individual entitled “You Suck at Photoshop“. Definitely PG-13 and abusive, but very funny – and yet instructional.

UPDATE: YSAP returns for “Season 2″ on June 27!

I suppose that Flickr would be the sweet, lovely butterfly and Picnik provides the sting as the bee. The marriage is finally consumated. You will now find an "Edit Photo" button on your Flickr pictures, and that editor is the Picnik engine, which opens up a new section for you to edit to your heart’s content. Or at least with the functions that the service provides you. Those features include things like resize, crop, fixing red eye, and even exposure and "auto-fix" capabilities.

Since I had an account already, I was greeted with this.

If you have a Flickr account, and you haven’t signed up at Picnik yet, it’s time!

For those of you who haven’t heard of Picnik, here is a little promotional video that those folks have put up on YouTube. If you store your photos online at sites like Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa Web Albums, or even Facebook, then why not use an online photo editor. The Picknik folks are doing what looks like a bit of a promotional tour (NBC and ABC networks), so I’ll help them out (again) by posting their video here, and vouching for their service. It really does work elegantly with really easy and tight integration with the above mentioned photo services. Their "premium" features are even available for free, for a limited time.

As I prepare for a new position as “New Media Specialist”, this is the sort of groundbreaking application that I’d like to highlight. Mac fan-boys (and girls) will be so jealous!

The latest version of Flock has changed quite a bit. Configuring all my accounts (del.icio.us, Flickr, Photobucket, wordpress.com, YouTube) took just a couple of minutes. I dragged in an image from my Flickr account. Looks like all the difficulty that I had using previous versions has gone away. They’ve thrown so much into this version that it’ll take some getting used to. This may just be my new “blogging platform”.

Blogged with Flock

Do you recognize this place? Let me give you a hint.

Still don’t recognize the place? Maybe you’re not a Windows XP user, but if you are, the chances are good that you’ve considered putting this scene on your computer desktop.

The place depicted in this photograph, called Autumn Lane, was the subject of an epic search by Nick Tosches in a Vanity Fair article. It all started with a computer tech changing the standard Windows XP desktop image, called Bliss, to Autumn on Tosches’ computer. After seeing this image, he deploys what he calls “Team Autumn” to track down the photographer and the location. Microsoft was not very helpful, at least at first. Eventually someone at Microsoft does come through with a location, and one of the team members comes up with the name of the photographer, Peter Burian.

The Vanity Fair article is a great read, and the story (thanks to David Pogue for the lead) of finding the place where the photograph was taken was intriguing enough to me to seek permission to use the photos here, from Peter Burian himself. I went to Peter’s website and filled out a contact form asking permission to use the photos in this post. FOUR MINUTES LATER, I had a reply from Peter saying, “Ok, can do.”

Peter also sent me a few other links to stories that appeared in newspapers near the location of the photograph – Burlington, Ontario, Canada. The Hamilton Spectator and the Toronto Star both ran stories about “the search”. Burlington is between Hamilton and Toronto, and the more accurate location of the photo is Kilbride, Ontario, which is a small village that is part of the Burlington township. I’ve taken many trips through this area on the way to Toronto.

Burian says that it wasn’t until this past December that he discovered his image was a part of Windows XP. After being contacted by Vanity Fair, he was as eager to find the location of the photo as Nick Tosches was. It’s amazing the power of a photo to literally move us.

One last point. Getting permission to use photos with a copyright can be quite easy, if you just ask. Thanks again Peter.