Photoshop Express – It’s about time
27
Mar2
Mar2
After graduating from college and losing my cheap student software licensing privileges Photoshop fell out of favor with me. I tried GIMP for a while (GNU Image Manipulation Program) which is essentially a Photoshop clone, but the controls are slightly awkward. I also have found for the most part both Photoshop CS2 and GIMP 2.4 to be very feature rich and far to complicated for basic photo editing and processing.
Photoshop finally announced their online Photo Editing suite called Photoshop Express. The answer to the layman’s photo editing needs. While the online factor is cool – I think the most important thing is you can get your photos back when you are done with them. Photoshop Express could have just as easily been a desktop install, but that is not the way of the software world these days.
Photoshop Express is still in Beta, but it is available to everybody and you should definitely try it out and see if it is right for you.
First thing I noticed was the 2GBs of free storage, not bad – but with 7 megapixel cameras being the norm this will fill up fast if you use the service regularly.
However, the 2GBs free is probably just a way to bait you into purchasing a larger ‘digital locker’ to keep all your photos in. A not half bad idea considering then your photos are safe (or safer anyway) from a hardware catastrophe at a reputable location.
Another interesting features – it allows you to login into other Web 2.0 worlds where you may have pictures stored and edit them directly. Currently you can edit pictures from Facebook, Picasa and Photobucket – so you can essentially grow your storage capacity by using external sites that integrate with Photoshop Express.
All the photo editing options are extremely easy to understand and show you 7 ranges for each effect and allow you preview each interval within that range in real time. Good enough! Some of the coolest editing features are the ‘Pop Color’, which allows you to create a grayscale image except for one color you isolate and the ‘Exposure’ which lets you quickly fine tune the exposure of your photograph.
There are also some standard Social Networking elements that all web 2.0 sites require. In this case you can share and browse Galleries. Essentially albums you have uploaded and selected as public. Hopefully – if you don’t select them to be public they are in fact private. (Facebook I’m looking in your general direction….).
The biggest advantage I see is all the processing is on their end, as long as you have a high-speed Internet connection, the age of your computer shouldn’t really affect performance, unlike installing the full blown Photoshop.
For now, I think it is a pretty good tool and so far it is free. I will continue to use it until I forget about it, which always seems to happen.
Revisiting a recurring Facebook Photo Exploit
10
Mar2
Mar2
A while back – actually about 8 months ago, I wrote a post about what I think is a major privacy hole in Facebook’s Photo service. It never seemed to pick up any traction, but maybe people didn’t quite get what I was saying. I still think this is a major problem and a major flaw in the Facebook Photo Service, so I decided to revisit the topic once again.
PROBLEM: I can see FULL photo albums of people I am not friends with on Facebook.
ILLUSTRATION:The photo, from You, Me and Dupree which illustrates the classic third wheel scenario, is a perfect definition of the problem that exists in Facebook’s Photo service.
The illustration is meant to serve as guide to your understanding of why this is a major problem in Facebook.
SCENARIO -
- Dupree and ‘You’ (Matt Dillon) are long time friends from college and beyond. Both have Faecbook profiles to keep in touch with old friends.
- Now, ‘You’ and his girlfriend, ‘Me’ (Kate Hudson) are also friends and have Facebook profiles.
- Important: Dupree and ‘Me’(Kate Hudson) are NOT friends on Facebook.
- Now, here is the problem – Dupree is cycling through old photos on his computer and finds some hilarious pictures of ‘You’ doing really stupid things that you know find embarrasing. Dupree decides to create an album called “‘You’ doing stupid things”.
- Dupree is smart, so he sets his privacy settings on the album preventing other people from seeing these photos.
- However, here is the problem, ‘You’ (again, Matt Dillon) sees these pictures have been uploaded in his ‘Mini-Feed’ next time he logs in. He is rehashing the old memories and on one of the photos decides to comment. “Man how dumb was I? Hilarious!”. Comment posted.
- Now, ‘Me’(Kate Hudson) logs in. On here ‘mini-feed’ she can see the picture that her boyfried ‘You’(Matt Dillon) has commented on. Not a big deal, he commented on it, so now it is visible to people he knows.
- PROBLEM!!! – If ‘Me’(Kate Hudson) clicks on the image, she can now cycle through every picture in the album – an album by somebody she is not friends with and could never view their profile or pictures otherwise. This is a huge problem and a flaw. There is absolutely no enforcement of the privacy settings if a person ‘twice-removed’ from the owner of the photos enters the album this way.
If the metaphor is confusing – try it out yourself and see what I mean:
If the metaphor I provided here is hard to follow, I decided to post step by step instructions of how your privacy is being invaded on a daily basis.
- Log in to facebook.
- Find a friend of yours.. A friend who has recently commented on someone else’s photo. The important thing here is ’someone’ means someone you aren’t friends with, and you also don’t belong to the same network. (i.e. you can’t view their profile).
- In your friend’s news feed, click the thumbnail of the photo they commented on. It will take you to that photo. (In my opinion, this is already breaking the privacy rules).
- Once you are done laughing at the no doubt hilarious, mischievous or embarrassing photo your friend commented on, click the photo. It will take you to the next photo in that album. Click again and again, until you have been through the entire album.
- Next, wonder why on earth you could see a strangers photos.
- Last, be concerned that people all over the place are seeing things, that Facebook tells people ‘only your friends’ will see this.
The reason, I know this is an exploit, security hole, bug, or what have you is that while in that album – try to click “Back to Album” – it won’t take you to the album, it will take you the ‘you two aren’t friends’ view of that person. Also, the link to go back to the album and person’s profile normally in the lower right-hand side disappears. So there is definitely some strange behavior going on here.
Will Facebook fix this as fast as they did the ‘Advanced Search’ issue? Let’s hope. Is this old news I just missed the boat on? I don’t think so.
In the meantime, you may want to think about what you are uploading to Facebook – because your friends might not like it if they knew, regardless of what Facebook tells them, that total strangers, potential employers, or even their parole officers may be able to see it.
Leave me a comment if you try this out. Let me know if it worked or not.
Photo Series v1
8
Mar0
Mar0
I have been running through some of my photographs from the last couple years and noticed an interesting trend. I have a lot of photos that don’t stand out on their own, but look great incorporated as part of a series of photographs. Not sure how this happened… but I like it.
Windows Live Writer…
3
Mar0
Mar0
I am testing out Windows Live Writer the newest of the Blog Publishing editor.
So far so good – it even grabs a snapshot view of my blog and stores it offline so I can preview the post in real-time.
It has some cool functionality built in – I can insert a map – with one click.
Tags, tables and a whole lot more. This looks like a promising tool.
So – maybe someday – I will actually have something interesting to write about… seems to be a common problem.
The pluggable architecture looks like it already has quite a few handy plugins for managing images, pasting Code snippets, etc… that can be added when you need them.
My overall feeling is it is much more robust then ScribeFire and whole lot more user friendly.
Interesting….
10 Gallon Changes
6
Dec0
Dec0
I have been working on updating my blog and the best change so far is the new and improved gallery. Now – maybe I will actually manage to upload some pictures…
What’s it worth to you?
3
Oct0
Oct0
If you aren’t a Radiohead fan (which you should be) or if you live under a rock you probably haven’t heard about the new Radiohead album. It’s called In Rainbows – and it costs exactly how much your willing to pay. That’s right – if you don’t think it will be worth the money – you can get it for free! There is a super content rich box set you can purchase for $84 dollars which will please the super-fans – but the album in mp3 format is enough for me.
Some say this is just Radiohead being Radiohead – but I think it is a larger experiment to demonstrate to Mr. Steve Jobs, and half of the major record labels in the music industry that license free downloads can work. In fact, even when given the choice, people are willing to volunteer their bucks to pay for it.
I eagerly await October 10th when I can download it and enjoy it exactly the way I want it – license free and for exactly how much I wanted to pay for it, $10. Perfect combination.
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