Friday, December 03, 2010

Photos and Fools

A note about viewing uploaded photos. First, do not expect anyone else to see exactly what you see when you upload a photo because most people have their monitors set to suit themselves. The bit of light sky that you upload as blue may lean to the greenish side to some of them and to others it may appear white or even pinkish. Another factor is compression. When you or your camera compresses a photo to .jpg format, some information is lost and the more times it is compressed and the value of each compression is reduced, the more is lost. Just resizing a .jpg file will cause it to lose detail. I always upload photos to Flickr and Megashot as being private so I can get an "after compression" view before allowing anyone else to see them and many times I replace the shot with one in I have compensated for in its compressed site value. On Megashot, the highest resolution that will display is 1024px, therefore it is best to upload your photos at that resolution so that the site will not alter them as much. Another thing to consider is converting your photos to .png format before uploading. It uses far less compression and even though the final image will be displayed in .jpg, it will still be truer to the original. The drawback to .png is file size and upload time; it is bigger and takes a little longer. Ideally, we should shoot in in .raw format, edit in .raw format, convert to .tif format and resize to 1024px and then upload. Some sites will not accept .tif files, so they should be converted to .png before uploading. Megashot allows only 1024px or less due to theft; a smaller file is not as like to be stolen yet is still large enough for satisfactory display on the monitor. It also saves on server storage space. None of this actually makes much difference for snapshots like I upload, but if you want to show something where subtle shading is important, it is best to be aware of these factors.
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I've been looking at some of Obama's "budget cuts" and one thing concerning the social security proposal is that it mostly affects the wealthier retirees. One thing for sure that I've learned over the years is that nothing affects the wealthy unless the middle-class and poor are involved one way or another. The most affluent oldsters will have major cuts in their monthly benefits and the rest of us will not be imposed upon except we will be getting little if any cost of living increases. In this case, when the rich get less, sooner or later the middle class will get much less. This is the only area where trickle down economics (Reaganomics) works. The simplicity of it is that whatever happens to the rich will eventually trickle down to the middle-class; the reality of it is that only the things that are considered as bad by the wealthy finds its way to the pocketbooks of everyday Jane and Joe. Obama's entire budget reduction plan reads like the Republican agenda; I think he should do us all a favor and switch parties; not to Republican, but to the Tea Bag party. He sounds as goofy as Palin, and has as much wishy-washy integrity as McCain. With the recent election, Middle-America has shown that they have written off Obama as a weakling and just another politician.
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