Chris Pirillo » Photos

Picnik

Chris — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:54:44 +0000

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I recently attended the WTIA Fast Pitch Forum & Technology Showcase. The conference featured two dozen of the of the hottest technology companies in Washington presenting their business in a competition for “Best In Show”. Picnik makes your photos fabulous with easy to use yet powerful editing tools. Tweak to your heart’s content, then get creative with oodles of effects, fonts, shapes, and frames.

If you already use Flickr for your photos (here’s what I do with mine), you’re only a click away from taking a Picnik. That’s how I discovered it, and it’s worked fairly well for me to this point.

An added note is that Yahoo has rolled out some new services recently, to hopefully cut down on the number of additional sites that patrons will ever need to visit. One of these is called Edit Photos by Picnik. This app provides users with a quick way to crop, touch up, add effects and more to any of the photos located in their inbox or online. How much easier can it get?

Picnik is a great service, one that I myself use frequently. If you haven’t checked it out – you’re absolutely missing out!

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Ontela

Chris — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 23:46:18 +0000

Ontela is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I recently attended the WTIA Fast Pitch Forum & Technology Showcase. The conference featured two dozen of the of the hottest technology companies in Washington presenting their business in a competition for “Best In Show”. Ontela makes it easy for wireless customers to save their camera phone pictures. Ontela automatically saves each picture to e-mail, your PC and / or your web photo albums.

Onetla builds simple platforms for a much better user experience. Their technology helps wireless carriers and the image hosting companies bring new value to their customers. What Ontela does is to bridge the gap between the two, making it so simple and fast for you to save all of those pictures you snap on the go with your phone.

You don’t want to lose your pictures. You don’t want to have a huge hassle when trying to extract them from your phone and save them or upload them. Check out Ontela, and save yourself a headache!

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The Best Free Way to Share Files, Photos, Music Online

Chris — Thu, 14 May 2009 04:58:34 +0000

The Best Free Way to Share Files, Photos, Music Online is a post from Chris Pirillo

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You probably have hundreds – if not thousands – of photos on your computer. You likely also have tons of other files sitting there, as well. How do you share those files with others? Let’s kick it up a notch, and say you have a calendar, tasks and contacts to keep in sync. How do you keep all this data in sync with each other? The answer is software – which is sadly usually expensive.

I have an all-in-one workspace solution for you! Tonido is an open personal web application platform that runs on your desktop which safeguards your privacy and online freedom. It allows you to run your own personal web applications on your desktop and form your own private Tonido network. Applications and data are always local.

I may not pronounce the name right, but I will tell you this is completely awesome. It’s easy to set up, and it’s cross-platform. It’s also open source! This isn’t interesting to you if you’re off in your own little world and never interact with anyone else. But the moment you need to share a document or picture with someone else… BAM! Tonido saves the day.

I’m a little excited, yes. I’ve been waiting for something like this to appear. It’s one thing to share a file… but it’s a step beyond when you can share contacts, calendars and more as well! Normally, something like this would be hard to use and expensive. But this – is – NOT!

Try it. Love it. Live it!

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How to Find Files and Geotag Photos

Chris — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:55:39 +0000

How to Find Files and Geotag Photos is a post from Chris Pirillo

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It doesn’t matter how you say “Houdah,” the developer of this series of utilities for Mac OS X just wants you remember it. In my experience, HoudahSpot makes for an amazing (power user’s) extension to the already-powerful Spotlight.

HoudahSpot is Houdah Software’s bestselling file search tool for the Mac. Unleash the full power of Spotlight to find, manage and clean up your files.
Fast – The search starts only at your command.
Precise – Pinpoint files using a myriad of criteria.
Detailed – Show any number of columns.
Customizable – Set your preferred criteria, columns and sort order.
BlitzSearch – The convenience of Spotlight, the power of HoudahSpot.

HoudaGeo adds another dimension to your photos, to boot. With HoudahGeo you may “pin” photos to locations where they were taken. Just like an expensive GPS camera, HoudahGeo may store latitude, longitude and altitude information right within the image file – invisibly with no loss of quality. HoudahGeo offers you many ways of geocoding your favorite photos:

Automatic – Matches photos to GPS track logs and waypoints.
Using a Google Earth – Point to the desired location.
Using a map – Pick locations using the built-in map.
Precision – Attach photos to GPS waypoints.
Manual – Enter coordinates found on Google Earth, Wikipedia and more!

Remember, before buying this or any other software, be sure to check with me. I may just have a coupon you can use.

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Are Your Photos Boring?

Chris — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:40:43 +0000

Are Your Photos Boring? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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The biggest problem I have with my digital photos is that they’re not fun enough. Maybe you’re in the same quandary. You want to make your photos more fun. We’ve talked before about Websites and software in the past that can make your photos more fun, including this one I want to show you today.

Primps allows you to have fun with your pictures. Upload your picture (or link to it from somewhere on the Web), add some text bubbles and crazy objects, then save your image. There’s nothing to sign up for, nor pay for. You don’t need to create a login, nor even use your email address. There are several different things you can tweak and play with to edit your image, and make it be the best it can be.

Now you know where you can go to do some quick text additions to a photo. Yeah, you could load it into your image editor. However, it’s easier to just go to Primps and save it out. I just showed you how easy it is. It doesn’t get simpler than this. What more do you want? Seriously… I want to know. Email me. Tell me about other cool websites that others haven’t heard of yet. Pass it along, and I’ll show the rest of the community.

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What Software do you use for Digital Photos?

Chris — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:55:46 +0000

What Software do you use for Digital Photos? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Believe it or not, I have been accused of never talking about Windows. That’s an illusion. Apparently, there’s just not a lot of interesting Windows software out there anymore. If there is… you’re not telling me about it. How can I let everyone know about cool programs like this one if you don’t point me towards them? Send me links to the cool stuff you find, and I’ll be happy to talk about it.

PictoMio is more than just a digital photo manager. It happens to be a full-on suite of tools to help you clean up and organize your digital photos and videos. You can think of this as the way Picasa should be. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been using Picasa for years. But, Picasa has kind of fallen flat. They kind of stopped developing it. And now, along comes the free PictoMio, available for Windows only.

Pictomio easily manages thousands of media intensive image and video archives and groups your media according to orientation, time, type, size, rating, etc. Finally a tool to directly manage your videos. Along with viewing Thumbnails you can also rotate and zoom video. With the Library you can display photos by the date taken and EXIF values (e.g. type of camera) as well as sorted by category and album. With the integrated EXIF editor (Exchangeable image file format) you can see, edit and save the meta data of JPEG files.
Albums and categories are virtual folders which you can use to arrange your pictures regardless of their location on the hard drive. Example album: “My best vacation pictures” Browse through your pictures With the visually engaging 3D picture Carousel. The direction of motion can be controlled by the mouse. Pictomio simplifies the production of slide shows for you by using a drag-and-drop interface. By Using the capabilities of 3D graphics cards you can also integrate elaborate page transitions.

PictoMio is excellent software. It helps you work with your files to effectively and easily manage all of your digital files.

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Upload Digital Photos to Web Albums for Free!

Chris — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:24:31 +0000

Upload Digital Photos to Web Albums for Free! is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Last year, my parents lost a lot of digital photos in a hard drive crash. It was very tragic, because they had not backed up any of those photos. They had the Picasa software to help them with the backup, but I had never explained how to use it. I have apologized many times. Picasa is now a free program, and can help save your photos, should some disaster or failure ever occur.

This is a free program for Windows or Linux. Allegedly, Google is also working on a way to port it over to OS X, as well. Ponzi and my Mom both love Picasa. It’s very simple to use. Mom recently wanted to know how to upload photos to the web. I told her “well, just push the web albums button”. Yeah, that’s all there is to it. You can upload an entire folder full of photos through the Picasa client, right to your free Google photo account. Google gives you a Gigabyte of free space, just for this purpose.

You can also log into your Picasa account online, and upload photos directly that way. You can change several different options in your account. Choose your album cover. Change the look of your layout. Heck, you can even embed a slide show using any or all of your photos. It’s also easy to re-download albums should you ever need to.

As far as I’m concerned, Picasa whips all the other photo applications’ backsides. It’s an amazing program, and I sincerely hope you’ll give it a try.

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Photoshop Video

Chris — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 04:18:04 +0000

Photoshop Video is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Whether you’re new to Photoshop, or have been using it for a long time… these tips should help you become even more proficient. Keep sending in those top five lists!

When trying to fade an image, do not change the opacity of the layer use the eraser tool. This is because if you have more than one image on one layer, you can have the different images a different opacity level. To do this click on the eraser tool and go to the top tool bar (unless you have moved it), lower the opacity, and erase. You can also use this to blend images and get rid of “boxyness” (when the image is square and you want it more roundish) if that makes sense.
When cropping full images do not use the eraser tool, use the vector tool. It is much more accurate and only cuts out exactly what you need. The eraser tool, in my opinion, should only be used for fading and touching up images, but never to do a full cropping job.
ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS! Be aware of what layer you are selected on. I’ve seen other people many times and myself start using the vector tool to crop out images, only to find out I was on the wrong layer and had to redo it all over again. You may also run into problems if you want to flatten two layers, but select the wrong ones and find out later when it is too late that your layers are now messed up.
When using the magic wand tool, remember that it really isn’t magical. If you are using it too get rid of an unwanted background, make sure that you close up all of the openings of the wanted image. This can be done rather easily by using the pencil tool.
Always put images on different layers. This will give you more freedom t change the way the images are placed in the final image. If you put them all on one layer, you can usually never change it much.

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NAPP: Photoshop Association

Chris — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 02:51:34 +0000

NAPP: Photoshop Association is a post from Chris Pirillo

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A community member writes: “I recently went to a seminar by the NAPP. NAPP is the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. I joined them last year. Here are my reasons for joining NAPP.”

NAPP produces a magazine called Photoshopuser that is packed cover-to-cover with in-depth Photoshop® tutorials and tips written by the most talented designers, photographers, and leading authors in the industry.
NAPP offers a member’s only website www.photoshopuser.com/ with weekly feature tutorials. Each week there are two new video tutorials that allow you to watch how experts produce amazing images. As well as weekly tutorials that show the steps involved to created incredible photos. A member’s forum provides a way members’ can assist each other with specific issues using Adobe Photoshop program. There are many other features of the website which could be it’s own list.
NAPP associated with Kelly training produces seminars illustrating different aspects of Photoshop, which travel around the United States. The three tours are Photoshop CS3 Power tour, Photoshop CS3 Creativity Tour, and Photoshop CS3 Tour for Photographers. A benefit from membership is you currently receive a twenty-dollar savings on the $99 price.
NAPP has a twice a year convention on Photoshop and April 2-4 2008 it will be held at the Orlando Convention Center. For three inspirational days you will learn from more than 40 of the most recognized and respected names in the industry, including Scott Kelby, Terry White, Fay Sirkis, Joe McNally, Bert Monroy, Jay Maisel, Dan Margulis, Jeff Schewe, and more. NAPP member receive a substantial discount on the admission price for the three-day event.
NAPP has negotiated discounts on hardware, software and services from top organizations such as Adobe, B and H, Office Depot, Dell, Apple, Porter Case, Alien Skin, Site grinder, Lucas Art for a total of 92 different discounts.

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Photoshop Help

Chris — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 02:36:16 +0000

Photoshop Help is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Using Photoshop can be daunting, at best. It’s not the easiest program in the world to learn. However… it does produce excellent results. Here are some tips to help you become more familiar with Photoshop, and all it can do for you.

Know the Basics I cannot stress enough how important it is to learn the basics. If you are looking to use Photoshop for what it’s worth, you need to know how things work and how to get around the workspace with ease. Later, as you progress into more advanced areas of Photoshop , or if you are working on a time limit, knowing exactly what route you need to take will save you a lot of time and help you achieve the desired goal.
Take Advantage of Digital One of the amazing things about editing digitally, is the fact that you have complete control over your work. Unlike painting or drawing, if there’s an area of your project in which you are not happy with, you can simply delete or modify it using the magic of layers. Don’t be afraid to add as many layers as you wish, to separate every aspect of your project. Photoshop even gives you the ability to sort your layers in folders for organization and easy access.
Learn, Learn, Learn There is an infinite amount of resources both online and off line, which will teach you everything you need to know about how to USE Photoshop . Whether you prefer written instruction or visual, you’ll find all you need scattered across the internet. Some places, such as YouTube may offer video tutorials demonstrating certain aspects of Photoshop , but if you are looking to learn as much as possible, there are several paid resources which offer high quality training videos.
Don’t Limit Yourself Even though Photoshop can do a whole lot in terms of editing, you don’t necessarily have to only use Photoshop . There are other programs such as Adobe Illustrator which can be useful if you need to work in vector format. Adobe Flash, if you need animation or dynamic web content. Or Adobe Dreamweaver if you are looking to publish your work to the web. The great thing about using each of these programs for what they excel in, is that they are all cross compatible. Switch from one to another with great ease!
Be Creative There is no limit to what you can do. Let your mind wander and have fun with your designs. Don’t be afraid to go above and beyond, but always remember to stay professional. Be sure to follow basic color guidelines to make your work easy on the eye and user friendly.

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A Better Way to Resize an Image

Chris — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:26:17 +0000

A Better Way to Resize an Image is a post from Chris Pirillo

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – The other night I posted a video about a new picture editing website. A user left a follow up comment to that video, letting me know of yet another new site. This one is very different, and MUCH better than anything I’ve seen to work with photos.

Last week, I posted a video about resizing photos on the web. I received some excellent feedback on it, including a link to this excellent new site.

rsizr.com is a photo editing site that utilizes what is being called ‘intelligent image resizing’. This site uses a new type of algorithm called seam carving. Instead of making the entire picture smaller or larger, it takes parts of an image, retargets it, and preserves the important pixels in the photo.

This couldn’t be simpler to do. Upload a photo, and choose your settings. Watch the red lightning bolt as it targets all the important parts of your picture… almost like magic. The best part, of course, is the fact that this awesome site is free!

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The Most Fun You’ll Ever Have with a Photo

Chris — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:45:26 +0000

The Most Fun You’ll Ever Have with a Photo is a post from Chris Pirillo

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – Ponzi is trying out for American Idol! Seriously! Check out her audition video, made courtesy of Blabberize.com.

On blabberize.com you can upload any picture from your computer, and make a video out of it using your own voice and text. It’s easy, and it’s free! As I’ve already said, I am completely addicted to this website already. You can find some of my previous attempts on my blog.

Simply upload a picture, use the selection tool to outline the mouth, then push the record button. Record your text, and voila! Press the email button, title the video and save it. You’re done!

Be sure to check out all the excellent, hilarious video clips already on Blabberize, and then create some of your own!

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Windows Vista Digital Photo Import

Chris — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 06:24:48 +0000

Windows Vista Digital Photo Import is a post from Chris Pirillo

Brandon says:

Vistaâ€™s Photo Import tool, in my opinion, (aside from Tag support) is a complete step backward from what weâ€™ve got in Windows XP. In XP, I can pick and choose which photos I want to import at a specific time. With Vista, I get no choice what-so-ever. It just imports all photos and creates a directory for me. Vistaâ€™s Photo Import tool does give me some neat options on auto-naming folders when do imports but that doesnâ€™t go far enough – its still far too constricting.

Robert says:

I echo Brandon’s hope that this is one of the “surprises” Microsoft has planned for RTM. But at this point, if you’re copying photos from your computer in Vista, I wouldn’t even bother with the Photo Import Wizard. Better to use the new thumbnail features in Windows Explorer to do the copying instead.

Paul says:

Let’s talk photo import. It’s broken in Windows Vista, horribly broken. Here’s why. In Windows XP, you could preview the pictures on the attached camera and select exactly which photos to download. That way, if you had several events captured on the memory card, you could download them separately be stepping through the wizard once for each event. In Vista, you can’t choose. You get all these great file naming and tagging options, but you have to download the entire contents of the camera in one giant whack. That, friends, is just stupid. It’s less useful than photo import in XP.

I can’t believe I’m about to say this but… I don’t think it’s broken at all. In fact, I think this is a huge step forward for the photo import tool. Why? Because I’ve seen Ponzi plant her damn camera images all over her damn hard drive and then give me a hard time when she couldn’t find the damn things again.

Forcing a destination? Thank you, Microsoft. Forcing people to apply tags (even though they should be called keywords) to individual photos? Thank you, Microsoft. Forcing a complete download? Thank you, Microsoft. Seriously. If you don’t like it, you’re likely a “control freak” geek – and you can do whatever you wanna do with the damn things through the Windows Explorer.

McLaws just IM’ed me to say that Vista only tags photos en masse, which is completely asinine. Then again, what can you expect from a half-baked operating system that will ship with more bugs than actual features?!

Bye-Bye BlogWare

Chris — Mon, 29 May 2006 21:23:18 +0000

Bye-Bye BlogWare is a post from Chris Pirillo

You know what really grinds my gears? Nobody’s come up with a new priest and a rabbi joke in like thirty years. Ya know? That, and when I can’t get something done because I’m waiting on someone else to do what they need to do first. I get antsy. Such was the case in trying to get everything I put into my BlogWare account out of it.

To their support staff, I wrote: “As I posted on one of your lists, I’m leaving BlogWare. However, there’s virtually no way to access my files easily / en masse (photos, attachments, etc.). Your export utility is feeble and doesn’t export all of my stored data (like keywords, for example). I’m trying to work around your export limitations, but still need a way to get those other files (photos, attachments, etc.).” Siobhan McLaughlin flipped a few swtiches, promising better export features for other BlogWare users in the future:

One of our operations team members has moved your files to be accessible via FTP. The files in _attachments is now in a folder called attachments, _photos is in a folder called Photos. I can complete it for other BW members on an as needed basis, just as we did for you. After your experience, we have started discussing internally that we should re-design the export function. We will also have to add in an ability to dump the files in a virtual directory to a real directory.

The BlogWare platform isn’t horrible – it’s just incredibly inflexible, and painfully not-open-source. When I switched to it (from MovableType) a few years ago, I was expecting constant updates, further feature refinement, continual development, etc. That’s not what happened, though. For a while, it was “security through obscurity.” Then, the spammers started to hit BlogWare with everything they had – and BlogWare is still struggling to keep up. TrackBack management was laughable to begin with in BlogWare, and that problem only got worse with the onslaught of nefarious digital data warlords. That’s ultimately what drove me away from BlogWare, truly. It’s an increasingly-antequated platform when compared to WordPress – for novices and experts alike. Sorry, TuCows.

How to Handle Remote Tech Support

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMT

Using GoToAssist is the easiest way to view and control another person's computer online. Use it to provide instant technical support to family, friends and customers. Start a session with just one click, and instantly connect with the other party.

Network Tools for Windows

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

You need these network tools, no matter which operating systems and networks you have to support. SolarWinds ipMonitor: Affordable Network Monitoring for SMBs. Get turnkey network, server and application availability monitoring with SolarWinds ipMonitor v9.0. This easy-to-use, reliable solution for SMBs delivers out-of-the-box availability monitoring so you always know exactly what's up with Active Directory, DNS, Exchange, FTP, Web, IMAP, MS SQL Server, and SMTP. Download your free trial today. Or, try their totally free tools! And, through 2/29, save 20% when you purchase ipMonitor 9.0.

Get Your Own Web Site

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

Starting at just $3.99/month, web hosting from GoDaddy includes 99.9% uptime, 24/7 support and free access to GoDaddy Hosting Connection, THE place to install over 30 FREE applications sure to help you get the most from your hosting plan and Web site. Enter code CP2 at checkout, and save an additional 10% on any order.

Plus, as a friend of Chris Pirillo, enter code CHRIS7, that's C-H-R-I-S and the number 7, when you check out, and save an additional 10% on any order. Get your piece of the internet at GoDaddy.com.

VMware and Parallels for Virtual Machines

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

Coupons for Online Shopping

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:56:13 GMT

This feed is fueled by Lockergnome Online Shopping and Coupon Codes

Before you shop next time, see if we have a coupon first.