But Photo Finder could also aid users who are looking for specific photo types, for instance wide-angle or fisheye photos, or photos taken in a specific month or lightness.

Photo Finder processes Exif data that many digital cameras write automatically as meta data when photos are taken. The extension uses the vast archive of Google Images.

It adds an icon to Chrome’s address bar. A left-click on the icon displays a search form and menus to customize the photo search. It is not necessary to use the menus at all, which means that the extension can also be used as a quick way to search for photos on Google Images.

A digital camera manufacturer or model can be entered in the leftmost menu. You can for instance search for all photos taken with Canon cameras, or for photos that have been taken with Nikon’s D7000 digital camera. Once you start typing suggestions are made automatically by the extension.

The second and third menu are used to make changes to the camera’s zoom level and lightness. The fourth and final menu can be used to select a specific month for the photos. Want to find Statue of Liberty, Central Park or Golden Gate Bridge photos in Winter? Just select one of the Winter months and you are good to go.

The loading of the results page is not delayed by the selections. The selection may however have an impact on the quality of the results. Let me give you an example. If you select a camera that is not really that popular, you may up with unrelated or no photo results at all.

Photo Finder is nevertheless a handy extension for Chrome users. The extension can be downloaded and installed directly from the extension’s Chrome Web Store page.

Photographers who shot their photos in RAW format could not really make use of Windows Live’s Photo Gallery until now, as it did not support RAW formats.

This changes today with the release of the Microsoft Camera Codec Pack for Windows Vista and Windows 7. The independent download adds support for more than 120 DSLR cameras to Photo Gallery, Windows Explorer and other programs that use Windows Imaging Codecs (WIC).

Installation of the Microsoft Camera Codec Pack should be a breeze. Users only need to make sure that they install the right version for their operating system. The camera codec pack is offered for 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems.

The download page over at Microsoft’s Download Center lists the supported camera models. I have taken the liberty to quote the camera models below:

• Canon: EOS 1000D (EOS Kiss F in Japan and the EOS Rebel XS in North America), EOS 10D, EOS 1D Mk2, EOS 1D Mk3, EOS 1D Mk4, EOS 1D Mk2 N, EOS 1Ds Mk2, EOS 1Ds Mk3, EOS 20D, EOS 300D (the Kiss Digital in Japan and the Digital Rebel in North America) , EOS 30D, EOS 350D (the Canon EOS Kiss Digital N in Japan and EOS Digital Rebel XT in North America), EOS 400D (the Kiss Digital X in Japan and the Digital Rebel XTi in North America), EOS 40D, EOS 450D (EOS Kiss X2 in Japan and the EOS Rebel XSi in North America), EOS 500D (EOS Kiss X3 in Japan and the EOS Rebel T1i in North America), EOS 550D (EOS Kiss X4 in Japan, and as the EOS Rebel T2i in North America), EOS 50D, EOS 5D, EOS 5D Mk2, EOS 7D, EOS D30, EOS D60, G2, G3, G5, G6, G9, G10, G11, Pro1, S90
• Nikon: D100, D1H, D200, D2H, D2Hs, D2X, D2Xs, D3, D3s, D300, D3000, D300s, D3X, D40, D40x, D50, D5000, D60, D70, D700, D70s, D80, D90, P6000
• Sony: A100, A200, A230, A300, A330, A350, A380, A700, A850, A900, DSC-R1
• Olympus: C7070, C8080, E1, E10, E20, E3, E30, E300, E330, E400, E410, E420, E450, E500, E510, E520, E620, EP1
• Pentax (PEF formats only): K100D, K100D Super, K10D, K110D, K200D, K20D, K7, K-x, *ist D, *ist DL, *ist DS
• Leica: Digilux 3, D-LUX4, M8, M9
• Minolta: DiMage A1, DiMage A2, Maxxum 7D (Dynax 7D in Europe, α-7 Digital in Japan)
• Epson: RD1
• Panasonic: G1, GH1, GF1, LX3

Windows Live Photo Gallery supports viewing and editing of RAW image formats once the codec pack has been installed on the system. Photo Gallery will automatically create a copy of the RAW images in JPEG or JPEG-XR format which can then be edited and worked with by the user.

Windows users can now also preview the supported RAW image formats under Windows Explorer and other programs that make use of WIC.

Microsoft has already announced that they are working on adding support for missing and new camera models. (via)

The new web service Stolen Camera Finder uses this concept to locate photos on the Internet. You can upload a photo taken with a particular camera to the service’s website, or enter the camera’s serial number directly to start a search for photos on the web. The drag and drop upload is currently only working under Firefox and Google Chrome, if you use another browser you need to enter the camera’s serial number into the form.

This is quite problematic, considering that some camera models store an internal serial number in the EXIF tags that is different from the serial number shown on the camera itself. Tools to read EXIF information. Tools like Photo Me can be used to read the EXIF information from a photo taken with that camera.

The main idea behind the search is that the thief may have uploaded photos taken with the camera to the Internet, which would then open up possibilities to identify the person responsible for stealing the digital camera.

The service crawls the web for photos with serial numbers and adds all that are found to its database, which currently contains a list of well over one million serial numbers.

The serial number of the camera is then compared to the information stored in the database, with matches being reported to the user on site.

A match does not necessarily mean that the thief has uploaded photos to the web. It can very well be a photo that the original owner has uploaded to the Internet before the camera was stolen.

Users can fill out a missing camera report to receive email notifications whenever a new photo with the same serial number is added to the database.

The developers of Stolen Camera Finder have created a Google Chrome extension that anonymously submits information to the site if a JPG image is loaded that contains a serial number.

Another application, Flickr Scraper, is offered on site that scans the Flickr website for photos and submits the information to the project’s database.

The Stolen Camera Finder service adds another option for users who have lost their digital camera, or had it stolen. The biggest drawbacks currently are the small database size and the fact that several camera models do not save serial number information.

Among the features that can be enabled for supported camera models are the following:

• Shooting in RAW / DNG (Fast SD card is beneficial)
• Live histogram
• Always visible battery indicator
• manual settings for many parameters that would not be available otherwise
• Zebra mode
• Shutter speeds from 1/40.000 to 64 seconds
• Scripting interface (uBasic & LUA)
• Games (sokoban & reversi)
• Bracketing
• Timelapse Videos over weeks or months with external power supplies & eye-fi wireless sd cards
• Motion detection with response times of just 60ms or less
• a lot more

The most interesting aspect of the development kit is that the new functionality is gained by loading files from a memory card which does not modify the original firmware of the digital camera.

It also means that it is possible to reset the camera by shutting it down and firing it up again. International users can download the most recent builds from the CHDK-SVN autobuild listing. It has to be noted that each supported camera and each firmware of that digital camera needs its own build.

The first step in the process is to check if the camera is running a compatible firmware. The easiest way to check is to read the CHDK for Dummies guide which explains that and more.

The same guide contains information on how to use CHDK with a compatible camera. It is not that complicated but may take some time on the first run. Again, check the guide or a connected user forum if you have questions about the process.

Users with compatible Canon digital cameras can add useful features to their cameras this way.

While that is very comfortable to get the photos loaded on the local PC, it often means that the user has to work with the photos afterwards. Missing are for instance options to rename the photos directly or to transfer photos into different photos depending on the digital camera or memory card they are stored on. That’s for instance an excellent option for professional photographers who sometimes work with multiple cameras.

WIA-Loader is a free portable application for the Windows operating system that adds options to the photo download from digital cameras and memory cards. The software does not only work with Microsoft’s WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) but with other sources as well. Still, it should work best with digital cameras that support WIA drivers. The two options available if the camera does not support the drivers is to either set the digital camera to mass storage mode (if available), or use a card reader to transfer the photos from camera to computer.

WIA-Loader uses photo profiles of which at least one has to be created before the software can be used. A profile creation wizard guides the user through the process.

It begins with the selection of a root folder for all pictures and the subfolder configuration. Photos are by default copied to CameraName\Keyword\day\month\year with options to change that folder structure in the wizard.

Additional tasks can be configured that the photo software will perform before, during or after transfers of the photos to the computer system.

Available options include rotating upright pictures automatically, setting the pictures to be read only, geocoding images with GPS information or tagging images with keywords.

The program options offer extensive configuration settings, including abilities to configure and modify profiles.

There is a lot to explore here. Options include to register WIA-Loader as the handler for removable media and as a scanner and camera program, to configure external programs like Adobe’s DNG Converter or ExifTool, to import or export profiles, configure dozens of preview options and more. Folder and file names can be configured via variables in the options. The user manual lists all available options which includes using EXIF information to name the photos.

To import photos simply select your camera in the main menu, then an import profile and finally the import button. The photos are now imported and displayed in the program interface. It is possible to delete the images from the source device, or configure the program to automatically import new photos.

WIA-Loader is an excellent program for the Windows operating system. The photo importers biggest strength is its flexibility and vast number of options to customize the transfer of photos from digital cameras and memory cards to the PC. The program requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or better. (via)

But DigiKam is not just outstanding at managing your photo collections. DigiKam also excels at importing digital photos in from your camera. It has an easy to use Wizard to set up your camera and can auto-detect hundreds of different makes/models of cameras. In this article I will show you how to install DigiKam as well as walk you through the process of importing your photos into DigiKam.

Installation

I am going to show you how to install DigiKam on Ubuntu. The installation will work just fine on other distributions, but I have found the camera detection and interaction to be far superior in Ubuntu (10.04 is the release I am using). In order to install DigiKam on Ubuntu, follow these steps:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install digikam.
3. Type your sudo password and hit Enter.
4. Accept any dependencies necessary.
5. What for the installation to finish.
6. Close out your terminal.

Congratulations, you are now ready to use DigiKam.

First use

When you fire up DigiKam for the first time you will have to walk through a very simple set up wizard. This wizard will have you set such options as: Directory for pictures to be uploaded, If you want raw data to be uploaded, if you want to include metadata assigned by DigiKam, if you want reduced images displayed, etc. These options depend upon your needs, so set them to suit.

Once you have finished the Wizard, you will need to add your camera.

Adding your camera

Figure 1

You can add more than one camera to DigiKam. To add your first camera go ahead and plug the camera in and then click Import > Cameras > Add Camera Manually. When you do this a new window will open where you can either add the camera manually or try to Auto-Detect your camera.

Make sure your camera is on (and in the proper mode for interaction with your PC) and click the Auto-Detect button. DigiKam shouldn’t have any problem detecting your camera. If it does, you will have to add it manually. This is very simple. Just click the Add button and complete the information shown in Figure 2.

As you can see (in Figure 2) DigiKam supports a HUGE number of cameras. You will also need to add a mount point for the camera. On the off-chance you have to add your camera manually you will probably have to check your dmesg output to find out how the camera is recognized so you can manually mount the camera. Fortunately, DigiKam is very good at auto-detecting cameras.

Importing photos

Figure 3

Now that you have your camera added, importing photos is the easy part. Just click Import > Cameras > YOUR CAMERA (Where YOUR CAMERA is the name of the camera you added) and a new window will open displaying all of the images on your camera (see Figure 3).

Go through and select the photos you want to import and then click the Download button. In the next window you will have the opportunity to create a new Album. Depending upon the size (and number) of your photos, this can take some time. Once the import is complete, you will then be able to view, tag, rate, edit, open with, and much more.

Final thoughts

DigiKam is one of the finest photo management tools available for the Linux operating system. If you tend to take a lot of photos and need a simple way to manage them, DigiKam might be your best bet.

Camera downloader is such a third party software. The software has a size of only 37 Kilobytes and is fully portable. It comes with an xml configuration file that the user needs to edit before the first run. Especially the local path for the saved photos and the path to the photos on the digital camera are important to edit.

The program displays a small user interface whenever it is started that can be used to configure the photo transfer. It is here possible to change the target directory, select a folder name for the photos that are downloaded and make the decision if the photos should be moved or overwritten.

Moving the photos will move them from the camera to the folder and overwrite will overwrite any existing photos in the target folder.

Photo Downloader is a handy program for users who want to transfer photos from their digital camera semi-automatically. The portable software program can be downloaded from Codeplex.

Able Raw is a software program for editing, converting and correcting raw images in the Windows operating system. The program can read many different raw image formats including rw, cr2, nef, raw, pef, raf, x3f, bay, orf, srf, mrw, dcr, dng and arw. It is therefor compatible with many digital camera models from Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Fuji, Kodak, Olympus, Casio and others.

The software program offers the following core functionality:

• Image processing (Color Adjust, Effects, Crop);
• Auto Adjust Colors;
• Blue and Red scales;
• Brightness value;
• Interpolating RGBG as four colors;
• Gamma;
• High-quality or low-quality color interpolation;
• Automatic white balance;
• Camera white balance;

Raw images that are opened in the application are displayed as a preview on the right side. Controls to edit and correct the raw photo are provided in the footer area of the program as well as from the Image menu at the top.

One interesting aspect is that Able Raw displays the original image and the resulting image to fine tune the results before accepting them.

The file menu can be used to save the modified raw image in a different file format including the most popular ones like jpg, png and tif.

Able Raw is available for free for most Windows operating systems. It can be downloaded at the developer’s website Graphic Region.

In this article I will introduce you to this photo collection tool that will more than likely become your de facto standard photo manager for the Linux operating system.

Installation

If you are using the GNOME desktop, most likely F-Spot is installed. If not, you will be glad to know it is found in your distributions standard repositories. So to install F-Spot all you need to do is open up your software installation tool (such as Synaptic, gnome-packagekit, etc), search for fspot, mark for installation, and apply the changes. Once installed you will find F-Spot in Applications > Graphics.

UI Layout

Figure 1

As you can see, in Figure 1, the layout of F-Spot is very user-friendly. There are a few items that might seem a bit foreign to new users. Let’s take a look at the pieces you might not be familiar with.

Toolbar

The first thing you will notice is the toolbar. There are a few icons here that need to be explained. To the right of the Browse button there are three icons of interest:

Edit Image: With an image selected, by clicking this button you open the F-Spot Image Editor (see Figure 2). From this window you can manipulate your photos. You will also notice a bit of version control in the left pane. After you do any manipulation the Version dropdown will list either Original or Modified.

Figure 2

Full Screen: If you click this icon the selected image will be shown in full screen mode.

Slideshow: By clicking this button all of your photo collection will be shown in a slide show (which is managed in Tools > Configure Screensaver.)

Timeline

Below the iconbar is the time line. If you have photos from different years you can select each year by clicking the square and dragging it to the desired year.

Importing photos

Figure 3

Enough with the UI. Let’s get to the good stuff. Importing photos with F-Spot is simple. Follow these steps:

1. Click the Import button.
2. Select the location of the photos you want to import.
3. Allow F-Spot to load all of the photos in the collection.
4. Select the options you want (see Figure 3).
5. Click the Import button.

Your collection has just grown. But when your collection gets too large, how do you manage it? F-Spot has a simple solution: Tags.

Tagging files

You will want to first create tags for your files. If you right click an empty spot in the left pane (under tags) you can select Create New Tag. You will need to give the following information:

• Parent Tag: What tag will this new tag be a member of?
• Name of New Tag: What is the name of your tag?
• Create Icon for this tag…: If checked, this will create an icon from the first photo you tag with this category.

To tag a photo you simply click on a tag and drag it to the photo. You can add more than one tag to a photo. Once tagged you can then sort your photos by tag by double clicking on the tag listing in the left pane.

Final thoughts

F-Spot makes easy work of managing your photos. You will also find it simple to import your photos from your digital camera as F-Spot will want to automatically open when you plug your supported camera into your USB port.

The Snapsort portal is another resource that can be used before purchasing a digital camera. the portal can be used to compare hard facts about digital cameras.

A research begins by entering two digital camera models into the form on the Snapshot startpage. Users who are undecided can either use the random button to view two randomly selected digital camera models from the portal’s database or pick one of the popular comparisons that are displayed on the page.

The comparison will list the most important differences and similarities of both digital cameras, award a winner and display ratings, specifications and a pro and con list.

This can be very helpful in quickly determining the better camera. The service lacks some features that would make it indispensable including photos taken by those cameras to compare the picture quality as well as links to websites with additional information about the cameras.

Snapsort can be used for quick comparisons but users need to perform additional research to find the best digital camera. It is a great idea which could really thrive if the developer’s would add those missing features.

Many digital camera manufacturers on the other hand have not created codecs that support the framework and both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. That’s where the FastPictureViewer WIC Codec pack comes into play which is a collection of digital camera codecs for about 300 different digital camera models that make use of the framework under 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7.

The codecs are then automatically used by programs that support WIC which includes most of Microsoft’s own software programs including Windows Media Center, Windows Live Photo Gallery, the developer’s Fast Picture Viewer and all Microsoft .net Framework 3 applications.

The digital camera codec pack is currently available as a beta version from the developer’s website. It adds support for the following formats:

• *.tga, *.tpic Truevision Targa (TGA) Supports most format flavors: uncompressed and RLE-encoded grayscale 8 and 16-bit, true color 15, 16, 24 and 32-bit (with alpha) and 8-bit indexed with 15, 16, 24 and 32-bit colormap.
• *.dng Adobe Digital Negative BETA
• *.cr2, *.crw Canon Raw Images BETA
• *.raf Fuji Raw Images BETA
• *.3pr, *.fff Hasselblad Raw Images BETA
• *.kdc, *.dcr Kodak Raw Images BETA
• *.raw, *.rwl Leica Raw Images BETA
• *.mrw Minolta Raw Images BETA
• *.nef, *.nrw Nikon Raw Images BETA
• *.orf Olympus Raw Images BETA
• *.rw2 Panasonic Raw Images BETA
• *.pef Pentax Raw Images BETA
• *.sr2, *.arw Sony Raw Images BETA
• All formats Thumbnail provider for XP Provides support for thumbnail views in Windows XP Explorer, for all the above format variants.

The developer is currently investigating possibilities to add additional codecs to the codec pack. Check out the website for more information.

All that needs to be done is to open a photo on the Flickr website. You notice the information that are posted on the same page like comments by other Flickr users or groups the photo has been added to. If you scroll down the page you will eventually come to a section called Additional Information in the right sidebar of the website.

This section contains information about the location and date the photo was taken, the number of views and the digital camera. The Taken With A [digital camera model] row will provide the information for registered users and guests alike. This seems actually like a very good way of researching a digital camera before purchasing it. If you got a few models that you would like to compare you can go to Flickr and check out the Camera Finder section of the site.

This section lists the most popular cameras used by Flickr users and provides information about many other digital cameras and brands as well.

TOP OCR processes images of documents that have either been taken by scanners, digital cameras or smartphones. It basically allows to emulate the usual document scanning that is done by a hardware scanner with images taken by digital cameras instead.

The software ocr application will process images that get loaded into the software program by the user of the computer system. It will display the scanned document in the left window and the text that has been processed by the OCR document scanning in the right window. The software developers of the OCR software are recommending at least a 3 Megapixel camera to take the image of the document. They have setup a tutorial page with many helpful tips on getting the best results.

The OCR document scanning process itself takes only a few seconds per page. Results are instantly shown in the right window which offers basic text editing capabilities to correct any errors in the automatic text recognition process.

The OCR part of the software program is providing basic image manipulation features like rotating the scanned images or changing the image contrast. TOP OCR is a multi-lingual OCR software program for the Windows operating system that produces impressive results if the source image is of good quality.

It does offer an option to manually configure the path to the memory card or digital camera in the unlikely event that it is not recognized automatically. The digital camera software will display the amount of photos found on the storage device. Picmv provides access to extensive output settings like defining the naming syntax for photos from the digital camera or creating thumbnails of each transferred photo.

It not only supports the extraction of photos but also movie files from the digital camera. Additional filenames can be specified in the options in case the digital camera uses its own media format.

The time it takes to transfer the photos from the digital camera to the computer depends on the speed of the connection. A portable version of Picmv is supplied by the software developer making it an interesting software program for removable devices. The digital camera software comes both in 32-bit and 64-bit editions.

Results vary depending on the digital camera used but it can be basically said that most digital cameras should be able to produce a good enough scan. It is a good idea to use enough lighting and place the document on a one colored background. This makes it easier later on to process the scanned document in an image editor.

It really depends on the purpose of the scan. If you just want to scan a document to a friend or family member a simple image might suffice but if you have to send it to authorities, business or other formal contacts you might want to make sure that it looks extra fine.

The one colored background ensures that it is easy to copy and paste the document to create a new document that is using the exact document borders as its resolution. This looks way more professional than a document photographed on a kitchen table.

The scanned document can then be printed or send electronically. It is really an easy and efficient process. Have additional tips? Let us hear them.

Photos can be loaded into the main interface. Each photo is displayed as a thumbnail with its resolution and DPI next to it. Images can be rotated by 90% and the aspect orientation can be changed between landscape and portrait mode.

The most important option however is the ability to change the photo’s resolution in various formats from centimeters to inches. Since it is possible to batch load photos it is also possible to change the aspect of all those photos at once. This is efficient if all photos that have been loaded into the application have the same resolution.

Each photo can be easily cropped by reducing the sides of a rectangle. The photo cropping software is extremely easy to use. It can process hundreds of photos in a matter of seconds.

The photo recovery software is compatible with every Windows operating system since Windows 95 and should work with all memory card types. Two of its biggest selling points are the ability to recover pictures from formatted memory cards and that it can even identify and work with cards that Windows detects as corrupted.

The portable software provides two recovery options. The first is to recovery images directly from the memory card while the second will create an image of the memory card on the computer which can be parsed for photos afterwards.

Memory cards can be accessed directly if they are visible as a logical drive in Windows. If that is not the case a memory card reader has to be used instead. The last step involves picking the image formats supported by the camera. Some users might be tempted to select all but this could lead to corrupted photos and is not advised. The easiest way is to look at previously saved images or the digital camera’s manual to find out the formats that it saves the photos in.

The photo recovery software supports currently the formats JPG, TIF, DNG, Canon CR2, Konica-Minolta MRW, Nikon NEF, Olympus ORF, Pentax PEF, Sony ARW, SRF and SR2 plus a few additional RAW formats that might not be supported fully but can be recovered nevertheless.

The program is very easy to use. The user needs to pick at least two images of the same object which are then processed automatically by the image editor. An error message will pop up if the software program was unable to compute the new panoramic image. If the process is successful the new image will be shown in the program’s interface.

Several post processing options are available to manipulate the newly created image further. The user can choose one of five camera motions, crop functionality like automatically cropping the image and image projection.

The image can be exported in various formats including jpeg, tiff, Adobe Photoshop psd and the HD Photo Image format. Microsoft Image Composite Editor is a nice tool that can combine multiple images of the same object into one larger image of the object. This is great for objects that are to large to fit in one picture taken with the digital camera but also for detailed images that should be combined.

Microsoft Image Composite Editor was tested on a Windows XP Service Pack 3 test system. It should run fine on other Microsoft operating systems and comes as a 32-bit and 64-bit version.

Geotagging is a feature that is not supported by many digital cameras yet but it will surely be a very powerful feature in the coming years. The Microsoft utility provides easy access to that feature and the ability to add geographic information to each image including street address, city, country and even gps data. Pictures can be placed on a virtual map next to locations they have been taken.

Longitude and Latitude are automatically added to the picture when a town and country have been selected. Microsoft Pro Photo Tools do not offer any additional features besides editing metadata but Microsoft has plans to add new features and functions to their software. It is currently in consideration to give third party developers access so that they can provide plugins and add-ons for the software.

The software can be downloaded from Microsoft directly and requires that your computer passes a genuine advantage check before starting the download.

The developers of the image recovery software have created a list of supported camera models which is probably a good point to start. The list also contains those models that were found to be not working with the software, so before you try check the list. You need to connect the camera to the computer or put the memory card that contained the pictures in a card reader that is connected to the computer running the image recovery software.

It’s then just the matter of selecting the correct camera model or media from the list of available ones. The software will then automatically scan the card and try to recover all information it can find. All images that are recovered will be stored on the hard drive in a location that you specify.