Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with photos

Government office wants to use Creative Commons photos - kosher or no?

rileyray3000 — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:06:09 -0800

I'm trying to get an idea of WHICH areas of Creative Commons I can draw from on Flickr. I work for a state doing something that, while noncommercial, does support business in a way. I want to use creative commons pix for a website we're putting up. So attribution, I get. That's easy. The others I'm not sure about - as a government office are we, by dint of our setup, considered non-commercial? And the non-deriviative works...does that mean we can't even crop it? And I completely don't understand "share alike" at all. Does that mean if we use THOSE photos we have to let anyone have our website template and content (which would be our only original work) for free with complete unrestricted use?

Protocol for Photos on a Blog?

amicamentis — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:36:26 -0800

What is the protocol for 'reblogging' photos you find at various places on the internet? I run a photo-only site where I feature a ton of my own work. I use Tumblr and love the 'reblog' feature when I come across other users' photos that are relevant. Question: what is the best way to do this with images found through other sites (Flickr, personal websites, newspaper websites, etc)?

I would love to be able to highlight their photo on my site while giving full attribution and a link back to the original source. Do I need to contact each person individually? Is this a common thing to do?

Don't want to commit a bad internet faux pas or inadvertently insinuate that these are my works.

Thanks!

How to implement a digital asset management system for a small company

andendau — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 13:08:37 -0800

I work for an organization that has lots of photos and videos but no system to manage that. I have introduced the idea of using a system like Resourcespace to achieve this goal. What areas could I study to implement this most effectively? Any books, journals, associations or anything that covers effective metadata and content management? I have been familiarizing myself with various metadata schemas for photography and video. However, it appears my organization is going to heavily customize the metadata as well. What resources can I read and learn about doing this in the best possible way? This particular system would work well in our ecosystem and there is the possibility of purchasing support for the product. However, no matter the system that is chosen I want to be able to implement good standards for evaluating what our current assets are and describing the metadata accurately and efficiently. I have also looked into controlled vocabularies. I would appreciate any recommendations on where to begin with this type of task.

Name/domain for private photo network for parents.

signal — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 18:39:54 -0800

Please help me pick a name and domain for our website/app. We're a private network for parents to upload, backup and share their kids' pictures. Strong privacy and backup should be the main differentiators over the competition.

Initial market is Latin America, but looking to expand to English speaking countries and rest of the world quickly, so it should work in English (and not be too weird in Spanish). We'd prefer a .com, but other TLDs might work as well.

The Bedroom of Tristan Tzara's Children

Marauding Ennui — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 06:35:09 -0800

Years ago I was reading a book (an art book I think but it's possible that someone like Tom Stoppard might be messing with my memories) and it said that Tristan Tzara had decorated his children's bedroom and playroom with the most beautiful wacky paintings and props a dada artist could conceive. I meant to look it up afterwards and never did. I could swear there was a photo of Tzara's kids riding the grounds of a sumptuous mansion in a miniature car, sort of illustrating how well off his family was.

I suspect this children's room is a fact rather than fiction after reading the description of the house Adolf Loos built for Tzara ("each room of the house must be adapted and decorated according to the function that is to be used") but I can't find mentions of the kids rooms decorations nor, more to the point of this question, photos of them. Not even sure this was the house in question.

Does anyone know where can I find more info (and photos!) of Tzara's children's room? Any good bios out there with more information about Tzara's private life than would be reasonable? Or maybe you are a better googler than I am?

I need a lot of royalty-free pictures of California. Options?

rileyray3000 — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:51:28 -0800

So basically I need to swap out all the art on several websites with photos of California that we have the rights to use in perpetuity (as well as for print). I realize there's the "buy one at a time from Getty" avenue but I have neither the time or resources for that. What I need is a boatload of pics that I can use for commercial use that are all OF California (as well as some general use pics, graphics and art). A very big collection that I can hand to an intern so they can get swapping. I think in the old days you used to just be able to buy a CD-rom of images. Can you still do that? Are there full collections with hundreds of pics? Or are there any free collections that anyone knows about that are just public use for this purpose? My budget for this is not high (no more than a couple hundred bucks) so I'm open to any options possible.

Moving to SSD, moving iTunes, overthinking beans

Admiral Haddock — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:08:03 -0800

I am adding an SSD as a boot drive in my Mac Pro. I am comfortable installing it, and intend to clone the existing boot drive onto it with SuperDuper! However, I'm confused about how and WHEN to move my documents, iTunes library, etc. in the process. Can you help? I am adding a 512GB SSD as a fifth drive in the Mac Pro using the spare optical bay. Right now, this is the setup:

Drive 1: 640GB Boot drive, with all programs and documents (inc. iTunes, etc.)
Drive 2: 1TB photo drive
Drive 3: 2TB photo drive
Drive 4: Time Machine.

I'm using about 540GB of the current boot drive, of which about 200GB is iTunes, documents, pictures, and videos. Ultimately, I'd like to separate all of those from the SSD boot drive, either locating them on Drive 3, or the current Drive 1 (which will no longer be the boot drive).

I don't know how to proceed though--I don't have enough room on the SSD to do a straight clone without moving those directories, but I know some of them (iTunes library) can't just be moved willy nilly. (I DO want to keep playcounts, etc.) And, again, to complicate things, I probably would ultimately want them to stay where they are (Drive 1) and just move the boot drive and applications to the SSD.

Would it be better to try to take the time to move everything but the iTunes library to another drive (which could theoretically get me below 512GB (yes, I realize it will be smaller once formatted)), and then clone Drive 1 with the iTunes library where it is, and THEN target iTunes back to Drive 1? Maybe I should just dump everything into Drive 3, which has 1.4TB free?

And how do I move the documents and downloads folders?

Bonus Question: I've been backing up to Time Machine (which I know can back up multiple volumes) and to a SuperDuper! clone on an external drive. What's the best way to use SuperDuper now that I'm splitting off the boot drive from all my documents?

Blerg! Thanks!

Using photos that aren't yours

jimmythefish — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 20:57:43 -0800

Someone asked to use photos I took at their event to give to the media, and then used them on their Facebook page without asking me. I need to calibrate my anger and response. So this weekend I was attending an Easter egg hunt event at my kid's new preschool, which we paid $7/kid for. It's a for-profit preschool that requires no parent volunteering or interaction. I hadn't met the owner yet.

I have a large, expensive camera rig because I do occasional professional photography, and was using it to shoot photos of my kid and my friends' kids. So, the media shows up later to do a community event shoot and the owner approaches me afterwards and explains that they showed up late and could she use some of my photos to send to them. Sure, I say. There's a 6pm deadline. Fine.

So, I go through the photos for about an hour, flag ones I think would be good for her, upload them to Flickr and send her the link via email on-time. Wasn't expecting anything mre than a 'thanks'.

No response. Next day, still no response.

OK, fine. My wife notices that the photos are up on her business Facebook page. Still no response from her. So, I send this:

Hey there,

Glad you could use the photos on your Facebook page. As I said I'm happy to take photos but a kind thank you and heads up that you're putting them on your Facbook page is the normal protocol here. I don't have that massive lens just because I do OK at my dayjob...I keep track of these things. While I appreciate that you asked me that the news wanted the photos, I don't believe you mentioned other uses. Ours is largely a business relationship (I wouldn't ask you to take time out of your Saturday to look after my kid for free) and if you don't say so much as a 'thanks for doing that' with the hour I spent yesterday going through photos and posting them, it will remain as such.

Thanks,
Jimmythefish.

She responds about an hour later with a long email ranting back at me, often in FULL CAPS how she is running a LOCAL BUSINESS and she would NEVER SEND AN EMAIL LIKE THAT and OTHER PARENTS CONTRIBUTE and it's FACEBOOK for a PRESCHOOL. And says that she was honestly offended by my comments and hurt and etc.

So, I'm standing pretty firm on this one. In my mind, it's simply theft as she's using these photos for business purposes. It's theft because it's a job that I would have demanded $200-$300 for. I stand my ground on these things because the devaluation of work in the digital realm is now to the point where people don't even realize they're stealing. The emtitlement is ridiculous.

We're at this preschool until July so I don't have to make a lifelong friend. My wife sees my point but thinks I'm being harsh and says that she needs to deal with this person. I have agreed with my wife to smooth things over and since responded that we should meet face to face and that email isn't the way to resolve this, but no reply. My blood is still boiling over it. Furthermore, if this affects her treatmet of my daughter or my wife, I will go the fuck off.

So what's a dude to do, given that I still have to have a relationship with this person?

Thanks.

Pictures of celebrities riding public transit?

Tom-B — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:58:18 -0800

We're looking for photos of famous people riding public transit for a Facebook page that fights prejudice against public transportation. In my city, public transportation is seen as something for the lower class.
We're trying to frame it as something cool and rebellious, that goes against mainstream capitalist expectations of getting rich and buying a car, humanizes the city, etc.

So we're looking for photos of famous alternative people, say Kerouac in a bus in 1953, or Afrika Baambaata riding the subway in 1980, suitable for making some memes in memegenerator. Help us out? Thanks!

New Parentsfilter: What's the best and easiest way to share photos?

zooropa — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 10:05:05 -0800

Earlier this week, Mrs. Zooropa gave birth to our son, Elias (we call him Eli). He is our first, so of course, we are taking all sorts of photos and video on our phones, and have received a ton of requests from grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. Here's my question: what's the best and easiest way to share photos and videos with all these folks? Here are some criteria:

* It should be EASY (many folks in our families are tech-challenged and I'm too pooped to play tech support).

* It should be secure.

* Free would be preferable, but I don't mind paying a few bucks per month if necessary.

* Cross-platform is a must. I have an iPhone 5 and my wife had an older Android device.

Thanks in advance!

Help me organize my digital photos!

any portmanteau in a storm — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:23:13 -0800

Pretty much all of my photos exist on my laptop, a networked hard drive and Flickr. I am looking for a good way to keep the three locations synced with each other. This is my current setup:

My camera saves the photo to a raw file as well as a low-quality jpeg file.

Lightroom imports the photo into its system and copies both the raw file and jpeg onto a folder on the local computer eg 2013-02-18.

Every once in a while I will copy the new folders onto a hard drive on my network which is my local backup (the hard drive enclosure runs linux so the thing is a mini server, but it is not exposed to the outside world).

Every once in a while I will upload all the photos taken to my Flickr account with a default setting of them being visible only to me.

Once they are on Flickr I will do things such as mark some of them public (ie viewable to people other than myself), organize them into albums and add things like tags or geo-coordinates. I am rarely at my home computer so I would not be able to enter these things into Lightroom directly.

To me, the downsides of this setup are:

Flickr doesn't take my raw file, it only takes a jpg of the image, meaning I can't use it as an online backup of my photos.

Any metadata I add to the photos on Flickr doesn't synchronize with either my local collection in Lightroom or with the actual raw files on either the local computer or the local backup.

It is not very automated in general. Once the photos are in Lightroom they don't automatically end up on either Flickr or my local backup.

This is what I would like to happen:

I connect my memory card to a computer and all new photos get stored somewhere on the local computer.

The local photos also get backed up to the network hard drive.

Either my computer or the hard drive automatically uploads the raw files somewhere online (either alone or with the jpg file) but it should not be publicly viewable/accessible.

The online service will allow me to display the photos as well as edit their metadata either individually or in a group.

Any metadata entered online will sync with either the local computer or network hard drive.

How do I make what I would like to happen actually happen?

Zenphoto seems to be the closest thing to what I want, however there doesn't seem to be any hosted option so I'd have to get my own hosting and run it off that which I am not interested in doing. Also, I do not know if it supports raw files.

I am not wedded to either Flickr or Lightroom. My laptop runs Windows 7. As mentioned above the hard drive runs linux, specifically an old version of Debian (Sarge I think).

Site or application for logging text and photo messages?

daisyace — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:57:07 -0800

For a research project, we’re asking ~24 high school and college students to log their experiences with homework by sending us text messages and photos over the course of about two weeks. Is there a site where they can send those messages so that we could see them from a computer? There are particular features we’re seeking... What comes closest to satisfying them? Ideally:
-The students would be able to use any cell phone that can send text and photo messages, using that phone’s native messaging rather than an app.
-We’d be able to see all the posts from a computer.
-We’d be able to reply to the most recent post or to any along the way. Students could see the reply on their phone or on the site.
-We’d be able to see all the posts from all the students aggregated in one, searchable place.
-We’d be able to send a message to everyone at once, and even better, to subgroups and individuals as well.
-Students could opt to share the posts with just us or with all the other students in the project.
-Students could comment on other students’ posts shared with the group, and those comments would also be shared.
-The content would only be visible to those within the group.
-The tool would be reasonably current and accepted by students (no myspace-like options)
-The whole thing would be free or cheap, and require very little set-up/sign-up for the students.

So far, we’ve been considering:
-Posterous/Spaces (no longer accepting sign-ups)
-Text messaging (received only on phone, and not easy to manage group vs. individual messages...)
-Facebook (requires smartphone and app, not easy to manage group vs. individual messages...)
-Tumblr (not easy to set up a group...)
-Twitter (limits message length...)
-Flickr (photo-centric, requires smartphone and app...)
-dscout (not free/cheap, requires smartphone and app...)

Got anything that meets more of our criteria than these?

Pimp my instagram

dinosaurprincess — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 18:13:16 -0800

Pro tips or tutorials on taking A Beautiful Mess style photos please. I am wondering how to take pretty girly blog type photos looking at those from blogs like a beautiful mess or more artsy vintage ones like these.
I am going to start off with using my Samsung galaxy phone but I have a Canon G9 at my disposal... My brother has a DLSR which is happy to lend me. I am a complete beginner and was hoping for your pro-tips on lighting, composition, things like shutter speed and aperture and ISO, or any photography tutorials you might know of that are useful for taking stylish (rather than technically well-done but stock photo style) photographs because google mainly directs me to those.

Thanks =)

What's the funniest photo on the internet?

ghost dance beat — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 08:55:22 -0800

I am looking for a variety of photos to choose from for a caption contest. The contest is related to sexual health, but the photos need not be, and preferably will be fairly suitable for public viewing. Searching the internet for funniest photos is time-consuming and drags up so much that it is hard to separate the wheat from the unoriginal, unfunny chaff. It's obviously a subjective topic, but I'm hoping Mefites may have a higher humour bar...

Why are my photos turning green on Facebook?

BungaDunga — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 15:59:44 -0800

I carefully change my photos' color temperature using Shotwell (not accurate, but fast enough and easy), export them to smaller-sized pictures and upload to Facebook using Facebook's uploader, but the color balance is wrong. They're all green. I opened the exported photos in the GIMP and they're in the sRGB color space, so that shouldn't be the problem, and it's happened with more than one album. This is getting annoying. Any ideas to stop it? I know Facebook's not exactly the world's best photo-sharing mechanism, but it's the only one I'm likely to get my friends to actually use.

Awesome photographer books for a photographer

ad4pt — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 12:56:52 -0800

Photographers and photography buffs! Please help me find a really cool photography book (or photography-related gift) for my photographer boyfriend. So my boyfriend's birthday is coming up. He's a photographer and I'd like to get him a really, really awesome photography book but I know NOTHING about photography. I don't even know who his favorite photographer is.

I'd like to stay away from getting him another equipment related since I don't know what he has and since I know so little about photography, but feel free to recommend anything you feel might be super awesome.

My budget is around $100.

He mainly photographs nature and inanimate objects. For example one his projects focused on photographing branches of trees that have become intertwined with metal fencing. He's currently working on a project where he goes out into a local area along a river where many homeless people live and has been photographing the foliage/objects he finds/camps people leave behind, etc.
He also recently bought a book where the photographer photographed ordinary looking places and then provided a paragraph explaining that something terrible had happened there (school shootings, murders, etc.). I have no idea who the photographer was.

I know he's not that into portraits.

So based on these things, are there any books that you would recommend? Or are there any photography books (within that price range) that are just awesome to have for any photographer in general?

I'm also willing to provide a link to his portfolio site, but I didn't want to do it here just in case it turned up on google.

Why are people taking pictures of our house?

julie_of_the_jungle — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 15:13:56 -0800

People keep stopping and taking pictures of my house. The previous owner was in a lot of debt and I'm wondering if we should be worried. For the third time someone has stopped in front of my house, taken photos and left. Our house is a plain, square 1950's construction house that could use some paint, so I don't think they're taking pictures for any architectural reason. We bought this house in June after the previous tenants were foreclosed upon and we still receive a lot of collections mail for them. According to the neighbors the previous owner was unpleasant, but not shady.

The first time a man parked on the street (next to the no parking sign!), got out of his car and proceeded to walk around the house taking several pictures. Our neighbor came over (we weren't home) and asked him what his business was and to leave. The man didn't say anything, but left. The second time a man pulled into the end of the drive, snapped ~30 seconds of photos, and left. I was home and saw this from my daughters nursery. Today a woman stopped in front of our house and snapped several photos. She pulled away quickly when our ferocious* mutt beast started barking.

I worry because I stay at home with our 5 month old daughter and my husband works long, predictable hours and is sometimes TDY for weeks at a time. What should I do if it happens again? Why would someone be taking photos of our house? It was never listed in the MLIS database so it's not a case of it being listed for sale still or anything. Please put my mind at ease Metafilter!

*She is all bark and cuddles.

Best practices in organizing a digital, image-based inspiration file

brieche — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 13:13:48 -0800

As an aspiring artist, I've recently acquired a habit of saving to Dropbox every image I find particularly inspiring or useful as an artistic reference. This is fun and motivating, except I'm realizing that my Finder-based 'folder > subfolder' organizational structure is doing a poor job of keeping up with my needs. I'm looking for software recommendations (Mac OS X) or general tips re: sorting a frequently-accessed image collection that will eventually number into the thousands. The catch: the system needs to sync with an iPhone/iPad. I currently organize my images using a series of folders in Finder, e.g., 'references > environments > forest'. However, it's proving inadequate for situations where I have to deal with images that belong in two or more categories ('reference > environments > forest' and 'reference > animals > deer' and 'inspiration > style > animal'??). I'm also an indecisive dumbass when it comes to naming and organizing the folders themselves (is 'inspiration' different from 'reference'? how many subcategories of 'technique' can I get into?). Really the nicest thing about using a simple folder system is that I can easily access my references on-the-go using the Dropbox app on my iPad.

Can anyone recommend any other solutions? I'd love to find an app that:
- is reasonably lightweight and fast,
- has a robust tagging system (bonus points if there's a field for inputting source urls),
- allows me to filter images by chaining/excluding multiple tags,
- has thumbnail-based overview pages,
- allows me to keep my images in Dropbox,
- is relatively inexpensive,
- works on a 2007 (slow) MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard for the foreseeable future, and
- the biggest question mark: also works on iPhone/iPad.
While a native iPhone/iPad app would be best, the iDevice compatibility isn't strictly necessary as long as the app allows me to edit filenames and source folders quickly and efficiently (either in-app or in-Finder), in which case I'd just use the desktop app while on my computer and Dropbox while on my iDevice.

Things I don't need:
- any social aspects, e.g., sharing, multiple user access, etc.,
- image editing capabilities,
- any facial-recognition or other 'helpful' (slow) tools
I'm also not really interested in photography, so I'd prefer to not invest in something weighed down with functions I'll never use unless I know the rest of the app is exactly what I need.

I've tried organizing my images using Tumblr, but it's slow, somewhat unreliable, and handles tags poorly. I would like to have the images readily available offline.

I've seen iPhoto, Picasa, Aperture, Extensis, Adobe Bridge, and Adobe Lightroom recommended in previous AskMes (1, 2, 3), but I've don't think I've seen anyone ask about my particular situation. Lightroom looks pretty great, but would Adobe Revel be the only way I can access the images on my iDevice?
________________________________________________________

Otherwise, if my dream image database software is but a fantasy, I'd love to hear about your own file-based system of image organization!

If you're also in the habit of saving tons of images, whether for hilarious gif response purposes or for your own morgue file, how do you wrangle your collection? Do you dump everything into one folder and rely on filenames? Use a complex system of folders/subfolders? Tag your images somehow? Copy/paste your images so that there's a copy in every relevant category? I get really pedantic about my image categorization, so any advice wrt staying flexible and not overthinking things would be appreciated.
________________________________________________________

Thank you so much for your suggestions! This has been driving me crazy over the past few months (I must have restructured my folder hierarchy five times by now) and I'd love to find a solution more intelligent and elegant than my current brute-forcing ways.

Is there an app that will put photos onto my iPad?

christinetheslp — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 04:44:57 -0800

Is there an app out there that will dump a bunch of clip art into my iPad's photo album? I think I'm asking for something that doesn't exist, but I hope I'm wrong.

I'm a speech therapist and there are some great therapy apps out there that allow you to make you own activities and games, but want to take photos from your camera roll or photo stream. I'd rather not spend time taking pictures of random objects in my house.

I'd like an app that will come pre-loaded with lots of pictures of common objects, and will just dump those pictures into a photo album on my iPad. My dream app would have photos, but good drawings are okay. Common objects and animals would be better than, say, famous landmarks and exotic food.

Does such an app exist?

Holiday card vanity

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 04:56:36 -0800

I made a holiday card for myself and my husband. My sister thinks it is embarrassing. I'm not going to send it anymore, but I have a questions about regarding the general consensus of what and when and why certain things are embarrassing or not. On one side there was a "Happy holidays love John & Jane Doe" type 1-2 sentence message. On the the other side was collage of 17 pictures from the year. About half were of me & my husband together. The remaining half had were about 2/3 pictures of just me (though one had me and another friend) and the remaining 1/3 were of just my husband. This is mainly because if I'm getting dressed up for something I'll have my husband take a few pictures of me just to save the moment, but my husband doesn't ever bother to do the same thing so there are more pictures of me.

My husband thought the card was great when I showed him the proof. So did my mom. I showed it to my little sister and after I hung up with her I was in tears. My sister wasn't trying to be mean though, she was just giving me her honest opinion.

I'm sure there's no absolutely wrong or right answer here, but I would like to find out if the general opinion takes more after my sister or my husband.

My sister's thoughts that I would like to hear the more general reaction to:

1)Three of the photos (of the 17 total in the collage) aren't of me in any identifiable context or activity (ie not out hiking somewhere or doing an activity). They are just photos of me taken this year that I chose to include because I thought I looked pretty in them. She says because that's obviously the reason why I've chosen them it's embarrassing to have them there. My husband says well everybody tries to look their best in pictures so what's the problem? I'm not

2) She says it would be less embarassing if we were including pretty pictures of ours kids (we don't have any) or something. That because it's just of us, it seems more vain.

If it matters, I am 28 and my husband is in his mid thirties.

I'm also really not sure how to know if one is being too vain or when it is embarassing? It seems like many people I know (especially many women who are my friends) have lots of pictures of themselves almost solely because they are pretty and post them on facebook and instagram.

Putting myself in the position of getting a card like the one I was going to send, if it was from a close friend I'd be really proud of my friend and post the card up on my fridge. When I see my friends post pretty pictures on social media websites, it makes me feel happy and I love to leave compliments for them in the comments. I might think ti was weird if someone was posting dozens of pictures every day or something...but I've never really felt disgusted or contemptuous of someone for this stuff.

I thought holidays were the time to send and receive out pretty photos of yourself and your family to everyone, but when does it cross the line? If it helps answer the question as it pertains to my situation specifically, this card right here is extremely similar to the one I made (in terms of size and # of photos) and how the finished card would have looked. Also, the reason I chose to do a collage instead of just picking one or two photos is because A) there wasn't just one photo I really loved that much B) we moved out of state in the past few years and thought people who hadn't seen us like they used to might like it. Thanks!

Can PhotoBridge save a collection of mediocre family photos?

naoko — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 06:46:00 -0800

Has anyone used FotoBridge to enhance and digitize old photos, and if so how would you rate their services? (Asking for a friend.) My friend has a large collection of prints of family photos (no negatives or digital copies) that are poor quality (dark, etc.) but that she has kept for sentimental reasons (two of the family members in many of the pictures have passed away in the last few years). She has tried taking them to other photo enhancement services at local camera stores with extremely poor results. I was skeptical that there would be much one could do without negatives, but then she found FotoBridge, which seems to provide what she's looking for. Does anyone have experience using them? Can you trust them not to lose your photos (this is really the most important thing)? Do they actually do a good job? Is it possible to make specific requests about individual photos (e.g. removing where a date was printed on the front of a photo, cropping a particular photo a certain way)? Is there a better service or better way of doing this (outside of investing money and time into buying and learning Photoshop, which I realize seems like the other obvious answer)? Any thoughts much appreciated.

No really, must I keep my 3rd grade diploma?

Ruthless Bunny — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 14:29:09 -0800

I have boxes of neatly organized crap! I would like to upload as much as possible to "the cloud" thus freeing up space in the basement for the kitteh olympics. I need recommendations! I'm interested in scanning all of our printed photos and organizing them into a cohesive set of digital "albums" that I can share with friends and family on-line. Also, once that's done, I'd like to save to discs and ditch the actual albums that I've been schlepping around since the Regan administration.

I'd like to be able to make notes on each picture, names, dates, situation, etc.

Secondly, I'd like to upload all of our insurance info, pink-slips, deeds, etc, so if we have to bug out ahead of another "Super-Storm" I can access important documents from my iPhone, or at least using a lap top.

I'm willing to spend under $500 for photo scanners, document scanners, and good software to help me organize all of this stuff.

Husbunny has "papers" and other stuff from childhood. I'd like to digitize and organize it for him, so we can stop courting the hanta virus from all of these old, dusty papers.

What does the hive mind recommend?

Looking for a mid-1990s magazine article about end-of-year celebrations in Scotland

usonian — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 09:25:24 -0800

Longshotfilter: Did anyone else in the U.S. see this magazine article about New Years Eve/Hogmanay (or possibly Christmas Eve) in Scotland circa 1996-97? One evening in late 1996/early 1997 I was waiting for takeout in a Thai restaurant in Van Nuys, California. I picked up a magazine and was enchanted by a photo essay about the celebration of Hogmanay in Scotland. (it *might* have been Christmas, but I'm pretty sure it was about New Year's Eve.) I seem to recall that it focused on celebrations away from urban areas - maybe even on an island, and there were cozy photos of people dining, dancing and socializing by candlelight and/or strings of white christmas-type lights.

I did not have time to read the article completely, but those dimly-remembered photos have stuck with me all these years and I would love to track it down and read the whole thing.

Difficulty: I don't remember what the magazine was. I want to say it was something in the Smithsonian/National Geographic spectrum - not a pure travel & leisure magazine, but the sort of magazine that travels, if that makes any sense. On the other hand one nagging but probably unreliable memory says it might have been AAA California's magazine. Given that it was a magazine in a waiting area, it may have been even a bit older than 1996-97.

I've spent a bit of time unsuccessfully searching Google and the archive web sites of possible publications, but I suspect this is going to be one of those things where I need to hope that someone sees this and says "Yes, I totally remember that! It was in [Foo] magazine!" So here's hoping - thanks hive mind!

Collage making software for PC?

jesirose — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 05:42:44 -0800

Collage making software for PC? I'm looking for something I can use either on my computer or on the web that will create simple photo collages with simple white/black borders. I don't want to "scrapbook" or add text or even need to edit the photos - I just want to take my high res photos on my computer and make collages. I have apps on my iPhone which do this, but of course they make small iPhone sized collages as a result.
http://mixel.cc/
http://www.dipticapp.com/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photoshake!/id389104355?mt=8

Those apps do what I want on my phone, but now I want to do it on my computer to make larger resolution collages. Everything I find on google is geared towards adding text and graphics, and I can't seem to find something that just does collages.

I'm willing to spend up to $30 on a program or site to do this.

Simple mass-tagging interface for photos

Zosia Blue — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 14:07:33 -0800

Suggestions for a photo management software that will allow me to quickly scroll through photos and tag them with keywords. I have thousands of unnamed, unorganized photos on a hard drive. I want to be able to tag each person in the photo, like Facebook. When I search the drive for, say, "Joe Dirt," I get all the photos of Joe Dirt from the past 10 years.

Which photo management software is for me? I realize what I want to do is time-consuming (and I'm OK with this), but I'd like to have the most efficient mass tool to do this. I'd like to be presented with a long line of photos that I can quickly tag and scroll through (once again, how Facebook allows you to move through photos to tag and add captions).

I don't want to use facial recognition software. I've found this processor-heavy and unreliable. And I'm not looking to quickly identify faces, anyway. I'm OK manually tagging each photo. I just don't want to click in and out of several screens to do this. I want to quickly fly through each photo.

I have a MacBook Pro.

I have iPhoto, though not the latest version. I've briefly dipped into Picasa, but I found the interface clunky. I may be missing something obvious with both of these, so please enlighten me if so. I'm open to all suggestions.

Thanks!