MAMA's Techno-Geek Thread

[GadgetGav]

Quote: Originally Posted by snid

Still waiting to see how good the RAW support is in iPhoto. Hoping for good things.

Looks good... Just did a quick test. Seemed slow importing a RAW file from disk, but once it's in there it seems snappy. Real time previews of all the slider adjustments including free rotation.
Got stuff to do now, but will try more later...

[snid]

I like this from the FedEx tracking page:

Quote:

Ship date Sun 99, 9999

It only does that when I follow the link from the order status page at the store.apple.com... go directly to fedex.com and enter the tracking number, and it works. Strange.

[snid]

Blah. I haven't entirely worked out what iPhoto 5 is doing with RAW files, but I'm 90% sure that as soon as you touch any of the edit tools, it ceases to be a RAW file. Some of the edit tools should be able to change the way the raw data is interperated, and have the file remain a RAW file. But, I don't think iPhoto does this.

In Photoshop (elements, for me), you can open a raw file and perform some "editing" that just changes how the raw data is interperated, then you're left with a 16 bit-per-pixel image to do the rest of your editing with. There's no way to do a little tweaking and save back to a Canon RAW file (there's something called Photoshop RAW, though)

In Canon's software for RAW editing, you can do some tweaking and save back to a RAW file. The Canon Photo Professional thing I mentioned earlier this week is nice about identifying what tools are in the RAW realm, and what tools are not. So, if you only use the RAW tools, you can still save to a RAW file.

In iPhoto, watch the file sizes as you edit a RAW file, they get smaller, but the "type" still says Canon RAW. Also, you get a .jpg when you drag an edited raw file onto the desktop, instead of a .crw file which you get if you haven't done any editing. And, to be really wierd, if you set up double click to send the photo to a different app, it converts it to a jpg on the way, even if the app can handle .crw and the format in iPhoto becomes "JPEG Image (from Canon Raw)". All strangeness.

Of course, I'm not sure if we're just arguing something like CD versus vinyl.

I'm not sure what I'll wind up doing... I'm guessing if you really want to get the benefits of shooting raw, you have to use something other than iPhoto. I'm leaning towards using the Canon software to tweak the .crw files, then importing them into iPhoto once I'm happy with them.

{edited to add}

No, wait, I changed my mind. Thinking back to what Josh said... something about using RAW when something might want to get printed, and using jpg for web... maybe... shoot raw, put into iPhoto, do editing on the jpgs using whatever app. When I want to get a print made of something, export the original crw file from iPhoto and do all the editing over again in raw / tiff and send that to the lab. Just might be the path of least resistance.

[GadgetGav]

I'm not sure there's really a problem here. A RAW file is just the full set of pixel values from the Bayer pattern on the CCD (or CMOS in our case) - something like
R G R G R G R G
G B G B G B G B
R G R G R G R G
isn't it... Now I would think that any program which displays an image that looks like something you'd recognize from a RAW data file would have to do some kind of conversion from the Bayer pattern to individual pixels, each with an RGB value. The whole trick is in the algorithm they use to do that. Once it's displayed on screen it's no longer RAW I think. Maybe the programs that can save RAW have a two way converter and the ones that can't only have one way. It wouldn't write Canon RAW because that's Canon only (hence Photoshop RAW and Adobe DNG formats).
If the conversion was to something lossless and 16bit depth, all the same info would be there. The problem with converting to JPEG in the camera is that it only saves 8bits per channel, so when you start editing you get a 'comb' effect in the histogram. Starting with the 16bit depth makes that less noticable.
It would be nice if iPhoto is claiming to use RAW, to have control over when it gets changed to anything else. If the first step is to make it an 8bit JPEG, that's a bit pointless...

[GadgetGav]

Update...
You're right Jason. The iPhoto marketing is very misleading. It imports RAW but all the editing in of a JPG. If you revert, it goes back to RAW. It's really only useful as a catalog of RAW photos. I suppose when you order a book it's going to be converted to a JPG anyway, so in that respect iPhoto is consistent in itself, but it's not really what people thought. Not going to ditch Photoshop yet...

[bethandlouis]

This thread may be over my head but.... I purchased a single player RPG CD-Rom game from Best Buy 2 days ago. Loaded with no problem, played for 20 minutes with little or no problem. But when I got to a certain spot it quit on me. Relying on divine intervention I assumed that I was meant to end the game at that point as I was starting to really wnjoy it and could imagine myself toiling aroung for hours. The next time I went to start it up it started fine, when I tried to load the game, luckily it autosaves at the end of a chapter, it closes without warning or explanation. There is a forum for the game (Neverwinter Nights) and have posted problem there but I fear terribly that they will ask me questions that I do not know the answer to and cannot find the answer to.
Bottom line....Spywear problem? Driver problem? game problem? I just added the patch and upgraded the version of the game to 1.65 got a little farther in opening but still closed on me. After it closes my computer runs so slow as if there is a million things running at once but while in gameplay there is nothing else active.

Help? If no help please don't ridicule me.

[GadgetGav]

Beth (Louis?)
Most diagnosis will have to start with the machine spec. What processor? How much memory? What operating system version? There should be a system info window where you can find all that out. It sounds to me like a memory leak - basically the game is not freeing up memory resourses as it finishes with them and eventually it runs out. When the game quits, again it doesn't give back all the memory to the system so everything runs slow.
Do you have an older operating system..? Is the game old - I don't play many desktop games these days (although I did just finish Project Gotham Racing on XBox )

[bethandlouis]

OS: Microsoft xp pro sp2
CPU: Pentium 4
speed: 2.20GHz
Ram: 254 MB

Everthing seems to be compatible with game requirments, there are a lot of people on the forum that have the same problem and they mods are all saying it's a driver issue but doesn't make sense to me.
Beth btw, louis has the less problematic mac.

[GadgetGav]

Quote: Originally Posted by bethandlouis

Beth btw, louis has the less problematic mac.

So you know the answer already then..!

The specs seem new enough. A little low on memory maybe. Everything will run better with more RAM and it's pretty cheap these days. It could be an XP SP2 problem, I believe that broke a lot of software. Is the game's 1.65 update supposed to take care of SP2, or is there another game update due..?
By driver, do you mean graphics card driver..? I suppose that could be the problem. Maybe a memory leak in the graphics memory... I wouldn't hurt to make sure that's at the latest revision too I suppose.

[bethandlouis]

Ha Ha, I have an ibook but it is murder getting games for it. there is a version for the mac, maybe I should just do that. I don't know whats wrong? Hopefully the techno geeks on NWN forum will help. I just tried to play another module and it crashed in the exact way, although recovery was a little faster.

I don't know?

[bakerjc]

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050120.html

[GadgetGav]

Quote: Originally Posted by bakerjc

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050120.html

Hmmm all seems to make sense, but is it just a pipe dream..?
iFlix and iFlicks go down, so they're being bought by Apple..? How about they're just scared of getting sued by the MPIAA..
I fit the demographic though, so I hope it's true..! I find myself surfing the HDNet and HDNet Movies channels just to see stuff in HD but it's always disappointing. Discovery HD is an impressive demo of the set, but it's not must-see TV... HBO and Max HD channels are OK, but there's not something I want to see every night... I'd drop my Netflix sub for an Apple HD download service.

[snid]

How much disk space would 2 hours of HD video require? How much disk space does a mac mini have? Never mind the time it would take to download (over wireless or even ethernet).

Beth: NeverwinterNights is a good game, I hope you get it to work. The biggest issue I had with it is having a supported video card with enough video memory. Check that out... If you need help figuring that out, some of the windows geeks could do it better than I can.

[GadgetGav]

Don't know how much space HD takes up with that new codec they were talking about... Mac mini has 40 or 80Gb (at the moment)
Time to download could be an issue, but I wouldn't mind lining up a list of 2 or 3 and having them download overnight. Tivo as already formed some kind of deal with Netfilx, so stuff like this is going to happen. Just watch the cable companies push up the cost of broadband when they're no longer getting the income fromPPV...

[GadgetGav]

Nooo...! Bad iPhoto, BAD..!
They've taken away one of the coolest little detail touches that was in iPhoto. It used to be that when you highlighted an area with a click and drag rectangle, then moved the zoom slider, it would zoom to that area, not just into the center of the image. That was a really nice UI touch and made it very easy to check details. Now when you move the zoom slider, it forgets your highlight and goes to the center. What a stupid step backwards... why would they do that..??