Photo Editing and Future Technologies

This is the world of digital images. Everyone seems to have a digital camera in their hand. If not a digital camera our mobile phones are fitted with a digital camera. So we are putting these hi-fi gadgets to good use and the result of that is billions and billions of pictures. We are not stopping at that, we want to share these pictures with our friends and relatives and the whole world.

But when we download these images to the computer we come to know that the image size taken with 3 megapixel camera is about 700-800 Kb and taken if taken with 8 MP camera it can go upto 1.6MB. Which is a huge size, if you want to upload such pictures on your blog or picture sharing website or simply attach with your emails. You have to make some changes in size of the pictures. The other thing is digital pictures most of the times require colour correction. There are several softwares available to do that which are called as image editing softwares. The most popular of them all is Adobe Photoshop. The problem is, it is a huge program and a costly one for the amature. So what you do?

PICNIK.COM – This website is an online Photo editing software. It lets you upload your pictures, edit, add effects and save the resultant photo to your computer. You can sign up for a new account or just fix your photos without registration. Site navigations is very easy to understand and you will be amazed to see the variety of effects you can apply to your pictures.

TED.COM (Ideas worth spreading) – An annual conference of the thinkers and doers of the world takes place (read Americans) since 1984. Every presenter gets only 18 mins to share their idea. Like Subway Sandwitch slogan in 18 mins “Kitna Ghusata Hai”. All these lectures are made available to us through this website. There are different categories or subjects like Technology, Environment, Science, Art, Culture, Business etc. on the left sidebar of the home page. You can select any category and select any movie clip from the next screen. If you register yourself (registration is free), you will be able to even download these movie in Mp4 format or only audio in Mp3 format for listening through your ipod or mobile phone. As the site describes itself these ideas are really worth spreading.

There are so many websites I am hooked on to. For me they are like oxygen and water. Surprised, are you? But once you visit these sites and are interested in the subjects covered, you will not be.

I will share the details of these sites with you. And you promise me that you will visit them. Internet is not only “checking emails” and “those irritating forward emails”. It is unfathomable ocean of information, knowledge. But you should know where to look and what to look for.

There is one weekly program on BBC World – Clickonline. This program is about new technology. Out of several sections in the program, internet related is “Webscape “ by reporter Kate Russell. She recommends 3-4 websites every week. Believe me you, they are all worth visiting. They are targeted towards people having varied interests. Some websites are for technology freaks or some are for fine artists. Some are for travelers or some are for sport enthusiast. Some sites may enhance your browsing experience or some site may throw open treasure of information. Most of the websites ideas I get are from here. But there are others which I get by aimless browsing also.

Today I am going to suggest some such sites to you. I will call this section “WebMasti”. So if you wish to see my post on this subject then go to the category list on the right side of this blog and click on the category by the same name.

esnips.com : This website is a treasure of information, especially if you are a music lover you got to check this site. You have to sign up for a new account and you will be allotted 5 GB of space on their server. Just imagine, it is a lot of space. Now you can upload anything like photos, music, documents, softwares worth sharing. You can also keep your data secret, by uploading it in your private folders. So here you can keep your documents or marketing presentations and also your resume. Just imagine you are going for the walk-in-interview or a presentation at your client’s office and suddenly you discover that you have not carried your necessary papers or the Power-point presentation on your laptop Is corrupt. But don’t worry just log-in to esnips.com and download whatever documents you require from your private folder.

This site is very popular among Indians and Non-resident Indians. As a result mostly the storage consists of music as mp3 files on esnip’s server. Untill last year esnips never paid much attention to the copyright laws and thus it was a heaven for the pirates. Then came the launch of the last book of Harry Potter and suddenly the security was tightened and nobody was allowed to upload any pdf file which had “Harrry” or “Potter” in its name or anywhere in the document. I had downloaded all the previous books of “Harry Potter” in the pdf format and read them on my Palmtop. Irrespective of this high level of security there is lots on offer. Just type the song name you want to search in the search window and press enter and beware this is an addiction, hard to give up. I have yet to come across Hindi film song which is not available on esnips. So go ahead and start snipping..

Bye & Take care.