Spammers are spoofing my email address!! Blech!!!

I started getting thousands of obviously spammy emails "bounced" back to my inbox - all with my address in the From: line.

Here's what is happening...

A low-life spammer sends SPAM emails to thousands of people. They enter someone else's address to the From: field of the email because they (obviously) don't want the spam tracked back to them. When the email bounces, it comes to the spoofed person's address. In this case, me. :-( Then there are the cases where the SPAM goes through, and someone gets it in their inbox. This is even worse because they think I sent them the SPAM email!

So if you're getting SPAM that looks like it is from me, it is NOT! I promise.

Spoofing is a pretty common problem, but it still sucks. And sadly, there is little that can be done about it.

DNG Codecs

Well, just like that... Adobe has released a DNG Codec for Windows Vista. This should allow those using Pro Photo Tools on Vista to work with DNG raw files.

And there is a solution for those of us still running Windows XP. Ardfry has a DNG Codec for Windows XP. Unfortunately, the codec is not free. But there is a free trial.

Also, all codecs can be found on the following Microsoft site: http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/codecs.aspx

Thanks to Josh at Microsoft for the info and links...

Microsoft Pro Photo Tools v1.0

Microsoft recently released Pro Photo Tools for editing image metadata. Initial reports looked promising, so I decided to give it a try. Here are my initial impressions...

Pro Photo Tools requires .NET Framework v3.0, which many people won't likely have installed already. After installing the .NET Framework you must reboot, then you can install Pro Photo Tools. Both of these installs require the annoying Microsoft genuine software validation - uggg.

After installing, I ran Pro Photo Tools and attempted to open one of my raw DNG files. Oops...
The file extension is not supported as an image file format.
Perhaps a codec should be installed.
Since I've been using Adobe Lightroom for my raw image editing, I've switched to using DNG raw format. Next I tried opening a .cr2 file from my Canon 30D. Same error. That's kind of a bummer! I imagine most "pros" and a good number of advanced amateurs will want to work with raw image formats, and these are not supported "out of the box." After a quick Google search, I found this FAQ Page indicating that codecs must be downloaded and installed from the manufacturer's websites in order to support raw image formats. Well, OK. I was able to navigate to the Canon website to download and install the CR2 Codec (which required yet another reboot). It appears that Adobe has not released a codec for the DNG format - disappointing. But perhaps a little more research will turn up a solution?

Finally, after 3 program installations and 2 reboots, I was able to open an image into Pro Photo Tools. And with that behind me, I was able to start using some of the features...

• Images opened in the tool fairly quickly, but you can't determine the subject of the photos from the thumbnails created. They just look like digital artifacts. This would be a real problem if geotagging manually - you'd need to be able to identify the subject of the photo (using the thumbnail), in order to place it geographically.
• Previously, I downloaded my GPS tracklog from my Garmin ETrex Vista Cx into Garmin Mapsource. From there I saved a .gpx tracklog file. I was able to easily load this into Pro Photo Tools.
• I selected all my images and clicked on the Place Images button. This quickly geocoded my images and placed them on the nice, smooth Virtual Earth interface.
• You then have the option of adjusting the image's position. This is not very intuitive, but you can adjust the images according to the time on the tracklog. This is better suited for geocoding one image at a time. When you are finished tweaking (I just tried a few adjustments), you need to click the Done button. Then in the GPS Data section, you will see the selected images now have corresponding geo information.
• Then I clicked the Get location text button. I can't imagine this feature will produce anything worthwhile for my wilderness images, but I'm looking forward to using it for my travel photography. Again, this worked very quickly with a selection of 10 images.
• I selected File - Save All Images with New Data to save my work. Normally, with my standard digital workflow, I'd proceed from here to Lightroom and start processing/finishing my images. But...
  
• I played around a bit editing other metadata and didn't run into any problems. Some of these editing features could be quite useful.

Conclusions after a relatively shallow first use? After jumping through the hoops of the program and codec installation, the tool was fairly intuitive, fast, and easy to use. The lack of DNG support is a big drawback, for me (I'll do a bit of research to see if this can be resolved). And the unusable generated thumbnails should be fixed. But the features of this tool DO look promising. And I look forward to subsequent updates/releases.

Minnehaha Park - Minneapolis

I just returned from a quick weekend to Minneapolis/St. Paul visiting in-laws. After my plane landed, I had an hour to kill. So I'd planned ahead of time to visit one of the oldest parks in Minneapolis... Minnehaha Park. Oddly, the taxi driver had no idea where the park was even though it is less than a 10 minute drive from the airport. Luckily, I'd brought my printed Google Map. There is a nice set of trails centered around Minnehaha Falls and there are also some interesting historic sites. This site provides a good overview. It was an enjoyable morning. Here are a few photos...

Minnehaha Falls

Flowers near the river

Pasque Flowers in the gardens

Camera Calibration

I recently picked up an X-Rite ColorChecker chart and used it to create a custom Lightroom develop preset for my Canon 30D using the Chromoholics ACR Calibrator script. It was really simple:

1. Download and install the script (download and directions at the link above).
2. Take a photo of the ColorChecker.
3. Download the photo to your computer and open it in Photoshop.
4. Run the script, then use the output values to tweak Lightroom's Camera Calibration settings in the Develop module and save a preset. Done!
   

Previously, I'd created a develop preset by eye, using landscape images I'd taken and averaged/optimized the camera calibration settings. The new preset created with the ColorChecker and ACR Calibrator script is slightly better.

I use this preset as my baseline develop settings and apply it to all images on import. This gets a vast majority of my images 90% of the way to a finished state - a big time saver!

I recommend trying this method if you have, or can temporarily get your hands on a ColorChecker chart.