The accidentally deleted images, the battery failing during saving a picture or a card corruption are the common and most irritating ways to lose a picture which may hold significant memories.

Lexar Image Rescue 4 is here to help when facing these kinds of problems. It is simple recovery software that enables the salvaging of valuable photos or videos from any kind of memory card using any card reader.

The software has easy to use and one step recovery process features which allow a simple way of use and are not wasting any time. Also it supports multi-languages to allow people an easier understanding of the process from all around the world.

The software provides reliable image recovery of most popular file types such as JPEG, RAW, TIFF, MP4, AVI, etc. Other than recovery, the software allows to reformat the card back to its original settings.

The process of recovering an image begins with scanning every sector of the memory card and then reporting any errors automatically.

The compatibility of software other than the multi-language feature is that it can be used with both PC and Mac, plus performing in any updates to maintain with the latest operating systems.

Whether being amateur or professional, knowing that Lexar Recovery 4 software will help anytime there might be problem gives a peace of mind and taking beautiful shots with no fear to lose.

Zone System is used often for contrasts and richer tones, as well as for approaching the perfect nuances in the picture. Through the Controlling contrast option of this tool you can choose a contrast range of the negative in order to increase or reduce the highlights and the shadows of your images.

The basics of Zone systems are divided by 8 different options. Zone 5 is the mid-tone of the scene. Zone 4 and 3 are for rendering dark images. For lighter options use Zone 6. If you want two stops lighter, go for Zone 7. Zone 8 is for the lightest images, as well as Zone 2 represents black ones.

There is also Zone System Exposure options for digital cameras, which demands a spot meter and a manual exposure mode.

BSI takes each pixel’s silicon light sensor to the “back” side of the silicon wafer, thereby getting most of the light instead of it being scattered by the layers on the front side of the silicon wafer before reaching the sensor. This technology has enabled companies like

Sony and OmniVision, to develop 5MP or 8MP cameras, to bring sharper and clearer images to their consumers without having to increase the size of the mobile phone or digital camera.

Toshiba has taken a huge leap further than OmniVision or Sony in providing high resolutions for imaging devices. In late October 2009, Toshiba announced that it has developed a new CMOS image sensor using BSI technology to bring 14.6 million pixels to devices such as digital still cameras and mobile phones with video imaging.

The new sensor will be sampled in December 2009, and mass production of these BSI sensors will follow beginning the third quarter of 2010. This will enable Toshiba to offer better images in its line of mobile phones, and break into the digital camera market with a bang.

Toshiba’s new CMOS image sensor will shrink pixel size to 1.4 microns, thus enabling 14.6 million of these pixels into a 1/2.3 inch sensor. Consumers are demanding better, sharper and clearer images from their digital cameras or mobile phones.

Toshiba will be able to bring that and more to its existing products and its new line of digital cameras.

Nowadays Adobe Photoshop celebrates its twentieth anniversary. The event will mark the most memorable moments from its creation till now.

The magic of Photoshop is now everywhere- there is no place on earth, in which this program hasn’t been used. The image editor, which brushed the most famous Hollywood bodies, is the favorite program of designers, photographers and picture lovers.

The funniest moments from the history of Adobe Photoshop will soon be displayed, so to show us when to stop distorting the images, we make.

To pay tribute to its own anniversary Photoshop is now giving free tutorials for all who love this magical program. The basic steps and improvements for better images will be given from the world famous program in order to celebrate a revolution, which many define as an end of the natural look.

Photoshop of course has made many political and social careers impossible after creating embarrassing images. But the evolution in digital photography, which came with Photoshop creation, stays one of most significant changes in the history of digital imaging.

It is a powerful tool for adjusting the brightness, color tone and contrast.

The ‘levels’ specify the location of complete black point, complete white point and a gray mid-tone slider on a histogram of an image and all values are unique for each photo.

Generally images look best when they are processed utilizing the full range from dark to light. Utilizing full range of levels brings higher contrast in the image.

However, it should be practiced with care because images taken during dawn, dusk, fog or hazy or in a soft light can be ruined if great color contrast is imposed.

The color tones are indicated by ‘pixel’ values which are again coded by ‘bit’ in digital language. There are 256 different pixel values for color tones ranging from darkest black to brightest white in digital photos.

Moving the right or white and left or black point sliders in a histogram to change these values in controlled manner generates greater contrast in the image.

Caution should be followed while moving the white and black point sliders at the edges of a histogram, as they can clip highlights and shadows of only one pixel height.

Hold down the ‘Alt’ key while dragging point sliders, and it will display the images clipped up because of very small pixel value. Sometimes, this is desired for more detailing in selected or important areas to draw attention in the photo.

The use of mid-tone slider can be best understood in a dichromatic or black and white picture. Use of mid-tone slider stretches and overexposes the details of brightness or shadow by adjusting the grayness or medium color shades, while maintaining an overall brightness or darkness in the photo.

All the pointers in this program are controlled by some numerical values, viz. the black pointer starts at ‘0’and approaches right, the mid-tone pointer ranges between ‘1’ and ‘254’ and the white pointer starts at ‘255’ and approaches left.

A digital camera shows only RGB or Luminance histogram and movable pointers as programmed in it while the software used in photo editing shows values of pointers at each position on any type of histogram including RGB histograms, color and luminance histogram etc.

You will find the ‘Levels’ tool in almost all photo editing software, like the Gimp and the most commonly used Adobe Photoshop.

First download the tool at http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/flickr according to your version of Lightroom2. Unzip the file and find the LRPlugin folder.

Drop the contents of this file in place, the ones you are going to use for this goal, but better is to place them near Lightroom2 files in a more central location.

Go back to Lightroom2 and click on File, then Plug-in Manager. There you can add the previously stored file, select it and then click Ok.

Then a dialog box with instruction will appear, read it and you will see the listing of your plug-ins. Click done and exit. Next step is to choose images for uploading to Flickr. Choose the option Export with right click on the mouse and press it on the picture you want to transfer.

After that, on the top of the dialog box you will see some files on disk heading, click on them for location Flickr as an option in your list.

Complete the areas of the Export dialog with the selected files and be careful, because when you click Export, images go directly to Flickr.

Last step is to click on Authenticate on Flickr button and your browser will open it automatically. All you need is to log-in and click the button Export for finishing the uploading from Lightroom2 to Flickr.

Source: digital photography school

Last ability, offered from STOIK is STOIK Panorama Maker for Mac, which allows perfect rendering of the images, when a moving object gets in the picture.

Panorama Maker for Mac will put an end to the blurred and misshapen pictures with one special option-Object-preserving blending.

The new program features are lens, geometrical compensation, and manual matching of the images.

All this can be made in 3 steps- adding images, selecting the stitching mode, and obtaining the result.

The images you take automatically are assembled horizontally, vertically, 360-degree and in tiled panoramas.

There is also an option for auto-correct the images. STOIK Panorama Maker for Mac is available with Mac OS X (10.4, 10.5 and 10.6) and the price is only 39 USD for a single-user license.

You can choose from its monthly or annual subscription plans to take advantage of free downloading of images. You can download up to 25 images a day and 750 images a month. Once downloaded you may use the images forever any number of times you wish.

The various categories available are animals, holidays and celebrations, architecture and buildings, backgrounds, business, education, concepts and ideas, food and drink, entertainment, health and beauty, industry, illustrations, objects, nature, science and medicine, people and lifestyle, sports, travel, technology, vintage, vectors and others.

The challenging situations are numerous whenever you go out shooting, but here are the most common mistakes and some ways to avoid them. If you have messed up the sharpening of an image, the best option is Photoshop or any other software (you will have to settle for lower quality results though).

If motion blur is a problem you often face, try to do some math before you press the shooter. The exposure value needs to be bigger than the focal length times the size on the camera’s sensor.

Whenever you try to shoot in the dark, you will have to use a tripod unless you are interested in abstract photography. Even pressing the shooter can cause a shake that destroys the good quality of any image.

The same thing applies to sunsets and sunrises and all the low light conditions of photographing. Also, keep in mind that DOF, the depth of field, gives a great deal of contrast to an image, so try to use it properly in all the situations where it can be applied.

Compression is basically categorized into 2 parts: lossless (which preserve the information of image) and lossy (it may discard certain image data).

Jpeg compression

One of the most used compression methods for digital pictures in digital cameras and internet web pages is JPEG (acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group). This is actually a standard how the picture will be compressed into a stream of bytes and how that stream will be uncompressed back into image.

JPEG compression is a lossy compression meaning you achieve small size of picture on the cost of its quality. It keeps the most important details of pictures while discarding the less significant ones.

The file size obtained by JPEG compression is much smaller as compared to those obtained by Tiff compression but JPEG compression is highly dependent on image content. Images with less details and noise levels will be compressed well as compared to those with high noise levels.

Tiff compression

Acronym for Tagged Image File Format, TIFF is a more complex file format that allows storage of picture data using lossless compression and is mostly used in printing and publishing industry. This translates in the fact that the picture’s quality will not be altered by editing and re-saving it.

It uses 8 bit or 16 bit per color instead of 24 or 48 bits per color providing high quality lossless compression. Many cameras come up with the option of storing in TIFF format but the image requires excess storage as compared to its JPEG counterpart.

A possible choice that could be considered balanced

Comparing pictures taken in TIFF format with those taken in JPEG format shows only small differences of actual quality of the picture and an average photographer will more often choose to save the photos in JPEG format because this way the pictures will take less storage space.

However, for an experienced photographer, there is another format to take in equation and this is RAW format which is the best alternative as the images in RAW format are smaller in size and can retain more information about your image.

For the sake of saving storage space and take hundreds or even thousands of photos with a minimum of compromise in picture’s quality, JPEG format seems to be the ideal choice.