Tag: Computers
It may not be an absolute necessity, but taking your digital darkroom
with you when you travel is definitely a huge benefit for your
photography. You can thoroughly review, organize, annotate, edit and
back up your photos as you go, so there’s less to do when you get home.
You also can upload to the Web and create an online gallery of your
travels as they happen or send photo postcards.
Thinner, brighter and more affordable than ever, LCDs continue to make
major strides, delivering outstanding image quality without
budget-busting price tags. Compared to now antiquated CRTs, LCDs
produce noticeably brighter, sharper-looking images, use half (or less)
as much power and take up far less desk space while delivering larger
screen sizes.
With the Windows Vista and Mac Intel transitions behind us, now is a
pretty safe time to consider replacing an aging computer, no matter
which platform you prefer. Ample RAM for most photographers’ needs is
affordable, and many off-the-shelf systems boast solid digital-imaging
specifications.
We’ve come a long way from sharing photos with a slide projector over muffled yawns. Our digital photos can move from camera to computer to phone to iPod and be shared instantly with practically anyone, anywhere. With all of the options for sharing and displaying images, we’ve gathered the essential gear you’ll need for a variety of sharing situations. Here are some suggestions on how to bring it all together.
If
progress bars and spinning hourglasses are choking the fun out of your
digital darkroom work, it may be time to upgrade your system. You can
usually get a significant increase in performance by adding more RAM
and a faster hard drive, but sometimes that’s not enough.
The future of computing is looking very portable. In March, Microsoft,
Intel and some other high-profile consumer electronics companies
announced a new platform for portable computing, the “Ultra Mobile PC,”
or UMPC for acronym enthusiasts. A handheld computer running Windows XP
sounded like a great idea, but one that would probably not materialize
as a real product for some time.
Apple recently made a rather mind-blowing announcement: Intel-based
Macs now permit loading and running Windows XP natively via Boot Camp
software. Apple released a public beta version of the Boot Camp
software and announced that its upcoming update to OS X, 10.5, or
“Leopard” in its feline naming convention, will fully support a “dual
boot” system. Leopard is due out in early 2025.
I despise wires, but I love the devices they connect. On or around my
desk, there are no less than a dozen peripherals, tools and gadgets,
each of which requires at least one wire, and some, two or more.
If you’re tired of squinting to view menu items on your digital
camera’s LCD or feeling cramped by all of the palettes in Photoshop,
maybe it’s time to think outside the confines of tiny monitors. Even if
you have perfect vision, there’s no comparison to the viewing comfort
and enhanced usability of screens with more real estate.
