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Do not forget the next Wildlife Festival in Montier-en-Der, from November 19 to 22, 2009.

If you shoot high resolution digital photos, it is nearly impossible to present them to the visitors of your web site in a manageable way: Who would want to download a multi-megabyte file to be forced in using an external application software to watch the details.

Closr solves this conundrum by providing you a way to upload your image to their web site. In return, you get a ready-to-install widget for your web site and all your friends will be able to zoom in or zoom out their hearts out.

Test the service with this panorama image I shot in the Masai Mara National Park in Southern Kenya in October 2008. You will have no difficulty finding the gnus (wildebeests) assembling themselves in a huge collection in preparation of the Great Migration crossing of the Mara river.

By the way: The Closr web site does not currently work with Opera v10, but Firefox is OK.

Some time ago we had presented the excellent TinEye search engine which is able to do search-by-similarity on images (you give it an image and it will find all similar images: cropped, reframed, slightly modified). Very useful to track pirates, copiers and illegal uses of your photos.

Several other products or in-development technologies also exist, like Gazopa (similar image search) or Imprezzeo (similarity search technology (not service, just a demo right now) or Picsout. But similarity-search is currently gaining speed.

Even if it is not always as precise as TinEye, it may be interesting when looking for a theme-based or form-based picture, rather than only the near-exact copy of an original image. That is what Google and Live Search are now offering or preparing.

• On Live Search Images, you can hover your mouse over any image and click the “show similar images” button.


Live Search: Click to get similar images

• More experimental, the Google Labs have started to present a Similar Search Engine (in English only)


Google Labs similarity search engine

• Less experimental, but less useful in its current too crude implementation, the normal Google image search now allows to select image colours you would like to see dominating the search results. You can get only blue images of the Eiffel Tower (below). But others did it better (YotoPhoto -now closed, Flickr ColrPickr or Multicolr Search Lab -only in Flickr demo).


Google: search only blue images

Technology is evolving. It’s up to us to create the corresponding uses.

Sometimes, you just want a simple tool that is cheap and does exactly what is advertised. And only that. Today, here are two of these.

PhotoPerfect Express is a freeware version of the $59.99 PhotoPerfect suite from Arcadia Software.

What I like most: It does not do much, but it’s what 90% of us need to start with an image (first optimization and enhancement) and it does it well, easily and precisely.

PhotoPerfect Express - step by step

MobaPhoto concentrates on a few actions (resize, crop or correct red-eyes) before preparing a photo gallery for your web site. Everything is geared toward batch processing (all images are mashed up in a row).

I discovered an interesting web site, the blog of Matt Burrard-Lucas, young winner of the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year (the 15-17 year old category, in 2005).

Even more interesting, Matt opened a Wildlife Photography Competition around a simple theme but with the added difficulty of a target rarely tried for wildlife photography: Portrait.

You can enter your participation (no more than 3 pictures) using this form. Your chance to win an Olympus SP-570UZ photo camera.

Mac lovers were waiting for a version of Picasa specifically built for their Apple machine. Now, it’s done and you can freely download Picasa, the Google photo management software. Your opinion will be welcome.

What is your most memorable photo event of this just-ended year?

For me, it will obvioulsy be the discovery of this Paris subway station (Charles-Michel) just a flight of stairs down from my own Paris flat. RATP decided to renovate it seriously and totally removed all coverings revealing the previous walls complete with 30-year-old markings, pannels and signs. I was there in the middle of a little croud going from one place to the next shooting like a demented man, and there was another photographer doing the same a few meters from me. We did not even exchange a word, but shared a very intense shooting moment under the eyes of Parisian subway users who did not want to see us.

I made a 2009 calendar out of it. Click on the calendar below to see the low resolution PDF version of the calendar.

To order, plase, purchase a RedBubble Gift Certificate of 19.50€ (or equivalent) then bubblemail me the gift certificate code with your delivery address.

Delivery expected within approximately 10-17 days.

Some of my best images are available are posters, cards, prints, laminated prints, etc. on RedBubble.com. I like the quality of their service, their prices and the broad support (including good discussion forums about photo).

What you’ll like even more is that they reduced the shipping costs to NOTHING for a week. They are celebrating their shipment of 100,000 photo/art masterpieces around the world. At this moment, they decided to offer one week of free shipping. You just have to use the following coupon code when checking out: ‘100000masterpieces’

PS: The promotion will expire at 2359 on 30 October (GMT). Just in time to prepare your gifts for Christmas or for your 2009 new year’s cards.

Buy my photos at RedBubble

• Cards,
• Matted Prints,
• Laminated Prints (between shiny plastic sheets),
• Prints mounted on hard support,
• Canvas Prints,
• Framed Prints

Astonishingly good-looking, a solution to ever-lasting issues of Linux-printing, Photoprint is a Linux-based application using the Gutenprint driver tools.

I just found a good article about these software tools on Linux Photography. I did not test the tool set, but it looks damn interesting for all Linux photo users. A must-try!

You have nice photos and you want to see them on the Internet, to share them with your family, your friends, the rest of the world. The choice is yours and… it is difficult. To host them somewhere on a server, you will first have to use a photo hosting service or you will build your own web site. Each one has its own advantages and its drawbacks.

Web full service

• Setting it up is effortless (think about opening an account in Flickr). Everything is ready now.
• This is not your site, this is everybody’s site.
• But, it is so easy to share, exchange, build a group or a network.
• Some of these web sites/services are very thorough but the neighboroud may be covering a range from “I dumped all my old photos out of my Flash memory card” (usually quite uninteresting if you don’t know the kid in the bath), to “I’ll show you only the best of the best” (much better, much more gratifying neighbours like on RedBubble).
• Some of these sites may include a complement of specialized services (e.g. editing, printing, selling; Like on RedBubble).

Web site made out of a photo gallery (like a SimpleViewer Flash script, or similar)

• The web site is naturally more personal (important if you want to look like a pro)
• The web site is to be built. Even with standard/free scripts available, there will be some work to do. But its worth it.
• You will need to find a hosting service (OVH, etc.) but if you already have a blog or web site, this may be only an extension of it.

Personally, I am very found of RedBubble because the community is very active, very participative. Furthermore, there is nearly no effort to start working with them (even if I already published a large number of image on my personal web site).

Even more important, I feel that it is a very good complement in the sense that it allows an easy sale of the work to outsiders. The RedBubble team handles the sales process and delivers the posters, cards, prints, calendars, while protecting my data files and ensuring that I receive my share of the sale price.

Posters, cards, prints, etc.

You will also notice that the images/photos presented there by others are of the utmost quality and wandering there produces a real aesthetic pleasure.

Some useful sources for additional information:

• How To Put Your Photos On The Web
• 30 Scripts For Galleries, Slideshows and Lightboxes
• Tom’s Guide : partagez vos photos sur Internet (in French).
• Aube Nature gives us les meilleurs scripts de galerie photo (the best photo gallery scripts, in French). In Flash, in PHP, integrated or not. JSGallery, (E)2, Phormer, ZenPhoto, PixelPost.

TinEye is one of those tools you dreamed about but were not available. Up to now.

Any photographer is concerned about the possibility of seeing his/her images taken from his/her web site and used elsewhere. Usually, it is impossible to find the copies, even if you know your images well. TinEye will find copies of your image/photo, even if it is squeezed, enlarged, cropped, with an added watermark, etc. It is even able to find near matches (photos that look a bit like yours and could be heavily modified copies or plagiarism).

You can ask it to use an uploaded JPG bitmap or direct it to the image on the web.

Check the “cool searches” they use as examples and then try with your own images. Of course, it does not have indexed all the Internet and (I am sorry to say it so bluntly) your photos may not have been deemed worth copying. But I tried it on several of my own photos and it is clear that it will find all kinds of borrowed photos on theweb.

Impressive!