TIPS & TECHNIQUES
November, 2006

 Here is a TIP from Chuck Childers regarding the PPA Indemnification Program ----

If you are a PPA member, you have the benefit of the Indemnification Program. While it is NOT insurance which everyone thinks, they will pay for data recovery of your images minus the deductible. So apparently, a hard drive crash with thousands of images or a compact flash card with hundreds of images, PPA's program will pay for the recovery.

I had a hard drive on a relatively new computer fail and I replaced the drive not knowing that PPA would pay to get the images back.....they were not backed up (ie,. new computer, hard drive won't fail for awhile.....NOT!). I had to return the drive to Dell since they were replacing the drive under warranty.

 ARE YOU SEEING SPOTS? CLEAN YOUR SENSOR.......

This information comes from Jim Chagares and Warren Gregory. Here are some internet sites which will provide all the information you need to keep those digital sensors sparkling clean!!

http://www.bythom.com/cleaning.htm

http://www.cleaningdigitalcameras.com

http://www.cleaningdigitalcameras.com/methods.html

Also, you can make your own cleaning swipe from a rubber spatula from a Dollar Store. Just cut it to look like the ones on this site. This site tells you how to do it.... http://www.pbase.com/copperhill/ccd_cleaning

 Why Focus-Recompose Sucks or How A Commonly-Used AF Technique Causes Focus Errors

Have you experienced focus issues when you move the center of interest off center to achieve focus and then recompose to create the image?

Click on the link below for a detailed explanation on why this occurs - and a more reliable approach to solving this problem.

Thanks to Don Spangler for sending in this tip.

http://www.visual-vacations.com/Photography/focus-recompose_sucks.htm


Those who have upgraded to Photoshop CS2 have enjoyed the benefits of the "Browser" now being implemented as a separate application called the "Bridge". Many have discovered, however, that they cannot run "batch" actions on images in the Bridge like they did in Photoshop. How can we do this???

When you select images in Bridge and then try to batch them in Photoshop by choosing File>Automate>Batch, you'll see that Bridge isn't available in the Source menu. You must use Bridge's Batch command for this to work. In Bridge, choose Tools>Photoshop>Batch to batch the selected files.

Unfortunately, most of us who utilize digital capture will have a problem with lost data - lost images - at one time or another. This can be a real problem which certainly impacts your ability to provide quality images to your customers.

Here are a couple methods used by fellow members to successfully recover that lost data.

1) One of our Sponsors - Fairborn Camera - has a Data Recovery Service which has been used successfully. Contact Paul or Travis at Fairborn Camera for all the details.

2) There are several data recovery programs available. Some are provided by the manufacturer's of the storage media (Lexar and SanDisk) and others are more "powerful" and applicable to all types of storage media. One such program used successfully by the "Woods Brothers" is called "Photorescue" from Datarescue. Demo copies are downloadable and it is available for $29.00. Check it out at www.datarescue.com/photorescue/

 This program is worth installing. It will bring up raw files just like Picture and Fax Viewer.

View RAW files in XP with RAW Image Viewer
Many digital cameras allow you to take pictures in "RAW" format, which gives you a very high image quality. However, XP doesn't support this format by default, so you couldn't use its built in photo viewing and printing features with photos saved this way. Now Microsoft is providing a free tool, the Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer, that you can download for XP to provide viewing, organizing and printing functionality for RAW image formats of Canon and Nikon cameras. To read more about it and download the tool, see the Microsoft Download Center Web site at:
http://www.wxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=050719TI-RAW



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