Inneresting

Got a mac, need an app ? Look no further than here. Hyper Jeff If you enjoy sifting through lists of new and wonderful applications sorted by type, category and licence, ie freeware, shareware, paid etc then this is the place for you. I've been using Jeff's site for years now to unearth many marvelous pieces of software. Go have a look and see what you can find, just use the 'pick a category' drop down and start trawling. inneresting .

I've been looking into alternative photography recently, more specifically, making prints using unconventional techniques. It's a practise that lies somewhere between photography, painting and printing. It utilises archaic chemistry and modern technology (and the sun), to create haunting images with unpredictable and deeply atmospheric qualities. For example, 'digital negatives' are a kind of reverse engineering of digital photography whereby a negative is created from a digital positive. The process is fairly straightforward. Here it is very briefly. a. Take a digi image you like, bung it into photoshop reverse it, make it monochrome and tweak the levels to adjust mid-tones and contrast, some practitioners recommend giving it an overall orange hue for reasons of tonality in the subsequent creation of a positive (See links for detailed processes.) b. Print out the image on a sheet of A4 inkjet/photocopier transparent film so that you have a nice big A4 negative. A

What the hell is HDR imaging? Well, I liken it to what mastering engineers do to audio tracks before they go on a cd. They add the gloss, sheen and sparkle, saturate the loudness levels and even-out all the lumps. A similar mastering process happens to video and film in post-production where engineers do magic to the colour balance, brightness and general look of the material and ensure it adheres to broadcast safe parameters, before going to press. HDR stands for 'high dynamic range'. In music mastering, a thing called the 'dynamic range' is an important factor in preserving the 'light and shade' in the music (a big problem in today's uber loud cd production strategies where dynamic range is severely comprimised). In visual terms it's kinda similar and employs a technique called 'tone mapping' which seems to give digital images an almost eye popping hyper-realism, probably approaching something akin to what you really see with your eyes, rath