Google Earth Antics – Revised

Yesterday, I wrote, "This morning, Google Earth Blog put meringue on my strawberries…” then, later on, I wrote, "Actually you are in Google Earth.
So, you ask, “What’s so special about that?” with a self satisfied yawn. After all, you are quite the techie…”

A couple of my readers suggested I made a boo-boo ~ specifically, '... it didn't work'.
Indeed, when I look back on it the information was there but not in direct form; lay that to forgetting some niceties of blogging while on sabbatical.

Google Earth Tours
Google Earth Tour's first became available in version 5 February, 2009. When a software provider announces a new version, it's customary to go download it.
So, if you've not downloaded Google Earth 5 yet, click here to download and install GE5 on your computer.

Once that's done, let me repeat: "Yesterday morning, Google Earth Blog put meringue on my strawberries…”.

Now, you can click on meringue or strawberries and fly under that bridge and over Hoover dam!
Mea culpa...for those bereft of Latin, My Bad...
Enjoy…

Google Earth Antics

Image courtesy Google Earth Blog

No, I did not leave our planet; I’ve just been on sabbatical, learning new things. This morning, Google Earth Blog put meringue on my strawberries…
You’re just about to fly under the bridge below Hoover dam.

You might be in a small plane, you might be piloting a small remote drone – in today’s technology driven world, such possibilities seem to grow almost exponentially.

Truth be Told
Actually you are in Google Earth.
So, you ask, “What’s so special about that?” with a self satisfied yawn. After all, you are quite the techie…

Pausing dramatically, the teacher responds, “Because you are piloting thru GE’s terrain imagery with an …iPhone!”

Yep, I had to pick myself up too…

You see, with new Mac technology called EarthGlider (Mac and iPhone) and you add a $4 iPhone app called Flype, you are at the flight sim controls.
So, get yourself over there and take a look at these videos!
The people at Google Earth say a Windows version is in the works.
Enjoy…

Full Range HDR – Codicil (Compute It Right)

Walking along the golf course, watching for whizzing golf balls, I was listening to PhotoNetCast podcast # 27 - HDR Photography.  At PhotoNetCast, an international panel of amateur and professional photographers shared divergent opinions on this HDR podcast.
With my attention split between listening, walking, and watching - I almost missed the seemingly stray comment, "Sometimes, I have to use Merge to HDR in Photoshop because Photomatix does NOT cleanly remove all chromatic aberration."  Fortunately, the Apple iPod Touch lets me hit one button and backup 30 seconds just to 'hear that again'. 

Pain in the …
I'd just spent about six hours removing noise and chromatic aberration after a quick Photomatix compilation of a full range HDR image.  Since I can only handle about two hours a pass at hi-res pen tablet work, it'd taken quite a while to mask offending edges of one HDR image.  Matter of fact, I even put off doing the second scene - this sort of mundane activity is much too mind numbing. 
In this situation, chromatic aberration is a blurring of boundaries which requires clone tool usage at 600% (OpenGL video card preferable) where you can see down to pixel level in your image.  With Photoshop tools, one spends the time doing computations rather than diligently hand correcting with a ‘slow’ pen and Wacom tablet.

Software and Computation Considerations
Photomatix can process 10 Full Range HDR images in a short period of time (minutes).  Unfortunately, when you blow those images up to 600%, both noise and chromatic aberration is quite prominent.  Photoshop takes several hours to process the same 10 images; but that's computer time not eye-and-back-strain time.  So, you go take care of something else...
Don't let the several hours give you any pain.  I use a dual 1.86 GHz CPU system with CPU sharing enabled.  I notice Photoshop really only uses one CPU effectively during this merge.  More recent 64 bit systems, faster CPU’s, and real dual CPU usage would significantly cut that computation time.

When done, the Full Range HDR image can then be color-balanced with global tone mapping in Lightroom before finishing up with sharpening in Pixel Genius Photokit Sharpener, a Photoshop plug-in.

Fini
All considered, once again Photoshop’s superior performance provide the subtle image control which fine art deserves.

Damn; that whizzing golf ball went on by this time...!
Enjoy…