Fun with Food – pictorially speaking

Someone else started posting photos of food, the pictures looked so appetizing that I just had to wade in. Let me start with the menu:

Let’s set the table.

The photos here are just for fun. As such no elaborate efforts were employed, not even a tripod. When flash was used, it was on-camera flash, with just a paper napkin as a diffuser in one of the shots.

Mind you, my dear reader, Café Ludwig is a blog, not a place to eat, so, no reservations, please.

 

How about spaghetti tonight? With a pleasant little chianti? Or maybe a chicken curry? Just a sandwich, perhaps? Or a “hurricane” dish – pantry food!

Oh, my, I used the same placement in two photos. Microsoft Word 2010 “Picture Tools” to the rescue:

The Background Remover needed just a little help around the plate – maybe a couple of minutes at most were spent on “lifting” the plate. A rectangle shape with a texture fill serves as the new placemat.

Using Picture Tools provides so many artistic effects that I couldn’t help playing with my food:

How about a couple of posters for Café Ludwig?

 

Ready for dessert?

Just one “fruit-on-the-bottom” pudding – all these artistic affects – you have also seen a version in the banner at the top. Microsoft Word 2010 shares these “Picture Tools” with Excel 2010, and PowerPoint 2010. Always handy when you want to play around with your photos – or your food. The banner was made only partially in Word, the capital letters were customized in Paint.

Bon appétit !

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

Technorati Tags: photography,digital pictures,Windows Live Photo Gallery,Live Photo Gallery,Word 2010,Microsoft Word,Microsoft Excel,Microsoft PowerPoint,Paint,art effects

 

Photos and Albums in the new SkyDrive – sharing and downloading

With your photos stored and arranged in Windows Live SkyDrive the next step is to share your memories and treasures. SkyDrive is not al all like so many other photo sharing sites that are the equivalent of galleries or museums for visitors from far and wide. For example, Flickr lets you explore photos from artists around the world. While flickr.com/ludwigkeck gets you to my photos on Flickr, there is no equivalent address for SkyDrive. SkyDrive is a very private place, there is no easily memorized address to your gallery. You can specify who can see your photos in great detail, yet sharing requires action on your part. You must invite your friends to come and see your photos.

Sharing: Send a link

You do this for albums, not individual photos. In your album view there is a Sharing section in the information pane on the right. It shows who the album is shared with, in the illustration here that is Everyone (public). There are three links for initiating sharing: Get a link, Send a link, and Embed.

The most straightforward is Send a link. Click Send a link and the next page provides a form for sending an email.

Just enter one or more email addresses in the To: field and any optional message you like,  click Send and SkyDrive sends the email. What do your friends see? They receive an email that looks like this:

The email your friends receive identifies you and the album you are sharing. It includes the message that you specified. There is a thumbnail of your “cover” photo and a link “View album”.

Actually the thumbnail also provides the same link. When the link is clicked a window opens that takes your recipient right to your album. Of course, it has to download the images, so it takes just a bit of time. Here are illustrations of that process:

This is really Windows Live Photo Gallery displaying the photos. Your friend can step through the photos, select from the thumbnail bar at the bottom just the photo to display, or choose one of the options on the top menu bar:

Full screen, of course, provides a screen-filling view of your photos. Thumbnail view is a gorgeous display of the thumbnails over a darkened image of the photo being shown.

Clicking Download brings up the Windows Live Photo Gallery import dialog. The recipient can select just the photos to download.

On opening, all the thumbnails of the photos in the album are checked. Making a customized selection is straightforward.

The download process takes a bit of time, as you would expect.

Now how does a recipient see the album if he or she does not have Windows Live Photo Gallery installed? The link in the email will take them to the album using the default browser.

This looks just as it does when you are signed in to your Windows Live account except that the visitor does not have links for making changes to the album or SkyDrive.

Sharing: Get a link

The Get a link command opens a page that displays a text box with an URL. The message says: Copy this link to share. You can click the word Copy or click in the text box and press Ctrl+C. The link is placed on your clipboard and you can then paste it into an email. The URL is way to long to copy by hand.

This link takes the recipient to the album in a browser.

Sharing: Embed

The third sharing option is Embed. This also takes you to a page with the information. In this case the text box contains HTML code. The headline says “Embed … in a blog or other webpage”. Unfortunately the code specifies an “iframe”. This code style is not recommended, and in fact not allowed on some blog sites. For example, if uploaded to a WordPress.com blog, the code will get stripped out. So for many, this code is next to useless. My recommendation is to not use this.

Other concerns

When you give someone access to one of your SkyDrive albums, you are in effect giving them access to all your public folders and other folders shared at the same sharing level. That little arrow in a circle in the upper left of your photo presentation allows your visitor to go to album view. The path to the album is shown and allows the visitor to click on any path item. And hence to any other public folder. Obviously public folders are there for visitors, but do keep this in mind.

More download options

In “SkyDrive view” when viewing a photo, the information pane shows a Download link. This link initiates a download of the photo. The download is done to the folder where downloads are normally stored.

In album view, where all the thumbnails are displayed,  the info pane on the right, shows additional options (shown here on the left).

The link “Download with Photo Gallery”, works as described above, allowing your email recipient to select which photos to download. The Download link runs the normal file downloader. See the illustration here.

Note that the album will be downloaded as a compressed ZIP file. If there are any sub-albums in the album, they will be included in the zip file.

Your friends can enjoy your photos as long as they keep your notification email. SkyDrive is not like a public gallery, more like an attic in your house and your guests are not totally free to come and go. That is the nature of SkyDrive.

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

Technorati Tags: photography,SkyDrive,Windows Live SkyDrive,sharing photos,sharing albums,downloading,download photo,download album,digital photos,Windows Live Photo Gallery,Photo Gallery

 

Photos and Albums in the New SkyDrive – organizing

Organizing your photos is an important part of getting your SkyDrive albums just right to show of your work. This means creating albums, moving photos from one album to another and re-arranging the order of the pictures inside an album.

With the many recent updates to SkyDrive the methods and tools for these tasks have changed, so here is a review of these procedures.

Albums in SkyDrive should preferably be arranged in a “flat” hierarchy – no albums inside albums. Although putting an album inside another is easily done, you cannot upload from Windows Live Photo Gallery to an album that is inside another. The sharing settings of an album will also apply to any sub-albums inside, this might not be what you want. When viewing photos you can step only through the pictures in the current album, there will be no indication that a sub-album is available.

That said, albums inside albums will show slide shows of their photos on their tiles – charming to say the least.

Creating an Album

You create an album in SkyDrive that is located in the current album of folder. See Photos and Albums in the New SkyDrive – uploading for details on creating an album and uploading photos.

Moving and Copying Photos

Moving photos from one album to another in SkyDrive is fairly easy for one photo. Unfortunately, there is no way to select multiple photos to be moved, so the procedure has to be repeated. Click on a photo you wish to move, it will be shown large. If you don’t see the info pane on the right, click on the left-pointing arrow in the upper right. In the info pane are a number of links. To move a photo to another album, click Move. If you wish to copy a photo to another album, so that you will have the photo in the current album as well as in the destination album, click Copy. The remainder of the procedure is the same for moving or copying. The next page presents a list of all the folders and albums on your SkyDrive. Click on the destination album. If that album contains more albums, you will see them on the next page.

Note the choices: Move this file into …, New Album, and if there are additional albums they will also be shown. You can create a new album at this step. Click the Move this file … (or Copy this file …) when the desired album name is shown. After a short delay, while the action is performed, the destination album will be opened.

Above the thumbnails you can see a message describing the action just performed. You can also see the path of the current album. Click on the a album name in the path or SkyDrive to get to another album.

Move an Album

You can move albums around just like photos. In album view, when thumbnails or the contents list are displayed, the info pane offers a Move command. This works just like the move process for a photo, except that the entire album can be moved to another album. You cannot copy an album – something not normally needed anyway.

NOTE: This is not available for primary albums, only for albums inside albums.

Rename an Album

Note that there is also a Rename command to change the name of an album.

Delete a Photo

When a photo is displayed by itself, the info pane also offers a Delete command. This works just as you would expect.  A delete confirmation is required, there will be a message dialog about like shown here. It advises that you are about to permanently delete an item from your SkyDrive and you have the option to click OK or Cancel.

Delete an Album

When in album view showing thumbnails there is not a delete command option in the info pane. I have wondered if this is intentional or an oversight. The procedure for deleting an album requires an couple of additional steps. Above the thumbnails in the upper right area, there are a couple of icons, one offers Thumbnail view, the other Details view. Click the Details view icon. You are now presented with a list of the contents of the present album (or SkyDrive). Move the pointer to  the album that you wish to delete. While the pointer is on the item line, to the right of the entry there is a “Show information” icon, . Click this icon. The info panel will provide information for this album and also include a Delete command.

Arrange photos

You may wish to arrange the photos into a particular order. In SkyDrive is is easily accomplished. Any time you are in an album the info pane includes an Arrange photos command. If you have Silverlight installed and are using the 32-bit Internet Explorer or another browser, a very neat drag-and-drop method is available.

With the pointer over the thumbnail you wish to relocate, just press down on the left mouse button and drag the thumbnail to the desired location. Note how the thumbnails move apart to make room for the newcomer. The thumbnail in the original position will fade out.

There is another method. It is the only one with 64-bit Internet Explorer or if Silverlight is not installed. It may also be the only method by the time you read this, as continuing changes to SkyDrive are released.

You can also bring up this alternate method by clicking “standard arrange photos page”. This method may seem complicated at first view. Each thumbnail has a number and you need to renumber the order. It is easier that it appears.

The instructions are to number the photos in the order you’d like them to appear in your album. Note the number of the photo where you want to place another photo. Then replace the number in the number box of the photo to be moved – it is a plain text box, you know how to replace and type text. In the illustration here, I want photo 6 in place of photo 5. So I enter 5 in the box of photo 6. Press Enter and the photo instantly is relocated and the thumbnails are renumbered. The procedure is not as pleasant as drag-and-drop, but just about as fast.

After the thumbnails are in the order you like, click Save.

SkyDrive is a bit different in the way things work, but after some practice you will be proficient in organizing your photos so you can show them proudly.

 

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

Technorati Tags: SkyDrive in HTLM5,Windows Live SkyDrive,organize photos,move photos,copy photos,move album,delete photos,delete album,arrange photos,re-arrange photos,digital photos,Photo Gallery,Windows Live Photo Gallery