Listen to the Podcast
10 Dec 2021 - Podcast #772 - (17:40)
It's Like NPR on the Web
If you find the information TechByter Worldwide provides useful or interesting, please consider a contribution.
If you find the information TechByter Worldwide provides useful or interesting, please consider a contribution.
Concurrent with Adobe Max, users of the company's photo apps received updates that include some dramatic improvements. Photoshop, Bridge, Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Lightroom Classic are the components of the Photography plan that costs $120 per year.
Let's take a look at some of the new features in each of the components.
An improvement to Object Selections, called Object Finder, automates and greatly enhances Photoshop's selection tool set. Selections are essential for masks. The first attempt, many years ago was called the Magic Wand Selection Tool, but many users referred to it as the Tragic Wand. That was unfair because it was remarkable for the time, but times change.
Selection options have improved a lot and Object Finder pushes the technology to the point that it's almost perfect. Using Sensei artificial intelligence, this year's refinements reduce manual selection time and sometimes eliminate it entirely.
Click any small image for a full-size view. To dismiss the larger image, press ESC or tap outside the image.
Consider an image of a small boy on a stroller with handle bars and assume that my goal is to remove the busy background with a sidewalk, grass, a vehicle, and the stroller's umbrella. Doing this with only the manual selection tools would take at least an hour. But if I start with the Object Selection Tool and ensure that Object Finder is selected, the process will be much faster.
The selection is surprisingly accurate, nearly perfect on the subject, with just a few bits that will need to be fixed manually. After I clicked Object Selection, Sensei took about 30 seconds to analyze the image. When I applied a mask without any manual work, I saw that part of the (2) stroller handle had been included along with (2) some of the car in the background and a (3) bit of the stroller. Additionally, there was some (4) color fringing and (5) a bit of the lawn was included between his body and his arm.
It took about five minutes for me to manually edit those few bits and reduce the color fringing. The image is now about 95% done. I added a background that's based on a color in the coat. This would be acceptable for most uses, but some minor edge touch-ups on the leg would be helpful.
Overall, this is a big win for Photoshop users.
Neural Filters should all be considered as beta. When they work, the results can be amazingly good; when they don't..... Well. Not so good.
New this time around is one that colorizes old black and white images. It can be effective as I found when I selected an image of a tiny parade in a tiny town. The photo was taken in 1965 or 1966. Several profiles are available that are intended to give the filter a clue about how strong you want the colorization to be. In addition to that, there are controls for strength and saturation.
These controls have a lot more effect than you might expect. I prefer the more subtle coloration, but the stronger coloring could be useful for some images.
There are lots of other new or improved features in Photoshop. For more details, take a look at Adobe's blog post on Photoshop 2022.
Lightroom and Lightroom Classic have similar names and increasingly similar features, but Lightroom Classic is the more powerful of the two. Lightroom is the more portable of the two. The older Lightroom Classic runs on desktop computers and is comfortable managing tens of thousands of images, or more. Lightroom is the newer application that's intended for use on desktop computers, tablets, and phones.
Changes made to photos in Lightroom are replicated to the web so they're accessible on any device that runs the app.
Masking has been improved in both Lightroom versions to closely match what's available in Photoshop. To test this, I started with a 1994 photo of a seagull in Seattle. Masking options include the previous choices (brush, linear, and radial) and several new choices: Select Subject, Select Sky, Color Range, Luminance Range, and Depth Range.
I selected (1) Masking and then specified Subject. This image has a clearly distinguished subject, so (2) the selection was perfect. I then decreased exposure slightly, and (3) added a bit of texture, clarity, and dehazing to bring out more detail in the gull.
This image was captured on film 27 years ago and I scanned the negative in early November. Film doesn't have the dynamic range that digital sensors do, so some of the highlights in the feathers are blown out and are not recoverable. Still, the result is a significant improvement.
Lightroom offers the same selection options as Lightroom Classic, so I decided to try it with a cityscape photograph that was taken early in the Covid pandemic. Hence the nearly empty street.
The sky is an attractive blue, but perhaps I'd like to try an outer-space, alien world look. That turned out to be quite easy. Lightroom selected the sky quickly and accurately in just a few seconds. I then boosted the saturation a bit and shifted the hue about 60 degrees. The result is an unearthly purple sky. The entire process took less than a minute.
Crop Overlays, Community Remix, and Lightroom Academy are new features in Lightroom that can help photographers improve their skills.
Nearly every photo can be improved by cropping even if you carefully compose in the camera. The camera's aspect ratio might not be the best choice for any particular image. Both the Mac Windows versions of Lightroom offer overlays that help users visualize common cropping techniques such as the rule of thirds, golden ratio, and golden spiral.
Community Remix lets users share an image to see how other Lightroom users would edit it and view photos shared by others and show how you might edit them. Those who are new to photo editing could learn from seeing others' techniques. Community Remix is available on both Windows and Mac versions of Lightroom, but not Lightroom Classic. By keeping the process somewhat private, Adobe avoids problems with trolls and other annoyances.
Adobe has significantly improved online training and educational options. Lightroom Academy is free, and anybody can use it — even if you don't use Adobe's software. Currently nearly 20 lessons are present and they cover basics. Adobe promises to add more soon. The lessons use images from Lightroom photographers and students can work with interactive controls as they follow along on the lessons.
Everybody needs a backup plan, but not everybody has one. AOMEI's Backupper application is one of several free backup programs, but it does more than just perform backups.
Click any small image for a full-size view. To dismiss the larger image, press ESC or tap outside the image.
The free version has some limitations that mainly cost additional time during backups, but even the free version has useful additional features such as disk cloning. The $50 paid version offers free unlimited updates and technical support. The company frequently offers discounts that make it possible to buy the paid versions of Backupper and Partition Assistant for the cost of just one of the applications.
Although the free version does include a clone option, the paid version adds system cloning, and the ability to adjust partition size, add unused space, and clone a dynamic disk volume.
Backupper supports all versions of Windows from XP to Windows 11, as well as all disk formats that can be used with any of those Windows versions. It can also back up files, folders, and systems to standard hard disks, solid-state disks, external disks, RAID systems, and network attached storage devices.
Backups can be scheduled based on time or specific events. Backups can include any combination of files, folders, partitions, disks, and systems.
That's what you would expect any backup application to do, but Backupper also can be used for cloning disks when you replace the computer's primary disk with a larger or faster unit.
AOMEI Backupper's downloadable PDF documentation covers all use cases in a relatively compact 80 pages. Unfortunately, it's not always easy to read because the document was translated from Chinese to English by someone who is clearly not a native speaker of English. If you get stuck, support is provided with online forums and by email.
The free version is easy to use and has features that will appeal to home users. To learn more, visit the AOMEI website.
Two primary types of testing exist for Covid, one fast and more or less accurate and one slow but highly accurate. Health insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid cover the full cost of tests, but those without insurance and those who want an at-home option will have to obtain a testing kit. Some organizations provide them for free, and costs are dropping even if you have to buy a kit.
Rapid tests usually provide results within hours, or even minutes if administered at home. They don’t need to be analyzed by a laboratory specialist. These are usually antigen tests. The CDC no longer uses “rapid” to describe antigen tests because laboratory-based antigen tests are also approved.
PCR tests are almost always more accurate than rapid tests and they are estimated to provide correct results 97.2% of the time according to research by the Centers for Disease Control in January 2021. PCR stands for polymerase (puh-LIM-er-ace) chain reaction. These are molecular tests. They diagnose Covid-19 by detecting genetic material of the coronavirus. PCR tests are considered the gold standard for diagnosis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Antibody tests look for antibodies created by the immune system. The CDC's research said that the antibody tests are correct between about 85% and 92% of the time. "Correct" means that the test doesn't return a false positive if the person being tested is not infected and that it does not return a false negative if the person being tested is infected. Later research by the CDC suggests that the rapid tests perform better than they were thought to almost a year ago. The rapid tests rarely give a false positive result, but false negatives are somewhat common:
Because rapid tests can be performed nearly anywhere and provide results in minutes, they are commonly used at home, a doctor’s office, a pharmacy, a school clinic, a long-term care facility, an airport, and drive-through testing sites.
Click any small image for a full-size view. To dismiss the larger image, press ESC or tap outside the image.
During the test, a cotton swab is inserted into the nose, throat, or both to collect mucus and cells. This can be done by a medical professional, by a family member, or even by the person being tested. The sample is then placed on a strip that changes color if the test is positive for Covid-19. They require more of the virus in the sample to report an accurate positive result.
Those who want to use a rapid test at home will find kits priced at $15 to $25 per test, but kits by IHealth Labs are available for $7 per test. No prescription is needed, so they're available over-the-counter in some drug stores are are eligible for purchase under a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) for people whose employer offers FSA. The tests can also be purchased online. IHealth claims 81-98% accuracy for positive tests and 93-96% accuracy for negative tests.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for over the counter (OTC) sale of IHealth's Covid‐19 Antigen Rapid Test kits in November. The tests come in packages of two test kits because the best accuracy requires two tests over a maximum of three days with at least 24 hours, and no more than 48 hours, between tests.
When you look at online reviews, you probably know that some of them are fakes. But how many, and which ones? The short answer is that it's bad and getting worse.
A company named Fakespot has developed artificial intelligence that can help users identify fake online reviews and sellers. Their analysis shows that nearly 31% of the online consumer reviews analyzed in 2020 were fraudulent. Fakespot analyses reviews and comments on Amazon, Walmart, BestBuy, EBay, and Sephora websites, and on more than two million active e-commerce websites built on Shopify. The trend has been upward since 2018.
Fakespot says reviews examined on Amazon, Walmart, and BestBuy websites — representing half of all US online retail sales volume — Walmart had the most unreliable reviews and Best Buy had the most reliable reviews. Additionally, Amazon shopping categories with the highest rates of fake reviews were women's apparel, health & personal care, cosmetics, pet supplies, and wireless earbud headphones.
You can read Fakespot's full report on the company's website.
Maybe you've heard of Squid Game. Maybe not. The Netflix show from South Korea is a big hit. Big enough that even I have heard of it even though I've not seen it. Scammers have noticed.
Kaspersky Labs says several dozen malicious files with Squid Game in their names are circulating on the web. Most were simple Trojan downloaders that installed other malicious programs. But "simple" doesn't mean "easy to fix". The malware might encrypt your files. It might harvest user names, passwords, and addresses when you enter them.
Some of the malicious apps have shown up in app stores "under the guise of other popular applications, games and books," according to Kaspersky. "The Squid Game becoming a new hit lure was just a question of time," Kaspersky security expert Anton Ivanov said. Cybercriminals know what's popular, what's trending, and what worries people and target their attacks to appeal. Ivanov says users must "check the authenticity of websites when looking for a source to stream the show or to buy some merch[andise]."
Near the end of 2001, I was thinking about big trade shows such as PC Expo and Comdex. I was cautiously optimistic and said Trade shows appear to be wounded, but it looks like they'll survive — even shows in New York City. Attendance had been down at Comdex. PC Expo was big in 2001, though, because it was well before the 11 September attacks.
Attendance at the November Comdex show in Las Vegas was down about 40% because of terrorism jitters and the ongoing dot-com crash. I wrote that attendance was close to 100,000 and one entire floor was unoccupied for the first time in years. The November PhotoPlus Expo at Javits Center was higher than expected.
As it turned out, the final Comdex show was in 2003, its 24th year. PC Expo became a part of TechXNY, but it no longer exists. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) continues, but the big German computer Expo, CeBIT, finally gave up after holding on until 2018.