It is the right time to prepare your Christmas gifts and the coming new year with my photographic prints or my posters (or even the new year’s cards). And it will help me maintain the YLovePhoto web site. But, I want to extend this to a gift for you. You will be able to use the special code that will unlock a special magic voucher:

15% of discount
with the code:

Yves Roumazeilles – The catalog of photos and prints

Métro, collages, déchirures by Yves Roumazeilles	Big cats of Africa by Yves Roumazeilles

RedBubble is an online art gallery and arts community. Browse the growing collection of art at http://www.redbubble.com

photo credit: 005 MARCO

• 1 audience: Be sure that the subject is right for your public (your kids will get all the attention of your parents and in-laws, but not from your office colleagues or friends).
• 1 subject: Don’t cover everything you can and stay concentrated onto only one theme per slide show.
• Be short: It’s always easier said than done, but you must absolutely limit yourself; You will be forced to choose only your BEST pictures, that’s a good thing; I already heard people say that a good slide show should not go over 15 or 20 photos, NEVER do more than 100 images.
• 1 story: To maintain attention, nothing is better than a story to tell or a scenario to follow; Leaving the straight path may be worth another slide show… another time.
• 1 music score: Do not select more than 1 musical style (If you want more, it is probably because you are tempted by more than 1 theme; Don’t go there).

Small advice for vertical pictures: Since the display screen will nearly always e horizontal, you can put two vertical/portrait pictures side-by-side to use all the surface.

• 1 format: All the pictures must be of the same format (JPEG, 8-bit, sRGB) and of the same size (No more than 1920 pixels width and 1080 pixels height) to better adapt to the projection tool.
• 1 copy: The pictures that you will show may be lost or deleted; Always show a copy on a small mobile device like a USB thumb-drive (don’t use the original files, from the original disk drive used for their archiving).
• Test it: Before starting, you’d better fully test the slide show with a simple viewer like Windows Picture Viewer or Mac Preview; This is rough, but it does the job and you don’t want to discover that nothing working front of your fan club.

With this, I can’t guarantee success, but I can tell that your slide show will go smoothly and your pictures will be showing their best colors.

It is no longer possible to list all the web sites that offer you the possibility to assemble a photo collage in a form that is appreciated by so many photographers despite its simplicity. Many web sites are characterized by the needed payments they request, but the idea has come a long way and what could be easily done with scissors and a glue stick, is now available on a computer near you. So, here are just two ideas I liked.

• PhotoVisi offers about the usual services with the main difference that you can freely download the image file in 1600×1200 pixels.
• ShapeCollage is letting your imagination roam freely with its huge choice of templates taking the form of nearly anything and because it is a free download software.

If, after that, you do not have ideas for your next photos, I’ll resign…

Closr solves this conundrum by providing you a way to upload your image to their web site. In return, you get a ready-to-install widget for your web site and all your friends will be able to zoom in or zoom out their hearts out.

Test the service with this panorama image I shot in the Masai Mara National Park in Southern Kenya in October 2008. You will have no difficulty finding the gnus (wildebeests) assembling themselves in a huge collection in preparation of the Great Migration crossing of the Mara river.

By the way: The Closr web site does not currently work with Opera v10, but Firefox is OK.

Several other products or in-development technologies also exist, like Gazopa (similar image search) or Imprezzeo (similarity search technology (not service, just a demo right now) or Picsout. But similarity-search is currently gaining speed.

Even if it is not always as precise as TinEye, it may be interesting when looking for a theme-based or form-based picture, rather than only the near-exact copy of an original image. That is what Google and Live Search are now offering or preparing.

• On Live Search Images, you can hover your mouse over any image and click the “show similar images” button.



• More experimental, the Google Labs have started to present a Similar Search Engine (in English only)



• Less experimental, but less useful in its current too crude implementation, the normal Google image search now allows to select image colours you would like to see dominating the search results. You can get only blue images of the Eiffel Tower (below). But others did it better (YotoPhoto -now closed, Flickr ColrPickr or Multicolr Search Lab -only in Flickr demo).

Technology is evolving. It’s up to us to create the corresponding uses.

PhotoPerfect Express is a freeware version of the $59.99 PhotoPerfect suite from Arcadia Software.

What I like most: It does not do much, but it’s what 90% of us need to start with an image (first optimization and enhancement) and it does it well, easily and precisely.

MobaPhoto concentrates on a few actions (resize, crop or correct red-eyes) before preparing a photo gallery for your web site. Everything is geared toward batch processing (all images are mashed up in a row).

Even more interesting, Matt opened a Wildlife Photography Competition around a simple theme but with the added difficulty of a target rarely tried for wildlife photography: Portrait.

You can enter your participation (no more than 3 pictures) using this form. Your chance to win an Olympus SP-570UZ photo camera.

For me, it will obvioulsy be the discovery of this Paris subway station (Charles-Michel) just a flight of stairs down from my own Paris flat. RATP decided to renovate it seriously and totally removed all coverings revealing the previous walls complete with 30-year-old markings, pannels and signs. I was there in the middle of a little croud going from one place to the next shooting like a demented man, and there was another photographer doing the same a few meters from me. We did not even exchange a word, but shared a very intense shooting moment under the eyes of Parisian subway users who did not want to see us.

I made a 2009 calendar out of it. Click on the calendar below to see the low resolution PDF version of the calendar.

To order, plase, purchase a RedBubble Gift Certificate of 19.50€ (or equivalent) then bubblemail me the gift certificate code with your delivery address.

Delivery expected within approximately 10-17 days.

What you’ll like even more is that they reduced the shipping costs to NOTHING for a week. They are celebrating their shipment of 100,000 photo/art masterpieces around the world. At this moment, they decided to offer one week of free shipping. You just have to use the following coupon code when checking out: ‘100000masterpieces’

PS: The promotion will expire at 2359 on 30 October (GMT). Just in time to prepare your gifts for Christmas or for your 2009 new year’s cards.

Buy my photos at RedBubble

• Cards,
• Matted Prints,
• Laminated Prints (between shiny plastic sheets),
• Prints mounted on hard support,
• Canvas Prints,
• Framed Prints

I just found a good article about these software tools on Linux Photography. I did not test the tool set, but it looks damn interesting for all Linux photo users. A must-try!

Web full service

• Setting it up is effortless (think about opening an account in Flickr). Everything is ready now.
• This is not your site, this is everybody’s site.
• But, it is so easy to share, exchange, build a group or a network.
• Some of these web sites/services are very thorough but the neighboroud may be covering a range from “I dumped all my old photos out of my Flash memory card” (usually quite uninteresting if you don’t know the kid in the bath), to “I’ll show you only the best of the best” (much better, much more gratifying neighbours like on RedBubble).
• Some of these sites may include a complement of specialized services (e.g. editing, printing, selling; Like on RedBubble).

Web site made out of a photo gallery (like a SimpleViewer Flash script, or similar)

• The web site is naturally more personal (important if you want to look like a pro)
• The web site is to be built. Even with standard/free scripts available, there will be some work to do. But its worth it.
• You will need to find a hosting service (OVH, etc.) but if you already have a blog or web site, this may be only an extension of it.

Personally, I am very found of RedBubble because the community is very active, very participative. Furthermore, there is nearly no effort to start working with them (even if I already published a large number of image on my personal web site).

Even more important, I feel that it is a very good complement in the sense that it allows an easy sale of the work to outsiders. The RedBubble team handles the sales process and delivers the posters, cards, prints, calendars, while protecting my data files and ensuring that I receive my share of the sale price.

Posters, cards, prints, etc.

You will also notice that the images/photos presented there by others are of the utmost quality and wandering there produces a real aesthetic pleasure.

Some useful sources for additional information:

• How To Put Your Photos On The Web
• 30 Scripts For Galleries, Slideshows and Lightboxes
• Tom’s Guide : partagez vos photos sur Internet (in French).
• Aube Nature gives us les meilleurs scripts de galerie photo (the best photo gallery scripts, in French). In Flash, in PHP, integrated or not. JSGallery, (E)2, Phormer, ZenPhoto, PixelPost.

Any photographer is concerned about the possibility of seeing his/her images taken from his/her web site and used elsewhere. Usually, it is impossible to find the copies, even if you know your images well. TinEye will find copies of your image/photo, even if it is squeezed, enlarged, cropped, with an added watermark, etc. It is even able to find near matches (photos that look a bit like yours and could be heavily modified copies or plagiarism).

You can ask it to use an uploaded JPG bitmap or direct it to the image on the web.

Check the “cool searches” they use as examples and then try with your own images. Of course, it does not have indexed all the Internet and (I am sorry to say it so bluntly) your photos may not have been deemed worth copying. But I tried it on several of my own photos and it is clear that it will find all kinds of borrowed photos on theweb.

Impressive!