How To Grab Image From QuickTime

This is very easy and uses only software included with Mac OS X.

1. At required place in movie select Edit -> Copy.

2. Open Preview and select File -> New from Clipboard

 3. The photo should now open in Preview where you can save it as JPG, PNG, PDF or TIFF.

You can use Preview to edit the photo before saving if you wish, or just load it into your photo editor of choice.

Of course as long as the photo editor has similar feature for creating photo from clipboard you can skip Preview and create in that editor. All my photos are first edited in Lightroom CC and I import the photo saved from Preview into this.

Hello Fujifilm X-T1

Having said goodbye to Nikon in Feb 2014 and welcome to Sony NEX6 I have just changed again.

Now the NEX 6 served me well for 18 months, including 6 weeks travelling around Australia. I also took a Sony RX-100 II, which I still have and use all the time.

I have a lifelong interests in birds and visit the local hides occasionally where I take a few photos once I get over the embarrisment of my kit being so puny compared to the big boys with their long Canons.  To this end I purchased a Sony A65 and added the Sony 55-300mm lens.

The kit performed OK but I was unsure whether it was wise to invest heavily into Sony A-mount and it still did not focus and track that well

The at my local LCE shop in Worcester I got my hands on an Olympus OM-10 and thought "this is the one for me"! Got so close to buying it but decided to wait until the Birmingham NEC Photos  Show in March. So I began selling Sony kit and saved my money.

Then I got to read and handle the Fujifilm X-T1, love at first sight. Reminded me so much of my Nikon SLRs in the old film days.

So now I am happy owner of Fujifilm X-T1 with 18-55 XR 2.8-4, 55-200 XR f3.5-4.5 and 60XR f2.8 Macro. 

However still not the best kit for birding, or indeed movies, so now I am considering complementing this kit with Canon 70D, or maybe 760D or even used 7D but will wait until the late June firmware release from Fuji which has some interesting updates to the AF especially for tracking and speed.

Goodbye Nikon

The time has finally arrived when I have sold my Nikon D7000 based kit and moved over to Sony Nex-6.

A little more complicated as at first I was going to upgrade my Panasonic GX-1 to GX-7 ready for forthcoming trip to Australia. GX-1 had been good although it's LCD panel had to be replaced after 14 months. Now give Panasonic their due, this had been done free of charge although outside guarantee period but this was my 3rd Panasonic camera and the second to have developed a fault.

I was also a bit disappointed at quality of their 70-200mm lens at 200mm. It turned out cheaper for me to swap GX1 plus two lenses for Sony Nex-6 and their equivalent 2 lens, 16-45 and 50-200mm, the upgrading to GX-7, no doubt due in part to the, then unknown, imminent release of Alpha 600 to replace Nex-6.

 

I still think it was a good move.

 

Posted with Blogsy

How to find iMovie Finalized Movie Files

Finalizing iMovie Files

IMovie is a great program for its cost. Typical Apple software, you have to prod and probe to find out how it works and you do not have to worry how it stores files on your disk. Well I do worry.

I was testing out the movie capabilities of my new indulgence, a Nikon D7000, by filming my two grand daughters. All went well, uploaded video to YouTube for rest of the family to see my master piece and then decided to Finalize project, an option in the File menu. This builds movies of various sizes so that if in the future if you use Share you will not have to wait for the movie project to be rendered.

I thought these pre-built movies could also be useful for just showing on my iMac without having to start iMovie, but where were they.

Locating the files.

The answer can be found in Apple Support pages, here is the contribution by John Cogdell Adelaide, Australia.

So following these instructions i went to Finder and found my iMovie projects.

Right-clicked on project and chose 

Show Package Contents

Still not sure what this "Package" is all about but I think of it as a sort of hidden Zip file.

And hey-presto here are my various size versions of the movie. If I click on any of these they run independent of iMovie using your default player. Alternatively right click on movie and use Open With QuickTime.

I made an alias for the 1028HD version, and moved the alias onto my desktop, renamed it with a meaningful name and now I just click this and the movie starts.

Aperture and iPhoto - using multiple external editors.

Introduction

My main software in editing and cataloging my photos is Aperture. I find that I can do a lot of the editing right there in Aperture but occasionally I want to use another editor.The editors I occasionally use are

PhotoShop Elements

When I want to simulate HDR or I want to extract parts of the image or paste additions, or use graduated filters.

Pixelmator

I keep trying this program but usually end up going back to PSE.

Snapseed

Great application when you want to give that flat looking photo a lift. Quick and can give amazing results.

Preview

Great when you want to quickly annotate a photo, adding say text and arrows. I added this to list after I took the following screen shots.

The irritation

Aperture and iPhoto only let you specify one external editor. This you do in the Preferences.

Switching Editors

So when you want to change it form say PhotoShop Elements to Snapseed you have to navigate to your Applications folder and then scroll through files until you find the file you want.

To ease this process I created a folder within Applications called Aperture Editors which I then copied onto my Favourites section of the Finder. Next create aliases for your editors and move them into the newly created Aperture Editors so when switching between editors they are easily found.

Aperture to PSE, TIF does not work but TIFF OK!

Aperture to PSE, TIF or TIFF.

In Aperture you can specify an external editor which you can use in place of the standard Aperture editor. In my case I currently use PSE (PhotoShop Elements) and I have set the option to use TIFF.

When the external editor is selected for a particular file, a duplicate is made before it is opened in PSE. After editing in PSE the file is saved and replaces the duplicated photo.

TIF or TIFF

Although TIFF is chosen as the type when the file is saved PSE opts to use TIF for its extension (1 F not 2 F's) and this causes a new file to be created and so Aperture does not recognise it as the photo it duplicated and so the changes are not seen. The solution is simple, just add the extra f to TIF before you save the file.

Red Admirals on last day of September

On the last day of September I was pleased to capture this fine Red Admiral butterfly in my Worcestershire garden.

Photo Details
Nikon D90 with Sigma 105mm f2.8 Macro Lens
SB900 Flash