Digital Innovations

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Digital Innovations
Digital Imaging: The Paradigm Shift Continues: A Thousand ASCII Character Is Worth...
Joe Farace  |  Apr 07, 2014  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2014
New & Updated Photoshop Actions
Remember the ASCII-art dot-matrix photos that were popular in the 1980s? PanosFX’s free ASCII-art action recreates the effect by producing images pieced together from ASCII characters. The set contains five actions that let you produce not only the classic ASCII-art effect but four modern variations as well, including Gray, Color, Color tiles, and Color tubes. The free Paperworks actions were created by Pit Hermann and let you make papercraft projects. His Pencil Stand actions let you produce (surprise) pencil stands with your photos printed on them. There’s also a set of Advent Calendar actions and Panos Efstathiadis has bundled his Paper Cube actions that let you make paper cubes with images printed on them. Mac OS and Windows versions work with Photoshop CS4 and later as well as Photoshop Elements 11 or later.
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Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations: Computers And Digital Imaging In Perspective
Joe Farace  |  Apr 01, 2000

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers," Thomas Watson, chairman IBM, 1943

Tom Watson's statement shows that predicting the future of computing is more a matter of...

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Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations: Entering The Millennium
Joe Farace  |  Jan 01, 1998

Happy New Year! I'll leave to others to debate whether or not the next millennium actually begins at midnight December 31, 1999 or on December 31, 2000. For digital imagers, the new millennium is already here. It wasn't all that long ago that a...

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Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations: The Time Machine; Photography Has The Power To Freeze Time
Joe Farace  |  Feb 01, 2005

All Photos © 2004, Joe Farace, All Rights Reserved

"Adapt or perish, now as ever, in nature's inexorable imperative."--H.G. Wells, 1866-1946

Your digital camera is a time machine that lets you show how the people and places look at this particular point in time. Many people think they need to travel to exotic locations in order to make great...

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Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations: What A Tangled Web We Weave
Joe Farace  |  Sep 01, 2000

"What we are seeing now is the first wave of changes in our industry in which computers, telecommunications, and entertainment will merge"--Joe Farace, February, 1985

When I wrote the above statement...

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Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations
"Real" Rebels, Exclusive Lenses, And More
Thoughts En Route And When Returning From Japan
Joe Farace  |  Feb 01, 2004

Last month, this column was about software; this month the focus is on hardware. I'm writing this on a Boeing 777 as it flies across the Pacific Ocean toward Japan and will complete it on the way back. In between I'll visit representatives of...

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Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations
A Few Digital Rules Of Thumb
Joe Farace  |  May 01, 2000

Digital Innovations

"640K ought to be enough for anybody," Bill Gates, 1981

I'm often asked by readers about the specifications for the "ideal digital...

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Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations
A Myth Is As Good As A Mile
Wash And Wear Memory Cards
Joe Farace  |  Sep 01, 2003

"It takes a licking and keeps on ticking."--John Cameron Swayze on Timex

A story oft told in photofinishing circles and one that is, perhaps, apocryphal goes like this: A customer...

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Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations
A Stroll Down Memory Lane
More Formats, Smaller Cards, Bigger Capacity To Come
Joe Farace  |  Apr 01, 2003

Digital Innovations

"The nicest thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from."--Ken Olsen, founder of DEC

While it...

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Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations
All The Colors Of The Rainbow
Joe Farace  |  Jan 01, 2001

"It has taken me many years as an active image-maker to fully embrace the idea that the entire photographic process is an act of metamorphosis." --Jerry Uelsmann

If you shoot a...

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Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations
Analog Filters In A Digital World; Only The Strong Survive
Joe Farace  |  Nov 01, 2005

"I always have a quotation for everything, it saves original thinking."
--Dorothy L. Sayers

Color filters for photography are often identified by their Wratten numbers, but who is this Wratten guy? Wratten & Wainwright made photo materials for commercial printing and by 1909 had established the Wratten system and published The Photography...

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Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations
Back To The Future
Joe Farace  |  Mar 01, 2003

Digital Innovations

"Are you telling me you built a time machine out of a DeLorean?...The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style."--Back To...

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Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations
Be Careful What You Wish For
What I Want And Don't Want In My Next Digicam!
Joe Farace  |  Oct 01, 2004

Photos © 2004, Joe Farace, All Rights Reserved

"You live and learn. At any rate, you live."--the late Douglas Adams

In last year's Shutterbug's Photography Buyer's Guide (do...

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Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations
Black & White And Infrared All Over; Don’t Overlook Your Digicam’s IR Capability
Joe Farace  |  Jul 01, 2005

"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light except bad news, which obeys its own special laws."--Douglas Adams

A digicam's infrared capability is a feature that's sometimes overlooked when cameras are reviewed in Shutterbug and other publications. Lest you think digital IR capture is an esoteric pursuit, a Google search turned up...

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Digital Innovations
Digital Innovations
Black And White And Read All Over
Joe Farace  |  Aug 01, 2003

Digital Innovations

"Everything looks worse in black and white..."--Paul Simon's Kodachrome

I think Paul Simon is wrong, but...

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