OverexpOsure ^pro

I did notice this some time back but seem to have forgotten about it again. Now I stumbled over it again and since I should actually be doing something else I'll procrastinate and write about it shortly.

It seems that blog posts display a different license for visitors and members. I don't think this is on purpose. I really believe it is a bug - and it needs to be fixed.

Since I had posted my first thoughts on how to remove "sensitive" meta data from files before uploading them back in February, I have modified the command a little since and made it a permanent alias so it is easier to execute.

To break with my usual habit of posting kind of "incoherent" pictures - a "problem" I will address in another post - I just uploaded a package of 51 "themed" shots from a Sunday's walk in a public park on the outskirts of Berlin - the "Britzer Garden".

They also sort of break with my usual "style" of geometric and technical motives since they are all of a very natural quality - in a literal sense. :)

I do hope that this massive bombardment does not result in annoyance or disinterest.
So consider this a "test" of your power of concentration. ;)

I might also reorder the pictures in the respective album contrary to the date-ordered state in the photostream to create some sort of dramaturgy.

Hopefully you will like some of the shots and maybe they are able to convey a sort of spring fever.

P.S.: If you feel like tagging some of the pictures, I'd be glad for the help :)
P.P.S.: Thank you, Josie!!

Recently I was surprised to find a notification in my Ipernity Mailbox saying I had been granted administrative privileges for one of the groups I was a member of.
Weird. Even weirder it was a group I wasn't really that active in.

Still wondering about this I was surprised again by my mailbox. I found half a dozen messages informing me about new members to that specific group.
I deleted them for reasons of rather low level of importance to me only to find another few after doing so.

I decided to check what responsibilities arose from the administrator position.

I realised that I could turn off such notifications but generally I didn't feel like being an administrator for that specific group at all.
So I went looking for how to de-administrate myself.
First thing I found was that apart from me the group had like 30 more administrators. Surprising.
I assume most of them must have been as surprised as myself when they got to know about their new position.

The problem is: anyone with administrative privileges in a group seems to be able to promote any member to be an administrator as well - without the consent of that specific person.

The next problem is: you cannot renounce your status as administrator - at least as far as I found. Please correct me if I am wrong here.
The only way to get rid of that position I found was to quit the group (while keeping my documents in it) and then rejoin it as a regular member. The administrator status does not seem to remain through that process.

I therefore urgently ask the Ipernity Team to overhaul the Group Administration function to at least include the following:

• need for a group member to ratify his promotion to an administrator
• option to dismiss one's administrator status - for my sake only if there is another administrator available

Otherwise joining a group could easily lead to a responsibility you did not choose.

Considering the recent departure of members here at Ipernity and the mentioning of group administration as (at least) a collateral damage I think this may be considered urgent.

10.000+ visits - just a number but still: thanks to everyone who has shown some interest in my pictures or posts (or both).

I'm really glad that I have the opportunity to share some of my ideas and "art" here.
I'm just as glad to get to see your works - as inspiration as well as for pure enjoyment. I have found there are many really extremely talented people around at Ipernity and I am always curious to see what I will stumble upon next.

Therefore: everyone, keep up your great work and if you feel like it pay me a visit once in a while.

I am not a fervent advocate of the strictest copyright possible, I even am a great supporter of the Creative Commons Initiative, since I do believe that we need to rethink the concept of fierce limits for creative work - given the possibilities of world-wide networking, publishing and cooperation.
I think that - as CC aims to do - simplifying the possibilities of utilizing all the works in this immense pool, that the net provides, will result in a much richer creative cultural sphere.

I do not vote for creators to dismiss their rights over their work, not at all. I instead call for authors to think about enabling certain uses of their works without the need to ask them for permission each and every time.
Sometimes this may be a good idea, sometimes not. Sometimes you want to loosen some of your rights, sometimes you want to keep them all tight.

In any case I find it self-evident that, whatever an author chooses to do with his creative opus, this decision should be respected.
If he allows his work to be used on a permissive basis, even better.
At all events the least thing that anyone that (re)uses alien works, is to give credit to the original creator - a matter of course in an academic environment for example. To me it is also a sign of respect.
This is also the only prerequisite for the most liberal of the Creative Commons licenses: BY - By Attribution

This is also a requirement of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), the license that is used by the Wikipedia project. (To finally get to the point)

Recently I have come across several accounts here at Ipernity that use texts from the Wikipedia to "subtitle" their photos. I won't name them.
In hardly any case there is any sign at all to be found, where these texts originate from.
There is no mentioning of "Wikipedia", the authors of this text let alone a link back to the original article.

Despite what I have written in the introduction: this is indeed a copyright infringement.

Every page of the Wikipedia has the following line printed on the bottom:
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

It is easy to figure out what simple restrictions apply, when you want to reuse content from the Wikipedia:
Text in Wikipedia [...] can therefore be reused only if you release any derived work under the GFDL. This requires that, among other things, you attribute the authors and allow others to freely copy your work. [...] Small quotations of Wikipedia content, with its source attributed, may be permissible under the "fair use" clause of U.S. copyright law.
(Copyright FAQ)

That is a first summarized hint on what you need to consider when you want to use content from the Wikipedia.

Other helpful pages might be:

• Reusing Wikipedia Content
• Reusers Rights And Obligations

or best the GFDL license text.

Generally you need to name Wikipedia as the source of the text, as well as the authors and also publish any derived works under the GFDL.
On a sidenote (but don't rely on this): a "gentlemen's agreement" exists that states that you need to provide a local copy of the GFDL, mentioning it and a link to the Wikipedia article as well as its version history.

I am not accusing anyone of deliberateness or maliciousness in disregarding these conditions. I am also not a lawyer, neither am I going to report such behaviour.
Still I think it is necessary to point this out because it might actually turn into a problem for Ipernity or more probable for the respective person - although I am more concerned with the "social" aspect than with the legal side.

To repeat myself and make this clear: please do spread content that is marked to be used in a permissive way, extend the reach of a culture of sharing and hence advertise this model of a collaborative creativity - but when doing so please pay attention to license conditions and thus show your respect for the efforts of others that have created content you want to reuse.

Please bear this in mind when you want to illustrate your pictures with e. g. some background information from the Wikipedia.

Have you seen anyone taking pictures of security arrangements such as CCTV? Has it made you suspicious?

= Background =
One of the really nice features on Ipernity is the "view as slideshow" option for albums, which you can even watch in an animated fashion and/or with a "music carpet" (what is the proper English word for "Musikteppich" anyway?).

I won't dig into questions about extending this functionality [I'll do that in a seperate post:)] with things such as full screen display etc., but rather discuss "porting" the slideshow feature to other forms of image collections than the "classical" album.

= As-Is State =
Currently to create a slideshow - other than showing all docs -, you have to create an album and assign certain images to be part of it.
This has the benefit that you can also define the order of the images in the album/slideshow to e. g. create suspense.

= Suggestion =
Now what I think would be a nice extension of the whole slideshow concept would be if not only albums could be displayed in this fashion but also other forms of image compilations, i. e. via tags.

Selecting a tag right now displays all documents in the current user's profile relating to it as thumbnails or in a detailed view.
From here you can also go and "Explore this tag" to see all docs&posts Ipernity-wide in relation to this tag.

I suggest adding another option "view as slideshow" that would generate a slideshow displaying the tag-filtered images.

This way one could get an overview of "content-related" pictures that do not share the same album, which I think could be very interesting.

= Implementation =
I assume it should be fairly easy to implement (although I have no knowledge of the backend code, so I might be totally wrong).

The URL for an album-slideshow is:
www.ipernity.com/doc/$member/slideshow/album/$album_id

The URL for a sort by tag is:
www.ipernity.com/tag/$member/keyword/$tag_id
www.ipernity.com/tag/$member/profile/$tag_id

There seem to be two subcategories here to differentiate between "regular" and member tags.

So the URL for my suggestion would look something like this:
www.ipernity.com/tag/$member/slideshow/keyword|profile/$tag_id

Here tag instead of doc clarifies we are dealing with a tag-sort, whereas keyword or profile limit it down to "regular" or member tag kind. The $tag_id finally defines the concrete tag analogous to the $album_id.

Extrapolating from the URLs I assume database queries as well as the code should not be too laborious to adjust.
[Again, I am mostly guessing here, so please don't hate me for my ponderings, Ipernity coder(s)!]

= Possible issues =
As it is - to my taste far too - often the case people might feel they are losing "control" over what is done with their works. After all they have not defined such a filter to create a slideshow - other than when creating an album.
I do not think this should be an issue at all since people do provide the possibility of filtering their works when tagging images. If they are then displayed as thumbnails/details or in a slideshow manner - to me - does not make a great difference.

On the other hand it will allow greater flexibility and new forms of exploring collections of images.

In the "Unofficial ipernity Ideas and Wish Group" Roberto Ballerini in October 2007 posted a short entry titled "[GROUPS] Different viewing mechanisms" in which he askes for the possibility to

view a slideshow of a group pool or to look at the pool shots in a bigger size than thumbnails

This is kind of the same idea I tried to explain in this post but with focus on the sorting criterion "belongs to group".

As Ipernity extracts Exif meta data to a great extent, i. e. not only "basic" information such as exposure, aperture, creation dates, etc., but really almost "all that's there" and I am usually very privacy-aware and "data-economical", that is an aspect I have been sort of uncomfortable with.
Especially data such as the Serial Number of the camera and other "sensitive" meta data that could easily be used to trace back to an individual - and are of hardly any use for other purposes such as figuring out the method of shooting - caught my attention.

[On a sidenote to kind of fend off speculations of paranoia on my part: last year Canon announced it would be potentially possible to track down the person who had photographed/-copied the latest Harry Potter novel by means of the meta data of the camera used, cf. Times Online]

Of course you can disable displaying Exif data but I do want to let others interested in exposure or ISO easily have access to this information. So disabling display of Exif all together is no option for me.
The only solution thus is to remove all IMO "unnecessary" meta data from the files before uploading them.

Here is what I have figured out for myself so far, I might overhaul it in the future since it is rather rudimentary - but sufficient - at the moment.

I decided to use ExifTool, which is
a platform-independent Perl library plus a command-line application for reading, writing and editing meta information in image, audio and video files.

It is a very powerful and flexible tool that can do a lot more than what I use it for - e. g. also handle meta data from other file types than images.

At the moment I have decided to do the following with it:

1. exiftool -all= *.jpg
   This removes all meta data from all files ending with the extension .jpg in the current folder, moving the originals to files with the additional extension "_original".
2. exiftool -overwrite_original -tagsfromfile *_original -make -model -exposuretime -aperturevalue -flash -iso -lens -focallength -orientation -datetimeoriginal *.jpg
   
   This copies the specified meta data (Make, Model, Exposure, etc.) from the "backuped" _original files to those stripped clean of any data.

Of course the fields can be extended or reduced to everyone's personal needs and the whole thing put into a nice shell script etc.

I still need to figure out what information is stored by my camera in what fields and what groups - it's well documented but rather complex - so I can specify more precisely what data to copy.

As I wrote above, this solution is rather rudimentary and not perfected, since e. g. certain fields (e. g. Components Configuration: YCbCr) are created - I assume because of interdependence with other fields/groups and meta data specifications -, but functional for the moment and a better solution for me to either shutting off the display of Exif data completely or showing everything.

Noise in images? No good way to get rid of it?

Sometimes I see myself confronted with this problem and the denoising filters in the Gimp just won't do the trick or result in a smudged image.
So by pure chance I recently found GREYCstoration which is an

Open source algorithm for image denoising and interpolation, using state-of-the-art image processing techniques.

It comes for the three major plattforms Windows, *nixes, Mac OS as a command line or with a GUI or as a plug-in (for the Gimp).

I must say that the results are really convincing, although so far I have not really tinkered with many of the parameters - and I have only tried out the denoising part of the algorithm which - if we believe the website and the examples shown there - can also rebuild images called "Image Inpainting", i. e. remove non-image parts such as overlaid text or even reconstruct damaged/missing pixels.
GREYCstoration is also supposed to be a great tool for resizing, esp. enlarging, images with better results and less blur than other algorithms, but I am not sure about that or if it is generally a good idea to Blow Up pictures first of all.

Having said all that it is up to you to test it for yourself if you think it can be of any use to you.

I recently stumbled on this very nice and informative videopodcast called "Meet the GIMP!".

As its title suggests, it's all about showing the potential of this free and open-source graphics software while focusing as well on some theoretical aspects of image manipulation (what do the blend modes like "Multiply", "Screen", etc. actually do) as on the practical side of using this software.

The presenter is Rolf Steinort who in "real life" is a teacher for biology and chemistry. His profession shows in the videopodcast, too, in a very positive way.
Although working without a script, his shows are structured, build upon one another and keep a moderate pace so everyone can follow. He doesn't reveal any super-secret magical tricks but explains the fundaments of good digital image post-processing, e. g. using layer masks, dodging/burning, etc.
So even if you are fairly familiar with image editing or even with the Gimp itself, "Meet the GIMP" is a relaxed and enjoyable format.

All in all Rolf Steinort is doing a really sympathetic and informative show there that deserves even more attention than it is getting already.

He tries to put out one episode each week and there are 32 episodes so far with an average running time of about half an hour, although sometimes it's 20 minutes, sometimes 50.

So if you feel like it, give it a try.

OK, one more quick note on possible enhancements for Ipernity.

After reading this comment to my previous post about extended search functionality at Ipernity, I realized there is a group (Unofficial ipernity Ideas and Wish Group) that discusses possible new features and enhancements for Ipernity.

I thought it might be nice to contribute my personal "Feature Ramblings" to this group - only to find that it is not possible to add blog posts to a group.

Hence I would much appreciate if this functionality was added, i. e. the option to add not only docs but also blog posts to a group.
They should then appear as a new discussion thread within the respective group.

I am aware that implementing this is - esp. considering the database side and keeping things "synchronized" as well as "divided" at the same time - not trivial, but would like this feature nonetheless. :)

OK, another quick idea to extend some of Ipernity's features.
[dear IP Team, please don't be annoyed! :)]

I'd love to be able to also see the "Popular View" feature, which at the moment is present in singular member's docs section, in Groups as well.

Right now you can have a look at the overview of a group including a dozen or so recent pictures as well as discussion topics and a description of the group.
You can also "view all" docs/posts - and that's it.

IMO it would be great if you could also choose to see the "Popular" items, i. e. the

• Most appreciated
• Most commented
• Most visited

docs or posts.

I am aware of the cumulative effect of using such a feature, i. e. popular items become even more popular while (statistically) less popular ones don't gain in attention.
Still I often would be interested in the most favorited item of a group etc.

Again: simple thoughts open for discussion.

A big construction site for me at Ipernity is the search functionality for docs, especially images.

Some more options for searching among the uploaded media would be really helpful.

Recently I have wondered if it were a good idea to ask for the following feature here at Ipernity:

Optional Border (and/or Drop Shadow) For Images

Looking at the "Docs" page I somehow get the impression of the pictures somehow "floating" around the screen without a "foothold".
Since the "Docs" page is white in background - which I personally do like - this impression is especially prominent for very bright pictures.

This is of course a matter of taste and we all know "de gustibus non disputandum est" but still I would very much appreciate the following feature to be implemented:

• In the "My Space -> Preferences" section add an entry
  
  "Default presentation options"
  Select the way in which your pictures are presented under "Docs&Posts".
   
• Choosing this entry will present the user with a dialogue such as:
  
  How would you like your pictures to be presented?
  [x] No border and no shadow
  [ ] Border but no shadow
  [ ] No border but shadow
  [ ] Border as well as shadow

Implementation would be - fairly - easy.
Pictures would simply need (apart from database and coding work) a banal style attribute for their border such as:
style="border: 1px solid #000000;"

Of course there are many possible styles for borders like outset, inset, ridge, groove, double, dashed, dotted, solid but I think the only useful ones for Ipernity would be

• solid: because it very much correlates with the "clear" overall appearance of the site
• double: because it reminds me of "real" picture-postcards

Have a look at "live" implementation of this:

2 pixel solid black border:

4 pixel double border:

The drop shadow would require an additional container and would result in something like this:
<div style="background-color: #c0c0c0; width:240px; height:160px; position: relative; right: -6px; bottom: -6px;">
<img src="u1.ipernity.com/u/2/53/50/675923.6d9b025d1.m.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="160" style="border: 1px solid #000000; background-color: #c0c0c0; position: relative; right: 6px; bottom: 6px;">
</div>

OK, it's just the code since the container style gets filtered. :(
Just copy and paste it into a local blank HTML-file and open that in your browser to see how it is supposed to look.

Of course - as you might have already guessed from the dialogue-mockup above - border and drop shadow could be combined.

Certainly it would be great if this "presentation style" could also be set/deactivated on a per-picture basis, e. g. if you have a picture collage that already has its own border.

As you see, the whole idea can be extended in respect to things like individual border/drop shadow colour, thickness, etc.
Despite this possibility I would vote for a limited set of "simple" border/drop shadow styles, such as mentioned above, to keep the overall "simplistic" feel of Ipernity.
After all it's about the pictures not their borders and I assume noone here wants a MySpace-like optical chaos.
Nonetheless it might be wise to have border/drop shadow thickness "scale" relating to picture size (thumbnail, medium, large...).

So these are my quick feature ramblings - let me know what you think if you feel like it.

Tagging - useful but what are the "standards" for doing it "properly"?

I am still trying to figure out some conventions to put tagging to the best possible use.
Actually (almost) all of us use it, some tag excessively, others are minimalists. What we have in common - as far as I can tell - that we all use our own ways of tagging our documents.
But wouldn't it be better if there was some kind of "standard" that everyone would employ? Something to rely on so you know what to expect. Something that puts some consistency in tagging.