No matter how well you compose and expose an image in your camera, it can always be improved. When cameras contained film, the process was complex: Either you had your own darkroom and knew how to adjust the processing or you needed to send detailed instructions to a professional lab. Today it's considerably different because you no longer need a darkroom or a professional lab. Applications such as Lightroom make the process relatively easy to learn and some of the applications that used to be offered as plug-ins for Lightroom and Photoshop can now be used as standalone applications.
The photo I'm using for this exercise is from the Dollar Photo Club, a division of Fotolia. Adobe has acquired Fotolia and no new subscribers are being accepted by the Dollar Photo Club and Adobe will probably terminate the service, but currently it's a source of good, economical images.
This image was created by Дмитры Беркут (Dmitry Berkut) in Russia. I decided to use it as I explored the On1 Photo 10 portrait function. Although On1 Photo10 can be used as an Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, or Photoshop Elements plug-in, I decided to use it in standalone mode for this test.
When you open an image in portrait mode, On1 Photo 10 draws a rectangle around all the faces it finds. If there's more than one face, you'll need to repeat the selection process for each face you want to work on.
Click anywhere within the white rectangle and it will become green to indicate that this is the face you'll be working with.
Click any of the smaller images for a full-size view.
Press Esc to dismiss the larger image.
The program will prompt you to set markers on 4 spots: The center of the left eye, the center of the right eye, the left corner of the mouth, and the right corner of the mouth. You can skip any of these.
Next, On1 Photo 10 will outline the eyes and the mouth. The application will do its best, but you'll probably need to fine-tune the selections. For this photo, the application got the mouth right, but was somewhat off base on the eyes.
Making and refining these selections enables the program to lighten the whites of the eyes, enhance details in the iris, and whiten the subject's teeth if they're visible.
The controls at the right adjust how much each of these areas is modified.
Next, you'll adjust On1 Photo 10 to reduce blemishes, increase skin smoothing, reduce shine, and adjust shadows and evenness.
A word of caution here: It's easy to go too far. A man or woman who has lived for 6, 7, or 8 decades will have some wrinkles. Model Lauren Hutton put it this way: "Our wrinkles are our medals of the passage of life. They are what we have been through and who we want to be." So don't try to make those wrinkles disappear.
You can reduce them, though. Soften them.
Stop there if you want to , but you might want to investigate effects that can be applied to the image. The Presets and Filters tabs make it possible to add finishing touches to the image.
I selected one of the presets (Portrait Color Boost).
After saving the image, I then selected Filters and added border. The blue picks up colors in the woman's sweater.
Portrait work is just the beginning for On1 Photo 10Although the portrait-based functions in Photo 10 are impressive, they're only part of the story.
There's also a section of the application that corrects exposure and contrast or adds a high-dynamic-range look to an image and another section that offers a range of presets and filters. You can download a trial version from the website, upgrade from a previous version for $90 or buy the application for $110.
Additional details are available on the On1 Website.
Last week, I quoted a recommendation by the Cyber Threat Alliance: "Keep web browsers updated and enable settings that disable browser plug-ins such as Java, Flash, and Silverlight to prevent them from running malware automatically." That prompted this response from a reader: "Can you inform me how to accomplish this?"
I'll start with a disclaimer. Completely disabling these plug-ins will make the browser safer, but it will also make the browser less functional. It's the old battle between security and usability.
Because HTML5 doesn't yet offer a straightforward way to play audio files, I continue to use a Flash player. Disable Flash and listening to the podcast will be more difficult. This is true of the other plug-ins, too.
Because Flash is still widely used, removing it seems like a bad idea. Instead of disabling functions that can be useful, my preference is to use protective applications, keep the browser up to date, and be cautious. So far, that has worked for me.
Your Internet service provider's nameserver (DNS, or domain name service) is what translates names such as techbyter.com to IP addresses such as 67.222.41.89. You can type either of those into the browser's address line to get to the TechByter website. Most people find the name easier to remember than the number.
The first line of security involves using a DNS that can warn you about known rogue websites. OpenDNS.com does this. Set the nameservers to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 in your router or in the computer's network settings if you don't have a router. Another good choice is Google's nameservers, 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, but my preference is OpenDNS.
The browsers themselves are becoming smarter and this is another reason to make sure they're always up to date. Firefox can be set to update itself automatically. Internet Explorer and Edge will update automatically with Windows 10. An application such as NiNite will keep other programs up to date, too, and I've found it to be very helpful.
The next barrier to malware is the anti-virus applications on your computer. Avast Internet Security, for example, includes a site rating option that will block unsafe sites by default. Ironically, Firefox currently blocks this add-on because Mozilla hasn't yet "validated" it. The Avast plug-in works in Chrome. Regardless of whether the protective application you use has a feature such as this, it almost certainly has a function that watches for suspicious activity.
Most protective applications will co-exist with 2 others that I recommend: Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit.
Just keeping the operating system, browsers, plug-ins, and protective applications up to date creates a reasonably safe environment, but there are also applications that block scripting. Several of these exist, but you won't find one that works with all browsers.
For Firefox, NoScript is a good choice because it blocks just about everything unless you explicitly approve it.
You won't find links to browser plug-ins here. Instead, use the option within your browser to search for the appropriate plug-in via the browser publisher's built-in function.
If you're using Chrome, take a look at ScriptSafe. When you arrive at a site the plug-in hasn't seen before, everything will be blocked. You can then choose whether to allow the domain, trust it, deny it, or distrust it.
If Javascript is disabled on the TechByter website, you won't see the site menu at the top of the screen.
After you clear the domain, the menu will appear again.
Edge (Microsoft's Windows 10 browser) has an option in Advanced Settings to disable Flash.
Internet Explorer
In the Internet section, be sure that the security level you choose is at least set to medium-high and possibly to high.
Choosing the high setting may cause problems for some of the sites that you regularly visit.
Although the Cyber Threat Alliance's recommendation to turn off plug-ins is valid, for me security depends on the steps I've described and on using carefully selected security applications. And caution. You can never have too much of that.
Ideally, yes. Realistically, no.
I detest Java because it's bloated, slow, and insecure. I can't get rid of it, though, because so many applications depend on Java. Point of order: Java and Javascript are totally different applications. Javascript is used in browsers (and elsewhere) it was created by Netscape and was originally known as LiveScript. Java is an object oriented programming (OOP) language created by James Gosling of Sun Microsystems. As a clever person explained it, Java and Javascript are similar in the same way car and carpet are similar.
Java has a long history of security vulnerabilities. Several years ago, Mac users (many of whom seem to mistakenly believe that their computers are impervious to malware) found that Java made it easy for crooks to attack their computers. As Tom's Hardware put it, "Java is a favorite target of cybercriminals because it is so easy to exploit, and also because users are frequently using outdated versions of it."
So the key point is that outdated versions are vulnerable. Oracle, which acquired Sun Microsystems and now owns Java, seems to be a bit more responsive these days and regularly releases security updated for Java.
Java is probably on your computer and uninstalling it will probably create problems for you. So always keep Java up to date. Whenever you're prompted to update it, install the patch. Period. No questions. Some people suggest disabling Java on all browsers but one and using that one browser for sites that require Java. That may be a good practice, but it seems impractical to me.
Sometimes you need more than just elevated (administrator) privileges. In those cases, you need to be the Administrator. This account has extra capabilities beyond what a standard administrator (note lower case) account has.
Recently I needed to delete the Windows temp directory, but its settings had become a bit muddled. I couldn't view the directory or delete it using my regular account (which has admin privileges), nor could I change permissions on the directory. Before explaining how I got rid of the problem directory, let's review the 3 types of accounts Windows offers.
The safest option is to set up all users as standard user. Because I'm constantly doing things that need administrator privileges, I don't use this kind of account, but it's what I would set up for others who need to have accounts on the computer.
A standard account protects the computer by preventing users from making changes to the system that affects any account but theirs. Standard users can run commands with enhanced privileges if they know the password of an administrator.
My account is set as an administrator. By default, it runs with standard permissions. An administrator account has complete access to the computer, and can make any desired changes. Attempting to run a command that requires elevated privileges will display a user access control message, but because the user is an administrator, the UAC can be dismissed by clicking OK.
But when you need a bit of extra power, you need the Administrator account. This account is not enabled by default and is a local account only. That is, it cannot be linked to an on-line Microsoft account. The Administrator has full and unrestricted privileges and will not see a user access control prompt. Some applications, however, cannot be run in the Administrator account.
I logged in as Administrator, deleted the temp directory, logged out, and restarted the computer. Windows recreated the temp directory on startup, but then the access controls were correct so any user could gain access to it.
There are several ways to enable the Administrator account. The easiest one involves using the command prompt. Start the command prompt (CMD) with elevated privileges by right clicking Command Prompt from the Start Menu or Start Screen and choosing Run as Administrator.
Then type net user administrator password /active:yes and replace "password" with the password you want to use. Once you've done that, you'll be able to switch to the Administrator account while your normal account is open or to log on directly to the Administrator account when you start the computer.
If you need more than one terabyte of on-line storage, Microsoft's OneDrive isn't what you need. That's the new limit for those who have subscribed to Office 365. If you're using the free version of OneDrive, you'll be able to keep only 5GB of files on-line instead of 15GB. Microsoft will be happy to sell you additional space, though, at $24 per year for 50GB.
Considering that a 4TB hard drive costs no more than $150 these days, $24 per year for just 50GB seems a bit overpriced. But what can you do? Or do you really need to do anything?
Google Drive gives users 15GB of storage for free. Box offer 10GB for free, and the cheapskate of the group, Dropbox, offers only 2GB for free.
Microsoft charges $10 per month for Office 365 and 1TB will hold a lot of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access files. The space reduction for free users is clearly an effort to push them toward Office 365.
If you need unlimited storage, there's Amazon. For $60 per year you can store as much as you need. Amazon doesn't yet offer synchronization or integration with desktop computers. That makes this service a non-starter for many people. Still, it's inexpensive and unlimited.
Google Drive wants $120 per year for 1TB of storage. That's the same price as Office 365 and you don't have the advantage of access to the Microsoft Office suite.
See in Spare Parts, "Microsoft Plans a New Data Center in the UK."
