The title of this section is intentionally provocative so that it can address a concern that many people, including me, have about photography today. Saying "the camera never lies" has been less than entirely true from the beginning, but today image modification is easier than ever and ethical considerations get mixed into our considerations.
Before getting to Landscape Pro's new version, let's look at the history of photography -- not all the way back to the beginning, but maybe to about the 1860s. Matthew Brady photographed Civil War scenes. Because of the equipment available, pictures of active battles were impossible, so the scenes are mainly of stiffly posed soldiers or the dead on battle fields. The images are considered to be true historic records.
But even then the image was selectively captured. Brady and his crew chose the views and the camera position. In some cases, multiple images were combined, as described in a 2012 Daily Mail article.
The Soviets were the 20th Century champions of photo manipulation. As people fell out of favor with Stalin, they were deleted from photographs by artists who used scalpels to remove the offending person and airbrushes to blend the images together. In those days, it was a lot of work. Today this kind of photo fakery is easy.
Sometimes it's harmless. Few people would object to combining parts of two or more pictures of a family group to produce a single image in which everyone in smiling. But when images are manipulated to lie about someone, as is frequently done by political partisans, the person doing the manipulation is on the wrong side of a clear ethical line.
Landscape Pro can be used to make wholesale changes to photographs. Although it is most useful for landscape images (hence the name), it can also be used to modify images containing people. A bland sky can be replaced with a dramatic one, for example. What are the ethics here? Maybe it comes down to the intended use.
If a photograph I take while on vacation has a boring sky and I replace it with a more dramatic sky, what harm have I done? This is an artistic use of the tool and, just as a painter doesn't have to replicate a scene exactly, these photographic tools can ethically be used for artistic purposes. But how ethical would it be for someone to use photographic manipulation to change the appearance of a polluted river from brown sludge to clear blue?
So with ethics in mind, let's see what the updated version of Landscape Pro can do.
Here's a picture of Ohio taken from across the Ohio River in Wheeling, West Virginia. The day was a bit hazy and the sky was bland. This is by no means an award-winning photograph. After all, it's taken from a cemetery. Nevertheless, it can be improved and Landscape Pro starts by explaining how to label the various parts of the image.
This is a simple image with just a sky, trees, and ground.
Click any of the smaller images for a full-size view.
To dismiss the larger image, press ESC or tap outside the image.
Then Landscape Pro applies masks -- red for the sky, green for trees, and blue for the ground. Overall, the selection is surprisingly good. The exceptions are in the fringe-like parts of the trees, along the line between the sky and the trees, and at the base the a tree in the foreground.
Landscape Pro includes tools that can be used to modify the selections. The most difficult correction involved the tree on the left where the sky shows through the leaves.
After getting the masking the way I wanted it and making some adjustments to the foreground, I wanted to modify the sky. Replacing the sky with an overly dramatic sky would clearly be fake, so I selected a sky with a few puffy white clouds and added a bit of haze to the sky so that it would match the overall atmospheric conditions.
Here's the before view. Bland sky, not much detail in the foreground trees, and the trees across the river in Ohio are dark.
And the after view. There's actually a bit more haze in the background. In this case, that makes the trees on the Ohio side a bit brighter. There's more detail in the trees and grass in the foreground, too, but the most significant improvement is the sky.
It's a natural sky -- exactly what we might expect to see in this part of the country.
This little exercise just touches on the basics of what Landscape Pro can do. Here's a brief (silent) tutorial from the developers:
Landscape Pro can be connected to Adobe Lightroom so that the initial work can be done there and then the heavy-duty masking that you might otherwise send to Photoshop can be handled, instead, by Landscape Pro. Lightroom makes a copy of the image, passes it to Landscape Pro, and then receives the edited copy back. If you still want to do some pixel-level editing, Lightroom can pass the edited image from Landscape Pro over to Photoshop.
Never say never is a good adage, but I can think of few times when you might want to do something like this even though Landscape Pro makes it easy.
The sky behind the Franklin Park Conservatory is bland and could use a bit of help, but the treatment on the right isn't helping. For one thing, the sun behind the building is clearly low in the sky -- sunrise or sunset -- and yet the people are casting relatively short shadows toward the right side of the image. So the sun is fairly high in the sky and on the left, not behind the building.
There is actually a good time to do something like this: It's when you're creating an image that you want to use to explain why someone should never do anything like this.
When you want to improve a landscape picture, reach for Landscape ProVersion 2 of the application extends and improves on the initial release. The masking tools simplify the most complex parts of the operation and the extensive sets of options for each masked area make it possible to refine images quickly.
Additional details are available on the Landscape Pro website. Check out the free trial version.
How many flash drives do you have around the house? I still have one that holds just 64 megabytes of data from when they were being introduced by an Israeli company. At PC Expo back in the late 1990s, the company was handing out 16 megabyte thumb drives. For some reason, they gave me a 64 megabyte drive. And it still works. I know this because I plugged it in while working on this article.
Think about that for a moment: 64 megabytes is enough for a couple of high-resolution images from a digital camera. In the late 1990s, 64 megabytes was huge. It was the equivalent of 45 of those plastic-case "floppy" disks that weren't floppy. Today you couldn't give away thumb drives that small. You can buy 4GB thumb drives with your logo on them for less than $5 (if you buy 1000). But even if you buy just 25 to hand out to your best customers, they're just $7.50.
A 64MB thumb drive from last century compared to a 64GB thumb drive now >>>>>>>>
Now some flash drive manufacturers think we'll be willing to buy expandable USB drives and my primary question is WHY?
The idea seems to be a thumb drive that has microSD slots. In fact, I have something similar. There's a USB plug on one end and a mini USB plug on the other, an SD slot on one side and a microSD slot on the other. It's a card reader that I can use with memory cards from a digital camera. But if I need another standard thumb drive, why wouldn't I just buy one that isn't expandable? They're priced from about $15 and up (sometimes way up), depending on the speed of the device.
A card reader is a necessity if you have a device that uses SD or microSD cards. Some cameras and other devices can be connected to a computer, but they often lag behind with USB 2 technology while card readers commonly are faster USB 3 devices. Few people would consider it reasonable to insert a memory card into one of these readers and use it like a flash drive, though.
An expandable thumb drive that accepts microSD cards seems a trouble looking for a place to happen. Consider what could go wrong. Thumb drives are small enough already. I've lost at least one over the years and I'm usually pretty careful with stuff like that. But now I could lose the entire thumb drive or the microSD card, which is about the size of a finger nail, could get lost. The design includes a slide-off cover so that the individual cards won't fall out.
The VastStick holds up to 16 microSD cards
That's right, cards. The VastStick has multiple slots so you could add 16 128GB microSD cards to create a 2 terabyte thumb drive! Who needs to carry around that much storage?
And instead of having just one set of contacts that could go bad, now there are two -- the USB contacts that connect the thing to whatever device you want to use it with and those that link the microSD card to the expandable drive.
So I return to my primary question: WHY?
These aren't shipping yet, but if you'd like to get in line for when they do (at the end of September), you'll find information on the Vast website.
The creeps who operate robo call operations are always looking for a way to get past our defenses. They can fake just about any phone number, so not long ago calls started appearing to come from my exchange. Starting a week or so ago, they started using what I thought was a phony toll-free area code.
Let's say my area code is 614 (which it is) and that I'm in the 888 exchange (which I'm not, but it's close). So my phone number might be 614.888.1234. That isn't my number, but scammers would start displaying the calling number as 614.888.XXXX where XXXX is anything from 0000 to 9999, giving them 10,000 possible numbers that would appear to be in my local exchange. I could never block all of those numbers, so I've started blocking all calls from numbers that begin with the area code and exchange I'm in, then unblocking the few numbers in the exchange that represent legitimate callers I know.
No sooner had I fixed that problem than calls started coming in from area code 833. Until June, that area wasn't valid but then it was added as a new toll-free area, along with 800, 888, 877, 866, 855, and 844. The quantity of calls has been relatively small so far, just 2 or 3 a day. I've started blocking all calls from 833 and may add the other toll free area codes. If somebody wants to call me, they can use a number with an area code that tells me where they are.
Otherwise, I feel no obligation to answer. Indeed, I generally won't answer any call that comes from a number I don't recognize. The call will go to voice mail and any legitimate caller will leave a message.
The October issue of Consumer Reports addresses the issue and says that the Federal Communications Commission is "considering a proposal that would strengthen a phone company's ability to block spoofed numbers." Considering? This is a no-brainer! Of course telephone companies should be able to block spoofed numbers. No honest organization would ever engage in this dishonest practice. What is there to discuss or debate?
If you'd like to encourage the FCC and phone companies to find solutions to illegal robo-calls, visit the Consumers Union website, read the suggestions for fighting the scourge, and sign a petition calling for action.
When you're outside the house, look up. Chances are pretty good that you'll see a camera. Many intersections have cameras. Gas stations and stores have cameras, inside and out. When you use an ATM to get money or make a deposit, you're probably on camera.
In the computer realm, we often talk about security versus ease of use. Improve security and the hardware or software will be harder to use. Improve ease of use and you'll doubtless open some security holes. The situation is similar with surveillance cameras.
Consider the Boston Marathon bombing. Surveillance cameras from businesses were useful in helping police identify the bombers. But there's another side.
New York attorney Yoni Levoritz says that he has concerns about civil liberties issues even as he acknowledges some of the advantages those all-seeing cameras provide. "It's great for law enforcement," Levoritz says, "but it infringes on our rights to be free from unlawful searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution."
It's virtually impossible to be stealthy these days. If you carry a smart phone, it's constantly checking in with cell towers so that it knows where you are. If you're in an area where toll roads use rapid-pass systems, your presence will be noted every time your pass is used. Some police departments have cruiser-mounted cameras that read license plates. These are great for identifying stolen cars, but again there's a trade off.
Levoritz puts it this way: "You should be able to travel around the country without being watched every step of the way, but these days it seems like you can't sneeze without being on camera." In fact, you can sneeze without being on camera, but possibly only if you do it at home.
Clearly the cameras aren't going to be removed. There are simply so many of them and they're owned by so many people and organizations: Government agencies, businesses, and individuals. It's a situation that doesn't have a clear cut right or wrong side.
But do they make us safer? Levoritz isn't so sure. The cameras catch criminal activities, but do they deter crime by making it easier for police to identify the criminal? "It's hard to make that argument considering that crime still happens in places where the person has to know they are being videotaped."
Because of cameras, police don't have to be everywhere. Red-light cameras, although not currently permitted in Ohio and some of the companies that sell the devices have gotten into trouble because of unethical behavior, but well placed and well maintained red light cameras could make drivers think twice before blasting through a red light.
The trouble is most of the cameras aren't well placed and well maintained. Many of them are more about generating money than creating safety.
"Surveillance cameras give investigators a great tool when a crime is committed," Levoritz says. "But the risk is that, as we give up a measure of privacy, it's turning the country into something the Founders didn't want."
