With all the excitement around the Apple App Storefront is it really no surprise that the groundbreaking Adobe Air platform has it’s own storefront? Adobe recently started offering everything from games, RSS readers, calculators, business tools and more, even better a lot of them are FREE!

The concept has worked great for Apple and the iPhone and now Adobe hopes to duplicate the success for the computer market. Though this recent addition to Adobe seems to be born out of a rivalry with Apple it definitely looks like it has the possibility of being a winner for all computer users if it proves successful.

So what does this mean for photography users? Well beyond all the glitzy toys and shiny things to look at in the App store there are already a few familiar and useful tools for photographers available.

Some of the familiar apps include Studio Cloud, TweetDeck and a new app called Photo Uploader for Facebook.

Don’t let the name fool you, it’s far far more than just a simple photo uploader for Facebook. Photo Uploader goes beyond just making it easy for you to read the update stream, you can do everything from monitor “pokes”, messages, events, and even chat all from this desktop application. Facebook addicts and non-addicts alike will like the time savings that can be gained when you don’t actually have to visit the site to do something as simple as comment on a post, upload photos or know when you have a friend request.

This App has been praised by more than one person as being far better than the program offered by Facebook and though it excels and I would agree with that assessment the 1.6MB version 1.0 app does have some flaws (such as trying to log out and log back in under a different user) that are kinks to be worked out still. Even with the few bugs it’s definitely a download I recommend to any photographer that wants to easily upload their photos and monitor their Facebook.

Visit the Adobe Air Marketplace here and download the Photo Uploader for Facebook here.

Total Cost – $1,625.88

Operating System – Windows 7 Professional 64-bit – $139.99

I could go on about why Windows 7 and not XP or Vista, but it’s just this simple. Windows 7 has been in use by many many people for over a year now, the processor I recommend for this computer shows solid results with clear leaps in performance in tasks including Photoshop. I really think Microsoft has released an operating system that people will enjoy using with Windows 7 and with that I’m recommending it before the Retail release.

Processor – Intel i7-860 - $289.99

Once again Intel leads the pack in processor speed over AMD. I’ve selected the i7 – 860 Lynnfield over the i5 class of processors as well as other i7 class processors because the i5 processors do not use hyper threading and the price point was dead on. These processors are great, Intel worked with Microsoft on the development of Windows 7 to really show some advancement and while not earth shattering the gains are definitely beneficial to photographers.

Motherboard – MSI P55-CD53 – $119.99

There wasn’t any great wise reason for selecting this motherboard over another more than the fact it’s a solid board with no more and no less than a photographer would need. It lacks support for multiple video cards, but does support up to 16gb’s of DDR3 RAM as well as 8 SATA ports leaving pleanty of room for additional disc drives and or hard disk drives. Beyond that personal experience with MSI makes it easy for me to recommend this board.

RAM – Corsair XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 – $129.99

I’ve had many different brands of RAM and aside from my very first build when I fried a stick of 256mb ram (at the time it cost nearly $200) I’ve never really had an issue with RAM. So I could say this RAM was picked because of timings, extreme performance or something else and while yes I did consider those I also considered things like the fact Corsair includes a LIFETIME WARRANTY and that only thanks to UPS have I ever had to use that warranty. Their customer service is great so in the end again personal experience coupled with a strong product made me jump on the Corsair XMS3 for photographers.

Video – PNY PCIE Quadro FX580 512MB 128-bit – $184.99

Obviously being one of the biggest things I harp on photographers about, the video card is an important part in the creation of a photography computer. For many reasons one of which being your wallet this card uses far less power then a gaming video card and that can be the difference between burning a 30 watt fluorescent light bulb or a 100 watt tungsten bulb. In the end it’s about saving you not only money but wasted computer features and upfront purchase costs. Yes, this card boasts HDMI ports for video as well as DVI. It includes an adapter to convert one of the HDMI ports to DVI in case your monitor doesn’t support HDMI. Beyond that I selected this card because it also boasts support for OpenGL 3.0 leaving you ready for future versions of Photoshop should it require more than the current OpenGL 2.0 CS4 Extended needs.

Disc Drive – LG Blu-ray Burner BH08LS20 - $199.99

Yes, you didn’t read that wrong Blu-ray burners are now under $200. The discs are also under $5 a slice (a slice is tech talk for per-disc) meaning that as long as you don’t mind it taking a bit of time to burn you can store 25gb of data on a single disc for an affordable price. I selected this LG brand burner because LG not only has great reviews but with new tech in the disc industry has always released quality burners.

With camera’s now shooting at 24mp (and higher if you can afford a Hassey) the file sizes are growing leaving Blu-ray a good jump to make now that it has become affordable.

Main/Operating System Hard Drive - Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB – $229.99

While I would rather recommend a nice fast flash hard drive the price per gigabyte on them is still to high for mainstream computing. So instead of recommending a slower 7200 RPM drive I’m instead going with this 10,000 RPM Western Digital Hard Drive. The extra speed is proven to increase the speed of everything from program starts, saves and of course boot time. Beyond that I who doesn’t want to be able to say their computer has a raptor inside their computer… ok that wasn’t a factor why I chose this but still!

Secondary Hard Drives - Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB – $84.99

These drives are great, I’ve heard many great things and await mine to arrive! The Western Digital Caviar Green drives don’t lack performance but boast some power savings to go with them. The power supply that computers are requiring these days power savings is and should be just as much a factor as performance for certain components especially with how long we keep our computers on these days, as if we never turn them off. That makes this drive a good choice.

Power Supply – KINGWIN Lazer LZ-750 750W – $199.99

Ok, this power supply, what to say about it. Well it’s modular meaning that you don’t have to use anymore cables then you need so it reduces heat inside the computer case which is a good thing. Beyond that it’s a little more power than you need so you can add more hard drives, RAM or accessories. It’s also “green’ running at 87% of peak efficiency as well as other power saving functions.

Computer Case – COOLER MASTER Elite RC-332-KKN1-GP Black – $39.99

I selected this case for many reasons none of them to do with price. Cooler Master has made some great cases, beyond that I really was considering how much desk space or even floor space is used depending on where it’s kept. This case leaves plenty of room to grow but also keeps the amount of space used in a limited space.

A little over a month ago I got the luck to meet Jeffrey Mcintyre via Yahoo Messenger (http://www.digital-expressions.net/) through my friend Betsy Finn (http://www.learnwithbetsy.com). In speaking with him I learned he created some workflow actions and was estatic when Jeffrey asked me to take a look at them. Now something I thought might take a few hours has turned into over a month, but all for good reason. 

No matter if you’re new to photoshop, have a few years under your belt or are an old pro; some of these actions are things I hadn’t even considered creating actions for or just plain have not taken the time to create them. The best part in my opinion is that the actions don’t force your images to look like something that isn’t your style. Most of the actions come in multiple flavors ranging from standard or half tone to dramatic allowing them to be useful to low, mid and high contrast lovers alike. Non-destructive is a key phrase I and many others love to hear and I’m happy to say these actions accomplish just that, most of the actions will automatically create a layer mask so that you can add and remove without causing damage to the image. 

The price tag is honestly a bargain in my opinion in the month since I have been using his actions I can see the difference in my retouching speed. It’s easy to forget the value of time in this business and the value of a fast computer, time saving actions and a good lab can all add up at the end of the year into hours and hours of extra time we never knew we existed. 

Normally when I see some new actions I’m not impressed because honestly they can show a cool effect or say they “know” the proper way to convert black and white. In the end I find a lot of actions to be bland regurgitations of eachother that at times can make print comps look just as bland and regurgitated. I wasn’t really walking into these actions with that mindset but I also hadn’t set my expectations high.  But and it’s a big but, these actions aren’t anything cheesey, regurgitated or even mass produced cookie cutter effects. Simply put the Portrait Enhancement Action Set is a brilliant, simple and downright useful set of actions that most every photographer will find a valuable addition to their actions.

If you’re interested in any of the actions that Digital Expresssions has to offer visit their website http://www.digital-expressions.net

Betsy Finn has also done a great write up about these actions and non-destructive editing on her website which can be found here

In the ever advancing online world new ideas are abound, some reinvent the wheel while others just find new ways of accomplishing the same task. Online backups do a little of both. While the idea has been the dream of many, including photographers for years to be able to both back up their data off site and not have to carry portable hard drives, thumb drives, CD’s orDVD’s home with them and put them in the that fire proof safe at the bottom of the closet each night. The dream seemed elusive and “a while off”, or is it?

In this article I’ll take a look at three options avaliable today and give my honest opinion on why these technologies have arrived. While it’s true that we are limited to the amount of data we can backup due to data transfer rates (speed of our internet connection) these services now make the idea of protecting the truely vital data a reality. The digital age changed the studio, requiring all photographers to go from masking negatives and storing paperwork to storing Terabytes (1000′s of Gigabytes) of data. Beyond that with the ablity to work from home on a computer more and more are taking their work home or working in a home studio with no off-site storage options. Destination wedding photographers take the risk of multi-thousand and tens of thousands of dollars worth of wedding photography not being damaged between the hotel and home.

With all that in mind and the roll out of FOIS (Fiber Optic Internet Serivce) now may be the time to start looking at these services as a real alternative to a complicated backup system in the studio.

Mozy.com

Mozy was the first service I tested out. They make everything fairly simple from the start. Just setup an account, download their program and select the files you want backed up on the Mozy’s servers. Worried about “hackers” or someone snagging your files in cyber space? With mozy your files are 128-bit encrypted from your computer to their server, once at their server the encryption skyrockets to 448-bit Blowfish encryption. Both of which should keep your data safe since even the lower 128-bit encryption would take an average attacker somewhere on the scale of 2 million million million years to guess the correct key (that’s 2,000,000,000,000,000,000 in case you were wondering). What about the 448-bit? Well no effective cryptanalysis has been found as of yet that would allow it’s key to be “cracked”, and it was created over 15 years ago. So is Mozy safe? I’d say so.

Software wise, Mozy supports both Mac OS and Windows.  Setup is pretty much a breeze to say the least, after installation Mozy gives your computer a quick scan to search for files it would recommend you to backup. After the scan and list of recommendations Mozy checks your internet connection for upload/download speeds. This check will make sure your internet is “broadband” speed (the term itself is very broad… oh the irony). After mozy ran the scan it tells me my upload speed is 256kbps and lets me know that I should be able to upload between 500 MB to 2.4 GB’s per 24 hours depending my configuration.

The first backup on Mozy can take quite some time simply because it’s not updating data it’s running the initial backup. Luckily with the software Mozy provides you can select if you would like to run the software in the background while your computer is idle (like the time you’re in a photo shoot or sales session) or set a time once a day, once a week, or more to run the backup. The options increase if you switch to “Expert” mode where you can select how many times per day the backup updates, how long to wait to start a back up when your computer is idle, alerts if you have not backed up your data in a certain amount of days, and on and on andon. Really, it leaves little to be wishing for, yes even bandwidth throttling.

Overall the backup speed and quality is more based on your internet and computer then anything else. So for the first backup at least let Mozy run at night while your at home sleeping and return with the backup complete. My first backup was a breeze, I simply went through (in Expert mode) checked off the files I wanted to be backed up and protect should my geek machine have any major problems. I leave Mozy to get to work, and begin laughing in the face of danger, jinxing myself up a tree. I begin saying things like “my computer will never crash” and “viruses HA my computer lights up like a christmas tree when it even suspects a file!” (to be fair it always has a nice blue glow).

My files now backed up safely on the Mozy servers, my computer is happy that its personality, yes my computer has a personality (and its data) will be intact should it’s hard drive turn to the darkside and crash. Quickly skipping around the Mozy site I find the data I just backed up can be accessed and even restored using the Mozy software or via an online web portal on the Mozy website!  Meaning I can even download my files to a second, third or fourth computer. Making it a great option if you’re traveling to or from an event and worry about protecting your data from point A to point B or visa versa.

MozyHOME for backup service should be great if you’re not wanting to backup multiple systems or if you have all your important files stored on one central computer.  They do offer a PRO version that starts with a base monthly fee and then a per gigabyte/per month fee on top of that. Basically you would pay the monthly fee plus, a fee for each gigabyte of data you have stored on their server that month.

Want to try Mozy? They offer a free 2GB account which includes use of their backup software. If you like it and want more then 2GB you can purchase an unlimted Home account for $4.95 a month or a Pro account starting at $3.95 + $0.50/GB per month. Mozy.com

iDrive.com

Similar to Mozy with a free service offering up two 2GB of free data storage on their secure servers iDrive differs, because it’s service is a flat rate no matter if it’s a business or personal account. You simply select how much data storage you would like you on their servers and choose between monthly or yearly payment schedule. iDrive’s software is about as simple to use as it gets, they say “once you install and login it takes exactly 2 clicks to start protecting your critical data” while obviously true if you want to use the standard settings, the simplicity that this sentence brings to mind really does exist. Support for you Mac addicts? Yep, it’s there too! But my geek senses tingle telling me to dig deeper.

iDrive does not test your connection prior to starting the software but does have the option. iDrive’s software gives a more exacting upload speed and estimated time it would take to upload 1GB of data. After discovering 11.5 hours was the estimated time for me to upload 1GB of data, it quickly shows that this is not a solution for someone wanting to upload an entire wedding or a weeks worth of sessions in a single upload.

The upload process to iDrive is also a simple check box selection much as with the Mozy software (on Expert Mode). The program then goes to work encrypting your data before sending it out over the web. iDrive also encrypts the data on their server using 256-bit AES encryption (that is a military grade encryption, secure I hope so or even homeland security has something to worry about!). While logging in iDrive will ask you if you would like to create the encryption key or if you would like the to generate one (the recommended option by iDrive), for my tests I left iDrive to generate the key for me. Though if I were using this for any important or client related information I would create my own key for an additional layer of security.

Just like Mozy again, iDrive allows you to access your files stored on thier servers via a web portal once it’s uploaded. Making iDrive another good option if you have files you need to access while on the road or at home but need to keep safe.

iDrive’s security doesn’t appear as strong server side as Mozy but it makes up for it with the ability to create your own key. Server side, the security is right up there with Mozy and the data is secured in transfer as with Mozy. iDrive’s unique factor is the flat rate upload, no per GB charge, and simple software. If you’re considering iDrive as with Mozy snag the free 2GB account and give it a run for it’s money. http://www.idrive.com

Carbonite.com

Carbonite right from the start has a flashy website placing their write ups from everyone ranging from Cnet to the New York Times on the front page. The “Avaliable on Amzon.com” complete with logo placed blatantly in one of the first boxes you look at along with the Mcafee logo to ensure they are “secure” make them appear to be a huge player. Their offer of a one time yearly fees instead of a monthly option and what I can only assume is an unlimited storage space only option as I was unable to find any documention saying anything else.

Carbonite is very different from the other services in this article for one big reason, software. Carbonite does not use a program seperate from windows, instead it integrates right inside Windows Explorer. This apparently makes one of the nice features that I love about other services not possible, or just not offered, access to your data via the website. The integration is nice and Carbonite has it’s own little virtual drive in your “My Computer” (or just plain “Computer” for you Vista users) though at the same time because the integration doesn’t clog your task bar with un-needed icons (ok yeah I know, a really small plus) it should be one less thing clogging your desktop space.  Other then that the software monitors your system for changes to the files you have selected be backed up so that it can upload them.

Really though I’m not loving Carbonite, I can’t say I dislike it either maybe I’m becoming a stuck up geek. The price is right, there is quality and support… for a price. If you want to have priority support it’s an additional fee, which for anyone considering backup software with limited understanding of the process should probably consider. But in the overall I can’t see where, except maybe base price of the service that Carbonite pulls away from the competition. Though it could be that I don’t see what others have seen in their service,  the reason why so many articles giving them positive reveiws exist in the first place. But why? Mozy offers the ability to place and access stored data on the server via Windows Explorer and even appears as a virtual drive just like Carbonite. Both Mozy and iDrive allow for you to access your data via a web portal which is great if you’re traveling and your portable drive crashes or laptop gets stolen by that weird guy you saw walk out of the Starbucks that was leering at all the people and their personal computing devices.

Maybe what I would consider Carbonite well suited for is someone who has one single computer, no travel needs, and no needs to secure data between a destination greater then that provided by a simple thumb drive. But even then the “FREE” price tag of the 2GB of storage make the idea of leaving the portable flash drive at home, loging into the site and snagging that PSD file off the web rather then having to climb behind the computer a pleasnt one.

Carbonite is a fine online backup option, priced similar to most of the other services avaliable with decent upload speeds. Use the 15 day free trial if you think it’s more suited to your needs, for me I can’t say I’ll continue to use Carbonite after my free trial ends. http://www.carbonite.com

Conclusions

Between the three personally I’m really liking Mozy, I can’t seem to find something I really dislike about it.

iDrive offers a very similar service and if I were uploading large amounts of data I might consider them as an alternative to Mozy.

While I’m not a fan of Carbonite, it has to have those postive reviews from those website for a reason, so I wouldn’t discount it. I just can’t see the value of it for a modern photographer, even if you’re not traveling between event to event and just studio to home access to your data at home while your data is at the studio could be valuable. I didn’t find this all important web portal access to my data avaliable with Carbonite, without installing their software first.

The future is probably bright for all these companies. Implementation of these services could eventually remove a lot of headache for many, many people, especially photographers. So use the free services offered by these companies and see if any of these remove at least some of the headache and worry of  backup for you.

All images in this article are copyright their respective owners