Image Viewing and Download

This post provides guidance for visitors to the main site on viewing and downloading images

You will have received an invitation to view a gallery of images in the form of a link and password

- Click the link to enter the gallery

- Enter the password if prompted (passwords are always lower case and with no spaces)

- Please ignore any options to sign in or open an account, these are for a different client group. The password is all you will need

To download individual images:

- Moving your mouse around the gallery will trigger larger roll-overs for a better view and enable the full caption to be read

- Click on an image to open it in the full window

- Click 'Download' and choose a size for the image. This will immediately initiate the download to your default location for downloaded files

To download all of the images:

- Click 'Batch Download'

- Select Images to Download - Either  'Select All' then 'Continue' or choose a group of images to download together. The window will scroll, supports shift-selection, dragging a box around a group of images or CTRL + Click on a PC or CMD + Click on a Mac to select a discontiguous set of images

- Choose a size for the downloaded images from the drop down menu and click 'Proceed to final step'

- Click the link which appears. In the case of a large gallery, several links will appear. Click ALL of them

- The download will be to your default location for downloaded files and will be in the form of a zip file which will decompress when complete.

Nothing happening? Some browsers, notably Safari, will give very little indication that a file is downloading. Rest assured the download has initiated. The file will be quite large and this is a good time for a screen break.

Still not convinced? Try this small gallery of three images:

http://tomparkes.photoshelter.com/gallery/G0000gO.NDvkjmjs/

Click the link and enter the password: test

Power user tips:

- In the single image view, you can use the left and right arrows on your keyboard to advance to the next image

- You can return to the gallery view by clicking the title of the gallery

- Selecting 'original file' where it is available as the download size will generally be faster as no additional processing of the image will need to take place before it is transmitted

Having Problems?
 

Users will find the system to be highly reliable and simple to use, but occasionally problems can occur. The notes below will help to answer the most common questions:

Password not accepted? If you copied and pasted the password from an email, please retype it. Some email applications will add invisible data which will be picked up along with the visible text

Are you logged in? The password system covered in this post does not require you to be logged in or open one of our free accounts. If you have an existing account, please log out from the system via the 'My Account' tab in the top right of the screen. This will avoid any conflicts

Download speed - the system will send images as fast as you can receive them. An individual image should download almost instantly. Users in corporate environments may experience lower speeds due to local bandwidth and security restrictions but a good average speed for batch downloads is five to ten images per minute. Clients with high speed connections not being shared with other people should see download speeds of better than 20 images per minute

Can't find the downloaded file? - Search your computer for the file name of one of the images

'Right clicking' is not used anywhere in the system

Browser related issues. The system works with the current versions of all popular browsers but if you do have a problem you can't resolve it's always worth trying another browser available to you on your system 


Still having problems? Please use the contact form or give us a call and we'll help

We're Jammin'

"Nikon has received reports of a small number of D4/D800 users who are experiencing 'locking up' issues, where the camera becomes unresponsive until the battery is removed and reinserted. Nikon is investigating a permanent solution to this issue and will update users accordingly. To immediately resolve this issue, users can turn off both the 'Highlights' and 'RGB Histogram' display options in the 'Playback Display Options' sub-menu found in the 'Playback' menu" Source: Nikon USA

Flashback to the late 80s and the FM2's MD12. A photocall (remember those?) never passed without at least one photographer exclaiming loudly before wrenching the motordrive off the base of the camera to push down the protruding pin which had jammed in the 'up' position and rendered the camera inoperable.

A "small number" can be interpreted as all D4s and D800s shipped to date and given that the majority of those units will be in the hands of professional photographers who received their cameras first through the NPS priority scheme, it's a serious fault. Professional photographers are most likely to be working with both the highlights and RGB histogram displays turned on and pulling the battery to free the camera will of course mean the loss of any images in the buffer.

This speaks to a lack of adequate beta testing and in particular, testing by professionals in the field prior to release where this would have been quickly unearthed.

17 Inch Macbook Pro Speed Test

Since 2007 I've used Apple's flagship 17 inch Macbook Pro models as my primary computers both on location and back in the office. The move from a desktop plus laptop combination was made possible by Apple's switch to Intel processors and in particular the Core 2 Duo which made working with the D3s 14 bit NEF files a realistic proposition for a laptop.  Shortly after, I moved to a cloud-based image storage and file delivery system with the result that wherever I could connect to the internet I was effectively in my office with everything at my fingertips and back at base I could connect my superb Eizo display for critical colour work and retouching. The Eizo is capable of displaying the full range of colour in the Adobe 1988 colour space commonly used in professional imaging and the publishing world.

Five years is the right time to replace a laptop and gain best value in terms of speed improvement versus cost though and I've now added the latest 2.4GHz Intel Core i7 version alongside my existing Core 2 Duo model.

Next to colour accuracy, nothing matters more in a photographer's workflow than speed and so I was interested to discover just how much faster the new computer would be. I devised a series of tests based around typical real-world procedures to compare the two Macs.

The contenders are a 2007 model Intel Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro 2.33 GHz, 3GB RAM (the maximum) OSX 10.6.8 and the new 2.4GHz i7 with 8GB RAM (again the maximum) and OSX 10.7.3.

PhotoMechanic 4.6.8:

Time to ingest 20 Nikon D3S 14 bit NEFs (288GB of data) using an ExpressCard 34 compactflash adapter, write an IPTC caption and rename the files:

Core 2 Duo - 18 sec
i7 - 12 sec

Copy the files to a new folder:

Core 2 Duo - 8 Sec
i7 - 2 Sec

Nikon Capture NX2 2.3.1:

Process 20 Nikon D3S 14 bit NEFs - convert to jpeg and save:


Core 2 Duo - 1 min 40 sec
i7 - 50 sec

Process 20 NEFs - apply noise reduction (better quality), USM and save as losslessly compressed NEF:

Core 2 Duo - 8 min 49 sec
i7  - 2 min 21 sec

It's clear that PhotoMechanic is gaining a useful increase in speed but NX2 is the real beneficiary of being free to run in 64 bit mode, with a tremendous boost in productivity. It's also interesting that the new Macbook is noisier than its predecessor, with the fan running gently at all times, causing a detectable exhaust flow from the left side of the case and the last batch test really causing it to pour on extra coal and immediately run the fan at full speed whereas the old model would have to be running at full capacity for an extended period before audibly fanning.

On the subject of colour accuracy, the display on the i7 as shipped was excessively blue, too contrasty and delivered over saturated colours. It looked wonderful, but it wasn't accurate. After profiling with my i1 Display Pro it was near identical to the earlier laptop which was always within a whisker of the profile it shipped with following calibration. The resolution of the i7 is 1920 x 1200 which is a nice resolution for a 24 inch display but leaves text too small to be read comfortably on the built in 17 inch display without risking eye strain. Fortunately, many applications, including browsers, now support zooming and CMD + scales the text up to a comfortable size.

The Edge of the World

© Tom Parkes

© Tom Parkes

Two pictures inspired by the Michael Powell film The Edge of the World. Both were created using the D3s monochrome mode with red filtration. Colour filters used in black and white allow light of their own colour to pass while darkening opposite colours. In this case the edge of the "world" is the southern edge, the dunes at Littlehampton's West Beach, a nature reserve and site of Special Scientific Interest.

Thumbnail captions restored

14:05 BST

Thumbnail captions are now restored and all galleries are displaying correctly.

Pop-ups restored

15:20 BST

 Mouse-over pop-ups are now restored. Thumbnail captions to follow.

Missing captions from thumbnails

Wednesday 28 March 10:55 BST - Main website

A problem with the new back end interface this morning means captions are not displaying correctly or at all below thumbnail images in galleries. This will be resolved in short order. Any clients experiencing difficulty locating images in the meantime can contact me by email or telephone for immediate assistance. My apologies.