I don’t have much to say, really. Not so much because there isn’t much to say, because I should be able to fill volumes, but because I don’t know how to say it.

I came to the Rocky Mountain News only 4 years ago expecting to make the best of it until something better came along. That’s the thing about the Rocky, something better was always coming along within that very paper. I didn’t make it to collect my 5 year pin (or was it a 5 year pen?) but given the opportunity, I would have. I’ve never heard of or met a more dedicated staff.

If Scripps CEO Rich Boehne knew how much unaccounted for overtime everyone worked in that newsroom he would keel over from a heart attack. Were everyone to come forward claiming their OT, Scripps’ finances would be left in worse shape than Media News Group. And that will be the last snarky punch I throw at the Denver Post.

Marie Griffin, Mike Noe and myself holding an award for best news website.

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter and me at the Rocky Mountain News farewell party. It was good of him to show up and see us off.

Jaime Aguilar and me at the Rocky Mountain News farewell party. Oh, and I'm pretty sure that's an award for best multimedia.

Sonya Doctorian, John Temple and me at the Rocky Mountain News farewell party.

This is what our server diagram looked like on the last day of the Rocky Mountain News.

And this is what the first day without a Rocky looked like. The Denver Post started publishing a Saturday copy as soon as we closed.

So long Rocky, and thanks.

Online journalism final edition, journalism, Rocky Mountain News

Uncategorized inauguration, obama, tag cloud

Pixlr is a browser-based image editor built in Flash. A lot of people see the word, “Flash” and thing “slow and clunky.” Pixlr is anything but. If you’re familiar with other browser-based image editors such as Picnik, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Pixlr is not only fast, but offers a layout and toolset that will be very famliar to Photoshop users.

So what would you use a browser-based image editor for? The speed and convenience of Pixlr is perfect for doing quick edits of photos before you uploading them to Flickr or Facebook or emailing them to your mom.

As an example of the speed and power of Pixlr, I offer you this fast 4 point toning tutorial.

Quick steps to a Pixlr toned image:

1. Adjust Brightness & Contrast to the point where only a small amount of the image is blown out or blocked up
2. Adjust Hue and Saturation to achieve ideal skin tones
3. Dodge image to highlight eyes, teeth and important features and Burn image to reduce emphasis on unimportant or distracting features.
4. Duplicate the Background layer, set the Blend Mode of the new layer to Overlay and reduce the Opacity of the new layer

Before

After

Alright, so you want that more in-depth? Cool.

Quick steps to a Pixlr toned image, expanded and explained:

Step 1. “Jump in”

There is no login, just click the “Jump in” button or go directly to the URL http://pixlr.com/editor

In the time it takes you to inhale approximately 1.73 times (that’s right, there’s no exhaling here) the interface has loaded.

Step 2. Open your photo

From the File menu, select “Open” to load an image from your local system or if you already have an image uploaded to Flickr, Picasa or your image sharing site of choice, select “Open from URL”

The time it takes to open the photo will depend on your bandwidth, but any photo I’ve dealt with - up to 12 megapixels - has loaded in very reasonable time.

EDIT: Those at Pixlr let me know that if you are updated to Flash v.10, there is no need for an upload. Sure enough, it definitely speeds things up.

From the View menu, select “Show all” so that you’re looking at your entire image. You can also select Fullscreen mode from the view menu for total toning pleasure.

Step 3. Adjust exposure

From the Adjustment menu, select Brightness & Contrast. Since there is no histogram or similar feedback, you’ll have to rely on your own two eyes.

To quickly bring the image into the correct exposure range, do the following:

1. Move the Brightness slider all the way to 100
2. Slowly move the Brightness slider back to the left until you start to regain highlights
3. Slowly move the Contrast slider to the right
4. As you move the Contrast slider, your highlights will begin to blow out again so counter this by moving the Brightness slider further to the left
5. Continue balancing the Brightness and contrast until only a small amount of the photo is blocked up and blown out.

Don’t worry if the image feels a bit flat, we’ll fix that in a moment

*Oh, and if you screw something up, there is a fully functional “Undo” feature.

Step 4. Adjust color

From the Adjustment menu, select Hue & Saturation.

Looking specifically at skin tones, nudge the Hue slider a few points in the appropriate direction. What is the “appropriate direction” you ask? Whatever looks good - yellow is to the right, red is to the left.

If you lightened the image in the previous step, chances are you lost some saturation. To fix that, just nudge the Saturation slider a few points to the right.

Step 5. Dodge and Burn

This step can take as little or as long as you like or be skipped entirely.

I recommend gently dodging eyes and teeth and burning down less consequential or distracting areas in the image

Step 6. The Ultimate Contrast!

Now for my favorite part…

From the Layer menu, select Duplicate layer. Looking at the layers palette, you’ll notice you now have a layer called Background copy. Change the blend mode of this layer to Overlay (you’ll have to scroll down the list.)

This will give you a super saturated, super contrasty image. It will probably be way too intense. To correct this, just reduce the opacity of the Background copy layer until the overall saturation/contrast balance is suitable.

A note on using Overlay: What you see is not necessarily what you’ll get when you save your finished image. I suggest setting Opacity 5 - 15 %.

You’re done!

Just remember to Save your image from the File menu.

As you become more familiar with using these techniques, you can tone images in seconds.

As of the posting of this tutorial, Pixlr is still in beta. It isn’t perfect in every regard, there’s no real color management for example, but it will get the job done quickly and effectively and I’m excited to see where they take it in the future.

Photography, Tutorials image editing, Photography, Photoshop, pixlr

There are several things that bother me about Final Cut Pro, but the redundancy of this dialog box always gets under my skin. 

Final Cut Pro Final Cut Pro, hdv, lame, Video

It’s been a wacky week to say the least. 

In what I would consider to be a profoundly beneficial use of our tax dollars (no, that’s not sarcasm, I’m serious,) the FCC is considering options to provide free Internet service throughout the US although the CTIA is less than enthusiastic. That’s fine though since the US Airforce is considering ways to destroy access to that very same Internet.

In a characteristically webish move, change.gov (yeah, that’s a gee-oh-vee at the end) goes all Creative Commons on our ass. 

Link Love courtesy of Tom Cheredar

To those of you new to the topic, DigiDave provides an excellent primer on linking for journalists (or anyone really.) I would pay damn close attention because not taking advantage of these tools is like walking into Level 9 and facing Ganon without those silver arrows! In other words, Certain Death. In addition to linking, Mark Potts lists what should be obvious to all but clearly isn’t. 

If you’re already on the auction block (chopping block?) this might be too little, too late. For anyone else, this is worth a read. 

One opportunity for community building as well as addition revenue lies in the realm of social media. But building a social networking site from the ground up is such a daunting task you say! Not so. Just don’t forget what separates a good niche social media site from a bad one. Oh, and you better hurry, cuz socialmedian is no longer in beta. 

Laying off hundreds of employees at various papers, Gannett has had a bit of a rough week. After reviewing this post on Gannett Blog, some of those employees might have further reason to feel a bit disgruntled. However, all those jobless journalists with limited skill sets have the opportunity to take advantage of some free technology training. 

There are an awful lot of newspapers closing or up for sale. What becomes of their audience? Community building takes time and is certainly worth something whether you’re a newspaper or social media service. Remember that. 

If this guy honestly represents the future of journalism, I think it’s better to opt out now. 

Everyone always preaches the merits and benefits of link journalism. You know, “the more you send ‘em away, the more they come back” but very few actually act. NYTimes just released Times Extra which allows you to modify your version of the NYTimes homepage with aggregated links. The idea is great, the current execution is clunky at best.

Ah the disposable medium… print is clearly dead and yet, not so dead. Er, wait… is everything dead?

Twitter was in the spotlight last week because of the phenomenal real time #Mumbai coverage. This week we can look at some of the lessons learned. And if you’re wondering why Twitter turned down the Facebook purchase, it’s because, “Twitter decided that it had too much left to do, beginning with figuring out how to make money.” Right. I can think of a really great way to make some money: sell your soul to Facebook. 

And finally, in a shocking move that has completely rocked the entire international journalism community, Reuters pulls out of Second Life.

Online journalism, Uncategorized journalism, links