A valentine from Corel

Valentine's day is approaching. Spring is just around the corner. So it's time for a young man's fancy to turn to thoughts of digitally enhanced photographs. Paint Shop Pro has, for a long time, been an application that I respect because it has offered uncommonly powerful features at a reasonable price. Corel acquired Paint Shop Pro, poured in some development money, and now has an application that's ideal for those who want to edit photos but don't have the money to buy Adobe Photoshop or the time to learn how to use it.

Before getting to the advanced features, let's take a look at some of the features that can be used to fix everyday problems. Click the smaller images to see a larger view.

		Here's what happens when you're sitting too far away to get a good picture, but you try to get a picture anyway. Can this photo be saved?
		The answer is that it can be saved, and easily. Paint Shop Pro offers a 1-step fix. Click one button to have the program modify color, brightness, and contrast. All I did was crop the image. It's certainly not a perfect photo, but it's a lot better than before.
		What if you're standing outside Madison Square Garden and you want to take a picture in the snow, but you forgot that you had set the camera to be color balanced for tungsten lighting? What happens is you get a picture with blue snow and, because you weren't paying attention, all the buildings are leaning, too.
		The first thing to do is to get the image straight. Paint Shop Pro makes this kind of correction uncommonly easy.
		This time the color was just too far off for the 1-step correction to take care of the problem, so I tried some manual adjustments.
		Much more like the day really was!
		Here's an image taken in Columbus. It's a little underexposed and, because the camera was tilted up a bit, the buildings are leaning.
		In just a few seconds, I was able to correct both the exposure and the geometry.
		Here's another image with multiple problems. It's underexposed and mixed light sources (fluorescent and flash) combine to ruin the color. The image would also be better if we had just the speaker.
		The first two steps brightened the image, reduced the contrast, and modified the color. The color still isn't good, but the speaker's flesh tone is now acceptable.
		The next step is a simple crop.
		Then I removed the cable that's hanging down behind the speaker.
		The final change (which you may feel is better than the previous image or not) makes the image slightly lighter and adjusts the highlights so that the white board is less yellow.
		Here's a ship near Tacoma. This image could use some help with the brightness and contrast.
		Another victory for the 1-step fix.
		But sometimes "correct" color isn't correct for the image. Sometimes you might want the color to have some added punch. Increasing the color saturation a bit makes the image much more dramatic.

And that's just the beginning.

The background eraser is about as close to magic as anything. Let's say I have a photo of Scampi cat sitting on a ladder, but that I'd like to make it look as if he's gone for a vacation in the West. Easy.

		The background eraser (slow and steady strokes) gets rid of the background and allows me to ...
		... paste in a scenic view behind the cat. I did this in less than 10 minutes, which accounts for the sloppiness at the top of his head. But note the whiskers on the right side of the picture -- the whiskers that extend out into the background image. Doing this manually with a standard eraser tool would have taken a lot longer than 10 minutes and the results wouldn't have been as good. If you're doing something like this for a client and the client isn't a cat (cats never pay, anyway) you'll want to spend more than 10 minutes on the project and fix some of the rough edges.

Is your computer still working?

The latest threat against your computer is one that threatened to delete Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access files along with Photoshop files and others. The payload from the "Kama Sutra" worm (one of its many names) was scheduled to detonate on Friday. I hope you and your computer survived.

"If you have opened an e-mail and your computer froze up, you should be very concerned." That's the opinion of Ken Dunham, a security expert at VeriSign. The virus causes the keyboard and mouse to freeze and then disables anti-virus programs when the computer is restarted.

By early last week, security experts suggested that the worm had infected hundreds of thousands of computers by posing as a pornographic e-mail attachment. As we said last week, the worm spreads by e-mailing itself to addresses in an infected computer's mailbox was thought to be on as many as 500,000 machines.

"It claims to be a movie or picture with some sort of sexual content," said Johannes Ullrich, chief research officer at the nonprofit SANS Institute research group. "That is how it tricks you." But should you fall for the trick? I don't think so. Any attachment should automatically be suspect. It's really not particularly difficult not to click on an attachment. All you have to do is not click.

Unlike a lot of recent attacks that have had the objective of taking over a computer, this worm's primary purpose is to destroy files.

The bottom line: Make sure your anti-virus program is up to date. Make sure your firewall is active and functioning properly. And use the "wet-ware" between your ears to assess threats.

Browser madness continues

Before summer, there will be a new version (2.0) of Firefox and Microsoft is working on Internet Explorer 7. The new version of IE will offer tabbed browsing and other features that have been common in other browsers for a long time. If you want to see the latest IE on your own machine, you can. Beta 2 is now public.

To find the latest version, visit http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/ie7/ie7betaredirect.mspx and download the beta software. Repeat: BETA software. If anything goes wrong, tough. And Joe shouldn't bother to look at it.

Unlike recent versions of IE, version 7 weighs in at 11MB instead of 30MB or more. This is still triple the size of browsers such as Firefox or Opera. IE7 also validates your computer to be sure that you have a current and valid version of Windows running. The installer begins by running Microsoft's latest malicious software removal tool. Mac fanatics might suggest that the malicious software removal tool would remove Windows.

Oh, by the way, Firefox 2.0 will be out by mid year.

It then installs the new version, which modifies your home page and your default search engine. (Thanks, Microsoft! It would be nice if you would give me a choice!) At the end of the installation process, you are required to restart the computer.

What's new?

		After restarting the computer and starting IE7, I was given the choice of turning on the automatic phishing filter (seemed like a good idea to me) and participating in a feedback program (Microsoft examines information from its various feedback programs and uses that feedback to create better programs). Click these images for a larger view.
		The two primary new features in IE7 are tabbed browsing and provisions to handle RSS.
		Yes, this is a beta application.
		In the Tools menu, there's an option for add-on programs.
		In the Internet Options menu, IE7 is unaware that my default website editor is Macromedia's Dreamweaver 8. Instead, it offers me Excel (use a spreadsheet as my default website editor?), Word, and other equally lame choices.
		On the right side of the main menu, there are RSS options and other tools.

Search me!

At first it appeared that IE7 allowed searches only with MSN Search (the default) and the Microsoft Developers Network (the alternate). Clicking Add Search Providers shows only these options. But then I noticed Find More Providers on the menu.

Aha! That's the link to a website that lists various search options.

From here you're able to select a search option and add it to the list or make it your default search engine.

And you can finally put a website on your tab with IE7. Once you enable tabbed browsing, you can open pages in a new tab or a new instance of the browser. This is something that has been missing from IE for far too long. Its addition may bring back some Firefox or Netscape users and it will probably help solidify IE's strong base.

IE7 is also smarter when it comes to security. Microsoft provided an update for IE6 that included a pop-up blocker. The latest version expands on that concept and includes anti-phishing measures.

You'll want to turn all of the security features on.

Nerdly News

Did you lose any files on Friday

Most of the antivirus providers reported little or no activity on Friday, the day the latest worm nasty was scheduled to explode. I'm not surprised because people are getting smarter about these things. There are other ways to attack computers, but this worm required the victim to open an e-mail attachment. Two years ago, many people weren't sophisticated enough to delete files with attachments from people they don't know. That's largely not the case today.

I'm sure there are people who lost files because they wanted to see "my wife" naked. If so, sorry about your luck. Well, not really. Maybe you'll know better next time.

Earlier in the week, Finnish security firm F-Secure said that the worm was still spreading rapidly, but Symantec said the rate of propagation was declining. The theory is that the writer of this worm is some sort of bozo hobbyist because the technologies and techniques are antiques. If the worm bites you, though, it's still destructive even it if is a relic.

Just to be certain, I ran a full virus scan on Thursday and a complete rootkit scan. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, so I expected nothing to happen on Friday and that's exactly what happened.

No news is good news.

100GB for $40?

For someone (namely, me) who remembers when a 16MB disk drive cost more than $1000, the thought of buying a 100GB disk drive for $40 is amazing. Do the math: 16MB for $1000 is $62.50 per megabyte. 100GB for $40 is 40¢ per gigabyte. If that's not amazing, what is!

Why do I need another 100GB of space? I decided that – instead of taking the 20GB Ipod to the office every day – I'll put all 60GB of music on a USB disk and have all 12,000 music tracks available at the office instead of just the 5000 or so that will fit on my Ipod.

For the cost of a Seagate hard drive, after rebate, (with a 5-year warranty) and a case in which to mount the drive, I have a jukebox that contains every bit of music I've ever heard, and then some. There are musicians I listen to frequently (Chumbabwamba, Henry Mancini, Frank Sinatra, and Billy Taylor) and musicians I listen to less often (Madonna, Merle Haggard, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and Frank Zappa). What's appealing about the set-up, though, is that I have access to all kinds of music all the time.

What's the cost of the case? ADS has a Simple Touch USB 2 case for $60 or less, and that includes backup software. If you buy a case that's just a case, you could pay $30 or less, so the cost of the drive and the case would be well under $100 to add 100GB worth of space to your computer.

Wow.

And speaking of wow, I just bought 200 (yes two HUNDRED) Dysan CDs for $32.99 (with free shipping). That's about 16.5¢ per CD. Computers, disk drives, memory, and media are all reasonably priced these days. If you need memory, storage space, or optical media and you're not buying it -- -- -- -- WHY???

Annoying legal disclaimer

My attorney says I really need to say this: The Technology Corner website is for informational purposes only. Neither Joe nor I assume any responsibility for its accuracy, although we do our best. The information is subject to change without notice. Any actions you take based on information from the radio program or from this website are entirely at your own risk. Products and services are mentioned for informational purposes only and their various trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners. Technology Corner cannot provide technical support for products or services mentioned on the air or on the website.