Call Routing

by David English on December 30th, 2009

You may have three different phone numbers: a home number, an office number, and a mobile number. Wouldn’t it be great to have a single phone number that could ring all three phones at the same time? Or route your calls at certain hours to one of your phones? Or automatically route your calls to specific phones based on the caller ID?

You could route family member calls to your home and mobile, while sending business associate calls to your office and mobile. And while traveling, you might route all your calls to your mobile number. If that sounds ideal, but expensive and overly complicated, you haven’t tried Google Voice.

It’s free, though you currently have to request an invitation and wait (probably a few weeks) to be accepted. Once you receive your invitation, you can sign up for a new phone number or use one of your current numbers. In addition to routing your calls, Google Voice offers Web-based voice mail, along with the option to have the voice mail automatically transcribed and sent to you as e-mail messages. You can set up custom voice mail greetings based on caller ID and use your Google Voice number to make low-cost international calls. Despite all the options, I found the Web interface to be very easy to use.

There’s even a BlackBerry app that lets you access your Google voice mail directly from your phone. You can use the BlackBerry app to call out using your Google Voice phone number rather than the phone number that’s normally attached to the phone.

You can choose from a variety of phone numbers when selecting your new Google Voice number — and it doesn’t have to be in your area code. Choose carefully, though. While the phone number is free, there’s a $10 charge if you decide to swap it for another number.

Is there a downside to Google Voice? There could be privacy concerns. If you prefer that Google not have access to your phone messages or current phone numbers, then you may not want to use this service. Otherwise, it’s an incredibly powerful application that could dramatically change the way you interact with your phones.

Refined Color

by David English on December 28th, 2009

Digital photos give us a great deal of control with our image processing. The problem for most of us? We don’t know how to make the color, contrast, detail, or shadow adjustments that can transform a lackluster snapshot into a professional-quality image. Even if we know how to access the tools in Photoshop, Lightroom, or Aperture, we’re not sure how to isolate the effects to a specific part of the image.

If that sounds all-too familiar, you might give Nik Software’s Viveza 2 a test drive. You can install it in Photoshop, Lightroom, or Aperture for simple, yet precise, color adjustments. The product began shipping last week, though I’ve been using a beta version for the past two months. Where similar plug-ins or standalone programs tend to give a unnatural look to your processed images, Vivena 2 can be subtle, as well as powerful.

You can use the built-in filter controls to apply the tools throughout the image. Or you can use the control point system to target the tools to a specific region or range of colors. Need to darken the blue sky, without darkening the green grass below? You can do that easily in just a few seconds. Need to brighten the bride’s face and add detail to her hair, without altering either the groom or the background? You can do that, too.

I now apply Viveza 2 to almost all my color photos. Sometimes I end up keeping the previous version, but more times than not, it’s the Viveza 2 enhanced version that ends up being the keeper.

Relight Your Photos

by David English on July 29th, 2009

Talk about frustration. You snap a photo with your digital camera, and when you look at it later, you notice the subject is darker than it should be. Everything else is perfectly lit, except for the face or object that’s supposed to be the focus of the shot.

You could try to fix it with an image-editing program, such as Photoshop, Lightroom, or Aperture, but where would you begin? How do you lighten the darkened elements without causing the rest of the image to become washed-out or too bright? What you need is an automated fix that allows for your creative input.

Light Craft’s Aurora may be the answer. It combines a powerful relight tool with an intuitive interface. You can click the Auto Relight button and let the software decide, or move your cursor over bracketed variations of the tool’s results, and select the image you think is best.

Aurora can help you recover photos you might otherwise have chosen to discard, though it can’t perform miracles. It works best with shots where you can still see the subject — if only barely. It can’t draw details out of complete darkness.

This latest version of Aurora (version 1.1) brings Retouch and Punch tools to the mix. This version also expands Aurora’s integrated support for popular photo-sharing sites, adding Shutterfly to a list that includes Flickr, Facebook, SmugMug, Picasa, and TwentyThree.

I still prefer to use Lightroom for editing my photos. However, when I encounter a problem photo that needs a relight tool, I’ll try exporting it to Aurora. Previously, I did the same thing with Light Craft’s LightZone, which I reviewed last year for Computer Shopper.

Aurora currently sells for $19.95 (that’s 50-percent off the regular price). There’s a seven-day trial version, so you can try it on some of your own worst-case photos.

Free Cartoon Bubbles

by David English on July 28th, 2009

Want to add cartoon bubbles to your photos? Now you can. Digital Anarchy is offering a free Cartoon Bubble plug-in for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. You can vary the size, shape and position of the bubble, as well as the typeface and font size.

Other features include color selection for both the bubble and its edge, a slider control to adjust the bubble’s thickness, and seven preconfigured bubble styles that include basic ellipse, basic rectangle, emphasis, and thought bubble. You can even create and save your own bubble styles. I found using the plug-in to be simple and straightforward.

What’s missing? There’s no undo function inside the plug-in, though there is a workaround. If you use Photoshop to undo the plug-in’s changes and then reload the plug-in, it will automatically reapply all the previous settings, including the text you typed into the bubble.

You do have to provide an e-mail address to Digital Anarchy in order to receive the link for the Cartoon Bubble download. For what it’s worth, I’ve known the company for many years, and they are well regarded among graphics professionals.

Here’s a link for more information.

Ribbon Worthy

by David English on January 21st, 2007

I had read about the new ribbon interface in Microsoft Office 2007, but didn’t have a chance to try it until my meeting with Microsoft at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

At first glance, I felt lost. Like a complete novice, I had to ask how to load a saved file because the traditional pull-down menus have disappeared (hint: the file options are tucked under the oversized Office button on the far left).

Why take away the familiar interface we’ve come to love (and hate) over the years? We tend to think and work visually, so having functions grouped intuitively with visual cues encourages us to explore the hidden capabilities of the software.

Using the context-sensitive tabs, I experimented with features that were new to me, but have probably been available since Office XP or Office 2003. At this point, Word and Excel have essentially all the features you’ll ever need, so it makes sense that Microsoft would concentrate on making those features more easily accessible (think Microsoft Bob on steroids).

The biggest benefits will come to users who are new to Office. The rest of us will have to relearn and adapt, while wondering why it took Microsoft so long to break free from the confines of a one-size-fits-all interface.