Finished Products…

As a proud grandmother I love showing off photos of my two, beautiful granddaughters, but in this digital age I don't carry around an album of photos. Instead I share photos on my iPhone and iPad or upload them to my photoblog. If for some reason I want to alter these photos, I can easily edit photographs taken with my DSLR on my computer, and photos taken with my iPhone can also be easily edited directly on either the iPhone or the iPad. 

Enter the world of photo editing apps. Both iPhone and Andriod smartphones have  built-in photo album apps that allow users to adjust exposure and crop images. For a wider range of editing tools, there are numerous third-party apps from basic (exposure adjustments and cropping) to advanced (cloning, removing backgrounds, creating layers) techniques. There are probably thousands of such app for both iOS (Apple) and Android devices, and among the most popular are iPhoto (Apple only), Photoshop Express, Filterstorm, and Snapseed. 

In addition to cropping and adjusting exposure, most of the apps include features such as color correction, black and white conversion, sharpening, and red-eye correction. Another category of photo editing apps apply filters to images with one touch. An image can be transformed into sepia tone, high contrast, or made to look like an antique. Instagram, the most popular app in this category, has a companion website that boasts over thirty million users. For even more advanced editing, Photoshop Touch, for both platforms, has many of the features found in Photoshop, Adobe's flagship computer application. 

Photo editing can be done directly on a smartphone, or, as I prefer, on the larger screen of a tablet. When I take a photo with my iPhone, it is automatically saved to the built-in Photo app and simultaneously to Photo Stream, which stores the photos in Apple's, iCloud. Android images can easily be transferred between devices with Dropbox or other similar cloud storage services. 

What do I use for photo editing? My choice for quick and simple editing is either Photoshop Express or iPhoto. Both offer basic editing tools for adjusting exposure, cropping, fixing color balance, and sharpening. For more complex edits my choice is Photoshop Touch. Once I am happy with my edits I save the image back to the built in photo app, which simultaneously adds it to the Photo Stream. From there I can chose to display the image on both the iPhone and iPad, and I can upload it to Facebook or my photoblog. 

• Cnet reviews of Photo Editing Apps for Andriod
• Cnet reviews of Photo Editing Apps for iPhone & iPad

• Example of simple photo editing on my PhotoBlog
* Many of the photos on my blog were taken with the iPhone and edited on the iPad. Take a look!

Capture this…

As an avid photographer I like to have a camera with me at all times. On a "photo shoot" I use my DSLR (digital single lens reflex camera), but at all other times I carry a point and shoot in my pocket or purse. That is until last December, when I got an iPhone 5, one of the new breed of smartphones that support high quality cameras. I still use my point and shoot on occasion, but over time I find myself using the iPhone as my go-to camera for taking spontaneous photographs. 

As a side note, most smartphone cameras have a variety of high-end features in common. As I am not one of the paid technology columnist who receive demos from manufactures, I am limited to reporting first-hand on what I actually own, and on  research for competitive models. Last September CNET (reviews.cnet.com), an excellent website for all things technology, compared the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S3 with the iPhone 5. The overall conclusion placed the iPhone first for overall photographic quality, followed closely HTC and Samsung. The features on all three phones include: an 8-megapixel, backlit sensor; large aperture; little or no shutter-lag and shot to shot recovery; an LED flash; HDR (high dynamic range) mode; digital zoom; and image stabilization for video recording. Both the HTC and Samsung also feature scene modes, a feature not found on the iPhone, but according to the review, one that did not make much difference in the overall quality of the photos. 

My experience is that the iPhone 5's five-element sapphire-crystal lens produces excellent photos. Taking a picture is as easy as pointing the camera at a subject and taping the screen. If the scene has uneven lighting, tap a dark area of the screen, and the light sensor will adjust the exposure for that area of the image. The camera includes a grid option which turns on a three by three grid to aid in image composition, and a digital zoom that works by placing two fingers on the screen and pulling them apart. 

The feature I use the most is HDR, or high dynamic range. With HDR photography, I can take three successive photos at different exposures – underexposed, overexposed, middle exposure – and combines them into one image that is closer to what the human eye sees. The three images are snapped in rapid sequence, and there is no noticeable shutter lag. The flash is automatically turned off when HDR is turned on, and I keep it turned on unless I am in an extremely low-light situation.

Panorama is a software-based feature that was added to the operating system update introduced with the iPhone 5. This feature, which also works on the iPhone 4S, combines together up to a 360° image when you hold the camera in portrait mode and turn slowly. The phone even tells you to slow down if you are turning too fast. While there are a variety of third-party apps available for creating panoramic images, the new, built-in feature produces excellent quality photos with the minimum of fuss. 

Finally, making videos is as easy as snapping a still photo. Simply swipe a slider from still to video and tap the screen to start recording. It is very comfortable to take video holding the phone in portrait mode, and at a 1080 pixel-resolution with built-in image stabilization, the results are excellent. In addition an added feature is the ability to snap still photos during video recording. 

I am sure by now you have noticed that I have not mentioned tablet devices. Most tablet devices, with the exception of the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire, feature rear-facing cameras, but my personal preference is to use my iPhone for taking picture. The image sensors on most of the tablets are of lower resolution than their companion smartphones, and I find taking photos with a tablet extremely awkward. I have also omitted discussing the front-facing cameras designed for video chatting (the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire do feature front-facing cameras). These cameras, in both smartphones and tablets, are of a lower resolution than rear cameras, but they adequately serve the purpose of live video chats. 

Using a smartphone camera is is easy and fun, but it is how the smartphone post-processes images that really demonstrate their excellent results. Next week in OnMouseClick I will write about how smartphones natively process images, and what apps you can use to make your images better. Visit my photoblog at www.digitalquinn.com/photoblog for examples of iPhone photography.

More information on the HDR mode on the iPhone & Android phones.

Hacked

Yesterday my TR neighbor, Anne, told me one of her email addresses seemed to have been hacked. Her daughter had just forwarded an email, purportedly from Anne, that contained a link to an unknown website. When Anne received the forwarded email, she knew she did not send it and she wasn't sure what to do. My advice was to immediately change her email password, but when she tried to log into her account, her password was not accepted – signaling that a hacker might have changed the password. After an extensive online session and several phone calls with her Canadian internet provider, she was able to get the password changed. 

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, one definition of the word hack is "…to gain access to a computer illegally." A recent article in the New York Times sited major corporations, such as Apple, Google, Intel, and even the New York Times itself, as victims of Chinese hackers. While hackers going after Fortune 500 companies are not interested in you and me, we are in the sights of spammers and spoofers, who are often one and the same. 

Spamming is the sending out of unsolicited emails for the purpose of advertising or for more nefarious reasons. If you use an email application on your computer, or you send email through a web based service, a spam filter will attempt to filter out this junk email. As these filters have gotten better at identifying spam, spammers have had to develop other methods of getting their email into your inbox. One of these methods is disguising the spam as mail coming from someone you know, and to do this they spoof, or hijack, legitimate email addresses. 

When a spoofed email is sent, it appears to be coming from a legitimate email address, often from someone you know. The  subject line might read something like "Great" or "Check this out," and the body of the email, with or without other text, will contain a link. The link might be totally unfamiliar, or it might be appear to be a link to a familiar website. Don' let that fool you, the visible appearance of a link can be very different from the webpage it really opens (an example appears in the online version of the column). 

What has really happened is that you email address, or sometimes just your name, has been captured and is put in the FROM: section of the spam email. In Anne's case her actual email account was hacked, and her address book was used. Several of these bogus emails appear to have been sent, but yet they did not appear in her Sent mailbox, as the hacker must have deleted the message before they could be traced. 

Another form of spoofing is using just a person’s name and their online address book. A few weeks ago I received an email message from a friend that did not appear to come from her. The From line showed her name, but the email address was not one with which I was familiar. Since then I have received similar messages from both my sister-in-law and my daughter-in-law. Both times the email showed the correct name attached to an unknown email address, they were addressed to me, and they included a link to a website. All three used online mail accounts:  AOL, YAHOO, and HOTMAIL, respectively. Since the address books for these services are maintained online, it is not difficult for a knowledgable hacker to get into the system and extract information without actually hacking individual accounts.

What to do? A good practice to follow is to never click on links in emails unless you are 100% sure of their origin. If you have any doubts, contact the person who sent you the email to find out if it was really sent by them. Also be very wary of unsolicited email from a business, even from one that you regularly do business with. If you think the email may really be important, visit the corporate website through your browser. Legitimate operations will never send you email asking you to enter sensitive information. Such requests are phishing schemes that direct email recipients to counterfeit websites that often resemble the real thing. 

It is not my intent to create paranoia, or make you afraid to send and receive email. Just remember that if you think your email account has been hacked, immediately change the password and contact your provider. If you receive an email that you expect is bogus, do not click on any links – your best best is to immediately delete it from your system, and empty your trash for good measure. 

Below are several links to websites that discuss email hacking and prevention. And as a final note — I followed the source of one of the bogus emails I received from my friend in New York, and it was sent from central Russia. 

Prevent Hackers from Getting into Your Email Account

How to stop your Gmail account being hacked

Five steps to prevent your email from getting hacked

What do I do when my email is being hacked?

Wikapedia — What is email hacking

Protect your email account from hackers