Still As Life

Adobe have released the beta of Photoshop Express, a free, cut down (even more so than Photoshop Elements), web based version of Photoshop and photo sharing service which currently provides up to 2gb of space per user.

So far I have been unable to get the register page or the test drive page to load in Firefox, however it seems to be working in Safari.

Registration is fairly straight forward, name, email address, password, personal sharing url (basically you.photoshop.com), birth year, and country. Currently, the United States is the only country available to choose from the drop down menu. It let me register with the US as my country and I was given the following:

Check my email, hey I got my verification email straight up, I would’ve been annoyed if I didn’t. The verification page works in Firefox and tells me I am now able to sign in. No big surprise, the sign in page doesn’t work in Firefox.

So, signed in using Safari and I am greeted with a simple interface where I can choose to either upload photos, edit photos/create albums, view/share photos, or browse community photo albums.

The upload section is fairly straight forward and easy to use, though it is a little on the slow side when it comes to actually uploading photos.

As far as editing photo’s goes, it comes nowhere near a replacement for the real thing, but it does provide some useful features and makes some of the filters in Photoshop easy to apply for a user that doesn’t know how to use them.

As you can see from the screenshot, the tools are broken into 3 groups, Basics, Tuning, and Effects.

Basics

1. Crop & Rotate - Your photo comes up with an adjustable box overlaid on it, you simply drag the corners of the box or the entire box until your image is where you want to crop it to. If you want to rotate, there is a button for clock-wise and a button for counter-clock-wise.
2. Auto Correct - A series of small versions of the photo are displayed along the top of the editor with corrections automatically performed by the software. The user simply has to choose the one they like the best and apply it.
3. Exposure - Works the same way as Auto Correct, simply choose from the various different levels of exposure, as worked out by the software.
4. Red-Eye Removal - You are given a black cross-hair that turns red when you mouse over eye’s. If there is a red-eye, simply click it and the software will remove it. I don’t have any photo’s with red-eye’s on my laptop, so I can’t test the effectiveness of this at the moment, but it does seem to be very simple. Trying it on a photo without red-eyes though returned grey patches over the faces in some instances.
5. Touchup - This is a touchy tool and is probably one of the most complicated tools in Photoshop Express. It works simply by clicking on the photo and either leaving as is, or dragging it in/out for a bigger or smaller touchup, you can of course drag it out using a slider after the first click. However, it seems to me to work similarly to the clone tool in Photoshop, except that the software determines the clone source instead of the user. Often it seems to be inaccurate or inappropriate. It seems to only work well in a large area of similar things, such as the sky or trees.
6. Saturation - This works the same way as Auto Correct and Exposure, just choose your preferred saturation level from the choices made by the software.

Tuning

1. White Balance - This works the same way as Saturation, Auto Correct etc, except that it provides you with completely automatic, or choices for the sort of lighting, so you have options for sunlight, flashes, clouds, shade, incandescent lighting, and fluorescent lighting.
2. Highlight - Works the same way as Auto Correct and simplifies the adjustment of highlights, however, it does severely limit the amount of adjustment you can make as it is automatically determined be the software.
3. Fill Light - As with Highlight, it is a choice based on what the software decides, and seems to work similarly to adjusting the brightness.
4. Sharpen - Very simple to sharpen parts of a photo. Click anywhere on the photo to select the section you wish to sharpen and a box will appear around it. You can drag the box if you wish. Up the top, a selection of different sharpened options become available for that section of the photo. It works the same way as Auto Correct etc, except you can sharpen specific sections, rather than only the entire photo.
5. Soft Focus - Works the same way as Sharpen, except it creates a blur or “soft focus” on specific parts of the photo.

Effects

1. Pop Color - This is pretty cool. You are given an eyedropper and all you do is select a colour from the photo. The software then determines everywhere else that colour occurs and allows you to change the colour from a selection of rainbow colours. The rest of the photo is turned gray scale. Alternatively, you can choose from one of the 3 presets which also give interesting effects.
2. Hue - Lets you choose from one of the pre-determined choices, similarly to Auto Correct, and re-colours the photo the same way that using the hue layer overlay option does in Photoshop.
3. Black & White - As the name suggests, it turns the photo black and white, but it gives you some choices with differing levels of black and white balances, it can create some cool effects.
4. Tint - Works the same way as Luminosity in Photoshop, it takes a colour and makes the photo monochromatic based on that colour. The choices are rainbow colours.
5. Sketch - Is just like the Sumi-e filter from Photoshop. It provides choices which obviously have variations on the brush width and pressure.
6. Distort - Provides 5 different distortion effects. These effects all work by dragging an ellipse around the area you want to apply them to and it performs the operation. The effects are all pre-determined, so they will always have the same effect, on any spot on any image (though sky would not be as affected by them since its mostly variations of the same colour). If you use a lot of these effects, it becomes very slow and difficult to use. You are able to select each effect individually when you click it, which makes it difficult to apply two effects to the same spot. They are easy to remove though.
   • Twirl - Performs a twirl on the selected area.
   • Stretch - Stretches the selected area vertically.
   • Bulge - Creates the appearance of a bulge in a selected area.
   • Ball shape - Works similarly to the sphereise filter in Photoshop.
   • Fuzz out the details - Seems pointless except for blurring out faces and the like. It creates a big pixelated patch over the selected area.

All in all, Photoshop Express is fairly easy to use, I expect that the speed problems will be fixed before the final release, and hopefully some of the distort effects will become more user-friendly when there are large amounts of them. I’m also hoping it will work in Firefox. Aside from that though, it seems like a pretty good tool really, especially for someone that has no experience with Photoshop or photo editing.

I can’t compare it to the likes of Picasa or Flickr as I have never used these services. Thus far though, it is looking like a very decent product to be brought to the online photo market. Not to mention, it’s free as well.

One of my biggest qualms with it is that neither ctrl + z or cmd + z perform an undo function, you have to click the undo button if you don’t like it. You also have to use the scroll bar, not the scroll wheel when scrolling through albums and so on.

Something that particularly stands out to me is that it seems to be based in Flash, and it is one of the most user-friendly Flash interfaces I have ever used, and coming from Adobe, I wouldn’t expect anything less.

Popularity: 100% [?]

So you’ve got your normal V, then theres your sugar free variety, aptly called “V Sugar Free”.

This variety of V actually tastes very much like the regular stuff. Like any sugar free variant, it does taste somewhat worse than the original, but it’s not much worse.

They are currently $2.20 a can at Coles and are available individually or in 4 packs. V Sugar Free is also available in a 35oml bottle.

Theres not much more I can say about it really. It’s not a bad drink, it’s not a good drink. Is it healthier? Good question. I say no, it is worse for you than the regular stuff. I will explain why after the ingredients list below.

V Sugar Free Nutritional Information

The label indicates the following per 100ml:

This is identical to that of the regular V, and also very similar to Coles Zu Sublime Energy Drink.

V Sugar Free has the standard warning not to drink more than 2 cans per day.

V Sugar Free Ingredients

The ingredients according to the can are as follows:

Carbonated water, sugar, acidity regulators (citric acid, sodium citrate), taurine, guarana extract (0.12%), sweeteners (acesulfame potassium, aspartame), colour (caramel (derived from wheat)), glucuronolactone, caffeine, inositol, thickener (xanthan gum) vitamins (niacin (B3), pantothenic acid, B6, B2, B12), flavours. Contains phenylalanine.

So why do I believe that the sugar free variant of V is worse for you than regular V?

You may have noticed the little warning at the end of the ingredients, contains phenylalanine. This is because one of the artificial sweeteners used in place of the sugar, aspartame, is a source of phenylalanine. Now, is phenylalanine bad? No, it’s a naturally occurring amino acid. It’s in proteins and meats and so on. However, according to 3DChem, aspartame has roughly the same amount of calories as regular table sugar. So, you are getting the same amount of calories, it’s just not sugar. In addition to that, there are health problems linked to aspartame, particularly related to people with PKU (phenylketonurics) and diabetics. It seems that there are also a lot of diseases that are related to aspartame, there is a fair amount of information about this on sweetpoison.com, it’s definitely worth a read if you are interested in finding out more about aspartame.

The Aspartame Information Center is adamant that the synthetic chemical is safe. While that may be so, I personally think that the amount of it that can be found in diet drinks would be cause to make it unsafe if continually ingested in those sorts of quantities on a regular basis and is thus why I generally avoid drinking diet drinks, as I said, earlier, it’s around the same amount of calories, so there is no benefit to it in my opinion (plus diet drinks generally taste worse). It’s up to you to decide what you think about it though and do more of your own research into it.

Further reading on aspartame and phenylalanine:

• Sweet Poison
• Wikipedia - Phenylalanine
• What is PKU?
• 3DChem
• Aspartame Information Center

V Sugar Free Ratings

Quantity - 250ml
2.5/5

Price - $2.20
3/5

Flavour
1/5

Overall
2/5

Popularity: 62% [?]

V is manufactured by Frucor Beverages in New Zealand and is one of the first energy drinks in a can to appear on the market in Australia (on their website, V acknowledge Red Bull as being the first) and it seems to have remained one of the most popular.

I refer to V a lot in other energy drink reviews, so I thought it’s about time I wrote about it.

V has a unique taste that I can’t really compare to anything. I have heard it is meant to be a lime flavour, but aside from the green theme on the cans and their website, there is nothing that I can find from V as to what flavour it is actually meant to be.

I regularly refer to V as one of the worst tasting energy drinks, but I will admit, that there is a time when I liked it, and before I did this review, it has probably been 3 months since the last time I had V. I find that the taste of V is very easy to get sick of reasonably quickly. I didn’t mind it when I had it today, but I would definitely be over it if I had much more.

They are currently $2.20 a can at Coles and are available individually, in 4 packs, 6 packs, and occasionally you find them in an 8 pack (6x V and 2x V Berry). V is also available in a 35oml bottle.

V Nutritional Information

The label indicates the following per 100ml:

If you read my earlier review on the Coles Zu Sublime Energy Drink, you may have noticed that the Zu additives are near identical to the additives in V, the only real difference being that V has 10mg extra of Inositol.

V has the standard warning not to drink more than 2 cans per day.

V Ingredients

The ingredients according to the can are as follows:

Carbonated water, sugar, acidity regulators (citric acid, sodium citrate), taurine, guarana extract (0.12%), colour (caramel (derived from wheat)), glucuronolactone, caffeine, inositol, vitamins (niacin (B3), pantothenic acid, B6, B2, B12), flavours.

V Ratings

Quantity - 250ml
2.5/5

Price - $2.20
3/5

Flavour
1.5/5

Overall
2.5/5

Popularity: 79% [?]

Can anyone else say awesome?

I’m a fan of good ice coffee, and I really like the normal Ice Break Iced Coffee, so I figured hey, why not try this new one, Ice Break Loaded which is basically the normal ice coffee but with added guarana.

It tastes slightly different to the regular Ice Break, but it’s definitely not a bad difference, it just tastes like stronger coffee.

It doesn’t have all the extra additives of other energy drinks, which could be a good or a bad thing depending on your point of view.

Ice Break Loaded are currently $2.89 for a 500ml bottle at Coles. This makes it roughly the same price as the cheaper energy drinks like Coles Zu Sublime and Ballistic.

Ice Break Loaded Ingredients

The ingredients are simple:

1. Reduced fat milk (95% where 1.6% is milk fat)
2. Sugar
3. Coffee (0.5%)
4. Guarana extract (0.5%)

According to the nutritional information label, there is 32mg of caffeine per 100g. This is on par with the average amount in energy drinks in my experience thus far. It doesn’t list a quantity for guarana, but given that the ingredients indicate that it is the same percentage as coffee, I would assume that there would be around the same amount of guarana per 100g as there is caffeine, 32mg. This is higher than the average energy drink which seems to be around 10mg per 100g.

It is probably worth noting that the standard Ice Break has 23mg of caffeine per 100g, so there is added caffeine as well.

My assumptions are, that this is probably a healthier alternative to the regular energy drinks as this is milk based and doesn’t have a huge amount of anything unhealthy. There is 9.3g of sugar per 100ml and thats about it. By comparison, there is 10.6g of sugar per 100ml in a can of V.

Ice Break Loaded Ratings

Quantity - 500ml
4.5/5

Price - $2.89
4/5

Flavour
4.5/5

Overall
4.5/5

For anyone that’s interested, the photo in this article was taken on my new Sony Ericsson K850i.

Popularity: 68% [?]

As you saw in the final section of the previous tutorial on numeric expressions in Python, Fractions, the following two expressions give different answers:

18.0 / 7.0
# This returns 2.571485714285716

18 / 7
# This returns 2

So what’s going on here? Well, this is an example of the two main number systems in Python, integers and floats.

A float can be distinguished from an integer because it has a fractional part, even if it is just .0, such as the .0 at the end of the 18 and 7 in the above example.

If you choose to leave out the fractional portion of a set of numbers, Python will always return it as an integer, unless you force it to return it as a float which I will explain in a moment.

If you put in the fractional part, even if it is just a 0, Python will always return it as a float, unless you force it to do otherwise.

Now what happens if you use both a float and an int? Such as 18 / 7.0?

Let’s try it and find out.

18 / 7.0
# I get the same as 18.0 / 7.0
# 2.571485714285716

Why does it do this?

By using a float with an integer, Python defaults to a float for the result.

Forcing a Number Type in Python

Forcing a number to be either an integer or a float is a pretty simple task. All you have to do is add the following to your expressions:

int (18.0 / 7.0)
# This will force Python to return an integer value
# instead of the default float.

float (18 / 7)
# This will force Python to return a float value
# instead of the default integer.

If you need to determine what number type something is, this can be determined very easily with the following function:

type (18)
# This will return <type 'int'>
# In other words, 18 is an integer.

type (18.0)
# This will return <type 'float'>
# So, 18.0 is a float.

If you convert a floating point number to an integer, the fraction is lost, so if you need to use it, it is a good idea to keep your numbers in the floating point format.

Does 1 = 1.0?

You would expect 1 and 1.0 to be the same, and logically, they are, right?

While the integer 1 is numerically the same as 1.0, their value is not equal. You can test this in Python by doing the following:

1 == 1.0
# This asks Python if 1 is exactly equal to 1.0
# It returns True.

1 is 1.0
# This asks Python if 1 and 1.0 hold the same value.
# It returns False.

Floating point numbers are encoded as finite approximations in binary. This can cause some slight rounding inaccuracies to occur that are machine based.

Have a look below at some examples:

1.0 / 3.0
# Python cannot encode the infinite fraction, try it and see.

(0.1 * 3.0) / 0.1
# This should return 3.0, I do not get exactly that though.
# Try it and see what you get. It will be 3.something.

If you have any comments thus far, please let me know, the same goes if you have any corrections or input for the tutorials.

Next up I will be looking at strings in Python, so stay tuned.

Popularity: 68% [?]