Flickr Uploadr for Mac OS X - fixed

I upload all my Flickr photos using Flickr Uploadr for the Mac v3.2.1. Things had been working fine until two days ago. On September 18th, Flickr Uploadr crashed upon launch. Every time I tried to launch it, it would crash within five seconds. I use Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.4. I am pretty sure that it wasn't the software update that broke it, but something else.

I tried all the usual "software first-aid". Delete preferences, caches, application support settings. Re-install the application. Nothing worked. In fact, Flickr Uploadr would crash even before it signed into Flickr!

I wasted almost 12 hours over a period of two days trying to figure out how to fix things. Flickr Uploadr is Flickr's recommended desktop uploader of choice. However, they haven't updated the tool since June 2009. The only documentation that exists is in form of users pouring their woes out on Flickr forums. I loathe forums. One has to sift through piles of clueless rubbish to actually figure out what the proper issue is. And then, there's a 5% chance that the forum will have a proper solution in it.

Here is a forum thread where other users have complained about the same problem.

Flickr staff have washed their hands off the project with the following statement:

The desktop Uploadr is not in active development at this time, so it might be best to try one of the 3rd party applications in the App Garden if you would prefer to use a desktop client rather than our web uploaders

I decided to look under the hood and try to fix things myself. After some debugging, I realised that the component at fault was XULrunner - a framework upon which Flickr Uploadr is built. I then replaced the XULrunner framework with the latest version (v1.9.2 as of this writing).

And to help out Mac users in the Flickr community who are heavily dependent upon Flickr Uploadr, I have created a ZIP file of my "stabililzed" Flickr Uploadr which can be downloaded from:

http://saumil.net/howto/flickruploadr/Flickr_Uploadr_saumil19092010.zip

Unzip the file and copy the Flickr Uploadr App into your Applications Folder. Hopefully, it should work. Note - this application has only been tested on my Mac (Mac OS X 10.6.4 - Intel). I would appreciate it if you can confirm whether this works or not.

iPhoto Flickr and Geo-location

Today I tried using iPhoto 09's built in Flickr upload feature. Setup was easy. I had to add iPhoto as a trusted application in my Flickr account, which was automatically prompted for when I enabled the Flickr upload feature.

After uploading my first set of photos, I noticed that the geographic location data associated with the pictures didn't make it to Flickr. Upon searching, I found that I needed to enable Flickr to "Automagically import GPS information as geo data" in my account settings. Once that was done, Flickr picked up iPhoto's location data from the pictures.

Firefox 3.5/3.6 Color management - a step backwards

For whatever stupid reason, Firefox 3.5 and the upcoming 3.6 beta have decided to drop proper ICC4 colour management in their rendering engines. Firefox 3.5 only supports ICC2, and apparently, ICC4 support is still missing from Firefox 3.6.

So there we are, back to mismatched colours, back to the dull shades, back to what IE used to show. I personally have no idea why the "geniuses" at Mozilla decided to take this step backwards, and I don't think they're going to do anything about it either. Their reason states that the new colour management engine - QCMS - doesn't support ICC4 yet. Sadly, the thread states that it is "solved and closed". Far from it. So, we shall have to wait until the QCMS engine matures to something that was working quite well for the past few years.

6 ways to improve your photography

This is a sarcastic article. I am fed up with photography sites regurgitating the same garbage over and over again - publishing their articles with misleading headings to catch attention. No matter what, they end up re-iterating "use the rule of thirds", "try a different angle", "capture candid moments", etc. etc.

However, here is something that a sincere user posted somewhere on Digg:

If you know how to defend your photos, you don't need to learn how to take good photos. Here's how to defend your photo to make it look good:

• Weird = Abstract
• Overexposed = High key
• Badly composed = Lomo style
• Overprocessed = Artistic HDR
• Snapshot = Capturing the moment
• Shaky hands = Dramatic blurring

And thats why the photo that you thought looked awful got high ratings on Flickr.

Canon Tethered shooting from Windows

Cute Canon Capture is an open source and free program to control your Canon camera using a USB cable.

I haven't tried it personally, but I can see it being extremely useful in certain situations, especially studio product photography.

Cute Canon Capture runs on Windows only (sad) and works on the following Canon camera models:

• PowerShot A620
• PowerShot S80
• PowerShot S3 IS
• PowerShot G7
• PowerShot A640
• PowerShot S5 IS
• PowerShot G9
• PowerShot SX100 IS
• PowerShot G10
• PowerShot SX110 IS

Long Distance Camera Trigger

Here's a simple DIY project on how to turn a pair of walkie talkies into a long distance camera trigger, especially for photographing wildlife.

LifeHacker article

flickr page with do-it-yourself instructions.

Retro Polaroid Photography

If there's something that digital cameras of today lack, it is the charm of the old classic cameras. Black and white prints, faded colours, old memories. At times, it is nice to lose some details for nostalgia's sake.

One of my favourite programs these days is Poladroid. It converts your digital pictures into Polaroid-like prints, with a striking resemblance to Polaroid photography of the 80s. Polaroid photos are square and printed on chemically treated paper that develops instantly. There's some vignetting, difference in colours and an overall casual feeling to photos taken with a Polaroid camera.

Poladroid brings it all back! And with the same recklessness as a regular Polaroid camera.

Here are some pictures taken with a regular digital camera, processed by Poladroid.



More pictures can be found on Flickr's "Be Poladroid" group.

Download Poladroid (for Mac and Windows)