General Gaming Article |
- Amazon Expands Same Day Delivery to Six More Locations
- A Crash Course to Editing Images in Adobe Lightroom
- Activision Blizzard Sees Decline in Profit and WoW Subscribers, Still Beats Expectations
- Russian Cyber Thugs Swipe 1.2 Billion Passwords
- Xidax M6 Mining Rig Review
- Intel 730 Series SSD 480GB Review
- AMD FirePro S9150 Brings 2.53 TFLOPS of Double Precision Performance to Servers
- Acer's B286HK Spreads a 4K Resolution Over 28 Inches of Screen Real Estate
- Newegg Daily Deals: AMD A8-5600K APU, Samsung 840 Pro 128GB SSD, and More!
| Amazon Expands Same Day Delivery to Six More Locations Posted: 06 Aug 2014 10:54 AM PDT
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| A Crash Course to Editing Images in Adobe Lightroom Posted: 06 Aug 2014 10:43 AM PDT When your images aren't up to snuff, there's always photo-editing software Photography can be impenetrable from the gear to actually shooting and then the image editing software is a whole other uphill battle. Even with Adobe introducing Lightroom as a lightweight Photoshop alternative, it can be daunting to see a screen full of sliders as a complete novice. To help get you from serial Instagramer to amateur photographer, here's a crash course to making your images look great with just a few steps in Lightroom. Why you should shoot in RAWFirst off, before we get to editing any images, it's super important to start shooting RAW format images in case you haven't already. Unlike JPEGs, RAW files are uncompressed digital negatives that carry much more information. This in turn makes them easier to work with in Lightroom or any image editor. Thanks to this full allotment of the data packed into RAW files, you can fix more images otherwise destined for the trash heap such as blue-tinged messes or almost completely black frames. If that wasn't enough to sell you on shooting in RAW, this entire guide was done using the uncompressed format to show off and take advantage of the full image editing power of Lightroom. Getting started
The first thing you'll need to in Lightroom is to migrate your images of course. Upon starting Adobe Lightroom, navigate your mouse up to File and select "Import Photos and Video" (Ctrl+Shift+I). Another shortcut users can take advantage of is Lightroom will auto-detect any memory cards or cameras plugged into the computer. Lightroom will automatically drop images into dated folders. Unfortunately (or fortunately for some) this is programmed into the software, but users can always rename their folders. More importantly keywording your photos will be an indispensable tool to manage, search, and organize your images. Getting around inside lightroom
Once your images are all loaded into the library we can start editing one by clicking over (or hitting "D" on the keyboard) to the "Develop" screen. On the right edge of the screen users will find a list of settings that will allow them to tweak their images. There's a lot to take in with Lightroom's interface, but the most important thing users will navigate to are the filmstrip along the bottom to navigate images. Clicking anywhere on the image displayed in the center window, meanwhile, will zoom into the frame. Just beneath the featured picture there's also a box designated with "X|Y" that will allow you to view the original image next to their processed counterpart. The button to the left of this aforementioned comparison toggle will return the window to normal, displaying only the final picture. Along the left side of the screen users will find a history log of all the edits made so far to each individual photo--and speaking of image settings, they're all stacked on the right side of the window. At the bottom of this list of editing options there's also a handy "Previous" button to let users undo one chance or "Reset" to start all over again. Fix your framing
Sometimes in the rush to capture that decisive moment there isn't enough time to line up a perfect composition. But as long as the subject in the photo is in focus and your camera has enough megapixels, there's always the option to crop the image. The crop tool is located on right, underneath the histogram, and is designated by a boxed grid icon closest to the left. Depending on the shot it might be smart to cut away some of the background to isolate the subject. Alternatively, cropping could come in handy to remove a busy or boring background (otherwise known as negative space). Sticklers for completely level images can also bring their mouse cursor to the edge of the frame to rotate the picture as well. Red Eye Correction
Red eyes and flash photography seem to be inseparable despite all our technological advances, but at least it has gotten incredibly easy to fix this niggling issue. Located just two icons to the right from the Framing icon, clicking on Red Eye Correction will give you a new cursor that you'll want to select any red eyes in the photo. After that Lightroom will use the point users select and auto detect red pupils. White balance
Lighting is one of the toughest things in photography, especially when there's a mix of sunlight and a blue hued lightbulb. Not only do the two different types of warm and cool light clash, they also completely throw off all the colors in your photos. With this in mind shifting the white balance should be one of the very first stops on your image editing train. Lightroom comes with a series of preset white balance settings just as cameras do with options such as daylight, shade, tungsten, and flash just to name a few. There's also the option to have Lightroom figure it out all on its own and most of the time it does an admirable job of picking out the right type of lighting. In case anything still looks a little off, there are also sliders that users can move around. Each slider is fairly self explanatory—shifting the top knob leftwards will make the image take on a blue shade while shifting towards yellow will cause your image to take on a sepia tone. The one underneath splits the spectrum between green and violet. For those wanting a bit more fine tuned control with a point-and-click solution users should select the eyedropper tool. Simply hover the dropper over to a neutral gray or white area and clicking it will have Lightroom take a best guess on white balance from that one spot. Click on to the next page where we'll dive into more editing magic. Getting to the MeatNow that we've colored corrected the image and fixed up the composition, it's time to adjust the exposure. But before we start, there's no hard and fast rule for what is the perfect image. It does not have to be a perfectly balanced image where everything in the frame is evenly illuminated. There's nothing wrong with having harsh shadows or a blindingly bright spot—in fact it can actually be the thematic part of the picture you want to accentuate. Without further ado, here's are the main ways you can use Lightroom to manipulate your images.
Time to get technicalAside from the mix of sliders and staring at the image preview, a much more technical way of editing is using the histogram, which appears at the very top of the right side panel. Essentially it displays a graphical overview of the pictures's full tonal range in which darker pixels fill out on the left side of as they lighten towards the right. Every edit we just explained can be done by clicking on parts of this histogram and dragging them around. Either way works so it's really up to your preference. Making photos "pop"The tonal curve isn't all there is to editing images. Just underneath the exposure settings is something called presence. Starting with Clarity, users can increase the sharpness of their images or give them a dreamy, hazy quality. Saturation intensifies colors in the photo, which can be useful to bringing back some color on gray and cloudy days. Vibrance does a similar job of intensifying colors except in a slightly smarter fashion than Saturation. Rather than uniformly bumping up the hues in the frame, Vibrance increases the intensity of muted colors whilst leaving already bright colors alone. Next up Sharpening, Noise Reduction, Lens Correction, and more. Detail controlLocated in the "Detail" section below Lightroom's "Basic" editing options you'll find options to sharpen and reduce the noise of photos. Sharpening
Firstly to quell any misconceptions, Sharpening won't fix images for soft focus, camera shake, or any mistakes made at the time of taking the shot. Rather sharpening is a tool to accentuate details already in the photo. Just don't over do it as over sharpening images introduces a slew of new problems including harsh edges, grainy noise, and smooth lines transforming into jagged zigzags. There are four parameters when it comes sharpening images:
Noise Reduction
Noise is unavoidable whether its due to shooting higher ISOs or a result from bumping up the exposure in post—luckily there's a way to save images from looking like sandpaper.
Lens CorrectionMoving on, we're going to start correcting for imperfections in the lens by scrolling down the right sidebar to "Lens Corrections." Lens profiles
Enter the round hole, square peg problem. No matter how well engineered an expensive lens is, it will always produce some amount of distortion thanks to the nature of curved lenses filtering light onto flat sensors. The good news is this is the easiest thing to correct for. Simply click on "Enable Profile Corrections" on the "Basic" pane of Lens Corrections and Lightroom will do the work for you. Witness as your images are automatically corrected for barrel distortion and vignetting (dark corners). It's pretty much fool proof unless of course Adobe has not made a Lens Profile for the lens you shot with. It also might not be necessary to always click this option on as some photos might look better with the vingetting and distortion. Color Fringing
Fringing for who don't know appears as a purple or blue and green outline when an object is captured against a bright background—the most common example being a tree limb with the bright sky behind it. It can be a minor quibble with photos in most cases but certain lenses fringe so badly it can make a scene look like it was outlined with a color pencil. Luckily getting rid of fringing in Lightroom can be easy as spotting it and then clicking on it. To start, select the Color pane within the Lens Corrections and use the eyedropper just as we did with white balance. Usually fringing appears at points of high contrast so bring the cursor over to dark edges that meet a bright background. It might take a little bit of sniffing around but stay vigilant and you should be able to spot some misplaced purple or green-blue colors eventually. Some lenses are guilty of fringing terribly while others control it well, so it's really up to you if the flaw is noticeable enough to merit correction. Chromatic Aberration Since we're here anyway, go ahead and click on the option to remove chromatic aberration—another type of color fringing where wavelengths of light are blurring together—since it's as simple as turning the option on. You Can't Save Them All
Despite how extensive this guide might appear, there's even more editing magic to mine from Lightroom—we haven't even gotten to making black and white images, or split toning! This is only a crash course to help you make your images look better and the only way to master photography is to keep on shooting and practicing. In the same breath, however, we would recommend users should not use Lightroom as a crutch. Although Lightroom can do a lot to salvage poorly shot images, it's no excuse to just shoot half-assed and expect to fix things up afterwards. Otherwise post processing will end up eating up most of the shooter's time and eventually they'll realize that there are even certain images Lightroom can't save (as evidenced by the one shown above). Image editing software can be a great help, but its no substitute for good old skilled photography. |
| Activision Blizzard Sees Decline in Profit and WoW Subscribers, Still Beats Expectations Posted: 06 Aug 2014 10:34 AM PDT
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| Russian Cyber Thugs Swipe 1.2 Billion Passwords Posted: 06 Aug 2014 10:02 AM PDT
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| Posted: 06 Aug 2014 09:42 AM PDT A gaming rig that pays for itselfExotic car paint, multiple GPUs, and custom-built chassis' be damned, boutique PC builder Xidax thinks it has the sexiest sales pitch on the planet with its M6 Mining Rig: It pays for itself! Now, we can't say this PC is basically "free" because it ain't that, but Xidax says by using the box's spare GPU cycles to mine for crypto-currency, this baby would be paid off in about four months. To be honest, it's not something we've ever considered, as we've seen gaming rigs, and we've seen coining rigs, but never in the same box. It seems like a solid idea though, as the system can game during the day, then mine at night to help cover its cost.
The Xidax M6 Mining Rig comes set up with everything you need to start mining crypto-currancy almost right out of the box. The system's specs include a 3.4GHz Core i5-4670K with 16GB of RAM, a Corsair RM 850 PSU, closed-loop liquid cooler, 250GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, 1TB WD Black, and a pair of Sapphire Radeon R9 290X cards. In application performance, it's pretty pedestrian with its stock-clocked Core i5-4670K. Why not something more badass? Xidax says it weighed hardware choices carefully because the pricier the hardware, the longer it takes to pay off with crypto-coins. The Radeons are a wise choice, as they offer about twice the performance of Nvidia's fastest GPUs in mining applications. Gaming is also quite excellent (obviously, for a two-card system), and its mining performance is impressive at 1.7 to 1.8 Kilohashes per second. (Hashes of the kilo/mega/giga variety are the units of measurement for mining productivity.) Xidax ships the PC ready to start mining operations almost right out of the box, which is normally a daunting task. It also includes a Concierge (or should we say coincierge) service that has a Xidax rep remotely connect to the rig and do a final tune on the box for maximum mining performance. On this particular machine, it came ready to mine for Doge Coins and was forecast to make about $21.60 a day, or $670 a month, on a 24/7 schedule—including electricity costs. What's the catch? There are a few. First, it's loud when mining. In fact, it's so loud that you won't be able to stand being in the same room with it. Second, you can't do anything with it while it's mining because all GPU resources are pegged to the max. Third, crypto-currency can be volatile. Bitcoin saw its value see-saw from $130 to $1,242 and then back to $455 and $900 in just four months. It could all go kaput in a few months, or who knows—the government might even step in and ruin the fun. Considering its performance outside of mining, the M6 Mining Rig is pricey at $3,000. However, the price includes a lifetime warranty on parts and service except for the GPUs. Those carry a five-year warranty, which is still surprisingly good, considering that board vendors are already making noises that they don't want to eat the cost of dead boards killed by mining. Xidax says it will cover them, though. And—again—it pays for itself, right? That's ultimately the appeal of the M6 Gaming Rig, but it has to be carefully considered by potential buyers. After all, anything that sounds too good to be true usually is, but then again, it is a powerful gaming PC that could theoretically pay for itself in a few months. And even if the market blew up, at least you'd still have a formidable gaming PC rather than just standing there with your RAM sticks in one hand. And if it works out, whoa baby, you just got a PC for free! – $3,000, www.xidax.com
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| Intel 730 Series SSD 480GB Review Posted: 06 Aug 2014 09:36 AM PDT An overclocked enterprise SSD, priced accordinglyIntel has largely been absent from the high-end SSD market for many years, which has been a real head-scratcher, considering the original X-25M's dominance back in 2009. That all changes this month with the release of its all-new 730 series SSD. It springs from the loins of its data center SSDs, which use validated NAND and Intel's enterprise-level controller technology. To emphasize this heritage, Intel isn't bragging about the drive's overall speed, but instead notes the drive is rated to handle up to 70GB of writes per day, which is higher than any other SSD on the market by a huge margin. It features capacitors to protect data being written in case of a power outage, which is an unusual but not unprecedented feature on a consumer SSD. Intel also backs the drive with a five-year warranty.
Intel's new flagship SSD is validated for a whopping 70GB of writes per day. To create the 730 Series, Intel has basically taken the NAND flash and controller from its data center–oriented S3700 SSD and bumped up the clock and interface speeds. If you recall the "SSD overclocking" demo Intel held at Pax last year, this is the result, though Intel decided against letting consumers overclock the drive. Instead, it did the overclocking at the factory so that the drives could be validated at those speeds. To drive home the point that this is an SSD made for enthusiasts, Intel has even adorned it with a sweet-looking Skulltrail badge. The drive is a 7mm unit, so it will fit inside an ultrabook, but is available only in 240GB and 480GB capacities. It's odd that it's not available in 750GB or higher capacities, but our guess is Intel is afraid of the sky-high sticker price that such a drive would require; the two capacities it's offering are priced very high at $250 and $490, respectively. The drive features Intel's 20nm MLC NAND and its own third-generation controller. It's ditched SandForce, along with all the other SSD makers in the business. One interesting note is that since this is an enterprise drive, it essentially doesn't have a "low-power state," so it's not intended for mobile usage. Also, it consumes 5W under load, which is double the consumption of even a 7,200rpm mobile hard drive. When we strapped the 730 Series drive to our test bench, we saw results that were a bit slower overall than we expected. It topped the charts in AS SSD, which measures read and write speeds of incompressible data, but the Intel drive was only a smidge faster than most, and not by enough to make it stand out, as they are all very fast. It was a bit slower than average in straight-line sequential read speeds, topping out at 468MB/s for reads and 491MB/s for writes. While this is still plenty fast, it's a bit short of the 550MB/s Intel claims the drive is capable of, which is totally saturating the SATA 6Gb/s interface. It was also oddly slow in the ATTO benchmark, which has a queue depth of four and is a "best case scenario" for most drives. It scored just 373MB/s for 64KB-read speeds, compared to 524MB/s for the Samsung 840 Pro. We ran the test several times to verify, so it's not an aberration. It placed mid-pack in PCMark Vantage, but was slower than its competition in our real- Overall, this drive is a bit of a conundrum. We have no doubt it's reliable, as Intel has always been strong in that regard and this drive is full of safety-oriented features. But is it more reliable than a Samsung 840 Pro for the average consumer? We doubt it, and therefore the drive's extra-high price tag doesn't make much sense. If Intel realizes it's no longer the only game in town and adjusts the price a bit, it'll be a much more competitive drive, but as it stands, we must give it a so-so verdict of 8. $490, www.intel.com |
| AMD FirePro S9150 Brings 2.53 TFLOPS of Double Precision Performance to Servers Posted: 06 Aug 2014 09:34 AM PDT
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| Acer's B286HK Spreads a 4K Resolution Over 28 Inches of Screen Real Estate Posted: 06 Aug 2014 08:16 AM PDT
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| Newegg Daily Deals: AMD A8-5600K APU, Samsung 840 Pro 128GB SSD, and More! Posted: 06 Aug 2014 07:59 AM PDT
Top Deal: You want to build a new system, but school is about to start, and books aren't cheap. Neither is tuition, and let's not forget about a little fund for beer money. What's a budding PC builder to do? Build a bang-for-buck machine, of course! One possible route starts with today's top deal for an AMD A8-5600K Quad-Core Desktop APU for $90 with free shipping (normally $100 - use coupon code: [EMCPBPE24]). This 32nm Trinity chip sports an integrated Radeon HD 7560D GPU, so you can put off a dedicated graphics card purchase until next semester. Other Deals: Samsung 840 Pro Series 2.5-inch 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive for $98 with free shipping (normally $120 - use coupon code: [EMCPBPE222]) Western Digital WD Green 1TB IntelliPower SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive for $50 with free shipping (normally $55 - use coupon code: [EMCPBPE225]) G.Skill Sniper Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory for $153 with free shipping (normally $170 - use coupon code: [EMCPBPE36]) Dell P2314H Black 23-inch 8ms Widescreen LED Backlight LCD Monitor IPS 250 for $155 with free shipping (normally $190 - use coupon code: [EMCPBPE44]) |
Online shopping for the impatient
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