Searching with an image on Google

Google makes it super easy to perform a reverse image search.

If you are using a computer, open Google.com in your favorite browser and drag-and-drop the image you want to search for. Alternatively you can click on the camera icon to the right of the microphone (circled in yellow in the screenshot below).

Once Google comes back with results, you can refine them to show either visual matches or exact matches depending on how specific you want to be in your reverse image search.

In my example of searching for an AirBnB, I would use the exact match since rental property owners tend to upload the same images to every site they use to promote their properties. Then in the search results, I would click through to each site and look for the best price.

Searching from your phone

The same steps above will work from your phone too. You can open the browser on your phone, type in Google.com, and then add an image from your camera roll. If you prefer using an app, the Google app will also allow you to perform the same search.

Other uses for reverse image search

There are other use cases for using reverse image search like:

• Identifying places where someone used your image to create a fake profile.
• Seeing if someone used your photography without your permission
• Identifying a plant, animal, or bird in a photo

The post How to Reverse Image Search appeared first on Jake Ludington.

Features of Video 2 Photo

• Full-res stills from any video—no compression or quality loss.
• Frame-by-frame navigation so you can pinpoint the exact instant.
• Side-by-side comparison mode makes picking the best shot simple.
• Built-in Zoom and Pan for a detailed frame inspection.
• Batch export and favorite tagging streamline the process for heavy users.
• Supports Live Photos and even slo-mo videos without breaking a sweat.

For anyone who shoots a lot of video—parents, content creators, or just folks who never seem to tap the photo button on time—Video 2 Photo is a must-have. It turns “almost” into “nailed it” with a few taps.

Download Video2Photo

You can also export a still image from a video from your laptop easily using other software.

The post Video 2 Photo – Export a Photo from an iPhone Video appeared first on Jake Ludington.

Starting with iOS 2.0, Apple made it easy to take iPhone screenshots without additional software. Taking an iPad screenshot is just as easy because the steps are identical.

For most iPads taking a screen capture requires pressing a volume button and the power button at the same time. On newer iPhones, remember that the power button is the top button above the recently added camera button. You will see a quick flash and the screen capture will appear in the bottom right of your iPad screen.

If you don’t want to push buttons, you can also tell Siri that you want to take a screenshot and your iPad will capture an image without you needing to press anything.

The image is saved to your Photos. From their you can send the image via email, iMessage, WhatsApp or any other messaging solution.

Screen capture on an iPad with a Home Button

For an iPad with a Home button, the steps are slightly different. Press down on the home button, and then press the sleep/wake button at the same time. The screenshot is added to your Photos library on the iPad. After you locate the screenshot in your photo library, emailing a screenshot is just as easy.

Emailing a Screen Capture on iPad

If you have your email configured on your iPad, you can very quickly email a screenshot by attaching the screenshot stored in your Photos to an email message, just like you would any other attachment. If you never use email on your iPad, you will need to connect your iPad to the computer you sync with, copy the screenshot off your iPad and follow the steps you use to attach an image to an email message in your email software.

The post How do you Screen Capture on iPad and Email the Screenshot? appeared first on Jake Ludington.

Hidden windows open outside the viewing area of your screen can be infuriating if you don’t know how to fix it. I once had my email program launching off-screen and thought it might drive me nuts. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution to get your window back on screen with a couple of quick keyboard commands.

Follow the steps below to learn how to move a window that is off screen. These same steps will work for to move any app back on screen again.

The first thing you want to do is shift right-click the taskbar button for the off-screen window. If you don’t hold down the shift key, you will see shortcuts for the app you are trying to move. Choose the Move command from the menu of choices.

This turns your mouse pointer into the move cursor which looks like a plus sign with an arrow on each tip like the image below.

Tap any of the 4 directional arrows on your keyboard, which locks your mouse pointer to the title bar of the window. Without clicking on a mouse button, drag the window until it is back on your screen. Once you have the window where you want it, left click to keep the window on screen.

Other ways to move a window back on screen

Another option for moving windows back on the screen is to view all open windows at the same time. You can do this by pressing the Windows key and then tapping the Tab button on your keyboard. You will have a tile view of everything open. At this point, right click the window you want to bring to the screen and choose either Snap Left or Snap Right from the menu.

Now you know how to move a hidden window back to a viewable position.

The post How to Move a Window From Off-Screen appeared first on Jake Ludington.

I dug through all the sections of the Word file and found a few references to this other font, but I couldn’t seem to eliminate it from the document. I was on the verge of tearing my hair out, when I realized, Find and Replace allows you to search for and replace fonts throughout your Word .doc and .docx files.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t care about an invisible font in a Word document, but it was preventing me from uploading the PDF I created into a print on demand service because this random font wasn’t actually embedded in the document even though it showed up in the PDF. Read on to see how I solved the problem.

Note: It’s worth mentioning that if you want to replace font formatting in a Word document, you need to install the app on your Windows or macOS computer. This will not work in the browser.

First pull up the Advanced Find and Replace window in Microsoft Word, then start building your Font replacement. This is located in the Edit menu under Find.

At the bottom of the Advanced Find and Replace windows, click the Format button and choose Font.

With the Font window open, choose the font you want to remove from your Word document. next make sure all the check boxes in the effects section have a blue square inside them, so that Word will search everything.

Back in the Replace window, in the Find what section, use the button labelled Special at the bottom of the window to have Word look for things like Paragraph Mark, Any Character, White Space and other aspects that may be improperly formatted. Any Character is a good choice for this because it will locate letters and punctuation.

You may need to cycle through these and click the Find Next button in order to find the rogue font in your document. Once you have located something with the incorrect formatting, you can either manually change it, or you can use the Replace with tool to choose an alternate font.

Once Find next no longer returns results, the font is fully replaced.

If you ever need additional fonts to use in Word, check out 1001 Fonts.

The post Find and Replace Font Formatting Automatically in Word appeared first on Jake Ludington.

One of the wireless devices that’s been around homes the longest is the garage door opener. Push a button in your car and the door goes up. A simple concept that originated with the first radio frequency controlled Genie branded openers way back in 1954.

The fundamentals haven’t changed all that much in the 70 years that followed. While there are garage door openers that can communicate via WiFi, the basic mechanism is still commonly a radio frequency signal operating in the 300mHz to 390 mHz range.

I mention all this because my garage door opener recently started functioning poorly. In the two years I’ve lived in my current house, the door opener consistently worked from at least 50 feet away. More recently I would have to patiently wait for the signal to register while sitting just outside the garage.

I first assumed the battery was low and replaced that with no change in performance. I thought maybe the dangling antenna for the RF receiver might be directional, so I tried moving that. Nothing would fix the issue. I was almost at the point of giving up and buying a new garage door opener.

And then I remembered that I had installed a new light fixture in the garage. The light came with a remote to turn it on and off. On a whim, I unplugged the light. Garage door remote in hand, I walked a few houses down from the front of my garage and pressed the button on the remote. The door opened.

I will not be using that light in the garage anymore, but it also was a good reminder. When technology suddenly stops working, even simple technology like a garage door opener, the best course of action is to return things to the last working configuration. In this case, a configuration that excluded the light.

Wireless devices can be handy when they work, but too many of them create wireless interference and you never know what might stop working. If you’re reading this, I hope it provides some troubleshooting inspiration before you throw out something perfectly functional. It’s also a good lesson in knowing a little bit more about the frequencies used by the products you purchase. I’m not sure how to keep track of them all, but in this case in particular, knowing my problem was simple wireless interference solved by unplugging a recent purchase would have saved plenty of swearing.

The post Wireless Interference appeared first on Jake Ludington.

Why would you want to shoot panoramas?

Resolution: You can create a higher resolution image by combining several images in a panorama.

Composition: Imagine you have the wrong lens to capture the beauty of what your eye can see in front of you. Creating a panorama gives you the ability to reconstruct that beauty either digitally or as a print.

Perspective: A wide angle lens will capture all the details in front of you, but without the same richness of combining several shots using a longer lens.

Requirements for Panoramic Photos

One of the key tools in capturing the perfect panorama is a tripod head optimized for the task. Depending on whether you plan to shoot panoramas frequently or not, a basic ball head for your tripod might be good enough. If you plan to get serious about panoramas, the micro-millimeter adjustments of this Neewer tripod head will provide the precision required for perfectly stitched images.

Learn how to choose a lens, level the tripod, setup the camera, and build your panorama from a collection of stills in the tutorial below.

The post Panoramic Photography Tutorial appeared first on Jake Ludington.

I first discovered VueScan way back in 2002. I downloaded the trial version on an old Macbook, launched the VueScan application, and without issue scanned documents natively on a UMAX scanner that hadn’t seen new Apple drivers since 1998.

You don’t have to be a Mac user to appreciate this level of compatibility—VueScan aworks for Windows and Linux. You also don’t need a 15 year old scanner either. If you have an old scanner, chances are good it will work with VueScan. The software is compatible with thousands of flatbed scanners, film and slide scanners, as well as automatic document feeder scanners like the Fujitsu Scansnap.

The TWAIN drivers typically used for scanning are bypassed entirely, which seems to be more effective in terms of program speed. In my several trials of VueScan over the years, scanning performs faster than when using native drivers in some cases. Most of us can get by with the basic preview, crop, and scan solution at the core of this application.

What type of scanning does VueScan support?

The basic version only supports flatbed scanning and .jpg files as output. A standard version adds support for optical character recognition, as well as PDF and TIFF file formats. The standard version also adds support for document feeder type scanners. If you need to scan film or slides, the professional version will be the one you want.

If you are a power scanning user the professional version includes a long list of additional features more comprehensive than I can document here. Lets just say, if you wanted to configure something about your scanner, this app can probably do it. Most of us probably have a scanner or two that still works from a mechanical standpoint, but is no longer supported by our most recent operating system upgrade.

A trial version lets you try all the advanced features, but watermarks scanned images. Pay versions come in 3 versions depending on the type of scanning you plan to do with prices ranging from $24.95 up to $149.95. There’s also an option to pay monthly if you only need the software for a small project.

Download VueScan

Is VueScan Safe?

One of the questions I get about VueScan is whether or not VueScan is safe to use. VueScan support over 7,000 scanner models. Like I mentioned earlier in this article, I first used it in 2002 on an old Macbook. It still works with older scanners today. The software won’t harm your computer and it does a fantastic job of bringing new life to your old scanner.

The post VueScan Software for Scanning appeared first on Jake Ludington.

For my purpose, I’m specifically looking at photo printing services who offer 8×10 and 16×20 sizes to hang in specific locations for some of the photography I’ve done over the years. I’m also looking at more standard 4×6 prints too.

Best All Around Photo Printing Service

Mpix gets my vote for the best all around photo printing option. It isn’t the cheapest solution — prices before any current running sales are higher than some other options. At the same time you get what you pay for. The Kodak Endura paper used by Mpix for their E-surface paper is designed to last as archival paper and maintains color accuracy when printing.

Like many online photo printing services, they also offer photo books, posters, printing on metal, and cards for all occasions. Another thing I like about Mpix is that all photo book offerings have lay flat pages, which is not the case for all photo printers. One of the more unique offerings is statuettes, which are freestanding cutout printed on the same E-surface paper and mounted on 1/8″ masonite with a small black acrylic base.

As of this writing, 4×6 prints are priced at $0.36 each. With free shipping on orders over $35 and numerous specials that bring the price down, you can easily end up with high quality prints in the $0.25 range.

Printing Photos on a Budget

Snapfish is a winner on price. List price for 4×6 prints is $0.25, but they have perpetual sales that bring that price down. In some cases you can get below $0.10 per print if you time it right. This is one case where you never want to complete checkout without looking for a coupon code first.

Snapfish also wins on ease of use for adding photos. It doesn’t matter whether your photos are on your phone, on a computer, or on social media, Snapfish can accept the photos and print them. They also have a convenient option to start the photo upload process on a computer and continue from your phone without making you start over.

Other Photo Printing Options

Honorable mention goes to Nations Photo Lab for offering quality prints and making it easy to choose by paper type instead of by print type if you choose. Nations uses Fujicolor Crystal Archive Super Type PDN or Fujicolor Crystal Archive Digital Pearl Paper depending on the type of print you’re going for. They don’t have the fastest shipping, with estimates ranging in the 7 days to 2 weeks range for standard shipping when I checked recently. They do include color correction of images with every order, which makes it more likely your prints will be stunning when they arrive. Prices start at $0.36 for 4×6 prints, just like Mpix.

The post Best Online Photo Printing Services appeared first on Jake Ludington.

Most JPG or JPEG photos from digital cameras with a camera resolution of 20MP or more fall in the 7MB per picture range. RAW photos range in size from about 35MB-80MB across the various formats from Canon, Panasonic, Sony, Nikon, and the rest of the camera manufacturers.

Given that 1GB = 1024MB and 1TB = 1024GB, you can estimate the number of pictures a memory card can hold. Check out the chart below to learn how many pictures can 64GB can hold, how many pictures can 128GB hold, as well as photo capacity for other common memory card sizes.

Those 1TB memory cards really start to pay off for professional photographers shooting extremely high resolution RAW file format photos. CR2, CR3, NEF, and ARW file formats all take up significantly more space thanks to their uncompressed nature. They also give you the flexibility of editing things like white balance in post, so the trade off is worth it.

Be sure to order a few extra cards from Amazon before your next shoot so you don’t need to worry about whether your high quality photos have enough space. For my own needs, 128 GB offers plenty of space for maxing out the capabilities of my camera while keeping costs per card down.

This article was originally written when memory cards came in much smaller sizes. You can read the older post below to see how far digital cameras and memory cards have come.

Number of Photos for Older Memory Cards

Mary writes, “I’m going on a two week vacation to Hawaii. My digital camera currently has a 512MB memory card. I’m planning to take lots of photos, but I have no idea if my card will be big enough.”

Whether your camera’s flash memory card will be big enough to hold all of your pictures depends on many factors, starting with how many pictures you define as “lots of photos”. This is further complicated by not knowing which quality setting you’ve chosen in the camera settings. And it’s also important to know the maximum number of megapixels for each photo your camera takes.

My recommendation will always be to have a spare card on hand, because you never know when you might want to take more photos. 1GB memory cards are often available for well under $20, making it a modest addition to your vacation budget. It is possible to make a good guess as to how many photos you can fit on a single memory card using the following chart as a guideline. All you need to know is the Megapixels number for your digital camera.

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