rescue http://www.computersight.com/tags/rescue New posts about rescue Fixing an Image That is Too Bright or Too Dark http://www.computersight.com/Software/Photoshop/Fixing-an-Image-That-is-Too-Bright-or-Too-Dark.100792 Ever taken a great photo, captured that once-in-a-lifetime shot, or in a location that you'll never get back to… just to find later that the shot is too light or too dark?

Here's a simple way to rescue those images from the recycle bin:

  • Open the image in Photoshop (this may also work in PS Elements).
  • Hit CTRL-J to duplicate the layer.
  • On an image that is too bright, change the layer's blending mode to “multiply”.
  • On an image that is too dark, change the blending mode to “screen”.
  • Then adjust the layer's opacity with the slider at the top of the layers palette until you get the desired level of brightness.

You have to be careful using this, because just like over-adjusting the levels on the image will introduce noise, this method will accentuate noise or compression artifacts.

While this method does not give you the same control over an image as the adjustments available with RAW format, it can help you when you've got a JPG or TIFF that is just too dark or too light.

]]> Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:12:37 PST Top Five Data Recovery Software http://www.computersight.com/Software/Top-Five-Data-Recovery-Software.64667

  • File Scavenger 3.1

    If you have lost any valuable data, than you should get “File Scavenger”. This software perfectly recovers data even if your hard drive was reformatted. This goes to flash cards to. All pictures and Word documents were restored successfully. Video files were successfully recovered too, but not on FAT32 HDD. In fact, all other files were poorly recovered from FAT32. Recovered files weren't damaged. Only few pictures had errors. The next good thing about “File Scavenger” is that it works fast. It only took 2 minutes to recover all deleted files (2GB). And you will only need 1,4 MB free space to install this program.

  • R-Studio Datenrettung 4.0

    “R-Studio Datenrettung” works almost as well as “File Scavenger”. The problem is that most of the files from flash cards weren't recovered. It works a bit longer than “File Scavenger”, it took about 5 minutes to do all the work. That's a not bad result indeed. It will need 25MB free space.

  • Easy Recovery Data Recovery 6.1

    A very popular program “Easy Recovery” showed great results, but it had serious problems on FAT32. Many deleted files were unrecovered. By the way, you need to be very patient, it took 25 minutes to recover lost data. That is 5 times longer that it took “R-Studio Datenrettung”. I should also mention, that if you buy “Easy Recovery Data Recovery”, you will get a system restore disc, which will restore important Windows files in case they were deleted and Windows doesn't start up.

  • Rescue Box 4 Personal Edition

    “Rescue Box” didn't recover files perfectly. There was no problem with NTFS, but files were poorly recovered on FAT32. If you want to recover files from flash cards or USB devices than you should get “File Scavenger” instead, because “Rescue Box” had only recovered about 50% of all data. But on the other hand, files from HDD were recovered perfectly and “Rescue Box” is very easy to use.

  • Phoenix Windows Data Recovery 3.0

    There is a story about a bird Phoenix, which could reborn from its ash. It would be great if program, which has such name, could do the same with our files. Only 10% of data was recovered from a flash card. It also crashes sometimes. Well, at least files from hard drive were recovered nicely, but on the other hand, it took more than 1 hour to recover lost data. That is the worst result.
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