We often take pictures with our smart phones which may save photos at very high resolutions resulting in large file sizes. What if we want to quickly resize and compress these images for uploading to a website or sharing via email. One quick was is to use Photoshops Image Processor Automation Script.
File > Script > Image Processor
You’ll then see a dialog where you
select a folder containing the large images
select a location to save the processed images
check a file type (JPG) and optionally resize the image to fit within a specified width and height
Then, just click the Run button and Photoshop will do the work.
Modular and therefore can add modules that offer different / better features
HDR (high dynamic range) for better image quality
More advanced desktop editing software
Cons:
Modular and therefore can be a hassle to have to switch modules, especially quickly in order to capture a moving target
GoPro Max
Pros:
Easy to use without having to assemble modular parts
Cons:
No HDR (high dynamic range)
Desktop editing software not as powerful as the Insta360 Studio
Insta360 One X2
Pros:
Small
HDR (high dynamic range) for better image quality
Ricoh Theta SC2
After testing the GoPro Max, Insta360 One X2, and the Ricoh Theta SC2, it clear that the Insta360 One X2 is the better camera.
Virtual Reality / 3D Panorama Software
Marzipano
Marzipano is free and open source. You can use the Marzipano tool to quickly upload 360 photos and then download a complete website with all code to host yourself. However, you can only zoom out so much as shown in the screenshot below.
Kuula
Kuula lets you upload 360 photos and embed a 360 viewer of your photos on your website. You can also zoom out much more than with Marzipano as shown in the screenshot below.
You can then take a screenshot of the zoomed out 360 photo which doesn’t show very warped and curved lines.
Metareal
Metareal is a great alternative to MatterPort. You can create floorplans as well and pay a nominal fee to have Metareal convert your 360 photos into virtual tours for you.
Photoshop
In Adobe Photoshop, you can import a 3D panorama photo
In the lower left corner, when you have the white grid enabled, you will see orbit, pan and dolly buttons to move the image around.
Under Properties, you can adjust the Vertical FOV (Field of View) to zoom in and out.
GoPro Player Desktop App
The GoPro Player desktop app will also open 360 photos and let you rotate and zoom in and out. But, unlike Photoshop and Kuula, you’ll get a fisheye view as shown below.
Google Photos Mobile App
The Google Photos mobile app has a Panorama feature but you have to move your camera horizontally or vertically to capture create the panorama. It’s not a full 360 degree panorama but it does support scrolling in Google Photos.
Insta360 Studio
The Insta360 Studio desktop app is definitely better than the GoPro Player desktop app. It’s got more features and is intuitive to use.
If you go to Google Translate, you can not only translate text from one language to another, but you can also listen to the translation. For example, this English to Chinese translation allows you to listen to the pronunciation of the Chinese text.
Google’s Cloud Text-to-Speech API allows you to programmatically generate mp3s of any text. Below are steps to do it on Windows using PHP.
When you follow the steps above, you will download a JSON file containing your credentials. You need to set an environment variable by opening a command prompt and entering
set GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=path-to-json-file
You can then verify it is set by typing “set”.
That environment variable is temporary and will persist for the duration of the terminal session. To set the environment variable permanently, follow these steps.
Composer will need a php.ini file. If one doesn’t exist, it will create one.
4. Update php.ini
To ensure your SSL certificates are up-to-date, download the latest cacert.pem from https://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem. Then, edit php.ini as follows:
curl.cainfo=”/path/to/downloaded/cacert.pem”
5. Create PHP Script
Copy and paste the example code from the instructions in step 1. This is a PHP script so wrap the code in <?php … ?>. Save it as test-text-to-speech.php somewhere.
6. Run PHP Script
At the command prompt, verify the Google environment variable is set and then run the PHP script. If PHP is in your path, you can run, for example,
This will output an audio file (output.mp3) in the same folder. By default, the text is “Hello, world!” and the language code is en-US. You can change the text to Chinese, for example: 这是一个测试 and change the language code accordingly to cmn-CN. Then, you’ll get the same speech as what you hear in Google Translate.
Have you ever needed to make notes on screen like a web page to then share with others. You might first take a screenshot and then edit it in some program or buy an app like TechSmith SnagIt. A simpler option would be to install the Web Paint extension in Chrome. When you click on the extension, it opens this panel
Then, you can type, draw, add arrows, and so on then take a screen capture and share with others, e.g.
Many, if not most, web forms are backed by a database. But what if you just need a simple data store, like a JSON file, and you want to quickly and easily provide users with a user-friendly web form to make updates to the JSON data. JSON Editor takes a JSON Schema and uses it to generate an HTML form.
The generated JSON output can then be used by a templating language like Handlebars for building a web page.
JSON Editor supports many options including the ability to quickly style a form using CSS frameworks like Bootstrap.
JSON Schema also supports validation so you can ensure your users are not submitting invalid data. For security reasons, this solution may not be good in a production environment by non-trustworthy people but it could work well in a secure, internal environment among coworkers.
Let’s say you have a website and you’re tired of making constant updates to some portion of oft-changing content, e.g. a conference agenda. It would be nice to offload this tedious work to a content owner who so often makes typos. But this content owner is non-technical and is a visual person. They need a WYSIWYG editor that would allow them to make changes directly on what it is that they want to edit, not directly in a database or something cryptic like a JSON file.
HTML5 supports the contenteditable attribute which makes any element editable. In the screenshot below, on a part of the byline is made editable.
Simple add the attribute “contenteditable=true” to the tag that wraps the text you want to make editable.
<p>Last Edited by <span id="author" contenteditable="true">Monty Shokeen</span>
</p>
When the content owner clicks on the text to editor, a black outline appears making it look like a form field.
The contenteditable attribute can be added to as many HTML elements as you want. Here is a live example showing three different editable fields with changes saved to local storage. Here’s an example showing how you can save the changes in JSON format and post it to a URL endpoint using AJAX or Fetch.
Many web developers are familiar with online editors like TinyCME. If you’ve edited a blog post in WordPress using the classic editor, then you know what I mean.
The problem with this type of editor is it’s too easy to accidentally output garbage HTML. WordPress has switched to offering a block style editor.
If you need to create a similar editor for your web project, editor.js offers inline block-style editing and it outputs clean data in json format.
Here’s a screenshot of example JSON output which can then be used with
This JSON data can then be used with a templating language like Handlebars to build web pages.
Icons make a big difference in the look of a website. When placed beside text links, they make the links stand out. They can be used to replace text links, especially on mobile. They accompany text to make boring, text heavy pages easier to read. But, finding icons or creating them can be difficult. FontAwesome solves this by offering thousands of icons that are easily searchable. If I search for car, here’s what I see.
To use an icon, e.g. of a car, just paste this HTML code.
Have you ever needed to do search and replace multiple times against the same file or set of files. If so, the Batch Replacer extension for VisualStudio Code makes this very simple.
Open a folder or file in VisualStudio Code
Create a new file (no need to save it) and enter some search and replace instructions, e.g.
In the example above, I want 3 different replacements done in the order shown and I only want the replacements done to a specific file. The “in” command is followed by the path of the file relative to the root of the workspace open in VS Code. If the file is open, you can get it by right clicking on its tab and selecting “Copy relative path”.
3. Execute the replacer script
To run the batch replacements, you active tab must be the tab containing your replacement instructions. Then, hit CTRL+SHIFT+P -> Batch Replace. A status window will appear in the bottom right corner telling you how many files have been modified. If you want to batch replace across all files in your workspace, don’t include the “in” instruction.
A few years ago I tried a product called Leave-in Hair Treatment with Argan Oil by HSI Professional. It came in a red box and bottle.
You just dab a little in the palm of your hand and massage it through your hair and it instantly makes your hair look and feel better. The ingredients are
Unsurprisingly, it got many good reviews on Amazon.
Unfortunately, this product has been replaced with a similar but slightly different product. It’s good but definitely not as good as the original formula.
To understand the difference and find products that are just as good, if not better, here is a list of products that have similar ingredients. Note that the percent amount of each ingredient is in descending order.
Phenyl Trimethicone reduces the tendency of finished products to generate foam when shaken. It also enhances the appearance and feel of hair, by increasing hair body, suppleness, or sheen, or by improving the texture of hair that has been damaged physically or by chemical treatment. Phenyl Trimethicone slows the loss of water from the skin by forming a barrier on the skin’s surface.
Keratin Amino Acids
Used for conditioning, moisturizing, known to make hair glossy, give it more body, and also for its marketing appeal (natural ingredient as well as hair is made from this). It’s a strong humectant, and pulls water into the hair.
Peg-4 Laurate, Peg-4 Dilaurate
They also clean the skin and hair by helping water to mix with oil and dirt so that they can be rinsed away.
Lodopropynyl Butylcarbamate, Phenoxyethanol
Prevents or retards bacterial growth, thereby protecting cosmetics and personal-care products from spoilage.
