position: absolute - Design resources and inspiration.

360° images have come a long way in quality since the old days of Quicktime VR, but they never really did hit the kind of popularity you may come to expect from a 3D-ish approach. And really, maybe it’s just because they are static and thus mostly boring. That may change however. Immersive Media has specialized themselves on 360° films with a twist: the material is not static, but actual film footage playing. It does make for a much more interesting experience:

You can get a lot more demos here.

Incidentally, they are the same folks behind the Google Street View technology.

(Thanks, Datenvandalen)

Hey everyone, I hope you’ve had a nice few days with your families. We’re back! :)

Intriguing contest by coudal, FILE Magazine and flak joint:

You have 1 film roll, 36 frames. Tell a story.
No digital, no Photoshop, no cropping or anything else.

Cool. I haven’t seen anyone use film in a while.
Let us know of you take part!

Update: whoops, only two days left to submit your ideas. Better hurry up!

TiltViewer by Felix Turner (who is also behind the excellent design-feed.net) allows you to browse Flickr’s most interesting images in a 3D space. It’s designed to provide a fun, intuitive user experience. Images are pulled from Flickr’s Interestingness list.

Wait, don’t hit that delete button just yet. Have a second look: your blurry and overexposed photo just might be material for Deleted Images, a website dedicated to sharing with the world what you might have deleted otherwise. One of those simple concepts I wish I had thought of. (Thanks, knufflebunneh)

On almost every website project I’ve worked on, there’s one question that pops up over and over again: “can you copy-protect my images?” I’m certain I’m not alone on that one. Most of the time, they’ll ask that you disable right-click. I always deny the favor, as it’s a major interference in basic usability (and simply rude as well as pointless). Then there is the possibility of providing embedded copyright meta-data, but there’s nothing secure about it, as it can be removed any time. Photoshop architect Russell Williams explains why Photoshop doesn’t provide secure metadata. Read that and you’ll have all the arguments you need the next time a client needs you to “protect his images”.

*At least until there are some major watermarking breakthroughs, of course.

If you’re thinking about buying a digital camera, but you have no idea where to start looking, or if you have a general idea but you’d like to get some second opinions, look no further. Digital Photography Review has everything you need to make an informed decision. Detailed reviews, a tool to directly compare cameras, and a multitude of ratings and written experiences by photographers will shed the marketing skin off and let you know which cameras are really worth their price tags. To round it off, Digital Photography Review gives you sample galleries of unedited shots in full resolution, so you can see exactly what you’ll be getting. Long-time favorite of mine.

And if that’s not enough for you, you should check out a relatively new feature that Flickr has been offering for a while but most people are unaware of. Camera Finder lets you filter photos by camera model, and presents you with charts about the most popular cameras around.

I think both links are great resources to help you with your purchase. The only thing that’s missing is the possibility to actually try the cameras, but they’re an excellent starting point before you head off to the store. Happy shopping!

Amateur photographer Alexandre Duret-Lutz is putting together an inspiring portfolio of spherical panoramas. The series, appropriately called Wee Planets, features panoramic photos stitched together in a way that they appear to be very small planets. Reminds me of the cover for The Little Prince.

Graham Jeffery of Sensitive Light has created some absolutely beautiful photography of colored smoke. I’m sort of reminded of Adobe splash screens, for whatever reasons (probably the color combinations). I’ve seen plenty of smoke photos but these really are stunning.

In another bit of cool photography, Irene Müller lets milk meet coffee. A friend of mine was wondering what you need to get these kinds of shots. According to Irene, you need “Just a pipette or syringe, good eye/shutter finger coordination and patience, patience, patience…” Yup, I can imagine that…

Microsoft Live Labs are developing a very promising new technology called Photosynth that collects photos of a scene from all over the web and reconstructs a 3-dimensional model from them. You can then navigate through the scene and zoom in to all the photos, some with very high detail. It’s still in an early stage, but some day you will hopefully be able to do it with your own photos. Check out the demo (needs Internet Explorer, of course), or, for those of you without IE, have a look at the videos. High wow-factor, really.

Justin Seely of Photoshop Quicktips shows us how to utilize Photoshop’s LAB color mode to quickly add contrast and saturation to flat photographs. It’s a quick fix and you return to your regular color mode right after using it. Check out the rest of Photoshop Quicktips for some other great tutorial podcasts.