Snow Leopard, Files and AppleScript

Monday, September 14th, 2009

Snow Leopard’s broken some of my AppleScripts in some weird way I don’t yet understand. After some debugging the problem seems to lie in files. Specifically files treated as strings. This no longer works:

set libraryFile to file "Macintosh HD:Users:elharo:Cafe Au Lait:support:CafeLib.scpt"

Nor does this:

set libraryFile to alias "Macintosh HD:Users:elharo:Cafe Au Lait:support:CafeLib.scpt"

They both die with

error “File alias Macintosh HD:Users:elharo:Cafe Au Lait:support:CafeLib.scpt of «script» wasn’t found.” number -43

Any ideas?
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Keyword Search in the Cloud

Monday, September 7th, 2009

I have almost completely switched over to Safari of Firefox, and have found replacements for almost all my Firefox plugins; but the lack of seamless keyword search in the location bar still bugs the hell out of me, enough to make me switch back to Firefox on occasion just for that. However recently I installed Verizon FIOS and noticed that Verizon’s DNS services intercept failing DNS queries through the browser and replace it with Yahoo search results. This means I can now type “fred brooks” into the location bar, and get a link to the page I need.

Search Results Provided By Yahoo!®

Well, almost. There are two problems:
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Where to Report Lightroom Bugs?

Monday, July 13th, 2009

If LIghtroom were open source, there’d be a bug tracker somewhere:

An internal error has occurred: ?:0 attempt to index field rootFile (a nil value)

Lightroom Update

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

It took some time and a learning curve, but I am now more or less happily using Adobe Lightroom 2.4 to manage my more serious DSLR nature photography. (I still use iPhoto for point-and-shoot family photos and the like.) Lightroom’s ability to correct exposure problems is nothing short of magic, and has rescued many photos. Here are some updates on things I’ve talked about in the past, as well as some open questions.
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Auto Smart Fix for Lightroom

Monday, February 9th, 2009

It sounds like most folks think Lightroom 2.1 is the way to go. However it’s still missing the autofix controls from Elements:

Auto Smart Fix Corrects overall color balance and improves shadow and highlight detail, if necessary.

Auto Levels Adjusts the overall contrast of an image and may affect its color. If your image needs more contrast, and it has a color cast, try this command. Auto Levels works by individually mapping the lightest and darkest pixels in each color channel to black and white.

Auto Contrast Adjusts the overall contrast of an image without affecting its color. Use when your image needs more contrast, but the colors look right. Auto Contrast maps the lightest and darkest pixels in the image to white and black, which makes highlights appear lighter and shadows appear darker.

Auto Color Correction Adjusts the contrast and color by identifying shadows, midtones, and highlights in the image, rather than in individual color channels. It neutralizes the midtones and sets the white and black points using a default set of values.

Auto Sharpen Adjusts the sharpness of the image by clarifying the edges and adding detail that tonal adjustments may reduce.

Auto Red Eye Fix Automatically detects and repairs red eyes in an image.

Are there any plugins to add these capabilities? Could someone write one? Has anyone documented what these actually do at a technical level?

Looking for a Photo Organizer/Editor

Friday, February 6th, 2009

I’m looking for a program to organize and edit my photos on the Mac. The editing duties are light. Photoshop Elements fully meets my needs there, and I really don’t want something more complex. In particular I live by Auto Smart Fix and Auto Sharpen. However I’d like to not come out of one program just to edit a photo.

I like iPhoto’s organization, but it’s too buggy and has atrocious editing and previewing tools. Lightroom 1.4 doesn’t organize quite as nicely as iPhoto, but is a little more stable. Maybe 2.0 is better? What’s my best choice? Here are my desiderata:
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