DJ Koh, Samsung’s mobile boss, has confirmed that the company will launch its next flagship Galaxy S smartphone at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month, according to a ZDNet report.

The report says Koh made the announcement at a press conference during the CES trade show in Las Vegas. ZDNet does not explicitly confirm that the new phone will be called the “Galaxy S9,” but any name other than that would be a surprise. Earlier reports suggested that Samsung would show off the Galaxy S9 and the larger Galaxy S9+ at CES this week, but that hasn’t happened.

Samsung unveiled the current Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ at its own “Galaxy Unpacked” event in March last year before putting the phones on sale in April. For several years prior to that, however, the company first revealed its latest top-end smartphones at Mobile World Congress, a major conference for the mobile industry. This year’s MWC takes place from February 26 to March 1.

History suggests that the Galaxy S9 (and, presumably, the Galaxy S9+) would then go on sale some time in late March or early April, though an exact release date is still unknown. Samsung did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Details about the next Galaxy flagship are relatively scarce at this point, but the phone isn’t expected to be a radical departure from last year’s Galaxy S8, which featured a drastic redesign and was generally well-received by critics and consumers alike. Expect the US model to feature Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 845 SoC.

Besides the Galaxy S9, Koh reportedly said that Samsung will launch the next iteration of its much-maligned Bixby voice assistant this year and that it’s looking to launch its long-rumored “foldable” smartphone some time in 2019.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1242299

Smoothly running Android apps on Chrome OS has been a work in progress for years now. Google has done a lot to improve the experience of running mobile apps on its browser-based operating system, and it appears a forthcoming software update could fix one of the remaining problems. A report by Chrome Unboxed details a new feature in Chrome 64 beta called Android Parallel Tasks that lets Android apps run continuously in the background even when you’re actively using another program.

Chrome OS has always allowed users to have multiple programs open at one time, including Chrome OS and Android applications. However, Android apps pause when you click or tap out of their windows. That means the app essentially stops working until you tap back into it to continue using the program. There are some exceptions like Spotify, which will continue to play music even when you’re not actively using the app, but other programs pause all activity until you resume using them.

While this makes sense for smartphone apps, it doesn’t translate well to a desktop. On a traditional PC, one expects to be able to open multiple programs and have them all running continuously, no matter which one is being used at any given moment. Chromebooks, like Google’s expensive Pixelbook, couldn’t do that with Android apps, but it appears Android Parallel Tasks fixes that issue. Each program or app that you have open will run continuously until you manually pause it or close it entirely.

Chrome OS 64 is still in beta, so it’s unclear when Android Parallel Tasks will come to the operating system as a finished feature. Sometimes beta features don’t make it into the official update at all, but since the feature is in high demand and appears to work well in practice, hopefully Google will include it in the final version of Chrome OS 64.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1237995

Superfans and holdouts using some older smartphone operating systems will have to bid adieu to WhatsApp messenger soon—or at least the most updated versions of the app. According to an FAQ page, the Facebook-owned messaging app won’t support Blackberry OS, Blackberry 10, or Windows Phone 8.0 and older after December 31, 2017. That means that on the first day of 2018, users will no longer be able to create new accounts or re-verify existing accounts on those operating systems.

WhatsApp will still work on those systems, but it’s unclear how long the app will be fully functional. The FAQ page does warn users that some WhatsApp features may stop working on these unsupported platforms because the company is no longer actively developing for those OSes.

To avoid issues, WhatsApp recommends users of those platforms either update to a newer OS version or use WhatsApp on a device running Android 4.0 or newer, Windows Phone 8.1 or newer, or an iPhone running iOS 7 or newer.

WhatsApp also announced that it will support Nokia S40 for only another year (until December 31, 2018) and devices running Android 2.3.7 and older until February 1, 2020. The company claims these platforms, in addition to Blackberry and older Windows Phones, don’t have the “capabilities” it needs to support future app features.

Blackberry users already got more time with WhatsApp than previously anticipated. The messenger extended its support for Blackberry earlier this year to the end of 2017, but it appears the messenger isn’t going to put energy into the platform anymore. While the app still works on newer Windows Phones, those users still have to reckon with the fact that Microsoft isn’t too interested in updating its mobile platform.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1237461

A newly discovered piece of Android malware carries out a litany of malicious activities, including showing an almost unending series of ads, participating in distributed denial-of-service attacks, sending text messages to any number, and silently subscribing to paid services. Its biggest offense: a surreptitious cryptocurrency miner that’s so aggressive it can physically damage an infected phone.

Trojan.AndroidOS.Loapi is hidden inside apps distributed through third-party markets, browser ads, and SMS-based spam. Researchers from antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab have dubbed it a “jack of all trades” to emphasize the breadth of nefarious things it can do. Most notably, Loapi apps contain a module that mines Monero, a newer type of digital currency that’s less resource intensive than Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies. The module allows the malware creators to generate new coins by leaching the electricity and hardware of infected phone owners.

But the lower demands of Monero mining by no means stop Loapi from straining infected phones. Kaspersky Lab researchers tested Loapi in a lab setting. After two days, the mining caused the battery in the phone to bulge so badly it deformed the cover. The researchers provided the pictures above as evidence.

Drive-by currency mining on the rise

Over the past few months, a surge of sites and apps have been caught draining people’s CPUs and electricity as they run resource-intensive cryptocurrency mining code. In a handful of cases, the apps or sites disclose what’s happening, throttle down the mining, and ask users to participate as a form of payment. In the vast majority of cases, however, the mining is only discovered when users open monitors that track all processes or apps running on a device.

On Tuesday, officials at AV provider Sophos formally labeled all cryptocurrency mining without user consent as parasitic.

Loapi is a nuisance in other ways that go beyond covert coin mining. It sends an unending barrage of prompts for users to assign it administrator permissions. Once granted permission, Loapi makes it hard for victims to install security apps that can help disinfect the phone. It can subscribe a phone to costly premium services and even covertly send codes in SMS messages to confirm the request. It allows attackers to use infected phones as foot soldiers in DDoS attacks. And it displays a constant stream of ads. There are no indications Loapi apps have ever been available through Google Play.

“We’ve never seen such a ‘jack of all trades’ before,” Kaspersky Lab researchers wrote. Later in the post, they added: “The only thing missing is user espionage, but the modular architecture of this Trojan means it’s possible to add this sort of functionality at any time.”

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1234837

Come App Developer, mi sono spesso trovato alle prese con gli update di Cordova, Android SDK, e compagnia bella. Ho deciso di affidarmi a Docker per non avere più problemi.

Da quando ho scoperto Docker, mi sento un bambino alle prese con un giocattolo tutto nuovo.

Lo userei per qualsiasi cosa, vorrei un container anche per fare il caffè!

Scherzi a parte, i vantaggi di Docker sono assoluti, e se ancora non avete iniziato a usarlo, beh dovreste, assolutamente.

La comodità di portarsi dietro dei Dockerfiles, anzichè passare giornate a installare pacchetti, configurazioni, litigare con versioni e rischiare di avere problemi di compatibilità tra progetti, per non parlare di poter poi mettere il tutto su un qualsiasi server, e avere la stessa identica configurazione, è assolutamente senza pari.

Oggi, dopo l’ennesimo aggiornamento degli Android SDK, e relativi malditesta per far funzionare di nuovo tutti gli ambienti, mi sono messo in testa di eliminare dalla mia macchina tutte le configurazioni Android necessarie per lavorare con Cordova (e di conseguenza con Ionic, Meteor) e React-Native.

Per cui, spazio ai container, montati con Android SDK, e Cordova o React-Native, a seconda della necessità.

In realtà, per fare quanto stiamo per vedere, sarà necessario appoggiarsi a VirtualBox, e creare una VM su cui fare girare i container.

Il perchè è presto spiegato, e ci ho messo diverso tempo per capirlo (e devo ringraziare un paio di persone che mi hanno aiutato a capire il funzionamento).

La necessità di chi, come me, sviluppa App, è di fare deploy e debug direttamente su device. Per farlo, ovviamente, i device devono essere collegati via USB alla macchina su cui si lavora.

Purtroppo per noi, nel caso di Docker non è possibile rendere disponibili le porte USB direttamente ai container.

VirtualBox, però, consente di mappare le porte USB della propria macchina e di renderle disponibili alle VM installate. Ecco quindi che in nostro soccorso corre docker-toolbox, e in particolare docker-machine, ovvero una Virtual Machine su cui installare i nostri container.

Il tutto si configura con i passi che vi sto per elencare.

Procedimento

• Prima di tutto, verificate di disporre di tutti i seguenti tool:
• Installate VirtualBox;
• Installate docker;
• Installate docker-toolbox, che installerà una VM, basata su VirtualBox, raggiungibile da terminale tramite i comandi docker-machine;

Una volta installata la VM, aprite VirtualBox, andate nelle impostazioni della suddetta VM (che dovrebbe chiamarsi “default”, solitamente), Porte -> USB, ed abilitate il controller.

Dopodichè, da terminale, accedete alla vostra macchina virtuale, digitando:

docker-machine ssh

A questo punto siete dentro alla VM, e avete la possibilità di installare e far girare i vostri container.

Per lo sviluppo Android, sono partito da uno dei tanti disponibili, come ad esempio https://hub.docker.com/r/snowdream/docker-android , con cui ho poi compilato i miei docker-compose (a seconda che mi serva Cordova, o React-Native o altre librerie).

Installato il container, dovete fare in modo che le porte USB siano condivise tra la VM e il container su cui gira l’SDK Android.

Per farlo, digitate il seguente comando:

docker run -t -i — privileged -v /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb snowdream/android:latest

Ovviamente, sostituite “snowdream/android:latest” con il nome dell’immagine che avete installato.

Fatto questo, dovreste essere dentro al container, e connettendo il vostro device via USB, dovreste vederlo digitando:

adb devices

Se questo avviene, siete a cavallo.

Da questo momento in poi, qualsiasi istruzione del tipo:

cordova run android — device

verrà eseguita come se foste in locale, e quindi facendo il deploy dell’app sul vostro dispositivo.

Evviva Docker, lunga vita a Docker!

https://italiancoders.it/creare-docker-un-ambiente-lavoro-android-cordova-deploy-device/

Android NotificatiotenerService

Avendo passato ore a capire come implementare (e soprattutto far funzionare) un Servizio di tipo Notification Listener in Android, ho deciso di condividere con voi la soluzione.

Innanzitutto, a cosa ci serve?
Un NotificationListenerService, come suggerisce il nome, serve a “catturare” tutte le notifiche (push e non) in arrivo sul nostro device Android.
La questione non banale, è come farlo funzionare correttamente.
Il trucco, che troverete alla fine dell’articolo, è richiedere all’utente l’autorizzazione esplicita per la nostra app di accedere alle notifiche.
Cosa che normalmente andrebbe fatta da qualche recondita schermata negli abissi delle impostazioni di Android, ma che possiamo far comparire all’utente tramite tre semplicissime righe di codice.

Ma procediamo con ordine.

La prima cosa da fare è dichiarare il servizio e le nostre intenzioni all’interno del file AndoidManifest.xml nel TAG <application>.
(In questo esempio il nome del servizio è NotificationListener, ma potete chiamarlo come volete, purché eriditi da NotificationListenerService)

<service android:name=".NotificationListener" android:exported="false" android:label="@string/app_name" android:permission="android.permission.BIND_NOTIFICATION_LISTENER_SERVICE"> <intent-filter> <action android:name="android.service.notification.NotificationListenerService" /> </intent-filter>
</service>

Implementazione del servizo:

public class NotificationListener extends NotificationListenerService { public NotificationListener() { super(); } @Override public void onCreate() { super.onCreate(); } @Override public void onNotificationPosted (StatusBarNotification sbn) { if(sbn != null && sbn.getNotification() != null) { Log.i("notifcation", sbn.getNotification().toString()); String title = sbn.getNotification().extras.getCharSequence(Notification.EXTRA_TITLE).toString(); String text = sbn.getNotification().extras.getCharSequence(Notification.EXTRA_TEXT).toString(); Log.i("notifcation", "title: " + title + " text: " + text); // Qui il vostro codice } } @Override public void onNotificationRemoved (StatusBarNotification sbn) { Log.i("notifcation", "onNotificationRemoved"); }
}

Ora, da qualche parte nella nostra applicazione ci farà sicuramente comodo controllare se la nostra applicazione ha i permessi per la lettura delle notifiche in arrivo, e il seguente metodo fa al caso nostro:

private boolean checkNotificationListenerPermission() { ComponentName cn = new ComponentName(this, NotificationListener.class); String flat = Settings.Secure.getString(this.getContentResolver(), "enabled_notification_listeners"); final boolean enabled = flat != null && flat.contains(cn.flattenToString()); return enabled;
}

Ora, come promesso, non resta altro che presentare all’utente la schermata per autorizzare la nostra app, e questo può essere fatto semplicemente richiamando l’intent di sistema.

Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setAction(Settings.ACTION_NOTIFICATION_LISTENER_SETTINGS);
startActivity(intent);

https://italiancoders.it/android-notificationlistenerservice/

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 has joined a handful of other phones at, of all places, the Microsoft Store. Both the online store and brick-and-mortar locations have the handsets, both unlocked and carrier-branded; today, they’re $780, with a regular price of $930.

The Note 8 joins the Galaxy 8 and 8+ as well as Razer smartphone; Microsoft is selling all four Android handsets, alongside three Windows Phone devices (including the HP Elite x3, newly available to Verizon). Why is Microsoft selling Android handsets? Well, the company says, you can run Microsoft Launcher, a home screen/app launcher replacement for Android, along with all of Microsoft’s other Android apps, such as Office, Cortana, and Skype.

This represents Microsoft’s fallback position in the smartphone market. If people won’t buy phones with Microsoft’s operating system, the company will at least try to get people running Microsoft’s apps on their phone. Redmond is also trying to use these apps to improve the Windows 10 user experience. If you use the full range of Microsoft software, you get some convenient extra capabilities, such as the ability to open a webpage on the PC from your phone, with much deeper integration promised soon.

While most of the apps (except Launcher) are also available on iOS, they are, at least in some ways, better on Android. That’s because Android offers deeper integration and customization capabilities to third-party applications.

Microsoft can still earn a few pennies from this, too; lighting up the full range of Office for Android features requires an Office 365 subscription. But it all falls a long way short of using an actual Microsoft phone; Launcher isn’t bad, but it’s not a patch on the Windows Phone interface with its live tiles. And on most phones, the styling is all over the place; you’ve got Google apps with Material design, Microsoft’s apps with their similar but different Windows-like styling, and then whatever apps your phone’s OEM has bundled. I’ve been using the Microsoft apps on a Huawei Mate10 Pro, and Huawei’s built-in software, such as its phone dialer, sticks out like a sore thumb, with icons and an interface that look like nothing else in the operating system (other than Huawei’s other apps).

The phones Microsoft is selling are otherwise run-of-the-mill Android handsets. Aside from their unusual vendor, there’s nothing special about them. If Microsoft’s pricing and availability works well for you, the Microsoft Store is as good a place as any to buy them. But you’re not missing out if you don’t.

Animal Crossing debuted as a weird, unique, and very Nintendo-like video game in 2001. It resembled popular life- and farm-sim games, where your experience in a small, riverside village revolved around simple tasks and monotony. But Nintendo added a very special pinch of time and patience.

There simply wasn’t much to do in a given day after fishing, fossil scavenging, and running basic errands. That was the point. You were supposed to hop in, do your daily virtual regimen, leave notes for other players in the same household, and come back in a day or two. That formula has since shone for over a decade, with follow-up entries adding online support that essentially expands that “cozy little household” feeling without breaking the game’s core loop.

That’s why fans were understandably excited about the series getting its first smartphone entry, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, which is now out on Android and iOS. The series’ mix of simple, bright graphics, cute animal friends, house decorations, and quick-hit daily tasks seems like perfect tap-and-go gaming fodder. And many of the series’ best and weirdest trappings are in this smartphone version. But before addressing any of that, we have to look closely at how Nintendo converted this game from a fixed-price, retail offering to a free-to-play microtransaction disaster—and how that has rotted Animal Crossing‘s most rewarding elements from the inside-out.

The opposite of free-range

Like other Animal Crossing games, Pocket Camp starts with you arriving at a new, outdoorsy locale. Instead of moving into a new town like previous games, you’re asked this time to run a campground. You must attract campgoers from nearby, which you do by completing errands, picking up supplies, and crafting your neighbors’ favorite furniture and decorations. Doing all of this is as simple as tapping the screen. Tap to walk. Tap to pick stuff up. Tap to talk to a pink, sweater-wearing dog. Tap to drop a fishing line in a river. Tap to catch a butterfly with a net. Anything you’ve done in an older AC game is easy to do by way of taps, and Nintendo designed this to work as well as you could imagine.

The first huge difference in this game, however, is that players no longer wander around a single, large town. Instead, Pocket Camp‘s map is broken up into smaller, discrete zones, and when you go to these, you can only do one major action. If you go near a shoreline, you’ll have a fishing rod in your hand. If you head to the bug-crazy Sunburst Island, you’ll only have access to a net. This disrupts the feel and flow of Animal Crossing in surprising ways. Instead of free-flowing and emergent gameplay, where you happen to see a rare bug or a fish’s shadow and make moves to switch out inventory and capitalize, you’re instead just heading to specific locales and farming the crap out of them until their supplies are exhausted.

When you wipe out certain supplies, particularly from fruit trees, you are promptly shown a three-hour timer. Want more cherries? You can wait a few hours for the tree to naturally produce more… orrrr you can spend your limited supply of fertilizer to make those fruits appear immediately. Want to speed up fishing? That’s what new “fishing nets” are for, which auto-catch a slew of fish. They, too, are limited.

These kinds of supplies can be earned in the course of normal gameplay, but more of them can be purchased with the game’s paid currency, called Leaf Tickets. And Nintendo makes sure you know how much stuff you can spend those Leaf Tickets on. For example, all of the region’s denizens ask you to run around and fetch them certain supplies; doing this rewards you with both friendship points and experience points. When you’ve fulfilled a denizen’s desires, you then must wait a few hours for them to come up with new requests… or you can spend a limited “request ticket” to make them impatient and ask for more FP- and XP-earning tasks. (Should you run out, these request tickets can be purchased with Leaf Tickets.)

Why would you be in a rush to bump these denizens’ desires so quickly? Why not just go run around the island and busy yourself with other Animal Crossing-esque tasks? Because, again, you can only do certain things in each zone, and that means you can no longer do a lot of series tasks. Those include: hunting for a variety of bugs based on time of day; digging up fossils; digging, planting, and arranging flowers; designing your own clothing; hanging out at a cozy cafe; and anything relating to a museum. The series’ standard museum is gone, and nothing here replaces the casual, months-long collect-a-thon it fueled.

Ticket taker

Your campsite works more or less the same as your houses did in previous games. Place and arrange all matter of furniture, rug, plant, and other cute objects however you see fit. In order to get the region’s quirky creatures to visit your campsite, you’ll need to complete enough tasks to earn enough friendship points, at which time they’ll demand certain furniture be placed in the campsite before they stop by. Do this, and the game will automatically (and temporarily) place whatever objects your demanding rabbit or pig friend wanted. A cut scene will play out of them sitting on all of your stuff with smiles, and then you can go back to placing furniture however you see fit.

Pocket Camp‘s loop works as follows: do tasks for critters to earn FP and XP, which unlocks your ability to 1) craft a greater variety of furniture and decorations and 2) meet more critters. At first, getting FP and XP is pretty easy, especially with a flood of new critter friends in the early goings. However, this process slows down remarkably, because you stop meeting new friends and instead must make older friends happier, which becomes more expensive and time-consuming. They start to want nicer, more expensive furniture items, including the larger “amenity” items.

I mentioned crafting up there, which is a series first. And unfortunately, it appears Nintendo instituted this whole crafting system just to dump a soup of confusing currencies into the game. You don’t just collect the game’s old virtual currency of “Bells” (which are still here and never cost real money). And you don’t just accumulate those paid Leaf Tickets, which are also rewarded during standard gameplay. Now, you must also account for—ahem—paper, cotton, wood, preserves, steel, four types of “essence,” “friend powder,” and sparkle stones. And that’s just after 24 hours of play.

You’ll receive different amounts of each currency after completing tasks, and this becomes a blur of visual noise after a while. Like, great, I got some shinies for giving Beau the Deer some fish. I’ll figure out what those mean later. But when the time comes to craft something, and you’re out of, say, cotton (which has been in seriously short supply in my testing), Nintendo is quick to remind you: just spend some Leaf Tickets to make up for your missing, required supplies.

Leaf Tickets can also be spent to speed up any item-crafting timer, and every item runs on a generation timer. Early crafting items only take 1-3 minutes to generate, but already in my brief impression-period testing, I’ve been asked to create items that take 12 hours. For a little over $2 worth of Leaf Tickets, Nintendo can make that 12-hour wait go away (and it generates an exact Leaf Ticket price for whatever the timer is in any given circumstance). Players can also spend Leaf Tickets on more simultaneous crafting slots and more inventory slots.

It’s not just about the money

I can already see the payment wall coming right at my face. As my Pocket Camp friends become more demanding, I’ll need more, harder-to-get fruits and fish (which I can speed up by using limited, sometimes-paid boost items). Then they’ll demand longer-timer furniture and items, including supply-specific amenities. And the primary way to fulfill these few, basic requests is to hop from menu to menu and between very limited-instance zones, with a very basic suite of taps and menus to tap through in order to make everyone happy.

Worse, the interconnected nature of old AC games has been devastated. You can visit friends’ campsites, but all you can do is look at how friends have arranged their items. There’s no true interaction on their campsites. No ability to leave notes, no talking to their unique residents, and no version of “I can get more apples or fossils from my friend’s island” here. Instead, you can put a few of your collected items up for sale, which your friends can only access in a bland menu and trade you the “Bells” currency for them. (It’s much faster to blow limited-use items and Leaf Tickets when you’re low on supplies.) You’re also encouraged to tap through your friends list and demand people help you access a “mining station” mini-game, which takes forever to do via the friends list. This mini-game, too, is more easily accessible by spending Leaf Tickets.

The problem isn’t having to pay for AC:PC‘s content, which isn’t even required at first, thanks to a “welcome to the game” bounty of Leaf Tickets and other limited-supply items. If it came down to it, I wouldn’t be against paying for the good parts of this game. I love the music, the world design, the quirky characters, their cheeky dialogue, and the furniture designs. I love when the tapping controls let me do standard Animal Crossing tasks like catching fish and collecting bugs. I love using my fingers to arrange various items and furniture to my liking and then watching little walking, talking animals hang out on my couches and play with my barbecue grills.

The problem is that Pocket Camp is severely tuned to push you into hurry-up-and-wait situations, as opposed to letting you freely melt into the world and be subject to the patience-is-a-virtue systems of its predecessors. Those are all gone. If you spend at least $60 on Leaf Tickets, you can accumulate every single item and placate every denizen in a few long marathon sessions, just tap-tap-tapping away between menus, currencies, and tiny zones. That goes against the spirit of the series, which might be OK if more gameplay systems were implemented to make up for this transition to mobile screens and fewer buttons. But the designers haven’t added anything to the experience.

As a result, this isn’t Animal Crossing. This is a scam. Nintendo should be ashamed for attaching such predatory practices to one of its most family-friendly properties, and nothing short of a full-scale redesign will fix the FarmVille-level rot within this shiny-looking game.

Listing image by Nintendo

EXPANDED VISION

Making a photograph, we can expand our vision. Here is a fun way to accomplish this during your outdoor photography ventures this Fall:

1.  START: Photograph Fall textures and patterns. Bring the images from any device into your image editor, in RGB or ProPhoto RGB color space.

2.  ADD TEXTURES: Next, try using the various filters in your editing program to clarify and expose the textures and details. Make sure to try a few black and white versions to illuminate the patterns. Limit the number you apply to just two or three filters.

3.  SAVE your work and back it up. Print out some of your art work.

I use this exercise each Fall with my photography students. We always learn something intriguing about nature.

AWARENESS

Since most photographers have bustling work, home, family and travel lives, we cherish our rare moments to change the pace, getting outside into the natural world. Photographing Fall subjects is a renewing experience. It moves us away from news, our phones, and distractions.  Our goal here with this exercise is to expand awareness beyond the beauty of Fall colors alone. With it, we tune in fine details of nature and can better appreciate the stunning structures of feathers, leaves, and living creatures.

TWO PARTS

The first part of the exercise is to develop awareness during your outdoor photography. The second part, post-processing in your work space, you enhance the natural forms you’ve captured using black and white and color filters. Try out filters that you may not have used in awhile. While there are thousands of filters for photo editing, here I chose stackable filters like Google’s free Color EFEX Pro 4, Photoshop filters and Lightroom plug-ins. You can use any photo editor or plug-in, including apps on your iPhone or other device.

I chose:

1. GOOGLE NIK Color Efex Pro 4 filters. The BW solarize is one that was effective. Find the updates versions here: http://www.google.com/nikcollection .
2. Photoshop Filters including Lighting Effects, Oil Paint, older filters, and newer ones described in Adobe’s Help site  https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/filter-effects-reference.html
3. Photo Painter Free from Imagic Mobile. This is a free app for your device that offers expressionist and painterly effects for photos, at their site  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=aspiration.studio.photo.painter.free&hl=en
4. Discover Plug-ins and Add-Ons for Adobe photo editors  https://exchange.adobe.com/addons?pp=PHSP
   

   

GETTING CLOSER, & A CLEANER BACKGROUND: Three Images from Blah to Better

I was attracted to the color of a leaf on a tree. However, my first picture was taken from too far away and with too much in the background (Leaf IMAGES 1 and 2, above). So, I took more time, changed to a portrait frame, and made an in camera double exposure that gave an impression of leaves in the wind, instead of a focused image (Leaf IMAGE 3).

DESIGN for NATURE’S GOODNESS

When we photograph we can pay attention to our thinking. What are we conscious of as we get ready to make an image? By observing our own mind while using our mind’s eye, we strengthen the ‘foreground’, and weaken the ‘background’ of our awareness of detail. For instance, when I walk outdoors in the Fall for a half hour, my busy “work mind” calms down, and my thoughts gradually move to the foreground of what is here, now, before me. I strengthen my seeing when I walk outdoors and let “nature’s goodness flow into me like sunshine through trees” (John Muir).

Finding patterns and textures helps us pay attention as we see, look, stare and wonder. With the exercise, ordinary subjects we might have overlooked can turn into interesting designs if we use filters as tools to enhance them. Still, it’s not about the filter after the fact. The central idea is to enjoy any exercise that gets you photographing nature’s goodness.