Tag: Digital Photography

Pictures that are copied in using Windows Explorer may not always appear the right way up

A problem that can surface with some photos that you view using your Smart TV, set-top device or similar equipment is that they don’t appear the right way up.

It happens more so with those pictures that come in from an email whether as attachments or downloadable links, or from a cloud-storage service. Similarly it also happens if you transfer the pictures from your device to your computer using the operating-system’s file manager i.e. Windows / File Explorer or MacOS Finder by using the file-copy procedure. This latter process is something most of us do when we want to make digital pictures that we took at someone’s location available on their computer.

These cameras record information about the photo orientation as part of the picture file when you click the shutter

The main problem is that today’s cameras and mobile devices record the orientation of the photo in the file that represents the image as part of machine-readable EXIF metadata. Most of the file managers recognise this metadata and use it for creating the thumbnail that is seen for each file. Similarly, when you upload photos to an image-sharing or social-media site, you will find that these pictures will be shown the right way up thanks to this metadata. It is also true of image management software which even creates copies of the imported files that are the “right way up” as part of the image-import process.

Copying photos from your camera using Windows / File Explorer or other file managers may not guarantee the best results with photo-rotation metadata

But a lot of hardware media players like smart TVs, set-top devices and electronic picture frames don’t recognise this EXIF picture-orientation flag and show the picture with the incorrect orientation. It can be exacerbated with DLNA media-streaming setups where the DLNA media server doesn’t use this flag to rotate the picture to the correct orientation when it is being served to the client device. The same problem also extends to some photo-viewer and presentation software that doesn’t understand the EXIF photo-orientation tag properly.

Another situation that always surfaces with photo orientation is if you are photographing something on a table, floor or similar horizontal surface. Here, the camera or smartphone doesn’t properly register the orientation due to the orientation sensor being driven by gravity. In this situation you would still have to manually rotate the image even if you were importing it with software that understood this EXIF orientation metadata.

How can you work around these problem when you want to show images that are drawn in from email or copied over from that digital camera?

Cast To Device option to show picture on DLNA video player – may not always work properly with the EXIF photo-orientation metadata

One way would be to open each portrait image using a photo editor or bitmap image editor that understands the EXIF photo-orientation tag like Windows Paint or Adobe Photoshop, then save the image as a JPEG file using the software’s Save As command. This will typically rotate the image the right way up and strip off confusing EXIF tags. It would appeal to situations where you are preparing a folder of photos to be shown, perhaps on a USB stick or using “Cast To Device / Play To Device” on your Windows computer and a DLNA-capable video device.

For Windows users, especially those who regularly copy photos to their computer using Windows Explorer / File Explorer, there is a free program that can batch-rotate photos in a folder correctly. The program is called JPEG Autorotate and is freely available from its author’s site. Once installed, it appears as a secondary-menu (right-click) option to allow you to rotate a single image or all the photos in a folder including the subfolders without quality loss.

If you are using a computer as the primary storage or “staging post” for your digital image collection, the best path is to use the photo import functionality that is part of the image management software installed on it. Typically this will be Windows Photos, Windows Photo Gallery or Photos for MacOS (formerly iPhoto) that will be with your operating system. As well, make sure that the “rotate photos on import” option is selected in your software’s import settings.

This information will help you with making sure that digital pictures appear the right way up no matter the device you are using.

Recently, I have been going through news articles about the digital cameras that are being launched or premiered this year and most of them are offering a common feature. What is this feature?

It is Wi-Fi wireless-network connectivity which allows you to link your smartphone or tablet with your camera using the same technology that is used to link these devices to your home network and the Internet when you are at home.

One of the key advantages that Wi-Fi wireless connectivity offers is that it offers a wider bandwidth than Bluetooth which would earn its keep with transferring the high-resolution RAW or JPEG pictures to your computer or mobile device.

The camera serves as an access point for the smartphone or tablet

The typical situation is that you have to install software on your smartphone, tablet or computer that is written by the camera’s manufacturer to take advantage of this feature. This software would allow you to transfer photos and video from your camera to your computing device or have the computing device’s screen work as a viewfinder for the camera. In a lot of cases, it could serve as a remote control for your camera such as to be able to trip the shutter remotely. If the computing device is a smartphone or tablet, you may have the ability to geotag the shots you took using your camera with the smartphone’s GPS sensor providing the information. As well. some Panasonic camcorders use this software to create a multiple-camera setup using your smartphone’s camera along with the camcorder’s own camera function.

Using your smartphone’s wireless tethering feature as an access point

As I have highlighted before, Ricoh uses an integrated Web page rather than a client-side app for their GR II digital camera when it comes to remote control. This would appeal to those of us who use regular computers or Windows smartphones as partner devices for our cameras.

In some situations, the camera may offer an “on-ramp” to a manufacturer-hosted Web gateway which allows you to upload and share the pictures using the Web. As well, some of these Web gateways may offer a further “on-ramp” to social-network, image-sharing or file-exchange services that you have accounts with so you can take advantage of these services.

Your Wi-Fi-capable camera as part of an existing home network

But how can these cameras work with Wi-Fi? Most of these cameras can be their own access point, typically serving one device like a smartphone or laptop. But they also have the ability to connect to an existing access point. This can be of benefit when you use a phone with Wi-Fi-based tethering, a “Mi-Fi” router or your existing home or small-business network.

How to get the most out of this technology

Interlinking with your smartphone

Facebook and Dropbox can benefit here

If you use your smartphone or tablet to post pictures on Facebook, Instagram and the like, you can take the pictures you want to post using your Wi-Fi-capable camera rather than the smartphone’s rear-facing camera and these pictures could impress people more. This is because the good digital cameras implement optics that are better than what would be integrated in a smartphone’s integrated camera.

… as can Instagram

Similarly, when you take those holiday pictures, you can take advantage of your smartphone’s GPS to geotag the pictures and use them as part of an interactive map that a social network may offer.

Here, you use the camera for most of the photography while your smartphone’s camera can work as a fallback if your application calls for something small and light and you don’t care about the quality. Similarly, your smartphone’s camera would earn its keep with video-conferencing.

The best network setup for the job

The Wi-FI feature along with the “remote-control” functionality will come in to its own when you dig out that tripod. Here, you could be able to interact with the subject yet keep tabs on how it will look in the viewfinder and how the exposure will come off using your smartphone.

An existing network served by a powerful router could earn its keep here if you need to be further away from the camera such as filming a presentation or interacting with a subject. If you are “out and about”, a Mi-Fi could serve this role easily because of it working as an access point on its own battery rather than you finding that the battery is being depleted very quickly during a long shoot.

What needs to be done

DLNA integration

Once you have NAS units, especially mobile NAS units being equipped with the Upload and Download functionaliy for their DLNA MediaServer functionality, these cameras would have to support DLNA MediaUploader functionality to allow you to deliver the pictures you took on to these devices.  Similarly the idea of “throwing” images and footage you just took to a DLNA-capable smart TV via your home network would need to be investigated as a feature for these cameras.

Here, this could be approached through identifying standards and specifications that apply to the photography and videography ecosystem. As well, this concept could be taken further to allow different software to gain access to the camera’s sensor or controls for different applications.

Wi-FI Passpoint support

Another area that may need to be worked on for these digital cameras and camcorders is support for WI-Fi Passpoint. This allows for a simplified yet secure login experience when you use these cameras with a public-access Wi-Fi hotspot like what your favourite hotel or café provides. Here, you are not dealing with a login Webpage which would be difficult, if not impossible, to use with a digital camera because of the absence of a Web browser and reliance on “pick-and-choose” data entry.

The concept of a “trusted device cluster” could be looked at in the context of Wi-Fi Passpoint so you can provide a surefire “local-network-link” between two or more devices that are using a public-access network. Here, it would earn its keep when you are controlling your tripod-mounted camera from your smartphone during a presentation or downloading those pictures to your Ultrabook or tablet while you are in your hotel room.

Wi-Fi as another path to control lighting and other peripherals

Serious hobbyists and professionals will be dealing with advanced lighting setups in order to get the best out of their photographs and footage. This may involve continuous-light devices like video and photo lights along with flash-based devices like Speedlites or studio flash units. LEDs are also making it more feasible to vary the lighting colour of a particular lamp at an instant.

Here, Wi-Fi along with some of the “Internet Of Things” proposals being put forward by the UPnP Forum and AllSeen Alliance could open up the ability to use your smartphone or camera as a control surface for your lighting setup. This would also include being able to trigger flash units manually or in sync with the shutter.

For video applications, Wi-FI technology could also earn its keep with picture-sound synchronisation by working as a “common path” to transmit SMPTE synchronisation data between audio recorders and video camcorders. This could allow for “best-quality” sound recording and multiple-camera setups with devices having their own recording transports.

Conclusion

What I see of this year’s trend for cameras and camcorders to have Wi-Fi wireless network abilities is something that will make them increasingly capable.

Article

Smartphone Cameras v Point And Shoot Digital Cameras | Photography

My Comments

Often we think of the cameras that are integrated in the typical smartphones as competing with the traditional compact digital cameras. Typically the smartphone and tablet cameras win out on integration in to the device we carry around frequently and immediate access to the online world for sharing what we have taken, whereas the compact cameras, especially those modelled on the 35mm compact camera, win out on the body shape, optics, sensor and electronics being tuned for the act of photography.

Taking images further

The main obstacle was taking the images that you took with the camera further using mobile-computing apps and Web sites. This is to do things like “throw” a copy of that image you took to the subject for them to take further or simply to share that image with your friends via Flickr, Picasa or Facebook.

Some newer trends have occurred where the cameras have been equipped with Wi-Fi wireless, Bluetooth or integrated wireless broadband in order to facilitate sharing of images held on the camera. The connection is augmented with front-end apps for image-sharing, cloud-storage and social-network services installed on the camera. There are even a few cases of digital cameras which have the Android mobile operating system as their operating system, with access to the same Google Play app store as you would have on an Android smartphone. This setup allows one to use the apps that exist for the Android platform such as the Dropbox and Facebook mobile front-ends with these cameras.

It is to mitigate the common situation where images have to be downloaded to a computer before they can be shared, whether through the camera being “tethered” to that computer or one removing the “film” i.e. the memory card from the camera and inserting it in the computer.

On the other hand, those of us who have newer Android smartphones and tablets could use a USB “On The Go” cable and either the camera’s USB cable or a card reader to “get at” the images we took with our cameras. Similarly Apple sells an iPad accessory kit which offers this similar function for the iOS devices.

Similarly, cameras that work with the “Eye-Fi” cards can allow you to share the images to your smartphone or tablet so you can take them further with the apps on these devices. They could utilise mobile NAS units of the likes of the Seagate GoFlex Satellite or the Kingston Wi-Drive as extra storage for the images and footage.

How I see this

I see the compact digital cameras existing as a way for those of us who value good-quality images to take these images on the go, including working as an auxiliary camera for big-time photographers.

Whereas the smartphone cameras would work more like the entry-level “quick-snap” cameras of the ilk of the Kodak Instamatics, the Polaroid instant-film cameras and the fixed-focus entry-level 35mm cameras where the goal is simply to grab a quick snapshot of the moment. They would also serve as a tool to create images they can refer to when doing tasks such as dismantling an item or grabbing reference numbers.

Article – From the horse’s mouth

Sony puts DSLR power in your pocket with the NEX-6 : Consumer Products Press Releases : Sony Australia (Press Release)

My Comments

Sony are to release the NEX-6 which is a fully-equipped “rangefinder-style” mirrorless camera. It will have the APS-HD sensor and work with E-mount user-interchangeable lenses making it an answer to the DSLR camera; as well as working with a fast “phase and contrast” auto-focus setup.

It also implements an OLED electronic viewfinder and works with a Sony-driven app system. But the app system only works with the camera being tethered to a computer.

DLNA in a digital camera

For me, the main piece de resistance is integrated Wi-Fi and DLNA functionality. This is brought on by Sony supplying a continual lineup of DLNA-capable TVs and video peripherals like the BDP-S390 Blu-Ray player that I have reviewed.

The main application I see of this function is a very common business or pleasure situation. Here, you you want to show the latest pictures to family members, friends or business colleagues using that large flatscreen TV. If the TV is a DLNA-capable set like an increasing number of smart TVs or is connected to a video peripheral that works as a network media player, you can either “pull” the pictures up on the screen using your TV’s or video peripheral’s remote control or “push” the pictures from the NEX-6 to the TV using the camera’s control surface.

Here, this function isn’t provided in an app that the user has to search for and download but as something that is integrated with this camera. In some ways,  What I see of this is a chance for camera and camcorder manufacturers to have Wi-Fi wireless networking as a product differentiator and to have DLNA as part of this feature set, thus exploiting what the smart TVs and network-enabled video peripherals offer as a way or reviewing or presenting the pictures or footage you have just taken.

The DLNA functionality could be taken further by allowing the camera to be an “uploader” so that pictures and video can be uploaded to a network-attached storage device without the need to have your computer on. Similarly, it could allow “take it – show it” behaviour where an image that you just took appears on the screen, or sensor-to-screen streaming where the large screen works as a viewfinder to work with DLNA-capable display setups.

In some ways, this functionality could be extended across other camera types such as the DSLRs or the consumer or professional / broadcast camcorders. This again is more so as an integrated function that Sony and others can differentiate the more expensive equipment with.

Where to go to enable DLNA in Windows Media Player 12

Just lately, the couple whom I am living with bit the bullet to buy a flatscreen TV. They wanted something that was to be good-quality and would be known to last a long time. They asked me for some assistance on this matter and I recommended any of the newer Panasonic, Sony, Samsung or LG sets and not to worry about getting 3D for exanple. So the husband went out and chose a 40” variant of the new Samsung Smart TVs.

I had got this new set going in our home and attached it to our home network using Wi-Fi with the supplied Wi-Fi network adaptor dongle as well as connecting it to the aerial (antenna), the Samsung Blu-Ray player they purchased as well as an existing PVR. This opened up a variety of opportunities like access to ABC iView and SBS On-Demand which represented the on-demand front-ends for their favourite TV channels.

DLNA content collections listed as sources on the TV

But the lady of the house wanted also to show their newly-taken pictures, including some from a recent holiday of theirs, to her mother-in-law who was arriving the next day. So I set up the husband’s desktop PC which had the images on it to enable Windows Media Streaming in Windows Media Player. This allowed the computer, which was on the home network to share all the pictures in the Pictures library on to the home network using DLNA which this TV supported. There was also a network-attached-storage which they bought which I had set up as a backup / offload device for photos and I had also set this up for DLNA media-server functionality.

DLNA media directory shown on TV screen as provided by PC

The whole setup worked properly using DLNA. I had subsequently demonstrated to the husband how to bring up the latest images from the computer using the TV’s AllShare interface. This is where the TV listed each DLNA media collection as a source alongside the TV tuner and all sources connected to it, thus simplifying the operation experience for them. They were able to select the PC by its name, then select Pictures and choose how they wanted to view them, an activity which for someone with limited computer skills was able to get the hang of easily.

But I infact exposed this couple to the DLNA concept and why I stood for it earlier on when I was involved in choosing another network-attached storage device. Here, I looked over the box and was looking for “UPnP” and “DLNA” logos on the box to be sure that the NAS complied with these standards. Subsequently I mentioned that I was looking for network equipment that stood for these standards due to ease of access to stored media on the device from compliant equipment.

What this has been about is demonstrating the use of a network-capable TV set being able to “draw down” pictures from a computer using commonly-available standards. Then being able to locate and view these pictures in a manner that is very intuitive even for people who don’t have much in the way of computer skills.

A common situation for Webmail users is that when the receive an email with one or more picture attachements in it, they are faced with an option to view or download the image. This is a situation that can perplex some novice computer users when they face these situations.

Viewing an image

When you select the “View” option for that image, you see the image using your Web browser. This can work well with some Web browsers but not with others and can be annoying if the browser that you are using either shows “actual size” only or while the photo is loading.

In some cases, some browsers such as Internet Explorer can provide a user interface for panning and zooming on digital pictures that can be frustrating and unintuitive to some users. It can be good enough if you are viewing small images or viewing an image “at a glance” with a properly-behaving browser.

Downloading an image

When you select the “Download” option, the image will be copied to your computer’s local storage and you are then presented the option to “open” the image or “save” it somewhere else.

If you “open” it, you use your operating system’s default image handler which, for most desktop environments, would be a dedicated image viewer or your image management program.  Some users may find this program’s interface more intuitive because it shows the image at best resolution on the screen yet allows them to use the image handler’s zoom and pan controls to view the detail.

You also have the option to “save” the image to somewhere of your choosing on your computer’s file system to “take it further”. This can be useful for saving it to a USB memory key so you can have it printed by your favourite digital photofinisher or to show on that digital picture frame or TV. Similarly, you could “save” it to your image library as something to “come back to” later; or to view using your DLNA-capable smart TV or video player.

What do you do?

Whether to view or download that image in your Webmail can depend on what you want to do with the image.

If you want to take the image further, it is best to “download” the image and use the “save” option. On the other hand, you can just “view” the image if you are comfortable with how your Web browser shows images or “download” if you find that the image viewer or image management program’s viewing interface does the job better for you.

The current situation with electronic picture frames (digital picture frames)

I have been to a friend’s home and had seen an electronic picture frame that they received for a previous Christmas sitting on their sideboard, turned off and hidden behind other framed pictures on that same sideboard. This picture frame has some old pictures that the close friend doesn’t really want and their granddaughter has to come up from the country with a memory key full of images in order to update the picture frame’s collection. Similarly, I have noticed that our household and another household are becoming the two households that are involved with updating an electronic picture frame belonging to a close friend.

This usually sees most households in situations where managing the typical sub-$100 electronic picture frame becoming very tenuous and ends up being a serious task if one has to update many of these frames that are spread across the households that make up an extended family. This situation would typically be in response to a family event like a wedding, the arrival of a new baby or a family reunion.

If the event happens overseas, the family members will need to email the pictures or send them using Flickr, Facebook or similar online services to nominated family members in other countries. Then it’s the job of these family members to push the pictures to optical disks, SD cards or USB memory keys for uploading to relatives’ picture frames.

There are some online picture frames on the market but these are tied to particular services which may require the user to take out a subscription. Similarly, some of the frames also require the user to run special manufacturer-supplied software to deliver pictures over the network to the frame. As well, a lot of Wi-Fi-enabled picture frames on the market are not DLNA-compliant thus wouldn’t work with most network-attached storage devices or storage-enabled routers on the market.

Infact one close friend of mine who had taken me shopping for my birthday present had noticed me looking at network-attached storage devices and looking carefully for the UPnP and DLNA logos on the NAS device’s box before I offered it as a possible idea for a group gift. I had later explained that this kind of functionality was to be a step in the right direction to an easily-manageable digital-image-storage system once connected to DLNA-compliant Wi-Fi picture frames.

How could the DLNA-based system be built

The components

The digital picture frames

There would be one or more DLNA-capable electronic picture frames or similar devices connecting to the home network by 802.11n Wi-Fi, HomePlug AV or other similar means. These devices would be DMR devices which permit other devices on the network like network-enabled remote controls to determine what is shown on the devices.

The media server

A DLNA-enabled network-attached-storage which works with a unique POP3/IMAP email inbox or established cloud-driven image-delivery service can work as the picture storage centre. Pictures can be uploaded locally via a USB port or SD card slot(“quick drop”), via the network using CIFS or NFS (common network file-handling protocols) or the unit can allow FTP/HTTP “block upload” for remote uploading or simply allow the user to email photos to it.

Other devices such as another of the picture frames or the network’s Internet-gateway device could work as an alternative primary or secondary media server. This may be achieved through the devices using flash-memory technology or a small hard disk; and may be applicable for receiving emailed images or images from online services. They could even work with a NAS by “offloading” images to that device when new images come in.

Metadata

The server device would make use of established metadata tag families like what is used with Windows Live Photo Gallery and iPhoto for indexing the collection and allowing various search and browse options. It is alongside use of file-system and date/time hierarchies that would be typically used by these devices. These include keyword-browsing with support for user-created “keyword trees” as well as multidimensional searching. The DLNA server software should support the newer person-tagging and  place-tagging functionality that newer image-management software offers as well.

Do we tag a picture of the Sydney Harbour Bridge as simply "Sydney" or as "Sydney Harbour Bridge", even as a sub-tag of Sydney?

An issue that may be of concern with place-tagging is how one tags places in a town. One may tag “general” or “landmark” pictures with the name of the town or establish a hierarchy based on the town’s name and a tag list for the landmarks. They may not use this tagging system when it comes to pictures of particular locations that they have visited like homes, offices or similar places.

Another metadata form that could be supported for people who make the time to work with metadata is the creation of horizontal or vertical “pan lines” in a picture. These lines would determine how a picture frame pans across a picture that is too wide or tall for it and can avoid us seeing the bodies of the subjects that are in a group photo for example.  These “pan lines” can also have “home points” in the picture to allow for the photographer to have control over default static presentation on horizontal or vertical displays. 

Control

The picture frames or the controller need to be able to select multiple UPnP collections and show the pictures in these collections in a sequential or random manner. It can also include whether to play the videos with sound or not at certain times of the day in order to avoid the sound track being of nuisance value.

Advanced playback control options

Frame groups

One or more of the picture frames which have controller capability or a separate controller device / application the ability to “push” pictures from one collection or set of collections to one group of frames such as frames installed in the lounge room. This function would require that random pictures from the collection or set of collections are shown on each frame in the same group.

A frame could be a member of many groups rather than just one group. An example of this could be frames that are placed on the mantlepiece being their own group but being part of a super-group encompassing all of the frames that are in the lounge room for example.

Event-driven playback

The controller could support timed playback so that particular collections of images and content are shown to particular frames or frame groups at certain times or in response to certain events. An example of this could be to exhibit Christmas family pictures from Advent through to Epiphany; or show pictures of a city that you intend to travel to for two weeks before the journey. Another example would be to immediately show newly-arrived pictures on certain frames as soon as they come in or be “slaved” to an intruder-alarm / access-control system that is configured for individual household members and show favourite pictures to particular household members when they come in.

Picture Sources

Most pictures will be imported from digital cameras via one or more networked computers. Here, the pictures may be edited and tagged with appropriate metadata, then they will be synchronised to the network-attached storage drives for availability across the network.

Images delivered by email

A key question that will be raised is which device checks for new pictures that have come in by email? Is it the network-attached-storage unit, the Internet-gateway-device (broadband router) at the “edge” of the network or one of the electronic picture frames?

• If the network-attached-storage checks for the pictures, it will have to check a known email address then copy pictures to a particular directory. This may be easier for a multi-frame system because it is a device that is suited to being kept available all the time.
• If the Internet-gateway-device is to do the job, it will have to check the email address and store incoming pictures to a particular directory on integrated or attached mass-storage like an SDXC card, solid-state drive or hard disk. Then it will upload the pictures to the network-attached-storage at regular intervals. As well, it will also be required to be a DLNA server in order to share this directory with the picture frames so the newest photos of the new grandchild are highly available.. This may be OK if the only device you want to keep available when you are out is the Internet-gateway-device. It may also be OK if the intention is to make the Internet-gateway-device become a central storage server for the photos, which is something that may be desired of by manufacturers who want to provide a “one-device-does-all” solution for the network-Internet “edge”.
• The electronic picture frame solution will be similar to the Internet-gateway-device solution but this will again  require a third device to be highly available to share or upload the pictures. This device may be able to display the pictures as soon as they arrive then upload them on a regular basis. It will also be required to have a large-capacity rewriteable mass-storage system like an SDXC card on board.

Device manufacturers and Internet providers may prefer that their device is the one that collects emailed pictures and this could lead to some confusion when you add a device to this ecosystem.

When picture arrives by email, the router, picture frame or network-attached-storage device would copy the pictures to a “new pictures” directory. This directory would be  distinctly selectable on UPnP AV clients and contain these new pictures. Pictures older than a user-determined time would be pushed in to the main photo collection so they can be available for viewing. As well, users can move the pictures to the main collection and add appropriate metadata to the pictures using a regular computer connected to the network.

Integration with online services

A lot of us do work with online photo albums, whether as dedicated sites like Flickr, Photobucket or Picasa Web Albums; or as part of a social-network setup like Facebook. There will then be the desire from both the service providers and their users to integrate the photo collections with the DLNA Home Media Network.

The device that works as the “hub” may have to regularly visit these sites and cache the pictures from the albums to the local mass-storage in order to provide constant availability of these pictures. One issue with this is whether to allow the device to cache every album that its associated account has access to or allow the user to nominate albums or “peers” (friends, Pages, etc) for caching. This is important with users who have a large number of “peers” that they subscribe to from these services.

As well, there would be the issue of establishing a UPnP Content Directory tree which works in this order: Service (Facebook, Flickr, etc) – Account (own account, each “peer” account (Facebook Friend, Page, Picasa Friend, etc)) – Album / Photostream (including images in account’s “root” album).

Support for and integration with premium content

An option that is being encouraged with some networked picture frames is the delivery of commercial content such as clip-art / stock-photo images, news-photo images (useful if you are associated with a news article) and comic strips / cartoons. Similarly there could be such content as “information screens” (news, weather, etc) being delivered to these frames.

Here, it may be worth considering where this kind of premium content should be held and how new providers are added. This could be driven by an “app” model where customers can add content sources in a similar manner to what is being done with the iOS and Android platforms.

Conclusion

Once these ideas are looked at and the concept of DLNA-driven digital picture frame management is achieved, this could increase the utility of the digital picture frame and other image-display devices as a way of showing the increasingly-large library of digital images.