Recently, there has been found a bug in iPhone’s camera roll display system. It’s related to the number of images taken with iPhone; if you take at least 10000 photos, you’ll face with this problem. Before returning to this topic, i want to tell about some similar problems:

When i was working for Nokta Inc. (www.nokta.com) and creating a clustering system for uploaded images, i wanted to extend possibilities and push the limits for image and user counts. Any technic might work, but according to your solution, there might be so many works that you can not handle in necessary time; not feasible. So this could ruin the project’s evolving process and project plans. You might have to re-write many codes, redesign the whole system, maybe shut the sytem for a while… Because of this, i thought “what if every person in this world uses this system with more than one account”, people laughed at me in Nokta. But i designed it in my way ( in the same time duration ). Currently i’m not working in Nokta, but if they don’t rewrite the whole code, they won’t be facing with problems related to uploaded images system for a really long time. (However.. trying to seperate images and putting them into UN-real cdn systems would break and make developers to rewrite the whole code for image system).

(Kızılay, ANKARA)

I’m living in Turkey. Ankara is the capital city of Turkey as you know and KIZILAY is one of the most crowded and central parts of Ankara. In the past, when there were only a few cars, the first president of the republic of Turkey, Ataturk ( Mustafa Kemal Ataturk ), has said that, in future “KIZILAY” might have been important for Ankara and number of cars might have been huge, so roads must be very wide and for both ways to handle those in future. At that time, people didn’t understood it and didn’t liked the idea. Today, traffic is a problem in Kızılay (however not a very big problem for now), it’s hard to imagine what could happen if those roads were built smaller..

Recently, there has been found a bug in iPhone’s camera roll display system. It’s related to the number of images taken with iPhone; if you take at least 10000 photos, you’ll face with this problem. ( Fix iPhone’s Camera Roll display bug ) According to my experiences, at the first glance, i can tell that this problem is related to foreseeing or lack of energy and desire of development team in Apple. Maybe coders of that part were not happy about their jobs, they were just coding to get money and only thing to get it is finishing what was given to you.. Yes it’s finished and we purchased and started to use those devices and applications and this is what happens if you don’t think about the thing you make for future.

If you have time and if it’s feasible, why not do it in a way so it’ll help you in the future? And also, people won’t talk behind of you! Maybe coders of this bugs had told to their team that “system works but it can not handle more than 10000 photos, i want to change the way, would you let me?” and maybe they’ve told him/her “No, we have no time”. That’s an excuse for the developer but not for the team, project leader and Apple. It should have been fixed until now!

- Hey, but what happens if you take more than 10000 photos?
– What? Hahahaha, you are funny.
– No i’m serious.
– Ok i have to work, let’s chat later.
– But no, i…. ok nevermind..

- I’ve planned the system so it can support billions of user uploaded photos.
– What?! Why did you do that?! Are you for real?!
– Well.. yeah?
– But why? How does your brain work… only Turkey will use this system and not all of it.. But you are saying that you made it to work for the world. Hahahahhah..
– Yes.
– We have no time, why did you do that?!?!
– I’ve used the same duration for doing it.
– Ok, but will it work for now?
– ……
( after some time, another project leader of another project )
– Hey, hahahahah come and optimize this for billions of people, you are good at it, hahahahhaha.
– ……….

They’ll keep monkeying around, extending their duration for being a monkey; harmless future optimizations for xillions should really not harm anyone or anything.

Creating an image for iPhone toolbar may be tricky. If you don’t want to draw pixel by pixel, or if you want more than 1 color (white), you need to make something different.

For the technic i’ll be explaining here, If you are a Photoshop expert, you may extend the possibilities, but if you are not an expert, that also won’t stop you creating icons.

Here is the small tutorial/tip:

Other than Apple’s related requirements and guidelines (HIG), follow these steps:

1. Open the file(image) with Photoshop.
2. Convert it to greyscale. (This is not necessary, but it’s right to do; it’ll simplify the steps and coloring will be useless since those colors won’t be rendered)
3. Clean it (make unwanted areas transparent).
4. Copy the actual image (select it).
5. Add mask to that layer with related button in Layers Window.
6. Go to Channels tab and only activate the layer(channel) named as mask.
7. Paste the image to that layer(channel).
8. Go back to the normal layer view.
9. Your mask should seem like the actual image at the Layers Window.
10. Select original image from the layer that has the mask in the Layers Window. ( not the mask )
11. Paint the selection(fill it).
12. To adjust the intensity, play with white balance and or levels and or contrast.

That’s all. Now you have an image converted to just white and alpha values.

Explaining this to a graphic artist may be hard. They probably can not understand why you want to do something like this. They may tell you that you are making ( you want to make ) something that is useless, silly, pointless. They will tell you these not because they are bad at their job, they’ll tell it because you are making use of a masking technic that is uncommon. So don’t blame artists, don’t blame Photoshop and don’t blame Apple.

However people especially in the mobile world usually don’t like sharing their experiences, i like sharing mine.

This is how i’m generally using it. So if you have other ideas, share it as i do, so we can do it better!

At last, google just launched “Similar Images”. Similar Images is currently an experiment, released under “google labs”, about finding visually similar images when you define the master image. If you click on “similar images” link under a car image, which was photographed at a certain angle, you’ll get similar car photos at the similar angles. When similarity decreases, you’ll start to see unrelated or not that similar images.

How does it work?

1. Go to http://similar-images.googlelabs.com/
2. Type anything and search it.
3. In the results page, click on “Similar Images” link at the bottom of the thumbnail you want to get the similar result of.

Go and give it a try. Infact there are more things happening inside of the google, but these are just what we can see right now. It’s hard to beat the google even if they make mistakes in business world; because they have incredible amount of data related to everything… ( becareful about your privacy )

Here is the video from google related to “Similar Images”: