GPS Tracking and Employer-Employee Relations

When it comes to GPS tracking systems and employers there is a lot of talk about how they can be used to help make certain that employees are doing what they are supposed to do, when they are supposed to do it. There is no doubt that many an employee has been caught going somewhere they were not supposed to, driving faster than they were supposed to, or leaving the car idling for much longer than is necessary or economical. And, yes, as an employer you may find yourself making an example of an employee through reprimand or other action once a GPS tracking system singles out someone as an abuser of company property.

It is also possible that you may find that there is some extenuating circumstance or reason other than flagrant rule-breaking that accounts for an employee\’s lackluster performance. It could be anything, really. An employee who has started drinking a lot of water for health reasons could be stopping off to use the restroom more frequently. Adjustments can be made, but this is something that you wouldn\’t know if you hadn\’t installed a GPS tracking device in your company vehicle.

There is also another use for all of the information that you get with a GPS tracking system. What about using that information to reward employee excellence. If your GPS tracking devices show that there are employees who consistently complete deliveries on time, stick to the assigned route, obey the speed limit and do not waste exorbitant amounts of gas idling, why not find a way to let them know you appreciate their efficient work?

Now some people will say it makes no sense to reward someone for doing what they are supposed to do, and I can understand that line of thinking. There is not need for a grand ceremony to honor a person for performing the job duties they agreed to perform. You can, however let someone know that you are aware that they take the time to do good work.

GPS Tracking Systems
McCord Web Design

Learning To Edit Digital Photography Without The Headaches

An image editor is a computer program that enables you to adjust a photo to improve its appearance. With image editing software, you can darken or lighten a photo, rotate it, adjust its contrast, crop out extraneous detail, remove red-eye and more. Most graphics programs have the ability to import and export one or more graphics file formats. Several graphics programs support animation, or digital video. Vector graphics animation can be described as a series of mathematical transformations that are applied in sequence to one or more shapes in a scene. Raster graphics animation works in a similar fashion to film-based animation, where a series of still images produces the illusion of continuous movement.

Possibly one of the most confusing aspects of dealing with digital imagery is resolution-specifically, what it really is and how changing it affects an image. Simply put, image resolution is the number of pixels displayed per unit of printed length in an image. It\’s a measurement used for printing and it\’s usually stated in pixels per inch (ppi-used when referencing screen images) or dots per inch (dpi-used in printing because printers print dots). The way resolution affects an image is thus: For a given number of pixels in the width or height of an image, the higher the resolution, the closer the printer packs those pixels together in order to make a beautifully smooth and sharp print. The closer the pixels are packed together, the smaller the image will be physically when printed, and vice versa. Because our monitors can only display a certain amount of information that our eyeballs/brains can process, resolution matters only to printing devices. That\’s right, it doesn\’t mean a hill of beans until that image is headed for a printer because only a printer can do anything with the resolution measurement.

The best thing about digital cameras is that it\’s easy to take thousands of pictures. That\’s also the worst thing about digital cameras. After you\’ve owned your camera for a few months, you won\’t be able to find that great picture you took a couple of months ago if your pictures aren\’t well organized or named logically. Folders are the best way to organize groups of pictures, and the My Pictures folder is a great place to start. In your My Pictures folder, create a subfolder for each year: 2004, 2005, 2006, and so on. This might seem silly the first year you own your camera, but after five years, you\’ll be glad you did this because you can go back to your 2005 folder and easily find a picture from a vacation you took that year. Arranging pictures by year is also helpful if you\’re scanning older photos stored in shoe boxes or albums that you took before owning a digital camera. This is also a good way to start organizing the pictures that you currently have on your computer.

With a photo-editing program, you can “fix” or change images acquired from a scanner, digital camera, or the Internet and print them, import them into another document, post them on a Web page and use them for desktop backgrounds. To make the choice that\’s right for you, check reviews in computer magazines and on the Internet to narrow your choices; look for a program that can directly import images from a scanner or digital camera; make sure the program can crop, resize, flip and rotate images; compare color adjustment capabilities of programs. You should be able to adjust contrast, brightness, sharpness, hues and color-saturation levels; change a color; and convert color to black-and-white or grayscale; and compare the ease of using the various programs available.

Sharpen filters bring out detail in images by increasing the contrast of pixels next to one another. More advanced image editing programs offer several options such as Sharpen, Sharpen More, Sharpen Edges and Unsharp Mask (USM). Unsharp Mask gives you a lot of control over how an image is sharpened. Sometimes a photo will benefit from selective sharpening. You select an area with a programs selection tool and only sharpen the area. The important thing is not sharpen an image too much. The sharpening tool that is most useful for photographs is the Unsharp Mask, now available in most raster programs. The Unsharp Mask searches through your image looking for where colors change, and sharpens those areas. The Unsharp Mask is superior to any other sharpening because it makes decisions based on adjacent pixels, not random color changes, so it usually can find and sharpen just the true edges of color areas.

Often times images are posted on the web and resized with HTML code. This leads to an image full of jagged edges. By resizing your image in an image editing program, such as Adobe Photoshop, you can utilize smoothing algorithms that will make an image look much smoother. Additionally, resizing the image will reduce the file size, allowing a web page to load faster than usual. When you resize an image, you are resampling an image. In other words, your program is taking all of the image data and redrawing the pixels so that the image is the desired size. However, when you ask the application to increase the size of the image, the size of each pixel is increased, which inevitably leads to degradation of the image. When you resize an image, you can also change image resolution, to keep the quality of your image.

Cropping refers to the removal of the outer parts of an image to improve framing, accentuate subject matter or change aspect ratio. In the printing, graphic design and photography industries, cropping refers to removing unwanted areas from a photographic or illustrated image. One of the most basic photo manipulation processes, it is performed in order to remove an unwanted subject or irrelevant detail from a photo, change its aspect ratio, or to improve the overall composition. It is considered one of the few editing actions permissable in modern photojournalism along with tonal balance, colour correction and sharpening.

Would like to find out more about editing digital photography? Don\’t trust anybody\’s advice until you read this free report