THE ROBOT called Forpheus does more than play a mean game of table tennis. It can read body language to gauge its opponent’s ability and offer advice and encouragement.

“It will try to understand your mood and your playing ability and predict a bit about your next shot,” says Keith Kersten of Japan-based Omron Automation, which developed Forpheus to showcase its technology.

“We don’t sell ping-pong robots, but we are using Forpheus to show how technology works with people,” he adds.

Forpheus was among several devices shown at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show, which highlighted how robots can become more humanlike by acquiring “emotional intelligence” and empathy.

Although this specialisation is still emerging, the notion of robotic empathy appeared to be a strong theme at the huge gathering of technology professionals in Las Vegas.

Honda, the Japanese auto giant, launched a new robotics programme called “Empower, Experience, Empathy”, including its new 3E-A18 robot, which “shows compassion to humans with a variety of facial expressions”, according to a statement.

The Omron Forpheus robot thrashes a mere human at table tennis during the Las Vegas convention./AFP

Although empathy and emotional intelligence don’t necessarily require a humanoid form, some robot-makers have been working on form as well as function.

“We’re been working very hard to have an emotional robot,” says Jean-Michel Mourier of French-based Blue Frog Robotics, which makes the companion and social robot called Buddy, set to be released later this year.

“He has a complex brain. He will ask for a caress or get mad if you poke him in the eye.”

Other robots, such as Qihan Technology’s Sanbot and SoftBank Robotics’ Pepper, are being “humanised” by teaching them to read and react to people’s emotional states.

Pepper is “capable of interpreting a smile, a frown, your tone of voice, as well as the lexical field you use and non-verbal language such as the angle of your head”, according to SoftBank.

Developing emotional intelligence in robots is a difficult task, melding the use of computer “vision” to interpret objects and people and creating software that can respond accordingly.

“Empathy is the goal – the robot is putting itself in the shoes of the human, and that’s about as hard as it gets,” says Patrick Moorhead, a technology analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy.

“It’s not just about technology – it’s about psychology and trust.”

Choose your pal – a Honda 3EA18, left, of a 3C18, both concept robots for now./AFP

Moorhead says this technology is still in the early stages, but holds promise in some areas, noting that there is strong interest in Japan amid a lack of caretakers for the elderly population.

“In some ways it can be a bit creepy if you’re crying and the robot is trying to console you,” he says.

“If you have no friends, the next best thing is a friend robot, and introverts might feel more comfortable talking to a robot.”

One CES exhibitor offers a promise of going further than the current devices by developing an “emotion chip” that allows robots to process emotions in a manner similar to humans.

“There’s been a lot of research on detecting human emotions. We do the opposite. We synthesise emotions for the machine,” says Patrick Levy-Rosenthal, founder of New York-based Emoshape, which is producing its chip for partners in gaming, virtual and augmented reality and other sectors.

It could be used to power a humanoid robot or other devices. For example, an e-reader could better understand a text to infuse more emotion in storytelling.

As for Forpheus, Kersten says the robot’s ability to help people improve their table-tennis skills could have numerous applications for sports, businesses and more.

“You could sense how people are feeling, if they are attentive or in a good state to drive.”

Another key application could be in healthcare, he says. “In an elderly-patient facility, you can determine if someone is in distress and needs help.”

The blurb on the front cover says “old-school thriller”, and even though it actually refers to an earlier book by the same author, there’s no point trying to top that capsule description of Frank Hurst’s writing – now again on view in his latest novel “The Chiang Mai Assignment”.

The action is set at the dawn of the 1990s – for some interesting reasons, as it turns out – but in certain ways, this could easily be the 1950s or ’60s, deep in the Cold War. This is a tale of British policing, and while MI6 is relegated to a caper on the side lines, and Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise is centre stage in the sleuthing, there’s very much a spy-versus-spy tingle to the plot.

It comes naturally to Hurst, a former drugs-intelligence agent whose own exotic travels and 35 years of experience with Customs, Scotland Yard and the Foreign Office ensure a level of authenticity that armchair detective writers can’t hope to match.

Hurst was part of the globe-spanning operation that put the late Howard “Mr Nice” Marks behind bars. Having only started writing when he retired in 2011, he’s on the hunt again.

Mike Rawlin is Hurst’s alter ego and his Bond, but at the outset, Rawlin has been frozen out of the Cold War, recalled from the field after letting his emotions get the better of him and fumbling his previous assignment.

Back in London (more precisely Coventry, figuratively speaking), he’s pushing paper clips and lunching alone at a pub none of his colleagues frequent, the better to avoid their derision. Rawlin has all but given up hope of ever returning to Thailand, or being given any other plum mission, for that matter.

But then the Customs boys get word that Bart Vanderpool – the Dutch drugs kingpin Rawlin was tracking in Phuket when the case went pear-shaped two years earlier – has resurfaced in the far Thai North and might be shipping a massive quantity of heroin to Europe.

Rawlin hasn’t lost all of his friends and support in the service, he knows Thailand intimately and he has an established network of contacts there, so the chiefs set aside their doubts, pluck him from his desk and put him on a plane.

“The Chiang Mai Assignment” is the second novel in a planned Golden Triangle Trilogy that began with “The Postmistress of Nong Khai”, which was set even earlier, in the early 1980s.

Nong Khai is briefly revisited here, as is Phuket, but only as stopovers on the way to the Golden Triangle. There’s an encounter at the Eastern & Oriental in Penang, and Bangkok gets a look in, with a few trips to Don Meuang Airport (no Suvarnabhumi back then) and to Klong Prem Prison to pump an old adversary for information.

Rawlin has trusted help on the Royal Thai Police and Australian Federal Police, but none at the US Drug Enforcement Agency. The latchkey to the book is the ebb and flow of trust, not only among the competing nationalities, but also within Britain’s own law-enforcement network. “Things aren’t what they seem,” as the promotional materials sardonically put it.

MI6, for its part, aims to assist – or does it? – through the mock theft of a Vermeer painting from a London gallery, intended as a lure for the art-loving drug smuggler.

As was the case in “Postmistress”, the romance angle here swoons chiefly around Lek, a beautiful former Thai Airways stewardess, now a travel agent, who was once on Vanderpool’s arm until Rawlin turned her into an informant.

Setting the yarn in the early 1990s puts it squarely on the far shore, all but forgotten now, of the cell-phone age. Readers young and old will spot this right away, and wonder (from different perspectives) that it took so much time back then to communicate across distances.

But Hurst also chose this period, he told me, because that’s when “opium and heroin production in the Golden Triangle was a genuine international problem, much more than nowadays”. With US President Ronald Reagan’s “war on drugs” underway, it was “a very challenging and exciting period for law enforcement”.

Hurst has contrived an engaging, believable tale filled with well-crafted characters. The dialogue is marred by a shyness over contractions, and there are other curiosities – renderings like “tuc tuc” in place of “tuk-tuk” and a penchant for unnecessary italicisation. But there’s also some fine writing, as in this evocative passage:

“A woman screamed from inside the house, a glass shattered, and there were shouts from some of the policemen who were clearly rising to their task. The brutal noises from within continued for a few minutes and then ceased suddenly. An eerie silence fell like a soft blanket over the house and Rawlin could hear the forest birds again; their song sounded jubilant and joyous – laughing, almost. For the first time, his ears picked up the soft lapping sound of the nearby lake and the pungent fragrance of white jasmine invaded his nostrils.”

The most remarkable aspect of “Assignment” is that it’s fundamentally a police procedural – the villain is identified and tracked down step by step, and there’s nothing else along the lines of car chases, cliffside fisticuffs or gory shoot-outs, not even a speedboat explosion of the type with which the first novel in the trilogy culminated.

And yet, despite lacking the usual tropes of a thriller, the story is innately compelling, a drama of considerable suspense. As surely as the drug lord must be caught, the pages demand to be turned. This is a cool, calm, collected thriller of a different order, something akin to 007 without the Hollywood-scale pyrotechnics – yet with the canny Ian Fleming-style plot-building intact.

It will be interesting to see where Hurst takes his hero in the closing episode, when he says the trilogy will finally emerge into the modern world, mobile phones and all. After that, he adds, he’d like to try different genres, including short stories about Thailand. Those too are awaited with anticipation.

The Chiang Mai Assignment

By Frank Hurst

Published by Books Mango, 2017

Available at Amazon.com, US$15 (Bt481)

VIRTUAL AIDES battled to rule “smart homes” on the Monday, the eve of the official opening of the Consumer Electronics show gadget gala here.

Samsung, LG Electronics, Panasonic and others touted a future in which homes, cars and pockets brim with technology that collaborates to make lives easier.

Google and Amazon are key players in the trend, with their rival Assistant and Alexa voice-commanded virtual aides being woven deeper into consumer electronics and vehicles. Samsung meanwhile is playing catch-up with its Bixby assistant.

“The biggest theme is the fight for the connected home between Google and Amazon,” Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy said during a day of back-to-back CES press briefings.

“The notion that there is this new layer that can replace apps and operating systems means the stakes are high.”

LG’s CLOi personal assistant robot with a prototype robotic lawnmower is displayed at the LG booth during CES 2018 at the Las Vegas Convention Centre. /AFP

If voice-commanded assistants become the new norm for interacting with computers and the internet, being the virtual aide of choice could be a powerful and profitable position.

“Competition is heating up for the smart assistant ecosystem, and the question is who is going to be the smart assistant of choice in 2018,” said Gartner analyst Brian Blau.

Apple and Google have big leads, since their rival digital assistants are already on millions of smartphones and computers, according to Blau.

“That is why Amazon is being so aggressive; they need millions of more endpoints for Alexa in people’s hands,” Blau said.

“The loser, if any, is Cortana, because nobody is talking about them,” he added, referring to Microsoft’s digital assistant.

But, Moorhead countered, Microsoft is likely playing to its strength by angling to be the dominant digital assistant in workplaces and Cortana is already on some half a billion computers powered by Windows 10 software.

Consumer electronics titan LG proclaimed this year a “tipping point” for smart homes during a press event that featured an ignoble on-stage fail.

A cute, table-top smart hub called CLOi went awry, with the voice-commanded, small snow-person shaped device quickly ignoring an LG executive.

“CLOi doesn’t like me evidently,” quipped LG US marketing vice president David VanderWaal.

“Even robots have bad days.”

A Panasonic Smart Speaker with Google Assistant, left, is displayed with a 1931 radio receiver at the Panasonic booth during CES 2018. /AFP

Such moments are playfully referred to as “the curse of the live demo” in Silicon Valley.

LG is developing technology designed to enable its appliances, televisions and other devices adapt to users and collaborate to handle tasks.

The AI platform is “open” to utilising software made by other companies, LG chief technology officer IP Park said.

“The world has become just too complex for just any single company to insist on a proprietary, closed solution,” Park said.

LG collaborators include Google and Alexa creator Amazon, according to the South Korea-based consumer electronics titan.

Google Assistant is being integrated into LG products including televisions, headphones and smart speakers.

“Our goal at Google is to help people get things done in a natural, seamless way,” Google Assistant vice president of engineering Scott Huffman said.

Interacting with computers by speaking has proven a hit, and the ability of virtual aids to converse with people is expected to improve quickly, according to researchers from the Consumer Technology Association behind the annual CES gathering.

A LG ThinQ speaker with Google Assistant will be available in the “coming months,” according to Huffman.

LG’s vision for its artificial intelligence platform includes enabling appliances, cars, air-conditioners and other “everyday” devices to adapt to users’ individual preferences as well as collaborate on tasks.

“Our products will learn from users to provide intelligent services, not the other way around,” Park said.

“You won’t have to study instruction manuals any more.”

Samsung Electronics used its press event to extol the South Korean company’s strategy of making its broad array of offerings connected and enhancing them with digital brains of Bixby virtual assistant.

“Televisions, refrigerators and more will understand you and your preferences, and tailor an experience that is right for you,” said Samsung global consumer electronics president HS Kim.

A new SmartThings application to be released by mid-year will consolidate command of Samsung devices and be a “remote control for your connected life,” Kim said.

Samsung is investing in improving Bixby so that it “intuitively understands you and figures out what you need before you ask,” according to Kim.

Samsung televisions sold in the US will have Bixby to respond to spoken requests or control other home devices.

Bixby was also being built into a “family hub” smart system in Samsung refrigerators with large touch-screens on doors.

Panasonic announcements included that it is working with Amazon to build Alexa smart assistant into “infotainment” systems it sells to carmakers.

“Alexa can help customers with thousands of things in the car – navigation, music, audiobooks and more,” said Alexa automotive vice president Ned Curic.

“This is a big step toward bringing Alexa to customers wherever they might need her, whether they’re at home or on-the-go.”

Panasonic also collaborates with Google to build Assistant smarts into some of its products.

The show features all new material, plus Peters’ signature interactions with the audience. Peters says, “I love getting to know my audience. It’s a collaboration between us.” Peters last toured Asia in 2015 – 2016 to sold out houses, including in Bangkok. “I’ve been building the new act in clubs across the States over the past year and I’m very happy with it.”

The comedian is enjoying his return to live touring after taking time off to film his smash hit Netflix series “The Indian Detective”. The series also stars Anupam Kher, William Shatner, Christina Cole and Mishqah Parthiephal.

Peters also appeared in the still unreleased films, “The Clapper with Ed Helms” with Amanda Seyfried and Tracy Morgan as well as “Supercon” with Ryan Kwanten and John Malkovich, and “Public Schooled” with Judy Greer.

The Deported World Tour will also feature one of David Letterman’s favourite comics, the legendary raconteur of weird stories, comedian Jake Johannsen.

The Asia dates follow a run through Australia and New Zealand. His last tour travelled to 26 countries with over 200 performances and more than 300,000 fans in attendance.

Ticket prices start from Bt2,000, and go on sale at 10 am on January 20 at all ThaiTicketMajor outlets and online at http://www.ThaiTicketMajor.com.

The “ideas festival” Bangkok Edge returns for its second year on January 20 and 21, offering a wide variety of educational and entertaining activities.

The inaugural event drew 20,000 Thais and foreigners, and this year’s festival – with its theme  “Explore, Create, Inspire” – promises to be even busier.

“Attendance last year was way beyond our expectations,” says festival director MR Narisa Chakrabongse. “We’d prepared 4,000 entry stickers, and they were all gone within three hours the first day. That success gave us a tremendous energy boost!”

The hope this year, once again, is “that everyone comes away having explored different ideas, created something new, or been inspired to make changes in their life”, Narisa says.

“Above all, though, I want people to have a good time!”

The event will occupy the same three venues – Museum Siam, the Chakrabongse Villas and the Rajini School.

Rames Promyen, director general of Museum Siam, which is officially called the National Discovery Museum Institute, says it will give festival guests a deeper understanding of three far more traditional festivals – Loy Krathong, Songkran and the Boon Bang Fai rocket festival.

“We’ll also have the Mommy Puppet troupe putting on a hand-puppet show, presenting a fairytale about families and the rearing of children to demonstrate how puppets can teach lessons from folk tales,” Rames says.

The show will be presented in Thai at 4pm both days and in English at 5pm.

“Museum Siam will also be extending its operating hours from the usual 10-to-6 and stay open until midnight both days,” Rames adds.

SeaWrite Award-winning author Weeraporn Nitiprapa, who’s just published “Rocher”, will give a talk about his inspirations. He was a hit with both Thais and foreigners at last year’s festival.

ML Pratinthip Nakornthap, manager of the Rajini School, says she was “amazed” last year to see all the talks and workshops at the school featuring famous writers and speakers so well attended. “We had to keep making more room for the people who kept coming. So this year we’ve prepared two additional rooms.”

There’ll be speakers this year on smart cities, waste reduction, preserving cultural heritage, the future of transportation, and international relations. Local topics will include Thai history, literature, the LGBT movement and environmental conservation.

Three embassies have lined up speakers. Portugal has Alfonso Cruz discussing “Thinking about Identity and Culture – Connections and Contradictions”, Australia has Omar Musa on “The Power of Siam Poetry” and “Hip-hop and Our Combustible Society”, and Canada has Marina Mahathir on “Women’s Rights in Asia: Progression or Regression?”

Other speakers are historian Chris Baker, journalist Christina Lamb, Jaguar design director Julian Thomson, novelists Christopher G Moore, Colin Cotterill and Lawrence Osborne, “near-zero-waste” blogger Madeleine Recknagel and British photographer Michael Freeman.

More than 50 activities have been organised for the weekend, all free of charge. As well as the talks and workshops, there will be exhibitions, book launches, children’s events and film screenings, plus food and crafts markets.

Musicians lined up for concerts are Chanudom, Yellow Fang, Rasmee Isan Soul, Siplor, Yena and Narisa’s famous son Chulachak “Hugo” Chakrabongse.

“I’ll be playing both nights,” Hugo says. “On January 20 I’ll be playing the Thai songs I did with my original band Siplor – with Rasmee Isan Soul, Siplor and Yena – and on January 21 it will be all English songs, with Yellow Fang and Chanudom.”

Bangkok Edge is a great chance to get a glimpse inside the Chakrabongse family homestead. Prince Chakrabongse built the Italian-style villa in 1908 and for decades it’s been the private residence of his granddaughter, Narisa.

There will be four tours a day, one of them conducted in English, for people who buy a Bangkok Edge “chill pass”.

One of the big concerns this year is getting attendees to reduce waste by reusing and recycling as much material as they can. They’ll be reminded that Thailand is one of the world’s worst offenders when it comes to plastic waste and are encouraged to bring their own food containers and utensils.

Food and retail stalls at the festival are required to use only packaging that’s environmentally friendly.

How to get an Edge

– Bangkok Edge takes place at Museum Siam, the Chakrabongse Villas and the Rajini School on January 20 and 21. It’s free to attend.

– Learn more at (02) 622 1617, http://www.BangkokEdge.com and http://www.Facebook.com/bangkokedge.

You can be your own “Greatest Showman” with the Synology DiskStation DS218j, a cost-effective cloud-storage system that turns living rooms into entertainment centres.

This is more than just entry-level, two-bay NAS (network-attached storage). It’s like a computer server without the monitor, keyboard or mouse.

You use “clients” – like a smartphone, tablet computer or notebook computer – to interact with the server and conveniently access your files when you’re away from home.

Inside is a Marvell Armada 32-bit dual-core processor running at 1.3GHz and 512 megabytes of DDR3 active memory (RAM).

The two drive bays can handle up to 24 terabytes stored information as installed on two 12-TB drives. If only one bay is used, you can plug in and play a drive of up to 16-TB.

The drive bays will take a 3.5-inch SATA hard drive or a 2.5-inch SATA HDD, but to use them you need a 2.5-inch disk holder and 2.5-inch SATA SSD.

There’s also an RJ45 1GbE LAN port for connecting to your home router and two USB 3.0 ports for external drives for copying files onto the NAS drives.

Among external drives, the DS218j is good for partition formats EXT4, EXT3, FAT, NTFS, HFS and exFAT. But only EXT4 format can be used on internal drive mounted in the bays, meaning you’d better back up any precious data before plugging them in.

The DS218j is compact in size – 165x100x225.5mm – small enough to keep still keep your desk pretty clear. Its 92x92mm fan is quiet, too, and the NAS system is eco-friendly, using only about 17.48 watts during drive access and about seven watts in hibernation mode.

The performance is good enough to transfer multimedia at 113MB per second and back up files at 112MB/s.

Testing the device with a Seagate IronWolf 4GB HDD, I found the NAS system easy to set up for both hardware and software. No technician needed to be called in for assistance.

You pull the cover forward to reveal the drive bays. The drive is easily attached with four screws provided. I figured the screws holding the middle and rear parts of the drive to the bay were secure enough, but you can tighten it up further secure with a provided holder for the front part of the drive.

Setting up the software was just as simple. The NAS system runs on Synology’s DiskStation Manager Version 6.1.4, a Web-based operating system tailor-made for it. This DSM features an intuitive user-interface and is just like setting up a desktop, with minimal effort to explore and manage the NAS.

You attach a LAN cable from router to the DS218j. Switch it on and type “diskstation: 5000” in your Web browser. A prompt appears for downloading and installing the latest version of the DSM operating system.

Once installation is complete, there’s another prompt to register for an account at Synology. The account is used to get a free QuickConnect.com account that provides the link to your DS218j online without the hassle of setting up port-forwarding rules, DDNS or other complicated network configurations.

Once you assign a QuickConnect name to your DS218j, you can access files stored on it from anywhere in the world, using a Web browser or apps (Android or iOS) provided by Synology.

I registered the QuickConnect name “PaisalNAS” and can access my DS218j NAS by typing “PaisalNAS.Connect.to” as the Web address.

You can further enhance the DS218j’s abilities as a computer server with more functions (packages) from Package Centre.

There are several packages to turn the DS218j into a multimedia hub – Photo Station, Audio Station, Video Station and Media Server.

Media Server is a multimedia service where you browse and play the content on the DS218j via DLNA/UPnP home devices such as a smart TV.

Video Station is a powerful app for storing and organising movies, TV shows, home video and RV recordings. All of this can be streamed to your computer, phone, tablet or TV set.

Use Audio Station to build your own music library and to stream tunes from the DS218j with your other devices, even an Apple Watch.

Photo Station lets you share pictures and keep them organised in one central location.

File Station has a browser-based user-interface for organising and sharing everything. Files are moved and uploaded with a simple drag-and-drop. You can create file links and file requests to share large files in storage.

File Station also allows for full content searches in case you forget a particular file’s name. In Document Viewer, you can look at files without having to download and open them in Microsoft Office or iWork.

You can install DS photo, DS audio, DS video and DS file apps on your iOS or Android phone or tablet to access them on the DS218j.

The Cloud Sync package is for seamlessly synching and sharing files between the DS218j and whatever other public cloud services you use, such as Dropbox, Baidu Cloud and Google Drive.

Download Station allows you to pull files off the Internet through the protocols BT, FTP, HTTP, NZB, Thunder, FlashGet, QQDL and eMule. It can also search for torrents directly, so you can download large files without having to keep your desktop or notebook computer running.

I found that the S218j performed very well. I could play Full HD videos stored there on my notebook computer and access and play stored music on my phone.

Synology DiskStation DS218j has a suggested retail price of Bt6,499.

– CPU: Marvell Armada 385 88F6820 32-bit dual-core 1.3GHz

– RAM: 512MB DDR3

– Drive bays: Two

– Compatible drives: 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch SATA HDD, 2.5-inch SSD

– Maximum internal capacity: 24TB

– Ports: One RJ45 aGbE LAN port, two USB 3.0 ports

– External drive file formats: EXT4, EXT3, FAT, NTFS, HFS+, exFAT

– Dimensions: 165x100x225.5mm

– Weight without hard drive: 0.88 kilogram

If you’ve got an iPad and take lots of pictures, grab the Affinity Photo app from Serif Labs to enhance them with various easy-to-use filters and functions.

The app can increase the value and usefulness of your iPad and it’s so useful that the Apple Store lists it as “The iPad app of 2017”.

Not all iPads can use the app, however – it only works on the iPad Pro, iPad Air 2 and the latest edition released last year.

As well as handling the iOS 11 Drag and Drop function, the app is loaded with tools, filters and functions for jazzing up photos in such a way that your imagination is the only limitation.

You can use it to adjust colours and brightness, remove haze, replace the sky with some other background, crop shots and straighten the horizon.

It works with Apple Pencil to precisely edit and crop images, but it’s designed to be manipulated with taps, pinches and swipes. You pinch in and out to zoom in and out. In Selection mode, you tap with two fingers to view context options.

Affinity Photo boasts an intuitive user-interface, real-time pro-level dynamic tools, non-destructive Adjustment Layers and Live Filters, a comprehensive blend mode set, and liquefy and retouching tools.

There are tutorials to get you started in a builtin help file that has a vast amount of detail for each and every tool.

Serif Labs calls the working modes “Personas”, and each has its own set of tools. These help reduce clutter in the user-interface and thus improve workflow.

So you have Photo, Liquefy, Develop, Tone Mapping, Export and Panorama Persona.

Photo Persona is the default for photo editing, including crops, selection, brushes, retouches, erasing, warping and vector-based tools.

Liquefy is a stunning design environment for distorting images. Use it to retouch pictures or add special warping effects.

Develop Persona is handy if you shoot photos in the RAW format. Images can be developed with full control of colour and tone.

Tone Mapping is intended for 32-bit documents but can be entered from eight and 16-bit documents and adjust the tones of non-HDR images.

With Export Persona, you can output an image, layer or slice to a range of image formats.

Panorama is for stitching together pictures into a wide view and fine-tuning them.

I tested the app on a new iPad 9.7 tablet and watched it run smooth and fast. Some effects took a few seconds to process, but most appeared in an instant.

The diverse adjustments, filters and layer effects make transforming images easy and fun.

The adjustments include Black and White, Brightness and Contrast, Colour Balance, Curves, Exposure, Shadow/Highlights, Selective Colour, Posterise, Invert, Levels, Soft Proof and White Balance.

Exposure is handy for altering the overall brightness and contrast if a picture is over or underexposed or for giving the photo a high-key or low-key look.

With Shadows/Highlights, you can brighten shadows and darken areas that are too bright rather than applying a lighting adjustment to the overall image. It works on specific areas and the surrounding pixels so there’s no obvious transition.

Selective Colour subtly adjusts and enhances hues in each of the four colour channels.

Among the filters, Haze Removal is great for cutting through any haze, fog, rain or glare obstructing a subject. In a landscape situation, these environmental factors can wreak havoc with contrast and colour saturation.

Zoom Blur applies streaks to the picture that converge on a selected point to lend the impression of movement, similar to the effect of a long exposure during zoom.

Motion Blur also suggests movement by blurring the pixels in a specified direction, much as you see when panning on a subject at slower shutter speeds.

For portraits with an attractive bokeh blur in the background, go to Lens Blur. It mimics the effect that occurs when a wide aperture produces a narrow depth of field. It improves composition by making the central subject stand out more against the backdrop.

The Lighting effects simulate ambient, point, directional and spot lighting. You can add light sources for more advanced lighting control. Different light source types can be used in combination, each one independently configured and positioned using onscreen handles.

For retouching photos, there are Red Eye Removal to get rid of the scary red dots produced in flash photography, and Inpainting, which means image interpolation.

This is how you restore lost or deteriorated image data or, in the context of digital photography, replace or remove unwanted areas of an image. You might want to get the ugly power lines out of the background, for example, or anything else that detracts from the image.

You use the Inpainting Brush Tool to paint over or identify damaged or unwanted areas. Complex algorithms then take over to harvest information from the surrounding areas and reconstruct what’s missing.

Affinity Photo has a suggested retail price of Bt699.

– Developer: Serif Labs

– Version: 1.6.5

– Size: 994MB

– Operating system required: iOS 10.3 or later

– Compatibility: iPad Pro, iPad Air 2, iPad

June Kenton, 82, who is still on the board of the company, published her memoirs entitled “Storm in a D-Cup” last year but said there was “nothing” in it that should have caused offence to the royals.

Kenton described her first bra-fitting session with a half-dressed Queen Elizabeth in the 1980s and recounted a personal anecdote told by the monarch’s mother, the Queen Mother, British media reported.

It also said that Princess Diana would come in for bra fittings and take away posters of models in lingerie for her teenage sons, William and Harry.

“I can confirm the warrant for Rigby & Peller is cancelled but I can’t go into the details why,” a spokesman for the Royal Warrant Holders Association told AFP.

“A royal warrant can be cancelled at any time for various reasons,” the spokesman said, explaining that royal warrants are also reviewed every five years.

Royal warrants are the official mark given to suppliers to Britain’s royal family and often offer a major commercial boost for companies.

Only around 800 companies have the right to use royal coats of arms on their products and business cards.

These include Fulton, the queen’s favourite umbrella maker, leather goods maker Ettinger and tailor Henry Poole.

Luxury department store Harrods lost its royal warrant in 2000, after its owner Mohamed al Fayed accused the royals of masterminding the 1997 car crash that killed Diana and his son Dodi.

Rigby & Peller said in a statement it was “deeply saddened” by the decision but declined to comment further “out of respect for her Majesty the Queen and the Royal Warrant Holders Association”.

“However, the company will continue to provide an exemplary and discreet service to its clients,” it said.

Kenton said she had been told by Buckingham Palace six months ago that they “didn’t like the book” and she should no longer have a royal warrant.

“I’m very sad Buckingham Palace took exception to the story — it’s a kind and gentle story about what went on in my life,” she said.

“I think it’s unbelievable. It’s just upsetting at the end of my life but what can I do. I can’t fight with Buckingham Palace and I wouldn’t want to,” she said.

Legend has it that a Siamese monk travelling in Burma came across these unusual saa umbrellas, which offered protection against both sun and rain. He learned how they were made and shared the knowledge with the artistic elders of Bo Sang village, who embellished the technique and created a distinctive colourful but very practical umbrella of their own.

At first it was just a profitable hobby to supplement earnings from rice, but the parasols proved so popular that in 1941 the villagers formed a handicraft cooperative – the same body that now organises the annual Bo Sang Umbrella and San Kamphaeng Handicrafts Festival.

Bo Sang umbrellas are today made from silk and cotton as well as saa paper.

During the threeday festival, lanterns illuminate the streets and hundreds of umbrellas are hung from the rafters and beams of houses and shops. Bands play and villagers compete to design the most attractive umbrella.

The Bo Sang Beauty Pageant Bike Parade puts the young contestants on two wheels and there are concerts and lots of great food.

The star of this year’s show is the Dasada hydrangea, whose purple, pink and blue blossoms are 30 to 40cm in diameter. It’s a hybrid bred by Dasada over the course of five years.

Also not to be missed is a seven-metre-long gown made from blooms of the hydrangea.

You can admire a wide variety of phalaenopsis orchids in many different colours, a dancing fountain, flower mapping and magnificent arrays of chrysanthemums, actually dine inside a greenhouse, and explore a floral tunnel by night.

Admission is Bt250 (Bt150 for children).