A Few Good Documents

May 1, 2011 By 1 Comment

No, it is not a movie sequel. I have just come across a few useful documents or Web sites that visitors may find helpful.

Canon In 4 Parts (maybe 5!)

Canon DSLRThe first is for digital SLR beginners, but there may be some useful information for the seasoned veteran too. It is from Canon Japan and is heavily slanted towards Canon cameras. But, a camera is a camera! Take a look here.

Canon Digital Learning Site (new and improved!)

Canon Digital Learning CenterCanon has had much material on several different locations scattered in many parts of the world. They seem to have collected a good deal under one roof. It is a rich site with layers of content, it is worth exploring (at least for Canon users.)

Using Adobe® Photoshop® CS5

Photoshop CS5Have you ever wondered if there is actually a Photoshop manual? Yes there is! In electronic and fully searchable format. As one may expect, it is in Adobe Acrobat PDF format and you can download it to your computer for future reference. Warning: Don’t try to print it, it is over 600 pages!

Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 performance

Photoshop CS5Photoshop is a complex application that can be configured to meet your needs. But what about the needs of Photoshop? If properly configured, the software can reward the user with a quicker performance. This document, direct from Adobe, explains the ins and outs of configuring Photoshop for best performance for your kind of work.

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Browser Add-ons

April 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Web browsers have become indispensable tools in our daily lives. We use them for work, entertainment, shopping, reference, etc. My choice for browsers has been Firefox for quite a few years now, mainly due to its rich collection of add-on or plugin support. I have come to rely on them so much that I will not even contemplate switching from it to something else.

Many of the add-on software I have added to Firefox are useful if you do Web development and design, so I will spare them from this post. However, there are some that I find very useful for any user and I would like to highlight them here. Read the description and then decide if you want to add a particular one or not. Of course, if you are not a Firefox user these will not mean much to you unless they offer similar plugins for Internet Explorer, Chrome, or Safari. I will not go into the installation process of add-ons to Firefox though. [Read more...]

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Smart Publishing with MagCloud Part 2

February 25, 2011 By 5 Comments

This is part 2 of a 2-part series on publishing magazines at MagCloud. If you have not read part 1 please review that first, and review the recommended post before continuing.

See the updated soft-proof profile post before proceeding. (8/8/2011)

In part one of this series I tried to explain the impact of the binding and number of pages had on the published magazine as MagCloud uses different stock of paper for different binding. Along with that the printer profile used in the process also varies based on the binding you choose. These, publishers can control only by knowing the impact of their choices.

In preparing the photography for publishing we must pay attention to our working environment and make sure that we use a repeatable and reliable process. Of utmost importance is the calibration and profiling of the monitor, careful selection of images, and proper editing of them in Photoshop or Lightroom. In this section I will focus on a process I call “smart proofing” when ordering proof copies to maximize the information gained in a controlled and repeatable manner. [Read more...]

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Smart Publishing with MagCloud Part 1

February 24, 2011 By 2 Comments

This is going to be a two-part series. Before getting into the second part, I strongly recommend that you read and study my Printing Workflow presentation as it details how to accomplish some of the steps in reasonable detail. Although there are a couple of PDF documents for printing, they do not show some of the slides as they are not visible outside the presentation flow. Make sure to watch the slide presentation.

See the updated soft-proof profile post before proceeding. (8/8/2001)

I have been using MagCloud on-demand publishing since last year. I had two academic projects that benefited from the technology and my exhibits and publishing as well. Along with two students, in collaboration with the members of the Photographic Society of Rhode Island, PSRI, we published PSReye Focus in December 2009. This past fall semester MagCloud was an important tool in another course where students worked on a project titled Vision of Hope in collaboration with the Gloria Gemma Breast Cancer Resource Foundation. Since May 2010, I have used MagCloud services for three exhibits, an expanded exhibit catalog, and more recently a free-standing publication called IR Earthscapes.

In all projects, the proofing turned out to be the most challenging step, partly due to time constraints resulting from poor time management, and partly due to the way we have handled the proofs. Since my last project IR Earthscapes, I have come to the conclusion that there has to be a smarter way of proofing to save time and to save money while getting as much information as possible from the proof. [Read more...]

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A New Use for X-Rite Passport ColorChecker

January 21, 2011 By 2 Comments

X-Rite Passport ColorChecker has been helping me for a while now and I am very pleased with its performance as a color managed workflow tool. I use it indoor or outside shoots and can quickly balance the white value and apply calibrated camera profile to the images. The results are richer and truer colors. So far, nothing new, many readers know that much.

I also use an Epson Perfection V500 Photo scanner to acquire scanned photographs or to directly capture images of objects, like flowers. When I capture an image via the scanner, I am not as sure of the colors as I am when the image comes from my camera. I thought the ColorChecker might come in handy and I was right. Although its use is not as automated, nor is it necessarily sanctioned by X-Rite, as it is when used with a camera, it certainly makes sense to use it in the scanning workflow. [Read more...]

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