Yearly Archives: 2009

Going glossy

Printing

Just doing what it takes

I have been unsparing in my criticism of Apple’s cynical move to producing only glossy screens on its displays. The thinking is identical to that of the jeweler who installs strong quartz iodine spotlights in his store. That 1 carat bauble that so impressed in the store, thanks to the Hollywood lighting, leads to a sense of dismay when viewed at home. It’s no different for Apple’s glossy screens.

So what on earth was I doing ordering glossy printing paper for my HP DJ90 the other day?


An engineering company. Note the micrometer and the Swiss manufacturer!

Well, I may dislike glossy when it comes to making and printing my photographs, but I am not beyond learning from the ace salesmen at Apple, Inc.

Simply stated, I have not submitted a photo for publication since 1977 when I left England and started getting paid for my labors in America. So great was the increase in income and reduction in tax (the top income tax rate when I left the UK in 1977 was 83% ….) that the modest amounts that publication brought no longer made sense. I could earn more the easy way and use the money to take the pictures I wanted to take, not the ones some editor preferred to see.

But the bug bit again recently and while I have no intent to make any money from getting my stuff in print (and the odds of doing so are, let’s face it, pretty remote in an internet world), my ego can now afford it. And as first impressions are 100% of the battle with photographs, when that editor opens my envelope of snaps I want them to say ‘wow’. Glossy paper does that.

So the medium, not the content, may be the message, but if it ghastly glossy paper helps get me into print, so be it. Just don’t expect these prints to be gracing the walls at home any time soon.

This is my first experience of using HP Premium Glossy. The inked areas are matte whereas highlights where no ink was deposited retain the original high gloss of the paper. However, after drying for a couple of hours the inked areas take on a good gloss, although not as high gloss as virgin paper. So it may explain why some later printers now use a glossing agent to restore high gloss to a print – the DJ90 does not have this technology.

Picture Packages

Printing

A useful Lightroom technique

When I make large prints on the HP DJ90 dye printer, it’s usually strictly a ‘one at a time’ sort of thing. The prints are 18″ x 24″ (‘Super A4’ is the uninformative European description), which is as large as my HP will go and, after an obligatory 24 hour ‘drying’ period to let the ink dyes set, they are dry mounted and framed.

However, with my new found determination to get some work published again, smaller prints were called for – 9″ x 12″- and these just happen to divide an 18″ x 24″ sheet into four equal parts.

Rather than cut up the paper first and then do four print runs, it proved just as easy to make one combined print job and do the cutting last.

First I went into the Library module of LR2 then clicked on Library->New Collection. I dragged the candidates into this new collection and oriented them all vertically (Photo->Rotate Left/Right). These candidates had been processed and cropped just so, so that no further adjustments would be required.

Into the Print module of LR2, where I clicked on Tempate Browser->Lightroom Templates->2×2 Cells. Lightroom comes with this template installed. Moving the mouse cursor to the base of the screen to disclose the filmstrip – which I have set to hiding mode so it is ordinarily invisible – I simply highlighted four contiguous images, which then appear on the print ‘canvas’.

The screen now looked like this:

Then it’s off to the races, printing in the usual way. It takes a lot less time to do than to explain and you have the benefit of applying the same print settings to all pictures on the ‘canvas’. Of course if you process the originals poorly, then you may end up with four clunkers, but I seem to have lucked out.

Note the personalized nameplate at the top left of the Lightroom pane in the last picture above. You can do this by going to Lightroom->Identity Plate Setup.

Poppy time

Photographs

The state flower blooms

It’s wild poppy flowering time and none is finer than California’s sparkling yellow variant, the state flower no less.

My super secret source disclosed the location of a new outbreak down the road, so I shot off to snap these, which I hope you enjoy.


5D, 15mm Fisheye, 1/350, f/13, ISO 250


5D, 200mm, 1/350, f/16, ISO 250


5D, 24-105mm @ 65mm, 1/15, f/22, ISO 50

Bad Mac advice

Hall of Shame

Where not to go

It’s no great secret that newsprint is dead. Within a decade even the most powerful print media – WSJ, NYT, etc. – will have ceased publication using forests of trees. eInk technology (like in the Kindle) will add color and someone will design a two button interface almost as simple as a book. All those enviroloonies should be required to help capitalize the related R&D as they do want to save trees, no? And the advent of color will also dramatically reduce the price of art books – when the screen is transilluminated and has superior definition to traditional printing on reflective materials – what’s not to like?

Which brings me to the curious case of MacWorld magazine. ‘Curious’ because it begs the question why this trashy publication survives. When I got our first Mac a decade ago a relative gave me a subscription to this rag and it helped get me into the Mac ecosystem. That was ages ago and, like a fool, I still pay for a print subscription. At least until this one expires, that is.

This is simply the very worst place to go for objective advice about Macs. The magazine started life 25 years ago with funding from Apple. If you are not already holding your nose, you should be. Now purportedly independent, it is a sycophant’s dream for anyone getting a paycheck from 1 Infinite Loop. You see, they have yet to see an Apple product they do not like. Read any of their reviews and you will quickly realize that these are little more than regurgitated press releases.

Two cases in point. The other day they had a laudatory piece on Apple’s Time Capsule back-up hardware. Only thing they forgot to mention is that you cannot boot from the TC. So what are you going to do when your Mac’s drive crashes? Pull out the original OS X discs? Try and access TC that way? Do you even know how risky and time consuming this is? It’s not called Time Capsule for nothing. As a disaster recovery tool it is almost completely useless. But it ranks a rave review from MacWorld. No mention of the booting issue, of course.

Or their piece today on external hard drives. Without so much as opening the box they laud the overpriced LaCie Rugged. I own one and yes, I have dismantled it. Not from idle curiosity but because the bottom-of-the-line Western Digital drive inside failed just after the warranty expired (good business design, if you ask me). The full scope of the ‘rugged’ moniker was then exposed. The ‘ruggedness’ is comprised of four rubber strips inside, purportedly cushioning the drive from the case. Laugh – I did when I opened the case. And, of course, a 2mm thick jolly colored rubber covering on the case. Did MacWorld open the case? Did MacWorld try dropping the drive on a hard floor? Did MacWorld refuse advertising dollars from LaCie? Well, you can figure out the answers to those questions. (Hint: Not a ‘Yes’ in sight). So for a 2mm thick casing of rubber and four rubber bumpers (aggregate cost: 2 cents) LaCie gets $160 for something you can build yourself for $85; $70 for the drive and $15 for a self-powered USB enclosure. The assembly skill is especially low – even a GM production line worker could do it, although it will take you 2 minutes, while his union will make sure it takes an hour.

Let me illustrate. The drive is a 2.5″ SATA notebook drive – available for $70 in a 320gB size. The enclosure is a $15 2.5″ SATA enclosure from Tiger Direct. That price includes a leatherette case and a nice long USB connection cable with a pass-through connector to permit ganging. Why, they even provide the two screws and the screwdriver you will use to secure the drive in the case.


Detailed assembly instructions. Free screwdriver not shown.

Did you get that?

Oh! you want to add the ‘Rugged’ feature? Heck, blow $5 on some foam rubber and do 10 drives while you are at it.

MacWorld is a great place if you want to read Apple advertising and pay for it.

However, for objective comment just check in with the Apple Discussions section of Apple.com and see just how flawed many of Apple’s much hyped products are – like Time Capsule (worthless if your internal drive fails), Back To My Mac (terminally faulty), Airport Extreme wireless routing (the signal fluctuates for unknown reasons at anything over 10 feet from the router), glossy screens (useless for real users), dying Firewire (too bad about all those FW drives you bought), perennially ‘new’ connectors which obsolete your peripherals – and this is from Apple’s own site, for goodness sake.

Skeptical? Here’s today’s front page from just the Time Capsule ‘Discussion’ – a lot of comments and views for a device that ‘just works’, no?


It just works, right?

And that’s after Apple’s (very active) censorship of its Discussions forum.

Before you even think about any major software upgrade (OS X upgrades and security upgrades have been the worst in this regard), wait a month, read Apple’s Discussions, then decide whether to risk it. I have long adopted this approach and it has saved me countless hours of repair otherwise caused by Apple’s policy of releasing buggy software and having unpaid users test it for them – a practice Microsoft perfected years ago. You have already paid a 30% premium for the Mac; it’s nice that critical user feedback is free and that you don’t have to pay advertisers posing as journalists at MacWorld for it. Just let the first implementers serve as your reviewer of choice.

MacWorld magazine and its staff of shills is a much overdue entrant to this journal’s Hall of Shame.

Feeling blue

Photographs

It’s just your money, that’s all

Bought for several million dollars by the State of California a couple of years ago, the Piedras Blancas motel has, needless to add, stood abandoned ever since, with a forlorn government sign warning the owners (you and me) not to trespass. Well, as I paid for a slice of this place (though no one asked me first), I can trespass all I want and proceeded to do so with impugnity yesterday during a drive up Pacific Coast Highway.


Government at work. 5D, 24-105mm, ISO 250

You can see a QTVR of the old motel I made 30 months ago here. It does not look any different today, though the crooks in Sacramento have added a sign telling everyone they bought the place with money stolen from taxpayers to ‘preserve the pristine views’ or some such rot. Strange how there’s another 75 miles of better views to be had free on the way to Carmel from Cambria as you leave the now blighted motel.

More sordid data on the extent of this theft of taxpayers’ money appear here.

Here’s another – and I’ll bet you in 10 years time it will look far worse:


The State of California’s idea of a $10mm residence. 5D, 24-105mm, ISO 250

A simple reminder of the nine most dangerous words in the English language: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.