Category Archives: Software

Collections and Slideshows

Lightroom, Photographs

Useful Lightroom tools.

Two powerful tools in Lightroom which perhaps don’t get the recognition they deserve are Collections and Slideshows.

Collections allow you to group selected images in one place, suitably named. No catalog bloat results, as a Collection is simply a set of pointers to existing pictures in your Lightroom catalog.

Collections in Lightroom.

The other day a relative asked for a selection of recent snaps so that she might choose one or two for display in large print format. I simply placed four dozen into a Collection, based on her taste for the simple and uncluttered, then went into the Slideshow module of Lightroom, choosing that Collection for the slideshow.

The Lightroom Slideshow module.

I saved the whole thing in low quality, to keep the files size down, exported it to DropBox and, minutes after receiving the request my relative had a file of proofs for review. The only things I did in the Slideshow module were to add a face page, which you can see below, and numbering, so that she need only report back the identifying numbers of the images she wants printed. The slideshow was saved as a PDF file in 1024 x 768 page size, formatted for her iPad. (The images break up if viewed larger than that).

If you like you can even embed a sound file to accompany the slideshow and can also save the slideshow as a video in a wide variety of sizes and formats. Adobe is totally on the ball here. Be warned that video creation really stresses your CPU and owners of iMacs should think twice before doing this, owing to the atrocious cooling design of those machines. Even the extraordinarily well cooled HackPro I use showed its quad core CPU temperature rising from the usual 115F to 165F when processing the related RAW files into a video, with the process taking 10 minutes. To put that upper temperature in perspective, I have the overheating warning buzzer in the HackPro’s BIOS set at 175F, near the CPU’s service limit, so that’s getting up there. The video, whose delay between slides can be set in the Slideshow module, came in at a whopping 88mB in 720P format.

Don’t try this on an iMac. Dramatic CPU temperature rise when
creating a video in the LR Slideshow module – all four cores shown.

The PDF file is a modest 4mB in size, by comparison, and you can download it by clicking the picture below.

Click to download. Best viewed in GoodReader on the iPad or in Preview on a Mac.

EyeOne and OS X Lion

iPad, Software

Problems, problems, problems

October 4, 2011 update: Xrite has now released a Lion-compatible version of its software. Click here to read about it.

As I mentioned yesterday, OS X Lion will no longer support PPC Rosetta applications. That really matters little as 99.9% of software has been updated to tun on current Intel Macs. But the fact that the PPC (G3/G4/G5) Mac has not been made for some 6 years now has not motivated the people at xrite to update its colorimeter software to work on Intel Macs. So once you convert to Lion or buy a new Lion-equipped Mac, your old EyeOne or Monaco Optix colorimeter is junk. It will not work as the software cannot be loaded.

Here is the reply I received from xrite to my question as to when they would release EyeOne Intel Mac software:

Forcing the noun ‘task’ into service as a verb is enough to make anyone ill.

Well, that’s encouraging. A guy who has no idea points me to a product that does not exist with an unknown release date.

Here’s an extract of the brochure he points to:

The bottom line is EyeOne and Monaco Optix (and maybe ColorMunki and Huey – all come from xrite) colorimeter owners will need the i1BasicPro software which the fine print states is a Universal Mac app (meaning PPC or Intel machines are fine). The software is not available yet, there is no stated availability date that I can find and there is mention of costly upgrade coupons ($400!), though it’s unclear whether you will need one for this app. This all makes me feel about as confident in xrite as I feel about U.S. energy policy.

It’s taken xrite 6 years to not release an Intel version of their app so I wouldn’t be holding my breath. But I would be holding my wallet.

Read on.

A simple and cheap workaround to Xrite’s sloth:

It generally pays to upgrade to the latest version of any Mac OS, with the sole caveat that it also makes sense to wait a while for the first version (meaning Panther->Tiger->Leopard->Snow Leopard, etc.) of a major upgrade to gel, allowing any undiscovered bugs to surface and be quashed in the first amended release. So you will likely want to upgrade to Lion when it hits version 10.7.1, skipping 10.7.0. Thus you have a couple of months at least. I doubt xrite will have their product out by then.

There are a couple of simple solutions, as subtle as a sledgehammer, but you can be absolutely sure they will work and that your excellent EyeOne colorimeter will continue to do its job.

They cost $0-$60, depending on which you choose.

  • Buy a $20 8gB USB flash memory drive.
  • Buy a $40 250gB 3.5″ SATA HDD for your Mac. If you have slots in it, you can install it internally. If not, use a disk cradle or separate enclosure, another $20-30.
  • Buy a 2.5″ $25 100gB SATA notebook HDD (MacSales has them for that right now!) and an external enclosure if needed
  • The free option – repartition an existing HDD and set aside some space for your Snow Leopard + EyeOne install

In each case the process is simple as can be.

Format the USB stick or HDD and install Snow Leopard and the PPC EyeOne Match software on the device. Don’t forget to include the optional Rosetta installation! When it comes time to profile your monitor(s) restart the Mac while holding the Option key on the keyboard. Your display will give you a choice of start-up drives. Select the one with Snow Leopard on it (or Tiger or Leopard). Start EyeOne Match and do the profiling.

The Free option: This one is my favorite! If you have an existing back-up HDD with lots of free space, then you can repartition it, if you use Leopard or Snow Leopard, without losing any existing data. Go into Disk Utility, select the drive then drag the lower right corner of the drive map (after clicking on ‘Partition’) to reduce the size of the existing partition and create a new partition for your Snow Leopard + EyeOne Match installation. You can then rename the partitions to something sensible using Finder. The picture of Disk Utility below shows the result after creating a new partition of 50gB on a 500gB notebook drive, reducing the original single partition from 500gB to 450gB. The 50gB partition will be for SL + EyeOne Match. Data in the original partition was not lost or erased by doing this.

A new partition has been created on a back-up disk.

If you rename your original partition be sure to rename it also in any stored back-up scripts used with the likes of Carbon Copy Cloner or other back-up applications.

Finder will now report your back-up disk as two disks and you can install SL and EyeOne Match to the new partition. When you are done you can go back into Disk Utility and reduce the SL + EyeOne partition to the minimum necessary so as to make as much free space available in the main partition on the HDD. I have tested booting from this partition back-up, attached the EyeOne colorimeter, ran the EyeOne Match software and everything worked perfectly.

Your profiles will reside here on your new device:

The screen snap shows the latest profiles for my three Dell 2209WA displays used with my HackPro.

Now reboot starting from the regular OS Lion boot disk, leaving the profile device attached so that you can copy over the latest profiles to the like directory on your Lion HDD. Do the copy now. Erase the old profiles.

To check the correct profile is being used go to System Preferences->Displays. If you have multiple monitors, move the white bar in Arrangement to the monitor you are checking. In this case quit and restart System Preferences->Displays to make sure you are addressing the selected monitor (OS X does not do this without restarting System Preferences).

Check the ‘Show profiles for this display only’ as shown below:

If the correct profile is not selected (your naming convention used when you save the profile from EyeOne match should be clear and obvious – I use ‘Left’, Center’ and ‘Right’ for my three displays) select it now and repeat for all other displays.

You are done and you can disconnect your Snow Leopard drive and stop worrying about Hans, Fritz, Helmut, Adolf and their fellow duffers at xrite coming out with a new version of their application for your EyeOne or Monaco Optix colorimeter. And your wallet will be safe, too.

And whatever you do, keep that Snow Leopard install disk or buy one now ($29) before Lion comes out, if you have lost your original!

Aperture cheap

Software

There’s a reason for that.

Apple just opened its App Store for the Mac, but to get at it you must first update to OS 10.6.6 (free).

The update places an App Store icon in your dock, thus:

The format of the AppStore remains the same, confused, poorly laid out and hard to find one used in the iTunes store and the iPad/iPhone App Store:

And if you like photo processing software that is buggy, slow, needs costly hardware to run and may well lose your pictures, you can now get it cheaper than ever. It’s Apple’s Aperture brought to you by the company which never discounts its software. Aperture started life at $499, dropped to $299, dropped to $199 (and kept dropping photos from your catalog) and has now crashed, like the Mac you are using it on, to …. $79.99.

So now you can lose your pictures for less than ever before. Now if you had a crappy product you needed to sell to keep the developers on board, would you be increasing the price? Hardly.

For those seeking to escape the tyranny of Aperture (I exited at v2.0, ten times bitten twice shy) you can see my piece on how to escape here. Lightroom continues to be bog reliable, fast, ever better with new noise reduction and distortion controls in v3 and doesn’t need a supercomputer to run fast. It never locks up for this user. Lightroom is $300 and given that it works, it’s worth a boatload more.

Think things have improved in Aperture v3? Think again. Here’s today’s screen snap from the Apple Discussion Board – notice anything?

Grumbling aside, the OS X AppStore is a move in the right direction, should expand the market for independent developers’ work and adopts the ‘register once, buy easily thereafter’ model familiar to every iPhone and iPad user. That part is well engineered and there is no evidence to suggest that Apple is lying when it says it does not sell your ID.

And you know the best thing about it? It runs perfectly on the best OS X machine made, a HackPro, and supports that third monitor just fine.

Finally, for those of you in high sales tax jurisdictions, buy from the AppStore and you will be charged sales tax. Buy direct from the developer and you will not pay any. Hey, it’s your choice.

Software of the Year

Software

Some nice things.

You can see which software I wrote about in 2010 by clicking the ‘photography’ drop down menu below. These are all things I have used and in all cases continue to use as a photographer.

While no one could accuse it of being user friendly, Adobe’s free Lens Profile Creator does a fine job of creating distortion and chromatic aberration correction profiles for those lenses where profiles are not built into Photoshop or Lightroom 3. I created my own profiles for the Olympus 9-18mm MFT lens I use on the Panaasonic G1 and they work well – you can download them by clicking the aforementioned link. These integrate nicely into Lightroom 3 as a point-and-click option in the Develop module.

The very thought of running Windows on any of my Macs frankly disgusts me (after all these years XP still has the most godawful fonts in existence not to mention it’s propensity to constantly lock-up), but on those mercifully rare occasions where there is no choice, such as certain financial tools I use which do not come in a Mac flavor, I have found Oracle’s Virtual Box robust, well supported and, best of all, free. The excrescence that is Windows XP runs in its own little jail or window, free to soil its own underwear without trashing the rest of my Macs’ disks.

On those occasion I want to access my desktop HackPro from a remote location, all I need is an iPad and LogMeIn Ignition, a totally bug free and dead reliable remote client. Not cheap at $29.99 as iPad apps go, but use it just once when you absolutely need to and it has paid for itself.

Finally, last year I named NetNewsWire Software of the Year, as I find it to be the best desktop RSS feed reader out there. For the iPad I have replaced NNW with Reeder months ago and would not go back. The $4.99 Reeder app understands the touch interface well and is a superior product. The back end is provided by the Vampire Squid of the Internet, Google’s reader. I’ll switch as soon as I find a free alternative. Be sure to visit Reeder’s web site – a masterpiece of minimalism and function, like the app. Apple should buy these folks and integrate Reeder into Snow Leopard as its designs accords with much of the thinking of Steve Jobs and Jon Ive in Cupertino.

A couple of Reeder screenshots on the iPad.

TotalFinder

Software

Finally a proper Finder.

Update October 14, 2015:

The new security features in OS X El Capitan require a hack to keep Total Finder working, a hack which compromises security. This from the developer:

So for all practical purposes this great app is dead. RIP – you will be missed.

* * * * *

Ask any Mac user what the single worst app which comes with every Mac is and the chances are pretty good that the answer will be ‘The Finder’. ‘The Loser’ would be more like it, if you ask me.

Well, the folks at BinaryAge have fixed much of what ails the stock Finder in TotalFinder, adding the ability to use tabs and multi finder windows, allowing the drag and drop of files across directories/volumes/drives. You can also use cut-and-paste rather than Finder’s copy-and-paste, precluding the need to delete the source file if you really want to move it. The multi finder window shown below is toggled with Command-U.

TotalFinder in dual window mode, with tabs shown.

TotalFinder integrates into Finder but is also available as a separate app, meaning it’s visible in HimmelBar which I use to avoid having on screen icons for applications. So now you can jump into finder rather than Command-Tab’bing or mousing to your on screen app display.

TotalFinder is visible in HimmelBar

MacLampsX you ask? It’s a neat seasonal app which frames your display with Christmas lamps! X-Mas tree? More of the same. 0SEx? No, not what you think. It’s a DVD ripping app. And the little printer icon in the menu bar to the right of the Dropbox icon is Fingerprint which allows my iPad and iPhone to print to any Bonjour printer on the network.

I cannot detect any performance changes on my desktop Mac. Highly recommended for anyone who uses the Finder a lot.