Printing & Copying

Surprised? So are we. While most of us were expecting Fiat to unveil the turbocharged version of its 500 minicar at next year’s Geneva Show, yesterday, during the worldwide media presentation in
Surprised? So are we. While most of us were expecting Fiat to unveil the turbocharged version of its 500 minicar at next year’s Geneva Show, yesterday, during the worldwide media presentation in Torino, Italy, Fiat Automobile’s CEO (not Fiat Group) Luca De Meo, announced that the 500 Abarth will make its public appearance at the forthcoming Tokyo Show this October!  We talked to several journalists that attended the media presentation in Torino, but unfortunately no one managed to dig out any information concerning the Abarth’s powertrain. We suspect though that the rang-topping 500 will wear the Grande Punto’s 1.4-liter turbocharged unit that’s available in 120Hp and 150Hp guises. Check out a video featuring a prototype 500 Abarth at the Nurburgring race track here.

Two recent articles I've come across have discussed the subject of print resolution.  Thom Hogan wrote an article called "How big can you print?" and a Google search turned up "The 300dpi Print Myth" by Gary Gray at Have Camera Will Travel.  I guess this is coming up more often as the latest cameras come out with high pixel counts, both DSLRs and compacts, and people contemplate trading up.  The consensus of both of these articles is that anything from 180 dpi print resolution and up, that at normal viewing distances, the differences will be very hard to see.So I'm planning to run a little test comparing the 12MP Nikon D300 to the 6MP Nikon D70.  The plan is to take an image on both cameras, using the same lens, and then print at 8x12, 10x15 and 12x18 (these are my most common print sizes), using the native resolution at that size (ie. none or minimal interpolating, setting a minimum of 180 dpi):  

This is halfway between a complaint and a public service announcement. I just spent three hours dealing with a problem that should have never existed in the first place. Basically, ever since a little bit before spring break, my printer had not worked. Sort of. It's one of those cool all-in-one deals that can scan and copy, as well as print. And the scanning and copying worked fine; the pictures got on to my computer and everything. But pressing Apple-P just didn't work: I got a weird error message saying that the computer could not connect to the printer. Which is a blatant lie, because I could scan, and so the printer and computer were talking.

But, as I said, this was just before spring break, so I just shut everything down, went home, and hoped that it would get better with time. Which it didn't. I needed to print out an application for a job today, and the same problem happened. So, I deleted the printer drivers and reinstalled them from the HP site. No good. I then deleted them and reinstalled them from Apple Software Update (it is handy that you can download drivers direct from Apple, because it can tell which ones you need). Also didn't work. So, I tried deleting everything having to do with printing and resetting the preferences, restarting the computer.... Nothing. Finally I looked online (this is after about three hours, and redownloading the stupid drivers about 10 separate times), and randomly found the problem.

The problem is Apple's most recent Security Update (2008-002). But not by itself, no. That would be too easy. It's the newest update combined with another program: Audio Hijack Pro. This is actually a very useful program; it can record audio, which is cool, but I already have something that does that. What I use it for is something that Apple really should build in to computers: the ability to mute individual applications. So often I'm playing a flash game online that doesn't have a volume control, which is lame. So, I just use Audio Hijack Pro to mute Firefox, and I can still listen to iTunes and hear alerts and everything. Very cool. Anyway, as you can see from that description, Audio Hijack Pro has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH PRINTING!!!!!! And yet, it still screws it up. In combination with the Security Update. Luckily someone (I have NO idea how) figured out that this was the problem, and they've released an update to AHP that fixes it.

So now I can print. Woohoo. But seriously, that problem made NO sense and shouldn't have existed.

Now I'm listening to the album "The Reminder" by Feist, which is on many 2007 top ten album lists. It's pretty good, but... I was about to say I like the Amy Winehouse album better (because it's somewhat similar), and then I realised that on the particular list I was looking at, Back to Black was number one. So, people agree with me. Or rather, since I'm rather late, I agree with people.

More on albums later, as I'm experimenting with only listening to full albums. As is my brother.

That is all.

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It was called "Old Money" for a good reason. Crane Papers of Massachusetts made it, the very same company that made currency stock for the U.S. Treasury for all those years. I had heard all of the stories about printers and counterfeiting, but I guess it never really registered. That was before the order for letterhead printed on "Old Money" came in.

We ordered the stock through Unisource, our primary vendor at the time. The order was for 5000 sheets, so I think we ordered 5500 sheets to account for waste. I liked the stock when it came in . . . it really did have the look and feel of old money. High rag content, kind of soft feeling and a very light green tint when you looked at it in sunlight. Cool, I thought, then went on to the next thing.

It was a couple of days later when I picked up the phone. It was a young lady from Crane who wanted to speak with the owner. "You're not in our records," began the conversation.

"That's good?" I responded.

"Not necessarily," was the reply. "I'm calling about the paper."

"Ahh, the paper . . ." I answered, still without the foggiest notion of who she was or where this conversation was heading. "What paper?"

"Old Money," retorted the young lady, and it all came together for me.

AlphaGraphics Macon was not in her database. We had purchased a product that looked suspiciously like real money, and she needed to know where it went. I played along, giving her information about our customer, the quantity delivered and what we had left. I comforted her with the assurance that we were indeed a real printing company and not a concern for either Crane Papers or the U.S. Treasury Department.

As far as I can tell, "Old Money" has gone the way of most of the interesting papers of the last century. Henry Ford would approve of today's approach to paper selection. The customer can have anything they want, as long as it's white or tan. As demand for paper has declined, the paper industry has consolidated, and much of the really interesting paper we used to be able to get is no longer available.

As of last week, there were basically two large manufacturers left. Domtar and Sappi seem to have gobbled up all of the rest of the big companies. We still are able to buy our old standby sheet, Cougar Opaque, which used to be made by Weyerhaueser, which was purchased by International Paper, which was swallowed by Domtar. You get the picture. There are two remaining US fine paper mills, Neenah and Mohawk, that still offer a pretty wide selection of flavors . . . but none of the paper distributors keep them in stock. Crane is actually still around. They make very nice and expensive writing paper that can be obtained in white or tan and they still produce the currency paper for the U.S. mint.

Why am I writing this? I miss the variety. Designers used to love to choose a fancy paper to make their project special. Their goal was to create an economical, but elegant printed piece, using one or two colors of ink on an unusual paper and sometimes with an unusual shape. One of our favorite designers, who moved to Japan and then to Ohio, but who was not swallowed up in large company mergers; used to do amazingly creative things with paper and ink. They were fun to print.

Designers have moved to the web and paper has become boring. The paper manufacturers tried to console us for a while by making up new names for white and tan. "Ecru" sounds kind of designey. "Natural white" is down to earth. "Cream" is kind of comforting. "Soft ivory" doesn't do much for me, because I don't like the idea of hunting elephants. And when you put all of these sheets beside one another, they're all tan. "Glacier" is whiter than tan, but not nearly as white as "Solar" or "Avalanche." You understand.

Printers have coped by printing a lot more in color. The technology for short run color has become more accessible and prices for offset have come way down with the onset of automation and with increased competition. Sometimes we even print a background to simulate the interesting paper we used to be able to purchase.

I never printed on "Old Money" again and I don't suppose Crane needs to keep a database of printers who buy their papers anymore. You don't read much about counterfeiting any more. Like fine papers, it may have become a thing of the past. Why would any self-respecting criminal would bother with messy, labor intensive crime like forgery or counterfeiting when easier, neater high-tech crimes like identity theft are so readily available?

A customer will still occasionally ask to come in and look at paper. They're remembering swatch books with dozens of shades and textures from which to choose. Some are incredulous when I explain the limited availability. But the runs are short and usually a deadline is looming, so ordering in carton quantities from the mill is rarely an option. I'm tired of white and tan, too; but fine papers are quickly going the way of the dinosaur. And honestly, I'm feeling a little fossilized myself.

It's a day off, the only jobs being done around these quarters today is washing and cooking and only one of these chores are being done by me! There is quite a layer of insulation along the skirting boards that does have proportions that would perhaps enable some 'sweepings of the floor' wool spinning; although that might perhaps be taking the recycle idea to extremes to spin my own dirt. The point is that the removing of this soft layer is not happening today!!!

Instead I have the tools out, all the tools.

I am developing, thinking, trying and mixing like a mad. I was given a very unsubtle hint, others would perhaps call it a kick in the backside the other day from the health shop owner who is selling my cards. Nothing like a good kick to focus the mind. Now I just wonder will I have anything ready for her in the morning because the ideas are just dripping out of my pencil and I am desperately trying to capture the good ones. I love the days when it is just to turn on the tap of the idea fountain, when they just flow. But that doesn't make for much printing and the backside is not getting smaller from it either...

Apple have released a new version of Aperture. It has what they're calling a plug-in architecture, which allows you to buy third party software and it just fits right into Aperture. One of my favorite tools, Noise Ninja, has announced it will be available as a Aperture plugin sometime in May. The developers of other successful imaging tools seem queued up to offer their tools as Aperture plugins as well.

To borrow a line from Theodor Geisel, "This may not seem very important, I know. But it is, so I'm bothering telling you so."

There are a couple of reasons.

The first big reason is that it seems that a lot of photographers are moving to tools like Aperture (or Lightroom, the competing product from Adobe). It's a sort of one stop shopping framework for everything from ingesting the images off your memory cards (or camera) to making prints.

The big problem with such products is that it's awkward to use tools that are outside this integrated environment. That is, it's awkward if your noise reduction tool (say, Noise Ninja, the really great product with the really silly name) must be run standalone, because you have to save a version of the image, run Noise Ninja on it, then import the result of Noise Ninja back into the integrated environment.

The same problems occur if you want to use some other raw converter instead of the one directly supported by your image processing workflow. That's why so many people use Adobe Camera Raw - it's not that it does such a great job as much as it's there and it fits into the workflow so well. Click on the raw file in Bridge, and ACR runs, and the output appears directly in Photoshop.

"But wait!" I hear you saying, "Photoshop has plugins! This is nothing new!" And indeed, Photoshop does have plugins. In fact, that's exactly how I use Noise Ninja - it's a photoshop plugin that appears as a filter. But plugins in Photoshop aren't really first class citizens. Plugins, for instance, can't be the basis for layers, the way curves can. Every plugin must , if needed, duplicate the effect of having masks.

But the fact that Apple have developed a significant part of the image workflow as a plugin (they've got dodge/burn/contrast/saturation/sharpen/blur done this way) makes me suspect that plugins in Aperture are more first class in the workflow. Plugins in Aperture 2.0 can work on raw files. So your favorite raw converter can be an Aperture plugin. Plugins in Aperture can start from more than one file, so HDR tools can be plugins, and be first class. I saw a really cool tool that takes a bunch of frames, does sub-pixel alignment, and extracts a result that has higher resolution than any of the original frames does, and that tool could be a plugin.

Now, from a strict computability argument, there's nothing that can't be done the old way that can be done in the new way. Photoshop has plugins, scripting, and so on, and strictly speaking it's probably possible to integrate these new tools into Photoshop. But developers don't do it, and I'm guessing that's because Adobe have made it hard to do. Apple, on the other hand, seem to view this as the strategic goal for Aperture - and that tells me that they're going to make it pretty easy.

The big question, really, is whether the local editing workflow in Aperture will be as versatile and workable as the layers model embedded in Photoshop. If so, it makes Aperture a big contender in the imaging world. It's entirely possible that a really good, structured model like layers could be built as a plugin, in fact. Hard to tell at this point, but it's an interesting idea.

Another reason why this is important is that Apple have apparently lined up some of the big names to do plugin versions of their tools for Aperture. If you're a developer and your product competes against Noise Ninja, the pressure is on to do an Aperture plugin so you can compete. This isn't a big chink in the armor of Photoshop dominance, but it might be the thin edge of the wedge.

Back when Aperture and Lightroom were introduced, I was still a Windows person. Now I'm a Mac person, and so I'm looking forward to getting a look at Aperture 2.1 and seeing what the image editing workflow looks like, and whether these plugins are more first class citizens than plugins in Photoshop. If so, I may be giving Aperture a whirl.

I have installed SP1 for Vista on my HP laptop and "WOW" I am glad to report that so far I have noticed absolutely no difference what-so-ever.

My machines doesn't load up faster, my network connection aren't better, my printer still prints and my applications still applicate.

So now I am confused.

Do we say to Microsoft "Job well done - nothing $%#$%@ up" or do we say "What the heck - do we even NEED to install this service pack ?"

There are supposedly great benefits. This is from the Microsoft website:

"Microsoft continuously improves the Windows Vista operating system by providing ongoing updates while working with software and hardware vendors to help them to deliver improved compatibility, reliability and performance. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is another vehicle that Microsoft will use to deliver operating system improvements to customers. Windows Vista SP1 is an update to Windows Vista that, along with improvements delivered to users via these other channels, addresses feedback from our customers. In addition to previously released updates, Windows Vista SP1 will contain changes focused on addressing specific reliability and performance issues, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards. Windows Vista SP1 also will continue to make it easier for IT administrators to deploy and manage Windows Vista."

So in other words just install this anyways as it cant hurt (famous last words I take no responsibility)

I would suggest that if your current Vista is giving you any grief regarding anything, install the Service Pack and it might fix the issues and if doesn't - wait for Service Pack 2 ????

I bought my first roll of paper today. 30cm wide premium luster. It won't fit the excuse of a roll paper adapter I got with my R2400, but my plan was to cut the paper prior to printing for long panoramas. It works fine. If I wanted to use roll paper, I could quite easily build a roll holder that could live just behind my printer, but I probably won't do that.

Anyway, as I was printing a 60cm panorama from Imageprint, the two of the black inks ran empty. I was expecting this as the lights was flashing, but I wanted to try out if swapping inks in the middle of a print was a success. The Epson driver seems to avoid this when printing cut sheet, but ImagePrint just churn out no matter what.

The operation did not go that well. Since the ink swapping of the R2400 involves pushing directly in the print head assembly, I guess things may get ever so slightly displaced. There was some banding after the swap.

Long-time readers of this blog if there are any! ha-ha may recall my observations about the rise of cowboy fashion in New York City.  At the time, I speculated that it might have something to do wiLong-time readers of this blog (if there are any! ha-ha) may recall my observations about the rise of cowboy fashion in New York City.  At the time, I speculated that it might have something to do with NY Democrats' obsession with Bush and Red State America more generally:
Could it be that the post-election fallout for Blue Staters has become some sort of unconscious "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality--at least where clothing is concerned?Today's NY Times has another data point.  I don't know what it says about my thesis (probably nothing), but it is fascinating.  Note in the following passage how the writer thinks of barbeque as more than just good food with ubiquitous appeal (as Balthazar says in Comedy of Errors).  Rather, the article is about Texas as much as it is about taste:
New York’s barbecue scene may be missing a lot of things — like dirt roads and screen doors and decades of deep-seated tradition — but love for barbecue in the city is strong. And in the past couple of years the product has caught up to the passion. Restaurants that hobbled out of the gate have hit their strides. The best pits in and around the city have gotten better. That doesn’t mean you can walk into any haunt with a neon pig outside and expect smoked bliss from every corner of the menu. An awful lot of stuff around town still has no right calling itself barbecue, though the ratio has improved considerably. Some places dabble in too many styles. Out there where barbecue comes from, that doesn’t happen: the top places in Texas don’t dress up their pork shoulder in Carolina drag, and no one in Memphis is trying to outgun Texans at their own game. Read the rest of the article HERE.

As promised here is the next installment in the ongoing exploration of Diafine Developer and TX. In these videos hybrid artist and master printer Stephen Schaub (The Leader) discusses scanning techniques, color management considerations and Photoshop techniques to maximize your Diafine processed TX negatives!! (Please note that due to a time limitation on Youtube the video has been broken into two parts so be sure to watch BOTH videos!!)

Video ONE

Video TWO

Stay tuned for part 3 of the Diafine and TX saga early next week on the Figital Revolution!

Resource Links

Noise Ninja

Pixel Genius (Photo Kit Sharpening Software)

Kami Scanning Supplies

Ergosoft High Fidelity Inkjet RIP Software

Eizo Monitors

Viva la Revolution!!