Ethical / Natural grading and retouching services – Photoshop and Lightroom training – Imaging workflow design and advice
My older clients will know that I have been generally recommending Dell computers when new imaging PCs are required, I can generally build a recommended system online on the clients behalf.
However Dells customer service has been going from bad to worse, a very bad experience by a new client has persuaded me to withdraw my recommendation. Please contact me directly if you wish to source any new machines, but for now:
Don’t buy Dell
Stephen
Its Vista month here at Copyrightimage!
Here are some tips for Wacom usage under Vista:
Although retouching is fine with the Wacom driver for Vista there are occasions where the naitive pen support in Vista can fight the Wacom driver for attention and occasionally cause a litte stuttering when cloning or healing, here is what to do:
In the control panel select “Pen and input devices” and untick all the boxes.
If you still have any problems then some people have found the solution to be:
Uninstall the wacom driver
Download this driver to your desktop:
ftp://ftp.wacom-europe.com/pub/WINDOWS/pro496-8_int.exe
right click on the downloaded file, choose the compatibility tab and select Windows XP SP2
(don’t run it yet!)
Reboot
Run the downloaded file
This should return you to XP speeds of retouching. Any other questions?
I’m in the middle of a big retouching job at the moment, will update the site next time I come up for air!
Whilst I’m enjoying running the Photoshop CS3 Beta on Windows Vista there are a couple of things to watch out for with this new operating system:
1. Although my main screen is calibrated and colour managed my secondary screen is not due to the fact that Vista is not loading ( or allowing other programs to load) the secondary profile for that screen. I have only discovered this since rebooting my machine (the profile worked fine on the second screen after the calibration). This is not a show stopper in itself, just a bit annoying really. Will keep you informed when the fix appears.
2. Microsoft are reporting that using Vista to add metadata to images may make them unreadable in the cameras own software, more here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927527/en-us
I wouldn’t recommend using any operating system utility for such an important task as adding metadata, you should be using at least Bridge to do this so its not really a problem. (It will annoy the general photographic audience though so hopefully Microsoft will sort it out.)
Gretag Mackbeth i1 Match 3.6.1 – Screen calibration works fine under Vista. Drag the program to the screen you wish to profile (if you have more than 1 screen). Vista manages the separate profiles for you.
Eizo Colornavigator, I use this for my main screen (an Eizo CG211). The software will fail to run under Vista straight off. You need to locate the Colornavigator program (usually in: c:program fileseizocolornavigator) right click on it and select properties. Then click on compatability and select Windows XP service pack 2 or Windows 2000 to emulate. The program will then work fine (phew!)
I have been playing with the retail version of Windows Vista for a few days now and am pleased to report it has all gone quite smoothly, more on this later.
There is one slight annoying glitch – although Photoshop installs fine there is a registration dialog shown on each time the program is run. Even if you fill out the registration details it still appears the next time you start Photoshop.
To solve this problem do this: right click on the Photoshop icon and select “Run as administrator”, then either fill out the details once (or select “never register” if you already have). The registration screen will not be seen again.