Month: May 2011

Thecus N7700 Pro for Image Storage

I have used many NAS (network attached storage) devices over the years but I’m very pleased with the latest one to join the network here at Copyrightimage.Like many of my clients I have a need to keep an archive of many thousands of images available for instant use and access. The major differences between this device and the more usual NAS devices are speed and capacity.

The N7700 Pro I have here is fitted with 7 x 2TB hard disks in RAID 5 formation which gives a single volume of 10.9TB of disk space, this means that I can hold large collections of images in one place which aids indexing and workflow.
The speed comes from its dual core processor which drives the controller and gigabit Ethernet to its full speed and so I can get real world transfer figures of 65mb/sec writes and even faster reads. This is over twice the speed of a USB2 drive connected directly to a host computer so its very impressive.

When dealing with large amounts of high res images this device would seem to be able to delivery speedy storage with the safety net of RAID 5 which means that if a disk fails I just need to swap it out for a new one (the image above shows the access door closed (left) and open (right) each disk is in a separate caddy.

The power supply to the device is a single point of failure however so its important I have at least one copy of every file on the device backed up somewhere else, as always, redundancy is the safety net.

Improved colour management software at Copyrightimage

I’m currently building some test print profiles using the new i1 Publish software from x-rite in Germany. This is intended to replace i1Match that I have used up till now with my i1 Photospectrometer.

The advantages are starting to show after a very dodgy start when the program crashed on Windows 7 when building profiles and trouble reading dense strips from my Epson 3800 printer. I’m happy to report I have been working via a contact at x-rite to beta test changes to the software and they have been very helpful in sorting things out.

Its still early days and I’m not trusting the software with mission critical work just yet but I have been building some very usable and improved profiles for the papers I use. These early profiles show an improvement in gamut (wider range of saturated colours) and greater smoothness of gradients, much less cloggyness in the shadows also – closer to a high end RIP than you would expect a print driver to achive. Im particularly looking forward to building profiles to suit the lighting that the prints will be displayed in, something that was not possible with i1match.

The plot above shows my old Permajet 240 Matt profile in solid colour with the new i1 Publish profile overlaid in grid view, the projected gamut lines at the bottom show the larger colour space of the new profile.

I’m hoping the investment benefit all my clients who need the occasional print profile building or use my printing services for exhibition quality prints.

Stephen

Client Story: Look and Learn

Delighted to receive a book in the post this morning from Laurence Heyworth the managing director of Look and Learn.

Laurence through his http://art.lookandlearn.com website runs one of the largest online children’s art competitions in the world. This is a sister site to the main http://www.lookandlearn.com site which mainly licenses images from classic children’s publications from the 1960s and 1970s.
The book reproduces the winning images from a recent competition to create an image to celebrate the Queens 85th Birthday. Rather wonderfully Laurence has sent a digital photo frame containing all 14,928 entries from 64 countries to the Queen.
All credit to Laurence for giving children encouragment to produce artwork and giving them a solid platform to display their work to the world.
I helped develop imaging workflow at Look and Learn and have written custom Photoshop actions to make a variety of files from submitted work. It is the automation of file creation combined with tight network and web development by my colleague Edward Leigh that makes projects like this possible with minimal costs and effort compared to having to do things manually.