Stephen Johnson

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.

Client Advisory: Adobe release CS5.5

Adobe have decided to change the way they release products. Historically they operated a system of 18 months between major releases of the Creative Suite products but have now decided to change this to 24 months with a minor 0.5 release every 12 months.

Its all part of a plan to extract more money of course and Adobe have also decided to offer the option of a software rental scheme at the same time that enables you to pay for products on a monthly basis (no pay – no work).
There is no change to Photoshop software compared to 5.0 so no real reason to upgrade at present though the default Photoshop included in Suites is now the extended rather than the standard version which will be useful when CS6 is released in 12 months time (Update : Applies to the subscription version of the premium only – dash!)
Adobe had better get their pricing right on this, they have a reputation for being expensive, if they push too hard then it will be worthwhile for another developer to challenge Adobes monopoly. I’m not keen on monopolies and Adobe have a real monopoly on image editing software.

Client Story: Sue Flood

Congratulations to Sue Flood on her exhibition at the Getty Gallery in central London.
“Cold Places” Pole to Pole is a collection of Sue’s work from the polar regions. Its sponsored by Canon and has attracted a lot of attention from the national media and I was particularly surprised to hear Sue talk about her work on “Woman’s hour” on radio 4 which kind of gives away my listening habits! The exhibition was launched in the middle of March and runs till the 9th of April. Sue took the opportunity to launch her book “Cold Places” to coincide with the exhibition.
Gallery details are here: http://www.gettyimagesgallery.com/
Her book is available online from the usual suspects but you can get yourself a copy directly from Sue from her website: http://www.sueflood.com/
Sue was away for a large part of the time involved in producing both the book and the exhibitions so I helped out with the production. Because I keep high res copies of Sue’s files I was able to prepare press ready CMYK sharpened files optimised for the print size of each image to pass onto the books designer Simon Bishop. I worked closely with Simon and the books printers to ensure that we got the best possible colour and tone on paper. I also prepared RGB print files to size and sharpened for print to Canon for them to make the exhibition prints. Mark Bennet at Canon converted the files to the printers colour space and the result was some very pleasing large format prints, nice to see Epson have some competition in the photographic quality printer stakes.
I also prepared and sent files for PR uses and serviced requests from the national newspapers.
The whole process involved a lot of intense work over a short period but I was pleased to help get Sue’s work in front of a larger audience and help raise her profile.
In the past I have helped Sue with equipment choices and training as well as editing and retouching , Sue is an example of a client who uses my services is a holistic way which would normally require full time staff and the associated costs and responsibilities. By offering my services as a freelance I enable clients to tackle work projects to a set quality and budget.
Stephen

Client Story – Round the Island Race 80th Anniversary Exhibition

Congratulations are in order for Karren May who with herculean effort and dedication has managed to mount a major exhibition on behalf of J P Morgan Asset management.

The exhibition covers the 80 years of the Isle of Wright race from some pioneering yacht photography captured with specially made large format plate glass cameras all the way to digital capture.
Karren asked me to help with “digital restoration” of a variety of images from aged plate glass to more modern images, my brief was to overcome any artefacts and present the images at their best.
It was important that the retouching was sensitive to the documentary requirements and ensure that only distracting artefacts were removed and to respect the underlying image. Careful tonal and colour adjustments were made to bring out the true image from the raw stock.
I was pleased to complete the work on time and within budget.
Karren kept a diary of her work and its an interesting read here:
Karren owned and ran the Bluegreen marine stock photography agency, since selling the agency she has been helping a variety of organizations to present their work through a variety of projects from publications to exhibitions. I am happy to introduce Karren as part of a team of creative professionals who can handle a wide variety of image based tasks and projects.
Stephen

Windows 7 SP1

Microsoft have today released Service Pack 1 for Windows 7.
This is a mixture of all previous updates and bug fixes together with some new ones.
I will be testing the update this week to see if it has any impact on Photoshop/Lightroom/Exiftool etc use. If your PC is mission critical then you may wish to accept just normal updates and hold back on SP1 till I have tested here.
UPDATE:
Well its been a week now and there is nothing bad to report from my experiences of the SP1 update. I have noticed a few small improvements in responsiveness so I would suggest that if you run Windows 7 you give the service patch a go.
Stephen

Pen click animations in Windows 7

If you are getting the annoying “bloop” animations in Windows 7 when using a Wacom tablet pen then the following may be of use.

To turn these animations off:

1. Open the Local Group Policy Editor (Start:Run:gpedit.msc)
2. Navigate to User Configuration: Administrative Templates: Windows Components: Tablet PC: Cursor
3. Enable the Turn off pen feedback setting.

Retouching in Photoshop is much smoother without these animated cursors, I had got rid of them some time ago but they came back recently (possible after a service patch). I confirmed that the Microsoft tablet controls service had been switched off but obviously this associated setting was still in place.

 

vatcalc 2.0 VAT calculator for Windows

I mainly write custom windows programs to help automate imaging workflow for clients but occasionally I write the odd useful utility program.
vatcalc 2.0 allows you to change any of the values in the boxes (just press the tab key to the box you require and enter a value) vatcalc will then update the other variables allowing you for instance to work out the exclusive and vat values when entering a retail vat inclusive price – handy for those vat returns.
You can buy vatcalc from the shop section of this website.