Stephen Johnson

Quality printing and framing service

Andrew Jackson over at ACTPIX will be known to many of my clients for his professional drum scanning / high volume scanning services and his wide format printing services (http://www.actpix.co.uk/)

Andrew has recently launched a new consumer site that makes uploading pictures and purchasing framed prints from these pictures very easy and offers very good value. Have a look here:http://www.mypix-framed.co.uk/

If your looking for a last minute gift for your family or clients then give him a go.

Stephen

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Thoughts on Lightroom 2

As many of you may know, I was not a fan of lightroom 1.0

My main concerns were of complexity and preformance/reliability it just seemed seemed a little too flakey.

I still beleive that for handling the workflow for production retouching Lightroom still lacks the simplicity of Bridge/Photoshop that is central to my workflow recommendations.

However, for keeping track of the “Master Collection” once created I now beleive Lightroom 2.0 has a place.

I am currently looking into how Lightroom may find a place within a small photolibrary/photographer situation and how it would impact the needs of different users.

Lightroom 2 holds promise, Im keeping an open mind.

Stephen

Photoshop CS4

I have been beta testing Photoshop/Bridge CS4 over the last few months and I’m pleased to say there are some real improvements to the stability, speed and usability of the programs.

Most of the improvements benefit high end rather than production retouching (rotating canvas, content aware scale etc), I have used these tools for real retouching jobs and been suitably impressed.

On the downside metadata handling has not been improved (The same “Multiple values” bug when appending keywords and captions as per CS3) and there is still no central configuration system for all the varied settings.

As far as I can see all my client CS3 actions run without modification on CS4 – will check this when I recieve the retail code.

I will contine to support CS3 for the forseable future so dont feel you will be left behind if you don’t upgrade. Workflow and retouching workshops can be held with either CS3 or CS4.

Stephen

VAT Calculator (updated)

I originally posted this in 2005 but noticed recently from the log files that the original file was moved some time ago in a reorganisation.
I have restored the file so the link works now:

As some of you know, I use Visual Basic to make custom windows programs. Most of these programs are highly specialized and written to fit into a specific workflow. Occasionally I write something a bit more general. VAT-calc is a tiny application that presents just three fields. You can enter a number into any of these fields and the other fields update to provide the missing figures. So for instance if you know the price including vat then just enter this figure in the inc field and the program will show you the VAT exclusive price and the VAT value. All very useful stuff if you are VAT registered.

You can buy vatcalc from the store link on this website.

Image investment

One of the main problems in delivering high technical quality images to the market has been the cost of suitable digital cameras.

Affordability has been pretty poor in the last few years but with the resourgence of competition between Nikon and Canon nobody should be very far away from at least 12megapixel bodies which I consider to be the minimum requirement for high end stock.

Canon today released details of the 5D MKII which with 21mp and a price of £2300 means that anyone earning a reasonable amount from stock can up the quality of their shots and potentially get sales from bigger (and better) repro uses.

It goes without saying that technical quality isnt the end of the story, but I have retouched too many fantastic images that were too small for even full page use….

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0809/08091705canon_5dmarkII.asp

Beta Canon 1ds mkII Profile for UK Garden Photographers

Part of my clientel are a number of garden photographers and as is known amongst this group that Canon cameras (unlike Nikon) tend to make green garden foliage a little too yellow.

Thankfully Adobe have released ACR 4.5 with better support for external camera profiles. If you have Photoshop CS3 and its fully up to date then download this beta profile I have made and put it in one of the following locations:

On Mac OS X:
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles

On Windows 2000 / XP:
C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication SupportAdobeCameraRawCameraProfiles

On Windows Vista:
C:ProgramDataAdobeCameraRawCameraProfiles

The profile gives more accurate garden greens for the UK.
Download the profile here

Once the profile is copied, restart Photoshop and open a raw image taken on a mkII. Select the camera icon on the raw converter tab, then from the NAME dropdown select the profile.

Let me have any comments.
Stephen

Processing large quantities of images for output levels

As some of you know Im not too keen on Image Libraries such as Getty and Corbis asking for attenuated output levels on submissions (Getty ask for 3-252 for instance).

Continue to use the full bandwidth if needed in your Master files, with proper colour management any CMYK you make for your own projects will handle the range through colour management.

Given that libraries ask for these compromised files however I have been developing a windows program that can sort large collections of images and automatically place them into 4 folders for processing to required output levels. This pre selection process allows images that are already in the legal range to be left alone and images that have just illegal highlights or shadows put into separate directories with the last directory being for images with illegal values at both ends of the range. Files in these folders can them be processed though my special “legal levels” actions that acheive the required levels without compromising mid tone contrast.

I will be mainly using this program to process clients images when they request files for agency submission, I am however prepared to sell the program for your own use at a cost of £60+VAT. More details to follow.