News

Vista networking shares to a Buffalo terastation

Vistas increased security can cause problems with network shares on Buffalo terastations.

These cheap raid 5 storage solutions are ideal for backing up images so if you would like to use them from a Vista workstation do the following:

select: start menu > programs > administrative tools > Security and configuration management

Select > Local policies > security options > Network Security: LAN Manager Authenticating Level

Set it to “Send LM & NLTM, use NTMLv2 session if negotiated”

You should now have no problems connecting and accessing shares on the terastation.

Stephen

Adobe becoming aggressive

The prices Adobe are charging for the new suits to customers outside the USA and Canada is really quite something. Looks like they are confident that they command the market and with CS3 are prepared to milk it.

Some healthy competition for Adobe would be a good thing all round and perhaps with these new higher prices it will encourage someone to have a go.

Adobe takes UK price hikes to new level with CS3

I will be upgrading myself because I have to, others must look at the (small) new features list and decide if they want to. There is a sting with this though as Adobe are tightening up on how old products count in upgrades and you may find yourself missing out on the upgrade price on CS4 or CS5 if they do contain useful additions.

Stephen

Update

I haven’t been updating this site much recently, lots of travelling and retouching work has kept me quiet. Things have settled down a bit now so I have been researching a few projects.

Currently I am learning some Windows 2003 server basics in order to better understand the networks of some of my medium to larger clients. Also on the white board is some time with Lightroom to better understand it’s workflow. There are some very good bits in Lightroom , have no doubt. The problem I have for it is in a production environment it just makes the workflow a little bit complicated and bitty. This is a shame as the camera raw controls are an improvement.

My Philosophy with workflow is to edit, process and send out the work into the market place in as few steps as possible. I will persevere with Lightroom but see no compelling commercial incentive to advise any change to my Bridge/Photoshop workflow just yet.

Stephen

Vista drivers for Epson inkjets

Until recently only the Epson 3800 had a vista driver but they have now release Vista drivers for all current ink jets including the 2100/2200.
You can download the new drivers from http://www.epson.com/.

Unfortunately they have not used the opportunity to improve the settings dialogs which are amongst the most ugly, messy and disconnected pieces of programming you would thought possible.

Stephen

Purchasing PCs

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

Wacom tablets and Vista

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!

Vista, the good and the bad

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.)

Monitor profiling under Vista

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!)