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Image Science April 2007 Update
Quite a lot to get though this time, so I'll skip the intro and get right to it! Thanks for reading!
Image Science is having a baby!
My wife Amy is pregnant and our baby is officially due on the 7th of July. It's our first and of course we're very excited, if a little apprehensive of the forthcoming demands on our time. The number of people who have said to me 'enjoy your sleep while you can' is quite alarming! But, the number of people who've told me there is no better experience in life than being a parent is also remarkable, so it seems to be well worth some shorter nights. Still, we're hoping for a quiet one!
Now, this will obviously bring with it a few changes for us, as we're going to be short staffed for a little while, and thus we're going to have to make a few changes to services. In general, we ask for your understanding if some things take us an extra day or two - officially we've never promised 24 hour turnarounds, but usually we've been able to offer them in any case - it will most likely not be the case for a few months starting mid-June or so.
In particular, scanning will most likely be consolidated to two full days a week (Tuesdays and Thursday or Fridays), which will mean our usual turnaround of about 24 hours will suffer a little, and you'll need to bear with us a little. Printing is also likely to slow down a bit.
Profiling and retail should work much as they do now.
Support queries, long detailed messages on colour management etc, will still be answered but most likely not quite as quickly as usual. I spend about 15 hours a week on this sort of thing so it may also be the case my answers are more compactly written than normal as well, but of course we'll continue to do our best to help you at all times.
We thank you for your support and patience with this, and rest-assured we will get back to full operational speed just as soon as we can.
New Website Content
As ever, I've been beavering away on new website content - some of the highlights:
- How to Calibrate an Eizo ColorEdge series monitor
- Notes on Choosing Spectrophotometers and Complete Workflow Calibration
- New Store'n'Print-to-order service (intended for limited edition prints / artwork reproductions)
- The 4 Methods of Monitor Calibration
- How to calibrate multiple monitors (bottom of the page)
- Choosing the right Eizo monitor for your needs
ColorVision Products
We're now carrying the full range of ColorVision products. While the earlier models of these devices were outclassed significantly by Gretag Macbeth's colour management products, there has been a bunch of recent upgrades that make this range very attractive.
With a recent price reduction to just $155, the ColorVision Spyder2Express offers a very good calibration device for the money and is software upgradeable to a full Spyder2Pro system should your needs/finances grow at a later date. It's pretty remarkable the device itself is the same as you get in the $475 Spyder2Pro package - they've created a really useful upgrade path that is an excellent option for those at the beginning of the colour management journey.
ColorVision have also released an upgrade to their PrintFix Pro product. At just $1225 for the Suite version that includes both a printer AND a screen calibrator that offer very good results, it's remarkably good value. It has some flaws (mainly that each patch must currently be read by hand which takes a while) but the resulting profiles are surprisingly good from such a reasonably priced package. Obviously not quite up to the standards of a profiling system like ours, but well on their way and I have to say for the dollars I was quite surprised at the quality.
New Profile Targets
We've once again updated our profiling targets as we have a new system that is capable of reading much smaller patches, so now the RGB targets fit on just one A4 page, and the CMYK targets take only two A4 pages. These new targets actually have the same number of patches as the previous targets, only smaller!
Please use these new targets for all future profile submissions! It saves you some ink and paper (always a good thing) and the results are of the same excellent quality as before.
Taiyo Yuden DVD+Rs
By popular request we've added Taiyo Yuden +R DVDs to our shelves, for those of you that prefer this format. They're noticeably more expensive unfortunately, but given they offer greater error protection than -Rs, they are in theory the most archival version available (although from real world tests I have read there is very little in it).
Taiyo Yuden DVD+R Archival Discs
A2 Papers
For those of you lucky enough to own the excellent new Epson 3800 printers (or the new Canons and HPs for that matter), you may be interested to know we're now keeping stock of A2 Photo Rag and A2 Crane Silver Rag on the shelf now. Remember to use the thick media setting with all of these papers! And many of our other papers we can get in the A2 size fairly quickly.
Printing pages from the Image Science Website
I've recently done some work behind the scenes on the Image Science website and you can now print pages more neatly and easily than ever before. Just go to 'File->Print' in your browser, and you'll find the printed pages have all the menus etc. removed automatically to make a much neater set of notes. Perfect for printing out some of our longer instructional pages, like how to use an Eye One display properly and so on.
Calling Retouchers!
If you're a retoucher/handy with raw processing, we regularly get requests from photographers needing ad hoc or regular help with some of their batch processing, mid level retouching, and so forth. The budget usually isn't massive, but the experience is good, the exposure is good, and the pay is generally still better than many other types of ad hoc work. If you'd like to register interest, email me a quick paragraph of your (realistic) skill level and availability, with full contact details. Be aware in most cases you'd be expected to hit the ground running and have decent raw processing (Lightroom, Camera Raw and Capture One being the most popular methods), Photoshop, and of course people skills already.
The Image Science Community Corner
Apologies if I've missed your bit out in this section below - it's been a frantically busy month and I've consequently got various piles of unfinished jobs and I'm afraid a few of you may have got caught up in the 'still to be done' pile. Please feel free to remind me as I've worked out a better system to keep things organised now!
Samantha Everton - Catharsis is Touring
Samantha is an absolutely superb art photographer who produces stunning work with significant creative vision and is quite simply one of the best Photo Artists working in this country today. It's her combination of clear artistic thinking and excellent technique that I so admire. Some of the images from Catharsis have been used by us in our example folio albums here as they're quite simply exceptional examples of both the photographic and the printing arts. She also happens to be one of the nicest people you could hope to meet, which never hurts!
The series Catharsis depicts the tension and interaction between two beautifully costumed women, using the recurring motif of the butterfly to symbolise their metamorphosis. The dreamlike images portray the clash and fusion of Eastern & Western cultures. Rich vibrant colours combine with elegant detail in costumes, setting and form, to result in a moving visual experience.
April 3 – May 27, 2007 @
Horsham Regional Art Gallery
80 Wlison Street, Horsham VIC 3400
03 5382 5575
Philip Caithness Gallery Opens - Welcome to Terra Vista in Olinda
This Saturday (i.e. tomorrow!) - one of our very good clients is opening his brand new gallery. For the last few months Phil has been madly getting his lovely landscape images scanned by us, and printing, building and framing, and now the fruits of his labour will be on show to all!
The operning of the new gallery is on Saturday 24th of March from 4.30pm till 'late', and the address is 3/1606 Mt Dandenong Tourist Road, Olinda - a lovely part of the world and it should be a bit cooler tomorrow, so perfect for a nice gallery visit and a walk through the luscious trees!
Mark Schapper - Hurry to catch it!
I'm a bit late with this update so I almost missed it, but another of our clients is having an exhibition until the end of this weekend at the McCulloch Gallery. The exhibition is a photographic essay called 'Dry Country' and features Mark's latest work including some lovely images on Lake Mungo.
Political Campaign Photography by Andrew Chapman from 1971 - 2004
If you're up in Canberra, it would be well worth your time to go visit Andrew's excellent political photography work - there's some fantastic characters, beautifully captured on show, with a fine eye for story telling (the one of Crean looking over Beazley's shoulder is just superb!) - printed in luscious black and white on Crane's superlative Silver Rag.
It doesn't come much better than that - excellent images, real story, and great printing!
Old Parliament House, Canberra
Feb 15th - April 15th 2007
http://www.oph.gov.au/
Andrews's Website
David Harridine Training
David has asked me to list his current events page - David is a great teacher who does very good courses to bigger groups on Photoshop, colour management etc. David really knows his stuff and is a very nice guy, so if you're looking for affordable high quality group courses on these sorts of subjects, check it out. With the baby coming I'm not going to have a great deal of time for our own ever popular one-on-one/small group Training Courses, so will inevitably have to cut down on those a bit over the next 6 months or so (not completely of course!).
Congratulations to Chris Polack on the launch of his new magazine!
Chris (who gets film scanned by us) has just launched his new BMX magazine, Rebel Yell BMX. It's out now, and it's got some pretty slick (and beautifully scanned!) BMX work in it...well worth picking up a copy.
New Science Photography Prize
We have a number of excellent science/documentary photographer's as clients and I'm pretty sure one of you can come up with the goods and win this - $5000 first prize never hurts:
The $10,000 New Scientist Eureka Prize for Science Photography is awarded for a single photograph that most effectively communicates an aspect of science. This photograph might be a startling image that captures the essence of scientific discovery. It may illustrate the workings of nature or the beauty of science. It may show something never seen before. It may illustrate scientific data. It might give fresh insight into a scientific phenomenon or an emerging technology.
Entries are encouraged from amateur and professional photographers, working scientists, and postgraduate and undergraduate students.
For more information and details on how to enter, see: www.australianmuseum.net.au/eureka/prizes/sciencecomm/Science_Photography.cfm
As ever with these things it's a good idea to check the terms and conditions, but I've had a quick look and they look very sensible to me - it quite clearly states you keep copyright to your images.
Jeremy's Corner
What a kick off to the year - we've been absolutely frantic so far, it's hard to believe it isn't even April yet. I keep thinking we're bound to have a slow week sometime, so that I can catch up on all those other things I plan to do, but it just isn't happening! Oh well, it's far better than not having enough to do (I once worked as an artificial intelligence researcher for the DSTO defence research organisation in South Australia - shortly after I joined my boss left work on sabbatical for three months and I had about one week's work to try and stretch out over 12 weeks...not very motivating at all!).
As you will have seen above, I've added a lot of new content to the website lately so I'm just going to put a few smaller notes in this section this time.
Windows Vista and Colour Management
If you're considering a move to Windows Vista, my advice is to hold off a bit. While most things can be made to work (the ColorVision range is now fully Vista compatible, but Gretag Macbeth aren't quite there yet, and Eizo are in beta with their updated version of Colour Navigator), there is a glaring flaw in Windows Vista from a colour management perspective. Basically, when Windows Vista alerts you to a security event, it pops up a window and dims the screen.
In doing this, it actually unloads your calibration table from your video card!
This means every time you get one of those messages, you have to manually re-instate your monitor profile (which of course will be very easy to forget!). This is, quite simply, a monumentally bad design decision from Microsoft and undoubtedly they'll soon have to fix things, but for now this means Vista is, by design, an unreliable system for colour management and should be avoided.
There are numerous other issues, notably with Photoshop, so I say give it some time (at least until the release of Photoshop CS3 in May or so), before making the jump.
LCDs and Contrast Controls
I am constantly asked this question - where is the contrast control on my LCD monitor? Well, if you're using a digital connection (and you should be for best quality) - there is no contrast control! LCD monitors have fixed contrast ratios (you'll see this ratio quoted in the monitor's specifications). Simulation of lower contrast things (like prints) is done by using profiles with accurate black points and black point compensation.
If your LCD does have a contrast control (usually only on analogue connected monitors), it's not really a contrast control in the true sense - it's simulating contrast changes by sending a message to the LUT in your video card. This can create big quality issues with your monitor profile, so in general it is best to leave this to it's default setting.
That's It!
That's it for this time. I'm still working on the online sales system - it's taking considerably longer than I expected, because I haven't been able to find some decent chunks of time to really concentrate on it. We'll get there eventually and the phone/email thing always works!
Cheers, and hope life is treating you well, and hope to see you soon,
Jeremy and Amy Daalder
Directors,
Image Science
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