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pecuniumWeds. I upgraded to the most recent version of LightZone which is my preferred photo-editor.
I'd been using the most stable version of the Version 2Beta builds, because I was lazy. My dad asked me to help him do the soft-copy documentation included with the program, and I got used to it. But they never really released it, going straight to Ver. 3.0.
But they did give me a license and I broke down.
So there were some teething problems (if it isn't working right, go to Preferences, and reset them; that seems to work. Call it the Microsoft model of easy-fix).
And there was the learning curve. All the things I was used to (sliders and the like) have been changed. The look is cleaner, and the tools (for all that what used to be color channels in some of the tools I use most, are now color wheels) are more subtle. Which is a good thing.
The export function is much more effective, allowing one to do more than most people have any need for. One can choose size (good), dpi (good), bit-depth (good), and color space (good).
The last is the one which gives me the most pause. Color management is a big deal. I want the picture I've edited to come of the printer/back from the lab, looking just as it did when I edited the damn thing. So I've calibrated my monitor. That's the color space I work in, and my printer is tweaked to give me the best representation of that image I can manage.
It seems the list of spaces is all those in my machine.
So if I export the image into Canon i9900SP1 (which is a native space for my printer) it looks different, on the screen, from the image I was editing.
I'm linking to three pictures behind the cut, because one of the quirks of this feature is the images are larger than I like to upload, my prefered size is 180-250Kb, these are 600Kb to 1.7Mb)
sRGB 1996
Colormatch RGB
LumiJet UltraGloss II
The color differences are subtle (and diminished by converting them to web colors in transmission from me to you) but they are there. The last is interesting because it's the color profile for a paper.
I've got that profile, because I like that paper; so I downloaded it to get the best possible prints. I don't, however, use it, because it gives a magenta cast to the print. When I printed Waveswept it was wrong (that wrongness, ironically "saved" the image because it's slightly out of focus. In a small image one doesn't notice. When I printed it nine-inches wide it was plain [at least to me]. With the magenta shift the edges don't look fuzzy, go figure). It shouldn't do that (and none of the other profiles I've pulled down from LumiJet for my printer have done that), but theory and practice are often at odds.
So I need to do some differential treatments of pictures with a good color mix to see if I can use this as one uses different film stocks to get different color spaces with film. That, of course, will mean doing a number of prints.
I would like to have sRGB1998, which is the working space of my camera, and the one which Photoshop seems to like best. On the flip side, some of them (e.g. Wide GamutRGB) are larger than the working spaces of any of my monitors, and most people's printers, which means rendering into it from some formats (doable from a RAW file, if not from a .jpg, or [IIRC] a .tif) is going to cause clipping. I do need, as well, to test the profile for my monitor, which it has loaded in. It seems to me that it ought to be the default space, but I don't know.[and they are there, I just didn't see them, because they are laid out in the same order they are in the Win32 Folder, which isn't alphabetical]
This doesn't bother me, because I've done the work needed to get the color managemet I want; but if someone hasn't done that, well it can get really ugly, really fast (and lead to a lot of frustration).
Playing with all of that ate up my working time for Thursday. Yesterday, because I am hanging some stuff at LosCon, over Thanksgiving, we headed to the framers, to get the picturees matted (and how is one supposed to spell matte for picture, no matter how I do it, it ends up odd, I like matte, but it looks odd when the word gets tensed. Just an example of verbing weirding nouns).
It took two and-a-half hours. Some of them were fast, similarity of color, and theme, made it pretty easy. Some took a lot longer. The larger the picture, the harder it seemed to be. I had 18 images, from a couple down in the 4x6 range, to one at 13x19.
With luck (more than I really expect) I'll break even on the deal (which is to say, the cost of ink, paper, mattes and space. I'll worry about my time, talent and the like after I get past sunk costs). Much as I'd like to make a real profit out of LosCon, I don't really think the market is right. Most people don't appreciate what photography costs, much less the recompense for time/talent in the equation, but that's a rant for another day.
The stuff that doesn't sell will go into storage, and I'll start flogging the portfolio. If someone likes it, and wants to know when I can be ready to hang something, the answer is, "now.". Conversely, if someone wants to buy something; in a generic sense, I'll have work on hand. Sooner or later it will sell.
So now it's off to the centary of the Orange Grove Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. Tomorrow it's off to the Orchid Show at Huntington Gardens for the orchid show. If anyone of the locals (L.A.) wan't to come by, and perhaps get together (might stop for a pint afterwards, at Lucky Baldwin's) drop me a line, and we'll figure out how to do it.
I'd been using the most stable version of the Version 2Beta builds, because I was lazy. My dad asked me to help him do the soft-copy documentation included with the program, and I got used to it. But they never really released it, going straight to Ver. 3.0.
But they did give me a license and I broke down.
So there were some teething problems (if it isn't working right, go to Preferences, and reset them; that seems to work. Call it the Microsoft model of easy-fix).
And there was the learning curve. All the things I was used to (sliders and the like) have been changed. The look is cleaner, and the tools (for all that what used to be color channels in some of the tools I use most, are now color wheels) are more subtle. Which is a good thing.
The export function is much more effective, allowing one to do more than most people have any need for. One can choose size (good), dpi (good), bit-depth (good), and color space (good).
The last is the one which gives me the most pause. Color management is a big deal. I want the picture I've edited to come of the printer/back from the lab, looking just as it did when I edited the damn thing. So I've calibrated my monitor. That's the color space I work in, and my printer is tweaked to give me the best representation of that image I can manage.
It seems the list of spaces is all those in my machine.
So if I export the image into Canon i9900SP1 (which is a native space for my printer) it looks different, on the screen, from the image I was editing.
I'm linking to three pictures behind the cut, because one of the quirks of this feature is the images are larger than I like to upload, my prefered size is 180-250Kb, these are 600Kb to 1.7Mb)
sRGB 1996
Colormatch RGB
LumiJet UltraGloss II
The color differences are subtle (and diminished by converting them to web colors in transmission from me to you) but they are there. The last is interesting because it's the color profile for a paper.
I've got that profile, because I like that paper; so I downloaded it to get the best possible prints. I don't, however, use it, because it gives a magenta cast to the print. When I printed Waveswept it was wrong (that wrongness, ironically "saved" the image because it's slightly out of focus. In a small image one doesn't notice. When I printed it nine-inches wide it was plain [at least to me]. With the magenta shift the edges don't look fuzzy, go figure). It shouldn't do that (and none of the other profiles I've pulled down from LumiJet for my printer have done that), but theory and practice are often at odds.
So I need to do some differential treatments of pictures with a good color mix to see if I can use this as one uses different film stocks to get different color spaces with film. That, of course, will mean doing a number of prints.
I would like to have sRGB1998, which is the working space of my camera, and the one which Photoshop seems to like best. On the flip side, some of them (e.g. Wide GamutRGB) are larger than the working spaces of any of my monitors, and most people's printers, which means rendering into it from some formats (doable from a RAW file, if not from a .jpg, or [IIRC] a .tif) is going to cause clipping. I do need, as well, to test the profile for my monitor, which it has loaded in. It seems to me that it ought to be the default space, but I don't know.[and they are there, I just didn't see them, because they are laid out in the same order they are in the Win32 Folder, which isn't alphabetical]
This doesn't bother me, because I've done the work needed to get the color managemet I want; but if someone hasn't done that, well it can get really ugly, really fast (and lead to a lot of frustration).
Playing with all of that ate up my working time for Thursday. Yesterday, because I am hanging some stuff at LosCon, over Thanksgiving, we headed to the framers, to get the picturees matted (and how is one supposed to spell matte for picture, no matter how I do it, it ends up odd, I like matte, but it looks odd when the word gets tensed. Just an example of verbing weirding nouns).
It took two and-a-half hours. Some of them were fast, similarity of color, and theme, made it pretty easy. Some took a lot longer. The larger the picture, the harder it seemed to be. I had 18 images, from a couple down in the 4x6 range, to one at 13x19.
With luck (more than I really expect) I'll break even on the deal (which is to say, the cost of ink, paper, mattes and space. I'll worry about my time, talent and the like after I get past sunk costs). Much as I'd like to make a real profit out of LosCon, I don't really think the market is right. Most people don't appreciate what photography costs, much less the recompense for time/talent in the equation, but that's a rant for another day.
The stuff that doesn't sell will go into storage, and I'll start flogging the portfolio. If someone likes it, and wants to know when I can be ready to hang something, the answer is, "now.". Conversely, if someone wants to buy something; in a generic sense, I'll have work on hand. Sooner or later it will sell.
So now it's off to the centary of the Orange Grove Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. Tomorrow it's off to the Orchid Show at Huntington Gardens for the orchid show. If anyone of the locals (L.A.) wan't to come by, and perhaps get together (might stop for a pint afterwards, at Lucky Baldwin's) drop me a line, and we'll figure out how to do it.
