see_r

<p>Since that means 11 am here in California, that's closer to the dark of the morning than the night, if I'm interpreting things correctly. Regardless, I'm going out right now to check it out, as well as tomorrow night.</p>

<p>Oh, btw...I am able to use GoLive on a PC (Windows), so I'm not sure what you mean by "GoLive is a Mac-only application."</p>

<p>Thank you for these responses. I have also received a recommendation for Squarespace.</p>

<p>I recently received a recommendation from a computer expert to use WebPlus X4 by Serif as a swift way to design a reasonably professional-looking website. After some research, it appears that it provides the nuts and bolds, but I am not yet convinced about flexibility in design aspects. I am quite certain I won't want to use the canned templates.<br />Does anyone have any experience to report with this particular software? Will I be able to do anything using GoLive to supplement the work I would do in WebPlus X4? Also, do you have other recommendations in the way of other software?<br>

Sorry if I sound novice with regard to web development because...well...I am. Feel free to message me if you would like to recommend a web design service.</p>

<p>It is almost ironic to hear that one in the UK is finding greater marketing success in the US than in his own country, given the economic trouble we are having here. Furthermore, the UK historically has no shortage of greatness in creativity, notably in the visual arts. Perhaps that is why, the competition is greater there than here.</p>

<p>The title certainly draws attention, and that's it's purpose!</p>

<p>Does anybody know roughly what percent of photographers who submit to the International Photographers Awards end up getting an honorable mention? This year quite a huge number of photographers got them, and there are large numbers in each category.<br>

I ask because I got an honorable mention under the Professional, Landscape category but see quite a long list of others.</p>

<p>Does anybody know whether it is much of a big deal to get an honorable mention in the Int'l Photography Awards?</p>

<p>I like the quote of his that says something like a good photograph is like a good hound dog--dumb but elequent.</p>

<p>For the past 2 years I have worked exclusively as a consultant (in a line of work other than photography), and I always use a contract. If you can get your client to provide the initial contract, or at least the initial draft (which you can suggest changes to) that would be ideal. I am not a lawyer, but a lawyer told me that if there is ever a legal case the "contract is always more strongly construed against the person who initially drafted the contract." But obviously it is better for you to draft a contract than to have no contract.</p>

<p>Hi Gerorge,<br>

Regarding your questions about assigning a profile or converting from one to another: without a color profile, the RGB value is a computer file which essentially is nothing but a set of binary values, one for each chanel, with a range of 2 to the 8th power (256: from 0 to 255, inclusive) for 8 bit (bit means 'binary digit' so 8 bit = 2 to the 8th power =256 possible values. or 2 to the 16 for 16 bit, etc. Your devices (printers, monitors) need a means of translating the data from the image file towards output (or in the case of a scanner, translate from the device to the computer file). A profile, therefore, contains the algorith that relates the computer file data (whether RGB, CMYK, etc.) to or from the relevant parameters required to drive the device, and therefore to translate the bit value to the actual actuated output for your devices, or actuated input from a sensor of a digital camera or scanner to a computer file. <br>

So to your question: "assign profile" actually means that you have no profile specifically connected with the file (and so some default profile is used [or else nothing would be able to display), and "convert profile" means that the color space of the profile is not the same as the color space assigned to the working space of the program you are using (in this case Photoshop). In either case, a conversion still occurs (there is obviously some default profile connected with the software drivers, etc) without you assigning a profile or converting from one to another, and frequently does not create a problem so long as the color spaces are within the same bit depth, eg. from 8 bit to 8 bit such as occurs if you go from sRGB to Adobe RGB. But when you go from 8 bit to 16 bit, such as when you go from sRGB to ProPhoto, then you can often run into problems with conversions. I haven't dug in enough to understand what the mathmatical error is...I'm no color scientist. I just know this empirically.</p>

<p>I don't know much about Huey. I use the Colormunki, and like it. It also comes highly recommended for it's price point. But based on your descriptions what you are observing is Photoshop vs. other image editing software. Basically, Photoshop is higher maintenance. Enjoy!</p>

<p>Oh, yes, you should probably just set to Adobe RGB</p>

<p>It's hard to know about your color settings without looking at your computer, especially when were talking about color management via Photoshop, which is not very intuitive and which has several places to deal with color management. Another thing is that color management is not all science, it's part art. So a "correct" set of color settings can not exist on any system unless they are correct for you under a given set of circumstances. For example, the nice series here on PN on Color Management will discuss previewing your images using your printer profile and will suggest some ideas (and limitations) towards interpretation. But ultimately, there are faults and the best thing I can suggest is to do a lot of experimentation so that you develop an excellent understanding of the relationship between what you see on your computer screen and what prints out--all under a given set of ambient light circumstances. I spend many hours dealing with all of this last winter. Ultimately, the print and the screen can never look exactly the same all of the time. A lot of this has to do with differences in ambient light, perception, shortcomings in the algorithms, and differences in the materials of the print vs. the screen.<br>

And actually, I don't think that color management series placed enough emphasis on the idea that the way an image appears is entirely dependent on incident light. The other night I took an alarm clock that has a blue LED, walked all over the house and shined it on all of my photographic prints and paintings. It was a real trip; everything looked totally different. Anyway, when color managing prints, it's important to keep in mind the light of the final home of the print may change, eg from incandescent or fluorescent light to daylight-totally different. Photographers are often working with settings that assume a clear sunny day under ordinary atmospheric conditions.<br>

Finally, a word on perception. In the article series, all you have to do is just go to that figure that shows the difference between looking at a lowly saturated orange box in a highly saturated orange box vs that same dull orange box in a blue box. Same color, same incident light--looks totally different. The dull orange box looks a lot brighter when surrounded by blue than when surrounded by bright orange. Color management, your print your computer and your screen have nothing to do with this--that happens entirely in the brain. So in comprehensive "color management" you have to deal with perception, and therefore, art.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Interesting question. I was thinking something similar today (different equiptment, of course). Perhaps for weddings its not necessarily so much what equiptment you have--although the equiptment is important, eg. the longer focal lengths/higher mag--it is more about are you going to be able to capture the images that will embed the memories for the married couple--telling the story. A wedding is (hopefully) a one time thing, so if you blow it you have done your customer a great disservice they are stuck with. I know from experience--our photographer was terrible. You need to start out well or you may have a bride giving you negative reports from the beginning of your wedding career for the rest of her life.<br>

I like the idea of a mock wedding. Personally, I was thinking of trying some wedding crashing--if I can do it politely and unintrusively--at least to observe the photographer(s). You could also try to volunteer to assist a more experienced wedding photographer, but that might be difficult because in this economy they may not want to train the competition.</p>

<p>In general I have noticed that in Photoshop blue appears a bit violet. This observation has nothing to do with the quality of monitor calibration, and appears to be a shortcoming of Photoshop. It is consistantly reported on the web and observed across monitors. Most importantly, I became acutely aware of it after starting to oil paint when the RGB value 0,0,255 (which should be blue) looks very much like French Ultramarine, which tends toward violet.<br>

One thing you coud try would be to make sure you have your Color Settings to North America Prepress 2 and when you open the file convert to Adobe RGB to see if you get improvement there, but I don't. Either way you should set to Prepress, not the default General setting so that you always are alerted as to any color profile mismatching or lack of embedded profile. You can read more about all of this in the series here on PN on Color Management, which is really quite good.</p>

<p>horray for diy...valiant effort I must say.</p>

<p>I just discovered that the "Darken" blending mode essentially represents a subtractive process, and as such is useful for understanding how one layer of paint would look ofer another. To do this you apply the darken blending mode to the upper layer, representing what color paint you would apply to the one underneath.</p>

<p>Edward, thanks for your response. I've attached the results of what happens when you pull the shadows out in the nef. For illustrative purposes only, I've done this at +4 exposure comp and then enlarged selected shadow areas. These results show the superiority of the D700 vs D80 in maintaining the shadow areas.<br />I should note that everything I have done here is not meant to be representative of how I would actually use each camera, from exposure to end result, but as a quick way to compare the cameras. Yeah, if you really want to get into photography you're never going to want to just go with the defaults--in this case-the default tonal response curve. I have my own personalized method of "HDR" that I use when I'm doing photography and not trying to compare cameras.</p><div></div>

<p>[corrected message below]</p>

<p>Oh, and here's what I got at minus 4 exposure compensation (the d700 image is the larger and the d80 the smaller, obviously)</p><div></div>

<p>Thanks for your responses. Ben, yes I agree--it would be nice to borrow a D700 and take it on a trip, shooting it part of the time and the D80 part of the time, and then do the best I can with each respective set of images. Of course this would mean me needing to borrow the D700 for awhile in advance of said trip because I would need to do the learning curve.<br />and actually, I just did a follow up, going back to the NEFs and setting the exposure compensation for each to -4 to evaluate the blown out streets....I do see improvement with the D700</p>

<p>I have a Nikon D80 and have been reading wonderful things and seeing excellent examples of dynamic range with the D700. So I brought my D80 (and memory chip) into the camera store and ran a "quick and dirty" comparison really only intended for comparing the dynamic ranges of these two DSLRs. I've attached my results. Here's what I did with both cameras:<br />1) put on my AF Nikkor 50mm 1:1.8D; 2) set to 200 ISO f4.5 at 1/100 s; 3) took two shots (pretty much the same shot with each camera), the first of which had a highlight that was about 4 1/2 stops overexposed (in the first images, left side, out the window on the street) and the second of which had a shadow that was 4 1/2 stops underexposed (in the second images, right side, middle dark wall); 4) opened up the raw file, made no changes and pasted into a single document; 5) res'ed down and jpg to upload here.<br />I know the D700 is a great camera and perhaps I have missed something in the haste of my experiment. But I'm not sure I see an improvement in dynamic range from D80 to D700. If anything, I see the opposite--at least when evaluating the extreme highlights and shadows.<br />Please let me know your thoughts.</p><div></div>

<p>yep, they're a bunch of arbitrary idiots</p>

<p>Oh, I should probably clarify that the book will include about 2000 words of text, so it's not exclusively photographic display.</p>