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zee

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Posts posted by zee

    cal comp. tablet ???

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    I used to have a CalComp Drawing Slate circa 1996 (I believe) back when I was still fairly new to Photoshop. I bought it because it was cheaper than comparable Wacom tablets and used it for a few years. Eventually I dumped the CalComp and bought a Wacom. My reasons for switching:

     

    1. Buggy drivers

    2. Lackluster vendor support

    3. The CalComp pen felt heavier and clunky. (This may not bother you if you're not using it for hours at a time.)

    4. Tracking felt more sluggish compared to the Wacom

    5. Innovation-wise, they seemed to hopelessly lag behind Wacom, at least from my Photographer/Designer point of view. Their products always struck me as CAD-focused with dabblings in other areas. Wacom, despite their faults, seemed to take their creative customers more seriously.

     

    I think CalComp's Drawing Board III is an older product, so you'll probably have to find a pen for it on eBay.

    "Why Photoshop doesn't provide secure metadata"

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    From Ellis' link, John Nack says:

     

    "Acrobat 7 or later will let you attach an arbitrary file to a PDF and encrypt only the attached file. You could send out a low resolution or visibly watermarked PDF and attach the full PSD to it in encrypted form. Anybody with a PDF reader can get the low resolution version, but getting the high resolution version out requires opening it with Acrobat and extracting the attached file with the required password. You can do essentially the same thing with any password utility and WinZip or similar program to package the two files together.

     

    That approach is cryptographically secure -- hackers can't work around the password..."

     

    That's funny. Brute force password cracking has been around since the dinosaur days. Anyone can google "pdf password recovery", "pdf password cracker" or other similar phrases and dozens of pages will result. There are plenty of programs that can perform brute force password attacks on Adobe Acrobat files just like they can for anything else. Although I've never used such programs, I see no reason why they wouldn't work if an unscrupulous person had a fairly decent computer and some free time.

    Monaco Optix XR - EZ Color activation problem

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    Obviously the person you bought it from will not be able to help you; it may not have been his intent, but he sold you an already activated product. Your only recourse now is to get your refund while you still can or contact Monaco directly at: 616-803-2100.

     

    I don't think a company can "prevent the resale of its product"; once a person buys something, s/he has every right to sell it if they no longer have use for it. Most software companies require the seller to delete all copies from his/her computers and that's it; some require the seller to fill out a transfer of ownership form or to resell the software only with the original hardware that it came with, but it can be done. I've bought software off of eBay and saved a ton of money, but I was also very careful to establish that the person selling it was the legal/registered owner.

     

    I think you should return this one and try again. Like Patrick, I'm not a fan of the Monaco EZ Color bundle, but the X-Rite Pro system is very good.

    Retrieving lost images...

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    Ouch! Sorry for your loss. It would help us assist you if you could list the programs you've already tried. Since you're using I-Match, I take it you're running Windows, yes?

     

    Mercifully, I haven't had to use any data recovery programs for quite a while, but in the past, I've had success using these:

     

    http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoverydatarecovery/

     

    http://www.diskinternals.com/

     

    http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

     

    You should definitely email Mario Westphal, I-Match's developer; I'm sure he'd be very interested in this possible bug in the program. He might also be able to offer assistance in recovering your data. Mario's contact info and the I-Match user forums are here:

     

    http://www.photools.com/

     

    Good luck.

    The DAM Book (and other workflow examples)

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    Hi Patrick,

     

    This has been my personal experience using Photoshop CS2 v. 9.02 on my Mac Pro with 3 400 GB HDs, a 250 GB HD, and the ATI X1900 videocard but *only* 2GB of RAM. I say *only* with heavy sarcasm because that should be more than enough horsepower to handle the type of work I'm doing, but often I am forced to go back to my old AMD Win XP box with just 2 300GB HDs, an ATI X800 videocard, and 1GB of RAM because it is more responsive using Photoshop CS2.

    The DAM Book (and other workflow examples)

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    Hi Marvin,

     

    I think you are wise to wait for CS3 since CS2 is slow as molasses in the wintertime under Rosetta. Unless you have money to burn, you'll be better off waiting to buy CS3, which promises to be optimized for Intel based Macs and is only a few months away.

     

    Which page(s) of the book are you referring to; I don't feel like re-reading it just to answer your question.

    I'm going to the bookstore. Which CS2 books should I look at?

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    Great answers above. Find yourself a nice comfortable chair and take a look at:

     

    1. Ben Willmore's Photoshop CS2: Up To Speed.

     

    2. Shangara Singh's Hacking Photoshop CS2.

     

    3. Bruce Fraser's Real World Color Management.

     

    4. Katrin Eismann's Photoshop Restoration and Retouching, 3rd Edition.

     

    5. Katrin Eismann's Masking and Compositing for technique; websites like www.worth1000.com and various magazines for fun ideas and inspiration (i.e. Computer Arts, Photoshop User, Advanced Photoshop).

     

    6. Practice, practice, practice.

     

    7. Juergen Gulbins & Uwe Steinmueller's Art of RAW Conversion.

     

    I suggest that you not rush into buying too many books at once -- not only will that lead to sensory overload, but I doubt you'll have a chance to work through them all before updated editions are out. :)

    Try starting off with a very general, tutorial-style book like Scott Kelby's The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers and then look again at the others; buy one or two at a time. You might find that you won't need *all* of them as your level of knowledge changes.

    Nik dynamic skin softner VS Kodak digital GEM airbrush pro

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    Digital GEM Pro is easier to use and gives good and fast results for a plugin, but I agree with Patrick in that the *best* results are often those one develops oneself after months (sometimes years) of practice.

     

    Ronald is also correct in saying that most retouchers are loathe to reveal everything in their bag of tricks, but others (myself included) have no problem sharing our knowledge because we were once beginners too and realize that we wouldn't be where we are today without help and encouragement from more experienced teachers. That said, if you are serious about learning and don't just want plugins to do everything for you, a good start for you is to buy Katrin Eismann's Photoshop Restoration and Retouching book.

     

    http://www.digitalretouch.org/

     

    You should also take advantage of the free and generous advice of others on forums that are specifically geared towards retouching and restoration, not digital photography in general. Here are a couple:

     

    http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1006

     

    http://www.retouchpro.com/index.php

     

    Best of luck to you.

    Monaco OPtix XR "Colour curves cannot be loaded"

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    You didn't answer Bob's question -- I think he's correct; it's possible something got

    corrupted. Have you tried using Add/Remove to uninstall and re-install the software?

    Before you do, you may want to click:

     

    Start-->Run then type "Msconfig" without the quotes. Click on the Startup tab and see

    what's running when you boot. I'm not on my Windows machine right now, but from what I

    remember, Monaco has two or three running processes; the only one that isn't necessary is

    the Monaco Reminder (or something like that) which nags you when it's time to recalibrate.

     

    While you're in the Startup tab, make sure Adobe Gamma nor other similar apps are

    running. Un-check them if they are and re-boot. Make sure your monitor and video card

    drivers are both updated, installed and loading at startup. If you have kids who use the

    computer, check to see if any of their games knocked your color settings down (this

    happens a lot with older software); you should be running "millions of colors". You'll find

    that setting under display properties in the Control Panel.

    Need a good source for Corel Painter tutorials

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    Hi Sathish,

     

    The best Painter books, imho, are written by Cher Threinen-Pendarvis. Her Painter 9 Wow Book can be found at Amazon, among other places:

     

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321305329/103-6232543-8125438?v=glance&n=283155

     

    See if you can grab a copy at your local bookstore and browse through it. The tutorials are outstanding and cover a wide variety of techniques, including this type of work (it's called cloning from a photo, incidentally). You might also want to try some of the online tutorials at GFXartist.com:

     

    http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials/

    Adobe of Borg assimilates RawShooter

    in The Digital Darkroom: Process, Technique & Printing

    Posted

    Bob Michaels, I think you're missing the point. Noone here is bitching about or bemoaning Adobe's success. On the contrary, we're dismayed by their insatiable need to swallow up their competitors rather than compete on a level playing field. Why not let their products determine their position in the industry? Don't they believe in a free market economy? If GoLive and Illustrator and Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom, etc are so great, then why not let them compete on their own merits?

     

    Photoshop is my image editor of choice, but I can still recognize the unfairness of one company exercising monopolistic control over the entire market. Lack of competition is not a good thing.

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