soboyle www.oboylephoto.co

I'm wondering how others are mounting their inkjet prints for

framing, are you dry mounting the prints to a backing board, taping

them to a backing board? I've had a few of my framed prints start to

wrinkle if the humidity and temp changes. I had taped the prints to

a backing board in the top 2 corners of the print "hanging" them,

and then allowing the mat board to press the photo flat against the

backing board. Is there a better technique for attaching the print

without having to buy a dry mounting press? Spray adhesives work

well?

Looking at getting a laptop for on the road photo editing and file

storage, need best bang for the buck (ie as cheap as possible while

still doing a decent job). Looking for recommendations of brand and

model based on processor performance and display quality. I look at

a Dell ultrasharp 20 inch desktop display all day long at work and

am very impressed with the resolution and color quality, but have

never done critical color work on it. Are there any laptops with

that same quality display? Are they stable enough to calibrate

properly?

I had read that you should use a light gray card, as opposed to a 18% gray card, the reason is that the 18 percent card is farther down the luminance scale and can be inaccurate when using it as a white balance reference because noise can affect the white balance setting.

 

I am refering to Jeff Schewe's article on adobe.com relative to using abode camera raw for raw file processing. article here.

 

http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/ps_workflow_sec3.pdf

 

Printing a card seems to be a very innacurate approach since you will be at the mercy of your printers color accuracy and neutrality. I'm looking for a calibrated solution, albeit one that doesn't cost 50 bucks. Probably doesn't exist.

Is there an affordable alternative to the GretagMacbeth Mini

ColorChecker charts? At the painful price of $59 for a 3.25" x 2.25"

chart, there must be a more affordable way to get an accurate chart

for photographing and setting white balance of my raw files. They

sell a white only white balance card for $49, but that still hurts

the pocketbook to much.

I've seen this in CS myself, if I open the directory in file browser and preview the image, the preview is displayed, then it seem to correct itself a second or 2 later. I've noted that this happens when I first open a directoy and try to browse while photoshop is building thumbnails of the images, if I let it complete this job first then I dont get the tonal shift when previewing (or perhaps the tonal shift is already applied). Not sure what is going on, but I suspect it is applying the color space settings to the raw image data.

I think the external hard drive is a good backup solution in additon to DVD media, I just received my 200 gig external firewire/usb2 drive from New Egg, to me this is a necessary piece of insurance, keep a mirrored copy of my working drives on there, as well as doing dvd backups. Something to consider, I just cant seem to trust my entire photo history to those untried DVD discs, so a secondary hardrive solution is my answer to that.

I have photocal and have calibrated my CRT monitor (sony trinitron

E540 - windows 2000 pro OS) several times recently, color match with

my prints is quite good, but they are coming out quite a bit darker

than what my monitor shows. I'm using 2.2 gamma and 6500K color

temprature. I think the problem lies in the initial calibration

setting where you adjust the monitor brightness using the 4 black

patchs, I've been tweeking it until I can just just barely see the

left most patch. But I still end up with a monitor that is to bright

compaired to the output of the printer. Any thoughts on where I am

going wrong? Should I reset to factory defaults and start again?

I've had limited success scanning B&W negs with my sprintscan 4000

with silverfast software. I have a lot of treasured old tri-x negs

that are very dense, they were over developed when originally

processed, so when I try scanning with any of silverfast's negative

settings they translate into a very light positive image of very

poor quality, I have tried customizing film settings and tweeking

the curves to see into the dense areas more, but the results are

still less than stellar, it tends to get very contrasty. Any tips or

tricks that I am missing?

A trip to Lake Atitlan is worth it, rent a motor bike and drive around to the back side of the lake.

 

Visiting Tikal in the Peten is a fantastic experience, a couple days there at least seeing the ruined Mayan city, and yes, the cays off the Belize coast have some great diving and snorkeling, the blue hole is a great dive. One option would be to fly to Flores from Guat city, then travel overland to Belize city after visiting Tikal. Great trip.

I have a travelogue of Burma from my visit in the late 1980's, not much has changed since then. For me the highlight of the country was certainly Pagan (Bagan). A couple days there minimum to absorb the quiet atmoshphere.

http://www.oboylephoto.com/burma

I have to suggest the 50 lens, either the 1.8 or the 1.4, I use the 1.8 extensively when taking picture of my daughter who is now 22 months old, makes an excellent baby lens because of the possibilities of the shallow depth of field, and the speed is great for available light inside and outside. Got some great shots at a halloween parade, available light, 800 asa. At $69 for the 1.8 you can't go far wrong.

From Ethans responses and I think I am leaning toward the Solux light, it doesn't have the spikes that the Ott light has and their Clip on light is fairly reasonably priced at $55 plus bulb, and for my needs a large fluorescent fixture is impractical.

Since the Solux light doesnt have the spikes I assume it would be better than the Ott for evaluating ultrachrome prints? (Ethan).

I assume the Phillips fluorescents you are refering to are the small ones that screw into a incandescent socket.

They sell a natural light series of incandescents as well, not sure if they are the same color tempreature.

Any suggestion on a lighting setup to use for judging prints? I'm

aware that pro's have several lighting booths setup for judging

prints under different lighting conditions, but I would like to get a

light source that would be simple to set up (i.e. screw it into a

socket or 2), and a good all in one compromise for judging prints

under. Preferably something I can go to my local hardware or

department store and pick up.

All the books mentioned are good, I would put in for choice 2, Real world Photoshop, while it does cover digital workflow it is an excellent book on photoshop from scanning right through output on the inkjet printer. You can't go wrong with that book.

Beau, Have you had any experience using the Quadtone RIP with the Semi-gloss papers? I haven't tried it yet, but would be interested in hearing your experience if you have.

Having paid $700 for the 2200 I was hoping to skip purchasing the next generation of Epson printer, but it is becoming obvious that it is not the end all that it was touted to be when it first came out. Prints are fairly flat when compaired to the output of my epson 1270 dye based printer.

I guess the dye printers are getting better in archival life, if they will go 75 years, thats pretty good, that may be the compromise to achive a full tonal range on the print.

I've been printing quite a few B&W prints on my Epson 2200 using

Matte black ink on Enhanced mat paper. Even areas on the original

file that are pure black are printing out with a slight greyish

tone, I'm not getting nice hard punchy blacks. Any suggestions for

tweeks to the workflow to achieve better black printing? Different

paper suggestions? I'm currently testing the QuadToneRIP 2.0 for

Windows by Roy Harrington and the results seem quite good, neutral,

but the blacks need more punch. I could move to a different paper,

perhaps the semi gloss but wanted to see if I could get the mat

papers to sing for some portfolio prints.

Thanks, I installed it last night and ran a couple quick test prints, it looked very good at first glance.

Barry, I'm on Win 2000 as well, make sure you follow the instruction included to the Tee, incuding sharing your printer with the name specified in the instructions. That worked for me.

I'm going to look into the QTRGui that Richard mentioned, there is a review on Digital outback and the QTRGui looks like a better way to work with this rip.

I'd be interested in anyone elses experience with other Epson papers, like the semi-gloss and velevet fine art.

Anyone using the beta windows version of the QuadToneRIP 2.0 for

Windows by Roy Harrington? Was curious to see how much better the

prints will be vs the epson driver on enhanced mat paper. Any

problem related to the windows beta version being buggy or causing

crashes?

I have noticed from reading messages here that some people convert

their image to the printing profile just before printing. Is this

necessary or benificial? I have been printing right along without

doing this on my Epson 2200 with good results, SOURCE SPACE is set

to Adobe RGB (1998), the PRINT SPACE the profile is set to whatever

type of paper I?m using, then I select ICM and No Color Adjustment,

is this just a different way of going about it, or are there

benefits to making the conversion in photoshop as opposed to letting

the printer driver handle it?

Actually a better idea is to buy a used 10D, which is just a notch below the 20D but a much better body than the rebel (I know as I have owned both), and then you will have funds for some L glass.

I happen to have a 6 month old 10D for sale if you are interested in going this route.

Get the 20D with the 50 1.8 lens. Its an almost free lens, very fast for limited light shooting, and it is a very good performer, way better than the kit lens, and limiting your focal options, aside from what you might gather from reading here, is a good way to better your photographic eye. Then when you can afford it go for some more glass.

Since I purchased my Epson 2200 my Epson 1270 has been sitting

gathering dust, I was intending to use it as a dedicated B&W printer

but no one came out with inksets for the 1270 that I know of. Anyone

aware of a dedicated b&w setup for the 1270 printer?

Is there a way to quickly and easily get rid of exif data in a jpg?

If I'm creating files for public viewing on the internet I don't

necessarily want viewers to know about my camera data, date of

shooting, lens used etc. any quick methods?