NVMUG eNews 5/19//2002
Last updated 5/19//2002
Digital Photography and Editing
Digital photography and editing quickly became the theme of last Saturday's Northern Vermont Macintosh User Group meeting in St. Johnsbury. The discussion started when Warren Walker brought in his Painted Trillium picture taken at the Seyon Ranch State Park in Groton. Phyllis Joy Hammond showed a card she had printed to announce her Gallery Opening for Traveling with Wildflowers. A flood of questions and answers on this theme followed, leaving no time to worry about not having a scheduled agenda.
Arlene and John Kimball came to the meeting to decide whether Arlene should use John's old Macintosh for the Internet and for editing photographs, or whether he should let her use one of his newer Intel machines. We let you draw your own conclusions.
1. Digital Photography and Editing
Warren Walker and Phyllis Joy Hammond with their art.
Warren took a picture of the trillium within 400 yards of the Seyon Ranch State Park building building, and will offer to display it with other art that is being displayed there. Warren made small changes to the image on the monitor, some contrast work, lightening and desaturating the background, using PhotoShop. He has synchronized his colors, so that he made the 8 x 10 inch print without test prints.
Phyllis invited everyone to her Gallery Opening, Saturday, June 1 from 2 to 4:30 at 3802 Lake Road, Newport Center, VT. She showed the colors in the original card, and the colors that did not look right on copies she made using her scanner and printer. This lead to a discussion of the Macintosh ColorSync process, and Epson's process, for taking colors as they come from the digital camera or scanner, and keeping them close to the same when displayed on the monitor and when printed. PrintShop 4 does not color sync accurately.
Warren is considering taking a white, black, and neutral gray target with him when he takes his flower pictures so that he can establish color and contrast curve adjustments for the images.
As Warren demonstrated, to judge how sharp a digital picture is, look at the diagonal lines. How large you can print a picture depends upon the number of pixels and the viewing distance, Warren's brother prints posters that look fine because you look at them at a greater distance. Pictures on the screen are displayed at 72 dots per inch, but you would not normally print at less than 150 dots per inch.
The Epson 6 color printer has lighter sienna and magenta colors so that flesh tones can be printed closer together than if heavier colors were used. A separate black cartridge is good for printing black and white documents without using up your color ink. Print a variety of pictures rather than print all your yellow flowers first. It does no good to have red left if you used up all your yellow. Using the draft setting speeds up printing and cuts down on ink usage.
With digital photography you can shoot as many pictures as you want to get the picture you want without a lot of cost for film and processing. You can preview the picture immediately to be sure that you got it, and can have it in time for use.
2. Older Power Mac 7500 or PC?
John Kimball used to use a Macintosh, but he needed a machine that was faster when running the Microsoft flight emulator software. He had tried running the program on a Macintosh with a PC emulator, and that just wasn't fast enough. He talked about having a 21 inch monitor in front, and two 19 inch monitors, one on each side. Calculating all those little triangles to update scenery on those monitors several times a second requires something faster than an emulator.
John, designed own system for flight simulation, and was in the commercial business including flight simulators for airlines. He now buys new equipment every couple of years because Microsoft writes new flight simulator programs and they require more power.
He also said that the price differentials were too great when you want to change individual equipment. For example, he could buy a Windows modem for $20 (Stephen said $29), and was told a Macintosh modem would cost $129. I told him that Small Dog has them for $72, and someone else said they are probably available cheaper on Deal Mac.
John also said Intel compatible monitors were cheaper, but then admitted that today any monitor will work on a Mac. Stephen said they always would with a cheap adapter.
Stephen once worked on PC repairs, but was not happy with it. He asked John what he thought about the quality. John said that in his years of using a Macintosh, he only lost one card, and that was a floppy disk. Since then he has had three Intel systems, and no hardware failures. But he said the operating system on his Macintosh was rock solid. The operating system on Windows machines was not as good and was getting worse until Windows XP. He said Apple was more innovative, but lacked marketing.
Stephen told about the Popular Mechanics
comparison between the $1,800 iMac and the $3,400 Sony which gave the iMac 40 points and the Sony 42. The author then said he preferred the Sony, but the iMac had a Super DVD drive which would have added greatly to the Sony's already nearly double cost.
Warren said that PC users seem to be most impressed with the excellent iMac LCD display, and the complete freedom of the arm to position the display. The arm is patented.
John said there are 900 programmers at Microsoft just writing game programs, that's what really tests the equipment. He said that there is much more software available for PCs.
Stephen said,Yes, but how many word processing programs do you want?
Midge said, There is nothing I can't find for my business on a Mac.
And Jim said the best Microsoft Office program right now only runs on Mac OS X.
The computer John gave Arlene to use is a 128 MHZ Power Macintosh 7500 with quite a bit of memory, a scanner, three disk drives, a printer, and tons of books. She needs a modem to get on the Internet. Stephen said this machine has the same architecture as a G3 and would accept a G3.
Arlene used to do some painting, likes portrait work, and wants her own machine to be able to work all day on a couple of pictures. She would probably need a new color printer, and they are not expensive.
Phyllis told Arlene, Keep on thinking for yourself. It is important.
3. News You Can Use
New GraphicConverter Manual
A new 144 page manual is available for GraphicConverter as an online download in pdf format for $10. Later, purchasers will be offered $10 off of the cost of the printed copy. I bought and recommend it. GraphicConverter is $35 shareware which offers most of the basic PhotoShop, but does not work with layers. It is an easier way for new people to start, and most users probably will not need the more expensive PhotoShop for professionals, but GraphicConverter does not do layers.
The manual in pdf format is available through
http://www.lemkesoft.com
Slow Telephone Lines
Warren Walker lives near Peacham and has had trouble with dropped Internet connections when his telephne line could not keep up with his 56K modem. He adjusted his connections downward to 36k. Since then he connects more rapidly, and has not been dropped
If you send to much, it may bounce
Jim Jackson reporting sending several pictures at once, and having them bounced back by the remote server because it would not accept messages that large. He had enclosed several pictures with reduced size and pixels for e-mail. He resent them two or three at a time and they went through no problem. They also did not take as long to receive.
