NVMUG eNews 1/21/2006
Last updated 1/23/2006
Peachpit Meeting In A Box and Much More
The meeting started with the Peachpit Press provided Meeting in a Box. Then we asked Daniel Hollister to tell us about working at Small Dog. And we have Advice About Printers, what user groups are all about.
2. Peachpit Meeting In A Box - Photoshop World Boston 2005
1. Warren Walker Picture
Warren Walker brought in a picture of the perfect water lily reflected in the still water. It took him three years to find the water lily
- when it was at its peak of perfection,
- when the background was not cluttered, and
- when the lighting and water was just right.
Then he had to lean out from his kayak and hold the camera near the water to get the right angle. It is an excellent picture made even more perfect when you realize the effort involved.
Warren Walker and water lily.
2.Peachpit Meeting In A Box
Peachpit created Photoshop World - Boston 2005 Meeting In A Box to encourage Macintosh and Photoshop user groups to attend the March 22-24, 2006 Photoshop CSI (Creative Suite Instruction) in Miami or Photoshop World in Boston next year.
Some of the items in the box were distributed to our members at the meeting including candy, and fliers with excerpts from two "Peachpit Essential books for the creative community."
If you want to learn more about Photoshop World, go to:
www.photoshopworld.com
Two Peachpit books from the Meeting In A Box, "Photoshop Classic Effects" by Scott Kelby and "uptospeed Photoshop CS2" by Ben Willmore, were added to our library, and two copies of the books and two bags of popcorn were given to members through a drawing at the end of the meeting.
The box also contained a DVD with the presentations that were given on Photoshop at the Peachpit booth during Photoshop World - Boston 2005. The full DVD is available for loan in our NVMUG library.
We watched the first presentation on the DVD,The Idea Behind Curves
by Ben Willmore because the others were too advanced for most of us, and because this was the first presentation on curves that I felt I really understood well. I watched it three times before the meeting.
We used Daniel Hollister's iMac which he brought in a special carrying bag that made it lug-able. Geof Gonter provided the speakers.
In the DVD, Ben started using Photoshop and the curve adjustment. He guessed at the brightness of hands in a photo and marked where he thought they might be on the curve. Then he clicked on the hands to bring up a circle on the line showing the brightness. Command-click changed the circle to a dot that stayed on the line - You don't have to guess.
Pulling straight down from the dot, or using the down arrow, reduced the brightness to show more detail in the hands.
This caused other parts of the picture to darken, and created a flat spot along the bottom of the curve. We do not want flat spots or downward spots. Flat spots have no contrast, and all detail is lost.
Go to the middle of the flat spot, click and move it to the spot or end of the line that is furthest away - in this case the one for the hands. Then move it in a circle to create as smooth a curve as you can without flat or down spots. Ben says it should be a curve that a motorcycle could ride.
Now you can look at other parts of the picture, and fine tuning by clicking and adjusting for more or less light.
The original curve is the straight diagonal line. If an area is too dark, click on the curve line to mark the line and drag it up toward, or if necessary above, the where the diagonal line was. If an area is too light, make a dot and drag it downward. Avoid flat spots and downward slopes or the picture will not look right.
A slope that is more steep has more contrast. Ben showed another picture where all the picture except the moon was almost black. He clicked on a black area putting a dot near but not at the lower left corner on the diagonal line. He moved dots to give this little area a steeper slope and lighten parts of it, and the picture that had been hidden in the darkness appeared - adding both light and contrast. (Using a brightness control to change the brightness would not have increased the contrast so would not have done much to improve the image.)
An increased angle means more contrast and detail. It can be used to draw attention to that area. n the pictue below I made the curve steeper in the area of brightness that included Daniel Hollister's face to add more focus and life.
3. Daniel Hollister Working at Small Dog
Daniel Hollister and his computer by Hartley Jackson<
Daniel Hollister said one of the best benefits his job, which he has had for the past few months, is that he can take his dog to work. He is working at Small Dog.
Daniel said he apologized for missing the last few meetings, but he has been working Saturdays.
Daniel just got the new iLife with the new iWeb application a couple of days ago.
GarageBand now does Podcasting. Daniel says that, while you can do it with your built in microphone, he recommends buying a USB mike for $50 or so. Geof Gonter said there is a Logitec mike for about $30, and said there is a Samson available via online search for about $80. With GarageBand you can publish your own podcasts. The new thing is video, and photocasting.
I have listened to two interesting and fun Small Dog podcasts. The first was on the history of Small Dog, and the second on the Consumer Electronics Show, Macworld, and a discussion on the PowerBook and the new MacBook Pro. You can find them on iTunes.
The iLife applications, like the newest iDVD and iMovie require one or more large hard drives, and lots of memory. Daniel said that Small Dog will not let anyone out of the store with 256 Megs of RAM. You should have at least 512 RAM for every system running OS X, and Daniel recommends 1 gig,
He said the new iLife is wicked fast, you have to hold on.
There is also an incredible difference in the new iMac with the Intel chip. The first thing you notice in the new programs written for them is the speed. There is practically no wait for programs to open. He did not notice any difference in speed in Microsoft Office which has not yet been converted for the Intel chip. You might see a little speed decrease in Photoshop until it is converted. The casual users won't mind, but heavy users might notice the difference.
There will be a new professional product, Final Cut Studio, for the Intel chip Macs in March or so.
The new iMacs now feature dual display, so you can have your Photoshop tools on a 20" display, and the image you are editing on a 30" display if you can afford it.
There is not much difference in the price of new Macintosh computers. If you shop hard for a bargain, you may be able to save about $5.00 maximum.
Small Dog is not allowed to give educational discounts on Apple products, but they can give education discounts on Photoshop and other products. The Microsoft Office education difference is in the kind of templates, with student clip art instead of business templates. Veer-Tess was asked if she was a teacher, and the person with her quickly said she teaches people about dreams. She got the education discount.
Geof Gonter said iPhoto and iWeb are worth spending the $80. They work with Tiger or OS X 10.3.9.
Daniel showed the iPhoto full screen edit on his 20" iMac display which I thought was pretty awesome. He showed the one button effects which preview several effects on one page. Click multiple times to multiply the effect. Someone asked if all this could really be in iPhoto. Then Daniel showed the ability to compare two picture of the same subject on the screen in the largest size that can fit to decide which you like best.
Wifh iPhoto you can publish your photos on the web in .mac, then e-mail the address to friends and relatives. The grandparents do not have to have a .mac account to subscribe to your pictures of the grandchildren, and every time you update your end, they can get the changes.
Daniel showed iWeb templates of web pages, and clicking on Media to select photos. He typed in a new title, and heading for the text. There is a button to publish to .mac, and you can upload to other sites.
Geof said he feels sorry for the iWork people at Apple because iWeb clearly came from them, but Apple chose to add it to iLife instead of iWork.
If you buy a Mac after January 10 that does not have the new iLife, you can update for only $10.
Daniel said GarageBand has thousands of loops, and the processor opens a folder and plays that loop every time it is needed. It takes a lot of processor power. GarageBand comes with royalty free sounds for podcasting, and audio ducking. When you start talking, GarageBand fades the music out, and it fades in again when you stop talking.
There is a new live track on GarageBand.
iDVD now supports third party burners. If you are going to buy one, check Apple's site first, to be sure it is supported.
iDVD and iMovie eat up hard drive space. There are 250 Gig hard drives in new iMacs and you can get 500 Gigs if you want
Daniel said, Please back-up.
All hard drives die and you do not want to lose your music and pictures. Invest in an external hard drive to back up your stuff. You can get an 80 Gig hard drive for $96. Geof said that there are some brands, like Maxter, that just pushing the button on the front will automatically back up. A a number of different favorite backup programs were mentioned.
Veer-Tess she would like a class on if what to do if your computer crashes.
Stephen Farber said you can restore your stuff using Disk Utility. People recommended using it to repair permissions after an install or once a month to reduce the chance of problems.
Stephen said that if you have one of the new Smart hard drives, checking Disk Utility will tell you if it is fading. He learned that when the red thing comes up, you may have only one restart left before your hard drive goes.
Geof said that if you spill something on your keyboard, unplug it as fast as you can. Push the power button to turn it off. If it is a laptop, keep it straight up and take the battery out. The damage is done when the liquid hits the electricity or when water in the keyboard touches an electronic part.
Daniel showed his iPod which went through the washing machine. He dried it carefully before starting it up, and it works.
There are tons of podcasts about Maintosh. Someone said MacCast is a good one.
Daniel showed a humorous Saturday Night Live podcast about an imaginary iPod micro which gets updated several times until it becomes the iPod inivisa, so small you cannot see it. In another one Bill Gates talks about the wonderful new features that will be in his new Vista operating system, and each time he tells about a new feature he shows it in Mac OS X.
Comic Life comes as a free program on new iMac. It is only $20 to buy if, don't want to buy a new machine to get it. It puts comic strip voice boxes where you want them so you can enter what the people, or animals, in your pictures are saying. Geof said, in fairness, Microsoft has had this capability for the last four or five years, if you can find it.
Daniel Hollister by Gordon Alexander
Gordon Alexander sent me this picture of Daniel Hollister. It is the kind of picture I would like to be able to take.
4. About Printers - What Macintosh User Groups Are All About
I believe Macintosh User Groups are all about sharing information, getting help in creating wonderful products, and helping others to do more with their computers. I believe this is a fine example. It may not contain all the responses Veer received.
December 30, 2005 1:13:44 PM EST
Hi Hartley,
I'm trying to find a printer I can use with my ibookg4. --- not fancy, not expensive : ) --- If anyone out there in our users group might be selling one, I hope they will contact me.
Thank you! Happy new year,
Veer
Veer-Tess Frost
December 30, 2005 6:43:55 PM EST
Hello Veer,
In my opinion, stay away from any used printer. It doesn't make sense to purchase a used printer and have to buy ink for it. Go down to Costco (or Amazon.com) and pick up any Epson, Canon, etc and pay less for a new one than replacing ink for a used one.
You are at a good time for some great deals on printers, although none of them are that expensive. It's the ink that will kill the wallet! Check out some of the online specials at BestBuy, Circuit City or Amazon. Most have free shipping and will offer a full warranty.
Hope this helps. Cheers,
Gail M. Murphy
Wired One Consulting
December 31, 2005 1:19:43 AM EST
You don't say what you consider fancy or expensive, but you can get an Epson C88 color inkjet for $79.00 at Staples these days which should do most anything you want. Buying new will get you a guarantee and fresh ink tanks. There are also Canon & HP printers for similar prices. Inkjets are not cheap to run though, replacement tanks cost about $12.00 for color and $30.00 for black although you can also get generic ink carts for less.
If all you are doing is b&w text, then a laser is a better bet. They are slightly more to buy (although I have seen them on sale for $50.00) but the cost per sheet is WAY less than an inkjet. Cost per sheet runs about .03 cents as compared to .10-.15 for an inkjet.
Either way you will also have to buy a cable, since they never include one. For an ibook, it would be a usb cable.
Let us know what you are doing and maybe we can give you more specific recommendations.
Happy new year, hope this helps.
Barry Hayes
January 1, 2006 10:51:30 AM EST
Thank you Gail & Barry & Richard, for replying to my query re finding a printer.
What I've gathered is that, as a writer printing out a large amount of text, the investment in laser will be a big cost savings in the long run. Right now though, something to get me through a winter project is needed asap; I'll be in touch directly, and again, thanks so much! Veer
Veer-Tess Frost
January 7, 2006 1:12:33 PM EST
Hartley, this is to send you thanks,
I did (through Barry Hayes) find a printer, not his, but he sent me a link to a laser printer via staples ... at the next meeting if possible I would like to ask for tips on setup, etc. ...
this users group is a lifesaver! Veer
Veer-Tess Frost
