Big Blue Squid

Diet Coke break?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 16:49:00 +0000

This 'simple' cutout was to create more space between the letters, clean up the background and keep the team on the plant floor with the coke tins in the background. The final version was to be printed 1.5m wide so quality had to be maintained.

Give Me A Percentage!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 13:40:00 +0000

This shot by Aaron McCracken showed the cheerleaders perfectly but unfortunately the percentage sign on the last girl was slightly obscured by the arm across her chest.

For the final pic I repainted the t-shirt white, added the text, modified it to match the others, distorted it to follow the t-shirt folds and masked out the relevant parts.

You put the left logo in...

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 16:51:00 +0000

This image was to celebrate Arthurs Day but as it was for general press required a less obvious 'drink' element so the pint up close had to be removed. Logos were then to be added to the laptops and the Guinness logo changed to the Arthur Guinness Fund logo.

'Arthur' on the right of the image had his coat and shirt cloned as much as possible and the rest 'painted' in to fill in missing texture.

Avatars, modern day Smurfs.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 16:58:00 +0000

This is one of our photographers, Simon, who made the mistake of taking a holiday.

Pro Editing on a Shoestring Budget

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 09:58:00 +0000

Whether you're trying to recreate the state-of-the-art multi-screen workstation in your glass topped open plan office inside your bedroom at home or simply trying to create an effective workflow system you will need a minimum of equipment for professional editing.
While you can work with considerably slower equipment than that of a professional studio you will find it hard to justify the additional time required for image processing created by your inferior processing power.
The successful blend of 'cheap' and 'efficient' is the key to a fast workflow that won't infuriate you and keep your clients waiting unncessarily.

First we have to decide what sort of editing we will be doing. There's no point in purchasing the latest NVIDIA Quadro GPU if your workflow doesn't demand that level of power. At the same time you want to be sure you can process 1GB files without worrying about waiting 20 minutes for a filter to render.
Make a list of the processing you NEED to do. As an example this is my own specifications for work.
Transfer pics from camera to computer
Manage up to 800 JPGs per shoot
Choose up to 20 key images for post production
Post production on multiple images at once
Print images
Photo restoration
Creative post production - very large file sizes, upward of 1GB per image
HDR blending
Manage RAW images
32bit post production
Large image printing (file sizes upward of 1GB per image)
Green/blue screen editing

I would also LIKE to be able to add in some 3D editing using CS5 Extended but I don't have a commercial need for it right now so I will make a list of future upgrades:
CS5 extended
3D graphics processing

3D image rendering
Video animation
Video special effects

Using the profits from my home image editing I will expand my equipment to accommodate the additional capabilities I would like to be able to offer. In this way I won't over extend my equipment or offer the client a service I can't complete in an economical time scale.

Now we know what sort of editing we're going to concentrate on we can choose our equipment. We'll look at the professional equipment then find the cheap equivalent that will do what we need.

First stop, monitors.
Professional monitors cost thousands of pounds and you will need at least two. One for the main screen and one for your toolbars and additional working space.
One of the best professional monitor manufacturers is Eizo. Their monitors are 'colour calibrated' which simply means the colours you see on screen are the true colours as captured in the image. Their colour, contrast, brightness etc can be very finely tuned as well giving you full control over how the colours are represented onscreen. This is particularly important for the home setup where your ceiling or desk lights are not going to be daylight simulation or a specially chosen bulb with a specific kelvin.

What we need is the cheap version of Eizo, or at the very least a monitor with good colour calibration options. There's no point in spending hundreds of pounds on a screen calibrator (this is a device that attaches to the front of the monitor and reads the light output) if your monitor can't be adjusted sufficiently to make the changes recommended by the screen calibrator.

At the lower end of the pro spectrum from Eizo is their more affordable FlexScan EV2333W. At £299 plus VAT it's a great price for a 22" monitor with high quality colours and plenty of controls. It also has an Eco option which saves power therefore costing you less but be sure and turn it off if you're editing images as the loss in colour quality is noticable.
Your second monitor can be anything you like. Amazon sells basic monitors from £80. This is for toolbars, your music player etc while you're working on the main monitor so it can be as cheap you like. I chose a 19" monitor and rotated it on it's side to give me an upright view for lots of layers and a long history box.
When it comes to VGA, DVI or HDMI connections choose DVI or HDMI. DVI is more common at the moment in monitors and provides a faster higher quality connection than VGA. You will normally get both cables with a monitor that has both connections. Just be sure you get a graphics card that matches the connections on both monitors. (Many modern graphics cards come with 2 connection ports, alternatively you can buy a splitter).

Next you need a computer.

I've gone into bench marking in another post available here so I won't bore you with the technicalities all over again but the main points to keep in mind are processing power, RAM and hard disk size.
3Ghz is a good speed PC.
3GB or more RAM is essential (don't accept less, Windows alone requires 2GB).
300GB hard drives or bigger are required. Preferably get a machine with two hard drives. One to install software on and one to use as a scratch disk (working space for Photoshop).
An external hard drive is a good start of backing up images as well but don't be over charged by getting it with the computer. A massive external hard drive from a good brand name shouldn't cost you much more than £60.
A personally chosen mouse is also a good addition although most of your home-pro editing will be done with a graphics tablet but a comfy mouse will save you lots of pain in the long run. Pick a mouse that moves easily and feels comfortable. Try the mice available in the shops rather than online (even if you buy online later) and make sure you sit down to use it. Your wrist and arm will be in a completely different position when seated versus standing. If like me you have a mouse attached to your arm for around 12 hours a day you will want to be sure it's very very comfortable! Rechargable batteries are also a must or they will cost you a fortune. Avoid really cheap mice, they don't last. Equally avoid the £100 mice, I've worn out two top of the range mice from Logitech and Microsoft and my £100 keyboard only lasted a year as well. I now have a mid range wired keyboard for £30 from Microsoft and a mid range wireless mouse for £30 also from Microsoft.

Essential Toys
People without graphics tablets will tell you they are not essential.
People with graphics tablets will tell you they are.
I have a graphics tablet now but I didn't for years until my brother kindly bought me one as a Christmas present. At around £300 for an A5 sized tablet they are incredibly expensive and initially you will think completely hateful to use. After a week however you will quite like it. After a month you will love it and your clients will be very impressed with your state-of-the-art equipment. Two monitors and a graphics tablet with some vibrant wallpapers will always impress a client. (Other designers will be more interested in your movie character collection underneath your monitor).
High end graphics tablets are of course spectacularly expensive.
Click here to drool over spectacularly expensive.
In my office I have the (now very old) Intuos 3 with standard pen and tablet mouse. Additional pens and nibs are available but at around £50 each even the pens are expensive. It works well for me however and until I'm fabulously wealthy I'll be sticking with it.
I did use the Cintiq (see link above) and the latest version of my own tablet at the Wacom stand at Focus 2010, the photography show in Birmingham, England this year and the differences are incredible. The new pens are superbly responsive and give massive control over your touch. It is this level of control that gives you fast and easy artistic results, especially when painting. The latest equivalent of my own tablet is the new Intuos 4 A5 model. Around £300 it's still a considerable expense for the home user.
The new Bamboo models bridge the price gap nicely giving you an entry level price (and a cool toy to impress clients) but with good functionality. The basic 'pad' of the tablet can be configured to match your screen size so if you place the pen at the left edge of your tablet, your cursor on screen will be at the left edge of your screen. The bigger the ratio between tablet size and screen size and the more delicate you will have to be with your movements but even with my A5 pad and 22" screen it's easy to use. The new Bamboo models also include touch technology so you can simply use your finger, much like an iPhone. This model at only 10.5x7" is slightly smaller than A5 but at under £70 it's a no-brainer for pen touch editing and just plain coolness.

Playing with HDR and all things shiny

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:16:00 +0000

One of our photographers, Simon Graham was photographing the new Audi showroom this week including a selection of motors inside. All of the images were taken as HDR images to ensure the highest range of light quality and reflection. Taking the finished 32bit HDR image as combined in Photoshop (from JPEGs) this is the before and after with just 10 steps.

All at Sea

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 15:17:00 +0000

Things have been fairly busy with Photoshop work recently but mostly on the retouching side so much of the work can't be published. This project arrived this week however, the production of poster sized (over 4ft) images for a new office. The images were randomly shot to display the harbour and the ships with the full selection of JPGs arriving back with me. From there I designed a range of final images with differing finishes to compliment the variety of items photographed. All of the designs were completed within a couple of hours. This is a selection of the final images.
The first image above I particularly like. It resembles the old style images found on collectors cards inside cigarette packets, now only found adorning golf club walls in aging frames.

This design resembles those puzzles where you have to move the squares around to recreate the picture. The trick here is to break the image into sections and move them equally apart. Blending Options>Stroke gives an instant uniform border. It's also key to keep the branding on the ship visible.

I picked out three elements which could be found in the wider shot and tried them in varying positions around the image before settling on this one. Anything close to or on the top of the image took away from the leading lines running up to the control deck.

This design was very simplistic but included all of the elements required, 3 types of ship and a large harbour view. The smaller individual shots weren't strong enough on their own to make into full size images.

The original idea for this shot was to split it into two separate windows but after adding a centre line to test the idea I found I preferred it to splitting the image.

If it ain't broke... tweak it

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:45:00 +0000

Optimising your PC or MAC can be tricky enough but designing it to specifically suit Photoshop and your image workflow presents additional challenges. If like me you've already got a PC or MAC then you probably don't want to spend any more money on an upgrade which may or may not work. The best you can do is tweak the system you have now to get more out of it.

I've started with a list of questions which normally arise when trying to increase the speed of any software followed by a search on Adobe.com for technical notes (TechNotes) and e-mailed the knowledgeable people at National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) for their take on Photoshop memory management.

My initial questions are below:

Does Photoshop 'manage' memory or should I install a 3rd party memory manager?
What graphics card should I install and will Photoshop use all, some or none of the memory onboard the card?
How big a scratch disk do I need and will I run the risk of wearing out that drive by constantly reading/writing to it?
How much RAM should I have?
How much Virtual Memory should I allocate to programs over background tasks?
Can I test the efficiency of Photoshop after I make system changes?
Are technical specifications for Photoshop memory usage available?
What features should I enable/disable in Photoshop to speed things up?

My searches on Adobe.com led me to the following articles:

Optimize performance of Photoshop CS5 and CS4 on Windows 7, Vista, and XP
Optimize performance in Photoshop CS5 and CS4 on Mac OS
List of tested graphics display cards for Photoshop CS4
List of tested video cards for Photoshop CS5
GPU and OpenGL Support in Photoshop CS5 and CS4
Photoshop CS5 64-bit benchmarks

The first thing to do is work out how to benchmark your system, aside from the obvious changes of seeing filters apply quicker and images load faster I want to be able to definitively say whether a change has made a difference.
John Nack in his blog mentions a couple of benchmarking tools but if you don't want to go down that route the easiest test is to choose a typical file you would work with (typical being the normal size of image you would shoot, download and edit) then choose a filter or range of edits to perform on your image. For consistency you can add these functions to an action (Sample actions used for benchmarking are here) or simply repeat them manually. Choose a complex filter that will tax your machine sufficiently to see a real difference.

In Photoshop open the Window>Info (F8) panel
Click the panel menu then Panel Options...
Tick Scratch Sizes, Efficiency and Timing
Click OK
You can now see these settings in the Info Panel. When you perform a function in Photoshop, the time taken (in seconds), efficiency of memory use and scratch disk space available will be shown. Some filters such as Unsharp Mask, Gaussian Blur, etc. use only processing power so if these run slowly you need a faster processor or to adjust your PC settings rather than your Photoshop settings.
Working with large images, multiple images or files with multiple layers will test your memory and the speed of your scratch disks.

For my own benchmarking I'm using the Photoshop Speed Test
Following the instructions I have set my History States, Cache Levels, Memory Usage and Processor Usage according to the Read Me file. To access these settings go to Edit>Preferences>Performance

The Read Me file says that no other program should be running when benchmarking but I will be leaving my background programs running such as Skype and anti-virus as these are the minimum programs which are ALWAYS running whenever I am using Photoshop. To close these would be to create a false benchmark for my personal system.

Test 1: Default Benchmark Settings
Windows XP Pro SP3 (32-bit)
Intel Xeon CPU 3.00Ghz
2.00 GB RAM
For the stopwatch I used the stopwatch feature on my iPhone.
Test 1: 1 min 43 seconds - DEFAULT BENCHMARK SETTING

From this point onward I will make a change to the settings or system and rerun the test from a reboot. A reboot clears the RAM and temporary files so to keep things consistent I will have to reboot after each system change.

Test 2: Run FreeRAM XP Pro
Normally I run FreeRAM XP Pro to manage memory while using lots of programs. On a busy day I can have around 10 programs running with up to 25 tabs open within FireFox and occasionally Internet Explorer at the same time. FreeRAM XP Pro manages this heavy memory usage very well but does warn that it can slow certain programs down. I rebooted with FreeRAM XP Pro on default settings, launch at Windows startup and AutoFree: Automatically optimize to balance speed and memory.
Test 2: 3 mins 21 seconds - FAIL

Test 3: Change Windows System Properties
Right-click 'My Computer', left-click Properties
Take a note of the RAM for your computer. (e.g. 2.00 GB RAM)
Under the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings
In the Performance Options dialog box click Advanced tab
Check Processor Scheduling is set to Programs
Check Memory Usage is set to Programs
Under Virtual Memory click Change
Here your system is most likely set to System Managed Size
If your computer is old or very well used it's quite common for RAM chips to fail. The whole RAM stick may not have failed but individual failed chips will contribute to slow performance and system freezes. If you know your machine should have more RAM try swapping the RAM sticks with new ones to boost performance.
The Paging File (Virtual Memory) is physical hard drive space used for processing information when there is insufficient RAM. RAM and the Page File can only be accessed independently, never at the same time so there is a delay between accessing the RAM and accessing the Page File. We can boost performance here in a number of ways. The first is to dedicate a hard drive to the Page File. Choose a fast hard drive that is not accessed very often. My system is by default set to C:\ drive with a custom Page File size of Intial Size: 2046MB and Maximum Size: 4092MB.
I clicked on D:\ then chose System managed size
Now drives C and D can be used for Page File access.
The more drives you can spread the Page File across the better your performance will be, but do not spread the Page File across partitions or Fault Tolerant drives as this will slow performance.
Ideally you want to put as much RAM into your machine as possible and lower the Page File access as much as possible. Turning off the Page File will cause your system to crash occasionally as it is used for other things as well as memory management though.
Detailed information on profiling your personal system can be found by clicking here.
For myself I have added drive D:\ and set it to System managed size. The system will require a reboot after you change these settings.
Test 3: 1 min 43 seconds - NO CHANGE
While there was no change in results for this test, the additional memory will definitely come in handy when working with larger and multiple files. It's also worth noting that defragmenting your hard drive will speed up Page File access but only if you defrag the Page File - this DOES NOT happen when running a normal defragmentation. For details on how to defrag the Page File click here.

Test 4: Bigger Tiles
Bigger tiles is a plug-in that ships with CS4 that will improve the redraw time of your images on screen. It requires more than 1GB of RAM to be installed and can be good news if you work with large or complex images. As a Picture Editor this includes me but the majority of my work is minor fixes to multiple images (50-100 per day) so this plug-in will actually slow my system down. Installation instructions can be found here. For the purposes of the test though I will install it to see the results.
Test 4: 1 min 28 seconds - 15 SECONDS FASTER

Additional tests from Adobe relate to working with specific file types, how you preview and work with images and hardware. These are all useful settings and it's worth tweaking the options that relate to your workflow and type of image production. The primary tests above are the first tests I can perform without upgrading my hardware.
With an OpenGL graphics card already running and turned on in Photoshop (Edit>Preferences>Performance) I am utilising the memory on the graphics card. Other options such as defragging your hard drives and running system cleanup are also explained on the Adobe page but I perform these regularly so I won't see an increase in speed from running these now. Lots more information can be found on tuning your MAC on this page as well including details of the Bigger Tiles plugin and DisableScratchCompress which will significantly increase your Photoshop performance on a MAC.

In conclusion additional RAM will be the first upgrade I make to my PC to bring it up to 4GB unless I move to Windows 7, 64-bit in which case the amount of RAM available is limited by your motherboard RAM chip spaces and your budget.
My additional memory manager slows Photoshop down substantially.
Changing the Windows Page File settings improve memory usage for large files and multiple files or when working with lots of programs open.
The Bigger Tiles plugin speeds up redraw times substantially but making lots of smaller changes to multiple images may be slower.

Make mine a pint

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:21:00 +0000

These shots (by John Harrison) were taken for the anniversary launch of Tennants lager. The shots were deemed too risqué so the skirt was lengthened and the top raised by painting in additional fabric before adding shading and softening the cleavage line. Finally the 'T' logo was added and weathered using a custom created brush to give the water damage effect in line with the other damage on the barrel. The layer was then given a new blend mode to match it into the colour which conveniently let the sand shine through making it look even more attached to the barrel.

Face Up To It

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:05:00 +0000

New business card portraits for a local client.

Quick Switch

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 07:52:00 +0000

This quick fix was to make a copy of the first image (top) but with another lady on the left who was photographed later. The only tricky part was bending the new arm to fit the pose, I suspect Puppet Warp in CS5 would have come in handy there but I haven't upgraded yet...

Minx Airlines

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 07:42:00 +0000

Shot (by John Harrison) for Anglewise to promote the new Manx2 flights I've changed the lighting on the catsuit to make it more sleek looking, enhanced the sky and adjusted the lighting on the plane to make it stand out more. The models skin tone and hair has also been deepened to make them stand out from the background.

Formula 1/3

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 07:47:00 +0000

Shot in the street (by Marie-Therese Hurson) this is Andy Hawthorns new race car. It was taken just outside his garage and we didn't have room to move it so I removed the background completely and created the zoom effect background using 'render clouds' and the zoom filter. A shadow was painted in to finish it off.

Poster girl

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 07:30:00 +0000

Shot (by John Harrison) for a drinks promotion we were asked to remove the girl at the front of the group as she was too young to be featured in an alcohol advertisement. I started by cloning out her head and legs then replaced the main part of her torso with the poster from the right side of the image. The final touches were cloning in the rest of the hand and painting in legs to complete the body of the man behind the girl.

True blue

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 07:10:00 +0000

This was a straight forward sky enhancement using a mask and cloning in new tree edges. The sky colour was selected using 'replace colour' then masked to keep the colour enhancing to just the visible sky areas.

Saturday morning oysters

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:59:00 +0000

I took these images during a walking tour for Belfast City Council which included a stop at Mourne Seafood Bar. The lady trying the oysters is Sheila Dillon from the BBC Good Food programme. Originally shot in colour I changed them all to black and white, removed a distracting ventilation grill on the shop front and cropped the images to suit the layout. The final print is hanging in the Mourne Seafood Bar in Belfast. The only posed shot was of Andy Rae, the owner, standing in the doorway.

Diet Coke Break

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Mon, 31 May 2010 15:45:00 +0000

A new project for Coca Cola called for a combination of PR/artistic imagery showing 'Coke People' so working with John Harrison he shot the people in a range of poses in their new bottling plant with a view to Photoshopping some of the images.

These are a selection of the shots.
In this shot I've selectively removed the colour to leave a black and white background with the red lighting remaining on the bottles which were originally clear plastic. The face has been enhanced slightly as well.

In this image I've cropped out the light in the background, reduced the green hue of the image and boosted the red to give a stronger glow on the face. Admittedly it looks better in print than on here. Fly away hairs have also been removed from the left side of the face.

In this shot I've straightened the image, removed the price tags and replaced the green hue with a red one. The plastic wrapping on many of the cans has also been cleaned up.

This was a simple case of skin smoothening, sharpening and eye enhancement:

Montage Season Returns

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Sat, 15 May 2010 12:21:00 +0000

Commissioned once again for montages I was asked to place a number of images onto 800x600mm display boards for a trade show stand by Balmoral Furniture. Iris Colour did the print proofing and final printing, producing excellent high quality boards.
Each board was designed to display a specific venue:

Netgear ReadyNAS 1100

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 18:25:00 +0000

When it comes to choosing network storage there are more options than I really care to consider before purchasing. It can be a huge investment however and I can personally recommend it as essential to anyone who stores a large number of images.
Compared to storing images on a USB drive connected directly to your computer, network storage allows you a range of additional facilities such as automated backup, shadow copying (automatically making multiple copies of the same file for backup purposes) and remote access, all without taking up resources on your computer.

In a medium to large scale enterprise storage system there are a huge number of factors to consider, especially cost. Some of these storage units can be £15-£20,000 each and that's before you add any hard drives. These units are simply controllers, dedicated computers designed to access huge volumes of data quickly and efficiently.

For the home office user, semi-pro or low budget pro there is a superb range of new options in terms of desktop storage. For my own particular needs I needed a low cost archival solution. This is for images that don't need accessed too often or too quickly. I don't need to spend a fortune on a system with multiple points of network connection to handle large loads, i.e. hundreds of users accessing the same images at the same time. I simply wanted disk space, and lots of it. I also have a rack unit (a box or tower designed to hold computers and other peripherals built in such a way that they take up small amounts of vertical space, such as the unit pictured above) so a rack mounted version was also required.

In 2007 NetGear released their ReadyNas units, cheap, Linux based machines designed specifically to give you storage space. Don't panic though, you don't have to understand or even use Linux to consider one of these units. Kepping Linux as their operating system NetGear have built a computer that has four slots for four hard drives in the front and a row of lights, one for each hard drive plus some more to show the status of the entire unit.
On the back is cooling fans, USB slots and network ports.

Despite the Linux basis Windows can see the files via My Network. In server editions of Windows you can point drives names to the ReadyNas units using Distributed File System but they can't be replicated automatically.

Out of the box you simply slide the unit into your rack (the desktop version simply sits on your desk) and you plug it into your network.
Add a keyboard and mouse (USB) and monitor (VGA) to the slots on the back and you're ready to go. Alternatively you can install the RAIDar software included in the box and access the unit remotely right away. Logging in using the default username and password you're presented with a wizard for setup. Beyond the wizards which setup just about everything for you the interface is very simple. It looks like a webpage and has every setup option you need including built-in backup options for adding an external USB drive. Note, you can't install additional software on these units so if your backup software requires a client version on the target drive you won't be able to use it. Instead you will have to rely on the backup options built into the ReadyNas control panel. If you use CA Arc Serve you will be able to target the drives for backing up without installing the Linux clients, saving you some licensing costs.

The early version of this interface had a few bugs, some of which requried a complete format and rebuild but the new versions of the software that have been released have cured all of these so far. The later units also have slightly improved interfaces and are faster to use.

I currently run 3 of these units, each differing slightly as time progressed but all updated to the latest version of software. Software updates are managed by the interface and downloaded directly to the unit making upgrades easy with little down time.

Access to the units is handled via 'RAIDar', a small software scanner which looks for ReadyNas units on your network and displays their current status and software version. From this software you can then enter the individual management console of the unit you want to work on.

A range of RAID options are available giving you peace of mind if you have the budget for the loss of storage. In a 2TB unit you'll actually get 1.33TB with RAID 5.

4TB units are now available and given the reduced costs of hard drives these are excellent low cost units for large storage volumes.
It is easy to fall into the trap of buying large scale storage and putting all of your images into it but don't forget to use these machines as second copies or easy access copies of your images.

Either buy two units and keep replica copies on each machine or go for tape backup. If you value your images, tape backup is expensive to setup but cheap to run. Once it's running a copy on tape and a copy on disk will give you peace of mind and fast access.
In the ideal solution you want a third copy, either a second tape or second disk. If recovery time is a major factor then a second disk is always faster than recovering from tape.
It's worth noting that the ReadyNas units have hot swappable disks and good tech support although phone queue times can be a little long.

Ultimately these units are easy to setup and use. They're not the fastest units for disk access but they're superb value for money if you need large storage quickly without requiring a degree in disk management.

Microsoft Digital Media Pro Keyboard

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:10:00 +0000

This is my third keyboard in two years (I wore the other 2 out) so I know I need a robust keyboard that won't install a pile of background tasks with the included software. I was also looking for a wired keyboard that didn't come bundled with a mouse. I'm quite picky about mice as the wrong one will quickly leave you with a sore hand from muscle cramp. I like the wireless mouse I have but the keyboard remains static so I don't need the hassle of changing batteries.

When it comes to choosing a keyboard buying online is quite difficult, you can't get a feel for the keys, how quickly they respond or the pressure required to make them work.

Previously I've had a Dell and Logitech keyboard in the office and several more in my home office so I wanted to be sure of getting the right one.

Lots of new innovations are available for the photo editor from dedicated image editing functions to Photoshop quick keys but as I have the main functions for Photoshop mapped to my Wacom Tablet I don't need the extended functions on the keyboard. Ultimately I need something hard wearing and comfortable for 10 hours a day use. Anything else is simply a bonus.
Budget is also a consideration as I don't expect the keyboard to last more than one year I don't want to be spending much over £50 on it.

Out of the box the keyboard is chunky, it's not massive on the desk but it's certainly not cut tight around the keys. This is good in that it doesn't slide around the desk. The removable wrist rest is a good height giving relief the wrist tendons during long periods of typing or using quick keys and the keys themselves are light and responsive but make a sufficient 'tapping' sound to let you know you've hit the key without annoying co-workers.

The keyboard features a few extras including a slide bar, volume controls, media controls, 5 mappable keys, 7 quick keys for common software applications and the F keys are dual function, working with the majority of Windows applications.

The dual function of the F keys is useful for desktop work such as e-mailing or MS Word but in Photoshop the F keys themselves are used frequently for Actions so I rarely use the secondary option.

The sliding bar is mapped to the zoom function but is useful only when your cursor is already on another tool, the crop tool for example, you can't deselect the crop tool without cancelling or applying the current crop so the sliding bar is handy to move in or out.
The sliding bar has only one setting though so when you push the bar to the top it springs back to the centre, this is one zoom change, push again to zoom again. This makes it a last resort for zooming, especially when you compare it to the likes of the tablet where sliding your finger up the bar is like a laptop control pad giving you tiny or large levels of zoom change depending on how quickly you move your finger.

The 7 quick keys are My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, Mail, Web/Home, Messenger and Calculator. This can be remapped but their names are printed under the buttons.
5 more buttons simply number 1-5 are available at the top. These can be favourite websites or in my case additional applications like Skype and Nokia Phone Manager. With extra room around the keys you can also add your own stickers (not included).

Ultimately this keyboard has lasted me well so far, is rugged but easy on the hands. It's not the most futuristic looking or stylish keyboard but it will get the job done and at under £20 it's superb value.

Note: this is a USB keyboard with a wire.

The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:01:00 +0000

It was some time before I realised that Scott Kelby was quite so 'big'. I had also thought this was the first book of his I had read but it turns out Scott is something of a celeb in the Photoshop world.

I initally bought his book to see if there was something I was missing in terms of how other pros use Photoshop when editing images but I quickly realised his books are much more than simple how-to examples with well chosen images.

As a quick background, Scott Kelby is a professional photographer and picture editor, he's also the author of the official Adobe Photoshop CS4 Classroom in a Book, the 'manual' for learning Photoshop before doing the exams. His training company, Kelby Training hosts a huge range of course material and he's also the President of NAPP where he advises regularly to members via videos, news and tutorials. To top it all off he's also the Editor-in-Chief of Nikon's Capture User magazine and Editor-in-Chief of Mac Design magazine.

His writing is clear, easy to follow and includes all of the necessary steps to professionally editing your images. Unlike many tutorial books there is a real sense of 'having done it before' rather than simply explaining how to do it. You quickly get the impression Scott has edited images this way himself commercially and it has worked well for him.

He's also not afraid to quote other Photoshop users and credit them with editing techniques he's borrowed, something else lacking in many books. This combination of bringing techniques together and real world experience makes his book a must for your library.

Each tutorial is grouped into chapters based on either the Photoshop tool or the type of image you're trying to edit. The tutorials are also then divided into two where there is a simple and complex way of producing the effect you're after. This combination makes the table of contents a very quick and easy source of reference for the tutorial you're after.
If you have all weekend to work on one wedding portrait for example, portrait retouching is explained in great detail with step-by-step photos. Equally if you need to e-mail a photo quickly the short version of the tutorial will get the job done in a few minutes, it won't have the same beautiful finish as the complex route but it's definitely ten steps beyond the original image and sufficiently good looking to impress your clients and family.

The book itself is comprehensive covering a wide range of topics, tools and image types, certainly more than enough for the beginner or intermediate user. If you're after a huge array of special effects or a special focus on weddings for example this is not for you, but if you need a starting point for editing your photos, a quick reference to improving your shots or some ideas for creative editing then it's a superb book and easy to read, not too technical but you'll definitely learn something.

Notes
This is general guide to digital editing but it's firmly based in Photoshop, not Elements. It is also quite an old book (2003) but it's still perfectly relevant. If you want a more up-to-date version however Scott has a book out for digital editing in Photoshop CS4:

HP L2245w Monitor

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:47:00 +0000

I've worked on LaCie monitors for a long time due to their colour calibration properties. Screen colour correction is one of the most important elements in graphics work so every colour I edit must be 100% accurate when preparing for print. Preparing for digital output however, there is a lot more leeway when it comes to colour accuracy.

Ideally I want every colour represented perfectly but the moment the image leaves my screen for the newspaper, magazine or client the picture will appear different on their screen. Ultimately the printer at their end will edit the image to suit their particular printing methods and styles anyway but if I'm in the right area they will have little or no work to do.

I started out by adding a HP LP1965 as a secondary monitor but quickly found the colour to be excellent and following the demise of my old LaCie I replaced it with the much cheaper HP model. For screen size I quickly upgraded to the HP L2245w and kept the LP1965 as a secondary screen.

For ease of setting up the L2245w is quick and easy to connect. It comes with a range of software including 'tilt and turn' drivers which run a small program in the background to allow me to rotate the screen and have the applications running rotate to suit.
I quickly found this unneccessary and a drain on background resources so I uninstalled it again.

The base of the monitor is heavy and is designed as a tray which is handy for all those desk items that roll around like batteries and memory sticks. The supporting arm moves smoothly and easily but the screen can be set at exactly the height you choose without any tightening or adjustment of the arm itself, you simply push the screen up or down to suit.
While the screen doesn't tilt forward too far it does go left, right and background ensuring you can get comfortable and avoid glaring lights around you.

If the screen is low to the desk and you reach underneath it you will quickly find yourself hitting the menu buttons, bringing up the on screen menu but this isn't an issue to worry about, I think it says more about my desk space than anything.

The monitor menu (OSD) is quick and fairly easy to use although if you're making a lot of changes it can be a little tiresome to keep going through each option in the menu to get to the exit button.
You can choose the location of the OSD within the menu which is necessary when using a colour meter that attaches to the front of the screen.

Colour calibration is quite good in that you can adjust the RGB channels separately but unlike the high end monitors the range is limited so you may not be able to adjust the channels to keep a colour meter happy.

This is where I resorted to a default of 6500k and let the software of the colour meter do the rest. With the high end monitors you get much more control over the channel range giving you precise colour calibration but equally you can expect to pay around £1000 for a LaCie or more for an Eizo.
The picture is noticably different but if you don't need 100% colour calibration then the facility simply doesn't justify the price. At around £160 direct from HP the L2245w is a superb screen, bright clear and easy to manage on your desk. The menu is a little slow to work through when you're making a lot of changes but once you're setup you won't have to refer back to until your next calibration.

When viewing the screen, brightness and colour don't change dramatically depending on your viewing height so it's quite good for viewing images while editing. Side to side it's not great but this isn't a big issue unless you're getting several people around the screen. In this case the 22" size will allow them all to step back and look over your shoulder.

With a screen resolution of 1680x1050 and a refresh rate of 5ms it's not bad for games but certainly not top of the range. For working with large images, it's a bright and clear screen and easy to use.

Connections are DVI and D-Sub plus 2 USB. The DVI is HDCP compliant so you can play protected Blu-Ray content. The USB ports are a bit fiddly to reach so they're only useful for mainstay items like a card reader or USB speakers.

Lastly, the screen has a power saving function so you can power down the monitor without interrupting workflow by keeping Windows Power Saving turned off.

All in all it's a great screen for the price. You won't have full colour control for high end imaging but with the price you can't complain. It will leave you with plenty of room for tool bars and when combined with a second smaller monitor it's superb for large screen viewing and editing.

Specifications
Display Size: 22in
Resolution: 1,680 x 1,050
Display technology: TN
Brightness: 300cd/m2
Contrast Ratio: 1000:1
Response time: 5ms
Connections: DVI, D-Sub, 2x USB
Adjustments: Tilt, height, pivot, rotate
Dimensions (W x D x H): 20.3 x 11.9in x 14.6in
Power consumption: 65W (max), 2W standby
Speakers: No
Warranty: 3yrs on site
Security: Kensington lock
VESA mounting: Yes

Wacom A4 Graphics Tablet

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:46:00 +0000

The graphics tablet is one of the most common post production tools in digital editing. A well established name in graphics tablets, Wacom have a reputation for quality products.

Included in the purchase was the tablet, mouse, pen and pen holder.

Originally I thought the tablet would be very easy to use, just like drawing with a pen on paper but it really did take some getting used to. The pen is quite sensitive but once you've had a little practice it's an extremely fast and accurate way to work on images. Included with the tablet is the appropriate software and drivers including sensitivity options so you can customise the feel of the pen and mouse to suit your style of work.

Used by graphic artists and designers, tablets give you back that feeling of control over your artwork that you lost with the mouse. While I can draw, paint and edit very quickly with the mouse, the pen and tablet mouse give you much more control.
Personally I've customised my inputs (mice & pen) to give me increasing levels of control. My normal desktop mouse will move the cursor 20 pixels at a time allowing me to move the cursor quickly around my dual screens.
The tablet mouse will move the cursor 5 pixels at a time, which is great for closeup work like editing eyes or general painting and colouring.
Finally the pen moves one pixel at a time giving me 100% precision, excellent with the pen tool or tiny details.

The tablet mouse is quite surprising in that it is wireless and requires no batteries. It works entirely by touch on the surface of the tablet, as does the pen.

One of the big benefits of the pen are the pressure options, included in Photoshop. By increasing pressure on the pen you increase the amount of ink, paint or other tool output. For example, choosing a brush and turning on 'pressure' in the brushes tool box you can hold the pen in one spot and watch the paint 'flow' off the brush, just like it would bleed on real paper.

This can be a superb way of building up layers of colour, makeup on a models face, hair highlights or working with masks quickly opens up all sorts of new possibilities.
One thing to note is that the pen cannot be rotated to a brush that isn't round cannot be turned just by turning the pen. An additional pen is available with the rotate function built in but it's pricey.

To increase your workflow speed the tablet includes 3 matching buttons and a 'slide bar' on each side of the tablet suiting both left and right handed people. These buttons can be customised to suit your working needs.
The slide bar is most often set at the zoom function and simply sliding your finger up and down the bar controls the zoom level. The other buttons can be ALT, SHIFT, CTRL or any other key you choose but when matched up with the most common tool you'll use, e.g. the brush they're invaluable time savers.

If you do a lot of painting, changing the slide bar to the brush size control can be useful but not very accurate.

When you combine the tablet with a media keyboard you'll find yourself capable of setting up a very fluid workflow for editing and manipulating images. All in all the Wacom tablet is a superb piece of kit I can highly recommend.

Pros

Easy to install
Customisable
Good build quality giving a long life
Wide range of sizes to match monitors and desk sizes
Improves speed of work and precision
Wide range of pens available for specific applications

Cons

Gets dirty fairly easily (cotton gloves with the index finger and thumb cut off will reduce hand grease on the work surface)
Quite pricey initially but will definitely last for years
A4 is the minimum size I would recommend, A5 and A6 are too small to comfortably work on for long periods
Additional pens are expensive

New Website in Development

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:25:00 +0000

Big Blue Squid and Photoshop Made Easy are now under construction as a single project. They will bring my blog onto a website along with a range of tutorials, reviews and freebies to help others learn and improve their Photoshop skills so if there is anything in particular you would like to see drop me an e-mail and I'll do my best to include it.
The website will be completely free and will also compliment my new Photography for Beginners classes starting in April.

In the meantime I've started studying for the Adobe Certified Expert exams in Photoshop CS4. I'm not taking a formal course with the exam at the end but doing self-study using the recommended books then booking the exam myself so hopefully I will be qualified by the summer! If anyone else has already taken any of the Adobe expert exams send me a mail and let me know how it went and if there is anything you would recommend to make sure I cover all the topics!

Adobe Raise CS4 UK Prices by 10%

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Thompson) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:43:00 +0000

Adobe are set to raise the price of CS4 by 10% on the 1st July 2009.
According to Adobe this will bring UK prices in line with the rest of Europe due to the change in GBP/EUR.

To make this happen they're also dropping the Euro price by up to 13%.
The US prices will remain the same however making it an even worse deal of the UK compared to US prices.

Adobe's US store sells Design Premium CS4 for $1,799 - £1,098 at today's exchange rate. The new UK price will make the same software £1,578 (inc VAT) over here, a difference of £480.

Adobe have stated in their press release:
"Adobe seeks to price consistently across Europe to the extent that circumstances and market conditions make this possible, the current economic environment and currency fluctuations have made this challenging. This change to the CS4 pricing is intended to realign the UK with other European countries."

So if you're considering a move to CS4 now is the time to do it.