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Visit my NEW site and see some different photos presented differently.  It's a much slower site, due to the larger photos, but I hope you'll think it's worthwhile.  Let me know what you think.

How do I do it on the computer?

Sorry no images on this page, just information.

(This page was last updated September, 1999. The major changes are in the Scanner section.  Actually, there wasn't a scanner section till now, so it really is a new section.)

I've also added my CD-R recently.  Ok, it's been almost 2 years since I bought the CD-R.  It's absolutely indispensable.  How could I live without it?  I don't know.  I've made dozens of data CDs.  Without it I'd just not have done much creatively, since the need to store the information is essential.  And without the CD-R it would have to be on 100mb Zip disks, which are $10 each vs. $1-2 for a 650mb CD-R.  And the CD-R is not subject to magnetic influences as is the Zip.  Yup, this was a great move.)

 PC or Mac?

CD-R

Scanner

Programs

Plug-ins

Xaos Paint Alchemy

Eye Candy

Extensis Portfolio

Andromeda Screens

Printers

Epson EX

This page is really a series of personal opinions and observations that I've made over the years. They are my personal feelings on things that I've used. I make no claims at being omniscient. If you follow my opinions and have problems that I haven't encountered, I'll be very sorry. But that's all. Be sure to find other opinions and feelings about equipment and programs. Everyone has an opinion and most people feel strongly they are right. Personally, I know that I'm right, but your experience may vary.

  For some years I've worked with PC's, though I've had an Amiga A3000 as well. In November 1995, I was able to sell the Amiga and bought a Mac 7500/100. My recently upgraded (July 1999) PC has 256 megs of RAM and a lot of hard drive space. My Mac now has 210 megs of RAM, and a large hard drive also.

Personally, I prefer the Mac, but both do the job of digital imaging well and I don't really think it matters in terms of the output. However, the Mac interface seems to be much more stable and intuitive. I have Windows95 on the PC, and I believe that it's done a lot to equalize the operating system war. Perhaps, if I had to do it over, I'd just get a second PC and network them together. However, I have to admit, that since my days with a Commodore 64, I've been contrary, and thus am quite happy with a Mac. Now I can bitch about two operating systems.

Neither is perfect, though I really do prefer the Mac. But the Mac OS is showing it's age, and really needs a serious upgrade (I'm still running 7.6 as I write this, but anticipate upgrading to 8.6 in the near future). But this is not the place to argue about "religion," so I'll just leave it at that.

 In August 1997, I purchased a LaCie CD-ROM burner to make my own CD's. I've thought about this for a couple of years and the price finally hit a point that I could actually afford ($399). It's a Mac only piece of hardware, but the software is excellent and makes great ISO 9660 disks that are readable by both the Mac and the PC. I've made a number of disks of my photos and it's a godsend! How did I ever live without it. Since the archival life expectancy is between 30-100 years, I'm no longer worried about magnetic media going bad (I've had a number of disks "disappear" over the years). I've been transfering slides to PhotoCD for a couple of years now, but that's expensive. So, probably my next move will be to get a negative/slide scanner so I can scan some of my 20 year old, home processed color film before it fades completely. Which one? I don't know yet. My budget is shattered right now, so cost will probably be a factor. I'm told that the Minolta Plus model is quite good, so I might go for it.

Scanners

I've had a total of three different scanners.  I just bought the latest yesterday (September 15, 1999).  Let's go through this logically, chronologically. 

My first experience in scanning with with the HP Scanjet IIc .  It was very highly rated at the time (about 1995).  I paid about $1,400 for it at the time, which was a pretty good price at the time.  It was a 24-bit flatbed scanner that was really very good at the time.  While I didn't realize it at the time, the software was really bad.  And it didn't change for a long time (I've got friends with later models and they used, essentially, the same software).  I'd certainly never recommend the scanner unless it's a distinct discount.  However, I have to admit that except for one basic flaw (which is true for most flatbeds, I understand) it's been a very good workhorse).  The problem that's insoluble is "artifacting," that is little bit's of color errors that creep into the scan from the scanner.  Little dots of blue, generally.  Very annoying and time consuming to get out if you're a perfectionist.

The next scanner I got was the Polaroid SprintScan 35 Plus.  It's a 35mm film scanner.  It was quite spendy ($2,000), though it's now available for a whole lot less.  Since I've got about 3500 rolls of 35mm this seemed like a good idea.  On the whole it's been an excellent choice.  Of course, with hindsight, I'd probably not buy the same one again.  The software's the problem again.  It's really not very good.  However, the scans are excellent.  If I had to do it over again, I'd probably get the Nikon Coolscan with I.C.E., the software is much better, as is the hardware.  However, Polaroid's recently upped the ante, they've come out with a 4,000 dpi scanner, which really is stunning.  I might just go for the higher quality and suffer with bad software.

Finally, I've just bought a Umax Powerlook III.  Got it today (September 16, 1999), in fact.  It seems excellent, though I've already had some interesting problems (8x10 b/w negatives don't seem to show up at all on the scanner and I've had some problems with doing batch scans, but I haven't even checked the real manual yet, which is a computer file and not a paper book).  I got this with a couple of ideas in mind.  One is a better reflective scanner.  I'm tired of getting scans with artifacts and relatively low resolution.  This scanner is a commercial grade scanner.  It's 1200x2400 optical resolution.  It also has a transparancy adaptor for film.  Since I've been shooting primarily with a Mamiya 645 for the last 10 years or so, this makes since for me.  I really want to scan my negs and not the prints.  This is supposed to do it for me.  Right now, I'm getting frustrated, but I think it may be a SCSI problem and not a fundatmental problem with the scanner itself.  At least I hope so.  I'll try and get an update when I figure this out.  Or I'll post the notice that I've taken it back and gone back to the drawing board. 

 I've worked with a number of programs over the years on the PC side, but two stand out. The first was Aldus PhotoStyler. It was a really good program and I really found it easy to use. Much more intuitive than PhotoShop and it used far fewer resources on my PC. However, when Adobe bought Aldus, PhotoStyler disappeared. Lamented, but that's the way of the world in computers. I've now made the switch to PhotoShop . While I really like it, the program has a very high learning curve and is the worst resource hog I've seen on the PC.  I've recently picked up a copy of JASC's Paint Shop Pro 5.0 and it's really very good.  I admit that I haven't used it too much, being that I've got Photoshop and know how to use it pretty well by now.  However, for a list price of $80 this is a great piece of software.  It'll do much of what Photoshop will, though the interface is completely different.

Paint Shop Pro v4.12 (See above for my comments about version 5.0 which is no longer shareware, but strictly commercial software.  I believe that 4.12 is still available as shareware.) is a very good shareware alternative to Photoshop. It has a lot of the power and is very inexpensive. However, it's just not the same program. It lacks many features and is simply not a professional tool. That having been said, I know of many professionals who have it in their repertoire of tools. In the same realm is LView . I really like this program. If you have a need to make a series of thumbnails, for example, this program will do it quickly and painlessly. Again, it doesn't have a lot of features, but what it has is fast and efficient. The entire program is less than a half megabyte download. It installs in a very small package and operates very quickly. I use it frequently for things that don't need a high level of complexity.  Lview has been "improved" and is much larger, but will still fit on a floppy.  Still very good for basics.  I've played a tiny bit with ThumbsPlus 4, but had the nasty experience that it wanted to rename all of my hardrive partitions.  This screwed up my system and took my along time to fix.  I removed it immediately.  Lot's of people like it, however, and it's got some good features.  But not for me.  If you've had good luck and a good experience, more power to you.

Now, on the Mac, there's much less choice that I've found. In terms of serious digital imaging software, PhotoShop stands alone, and that is what I use. I have, recently, bought Macromedia's Xres. So far, I've been unimpressed with it. Another program with a high learning curve and the speed increase doesn't exist for the things that I use the most (special effects). My files aren't normally large enough to benefit from the speed increase when using the proprietary file format. My mind is open, however, so someday, I may just change my mind.  (This paragraph was written a couple of years ago.  Since that time Macromedia has discontinued Xres.  No great loss in the sense that it wasn't really much competition for Photoshop, but we users need for Adobe to have some competition so they'll continue to make Photoshop even better.)

What I've decided is simply that Photoshop is the program of choice. Sure, there are lot's of other programs, and I've played with a number of them (and I'll continue to experiment), but the bottom line is that I keep coming back to Photoshop . As much as I may complain and gripe, it's the best program to manipulate photographs with that I've run across. The power comes with a price, to be sure. But I really want that power. Ultimately, I've come to the conclusion that it's simply worth the price.

Photo Tools has a number of effects that are really fun to play with and some that are extremely valuable to both photographers and web design people. The most useful to me are the Text Tool, and the PhotoGlow, both of which you can see many examples of in my photos (used to create copyright and make it more legible).

Extensis Portfolio is a great cataloging program. It will take virtually any file and create a thumbnail for the catalog. Since I'm primarily interested in still images I haven't tried to fiddle with other formats, but I assume they work just as well. This is one of the few programs of its type that's cross-platform, which is great for those of us who have Macs and PCs. So far my only complaint is that when I put the catalog file on a CD of images, it won't enlarge the image when it's double-clicked. It looks for the original location on your hard drive, not on the CD, where you put it. There is a very expensive "patch" for this, but it's really for professional use. There is a very complex work-around, but I haven't gotten it from Extensis, yet.

My favorite series is the Gallery Effects. Thank god they are now included in Photoshop 4! They are real delight and you'll find lot's of them in my special effects section. They do an excellent job and give me repeatable results that look great.

Paint Alchemy has some really great effects. Take a look at the Thread Lady and the colored pencil effects in my special effects catagory. These are complex plug-ins and take a lot of power/time. They also have a fairly high learning curve. In many cases you will be unable to tell what you have until you actually create the final effect.

Andromeda was touted as a really great series of filters for producing excellent mezzotints, which is something that I use for my B/W posters. So far, I've been unable to get better quality than built in features in PhotoShop or the Graphic Pen. I suspect that if I can just get the settings right, it will be a valuable tool, but for now, I've had to put it on the back burner. Well, I've fiddled a little since I wrote the beginning of this paragraph. You really need to actually read the manual. Since I've done that my quality is much better and I can actually see some use for this plug-in. With it you can make a stochastic screen. Interesting, but it's a high end result and I'm not sure that I can explain it very well. Ok, maybe I can't explain it well, but since I wrote the previous sentence, I've used it even more. It's an excellent way of printing high quality photos. The major "definition" is that instead of using dots, the program creates "worms." There are not dots, but instead the program creates little, tiny, worms (CMYK) that wiggle around. I have several of these images on my site, though it's extremely difficult to see the worms. It's not really high enough quality to see the advantages, but it's really impressive in the 16x20 I had made. It's primary use is in printing.

PhotoLab is the most disappointing, but, just the same, I want to fiddle with it more and see if I can get more out of it. It's claim to fame is that it will correct for the orange negative mask of color film when you convert from a negative to a positive. When you use the invert tool of most programs, it simply reverses everything, including the orange mask, which is not correct. Since I don't have a negative scanner at this time, I don't have much need for it. The other parts of the plug-in are some filters (photographic styles) and color filters (sepia, etc).

Eye Candy is collection of a number of plug-ins. They range from drop shadow, water drops, swirl, cutout, inner & outer bevels, fur, jiggle, motion trail, glass and others. Each one has many presets and variables. These are well designed plug-ins and are easy to use. They would be of great use to a professional creator of web pages, but their uses are limited if one works with "whole" images/photos. They are no substitute for the work that Paint Alchemy can do, for example.

Ok, here's where it gets really interesting to me. There are really two methods of output for a digital imager. One is the screen (which is certainly relevent, but which I don't intend to discuss now). The other is output to paper. As a "classical" B/W photographer, that's what I've always wanted. Good paper output. And, until fairly recently, that's been the reason that I haven't gotten very deeply into digital imaging and why I've been so disappointed in it.

What changed my mind was an all day seminar (10 hours) with Dean Collins that I took in the fall of 1993. At the seminar he had a Kodak Dye Sublimation printer (one of the 7500 series as I recall). It was the first time that I'd ever seen a really good print from a computer. He also showed some 3x5 foot prints made from an Iris printer that were simply incredible. I've been off and running ever since. My problem has been that I really can't come near to affording the price of the Kodak Dye Subs (around $8,000 at the present time for one of their good ones). Soon after that I discovered the Fujix Dye Transfer printer (no relation to photographic Dye Transfer printing, by the way). They run $17,000 so I've been simply paying $15-20 per print. The quality of a good Dye Sub print is every bit as good as a conventional print. While it's a color printer, I've done some B/W which are excellent. And it's easy to get a sepia, or any other tone of monochrome print.

My laser printer is a Lexmark Optra R. I really like the 1200 dpi output. The quality is really nice. One of my favorite things to do is to change the dot shape and pattern and make some really interesting prints. I wish I could save them the way they print. But I haven't yet figured it out.

That said, I've begun doing something that's totally different and a lot of fun. The basic idea is to make a print on your laser printer (I suspect that an inkjet just isn't sharp enough for this technique). Now that's certainly simple enough. But, you really need to make sure that the print is suitable for such a rendition. Remember that you can't produce a true, photographic gray tone from a laser printer, so you need to either do a half-tone or convert it to a 1-bit file. If you do it right, you get a print that's really interesting and impressive. At this point, you have a nice, interesting 8 1/2 x 11 print. Well, take that to a Kinko's that has a "Zoomer" (call them and ask if they have one, I guess not all of them do, and not all of them work well, but it's certainly worth a shot -- as of a year or so ago, Kinko's removed the zoomer, but there are similar machines in many print shops, look around). For the extravigant sum of $2.25, your nice print can be enlarged to 18x24 inches. If you do this right, you can get some really impressive poster sized prints for very little money. And if you use some of the special effects (Gallery Effect, Graphic Pen is my favorite for this technique), your results can look exactly like a pen and ink sketch. A number of people have actually mistaken my posters for pen and ink drawings, which I find alternately flattering and amusing!

My latest toy is an Alps MD-2010 Dry Ink printer. While they don't say so, it must be a thermal wax printer. I've been very happy with it. However, it's not perfect. There is some banding, for example. I've eliminated most of the banding by having the prints heat laminated at Kinko's. That also protects the surface of the print and makes it look and feel just like a glossy photo. While it's not up to the quality of a good dye sub, it's remarkably good and a lot cheaper. It also has the feature that Alps claims that it's archival. This is a feature that clearly differentiates it from the inkjets, which have a very short life expectancy (weeks or a couple of months exposed to ultraviolet light). It's also relatively fast, it can do a full page 8x10 in about 10 minutes.

Ok, this is written in June 1999.  I got rid of the Alps about 8 months ago.  I bought an Epson EX, which is a 6-color printer made for photos (before you ask, I've only done christmas cards with it and the results are outstanding text).  The EX is simply a wide carriage 700, same printhead.  They both produce really beautiful photos.  They are every bit as good as the Kodak dye subs I've gotten, in fact in some ways they are even better, since the Epson has much better resolution.  There are some new model Epsons which have just come out (the 750 and 1200 replace the 700 and EX).  They're even better.  Still 6 colors, but much smaller dots.  Will I move up?  Nope, not for awhile.  The quality of the EX is so good that I don't really feel the need to improve at this point.  It's just enough of difference.  Maybe with the next improvement I will though.

Now, there is a serious downside to inkjet printers...  the ink fades quickly, depending on UV light and atmospheric contaminents.  There is simply no way around this.  You can postpone the inevitable by laminating, which will certainly help, but who knows for how long and under what conditions.  So, I have to make sure when I give away an inkjet print that people understand they are ephemeral and not permanent.  Enjoy them while you can and if you display it carefully, they might last for a few years, if you put them in the sun in Los Angeles, they might last just a couple of weeks. I gather that the light magenta ink is the first to go, which really screws up a portrait!  So far I haven't noticed any problems, but I take care to keep the prints from direct light and store them in the dark.  I've also laminated a lot of them, which should certainly help.

Since then, I've entered a lot of digital photos in the local county fair.  Won all sorts of ribbons ( several firsts, second, third, and honorable mention), including a Judge's Choice award that I'm quite proud of.  As of July 1999, I'm conducting a contest with my local user group (OMUG ).  It's going to be a pure digital contest and I'm trying to encourage young people and creative people.  I don't want just pretty pictures, I want people who'll push the limits. 

Well, that's enough for now.