Digital

       Dilemmas

Hugh McLean-bsme, thb.

What is good enough?

I went to Office Depot to pick up a cartridge for my printer - actually it is a well worn path strewn with dollar bills. I gave the clerk the slip of paper with the printer cartridge number, and the clerk went into the storage room to find the required item. The cartridge was put into the store bag, I paid for it and went home to install it in my printer. Upon opening the box, I discovered that the cartridge was not the one that I had marked on the slip of paper that I had given to the clerk. I took the cartridge back to the store with the sales slip and confronted the clerk that gave me the cartridge. I told the clerk that the cartridge was not the correct number that I had written on the slip of paper. The clerk responded - with no apology - ‘well it’s close!’ In this case ‘good enough’ was not acceptable to this customer.

Photoshop presents a digital dilemma with the ‘what is good enough’ question, because it seems like there is always something more you can do with the image to improve it. Sooner or later you have to say - I cant spend any more retouching time on this project - that is ‘good enough’. Sometimes a little is better than a lot. A little retouching to de-emphasize a wrinkle is better than removing it altogether. Digitally retouching faces can result in very different opinions as to what is ‘good enough’, as anyone who has ever retouched an overly self conscious and paranoid woman’s face, can attest.

When does 5 x 7 = 4-5/8 x 7?

I learned this the hard way - with a customer complaining that my 5 x 7 prints didn’t fit her frame. I used Photoshop 7.0 file> automate > picture package > (2) 5x7 and imported the images I wanted to print. Everything seemed fine. I printed the images and never noticed the discrepancy in the width. Photoshop scales the images from the length instead of the width - which means that only a 4x6 image will come out correct, and 4x6, strangely enough, does not even appear on the [document] [layout] selection list. My conclusion is that Photoshop 7.0 was not designed with the digital camera in mind - which should have had an algorithm loop to check the width instead of the length - since digital cameras tend to have a length to width ratio of around 1.5. The only standard image sizes that fit that ratio is 4"x6" and 30"x40". Sooner or later camera companies will ‘get the picture’ that the ratio should be 1.25 instead of 1.5. Kudos to Olympus that is ahead of its time. 4-5/8 may be ‘close enough’ to 5 for Adobe, but is NOT good enough for me. Amazing that Adobe could let that slip through. I started looking for an alternative and discovered “Print Wizard” - which, unlike Photoshop 7.0 - can spool to the Epson 2200 or the HP 7550, print standard sizes while saving paper, print the missing 4x6 size, and quickly knock out customer saleable prints while I am doing something else. I inquired about the spooling problem to Adobe and was informed that it could be done - but if the technique is so complex that you have to inquire how to do it - ahh well - you can use a steamroller to kill ants too!

When does 43.25 = 0?

Ans. When it is $43.25 extra paid for mPowertools.

I ordered the ACDC mPowertools package along with the upgrade to ACDC 5.0 by paying an extra $43.25 to the upgrade cost of ($29.95). Win a few - loose a few. This one was a looser. Locks up my computer and is pretty much redundant since I have XP operating system - which does a pretty good job with digital images to start off with. What I was actually looking for was a preview thumbnail of vector files, and also a way to convert them to bit mapped files. Adobe suggested that ‘Designer’ might do it. Oh sure - I love these definitive answers! mPowertools won’t convert my files either, and neither will the ACDC 2D plug in package. I do use ACDC 5.0 though - which I upgraded from the previous version because of the many ‘bugs’ in ver.4.0 - to make what is erroneously called ‘contact prints’ with the filespec attached. There are still bugs with 5.0 and I find myself using the ‘free’ program Irfanview to convert and rename my digital files instead. If you are just getting into the digital imaging on your computer and don’t want to spend any extra $ on ACDC before you know if you really need it or not - you can download Irfanview for free from www.irfanview.com..

Previous DPPA articles, misc. charts and graphs can be d/l at www.elegantimages.net - click on dppa box to bring up the menu. /*5/*

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