Black and White Photography Blog, Vol. I

UPDATE:

I saw that it doesn’t overwrite anything so I installed it.

First problem - when I entered the key - it didn’t allow copy and paste so I had to write the key down and enter it manually.  It was rejected.  Then I realized it wanted the dashes to be input manually between the 5-digit clumps.  That worked.

Then I started Media Expression and opened one of my old iView Media Pro catalogs.  It immediately crashed…  XP still stable, but Media Expression wanted to know whether I wanted to send this to MS or not…

However, as I say - my old version of iView still works fine.

* * *

Last year, iView Media Pro was bought by Microsoft. Today I received an email with a free* upgrade to Microsoft Media Expression. There are now many flavors of what used to be iView. Here is a link to Microsoft Expression Menu.

You’ve got your Expression Blend, your Expression Web, Expression Design, and what I’m entitled to - Expression Media. Oh that’s right - there’s one more: Expression Studio which includes all of the above.

Yikes.

Since I hardly know what each one is supposed to do, I’m not going to yell, bloated software. But I did need an antacid after navigating to their FAQ page.

The real question - should I bite the bullet and do the upgrade from iView Media Pro to Media Expression? I guess I will - after doing a good backup of the current setup.

As a note - the iView catalog and templates are the basis for my current shopping cart - and all web galleries.

* Free (no extra money, but how much time? and am I losing or gaining functionality?)

Timing: In case you care about such things, I just printed my first 16 x 24 inch print with 4800. Before this the largest print I did was 16 x 20.Settings: b&w driver, file @ 300 dpi, bi-directional is off, 2880 ppi, drying time per head pass is .15 secs, firewire connection.

Total print time = 25 minutes.

***

So, I am looking seriously into replacing the 4800 with the 7800. There’s a bunch of things I need to figure out in terms of space. I guess any New Yorker would have that problem.

Also, I don’t even think they use the same cartridges. There’s no way I could keep sets of both cartridges. I’d better check that out.
Also, as far as the blog goes, I decided to use a different theme so that images wouldn’t be squished on pc’s with lower screen resolution.

***

Anyway, I printed seven 16×20’s today. The silver rag paper is not as instant dry as say an Ilford pearl, so I usually let them dry out in the open, with an air-can handy to blow off any dust / cat hair that might settle on it while it’s wet, and then they go into various cabinets to finish drying and what I call curing. It’s not that the printing takes that long, but some of these had to be rescanned and then re-photoshopped.

Tomorrow I have about eight 16 x 24’s to get through and then I can get to develop film that’s been piling up.

* * *

UPDATE:  I sent an 11 x 14 file to West Coast Imaging for them to print on Silver Rag with the 9800.  I should have it back in a week or so.  (Today is May 29, 2007)

Over the last few days - in addition to all the film experiments, I’ve been testing “PhotoKit Sharpener” from Pixel Genius.

Reason: my own sharpening techniques (and I’ve been using several including masking) are just not quite up to snuff. Or sometimes take too much manual manipulation.

Photokit Sharpener is for real. And it does make what to me is a dramatic difference in the quality of the prints.

It is geared towards a sharpening workflow. I haven’t gone through all the options yet - there are many - but I have been doing a two-step dance where first you sharpen the capture (in this case from 400 and 800 ASA negatives) - THIS TAKES A VERY LONG TIME ON A 5400 16-BIT FILE. I should give the specs on my PC before saying that - maybe later.

It is a non-destructive sharpener. Sharpening is done via a combination of several layers masks.

Then you go to step two where you get your print to the final size for printing with all your correction layers etc. and then you apply an OUTPUT sharpening which is geared towards your output device, in this case an inkjet printer. This doesn’t take as long as step one since you’re working on a smaller file. I’ve been doing 12 x 18 prints most of the morning at 240 dpi.

Since I just bought it - it means that a) it will save me time and b) give better results than I can do on my own.

Obviously this is not a review since I don’t have the time to write a good review. This is just a further note about what’s been going on in the Beckerman workflow.

One caveat. This thing wants a fast processor and lots of memory if you’re working on a 5400 dpi scan. So much so - that I may finally (after what - five or six years) have to upgrade the PC. It may be a sign because this morning the machine was making some weird noises; probably the fan was having some troubles. I opened the guy up and cleaned it thoroughly and hopefully turned it on and same noise - definitely from the main fan. I’m not saying that’s a reason to up and get a new machine - but it is time.