October 30-31, November 1
Radisson Hotel, Plymouth, MA

This past weekend was The Art of Landscape Photography with Ron Wilson-Plymouth workshop with Ron Wilson and Bob Bergeron. Eleven photographers registered for the workshop. Students were asked to bring 3 images on thumb drive to introduce themselves and their work.

Friday - 5:00pm

We met at the Radisson Hotel in Plymouth. After the meet and greet, we began a presentation of the "Art of Landscape Photography" power point. In the presentation we cover both the aesthetic and technical aspects of landscape photography. There were light refreshments available in the conference room. We discussed the details of weekend schedule and then called it an evening.

SATURDAY – Sunrise 7:13am - Sunset 5:39pm

We met in the Lobby at 6am to head out for the first morning field session, 6:30 – 10:00am.
The Saturday morning field session found us at Minot Beach in Scituate.

^{Minot Beach - Jim Foley}

After the early morning chill wore off and the sun came up everyone worked hard finding the light, which was especially beautiful as the sun illuminated Well Rock raking it with sidelight and turning it a golden hue.

^{Minot Beach - Khalid Alkhatib}

It was one of those moments that stays with you and makes the early wakeup call worth it.

From there on to Macombers Ridge in Marshfield on the North/south River estuary. This is a big space with salt meadow and tidal pools with an unusual milky pale blue.

^{Macombers Ridge - Dan Maclellan}

The landscape here is essentially flat with no vertical elements so it can be a challenge.

Breakfast was from 10:00 – 11:00am and was followed by individual instruction and image selection, and then from 12:30 – 2:00pm we had a group critique and review.

With fewer hours of daylight at this time of year we had a lot to fit in to the day. We began the afternoon field session at 2:00pm and headed into Myles Standish State Forest.

^{Myles Standish State Forest - Diane Collins}

Our first stop was at small unnamed pond right on the road. This pond is ringed with marsh which had given up most of its color, except near its root which had a crayon box like orange. Next on to Three Corned Pond where walking is very comfortable. It's possible to walk the perimeter without even getting your feet wet.

^{Ron takes a moment to grab a shot - Bob Bergeron}

As a big bonus, the surface of the pond was absolutely still. Working with reflection became a theme throughout the weekend.

^{Myles Standish State Forest - Ron Wilson}

From there we headed to East Head Reservoir near Headquarters.

We drove to a cranberry bog with adjoining creek and pond.

^{Cranberry Loop, Carver - Bob Bergeron}

The cranberry harvest had completed prior to the workshop, but there is plenty to photograph in the bog especially when the leaves turn to crimson, a color they retain until spring.

It looked like there was the possibility of a good sunset, but I've not found many locations on the south shore where it is possible to photograph the setting sun over water. We stopped at Sampson Pond.

^{Group Photo - Ron Wilson}

The pond’s surface was like glass and the sun was setting behind us, but the clouds in the sky were getting some light bouncing back and they picked up some subtle tones of magenta.

^{Sampson Pond - Dan Maclellan}

SUNDAY – Sunrise 6:13am – Sunset 4:37pm

Everyone managed to “fall back” and meet at 5:00am in the lobby for the Sunday morning field session from 5:30 – 9:00am. Powder Point in Duxbury is a favorite location of mine and is one place I can go and photograph sunrise and sunset over water. This morning there was some cloud cover, which made the light very flat.

^{Powder Point Bridge, Duxbury - Khalid Alkhatib}

Even with conditions somewhat unfavorable, there were some good monochrome images made of the bridge which offered some contrast in an otherwise bland landscape.

From there to Round Pond, one of many conservation trust properties in Duxbury. While the light was not good for the beach, that same low contrast diffused light was the right light for photographing in woodlands.

^{Round Pond - David Lieu}

Even after “Priscilla” had blown a lot of foliage off the trees during the previous week, there was still good color to be found. The pond itself was edged with yellow leafed shrubs and high bush blue berries with dark red leaves, all reflected around the edge of the pond.

I've been here myself several times, always seeing the photographic potential. On this morning I saw that potential materialize.

Breakfast was from 9:00 - 11:00am and we spent Sunday afternoon reviewing and critiquing a selection of images chosen by each attendee. Viewing some 50 images can be very instructional and inspirational, seeing what others found in the same location reveals how differently we all see the world and is an important part of the learning that happens in a workshop setting. We wrapped up the weekend by 4:00pm on Sunday.

All members of the group worked hard and the group dynamic was a cooperative and friendly environment.

*************************
STUDENT PHOTO GALLERY

*************************

Hi Ron and Bob,

Thanks so much for a great weekend. I really loved the experience, met some very nice people, and always enjoyed your guidance and suggestions.

Diane Collins

*************************

Hi Ron,

I can't believe how much fun and enjoyment I had last weekend. It was truly a very memorable three days. You and Bob did awesome job of presenting Plymouth, Mass. When I left I spent the rest of the afternoon at the art show presented by the cape guild. Congratulations on your award in the art show.

John Benoit

*************************

Thank you both for a wonderful weekend workshop. I came away with some great images and am still working on several of them.
Despite the weather, we got a lot accomplished and I really enjoyed the camaraderie of a wonderful group of fellow photographers.
Even the shots that didn’t turn out as I hoped have taught me what I need to do next time.
Thanks again.

Susan Simon

*************************

What Resolution?

Does that “Print Size” button under the Photoshop Magnifying Glass tool give you night sweats?
What resolution do you save your image at for web viewing? 72ppi? 72dpi? 96? Does it matter? What is the difference between DPI and PPI anyway?

In this post I’ll explain to you the difference between PPI and DPI and what someone means when they tell you they need a file “at 300PPI” I’ll also help you to get the “Print Size” button to ACTUALLY show you your print at print size! Grab your monitor and a ruler/tape measure, and hold on to your hat.
 

An In-Depth Doctoral Level Treatise Comparing, Contrasting, and Elucidating the Distinct Differences Between DPI and PPI.

For all intents and purposes, there isn’t any….
PPI stands for “Pixels Per Inch,” DPI is “Dots Per Inch.”  PPI is generally used for imaging devices (cameras, scanners) and monitors, while DPI refers to the resolution of printers.  An image file itself has NO INHERINT RESOLUTION, it has a number of pixels for width, and a number of pixels for height.  The PPI “resolution” of the image is meaningless.  It is the pixels that matter.  And the DPI of the printer. 

If someone asks you for a 300PPI (or DPI) file, ask them what the final print size is, because of that pesky "Per Inch" part, you don't know how many pixels to give them if you don't know how many inches they need to print.  I'm also always being asked things like: "I need a 5MB file."
Again, that means nothing.  Pixels are king, the only thing i need to know, is how many pixels do you need. If you need a 5x7 at 300PPI, you've told me how many pixels you need, 1500x2100, if you just tell me 300PPI, i have no way of knowing what size file you need.  5MB is indeed a file size, but it has nothing to do with the resolution of the image.

We use wet process photo printers, they expose the photo paper with RGB lasers for continuous tone printing, there are no actual “dots” that make up the image (unlike inkjet/dry lab printers) but for optimum quality, these photo printers expect files to have enough pixels to cover 300DPI at print size.
To make an 8x10 print, the file should be no smaller than 8*300=2400pixels by 10*300=3000 pixels, 2400x3000.  You can go into Photoshop, change the resolution setting to 72PPI…. As long as the pixel dimensions stay 2400x3000, your 8x10 will be at 300DPI… Changing the Resolution setting, while keeping the pixel dimensions the same, doesn’t resize the image, it just reshuffles the rulers, and tells you how big the file will print if printed at the resolution you chose.

So if a client calls you up and asks if you give them a file a 240DPI, tell them “Absolutely!” Then ask what size the image will be printed.  If it’s a yearbook photo, say it’s going to be printed 2 ¼ x 2 ¾, at for 240 DPI you need to provide them with a file that is 2.25*240 X 2.75*240 or 540pixels by 660pixels.

What is the standard for monitor resolution? Or the web? 72PPI? 96PPI?

There isn’t one…. 72PPI was a standard for the ORIGINAL Macintosh’s 9” screen. Why 72PPI? Because the Macintosh’s screen was meant to work together well with Apple’s ImageWriter printers which printed at a resolution of 144DPI, double the screen resolution.  Apple kept its larger screens at 72PPI so their users could (as long as they were still using ImageWriters) have an accurate representation of what they were going to get out of their printers.

Where did 96DPI on Windows machines come from?

Yes, that’s a screen cap from Windows XP, yes, it reads “DPI,” even Bill Gates finds PPI/DPI confusing….
Why 96? Because it’s 1/3 more than 72…. Makes perfect sense right?

Comfortable reading distance tends to be just under arms’ length, Microsoft figured most people were further than arms’ length from their monitors, about 1/3 further away.  A monitor that is further away, needs to display text larger for it to be comfortable to read. About 1/3 bigger.  If you have a 72PPI monitor set up to mimic the look of printed text, that text will be tougher to read, so we’ll design our programs to display text (and icons and stuff) at 96PPI (excuse me, I mean DPI)

72/3=24, 72+24=96

Now, monitors have just gotten larger and larger with higher pixel dimensions, that’s why XP had that DPI adjustment box, if the icons and text on your monitor are too small for your aging eyes, just up the resolution from 96 to 120 or so… in Windows 7 they decided to ditch the whole PPI/DPI thing and make it easier for everyone…. “Make it bigger, or biggerer”

Your monitor doesn’t care what PPI (or DPI) your image is set at, neither does the web, all they care about are pixels.  And the number of pixels in your image is determined by how big you want the image to look on your screen, or what size it needs to be to fit your web design.  I save web images at 96PPI out of habit, but if I have a 600pixel hole in the web page to fill, it doesn’t matter if the file resolution is set to 72, 96, 300 or 5000PPI….. as long as it’s 600pixels wide, it’ll fit the hole…

Photoshop “Print Size” why doesn’t it show me the image…. At print size?

Because Photoshop doesn’t know how big your monitor is, or what its resolution is.
But don’t worry, I’ll explain to you how to tell Photoshop this info.

“Print Size” was accurate when your Mac Classic was hooked up to your Apple Imagewriter, it hasn’t been accurate since then unfortunately.  I’m typing this and screen capping these images on a 24” monitor.  If I open up a 5x7 (@300PPI) image on my screen and click the “Print Size” view and hold a ruler up to my monitor, the image actually measures 5” by 7”

Open Photoshop right now, create a new document 5x7@300 (1500pixels by 2100pixels), click “Print Size” and grab a ruler.

How did you make out?

Probably not very well, because Photoshop assumes your monitor resolution is 72PPI. 

The first step is to make sure your monitor is running at its “Native Resolution,” windows calls this the “Recommended Size” for this 14” Eizo monitor, the Native Res is 1920x1200.

Write down whatever the WIDTH of your screen is in pixels, 1920 in my case.  Now measure the width of the actual screen, not the diagonal (how monitors are marketed) and don’t include the frame around it, just the screen itself, round to the nearest decimal.  My 24” monitor is 20 7/16” wide, 7/16 = 0.4375 call it 20.4375”

Now we’re looking for our monitor’s resolution, its PIXELS PER INCH, we know how many pixels it has, 1920 and we know how many inches wide it is, 20.4375, divide and we get our resolution!

1920/20.4375=93.9449 call it 94PPI, a lot higher than 72!

In CS6 the adjustment is under “Edit,” “Preferences,” “Units & Rulers”

I enter my calculated PPI under “Screen Resolution,” “Print Resolution” should be set to 300 (or whatever DPI your printer requires)

An inch is an inch!

Inside Out: The New Bedford Fishing Industry Through Industry Eyes

Many local journalists (and Discovery Channel/National Geographic tv crews) have captured New Bedford’s working waterfront from a journalist’s perspective.  This New Bedford Art Museum exhibit takes a different tack, and showcases the work of artists who work in the fishing industry. 

^{L-R: Phil, Serina and Alan}

Phil’s work documents the shore workers and the hard, thankless work they do.  He is currently the plant manager at Bergie’s Seafood and is a past president of the New Bedford Port Society.  He has been chronicling the shore-side activities for 40 years.

Serina’s work focuses on the objects in the industry and provides an intimate look into her family’s business.  For three generations her family has been in the propeller business.  Her grandfather started the business over 75 years ago, and her images capture the tools of that trade, many of which have not changed since the shop opened.

Alan Cass began his career scallop fishing in 1966, served in the Marines for 4 yours and went back to fishing in 1970.  He has captained several vessels since 1976 and has taken photos offshore for most of his life.

The exhibition runs at the New Bedford Art Museum in the “Regions” gallery, from August 4^th until the 28^th and the opening reception will be August 13, from 6-8PM.

^{An image of Pablo we printed and mounted for Phil}

DON'T PANIC - they aren't... very lost...

During our testing, upgrading from Windows 7 to 10 caused us to have to re-enter our LP Digital studio username and password, and we lost access to projects in digital studio.

The reason for this is that to make downgrading BACK to your previous version of windows easier, Microsoft renames your %USER% folder and creates a new folder for Win 10.

Your project and order files still exist, but they’re in a place that Digital Studio can’t find them.

SOLUTION:

Copy the LabPrints folder from: C:\Windows.Old\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\

Select “Labprints” right click on it, select “copy” and then right click on your desktop to paste a copy of the folder to the desktop.

Delete your defunct LabPrints folder at: C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\

Now take the Labprints folder you copied to the Desktop and drag it into that same directory:
C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows

If everything worked as it is supposed to, when you start LP Digital Studio, all of your projects will be back.

They say "those who can, DO; Those who can't, TEACH." Dean Collins was a man who could do both.  In 2005 cancer stole one of the brightest lights in our industry.  A commercial photographer and educator who had an ease in front of a crowd and a knack for explaining photographic concepts.

Whether you're a working professional photographer, artist, or hobbyist, the videos Software Cinema carries are an invaluable resource. 
"The Best of Dean Collins on Lighting" is a 4-DVD set covering the basics of studio and outdoor portraits, model portfolio creation, swimwear/fashion photography, and product photography. 

While Dean primarily worked with chrome (slide) film, photography is physics, and physics hasn't changed in the last few hundred years.  though the equipment (and hairstyles) may seem "dated" the basics, and advanced concepts Dean is teaching are universal in photography.

F11 is F11 no matter what camera or media you're using.

How do you light a scene so that the white backdrop is black? How do you make a black backdrop white? How can you make a colored background of intense pure light on any backdrop? All of these questions or more are answered by Dean's "Chromazones" system.  What Ansel Adams did for Black and White photography with his zone system, Dean does for color photography.  We have many advantages as digital photographers that chrome shooters didn't, we have instant feedback (granted they had polaroid backs that could give them an idea of the final product) and we have control after the fact to correct our captures.  But why correct after the fact, when you can get things correct the first time, in camera?

If you feel the "Best of..." DVD set is too much of an investment to make now, at least check out Dean's "Live at Brooks Institute" seminar from 1991.  It's worth it just for the entertainment value, Dean really was a funny guy with a great way of breaking down concepts.

Here's a small taste:

you can purchase the full video from Software Cinema, Dean Collins On Lighting - Live at Brooks Institute of Photography

Also available is a PDF file detailing his "Tinker Tubes" system.  A light diffuser frame system Dean developed for modifying light using readily available PVC pipe at a fraction of the cost of commercial soft-boxes and reflectors.  A Low-res version of the PDF is available for download, or for $19 you can download a high-res PDF and Dean's Studio Sketch Book, which details light and reflector placement for different lighting setups.

From time to time I'll pop in one of the DVDs to refresh my memory, review the process, or just spend a little time listening to the master.  Dean Collins was a friend and mentor and a voice taken too soon.

http://www.deancollins.com/
While photography itself may be close to 200 years old, pure education within professional photography is considerably younger. Even shorter are the number of years when a handful of dedicated photographic educators made their mark on our industry.

Starting in the 80’s a very special photographer, Dean Collins, had a very important impact on professional photography. For over twenty years he was one of the few working photographers who influenced the way an entire generation saw its profession.

He taught us to not only see the light, but to move it, bend it and most importantly control it, no matter where or when we were creating images. He was a brilliant educator and often referred to as the finest presenter in the industry. With a combination of wit and the ability to reduce complicated concepts to workable solutions, he was the “Dean” of Photographic Education.

As co-founder of Finelight Publishing, he set out to completely redefine the publishing of photo lighting materials, all while running his studio and conducting seven world tours. He developed easily understood methods of controlling light and understanding its behavior, single handedly raising the level of competency and quality among thousands of professional photographers.

In 1990 Collins began experimenting with electronic imaging, leading to a very close association with Adobe Systems. Software Cinema, a company founded by Dean, continues to produce a comprehensive collection of Photoshop and Design training resources for the digital imaging market.

Dean Collins battled cancer for 3 years and passed away on February 2, 2005.

He will be greatly missed, but his concepts and his passion for photography are timeless.

For each DVD purchased, a portion will be donated for the cure of childhood cancer with CureSearch.

CureSearch unites the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) and the National Childhood Cancer Foundation (NCCF) through a shared mission to cure and prevent childhood and adolescent cancer through scientific discovery and compassionate care. Website: www.curesearch.com

Dean Collins, 51; creative photographer excelled at teaching

By Jack Williams
STAFF WRITER
The San Diego Union-Tribune

February 12, 2005

When Dean Collins explained complex photography in simple terms, removing the mystique from sophisticated lighting techniques, his audience usually got the picture.

"He could hold them spellbound," said Roger B. Daines, president of Professional Photographers of California. "He was down to earth, humble, and had a dry sense of humor."

Mr. Collins, who taught photography to private and commercial clients as the founder of Software Cinema, combined communication skills with extraordinary technological savvy and artistic sensitivity.

During a career spanning three decades, he photographed heads of state, entertainers and elite athletes and mastered multimedia presentations before the emergence of digital imaging.

"I like to think of him as being to photography what Edison was to electricity – a creator and an innovator," Daines said.

Mr. Collins, who recently received a lifetime achievement award from the Professional Photographers of America, died Feb. 2 at his home in East County. He was 51.

The cause of death was cancer, which was diagnosed two years ago, said his niece, Janet Anderson.

"No doubt about it, Dean touched thousands of people's lives in photography," Daines said. "He was not the person to keep secrets. If he knew how to do it, he would share it."

In December, some of Mr. Collins' friends launched a project to collect images for a photo book in his honor. The book, which includes expressions of appreciation for the impact Mr. Collins had on their lives, was delivered at Christmas.

Mr. Collins was born in Escondido and raised in Vista.

He graduated in 1970 from Vista High School and worked by day in an ice-cream parlor. Nights would find him studying photography in a printing studio.

He moved to Pasadena to shoot weddings and portraits. He furthered his education in photography by learning on the job and taking courses from Kodak.

"I loved it," he told The Tribune in 1987. "I learned photo science."

After he started a small evening lecture series in Los Angeles, Kodak took note. He was hired to give seminars in France and Germany. He also studied photography in Switzerland before returning to the United States, where he opened a studio in Lemon Grove.

In the 1980s, he operated Collins & Associates in downtown San Diego and launched Finelight Publishing with partner Gary Burnsand. By 1987, he was marketing instructional videos and manufacturing photographic equipment, the latter through a company he called Lightframe.

"Before computers and DVD projectors, Dean would give seminars with six slide projectors, all synchronized," Daines said. "It looked like you were watching a movie. He was a perfectionist – he never let anything go out that wasn't perfect."

As a photographer, Mr. Collins' corporate clients included Kodak, No Fear, Hyatt Hotels, Lexus, Nissan, the Washington Redskins and the New Orleans Saints.

In 1990, he began experimenting with electronic imaging, resulting in a 10-year association with Adobe Systems. In recent years, his Software Cinema firm, based in the Mira Mesa area, produced a comprehensive collection of Photoshop training resources.

Mr. Collins' honors included an honorary degree from Brooks Institute of Photography.

Survivors include his wife, Linda; daughter, Hannah; son, Dean Jr.; mother, Florence Marie Anderson of San Marcos; sister, Sharon Harrison of Gig Harbor, Wash.; and brother, Kip Collins of Vista.

A memorial service is scheduled for noon today at Sunrise Community Church in Santee.

Mary C. Wills, our customer’s Great-Grandmother, wearing a peacock costume designed by Flo Ziegfeld.  We don’t know a lot about Mary, she was C.H. Wills' 2nd wife, Wills designed the Wills Sainte Claire car in Marysville, Michigan from 1921-1927.  C.H. Wills had been with Henry Ford, where metallurgy was his specialty. Wills introduced vanadium steel for the production of the Ford Model T; it was the first the large scale application of the alloy. Wills was also a designer and is credited with designing the script "Ford Blue Oval" emblem that the company uses to this day.

Wills left Ford on his own terms and with a sizeable severance package of more than 1.5 million dollars, which he used to establish his own car company he originally named "Wills Saint Clair" – Wills for himself and "Saint Clair" for the Saint Clair River near which his new factory was located. Wills later added the extra e's, thinking that it elevated the cachet of the product.

Frank Scott Clark was a prominent artist/photographer in Detroit.

Photographer/Publisher Dundas Todd wrote of Clark that:
"Frank Scott Clark is one of the most consummate stylists in portraiture whom the American school has ever possessed.  His portraits have a supreme interest as examples of dignified design from which all the other trivialities have been eliminated and in which the great salient facts are stated with perfect appreciation of their value. His sense of form, too, is as true as his feeling for tone, so that there is no flaw in the harmony of his work, and there is no direction in which he fails to make his artistic intentions perfectly intelligible.  No doubt Clark owes much to his love of art. He has always been somewhat of a painter, and not later than a month ago, as we sat on the sunlit lawn that surrounds his little corner cottage, he expressed the desire to abandon photography and to take up painting, largely for pleasure's sake but seriously I looked at him, doubtful at the moment whether he really meant it. And as I gazed at his calm, strong and gentle face, on which the struggles of a long career have left no trace, but on which it is easy to make out, behind the gentleness, a resolute will that nothing can discourage, I realized that Clark would be successful in whatever he would earnestly undertake, while his strong, healthy frame would help him to be equal to many more years of work. The quiet enthusiasm, the persistent seeking after truth, the absence of affectation which distinguished the whole of his production, have made Frank Scott Clark an artist in the fullest meaning of the word. His work will always express a noble singleness of aim and the observations and beliefs of a man who went his own way."

Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., popularly known as "Flo" Ziegfeld, was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies (1907–1931), inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris. He also produced the musical Show Boat. He was known as the "glorifier of the American girl." Flo Ziegfeld is a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.

A couple of weeks ago we had a customer come in with 4 framed engravings.  He’d bought them at an antique store and had them hanging in his house, but age had gotten the better of them and he wanted us to scan them and “freshen” them up a bit.  We carefully removed the old prints from their frames to take a closer look.  Judging by the weight and composition of the paper, these prints likely date to the early to mid-19^th century.  The Images were originally published in 1751, engraved by R. Short and published by John Boydell, these prints depict French 74-gun warships captured in the Battles of Cape Finisterre, in 1747.

The customer works in a shipyard and so these images mean a lot to him, his interest is in the history and the fine detail in the prints.  Right down to the men on the Tops.

Side Note: The “Top” is not a “crow’s nest,” the Top is a platform1/3 to ¼ the way up the mast which serves as an anchor point for topmast shrouds on square rigged ships.  Shrouds coming down from the topmast to the deck would be at too shallow an angle.  The crow’s nest started as a barrel tied to the top of the main mast.  The barrel crow's nest was invented in 1807 by the Arctic explorer William Scoresby Sr.

The goal with these prints (what our customer asked for) was to take out the yellowing and stains of age and bring out the colors present in the print. 

This customer was extremely particular about how he wanted the reproductions to look.  We made several test prints and tweaked the colors channel by channel at his direction to give him exactly what he was looking for.

As a 40-year veteran of commercial photography and lab services, Bob Bergeron knows the tools of the trade, and for Fine Art Reproduction, the best tool is not a conventional camera. Hint: Art + Cruse = Profit

^{Bob rappelling while shooting for Ranger Rick magazine}

Bob started his photography career in 1970, leaving the U.S. Air Force, and putting in time at schools like the Rhode Island School of Photography, Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University and the Winona School of Photography, where he studied, taught, and shot alongside some of the best photographers of our time- names like Ray Cicero, Bob Gilka and Dean Collins. As a student he was hired to shoot the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics, and went on, in 1984, to start Tri-Color photo lab to serve commercial and professional photographers. He’s seen, and done it all, and he understands moving along with the times. He’s discovered the secret of getting the best Fine Art reproduction possible, and he’s sharing his secrets here: It’s not, as most photographers would have you believe, a high-end digital camera.

When it started, Tri-Color was a completely equipped commercial lab, with a full “wet line,” along with the latest digital technologies as they emerged. He’s had equipment like the Durst Theta 51, a machine only operated by a handful of the best labs in the country. He has Creo and Durst Sigma scanners, Frontier and inkjet printers, and still hand processes traditional B&W film.

For Fine Art Reproduction, however, he doesn’t use any of it. He uses the Cruse Synchro CS220-110.

“From a business perspective, I could capture large artwork by setting up a dedicated room, lighting, and using a top-end digital camera, but the Cruse system’s lighting is really what makes or breaks the deal. When you use a conventional digital camera and lighting to reproduce a painting, you always have sheen, specular highlights, and other flaws from the lights. You always need to spend time tweaking and adjusting the results. With the Cruse system the images need minimal adjustment or correction, it’s usually a few minor changes and you get a good first print. It’s really about efficiency and profitability.”

In the case of delicate and irreplaceable work, it’s also about handling the artwork as little as possible in the least destructive way. “We scanned a large map that was literally crumbling in our hands. With the Cruse, we just laid it gently on the table, and didn’t have to touch it again.”

^{Scanning the original 1977 R2-D2 prop construction drawings}

Bob has seen the results of the years of constant refinement and expertise on the system.

“We’ve seen it all here, and constantly have to work with client-supplied files of poorly captured artwork. The Cruse system and the Synchron lighting set a standard that nothing else can reach, and that’s the secret to our reputation for reproducing Fine Art: Start with the best capture, and that is The Cruse Synchron CS220-110."

^{Bob posing with gallery wrap prints for a hotel chain}

We specialize in providing oversize scans for the Reprographic, Fine Art Reproduction, Photo, Architectural, Cartography, Graphic Design, Educational, Military and Exhibit markets, producing the highest quality scans from original materials up to 48″ x 72″ in one pass, even larger with multi-pass scanning and stitching technology.

We’ve scanned everything from delicate, irreplaceable textiles to pinball tables and more.

The Cruse surpasses any oversized capture technology available, and in particular, surpasses traditional copy photography techniques.

Why use LabPrints?

LabPrints Digital Studio allows you to upload and order 1 portrait print or 3,000 4x6 proofs.  you can easily crop your image to the shape of the print size ordered, and set up online galleries for your clients (and their guests) to order from.

With LabPrints you can:

• organize and edit images for presentation and easy ordering
• design flush albums with ready-made templates
• build matted albums with mats from major album companies
• host events online with online storefronts
• post finished albums online for proofing
• create custom composites, greeting cards, memory mates and sports mates

Spend more time behind the camera instead of in front of the computer.

You can organize and edit your images, design albums, post events online and upload orders directly to us, all from within Digital Studio.

Learn the tools with online training webinars. The webinars give you the chance to view a live demo plus you'll be able to ask questions. LabPrints is also happy to offer free professional tech support.

Download the Installer

If you have a Mac running OS 10.7 OR HIGHER, please follow these install instructions.

Windows users Download LabPrints Digital Studio Here.

or click the "Get LabPrints now!" button below

You'll be presented with the page to download either the PC or Mac version of Digital Studio LP.
For Macs running OS 10.7 and higher, there are alternate steps. 
The PC version has also been tested under 32 and 64-bit versions of windows 7 and 10 and works perfectly.
Make sure you download the correct version!

A box similar to the one below should pop up, click "Save" to save the downloaded program. If the box pops up and "run" is an option, choose that one instead of "Save."

Run The Installer

Find the icon for the downloaded installer and double-click it to run the install. The icon should look like the picture below.

During the install you should see boxes similar to the following, check the options presented and then click "Next" for each box.

To proceed with the install you need to click "I Accept" and then click "Next."

Here you can choose a location to install Digital Studio, the default location will be fine for most people.

Click "Next" through here too.

You'll want to have the installer create a desktop icon so you can run Digital Studio!

At this point the install has begun, pour a drink, grab some popcorn, sit back and watch the green dots go across the screen.

If this box comes up the install was successful!

Run Digital Studio LP and Register

A new icon like the one pictured below should pop up somewhere on your desktop, double-click it to get things started!
(It may also be called "Tri-Color's Digital Studio v5")

The first time you run Digital Studio it will take a little while to open, be patient! The program needs to set up a few preferences folders and do some housekeeping before it runs for the first time.

Once the program opens you'll be presented with the following dialog box:

 If this is your first time using Digital Studio LP, you'll need to set up an account, use the "LabPrints Account Setup" section and fill in your information.

Click "Continue" and the following box will pop up,

Be sure to check your email, you'll receive a welcome message with your username and password for safe keeping.

If you have a previous LabPrints account you can use the "Existing User" login with your email address as the username and whatever you chose as a password.

The LabPrints Storefront is a quick and easy way to upload low-res images of jobs for your customers to view and place orders. The online storefronts are set up so that you can sell images in the internet, even if you don't know a single thing about webpages. If you do have your own website however, your storefront pages can be seamlessly integrated into your existing website. There are 3 different billing options for the online storefront, choose "Skip storefront for now," if you want you can get back to it later via the "Storefront" tab in Digital Studio LP. If you have the time now, you can click the information links in the box to learn more about the storefront.

the Storefront allows you to set up a password protected page for events you shoot. 
What it allows you to do is set the page up before the event,
then you can hand out cards AT the event with the web address and password.
This allows you to not only receive orders after the fact from the participants,
the bride and groom in the case of a wedding, but also you can let aunt Jill who
lives 500 miles away see the images and order prints if she wants!

After clicking "Next" in the "Storefront Options" box you'll be presented with the option to create a new project.

Congratulations! Digital studio LP is installed and you're almost ready to start sending us your images for printing.

As always, if you have questions or need help, give us a call.

When you're ready to send us an order, our lab upload password is: tricolor

Mac OS - Manual Install Instructions

Updated Mac Installer: http://www.labprints.com/labprints/install/lion/LabPrintsMacLion.dmg
Due to changes Apple made, there are incompatibility issues with Mac OS 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, 10.10, and LabPrints.
Please follow the following steps as applicable:

Mac "Gatekeeper" prevents LabPrints from being installed on some machines.
You may notice the error message that the "application is damaged."
If you are not seeing this error message, then skip this step.
To fix this problem please watch this video, or follow these steps:

VIDEO Instruction for this step

Please go to the apple menu, select system preferences, then security and privacy:

Unloack the lock so you can change the settings:

Now you can set to install from "Anywhere" to install LabPrints.

A warning box will pop up to ask you to confirm the change:

Clicking "Allow From Anywhere" allows Digital Studio to install correctly, once the program is up and running,
you can go back and change the preference to its more paranoid setting, or as the box says, it will reset after 30 days.
Keep this trick in mind for installing programs in the future though!

UPDATED MAC INSTALLER:

For LabPrints Digital Studio, download here:
http://www.labprints.com/labprints/install/lion/LabPrintsMacLion.dmg

Once the download completes, the disk image should open and show you the installer icon:

Double click the installer icon:

If you don't click "Open" the program won't install! So click "Open" and when the box below opens up, click "Next"

To be able to find the program and be able to use it, we suggest adding the icon to your dock so it is always ready.

The desktop and dock icons:

IF YOU USE THE LABPRINTS STOREFRONT: Watch this video, and apply this easy step:
http://screencast.com/t/HioJI569u9zh

YOSEMITE: If you are on 10.10 and get a message about Java 6 not being installed,
download Java 6 HERE: http://support.apple.com/downloads/DL1572/en_US/JavaForOSX2014-001.dmg

Click the dock icon or double click the desktop icon to get LabPrints running and CLICK HERE to go back to the install instructions.
the setup from here is the same as on the PC.

In a previous blog I outlined how to rename your images and organize them.  Please view the blog on file naming if you haven’t read through it already, and then come back for this part. 

In this blog I hope to show you how using keywords is a flexible and powerful way to categorize your images to make them easier to find in the future.  Many photographers I know organize their images into folders: “people,” “places,” and “things,” or “BridesLastNameWeddingAndThenTheDate” this may seem like a logical way to do things, but it leads to clutter and images being misfiled or lost. 

Adobe Lightroom has a lot of features many of us will never use.  The key to getting the most out of our software and the most out of our valuable time, is to become familiar with the software.  The features we use the most become second nature.  Keywords are important tools that should become second nature.  No organization scheme will work for everyone, we all work differently, find a scheme that works for you, if you run into roadblocks, adjust and move forward.  That is what I have done over the years, and I’m trying to share the map of roadblocks I’ve come across in the hopes of helping someone else along the path.

So what are the advantages of adding keywords to your images?
Do you shoot weddings?
You come back from the wedding, load your images into lightroom, do a quick edit, rank your images and export for proof prints or cd (you are using Lightroom’s star system to rank your images correct?).
Keywords can be added to images automatically on import, these keywords will be applied to all the images imported.  That is great for general keys that apply to every image, but it is more efficient to keyword the images as you’re editing.

In “Grid Mode” (tap the ‘G’ key) use Control-A (or Command-A in OSX) to select all the images, go to the keyword box and type in your general keywords.  I suggest the bride and groom’s names, maybe the month and season, “wedding” is a good keyword if you do many types of photography.  Tap “Enter” (or ‘Return’) to apply the keywords to the selected images. 

Here I’ve added the bride and grooms’ names, and this entire wedding (ceremony and reception) was shot on Maui in June, so I added those keywords also.  That’s a good start, and will offer basic coverage, but the REAL power comes with keywording individual images.

Who else is involved in weddings?  Designers, Planners, Caterers, Venues, DJs or Bands, Cake Bakers/Decorators… Grab a great shot of the DJ? Throw his or her name on the image as a keyword.  Find out who did the cake, keyword your awesome cake images.  Saxophone player from the band really rocking out and sweating and you grabbed a dynamic shot of him? Keyword the band photos.

Now you can use those images to cross promote with those other vendors.  Keep running into the same DJ at the same weddings?  At the end of the year, you go to keyword search, type the DJ’s name in and every shot you have of that DJ will come up, you don’t have to remember that they did X wedding on Y date….

Highlight the year folder in Lightroom’s “Folders” list, go to the “Library Filter,” click “text,” and type the DJ’s name.

Have a family that you photograph regularly for family portraits or whatever?  “Tag” them with keywords in each single or group portrait.  If you’ve photographer little Susie since she was born, when she turns 18 all you have to do is highlight your main image folder and again, use the keyword search, type in “Susie Smith” and every image you shot of her over those 18 years will come up… That’d make a great album for her graduation present!

The more keywords you add, the greater the detail you go into, the more powerful your search tools become.

Tri-Color is in New Bedford, MA.  It is the largest fishing port in the world (by dollar value) and boats are always coming and going.  When I get the time I go down to the waterfront and photograph the boats at the dock, or get shots of the guys waving as the boats leave the harbor.  I tag the images with the names of the boats.  We lost one a few years ago, the “Lady of Grace” went down and I was able to highlight my “RAW” folder, and use keyword search to bring up every image I’d shot of that particular boat.
I didn’t have to dig through folder after folder and then randomly open large raw files hoping to find the right one.

which one of these is the group photo, has all their eyes open and the best smile on the baby?

If you like using folders for “People,” “Places,” “Things,” “Events,” etc. you can add THOSE as keyword organizers!

Right click in the “Keyword List” box and select “Create Keyword Tag…”

Enter a name for the Keyword Tag, “PEOPLE” in this case.  You’ll probably want to uncheck “Include on Export” that way when you export your images, you won’t have the tag itself added as a keyword.  I use all caps to distinguish Keyword Tags from the actual keywords.

Keyword Tags can be used to organize your keywords, this helps your keyword list to look more organized, and they can help if you want to find a keyword, in a list of thousands.  

Keywords themselves can have other keywords nested under them.  A hierarchy.

In the example above, adding “Wailea Beach” as a keyword to an image will also add “Wailea,” “Maui,” and “Hawaii.”

What about words with multiple meanings?
Wait….. huh?

What if you have a keyword that can mean multiple things, what do you do then? That nesting, or hierarchical (say that one out loud 5 times fast) organization comes to the rescue here.

Take my bass.

Did I just hand you a guitar or a fish? (send me an email and let me know)

Create “Fish” and “Guitar” keywords, and then create a “Bass” under each of those.

Now, as you’re typing in your keywords, an autocomplete box will pop up, and you’ll be able to select which Bass you want.

If I go back and remove all the keywords from my test images, I can show you a GREAT and powerful feature of Lightroom: Smart Collections



Smart Collections are groups of images that Lightroom automatically maintains for you.  Smart Collections are outside the scope of this blog entry (Stay tuned?), but one of the default Smart Collections built in to Lightroom is “Without Keywords.”
If you click on that baby, all of your images that aren’t keyworded will pop up in the grid.  One thing to watch out for, if you add a single keyword and tap enter before adding more keywords, the image disappears, because it is no longer without a keyword.  I use the power of Smart Collections and Color Labels to help out here. 

I use the "Without Keywords" smart collection to find the images for me, and you see the first entry in that list?



"Colored Red" once i have the keyword-less images in the grid, Control-A (or Command A) to select them all, then right click, choose "set Color Label > Red"

"Red" is a default Smart Collection that comes standard with Lightroom, if you use red for soemthing else, pick another color and set up a Smart Collection for that color.

Now those Keyword-less images are labeled Red, i can go through them, keyword them and when i'm done, set the Color Label back to "None"
and work through the backlog or images i may have missed the first time around in my "Free Time."
 

Gelatin dry plates were is use from roughly 1880 to as late as 1975.  The plates were machine coated, with even coating at the edges, the edges were cut rather than ground.  These plates are occasionally varnished and tend to have a neutral grey to black image tone (sometimes they look vaguely purple).
In contrast, wet plates date from 1851 to roughly 1880.  The plates were coated by hand, making the coating often uneven at the edges, and the edges of the glass were often ground rather than cut. 

We received some glass plate negatives from a customer that were in really bad condition.  The plates were stored in an attic and were the victims of a house fire.  Heat, smoke and water combined to try and ruin the plates.  When we received them, they were stuck together and filthy.

Typically a soft brush is used to gently brush dust and loose dirt from the emulsion side of the plate, distilled water and cotton balls are then used to clean the back of the plate.  If there are any signs of flaking or lifting of the emulsion, brushing is immediately halted.  Due to the way they were stored, stacked together, and the effect of the water causing them to be glued together, we had to take special care in separating and cleaning them. 

Using clean filtered water and Kodak Photoflo we were able to re-wet the emulsion and carefully separate the plates. After cleaning the plates were allowed to carefully dry and then scanned to digitally preserve the images.

(if you look at the above image and let your eyes go out of focus, a third image will show up in the middle of these two and it will be in 3d!)

Once cleaned, dried and scanned, the plates are stored vertically and individually in acid-free envelopes, in an acid-free box, in a cool dry climate. They should never be stored in an attic or basement or be subjected to extremes in temperature.

We also received a glass plate from the early 20^th century featuring an image of some brass cars in front of the United First Parish Church in Quincy, MA.

When the plate came to us it was coated in about 100 years’ worth of dust and dirt. 

Cleaning a glass plate helps in preserving it.  Removing the dirt minimizes the chances of further image deterioration and allows us to make the best possible scan of the plate.  Using water to wash glass plates isn’t recommended except under dire conditions. We DO NOT recommend that you try and clean glass plates yourself, this should never be attempted by someone without years of experience in handling these priceless negatives.

View the images here.

When dealing with thousands of images (as we tend to do) there is a very good chance that if you keep the file named as-is, at some point you'll end up with more than one file with the same name. I've had bad things happen to my own files in the past, and have heard of others having similar issues that what I’m about to show you could've stopped cold.

This is also a great way to keep your images organized.  A lot of photographers try to use “subjective” organization schemes.  Folders with names like: “people,” “places,” and “things” may seem at first like a logical idea.  These are inefficient and can break down over time.  What happens if you have an image of a person, holding a thing, in a place?  Where does that image belong?  Do you save three copies of it, one to each folder?  Organizing your photos by capture date is an objective method that we’ve found makes the most sense.  Your image management software (ie. Lightroom) will let you use keywords to make the files searchable.  People’s names, location names and object, adjectives, those are things that belong as keywords in your asset management software, NOT folder or file names.  We’ll do a key wording blog a bit later, first, let’s deal with the files.

Pretty much every camera on the market today uses a 4-digit numbering scheme to name files.  There are generally two naming modes, for Canon Cameras they are:

Continuous File Numbering: lets new files made on a fresh card start off where the last file numbers left off. (Nikon calls this "Sequential")    

Auto Reset: bad. (Nikon: "Normal")

If you use Auto Reset then each time you change the card (or reformat) the camera will start at file IMG_0001.JPG again, which means over time you'll have hundreds of files all called IMG_0001.JPG.

This wreaks havoc later if the files end up in the same folder or are used in the same job.  One file could end up overwriting the other, we see this happen to people almost daily.

If you set file naming to "Continuous," the camera will keep counting up until you get to file IMG_9999.JPG before it resets to IMG_0001.JPG.

DO NOT STOP HERE! I know you're thinking:

"But, now I'll only have duplicate file names every 10,000 images, that's not so bad." Yes it is!

We want unique file names, and we want to be organized so 5 years from now we can find that one particular shot we're looking for. Stick with me!

For renaming I use Adobe Lightroom, for PC users there is also a free program called A.F.5 Rename. Sounds appropriate no? It lets you quickly and easily rename 5 or 50,000 files any way you want.  OSX users can set up a custom Automator action to rename files, the action has to be customized for the particular file names your camera saves, so I won’t get into that in this post.  If you REALLY want to use Automator, contact us and we can set up a custom Automator App for you. 

Realistically you should be using Lightroom for image management, but I’ll go through the steps with A.F.5 for you disbelievers. 

The way I want to name the files is this: YYYY_MM_DD_XXXX.CR2

(or NEF or whatever extension your camera spits out.) By naming my images with the date and 4-digit number the ONLY way you'll have duplicate file names is if you shoot more than 10,000 images in one day.

I load the files into A.F.5 Rename and I have already set the program up with my
naming preferences. Under the first "Type" box select "ModDate" this tells the program to
look at the "Date Modified" property of the file and "Value" tells the program how you
want the ModDate displayed. yyyy_mm_dd_ will rename the file to the
4 digit year, 2 digit month and 2 digit day.

The underscore character helps keep the numbers spaced out so they're more readable.
The second "Type" box is set to "Right," this tells the program to look at the existing filename,
from right to left, to the right of the dot. The Value "4-1" tells the program to grab the 4 numbers in order (from right to left).


In the image above you can see the file IMG_2443.CR2 will be renamed 2008_01_31_2443.CR2

This part took me a while to get just right, all you have to do is copy the settings!

Once you have the settings exactly as I have above, go to A.F.5 Rename's "File" menu and
click "Save" give the setting a name (I chose Standard for mine) and the program will remember
these settings for you. Click the "Rename" button and you'll see the list of names swap places.
A.F.5 Rename will remember the filenames until you clear the list, or close the program,
so if things didn't go quite right, you can click "Rename" again to get the original filenames back.

In Lightroom, from Grid Mode (tap the G key), highlight the image/images to be renamed and under the “Library” menu, select “Rename Photo…” hit the dropdown menu and choose “Edit.”

Set up the naming options as shown below:

Hit the dropdown again and choose “Save Current Settings as New Preset…”

Now you have your file naming preset set up to use on import or manually!

We’ve found the best way to store these renamed files is in folders by year, month, and day, just like the individual files, and for the same reason.  Computers want to organize files and folders by number and then letter, in organizing by number, you want to go from the largest unit, to the smallest.  Going largest to smallest helps keep things in order and will make the files easier to find.

We start out with a folder for each year:  2015
Inside the year folder are the month folders: 2015_01, 2015_02, 2015_03, etc.
In the monthly folders are folders for the days you shot: 2015_01_01, 2015_01_05, etc.

If you shoot across days, say 11pm one day to 2am the next, don’t be tempted to put all the images under one day, break them into the daily folders where they belong.  You want to use Lightroom for your organization scheme (key words, collections, etc.) the folders are just for storage!

A RAID is NOT a backup!

Let me type that again... A RAID is not a backup. A RAID is about data availability, and redundancy. If you have a hardware failure (dead hard drive) your data is recoverable. But if you delete something, it's gone.

You can save your backup data TO a RAID, for example we use Norton to backup the files on our PCs daily, and these backups are stored on one of our RAID systems. This backup allows us to go back and retrieve files that may have become damaged or accidentally deleted. While the RAID doesn't back up data, it allows us to safely store the backups.

RAID - which stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (as named by the inventors) or Redundant Array of Independent Disks (a name which later developed within the computing industry) - is a technology where two or more hard disk drives are used to achieve greater levels of performance, reliability, and/or larger data volume sizes.

The fundamental principle behind RAID is the use of multiple hard disk drives in an array that behaves like a single large, fast disk drive. There are a number of ways that this can be done, depending on the needs of the application, but in every case the use of multiple drives allows the resulting storage system to exceed the capacity, data security, and performance of any single drive in the system.

The tradeoffs--remember, there's no free lunch--are usually in cost and complexity.

RAID's various designs all involve two key goals:

•     Increased data reliability.
•     Increased input/output performance.

When several physical disks are set up to use RAID technology, they are said to be in a RAID array. This array distributes data across several disks, but the array is seen by the computer user or operating system as just one, single disk.

Some arrays are "redundant" in a way that writes extra data derived from the original data across the array so that the failure of one (sometimes more) disks in the array will not result in loss of data. The bad disk is replaced by a new one, and the data on it reconstructed from the remaining data and the extra data. A redundant array obviously allows less data to be stored; a 2-disk RAID 1 array loses half of its capacity, and a RAID 5 array with several disks loses the capacity of one disk.

Other RAID arrays are arranged in a way that makes them faster to write to and read than a single disk.

RAID levels 0, 1, and 5 are the most commonly found, and cover most requirements. We use RAID 1, RAID 6 and a new “Beyond RAID” technology here in the lab, and we suggest you do the same.

We use RAID 1 in our workstations, the workstation's hard drive is mirrored with a second drive, so the same data is written on both drives, if one fails, we still have the second one. This comes at a cost, as we’re using two drives, but are storing the same thing on both drives, so in effect, we have one drive for the price of two.

We also have multiple RAID 6 systems in use for job data storage. The advantage of RAID 6 is that if there are 5 drives in the array, up to two drives can fail, and we haven't lost any data. The bad drive(s) can be replaced and the array will automatically rebuild itself. The cost of a RAID 6's protection is the space of 2 drives. If you have 5 drives, you can only store 3 drives worth data.

We've added boxes from DROBO which use “beyond RAID technology,” more about that later.

A RAID offers a wealth of significant advantages that would be attractive to anyone with a large amount of important data to store. Unfortunately, there are costs, tradeoffs and limitations to be dealt with. The degree that you realize the various benefits below does depend on the exact type of RAID you use, but you are always going to get some combination of the following:

Higher Data Security: Through the use of redundancy, most RAID levels provide protection for the data stored on the array. This means that the data on the array can withstand even the complete failure of one hard disk (or sometimes more) without any data loss, and without requiring any data to be restored from backup. All RAID levels provide some degree of data protection, depending on the exact implementation, except RAID level 0.

Fault Tolerance: RAID implementations that include redundancy provide a much more reliable overall storage subsystem than can be achieved by a single disk. This means there is a lower chance of the storage system as a whole failing due to hardware failures.

Improved Availability: Availability refers to access to data. Good RAID systems improve availability both by providing fault tolerance and by providing special features that allow for recovery from hardware faults without disruption. (RAID 5 and RAID 6)

Increased, Integrated Capacity: By turning a number of smaller drives into a larger array, you add their capacity together, though a percentage of total capacity is lost to overhead or redundancy. All RAID levels provide this "combining" benefit, though the ones that include redundancy lose some of the space because of that redundant information or "parity" information in the case of RAID 5 or RAID 6.

Improved Performance: Last, but not least, RAID systems improve performance. Different RAID systems improve performance in different ways and to different degrees, but all improve it in some way.

Obviously, the hardware costs are higher for those implementing RAID arrays. However, these costs must be compared to the costs of data loss, data recovery and interruption of availability that would result if RAID were not used. For many companies, the entire cost of a RAID setup pays for itself the first time it prevents their system from having to be taken down for a day to deal with a hardware failure. For the working professional photographer, this means not having to restore images from backups, not having to have us re-scan film, and not losing your irreplaceable digital images for which there is no film to be re-scanned. It also allows you to store your images on what appears to be one large drive. No more using multiple external drives and trying to remember what is stored on which drive.

RAID 0 distributes data across several discs in a way which gives improved speed and full capacity, but all data on all disks is lost if any one disk fails. In the picture below you can see that the file named "A" is broken up into 8 pieces which are spread across the two drives. If one of the drives fails, all information is lost. For the most part this is how many large external storage units are set up. A 1TB external drive is really made up of 2 500GB drives.

RAID 1 uses two (or more) disks which each store the same data (mirrored disks), so that data is not lost as long as one disk survives. Total capacity of the array is just the capacity of a single disk. This is how our workstation hard drives are set up, we have two physical drives that appear as one. If one drive fails, we still have the second one. In the image below you can see that the drive on the right stores the same information as the drive on the left.

RAID 5 combines three or more discs in a way that protects data against loss of any one disc; the storage capacity of the array is reduced by one disk. Until recently RAID 5 was the best compromise of storage cost and redundancy. This is our main storage method here in the lab. In the image below, file "A" is broken up into pieces A1, A2 and A3, some math is then done to these three pieces and the result is stored as a fourth piece, piece Ap. It's this "parity" piece that allows the RAID 5 to remain usable even after one drive fails. You can see from "B," "C," and "D" the parity is distributed across all the drives in the array. When one drive fails, the information on it can be rebuilt from the remaining pieces, if disk 2 were to fail, you'd lose piece 3 of file "A," but the system can rebuild piece 3 from 1, 2 and p.

RAID 6 an improvement on RAID 5, can recover from the loss of two disks. But the storage capacity is reduced by two disks. This is because RAID 6 uses double parity.

“Beyond RAID”

DROBO’s Beyond RAID technology seeks to fix some issues with traditional RAID systems.  With a traditional RAID, you are “locked in” to the RAID level you choose at set-up.  If you start out with a RAID 5 and want to move your data to a RAID 6 later for more redundancy, you aren’t always able to do that.  Also in a traditional RAID system, expandability is time consuming and expensive, and if an error occurs, you may lose all your data.  Your traditional RAID has to be made up of identical drives, if you have 5 1TB drives and space is getting tight, you must replace all 5 drives with larger drives.  In a traditional RAID these drives need to be replaced one at a time, waiting for the RAID to rebuild after replacing each drive.  If a drive fails during this rebuild process (which can take days) all your data will be lost.

Beyond RAID takes the traditional RAID levels and adds a layer of virtualization designed to make it more flexible.

DROBO’s system allows you to use different capacity drives and hot swap them in and out of the system as your storage requirements change.  Drives do not have to be added all at once, in the image above, say you started with 2-500GB drives, as you needed more room you added a 1 TB drive, 6 months later there was a sale so you added the second 1TB drive, then the 2TB drive a year later.  For your next move you could get an additional 2TB drive (or higher) and replace one of the 500GB drives to expand your storage.

Drives can be added as needed and they can be of any capacity. 

Because Beyond RAID is proprietary to DROBO, if the DROBO box itself stops working, in order to recover the data, you’d need a new box from DROBO. With a traditional RAID hardware failure, depending on the hardware and how the RAID was set up, the drives may be able to be moved to another computer and the data restored, but there is a high level of computer knowledge required, and a lot of “ifs.”

RAID systems with redundancy continue working without interruption when one, or sometimes more, disks of the array fail. When the bad disk is replaced by a new one the array is rebuilt while the system continues to operates normally. Some systems have to be shut down when removing or adding a drive; others support hot swapping, allowing drives to be replaced without powering down.

RAID with hot-swap drives is often used in high availability systems, where it is important that the system keeps running as much of the time as possible. It is important to note that redundant RAID is not an alternative to backing up data.

As I said earlier, a RAID is NOT a backup.

Data may become damaged or destroyed without harm to the drive on which it is stored. Part of the data may be overwritten by a system malfunction; a file may be damaged or deleted by mistake or malice and of course the hardware is at risk of theft, flood, and fire.

Optical backups (to CD or DVD) aren't the only answer as optical discs can degrade over time, become scratched or otherwise unreadable. For the best security multiple backups (depending on your level of paranoia) are necessary.

If you have questions or need help finding a RAID solution, Contact Us.
 

Irreplaceable Historic Images Entrusted to our Care.

Jenny O’Neil of the Westport Historical Society contacted Tri-Color Imaging about making scans and prints for their Handy House project.  The Handy House was built in about 1713 and showcases three architectural styles through additions during its 300 year life.  The Westport Historical Society’s mission is:

“… to engage the public in the exploration of the town’s rich history and culture, to inspire a spirit of discovery through educational programs and encourage active participation in the preservation and interpretation of our past.”

Integral to that mission is the researching, preservation and presentation of historical artifacts. 

We received the carefully packaged tintypes and took great care in recording them in their current state.  They were scanned using a professional Creo scanner at high resolution to capture the most information.  The tintypes were beautifully preserved in their original cases, and we did not remove them.  The images were scanned through the glass of the cases, and minimal cleanup of the resulting digital images was performed.  The goal was to show the image, but also to show its age and natural patina.

In the case of Almy Gibbs Brown’s portrait above, the glass in the case had a crack and some small chips.  The damage could easily have been removed, but it was decided that for the integrity of the piece, the crack should stay.  The image was lightened and some contrast added to make it more readable.  You can see that there is some color in her cheeks, it was not common for tintypes to be hand colored, but many were.  It was felt that hand coloring made the photos more like paintings of the day, and brought them closer to being “fine art.” 

This portrait of Dr. James Handy was in pretty rough condition, in the upper left of the portrait you can see where an imperfection, a bubble in the glass, was digitally removed during the cleanup process.  This was determined to be too distracting at the final print size.

Dr. Handy’s wife Hope shows us a great example of what can be done, if requested.  The scan reveals the degradation of the original image, also visible are “double spots” these are imperfections in the image which are mirrored by the surface of the glass.  We performed extensive cleanup and restoration on this image so Mrs. Handy could actually be seen, while keeping some of the defects.

Eliphal Almy Handy’s portrait above again shows the reflection of imperfections and hand coloring of the image.

No cleanup was done to the originals, they were documented “as-is” and then the resulting files were digitally manipulated.  Selections were created by hand to separate the image from the ornate frames, so that corrections to the image wouldn’t affect the frame.  No digital cleanup was done to the ornate gilded frames.  The files were color corrected to match the tones of the originals and then the portraits themselves were made neutral and then digitally hand colored as needed.

We pride ourselves on the care we take with the priceless originals entrusted to us.  From 400 year old original oil paintings, crumbling 200 year old maps, to 150 year old tintypes.  Everything we do is concerned with protecting the original piece, while creating new prints that can be displayed for the public.

“My phone died and I lost all my photos!”
“I lost my phone and all my pictures.”
“My memory card isn’t working, it has all my baby pictures on it.”
“I reformatted the card by accident, can you save my pictures?”

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard these in the last few years.  Last year I began the slow process of scanning all my baby photos from the 70’s and 80's and I couldn’t help but worry for kids growing up these days.  Their parents are taking more photos than ever thanks to the fact that every digital device has a camera in it these days, but they aren’t PRINTING any of them!

We have cloud backup and storage, we have FaceBook albums, Instagram, and DropBox, and all are adequate ways to preserve your digital files.  (Facebook and Instagram downsize your files to a low quality setting that makes them easier to store and move along the web, but is not ideal for reproduction.)

Dropbox has apps for Windows, Mac OSX, iOS and Android and offers Camera Upload a tool that will automatically back up your images and video and allow you to view them on other devices.  But the best “backup” for your images, is the one that needs the least technology to access. In the dark(room) ages when film was king, keeping your negatives safely stored ensured that as long as you had access to an enlarger, you had access to the information stored on the negative.  A print was an interpretation of that data and could be viewed with only the basic equipment most of us are born with. 

Photographic prints made 150 years ago are still readable today.  From a quality print additional copies can be made through a “copy negative” or the print can be scanned and digital copies made.  The best backup is a quality print.

While my late 70’s/early 80's color baby photos (EP2 Process) have faded to magenta, the papers and process (RA4) today produce color prints that are more stable than ever.  With Fuji’s Crystal Archive papers we can make color prints that will resist fading for over 60 years, if stored properly.  Giclée prints on fine art paper will last over 200 years.  Drop your phone in the toilet or leave it on the bus and your images could be gone forever.

Make prints from your digital images, put them in albums and preserve your child’s past for their future.  Stay away from the albums with so-called “magnetic pages” after a decade or so, the photos become nearly impossible to safely remove from the album, email me and ask me how I know.

By the way, in most cases, those old faded/color shifted prints can be scanned and the color shift fixed and new prints made.

May 15-17, 2015

This past weekend was The Art of Landscape Photography with Ron Wilson and Bob Bergeron-Cape Cod workshop with the Cape Cod Art Association.   We met at the Sea Crest Beach Hotel in Falmouth on Friday for three hours of introductions and classroom discussion on thinking visually and the art of seeing. After a fun night instruction and getting to know each other the students retired to their rooms for an early wake-up call.

^{Quissett Harbor - Bob Bergeron}

Saturday started with a 4:15am call in the lobby of the hotel. From there we travelled to Quissett Harbor and The Knob at 4:30am to begin the four hour morning field session.  We were treated to a beautiful sunrise with a sky that was overcast enough to be interesting, but that wasn’t just a gray blanket over the morning.  At dawn as the sun broke through the clouds, it lit The Knob with dramatic side lighting.

Quissett Harbor is one of the best protected harbors on Cape Cod and features “The Knob,” a rocky outcropping that overlooks Buzzard’s Bay and shelters the harbor. It features a 1.2mile looped trail.

^{The Knob - Bob Bergeron}

Our next stop was Spohr Garden, a six-acre woodland garden located on Oyster Pond.  In the spring the garden features thousands of daffodils.  The winding grassy paths lead the way to many nautical artifacts Charles D. Spohr collected during his lifetime.

^{Spohr Garden - Bob Bergeron}

^{Four Ponds - Bob Bergeron}

From 8:30 to 10:30 we broke for breakfast and “free” time. 

At 11:00 we all met for individual instruction and general image review, students were instructed in the use of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and we held a group critique and review of selected images.

We met back in the hotel lobby for 4pm to journey out for the afternoon field session.  Our first stop was Monument Beach and Phinney's Harbor.  Monument beach is situated in a small harbor on Buzzard’s Bay. Then we moved to the Four Ponds Conservation Area in Bourne.  This area features Shop Pong, Freeman Pond, Upper Pond and the Basin with wooded uplands, fresh water marshes and streams. Miles of trails encircle the ponds.

Also on the trail were Red Brook Pond and Harbor, Little Bay and Old Silver Beach.  Old Silver Beach on Buzzard’s Bay features Herring Creek and a salt marsh.

The afternoon session ended around 8:30pm looking forward to a Sunday sunrise at 5:19am!

The Sunday schedule mirrored Saturday’s schedule with a morning session, break for breakfast and then individual instruction, then group critiques and reviews.

Sunday morning we arrived at Nobska Light at 4:45 am. A short walk from the Lighthouse is a boulder strewn beach facing east. With the exception of 3 fisherman we were the only ones there. We photographed through the pre dawn until the sun rose above a thin layer of cloud.  We met for sunrise at Nobska Point, Woods Hole. The “Nobska Light,” was built in 1828 and sits on the east end of Woods Hole Harbor.

^{Nobska Light - Bob Bergeron}

From there we visited a much different site at Bourne Farm.  Dating from 1775, the 45-acre farm features fields, trails, woodlands and dry stone walls overlooking Crocker Pond. The still waters of Crocker Pond, the lichen covered stone walls and the barns and gardens in the soft light of this morning was a photo opportunity in waiting. 

^{Ron Wilson - Bourne Farm}

^{Bourne Farm - Bob Bergeron}

^{Bourne Farm - Bob Bergeron}

Finally we arrived back at Old Silver Beach, and the workshop wrapped up at 4pm on Sunday.

See more at: http://capecodartassoc.org/

*************************
STUDENT PHOTO GALLERY

*************************

Hi Ron and Bob,

What a fabulous weekend of photography and learning!! Thank you for all your help getting me set up with Lightroom. I am excited to spend time this week making files and moving my images. The workshop went beyond my expectations- you and Bob are patient teachers, enthusiastic, skilled and master photographers who were dynamic leaders for your workshop!!!

Thank you again for a fun weekend!
Best-
Sarah Strong

*************************

^{"Italian Nude" by Catherine Mayell}

An artist’s mother brought a large, magnificent 3.5’x 4’ nude artwork in a glass-protected frame for scanning.  Having sold the artwork years earlier as an art student, her daughter had no prints of "The Italian Nude." Her mother had tried to buy the original back from the owner, but she would not part with it at even quadruple the original price.

Filled with sorrow at the loss, the artist’s mother convinced the owner to allow her to borrow "The Italian Nude" for digital capture.  We were the only company that she could find that could scan the original without removing the artwork from the frame.

We captured a detailed scan of the artwork preserving the subtle beiges and skin tones without having to remove the artwork from the frame. We color balanced and printed a Giclee that matched the original so well that the artist herself could not tell the difference between the original and the print! Artist Catherine Mayell said, "It was like having the original back in my possession."

Here is a detail view of the paper texture captured by the Cruse Scanner:

Explore Plymouth & the South Shore with Ronald Wilson & Bob Bergeron

Spring Workshop     May 29-30-31     Friday to Sunday
Fall Workshop     October 2-3-4     Friday to Sunday

Ronald Wilson has nearly 30 years of experience photographing the New England coast and beyond. A graduate of Massachusetts College of Art with a degree in painting, his interest in photography began when he purchased a 35mm camera in 1980, that was soon replaced by a 4x5 view camera.
From the beginning he maintained his own darkroom where he produced exhibition quality prints using the Cibachrome dye bleach process. He moved out of the darkroom in 2008 and into digital photography. For 6 years he has maintained a gallery/studio in Plymouth.

Bob Bergeron after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Photography, became a staff instructor at the Winona School of Professional Photography in Indiana. In 1984 he opened Tri-Color Imaging Lab in New Bedford, which has served photographers in 50 States for 30 years, with traditional, optical, hybrid and digital output.

Ronald Wilson and Bob Bergeron have led The Art of Landscape Photography Workshop for three years on Cape Cod under the sponsorship of the Cape Cod Art Association, and in September of last year held the workshop in Plymouth for the first time.

Learn To Use The Components Essential To Landscape Photography

1. How to think visually through the use of elements of color, shape, texture, line, and pattern.
2. How to use lighting in a way the best enhances the subject matter.
3. How to build an image with a strong compositional foundation.
4. How to appreciate the expressive potential of the natural world.

The Workshop will begin on Friday evening with an orientation and presentation of materials.

The Workshop will feature approximately 10 hours in the field with 3 hour sessions beginning each day an hour before sunrise and Saturday afternoon through sunset.
We will explore the South Shore from barrier beaches and salt marshes to woodland ponds and cranberry bogs. Workshops are designed for those interested in exploring and nurturing their creative vision.

Complimenting the field experience will be 6-8 hours of classroom time that will include individual instruction, viewing of images and group critiques to elevate results.

Cost: $275
Maximum 12 Photographers of all levels are welcome, from beginner to advanced
Registration Form Download
CONTACT: Ronald Wilson 508-732-0170 info.rwilsonphoto@gmail.com

Robert Jackson, founder of The CAD Workshop, commented – “Since 1999 I have been looking for a resource that can provide accurate, high quality scans of large vellum prints and shop drawings without damaging them. After many false starts with companies that claimed they could provide high quality scanning services. When I viewed the Cruse scanning video on your website I was convinced that we had finally identified a resource that could provide the service that we needed.”

It turns out that Robert is very into Star Wars Droids, especially R2-D2. In fact, he has a set of the drawings that were physically used to make the original R2-D2  props for the 1977 film Star Wars. In 1999, Robert purchased the drawings from Norman Harrison, owner of Norank Engineering, the company contracted by 20th Century Fox to build the original R2-D2 props. Robert needed accurate scans of these drawings so that the digitized files could be used for baseline dimensional or measured information on these blueprints and 3D scans of objects used to make the actual prop.

Robert plans to launch a website www.openr2.org which will review various licensed life size R2-D2 merchandise for dimensional accuracy compared to the original props. The first review will be a dimensional review of Side Show Collectables life size R2-D2 statue using digitally scaled dimensions from the Cruse scans of the Norank Engineering blueprints and dimensions published in the coffee table book “The Blueprints of Star Wars” by John Risner.

Scanning large format vellum drawings and prints requires special scanning capabilities. Drawings are often rolled and brittle. They can be easily damaged by conventional drawing scanners. Since the Cruse Synchron scanner has a vacuum bed, scans were done without any contact with the document, eliminating risk of damage to the original.

If you have any questions or need assistance with large format scans or prints, contact us.

There’s one simple reason why the Cruse Scanner is better than anything else.  It’s the lighting.

If you have some experience with copy and repro photography, some of this may be old hat, but bear with me.  I guarantee a “Eureka!” moment.  If this is new, then hopefully it’s helpful in understanding some of the basic principles of reproducing flat art.

Let’s start with how it’s done traditionally.  Here’s a top-of-the-line repro copy stand with a standard four-light array.

If you’re following along at home, the formula is this: Each light is 45º off the axis of the table, measured from the center.  Each light is the same distance from the center point of the table.  Here’s a secret of getting balanced lighting- you aim each light at the far side of the table. This helps overcome the Inverse Square Law.

Simply put, the Inverse Square Law is a basic law of Physics, and without all the math it means that your light falls off really fast as you move further away from it.  It’s drops faster than just the distance. Moving something twice as far away cuts the light not by half, but by four times…  that is, the light at twice the distance is 1/4 the intensity.  Note the arrows, and the distance of the table from each light.  See the problem? Even from this rough diagram, the distance from one light to the far side is more than twice the distance to the near side of the table. There’s a ton of difference in the resulting luminance.

Here’s a basic diagram of a traditional copy setup, from the camera’s eye.

That’s the table where the art is going to sit, and those four blocks are the lights.  Now.  Because of the Laws of Physics, here’s what the lighting pattern is going to look like…  exaggerated for the sake of clarity, but nonetheless, this is what we’re fighting.

It really doesn’t matter what you do, at some level you’re going to be dealing with the basic Laws of Physics.  I know.  I don’t like Physics either.

Let’s take a look at the Cruse system and see how it’s different.

Here’s the lighting array, with the two strip lights centered on the sample area- literally only inches wide.

Here’s what the lighting pattern looks like:

…getting the idea here?  You have a completely even lighting pattern from one side of the piece to the other, but, more importantly, because the lights are so close and the sample area is so narrow, the intensity of the light is perfectly even.  The issue of the distance of the light from the subject no longer matters, since it’s virtually the same from one side of the sample area to the other.  This is called using Math for Good…  not for Evil.

Here are three shots simulating the Cruse making a scan.

And…  the final scan simulating the lighting:

See what we’re talking about?  Dead-even light from side to side, from top to bottom, without any sort of tricks, plugins or workarounds.

Here’s the cool part.  This demonstrates how the Cruse system works when you’re trying to light something as “Left-Right Even” lighting.  Now, suppose that you want to have a little side-shadow to show the depth of a piece, say…  a painting with a brush stroke?  With a conventional copy stand, that means you kill one side of your lighting, and your even-lighting problems just went ballistic.  Even if you use some very advanced lighting workarounds or software to even the field of the capture, your shadow quality is going to be different from one side of the piece to the other.  Where you’re closer to the light, the shadow will be softer.  Where you’re further away, the shadow will be sharper.  There is simply no way to achieve a true, even sidelight with conventional copy/repro lighting.  There’s no bending of theLaws of Physics.

Here’s what the pattern is going to look like with one bank turned off:

Here’s what the Cruse pattern looks like with “Left Textured” lighting, that is, with the right bank turned off:

On the Cruse, once again, the effects of distance from the light source are virtually non-existent.  You want side-lighting?  You got it, from a simple side-light to up to 10cm off-axis, and perfectly even intensity from one side to the other.  You’re not fighting the light, or Physics.  You’re working with the light.

Here’s what that looks like.  This is a top-lit painting, sampled from the very bottom:

Here’s the same scan, sampled from the very top:

With conventional lighting, the top sample would be getting about 200% more light intensity…  here you can see the two areas are being lit precisely the same.  Not only that, the shadow quality, that is, the softness and feel of the shadows are identical.  Game over.

There are very few digital systems out there that anyone can claim are clearly unique…  but the Cruse Scanner is one of them.  Next time someone tells you they have the best quality digital reproduction setup, just ask one question.  “Is it a Cruse?”