Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Mozilla firefox browser jpeg image white-washed (too bright) problem

I solved a frustrating and long-running image problem today.

For a while now I’ve been stumped over why some of my jpeg images are severely over bright when viewed on this blog using some versions of the Mozilla Firefox browser, but look normal on other browsers such as Opera, Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

As Firefox is pretty much the best browser you can use – it’s repeatedly recommended to me by course tutors, computer experts and forum advisors – its reproduction of my images in such a washed-out state has deterred me from recommending this website viewing program.

Today, through some trial and error and some desperate settings adjusting, I got to the root of the problem.

And though I may not have totally eliminated this problem during my image workflow, this is one way the fault has occurred.

I work with RAW files, converting them to either TIFF or jpeg in Phase One Capture Pro. For web use, I often further process images in Adobe Photoshop, either as a batch or individually.

And it’s while altering the images individually that the problem has reared its ugly white-wash head.

In the save options screen (when an image is being resized or renamed) the images which are causing a problem have the colour > ICC Profile box ticked. This profile will be your own camera’s (i.e Nikon D3 or Canon 5d etc).

To get rid of the problem, simply untick this box. Problem solved.

This is a fairly long explanation to a simple problem. I apologise for that.

Monday, January 24, 2011

The gazcook.com website fiasco

Around 12 months ago I was awarded a £3,000 innovation voucher from the Northwest Regional Development Agency.

The idea of the voucher is to help creative businesses develop by spending their voucher with organisations and institutions signed up to the program.

My voucher was awarded for the design and development of an online image management system. Or, as I understood it, a website where I could sell images and deliver images securely to clients.

I chose a Manchester-based company to carry out the work. Several months and a dozen appalling templates later, I put in a complaint against them and the website never got completed. I lost the chance to spend the voucher.

There were several areas where I felt they had fallen short. Here are some of the designs they came up with:

Direction_1
Direction_3
Having had only a shell of a website online for over two years I have decided to rebuild and finish off my website myself.

Earlier this month I did a one-week training course on Adobe Dreamweaver with Academy Class (Ian Gilbert did the teaching and was excellent) and partially funded by Vision+Media.

I’m halfway through the design of the all new gazcook.com

The website retains the same front page, though I have rebuilt it from scratch, with every other page brand new, including the projects page I have invested extra attention to. It's coming soon.

The gazcook.com website fiasco

Around 12 months ago I was awarded a £3,000 innovation voucher from the Northwest Regional Development Agency.

 The idea of the voucher is to help creative businesses develop by spending their voucher with organisations and institutions signed up to the program.

 My voucher was awarded for the design and development of an online image management system. Or, as I understood it, a website where I could sell images and deliver images securely to clients.

 I chose a Manchester-based company to carry out the work. Several months and a dozen appalling templates later, I put in a complaint against them and the website never got completed. I lost the chance to spend the voucher.

 There were several areas where I felt they had fallen short. Here are some of the designs they came up with:

 
Having had only a shell of a website online for over two years I have decided to rebuild and finish off my website myself.

Earlier this month I did a one-week training course on Adobe Dreamweaver with Academy Class (Ian Gilbert did the teaching and was excellent) and partially funded by Vision+Media.

 I’m halfway through the design of the all new gazcook.com

 The website retains the same front page, though I have rebuilt it from scratch, with every other page brand new, including the projects page I have invested extra attention to. It's coming soon.

Monday, January 03, 2011

Blog to pdf to book with BookFabrik (FeedFabrik)

BookFabrik turns blogs into books, which you can then buy either old-style printed or as a pdf.

It would be quite easy to produce my own pdf from my blog. The main problem I envisage is the time – cutting and pasting all the entries would, quite frankly, take yonks.

And I dread to think what extra tweaks I’d need for the many photos on www.longlens.blogspot.com

Eventually, I might produce a great pdf but this is where Feedfabrik beats me, hands down. I would have to put in hours, if not days of work to turn my blog into a ready-to-print pdf.

With BookFabrik, an electronic pdf only cost 2.99 euros and the process of compliling it actually takes less than 30 seconds. Quite stunning really.

As soon as you allow FeedFabrik access to your blog it produced an online book, which you can instantly flick through.

One last thing: It may be obvious to state, but video and slideshows do not make it into the pdf book.

Facts about this blog as a FeedFabrik publication:   
I started this blog in 2007. The hundreds of posts transform themselves into 312 pages, plus the cover. Printing it costs 23.71 euros, an electronic pdf is 2.99 euros.

You can get a print proof download for free which I have attached for you to download here.

NOTE: The joys of twitter brought this unusual site to my attention.

Christmas and New Year sales

Anybody been sale shopping over the past few days?

Art in the city (of London)

NOTE: This photo, taken a year ago, has been posted by embedding the HTML code into this blog. The photo can currently be seen over at my gazcook flickr account. Usually I upload photos directly to this blog. The embedding process is simple (I do it for all my videos and slideshows), let's see if it works here.

Phonar open University

It’s education with a difference.

The third-year degree course, held at Coventry University in the United Kingdom, has eleven students in its class.

But it’s the Photography and Narrative module which is groundbreaking. Known as #phonar on twitter, this course is accessed by over 100,000 users online.

#phonar is is free and open to anyone around the world.

Now this is where it gets difficult to take in.

I’m well-versed in theories of freeconomics and, specific to photography, how distributing images for free can contribute to viable business plan (it’s a bit like Prince giving away his album for free in the Daily Mail and then charging £100 for a concert ticket for one of his 21 consecutive gigs at the 02 Arena).

But this ten-week course, which explores the practicalities of how story-telling photographers can survive financially*, involves contributions from users around the world (latest stats for six days in mid-December 2010: 1,853 different people from 434 cities over six continents). The website has only been online for two months. Blimey.

What I can’t get my head around is how a small undergraduate course finds itself reaching such a staggering number of people. But as lecturers investigating new business models in photography, I guess I should not be surprised that they know how to market their project.

Photographer Matt Johnston masterminded what he calls the ‘strategies for social media leverage’. He was reluctant to reveal his strategy but said: “We have worked hard to ensure we create something that people not only want to read, but want to be a part of, and can see the value in sharing and engaging with."

If there’s one recurring complaint I have about photography and journalism degree courses it’s that they don’t examine closely enough what skills will actually make you money.

A course like #phonar is therefore worth it’s weight in gold – and the fact that it’s free and open to all is brilliant.

* This is my description. Worth describes the course in more academic speak, looking at the ‘development of a sustainable practice.”

50blogs3

By using their extensive network, #phonar has also produced a list of inspiring photography blogs.

Sunday, January 02, 2011