Lightroom tips

OK. I suppose I should give away design tips every once in a while to you handful of wonderful readers who patiently read this nonsense material hoping to catch anything remotely profound?

Well, here's a good one for anybody who takes digital photos. Adobe, the company that almost monopolizes the whole design application market (they do Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat; now they own Macromedia, etc.), is in the process of creating a new tool just purely for Photographers called Lightbox.

Right now Lightbox is completely free to download and use in its beta phase. So you're getting what is essentially all of Photoshop's post-photography production tools for free. I've played with it here and there, and as far as I can tell, you can do pretty much everything you need to do to enhance or fix your photos. It's a very powerful program....I'd guess maybe a good 50% of Photoshop's tools are built into Lightbox.

Here's a NAPP site that will give you some video tutorials on how to get started using Lightbox too. How convenient! Scott Kelby's tutorials are here....he's the guy I took the seminar from a couple weeks back. Great stuff.

See?! Who says I don't take care of you?

Loot

No, Santa didn't bring me the a new Canon camera like I hoped for. But I did get a cool Christmas themed Dunny figure to go with my other 2. These little vinyl collectibles are kind of fun. I get one of these every time I go up to San Francisco and visit the KidRobot store. These vinyl figures are designed by all these urban artists from around the world and sold in limited supply. So it's a fun thing to collect (can 3 figures be called a "collection"?). My bro's girlfriend picked this up for me. How sweet.

Mom got me a couple of massage gift certificates...which will come in handy after all of this end-of-year rush of projects. That will be nice.

Just as well everything was low key this year, I've been too busy to notice. December is just flying by. My fiancee and I will have a late Xmas together when she visits next month. Maybe by then I'll be more in the Santa mood. Better late then never.

Noooooooooooooooooo!!

The great Godfather of Soul, James Brown, died today on Christmas day.

That sucks big time. As a bass player, it's arguable, that without James Brown, half of the fun funk music I enjoy playing may never have existed. /sigh.

Bye bye James Brown. I suspect Heaven is holding a huge birthday bash today and they're all makin' it funky. "HAH...........ugh.......................Hah......................."

Latest Project

My latest web project for my client Prassas Capital LLC, involves my one of my first attempts at using a popular blogging system called Wordpress as a platform for the site. I think some service industry business, like my own, require that information is timely and changed frequently. It just seemed natural that a blog would work best in these cases so that the power is in the hands of the business owner to post updates & commentaries.

It's a fun project, although I'd be the first to admit it's a crash course in PHP and CSS work to get this kind of thing accomplished. Projects like these involve a lot of time searching for things, and doing a lot of reverse engineering to look at codes that people all over the world have worked on. It can get frustrating at times.

My own new site will be using the Wordpress platform. Although I can only work on that here and there these days. It may take a while....

Dell

Let me first say that I think Dell makes reasonably well built proprietary PCs at a very reasonable cost, and I think their monitors are just about as baddass as anything I've used before including NECs, Sonys and Apple Cinemas.

Now that we got that bullshit out of the way....here's a warning for anyone looking to buy from Dell here in Hawaii.

1) Be very cautious with their "Free Shipping" option. They don't offer free shipping here to Hawaii. For some reason their sales reps don't understand that UPS and USPS both offer ground shipping rates to Hawaii just like anywhere else in our nation. Sure, perhaps it costs them a little more because of physical distance, but they only offer the more expensive 2-day air here.

What really grates under my skin is the fact I know some reps at Dell know this. Some of my friends have received free shipping here on the exact same products during the exact same promotions. I don't know what they do -- perhaps they have a sweeter voice or they offer free naked webcam shows to the Dell reps or something, because I've tried every trick in the book to get free shipping (short of doing the webcam shows) and I can't get it.

So it's not necessarily the fact I'm paying for the 2nd day shipping that gets me pissed off so much as the fact they may be showing preferential treatment to some customers more then others. Either fuck us all over Dell, or give us the damn promotion like everyone else.

2) When you pay for one of their financing options, I learned you have to keep an eye on their statement due dates. I had just sent in my final payment over this monitor I purchased a few months back thinking I'm all golden. Come to find out Dell had slapped a $30 late fee in my account.

"WTF! Had I been so stupid as to submit my auto-payment schedule 5 days late?"

No! I had payed my bills on time as I had with all my other previous statements but they had shifted this one a few days ahead. It wasn't just one or two days ahead....I figure there are a few short months, plus daylight savings time always messes me up for something or another, so I can see a day or two shift on my due date. But this was 5 or 6 days early.

Had I not checked, I would have had this late fee, PLUS I would have defaulted on their free financing option that would have expired on January 1st and been slapped with all the interest going back to my original purchase.

ALWAYS check your bills with those bastards.

Yeah yeah, somehow I doubt reps at Apple are any better, but I'm tempted to try something else next time.

Black & Whites

Here's another old photo rescue I found this weekend while cleaning out my harddrive. (Do you know it takes 12 hours to back up my harddrive these days? What a pain in the ass) Anyway, some of the tips I learned from that seminar recently was that you shouldn't take black & white photos using the camera's B&W feature.

You take it as a color image then you process it into a B&W photo yourself. If you take the image in RAW format (the digital camera's equivalent to a raw film negative), then you can do this even faster and easier.

The photo tips made my otherwise dull looking photo pop out a bit better. To my untrained photography eye this is a decent attempt. /shrug. You know how it is, 10 years from now I'm going to look back at these things and realize how god aweful they are.

It's funny how I like putting all these white frames around these photos now. How unoriginal. But yet it makes me feel like a photographer! I'm getting quite addicted to this new fangled photography shimmadingy.

Happy Holidays

Wishing all 5 of you readers a Happy Holiday Season! That's the Christmas Card design I made this year for my clients. If you didn't get one....I'm sorry. I was so rushed this year I just had to brainstorm my list and rush them out in the mail. You know I love you!

I went through several different ideas for this thing. Everything from drawing some funny cartoons (maybe I should get them up here too), whipping up some illustrations. The only thing I know I wanted was to make everything myself. In the end, I just took my camera out one day and walked down to Downtown to take some Christmas shots....and I ended up with this big bear image. Add some Photoshop trickery and viola...instant Christmas card.

There's some blank cards that Avery has that's really good for this kind of thing. It's really thick heavyweight paper with some nice texture to it. The images come out very vibrant and sharp...at least with the Canon printers. I was pleased with myself...I gave myself a pat on the back and bought myself a Starbucks coffee for the good work. :)

OK, before I blow more smoke up my ass, Have a Great Holiday Season everyone!

Could it be true?

I got a notice by email today that the immigration office in California has sent out an approval letter for my fiancee to get a visa to come get married here. Until I hold this sucker in my hands and see it for myself, I won't celebrate, but if it appears this is the real deal...this is HUGE.

We only received our first notice that they recieved our application in October. Now 2 months later we receive an approval? The website says they're still processing applications for June. How did this happen that they skipped over to our application and processed it so fast?

Maybe they saw our huge stack of papers and just thought "no way I'm sifting through that mess, just let them pass....move along, move along." What a stroke of luck!

If this is true then there's no worries about having to change our wedding plans and trips. Whoohoo! Christmas has come early this year!

Condos

So I went through the trouble of trying to purchase a new condo development. I say "trying" because in all seriousness, it's almost impossible for a single person to purchase property here in Hawaii where even a single-bedroom condo typically exceeds $300k.

So without going into the nasty details, I had the opportunity to get a new luxury condo apartment at about 20% below market value. Yeah that might sound great, but even then just a 1 bedroom condo ranged between $275k - $309k. I know there are probably a lot of places in our country where that money could buy me a mansion and several acres of land. /sigh.

Plus if you read the fine print, I couldn't turn around and sell this condo to someone else within 2 years and any equity I earn when I DO sell it has to be shared with the association. So it's a program completely designed for someone who wants to live in the place long-term.

Long story short, the loan folks told me I had awesome credit and everything, but I just didn't meet the terms of this specific project. Which is just as well, the terms of this purchase made these condominiums terrible as an investment. They were selling these cheap units purely to fulfill some obscure State requirement to sell so many units to lower income local residence so people won't complain that Hawaii is being completely bought out by the Japanese.

I'm both relieved that I don't have to deal with the pressure of paying a huge mortgage, and a little depressed there aren't more affordable housing yet for first-time home buyers in Hawaii.

Donating Blood

Every few weeks the blood bank calls me to donate. "We need your donations!"

Sure, it makes me feel good I'm wanted for something. I must have some kind of hero-complex (is there such a thing?)...I see those posters up that says "For each donation you're saving 3 lives". So by that criteria I may have saved a room full of people by now. Where's my freakin' award?

Nah it's a good cause, but there are 2 things I hate about the blood donation process...

1) It hurts. With some nurses, it's a quick pinprick. A second of pain I can handle. But sometimes you get that one bad nurse who jabs that needle in the wrong place and it feels like they're chopping your arm off.

2) I have to pay for parking. OK, I'm reaching for excuses not to go. There are donation spots where they have free parking. But for years I've been going to this one donation office in downtown and I just feel comfortable there. Sucks that there's no free parking there.

They call me so often now I feel like I must be the only guy in the State that's single handedly donating my blood for all the hospitals in town. Sometimes I wish they'd drain some other poor sap and let me try to erase my last memory of the painful needle before I walk back in. /sigh.

What fun. I've been going through all these old photos I took over these past months and seeing how I can apply my new skills to them. Stuff I had practically all but dismissed as crap end up turning out pretty awesome once I put in some post-production work on them.

Photography is certainly fun. But it's such an expensive hobby. Now I'm getting the itch to buy a better camera. I'd love a Canon 30D. But I still can't justify spending more on a new camera just a year after picking up this Olympus E500. The Olympus is still a great camera but already I'm finding it a little limiting in some features.

Yes yes I know....it's not the camera, it's the skill of the photographer that can get good shots. But after hanging out with a lot of photographers lately, I realize that a good camera often gives these pros a LOT more opportunities to get those killer shots. Guys with cameras that can take 8 shots per second, have 2 or 3 times as much opportunity to get that one shot. Or if your camera can focus better or faster in low light conditions then my camera, then you're more likely to come out with a useable result.

Now I'm just saying that from my observation.... I still can't justify spending $10k on a camera when I can barely understand the physics behind exposure, aperature, and shutter speeds.

As far as other things go, business is moving briskly this month. I love the pace, but it comes with a lot of stress. Just have to keep moving. I'm glad I went to this last seminar though, it gave me new incentive and momentum to surge forward with all this work, I was feeling BLAH a couple weeks ago.

My fiancee & I are also coming along with our wedding plans, her move over to Hawaii, her visa application, etc. The latest report from the immigration center is looking positive again, after going backwards the last time they issued a report about their fiancee visa applications, this time they're back ahead and gained a little ground. So hopefully around March of next year we hope to hear the good news that everything is set to go.

Her nursing apps went through, so beyond passing a big test in March, she should be good to work in the U.S. right away when she moves here. That will be another load off our shoulders...the poor girl has had to study this HUGE 600 page book for this test, similar to a MCAT or SAT type test. I'm pretty proud of her. I wish I could do something to help her studies, but unfortunately I'm not telekinetic.

I'm so behind on Christmas things. I'm still struggling with this year's Christmas cards. And aside from a couple people, I haven't even begun my shopping yet. This year my bro is coming in from the bay area to celebrate the Holiday's with us. What the heck do I get him he doesn't already have in San Fran? ...............Macadamia nuts? ............... Shoyu chicken?

Photoshop rules

I attended an all-day seminar run by NAPP today. It was pretty fun. You know, even after having used Photoshop for over 10 years (since version 2.0), I thought I was pretty good at it. But after attending a show like this, it's a very humbling experience.

The whole world of digital color correction and photo enhancement was revealed to me and I was thrilled. I haven't been this excited about playing with software in a LONG time. Check this before and after shots for one of my photos:

Before

After

Killer huh? Overall I learned it's ok to exhaggerate colors a bit...what looks "real" is not necessarily exciting. I know how to white balance and do tonal adjustments a bit better so more details pop out. These were areas that were more for photographers rather then graphic designers, but now it's like a big mystery of the universe was answered for me.

The speaker was Scott Kelby who's like the president & chief editor of some upteen million associations and a best-selling author for tons of Photoshop and Illustrator books. It was unreal. He's a fantastic photographer.

What I also found out is that even the BEST photographers take terrible shots from time to time. But it's the fact they know how a billion ways to fix it in post-production that makes a huge difference. So I don't feel as bad anymore.

Now at least I can "save" a few of my mediocre shots.

New work

About time I show some new work huh? Yeah things have been a blur...I have a lot of projects in queue that are 99.99% done but just waiting on something or another, so I can't show them. But here's one finished logo project:

This was a logo I designed for a friend of mine. Can you guess what he does? The difficulty in this was trying to incorporate the "M" and the "G" into a camera body. After a few attempts I think I was pretty happy with this result.

Scans of my other concepts are shown in my gallery...