Category Archives: DAM

Photoshop CS3 Beta

Posted on by joe

The reports are flying in on Photoshop CS3 Beta. While you may be tempted to install CS3 now, here’s some sound advice from DAM expert Peter Krogh on keeping your machine running smoothly and your precious files safe:

  • Don’t put the beta version of software on your primary hard drive

I’m excited about CS3, but I’m going to let the early adopters test it out for me. I can wait until the official release when the major bugs get fixed. If you only have one hard drive, I wouldn’t install the beta — your settings could get easily screwed up when you install the official release down the road.

If you want to be smart about testing beta software, use a separate hard drive. On the Mac you can use SuperDuper! to make a bootable clone of your primary drive. Then install CS3 beta on the clone. If things get screwed up, then just copy your primary drive, which doesn’t have CS3 beta on it, back onto the secondary drive. Making a bootable clone is a great way to create a safe playground for testing new software, assessing OS upgrade stability, or trying a new workflow.

Or you could just sit back patiently and wait a few months until the kinks get ironed out.

RAW preview vs. DNG preview

Posted on by joe


Photo of comedian Will Franken — by Joe Reifer

What you see above is a screen capture from my cataloging software, iView Media Pro, that illustrates the difference between the preview embedded in the original RAW file, and the preview in the DNG version. Which preview would you rather use to assess the quality of your images on the virtual lightbox?

Here’s the deal — if I take my RAW image and adjust it in a converter so it looks pretty, then it looks pretty in the RAW converter, and as any kind of derivative file from the RAW (PSD, JPEG, etc.). But when I look at that original RAW image as a thumbnail or in a cataloging program, the embedded preview is based on the original camera settings. Contrary to popular belief, Will Franken is not orange.

If I use Adobe Bridge to adjust RAW files, the adjustments show as long as I’m still in Bridge or Photoshop. If my now adjusted RAW file is viewed by another program, I’m back to square one. As far as I know, the same holds true for any other RAW conversion software. RAW adjustments are not portable between programs — each company has their own proprietary way of storing these adjustments.

One of the huge benefits of the DNG format is the JPEG preview contained inside your file reflects your RAW adjustments. If your cataloging software is set to show the preview embedded in the file, then you will be happily organizing, rating, searching, and sorting images that look how they should — not how your camera saw them at the time of the exposure. It’s way easier to assess image quality if you’re looking at a properly adjusted file. This little feature makes a huge difference to my workflow, and is alone almost worth the extra time it takes to convert to DNG.

So how do you setup Camera RAW and iView Media Pro to make this work? Yet again, I will recommend Peter Krogh’s The DAM Book for a detailed explanation. Here’s the short version:

Save Options for Camera RAW or the Adobe DNG converter

  • Format: Digital Negative
  • Check – Compressed (lossless)
  • JPEG Preview – Full Size

Camera RAW Preferences – DNG File Handling

  • Check – Ignore sidecar “.xmp” files
  • Check – Update embedded JPG previews: Full size

This means when if you update the Camera RAW settings for an image, the embedded JPEG preview inside the DNG gets updated, too. You take a small speed hit, but it’s worth it. See pages 126-127 of The DAM Book for more info.

iView Media Pro – Preferences – Media Rendering – RAW

  • Make sure “Use embedded preview (if available)” is checked

With these settings you’ll be using a preview in iView that reflects your RAW settings in both the Thumbnail and Media view. If you’re an iView user, try it out with a test file. Makes a huge difference.

I’ll be writing about another big benefit of the DNG file format in an upcoming post about copyrighting your work. I’ll also be discussing the acquisition of iView by Microsoft, and how DNG really is the best file format for the paranoid. Stay tuned.

A productive year pt I

Posted on by joe

As the end of 2006 draws near, I was thinking back on all the fun I’ve had shooting at night and doing urban exploration this year. I photographed during 10 of the 12 full moons this year, including multiple nights some months. Friends in the San Francisco Bay Area night photography and urban exploration community really came through with some great photography locations this year. I would particularly like to thank Riki Feldmann, Steve Walsh, Troy Paiva, Tim Baskerville, Todd Lapin, and Gunnar H. for location assistance.

From a digital asset management (DAM) perspective, the year in review process was made quite simple by using iView Media Pro to sort images in my 2006 catalog that were rated 2 stars or higher. The benefits of being organized are immeasurable sometimes. I hope you all had a wonderful year and made some great images.

Mac wireless

Posted on by joe

I’ve got a Mac desktop computer that’s hooked up to DSL, and a Mac laptop. If I shoot when traveling, I backup to a small firewire drive, and then plug that drive into the desktop when I get home to move the files over. I’ve thought about getting a Macintosh base station to create a wireless network. This would allow me to use the laptop to get online from any room in the house, and share files between the laptop and desktop.

The Airport Base Station is a white orb that costs $200. The other Mac option is to use an Airport Express Base Station ($129), but this would also require buying an Airport Extreme Card for my desktop computer (the laptop has one already). Either way you slice it, it’s about $200. The Airport Express would allow me to do fancy stuff like using my computer to play music over my stereo. A cool idea, but right now extra time on the computer does not interest me.

I talked to a friend who has been networking Macs for awhile, and he recommended a less expensive option. The Linksys WRT54G Wireless Router is $49.99 from Amazon and ships for free. The WRT54G lets you share a DSL connection, move files between computers, includes a four port 10/100 switch, and uses 128 bit encryption. We’ll see how it works after I set it up over Thanksgiving weekend. Stay tuned.

DAM: Backing up on location

Posted on by joe

If you’re shooting on location for a few days, you’re probably bringing a laptop. But are you backing everything up? A few years ago when file sizes were smaller, I would bring a pile of CDs for backup. The routine would be to download the memory cards to the computer via Firewire cardreader, and then burn a few CDs. Two years ago on a 6 day shoot in New Mexico my laptop died. I sent it into the shop and no data was recoverable. All of the sudden that time I spent burning CDs every day didn’t seem so bad. I didn’t lose a single image.

Now that it’s 12-15MB every time you press the shutter release, CDs aren’t a good option. DVD burners are even slower. There are two general types of solutions for backup — portable hard drives, or a portable storage device. Portable storage devices are battery powered drives, some with an LCD screen that lets you review images. Some of these have amazing screens and are easy to use, but cost a lot – like the Epson P-4000. While the portable storage devices seem like a great way to skip bringing a laptop on location, they are not a good solution unless you can buy two. You always need at least 2 copies of your files.

I like to have the ability to organize, rate, and add metadata to images on location so I have less to do when I get home, which makes a laptop plus a small hard drive a better solution for backup. If you use a Mac, have a look at the One World Computing (OWC) bus-powered drives. These are small, lightweight, simple drives for around $100-150. Just download your images via cardreader to your laptop, then backup to the OWC drive via Firewire or USB2. Very simple and fast.

Now if you’re really careful, when your laptop is back in the hotel room, you can keep the little OWC drive on you at all times. Two people I know have had laptops stolen out of hotel rooms this year. Carrying a little drive around is called paranoid until something bad happens, and then it’s called smart.

Here’s another good idea if you’re on a Mac — SuperDuper! SuperDuper! is a really easy to use backup program that creates a clone of your harddrive. Let’s say your laptop has an 80GB drive, and you have a OWC 80GB drive for backup. SuperDuper! will make a bootable clone of your laptop drive on the portable harddrive. Not only are you backing up your precious images, you’re backing up everything on your laptop, including those Photoshop settings you spent so long fiddling around with to get right. Hard to believe, but it’s only $27.95.

I use SuperDuper! on my home computer, too. Downloaded images are backed up right away by dragging and dropping to a firewire harddrive that lives on top of my computer. Then once every week or two, I run SuperDuper! to make sure I didn’t miss anything. If my computer takes a dive, restoring is easy — my firewire backup is a fully bootable clone. Get in the habit of using good backup strategies now, and spend less time crying later when your laptop falls in a lake or your computer starts making funny sounds and dies. Anyone that’s had a data disaster will agree that it’s worth the effort. And if you haven’t read Peter Krogh’s The DAM Book, there’s no time like the present.

Posted in DAM

DAM: DVD Wars

Posted on by joe

There’s a very well written 1-page piece on in the 10/16/06 New Yorker about the battle between Toshiba and Sony for the next generation of DVD technology. You may have seen the ads for Sony’s Blu-ray or Toshiba’s HD DVD already, or you will soon. Is it VHS vs. Beta all over again? These formats will offer a higher resolution viewing experience to maximize the quality of the latest HD TV’s. Blu-ray is also being used for Sony’s Playstation 3 video games.

Why does this matter to photographers? As the file size goes up on digital cameras, backing up your photos becomes an even bigger issue. Blu-ray DVDs are about 50GB capacity, and HD DVD is 30GB. While the best DAM strategy is to have live and local backup on a harddrive(s), which are also getting bigger and cheaper, burning images to “write-once media” like a DVD is a good insurance policy against viruses and file corruption. They are also easy to store off-site. The jury is still out as far as how long they’ll last, and when we’ll see computers with Blu-ray or HD DVD drives.

Posted in DAM