October 2008 Digital Group Meeting

Meeting Notes March 2009 to 2018.
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spb
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Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:04 pm

October 2008 Digital Group Meeting

Post by spb » Wed Oct 08, 2008 2:05 pm

An excellent start to the 2008-9 season with 27 attending.

FILTERS

The Photoshop beginners tutorial was on the subject of Filters and Sharpening. As an example of a third party filter (or plugin) I demonstrated Kaleidoscope 2.1 from Mehdi. Like all such filters the single program file must be placed in a particular windows directory. For Photoshop Elements this is C:/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop Elements X /Plug-Ins and in this case there is no automatic installer so it must be placed there manually using Windows Explorer or similar. There are hundreds of other filters available, both free and commercial. Just Google "Photoshop Plugins".

EQUIPMENT

On the subject of equipment needed for digital imaging we talked about printers: HP, Canon and Epson printers can all produce excellent photo-realistic results but the club has a great deal of collective experience with Epson printers and these are highly recommended. The current models and some information about them can be found at the end of this email.

Note that setting up printers and screens for accurate colour is both crucial and tricky. There are a couple of documents on the subject on the APS Website on the digital group page.

There were several questions about Photoshop Elements which came from the feeling that at £50 Elements must be inferior to Photoshop CS at £500. Well - er - no actually. Maybe this was a mistake on the part of the Adobe marketing department or maybe they were losing so much money from pirated copies of CS, but Elements contains all of the features that an amateur photographer will ever need. In addition the user interface is easier to use than CS and there are some extra features for producing albums, projects etc. Elements handles Raw files, layers, filters, selections, adjustments of every kind etc. It does......it really does!

New versions - Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Elements 7 are due out any day. The last versions only appeared a few months ago. These are no longer about adding features they are about creating a revenue stream for Adobe. All the features that you will ever need were produced more than 5 years ago. I would suggest that any version from Elements 3 or Photoshop CS onwards is fine for most people. The only important exception is if you take Raw images (rather than jpgs) and you have bought a new camera recently. It is likely that your new camera will only be supported by the latest version of Photoshop or Elements. Updates to the Raw conversion software are produced periodically and they tend to work only with the most recent versions of Photoshop which is a cynical ploy to make you upgrade.

Adobe Lightroom does not overlap with Photoshop. Lightroom is for reviewing, managing and converting large quantities of images, especially Raw images. It is a workflow program. Photoshop is for the detailed editing and production of a single image. If you take jpg images and you have no problem reviewing sorting and filing them, then you probably don't need to donate £200 to Adobe for Lightroom. If you are a beginner I would strongly suggest that stick to jpg images which are much easier to handle. People have been happily producing stunning images from jpgs for more than ten years.

PRIVATE TUITION

If you would like to get up to speed with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements quickly, I can provide private tuition at exceptionally competitive rates, tailored to your needs. Handouts, homework and support are included as well as a review of your system to achieve the best results. Please respond to this email or phone me.

NEXT MEETING

Thursday 6th November. Same time, same place.

Cheers, Steve Brabner

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EPSON PHOTO PRINTERS

At APS we have the most experience of Epson inkjet photo printers which have produced superb photo-quality prints for us over the years. Having said that, HP and Canon also get great reviews. Printer brands to avoid would seem to be Lexmark and Dell according to reader surveys. The benefit of Epson is that we have a wealth of experience in the club with which we can provide support and advice, especially in the critical area of colour management.

The current Epson photo printers are;

A3+ PRINTERS

The Epson Stylus Photo R2400 has been a stalwart for several years and remains highly rated. However, that has recently been replaced by the Epson Stylus Photo R2880 which is also getting excellent reviews.

One criticism of this printer is the size of the ink cartridges; eight of them, each containing about 11ml of ink each and no doubt like the 2400 the FEED ME light will often be flashing. At around £10 each this printer will likely be as expensive to run as its predecessor with A3 prints costing around £3 each in materials.

These are pigment ink printers. Pigment inks produce 100 year+ archival light-fast prints but the colours are slightly more muted (though arguably more life-like). The R2880 contains two extra grey inks for excellent mono. You have to physically swap the Photo Black and Matte Black cartridges for gloss and matt prints respectively which wastes ink and remains an annoyance. If you want A3 archival prints and a high quality mono option this is the printer for you. Cost: around £500.

Incidentally the R2400 is still around and good value at around £450. See review.

If mono is not so important to you and you like a high gloss finish, there is the Epson Stylus Photo R1900 which replaced the R1800. This is also a pigment printer and has a gloss optimiser so you can produce prints with a more even gloss finish, and it's cheaper than the R2880 at around £340. This could become the default choice for photo enthusiasts primarily working in colour. See review.

Finally, there is the Epson Stylus Photo 1400 which replaced the venerable workhorse 1290 early in 2007. This is the cheapest of the batch at around £250 but nevertheless capable of excellent results, as was it's predecessor for many APS members. It uses dye inks which don't have the same long life as the above pigment ink printers but are fine for most purposes and can produce bolder colours if required. If you intend selling your prints, I would not recommend a dye printer due to their potential to fade when displayed in sunlight. See review.

A2 PRINTERS

You might think - "I'll never need A2 prints" but they are being chosen by some members especially because the printers contain large 80ml ink cartridges which mean that you almost never need to change them. Of course you can use smaller paper sizes but you do need a sizeable desk space to site the beast.

The Epson Stylus Pro 3800 costs around £800 so the cartridge hassle reduction may not be worth it. See review. The higher-spec Stylus Pro 4880 came out more recently but at £1200 but it inexplicably requires the swapping of matte and gloss black once again, so has dropped a major clanger (one estimate I read was £25 in wasted ink per swap!!!).

A4+ PRINTERS

The R800 is currently the only Epson printer dedicated to photos at A4 size and has Matte Black, Photo Black and Gloss Optimiser plus five colour cartridges onboard. It is a pigment-ink printer costing around £220. See review.

There are many other A4 Epson printers in the range. They tend to be cheaper, slower or do not feature the additional inks and features that give the finest photographic results. Nevertheless, many would be entirely suitable for beginners and those on a tight budget. The entire range is described on the Epson Website.

Steve Brabner.

(thanks to John Harrison for input to this summary)

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