Fotobook 4

The Result
The book arrived a little quicker than the website promised, in just over a week. Overall I was quite pleased. Picture quality was good and it is rather nice to see one’s work in a book format. Some of the arrangements of images worked particularly well I thought, and others didn’t quite make it.

Least happy with the text. For me the size of the text was too big on the page in most instances. I missed reformatting one of the pages to the font I wanted, so it had the standard font. These problems arose partially because of the shortcomings in the software I have flagged above. I also noted that the pages did not come numbered. Not something that I looked for in setting up the book but something that you do spot when looking at the finished article.

Summary
Overall, the experience was not too bad. The software was reasonably easy to use and the warning messages stopped me from making any disastrous mistakes. The quality of the book is fine. However, I did end up with the feeling that the software is aimed at those people who are content to print directly from their cameras. I would have felt happier if the software offered more of the printing experience you can get in the Adobe software. For example, if Fotobook provided a printer profile then at least it would be possible to soft proof and have some idea of the outcome. At the time of sending the book off there is a significant element of fingers crossed about the final result, at least for the first time. And at £30+ a go, that is an expensive trial set up.

Any other issues came about because of the challenges of designing a book. Although the provided software takes away much of the lower level design issues there is still the requirement that images on facing pages need to work well together to be really effective. Of course, images on the same page also need to support each other. These challenges are slightly different to my normal output considerations, such as single prints for club competitions or the occasional quick slideshow.

Brian’s notes
Brian Steptoe made some supplementary comments in an email which I have his permission to share:

Stuart,

A few comments on your article. I have not used Fotobook.

A normal book standard for a quality paper for photographs is 130gsm, so your 200gsm choice is very good, but likely to be more costly than needed.

I suggest step 3 should be to choose the book format and page size. That gives a guideline for the pixel size of images you will need. Your choice is ambitious for a first try. I would recommend a size of about 10x8 inches or A4 for a first time user.

I think that 300 dpi is the normal requirement. I suggest reviewing the sizes of the templates for 1, 2, 4 images per page and working out the approximate pixel sizes at 300dpi is the next step. Bear in mind that any images required to completely fill a page without any border should be 3mm oversize of the page.

Having done that, the next step is to prepare photos.

As you say, laying out a book requires thought over page spread layouts and general sequencing through the pages. There is also the issue of text - fonts, sizes, density, placement etc. I would suggest writing some introductory text for the start of the book, again probably before getting to choose the images, as one influences the other.

Hope this helps.

Brian

A day at Focus on Imaging 2009

Big trade show at the Birmingham NEC. First time there, mainly driven by two things; lot of chat by photographers about going so felt I should as well, and notification by my tutor at OCA that he was going to be there on the Tuesday. Nice to meet up with him. He can talk for England but he said nice things about my work, so all is forgiven. Seems like just after I decided to go for the Digital Arts course they completely revamped the first level courses for the Photography stream, which then made them much more attractive. Oh well. I still think I might get something useful out of the Dig Arts 1 course.

As for the show, lots of vendors housed in two of the halls at the NEC. Crowds not too bad, only really ran into a problem at the Adobe stand when I wanted to attend a talk on B&W conversion using their products. Couldn't get a seat and too knackered to stand for 45 minutes so left to come home. Did manage to get the back end of the previous talk while waiting though. The speaker was showing how he edited a grab shot of The Edge (U2) so that his eyes were looking at his camera rather than the one next to him. Quite nifty. Isolated the pupils and made then complete by copying them and flipping them vertically. Redid the whites to eliminate the existing ones (shadowing and colours), and then dropped the new pupils in. And after blending they looked ok. Could use the same technique on my candid of the young black guy I took at Waterloo.

Other stands visited:

Canon - nothing particularly interesting here since I understand their gear pretty well. They were plugging the 5D Mk II and showing some massive lenses on cameras that people could look through. Impossible to get close to of course. Various anoraks were twiddling with them and making appreciative noises but God knows what they were looking at. Managed to get a Canon bag to replace the free Nikon one we were all given at the front door. Equanamity restored.

Epson - again gear well understood and they were focussing on their high end large printers, which are out of my league. There was one interesting chap who was MD for a third party that made metallic sheets for printing through Epson. They would work in my 3800, but make use of the front alternative feed (need room at the back for it to feed through). MD said that they work well for wedding and general B&W. About £10 per sheet if you just buy the one it seems. Need to apply a 'lacquer' as well to protect the image. Can get that from diy store it seems. Managed to lose the guy's business card!

Superframe - displays 4"x4" photos in acrylic blocks, mounted in various combinations. Looked rather good if expensive. www.superframe.eu

Hahnemuhle - picked up three sample packs of papers. Must get round to using these some time. They were Canson Infinity (a new French company), Hahnemuhle Fine Art Collection, and Olmec, which came free with the other two. I saw an exhibition of Hahnemuhle papers, of which the Fine Art Matt group were very impressive, particularly for B&W.

Professional Photographer magazine - Bought a back issue, Feb 2009, which shows a method of producing a high key image from multiple layers in PS. Interested to see if I might subscribe in future.

B&W Photography magazine - Bought a subscription and got a free SLIK monopod, another one!

Silvershotz magazine - Bought subscription to Volume 5, which got me the four issues produced so far and the Folio. Beautifully produced magazine.

AG magazine - Four back issues purchased, the last four quarters. Again impressive quality, not as high end as Silvershotz but packed with stuff.

Printed Easy.com - On line printing house, flyers and brochures that sort of thing. Can't see me using them but you never know. Not sure why they are special?

Spicer Hallfield - Photo albums (ie. weddings). Looked good quality. www.spicerhallfield.co.uk

Dave Butcher - Old style master printer offers B&W landscape courses in the Peak District. Supports digital but really likes darkroom stuff printing on Ilford papers. www.davebutcher.co.uk

Flaghead - Succumbed to purchasing a ring flash that will work with my Canon flashes. My only failing of an otherwise quite disciplined day. Special show price! Must check on the internet! Should arrive next week. www.flaghead.co.uk

BJP - Interested in this as a regular magazine as well. Covers all aspects of pro photogs it seems. Came away with a back copy, not sure how.

Pretty good day, though a total of four hours driving for four hours on the site wasn't quite the right balance.

IR colorising trial

IR colorising trial, originally uploaded by stusk.

Sort of looks like a bad Victorian painting this one. The 20D I am using has been converted with an 830nm pass filter installed. Tradition has it that this is a more vigorous filter than the popular 710nm and so straight B&W is the preferred end point. Nevertheless I thought I would try some of the IR techniques others use in PS to see what happens. The Channel Swap I think did more or less nothing, the sky is still a sort of magenta instead of the intended blue, but the rather aggressive LAB moves did drag something out, those colours that are seen here. All a bit strained so I will probably not bother again.

I have also been trying to set up the 20D so that the WB is right in the camera. Best approach seems to be take a shot of full frame vegetation (grass) in full sunlight and then use this as a custom WB setting when taking the shots. I have also read notes on the internet that suggest that the WB will move a little throughout the day, so maybe I am chasing rainbows a bit.

Had a bit of trouble setting the camera up, since the instructions for the 20D were not clear. It appears that Canon rewrote the instructions for later models, so the 5D is much more explicit. Not sure that you can ever get a completely neutral tone, but much closer than it was. Interesting to note that neither the 20D nor any of my supporting software can really adjust the colour temperature to the needed ~1800K, everything stops at 2000K, hence the ongoing magenta tint. Solve it in the end by simply converting to B&W. But then I wonder if I am going to do that anyway, why bother with setting the WB. Need to investigate further.

TV DIG

Another Sunday meeting with the local chapter of the RPS Digital Imaging Group. Speakers this time were Martin Addison, author of a book on Corel Painter X, and Clive Haynes, Chairman of the RPS DIG. They did a sort of double act, in the morning sharing a large number of images that has been processed one way or another, the images arriving on a sort of manual conveyor belt formed by the tow speakers and a rather complicated viewing frame. In the afternoon they shared some of the computer techniques that created the images we saw in the morning.

Pretty good day overall. Clive showed some IR images where he bought out the colour via channel swapping and use of LAB mode, and they were some of the best I have seen in terms of subtlety and control. Unfortunately I have opted for the 830nm filter on my 20D and so opportunities for colour rendition are slim. He referred us to a number of other techniques on his web site http://www.crhfoto.co.uk/ and it looks quite good as a reference site.

Martin showed some of the capabilities of Painter X. Interesting but a bit easy to drift into sentimentality it seemed to me.

Entertaining though and time well spent.

Fotobook 3

Went back over the images that were regarded as only average quality and re-exported them from LR at larger dimensions and larger dpi. Seemed to solve the problem. Updated the text, so captions and the odd description. Maybe could have done with some more supporting text, but the area is well known to the BCC audience so probably not necessary.

Pressed the button to upload and a number of warning messages came up about content overlapping the border areas. A bit troubling since I had used the provided templates all the way through. Analysis showed that the problem seemed to be the caption placeholders, so large-ish text boxes that lapped over the 'printable' edges of the page. reduced the size of the boxes to tight around the text and problem solved.

Apart from the main cover page that is. Instructions from the software suggested that it is essential to cover all of the cover area, including the border, for the purposes of printing. But it seems that if you follow this approach you end up causing a warning. Decided to go ahead with upload anyway, so we will see what happens.

Paid for book as part of the upload (£41) and about 10 day wait for it to arrive. Once I had done that I wondered if I should have sharpened the images for the print size? Oh well . . .

Fotobook 2

So completed the population of the placeholders and on review only one seemed a bit naff, given the combination of the images on the page. Resolved the issue by simply pasting a new template. Found that I did have quite a bit of control over the positioning and size of the crop in the Edit function, so that problem was resolved. RTFM.

I still have images that are only of adequate quality, the larger ones, so need to reload them through PS. Complete the text.

Photobook 1

Put together a set of images from the South Bank in London, and showed the resulting Photomatix slideshow to a small group from the camera club. Somebody suggested a photobook would be a good idea, so I thought I might give it a go. Seems like we are presenting our work in April at a club evening.

So first choose your photobook supplier. Many on-line offerings with little to choose between them. One or two stood out as being a little different, both emphasised quality and thus were on the expensive side. I plumped for FotoBook in the end, simply because it got some gold award from Digital Photo magazine.

Downloaded the software (straightforward). Reviewed the web site to find some advice on dpi and sizes. Not very clear, the only suggestion being that at a minimum the images should be 1600 pixels on the longest side. No suggestion for dpi.

Exported the images I wanted from LR at 1600 on the longest side and @ 200dpi. Chose a landscape book with a printed cover.

First task was to find photo for the cover. Thought I found one the right shape, the cover illustration being designed to fill both back and front, so letterbox format. Loaded the chosen image into the page and found that the 'Quality' light remained red (= poor). Tried some other uploads into different formats on other pages and found that they were ok. Back to the front cover. Tried different pixel densities. No better. Eventually went into PS and created a black background of exactly the right dimensions and plonked my photos on the top of it. One picture for the front cover and two smaller pictures for the back. Software was happy when I uploaded this new beast. Then had to go back into PS to move the pictures around so that they fit into the cover template. Couldn't do that from the software of course.

Then cheerfully started to load pages up from the template library (easy) and pictures on to the placeholders in the templates. Again easy but found a) 1600 pixels gave only 'acceptable' image quality for the largest boxes, and b) I had no control over cropping of pictures I inserted. The original approach I have to cropping pictures does not work well in standardised book formats.

Plan is to continue to populate the templates so that I have an idea of the flow I want and then revisit the cropping (no guidance on crop ratios btw), picture sizing and dpi for each photo in PS.

Also found out that books need words! Need to write some verbiage for each image. More work than I thought.

Basingstoke 2009

Submitted 5 into the DP category and got three acceptances, which were the following:



I guess ok for the first external comp.

The Surfboarder

Score 10/10 in the BCC Projected Images comp last night, judged by Brian Powell ARPS APAGB. So very nice. He kept going on about the border, it seemed he liked the presentation, and I must say it did rather stand out against the others. The other competitor that scored well was Ellen Pirie's landscape of somewhere in Scotland, which she treated with an Orton technique. I liked it a lot, the colours worked well for me and she had a lovely sweep to the picture. I still think it slightly weak at the top but looked much better on the projector screen in this regard than on the web. Can see the picture here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellenpirie/3201012323/

Winter pigeons

Winter pigeons

The original of this photo (see below) had mixed reviews, people seemed to respond positively at an emotional level, or dismissed it out of hand at the technical level due to a lack of detail. I thought it might improve things if I was to make it smaller in the frame, which then led me to contemplate the appropriate background. So far so good, but the image then had a rather sharp and uncompromisingly stark edge to it in the middle, so I mangled things up a bit, just to break up that edge. Not sure I have ended up where I thought I would, but an interesting journey.