Leopard and mail stationery... so close

One of the features in Leopard that was most touted was the ability to us html based "stationery" to send cool emails embedded with logos, photos or whatever you want. As a photographer, I imagined all the possibilities to be able to send cool stylish emails with my logo or photos or whatever... but something that would give me the opportunity so send something other than the black text on white screen email.

It exists... it is a part of Mail 3, but the choices that are built in are not all that attractive (unless you want to look like a spin-off from a iPhoto advertisement or you are fond of really obnoxious backgrounds (like little flags.)

While the argument could be made that there are some cute ones, and there are, they are all aimed at the "cute" market... and some fall farther from the mark than others. What makes the whole thing not-very-Apple-like is the difficulty of trying to make any changes to the stationery templates or personalize them.

Here is a ten step tutorial on the Creative Guy blog showing you how to modify stationery (very cool for him to break it down and post it.) It is not impossible but it isn't simple either.

The other option is to shell out $30 and buy a bunch of other stationery templates that to me are all a bit over the top, too just like Apple's.

Neither solution exactly work for me.

What is odd is that there is no functionality built into iWeb to create stationery templates... it seems like it would be such a perfect fit and really boost the value of the whole thing to be able to make your own. The stationery is html based as is iWeb... why are they not playing nicely together?

The same thing that Apple has done with music (GarageBand), photography (iPhoto and Aperture) and video (iMovie and iDVD) which is to give the end user the ability to be creative in a simple and powerful interface has been lost with Mail and stationery.

Hopefully in the future (or maybe with the next Leopard update) this will become a reality so that email can become an art form on its own.

The other thing that needs to be mentioned is that html based email is the bane of Blackberry and most email enabled phone users everywhere. It shows up as a bunch of html coding and is nearly impossible to decode. So if you decide to dig into the stationery and start using it for your email, just don't send it to my Blackberry.

Taking your manuals with you

One thing that I have amassed as a digital photographer are lots and lots of instruction manuals. Cameras, flashes, wireless units, audio recorders, Pocket Wizards, studio lights, computer software, portable lights and all of them with more features than I could possibly remember. So I am really good about keeping all of the instruction books on a bookshelf in my office... ready to be referenced at a moments notice.

The only problem is that I am rarely shooting in my office when I need to look up some obscure feature offered by one of my cameras or accessories. Typically I am out of town, or at least across town when I need to look something up... and my manuals are... right there on my office shelf and out of reach.

So I started downloading pdf's instruction manuals of all of the cameras and other devices I use frequently and have a folder with my own little "digital library" that is on both of my laptops so that it always travels with me and I have access to all of my manuals whenever I need to look up a feature or setting.

Here are some of the links to the most popular items... if there is something you want that isn't listed, you can probably do a Google search for the name of the device and the words "manual" and "pdf" and if it's online, that should lead you to it. (Example: "Canon 40D pdf manual")

Canon manuals -- click on the camera you need the manual for. Then click on "Drivers & Downloads." Scroll down the list and download the manual for the camera.

Nikon manuals -- in the Nikon Knowledge Database under "Search by Product" select "Digital SLR" and in the sub-menu you can select the camera you want. Then under "Search by Category" select "Manuals and Guides" and then hit the search button and you can download the manuals you want.

Pocket Wizard manuals -- the various Pocket Wizard manuals (for current and previous products) are listed here.

Quantum battery packs and Q-Flashes -- a list of all the manuals for all their lights, batteries and accessories.

Happy shooting and computing!

10.5 and the little bugs

So overall I am still really liking Leopard (since have it installed on all my machines, I guess it is too late to not like it) but there are still a few things that continue to bug me.

The first and most annoying is that my HP 7310 All-In-One printer will no longer do double-sided-printing. It appears this has been a known issue since Leopard's release and HP has worked with Apple and on the Leopard install disk are print only drivers for the majority of their printers... that's right print only drivers... so a lot of the other functionality of the all-in-ones has disappeared. No more scanning or faxing from the computer and no more double sided printing.

And I can't begin to tell you how much fun it is to have to feed each page of my published image copyright continuation forms by hand into the printer after filling them out in Acrobat so that they will print on both sides correctly...

There are numerous discussions about this on most of the Mac forums.
Hopefully we will see a fix from HP soon.

The other thing that has come up recently (I've only experienced it in the last two weeks) is a bug where in using Photoshop CS3, when you try to enter a size in the crop tool, nothing ends up being entered into the boxes where you put the size and resolution of the image. Most of the time, quitting out of Photoshop and opening it back up again does the trick... but still... what a pain.

This also happens using the feather tool and a number of other tools, but most frequently for me with the crop tool. What is odd is that I am having this happen on my MacPro and my MacBook Pro but not on my MacBook. It could be because I do the least Photoshop work on the MacBook.

There has also been some debate over whether this is an Apple bug or an Adobe bug. Hopefully come MacWorld it will be fixed since there has been word that 10.5.2, which is rumored to be scheduled for release at MacWorld, will fix the problem.

A short term workaround for the problem: If you hover your mouse over the text Width, Height, and Resolution text in the menu next to the boxes where you enter the size, and then hold down the mouse button you can use it like a slider (go right or left) to increase the value to what you want in the box. If you also hold down the shift key, it will go by increments of 10 (pixels, inches, etc.), if you hold down the option key, it will move by increments of 0.1 (pixels, inches, etc.)

The other way you can make a crop if the bar isn't behaving is to do a crop with no data in the sizing windows and then use the "Image Size" tool under the "Image" menu bar item in CS3.

The other Leopard oddity I have experienced on all three of my Macs is the occasional really long startup or shut down for no apparent reason. If there were updates that were installed or running maintenance scripts or something beforehand, I wouldn't worry... but it is odd that this happens every so often. Repairing permissions doesn't seem to make a difference and there are no rogue startup applications that could be causing the problem... hopefully this will be put to bed by 10.5.2 as well.

If I had to do it all over again, I would still be running Leopard right now. It is fast and very stable... with the exception of the problems listed above... none of which are important enough to avoid making the jump... but hopefully they are viewed as important by the companies that hold the keys to fixing the problems.

Backing up Your Mac - Long Term Archiving

In addition to daily backups to protect work in progress, you should also be doing long term archiving of all your images and critical files. Unlike daily backups where you can access your backed up data quickly because it is plugged in to your computer, if you don't break your backups up, your backup system can be unwieldy if you are making it search and update 2TB of data every day.

How often you should perform long term archiving depends upon how many photos you shoot and how much space you are taking up on your hard drives.

I tend do to do archiving once a month. Doing it monthly keeps the number of images manageable and while I am archiving, I also compile everything for quarterly copyright sumbisison. I look through the images, delete anything that there is no use for (out of focus, mis-fires, etc.) and I burn everything else (from the raw shoots) to two DVD's (two copies of the same images.)

I also use a program called CD Finder to catalog all of the DVD's that I've burned so that I can search for photos using the database it builds. It is just another way to keep track of images.

One set of DVD's is stored on-site in my office closet in an acid-free box designed for the storage of CD's and DVD's. The other set of DVD's is stored off-site in a similar set of boxes. Both sets are stored in a cool, dark and dry location that isn't prone to big shifts in temperature or humidity.

After I burn the two DVD's, I move the files over to a hard drive that is only used for archiving. At the end of the year, I duplicate the hard drive (two copies of the same data) and put one hard drive in my safe deposit box at my bank, and the other with my off-site set of DVD's.

At the end of the year, I also burn DVD's and copy to the hard drive(s) all of my published images from the year, clips, copies of everything submitted for copyright (and copies of the submitted thumbnails) and anything else photo related that would fall within the year.

I reason I archive to hard drives as well as DVD's is because it is much easier to manage the data on a hard drive. If all of the data on my RAID got corrupted, it would be much easier to restore it from a few hard drive than from hundreds of DVD's that would have to be read one at a time.

The reason I archive to DVD's is because they are cost effective and allow me to do incremental archiving of images in smaller batches that I can then move to my off-site more quickly instead of waiting until the end of the year to distribute my backups.

There is still some debate about the lifetime of DVD's. If you burn quality disks, and verify the data, you should be in good shape. Most disks that go "bad" are bad because of scratches or they were left in the sun, or some other environmental cause.

You should store your archive DVD's in good hard cases (DVD's can get scratched in those cheap little paper sleeves) and use CD safe pens to write on them. You should store them in some sort of container designed for storing disks and keep them in a dry, dark, cool place. This will help extend the life considerably.

I figure that before I get close to the lifespan of a DVD, we will be archiving on something with 10 times the capacity... look at the transition from CD's to DVD's. So I am not fretting over the lifetime of the DVD's.

I would also advise that you not store your original files and all of your backups in the same place. Living in San Diego, wildfires are a constant threat, and there were a number of photographers that not only suffered the loss of their homes during the fires, but also lost all their photos and backups because they were all stored on-site. Spread your backups out so that if something catastrophic happens, you have other backups to rely on that are kept in other places.

You can even partner with another photographer to keep a copy of their backups and in exchange they store a copy of your backups.

The other thing that I use (and really love) as part of my archiving strategy is an external RAID where I also store every digital photo I've ever shot and all of my scanned film images, too. I use a Firmtek 4 bay RAID which I've been really happy with. I have 750GB drives in mine, and I am not sure I could live without it now.

The ability to have instant access to every image I've ever shot without even getting up from my chair is awesome. It has saved me hours of time that I used to spend pulling archived DVD's, getting the images off of them and then refiling them every time I had a photo request from a client. Using a RAID also reduces the risk of damaging your archive DVD's. Since the RAID is plugged into your computer, Spotlight catalogs the disks which makes it really easy to search for images.

Another advantage of using a RAID is that you can mirror the drives. Just like the name implies, one drives is a mirror image of the other. When you add or subtract files, those changes are made on both drives at the same time. When one of the drives in the mirror fails, you can pop in a new drive and the RAID will copy all the data back over to the new drive and you have no down time.

I use SoftRAID to run my Firmtek box (vs. Apple's built in RAID control.) It gives me more flexibility in how I set things up, and also gives you warnings if there are any problems with the disks in the RAID.

RAID is not a replacement for good archival backups, however. The problem with using a RAID is that if the data becomes corrupt or gets deleted, that change will be on both the original disk and the mirror (since they are the same) so having other good backups is critical. The mirroring is only protection against hardware failure, not data corruption.

Now is a great time to come up with your own archiving plan and start backing things up.