PixelatedImage Blog

It’s just past noon on Monday and I’m only now getting to posting something. We had guests this weekend and I’m only now recovering. I usually put in more work over the weekends, just didn’t get to it this weekend so it all got bumped.

Ok, lame apologies aside, here’s something I discovered this morning while trying to organize some new projects. It’ll appeal to you if you’re visually oriented and kind of anal-retentive about being organized. Another apology: this is Mac OS-X only. I’m on Leopard but assuming it works on Tiger too. Could be wrong. For those that are left out - sorry. (Update - I’m told this is OSX Leopard only)

I like my desktop and folders to look good. I also like them to be easily identified and since I am a visual person I’ve taken to making custom icons for important files. But this morning I just wanted a down and dirty icon for a new project folder. Here’s what I did:

1. Make an image and make it square.

2. Save it in Photoshop as a JPEG.

3. Find that JPG in the finder, click it and hit CMD+i - this will bring up an info pallette with a little thumbnail at the top. Click that and hit cmd+c (Update - Follow the instructions, and the REVERSE of the image below. I mixed it up. Sorry.)

4. Find the folder for which you want this ad hoc icon, click it, hit cmd+i, find the little thumbnail as you did in step 3, click it and hit cmd+v

5. That should paste a new icon. If you used a square you won’t have transparency issues. Now just delete the jpg image and you’re done.

Today was one of “those” days. I’m in the final stages of preparing to leave on assignment and in the middle of doing some routine stuff this morning (backing-up my laptop, ironically) my laptop harddrive died. I’m sick and was hoping for a day of lying around recovering. Instead I spent it freaking out and running around. In the end I took my laptop and my most recent back-up drive to my friend Rick at the Mac Market in Vancouver. He dropped a new drive in and restored it from the back-up. I lost a few emails and odds and ends from the last day or two, nothing more. This, class, is why we practice paranoia, and hone it to a razor-sharp edge.

I also bought a second digital data-bank and dropped a 120gb drive into it - because now I’m scared as hell that my laptop is going to die again and I want more than redundant systems, I want to be able to back-up my images even if the four horsemen of the technological apocalypse ride in and open the seven seals on me.

Then I got home and the internal battery that keeps date/time stuff current in my 5D died. So another errand to find a couple of those and dig out one of those little tiny screwdrivers for unscrewing little smurf-sized screws.

Lessons learned - shit happens and usually all at the same time.

*If you emailed me today and I didn’t reply - try again, it might be one of the unread emails now sitting at the bottom of the sea of lost harddrives.

** Turns out the MacBook drives are notorious for overheating and dying. So I also got one of these: KoolSink

A couple months ago I posted news about a new product called ZINK. ZINK stands for Zero INK and is the future of mobile printing. We have mobile everything and cell phones now have cameras, but still no way to easily print those images. Enter ZINK. In a few months the first ZINK printers will roll off the line giving every photographer who’s ever been asked “hey, can I have a copy of that?” a fighting chance.
The Pixelated Image caught the vision pretty quickly, and now ZINK has joined the Pixelated Image as a sponsor. Each sponsor I have is a leader in the imaging field, and I am fiercely proud of the relationships I have with them. Contrary to the artsy thought that “it’s not the gear”, it IS partly the gear. It allows you to form your vision without a sketch pad and pencil, and each piece of great gear gets you one step closer to being able to realize your vision.

Take a moment check ZINK out online - I can’t wait for these to finally go into production and into our hands.

I have a friend who’s getting in on the Evrium Two For One deal in June and he’s looking for someone to go halvesies (I can’t believe I just wrote that word with a straight face). So, if you’re interested in the Evrium Fluid Galleries software and you want a deal, please leave a comment and we’ll set you up with my friend.

If there is more than one who gets in on the deal I’ll match people up and you can all go in together in pairs. I just ask that in return for the favour you list me (david duchemin) as your referrer so I can get a kick back and pay off the bad men at the camera store who keep taking my money. Any takers?

For those unfamiliar with it, Fluid Galleries is the software I use to run my own portfolios. I’ve reviewed it here. And here.

More info here: EVRIUM.COM

I think I’ve posted something along these lines before but I continue to get emails asking what kind of software I am using to post my portfolios.

I am using Evrium’s Fluid Galleries 2 Basic. I suspect I will upgrade to the professional package sooner than later, but here’s the lowdown on why I use what I consider to be a truly exceptional product.

1. Easy to use. Evrium uploads this to your server (or provides hosting for you, if you need this) and you do all your management on the back end. Sign in to your site and in moments you can upload, reorder, and delete images, and change colours, spacing, the order of images and galleries, etc. Simple. Easy to use and very immediate. I can come home from India and have new galleries up in just a little longer than the time it takes me to get my images prepped for the web.

2. Good looking. Folks, photography is a visual art and if your website does not look good it says you don’t have an eye for design or you don’t care. Flickr is fine for the amateurs and family snapshots but not for a portfolio presentation. Sure, you could still make a Fluid Galleries site look bad, but you would have to try really, really hard.

3. Relatively inexpensive. If you opt for the Professional package, which allows you to create custom pages, then you can do your complete website with this software - and it is as easy to update and change as the gallery pages. So when you get a new client you want to profile, you can post it quickly without fuss or the need to ship files off to your freelance nerd to do it. And when you decide in a year that it’s time for an overhaul, a change in colours or design, then you can do that without shelling out for more design and nerd time.

Evrium Software’s Fluid Galleries gets a five star from me. Additionally if you head over to their site you can sign up for their newsletter. They have buy 1 get 1 free days, photo contests, and special deals, as well as user forums. Brilliant. If you buy it, tell them I sent you.

Sign up and download it for free here - the wait is over for all you people still clinging to Windows like so many lifejackets in the cold atlantic as the Titanic goes down beside you. Sorry, is my bias showing?
Go here: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/

I was about to post this when Trevor weighed in asking about it. So this one’s for Trevor.

The new galleries on PixelatedImage are posted with Fluid Galleries (click here to go to their website). On purchase they place files on your server - you then access your admin page online and post photos, edit your configuration, etc. It’s very fast, very elegant, and intuitive. I won’t try to sell you on it - visit the galleries and see for yourself.

I love Fluid Galleries. The folks at Evrium Corp communicate well and clearly and the whole process for me went like a dream.

Additionally they have a referral program. If you have any intention of getting this software please let me know first. I will send in a referal and they will kindly send me $50. When they send my $50 I will send half of it to you as a thank you. You save, I save, we all win. But you have to tell me FIRST so I can send in a form saying I am referring you. Not trying to make money here, just pay off the software, and you get to save $25.

Check them out. Some of the nicest portfolios I have seen online have fluid galleries on the back end.

I wrote a short review of Adobe’s Lightroom on the Travel Photographer’s Network for this month’s online magazine- you can check it out here

Just stumbled across this site via Rob Galbraith DBI: dg28.com - some wonderful photo tutorials and essays. Check it out.

If you’re a photographer you could do much worse than putting your site up with Fluid Galleries - a friend of mine whose been a professional photographer for years is in the midst of making some decisions about his next website rebuild and found this. It provides some of the nicest dynamic galleries I have seen. If you’ve got a need to put a nice looking site up but no desire to fuss with code - this is it.