Others would call me a computer geek. My OS experience covers a fairly broad range. I use Windows because I have to I have very stable Windows XP machines - I almost never reinstall (I use soooo much software it takes me several weeks to get everything installed!!).

Lately I've been looking at Ubuntu - which I quite like, but there are some things that aren't 100% for me. I also took a long, hard look at the iMac. Interestingly its core is FreeBSD (a Unix version as is Linux), and is an incredibly stable operating system. It's also secure - meaning that most viruses that affect Windows don't stand a chance even without AV software.

Graphics-wise the Macs have it sorted (and that was one reason for considering OS X). However, since moving to ArgyllCMS I have a much more controlled colour managed system.

What IS interesting is that the WINE project (www.winehq.com) provides enough Windows emulation on a iMac and Unix/Linux/etc to run a large proportion of Windows apps directly. So you can switch to iMac and not have to ditch all apps. If that fails, there are at least two other virtual machine products for iMac that will allow a full install of Windows XP/2000/98/etc inside a virtual machine "container" so you can run true Windows on the Mac desktop. And if that's not enough there's the last ditch thing - BootCamp - which allows the installation of full Windows on the iMac (you choose on boot up whether to boot to OSX or Windows).

It's a real, real shame you can't easily install OS X on PC hardware (though it can be done... and I'm not sure of the legality).

As for day-to-day applications I would use these apps anyway:
* Firefox
* Thunderbird
* Openoffice v3

All these are available in native Mac formats off the web. So, switching to OS X would be relatively trivial for a lot of things .

...only trouble is I'd have to buy new versions of Adobe Creative Suite etc etc

So, for me, it's the expense, and time that prohibit me right now. However, if I was setting up again I'd go with Mac

(I do have an issue with some of the laptop Mac displays. The MacBook display isn't good for me, and even the MacBookPro I'm not 100% sure about - there were some LCD modules that were actually 6-bit per colour, not 8-bit and produced some odd effects for photographic work. Whether this is a problem in real life, and whether Apple have changed their LCD panels in newer MacBookPros are questions I haven't had fully answered)

Hope that helps!
Matt

When I used to scan stuff with the Coolscan IV I always used Ed Hamrick's Vuescan. It provided an automated way of scanning a strip.
But, it was much easier scanning slides I'd feed them in while doing other work and Vuescan would automatically scan and save. Even then I could only do three or four rolls of slide per day. Yawningly slow

Love digital
(And I'm getting far, far higher quality images out of the K20D than I ever got out of any film! Even the *ist-D gave me better quality. Now either my film technique was bad, or digital is better )
Matt

Kris,
Try phoning Asahi Photo - they might be able to help out.
Matt

Dan,
Even if they use an internal profile (which is fine), they NEED to know what source profile the images were created with in the first place. Not embedding a profile is the dumbest things - a sure fire way to screw up colour rendition

Consider: if you saved an AdobeRGB image without a profile and tried to open it assuming it was sRGB you'd get "bleurgh".

If they don't understand that, then pass them by
Matt

Dan - yes, you're right... just tried CMYK'ing an image and it'll save as JPG and reload as CMYK. Learn something new every day

However, Pete's comment raises another issue. In PS converting to CMYK is one thing, but converting to a correct profile is another. By default my PS will convert to CMYK with the "Europe ISO Coated FOGRA27" profile. Oddly the Saxoprint website seems to contain zero information about which colour profile should be used
Even if you have a pukkah CMYK file it may still come out like mush if the profile is the wrong one (Photoshop has at least a dozen standard CMYK profiles, but you're better off with a specific one for the printer's ink & paper combination.)

If you can work out what profile to use, I'm happy to do a test against the LCMS tool against Photoshop CS2 and let you know whether it's going to work as expected

Matt

Here ya go:
http://www.littlecms.com/newutils.htm
Look for the "TIFF Profiler App". However, you'll probably have a hard time checking the results Note that JPG does not support CMYK, so you'll have to do TIFF to TIFF.

The TIFFICC.exe file is included in the latest precompiled binaries for Windows for LittleCMS:
http://www.littlecms.com/downloads.htm

But you will need an appropriate CMYK profile. Interestingly it has built-in profiles for conversion to "L*a*b" and "XYZ" colour spaces.

Hope that helps!
Matt

Dan,
I seem to remember that one of the GPL colour engine projects could do CMYK transformations... I'll try and dig out the link.
Could be www.argyllcms.com (which I now use for colour profiling ) or www.littlecms.com

Might take some digging to find the link...

But as hefty1 says, even an older version of Photoshop will do the job of CMYK handling. In fact, Photoshop 7 is a fine package But watch out when buying - there are a lot of copied CDs around, and people selling upgrades which require a licensed earlier version. According to Adobe you also need to get the original owner to sign a license transfer document to release the license so you can take ownership. Phoning Adobe is helpful.

If I find any other tool I'll post the link
Matt

No
Matt

Good question
Now non-sticky.
Matt

I've seen a few websites mention weighting down the "Bigma" - some have put sand-filled bags on top, used two tripods (one for camera, one for lens), and the like.

500mm on an APS is a real stretch and requires some careful handling!
Try Googling
Matt