With so much digital in evidence, you'd think scanning would be a hot area at PMA. At least, I was hoping it would be. There's a big gap in the middle when it comes to ways to get your film into the digital realm. You've got the low end, typically a normal flat-bed scanner that's optimized for reflective scans and does a mediocre job of scanning...
You'd think that with 12- and 16-megapixel digital SLRs so readily available that demand for digital backs and medium format digital bodies would be languishing. But 2007 looks like another good year for the big guns with both Rollei and Hasselblad showing very impressive new products, Pentax still showing a prototype digital body, and Phase One still doing very well...
If this year's announcements at PMA are any indication, color management is coming to the masses in a big way. New products, lower prices, and ease of use are all coming together to make this once arcane and neglected area more available to everyone, from seasoned pro to casual digital photographer.
This year also saw consolidation in the market with two of...
Epson, you have company! For years, serious large format inkjet printing has been owned by Epson with the 7000- and 9000-series printers. The pigment-based printers had a huge advantage in archival life and in the media options available, making fine art printing something that the individual could finally afford to do in-house. In the past year, both Canon and HP have entered the...
Image theft is a real concern for many people. Anyone who has a website, posts a photo to one of the many sharing sites, or even e-mails a photo to someone is at risk of their image being used without permission. And, if they aren't asking for permission, you can bet they aren't planning to pay you for the fair use of your work.
One of the most frequent questions I get from readers or students is about dpi, or dots per inch. There's a great deal of confusion out there on what the best settings are, and it isn't being made any easier by the use of two different measurements for resolution.
First, we have ppi, or pixels per inch, which usually applies to image resolution. This is...
In my last column I covered using Unsharp Mask to sharpen your images for output, whether print or screen. This time, we'll go a step further and talk about selective sharpening. Why would you want to use selective sharpening? It's the ideal choice when working on portraits, where you want to keep the skin smooth but have good detail and focus on the eyes. You'll...
First announced in February and now becoming available, the new HP Photosmart Pro B9180 is one of two new competitors to the Epson R2400 (the other being the Canon iP9500). Although 13x19 inkjets have been available for some time, including the highly regarded Photosmart 8750, the B9180 is the first pigment ink photo printer from HP, and the first Photosmart printer to bear the...
One of the most frequent questions I'm asked is about the proper, or "best," way to sharpen images for printing or web use. Almost everyone has struggled with getting this right. Software has improved greatly over the past couple of years, both within Adobe's Photoshop, which recently added the Smart Sharpen filter, and with third-party tools like...