Here’s a link to a great article from SixRevisions.com about places to get free stock images online. I was actually only aware of about half of these, but will definitely check out others for upcoming projects. Typically, I use iStockPhoto.com or Dreamstime.com for microstock photography, but if you have a client that doesn’t even want to pay for microstock — let’s say it’s pro bono work — you might want to give some of these sites a look. The quality of the photography may vary and not be up to Getty Images standards, but for some projects it may work and save you and your client some cash.

Click here to read the article at sixrevisions.com

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Hi, there!

As usual, there’s a lot going on right now. In addition to a huge prepress project with tight deadlines, I’ve been devoting much of my time to my other blog, Life In Lo-Fi.com. Basically, I’m moving a lot of the iPhone camera-related articles over there and focusing on design and type musings here.

The Epson 4880 proofer performed excellently for the previous job. We got great results and press check was a breeze. We were using Publication base stock and a custom profile provided by the printer. Results were close enough that the pressman had to do few moves on press day. Whew!

Our current big job will run three times as many proofs though the machine and will be on Commercial base proofing stock this time. The Commercial base is visibly brighter than the Publication base. I’ll be running to standard SWOP 2 densities throughout the project. After this job ends is when you get the full review of the 4880. Amazing machine so far!

That’s all I’ve got for now! Thanks for stopping in and I hpe to see you soon!

=M=

According to a recent TUAW — The Unofficial Apple Weblog post, Apple will finally allow developers to distribute, in essence, trial-to-paid versions of apps. As a user, you will be able to download an app for free and pay to upgrade features or to simply upgrade to the full version from within the app. These demo-to-paid versions of apps should start hitting the App Store soon.

This is a win-win for everyone, users and developers. Try before you buy apps have been around desktop computing for ages. Currently, if a developer wanted to offer a try-before-you-buy iPhone app, under the current Apple developer guidelines, they had to offer two versions of the app — a full-blown app for sale and a “lite” version that’s either ad-supported or with fewer features. They were considered two different apps with regards to numbers and ratings. As a user, you’d have to delete one app and install another. With no easy way to share data between the versions, this often meant that you lost the app’s data during the upgrade.

Now, we’ll be able to download one app — kick the tires — and if we like it, upgrade to the full version from within the app to take advantage of the full version. Developers only have to code and maintain one version of the app. As a user, I’m excited that I finally get to take the actual app out for a spin, rather than load the lite version, try, delete, either sync or lose my data, then download again. I think this will give developers a lot more flexibility in presenting a better initial user experience when downloading, previewing, and upgrading an app.

It’ll be interesting to see how this effects sales and app ratings in real life. In the past, I’ve noticed that the trial or lite version of an app typically gets lower ratings than its full-blown sibling. This is understandable because many more people are using the lite version to try an app out. If it doesn’t meet their needs, it gets deleted and gets a lower rating. I don’t think I’ve ever given five stars to a lite app that I was about to delete after trying. I wonder what will happen to app ratings when the group of tryers is merged with the group of buyers. I wonder how this will effect the usability of the App Store rating system when shopping for an app. This is something that Apple will need to work out.

=M=

Many iPhone apps have been compared to “Photoshop on the iPhone,” including Photogene and PhotoForge. Now, Adobe has released the real deal, Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone. I like the app — it has some good features — but it isn’t what you’d expect. Adobe may have done better to brand it Photoshop Elements Mobile.

Read the complete review here at our sister site, LifeInLoFi.com

=M=
Creative Director
typeadesign.com

Arial vs. Helvetica. Fonts.com has an interesting article on the two here. It’s a brief but good read for a short background on these two famous (or infamous?) sans serif fonts.

We’ve all heard of the Arial® and Helvetica® typefaces, and have most likely used them both. Graphic designers either love or hate the designs. What’s the story behind these two polarizing typeface designs? Here’s the scoop!

Click here to read the entire article.

While I can see the differences between these two similar typefaces, I don’t believe the two typefaces are interchangeable. To me, Helvetica looks more cosmopolitan. I love the range of the entire Helvetica family, especially the Helvetica Neue family. Helvetica looks better than Arial when set with tight range kerning. With many more weights available than Arial, Helvetica offers more ways to create contrast in type, or to match the density of your type to your layout.

In contrast, as far as I know, there are three weights of Arial and then the Arial Narrow family. Much less opportunity to match the type to your layout. It’s no contest for me — Helvetica is the more attractive, more versatile typeface.

=M=

Helvetica signage at Raleigh-Durham Intl. Airport

Millions of people from different backgrounds, regions and countries move through airports every day. With so much diversity, it is essential for airport signage to communicate as clearly as possible to the greatest number of people.

For years, Helvetica was the face of the airports.

While I see a trend for airports to makeover themselves with new typefaces and colors, I’m still amazed at how many airports create their signage using the Helvetica typeface. Despite recent trends for airports to re-sign using more humanist faces, such as Myriad, Frutiger, and variants thereof, I still see a lot of airports using Helvetica.

Helvetica is ubiquitous. You don’t spend any time deciphering the font — you simply read the words and receive the message. Helvetica is clear. It’s a good typeface with easy to recognize characters. From a distance, in bold weight, a lower case m looks like a lower case m. A serif face with more contrast between the components of the letterforms may not read as clear from a distance.

Helvetica is universal and versatile. It’s all over the planet. I’ve seen the Cyrillic version used in Eastern Europe. While I was trying to decipher unfamiliar words, I was not distracted by an unfamiliar typeface. It’s recognizable.

Airports and transit depots in England have long used Gill Sans and, more recently, a custom humanist typeface to which it is similar. Dallas/Fort Worth, my home airport, changed over their signage from Helvetica to Myriad. The New York City airports have switched to humanist Frutiger as well. I like the look of these typefaces. Yellow signage and Frutiger — very European was my first thought. I think they add an air of sophistication to the signage and the environment. They add a subtle uniqueness. To me, these fonts are the “face” of those airports.

But I’m always amazed at the timeless utilitarianism and, despite its ubiquity, how effective Helvetica is as a communications tool.

=M=
Marty Yawnick
Creative Director
typeadesign.com

– Post From My iPhone

(****) out of five stars

Zoom Lens by BitWink finally brings a real digital zoom to the App Store. It provides up to an 8X digital zoom with no loss of image resolution.

I grabbed this app based on the query of a commenter in a recent post at iPhoneography. I was skeptical before I downloaded it. After all, the app store is filled with “digital zoom” apps which are really just in-app cropping.

Zoom Lens is the real deal. It does what it advertises and does it well.

You set the zoom level by pinching and scrolling onscreen. A double tap toggles between 4X zoom and no zoom — a nice touch. Zoom Lens actually resamples your images, sharpens them, and saves them at full resolution — 2MP or 3MP depending on your iPhone. The results are better than cropping and resampling in Photoshop. I’ve used several of the zoom apps and Zoom Lens produces the best results by far. Not only does it offer image interpolation, but its sharpening algorithm is very nice for a digital zoom. I’ve been using Snapture for over a year, another app with an image interpolated digital zoom feature, but it lacks the sharpening algorithm and that makes a difference.

I’ve only run comparison tests with both apps up to 4X — the max my caffeinated hands can handle. Zoom Lens produces superior results when compared to Snapture’s. It’s still a digital zoom and will not replace a real zoom lens, so don’t expect results that are on par with a good consumer camera or a high-end SLR. But based on my tests, Zoom Lens is the best digital zoom for iPhone that I’ve used so far. Definitely worth the money for this great camera add-on!

Zoom Lens is available in the App Store for $0.99 USD.

=M=
Creative Director
typeadesign.com

The Epson Stylus Pro 4880, Type A's new in-house proofing system

Type A Design is a small design studio. We do as much of our own prepress in-house as we can, including image color correction. We also take on prepress projects for other clients.

We have just completed installing our new, in-house match color proofing system — the Epson Stylus Pro 4880 with the ColorBurst Queue Series RIP. After paying thousands of dollars to farm out for Kodak Veris match color proofs, we decided we should make the investment and keep the proofing in-house. We looked at the new class of Epson proofers and decided on the 4880. We went with Epson because years ago, I’d worked with other, older Epson proofers before and was mostly pleased with the output. We also looked at purchasing our own Kodak Veris proofer, but we were guided to the Epson X880 series as a viable alternate. With a maximum 17″ material width, the 4880 was the largest proofer we could physically fit in our office without needing to expand our space.

It’s available with a ColorBurst RIP package. The standard Epson RIP package contains enough ICC profiles to do the job, but it’s specifically designed for the Epson 4880 proofer and we opted for the Queue Series upgrade instead, which gives us far more flexibility in creating custom color profiles.

We are starting our first big job with the new proofer. I’ll have a very detailed review in the coming weeks as we test the proofer against our reference proofs and with a variety of proofing stocks.

My first impressions of the 4880 — the proof is in the, well… proofing. So far, based on test proofs, this proofer has greatly exceeded my expectations. Using standard, out of the box SWOP color profiles, the 4880 has excellent and brilliant color accuracy. The proofs have none of the dullness that I found with older Epson models, such as the 9600 series. The color accuracy was just about dead on, showing none of the color shifts some of the AGFA and older Epson proofers show. For the most part, proofs from the 4880 matched our reference proof from a Kodak Veris proofer, with the few differences attributable to an uninstalled source profile. I was very pleasantly surprised with the output right out of the box.

I’ll be writing more in the coming weeks of our experiences with the Epson 4880 and the ColorBurst RIP.

One more note…. We purchased our proofing system from Spectraflow, Inc. in Novato, CA. Our Sales Rep is Sarah Newman. I can’t say enough good things about everyone at Spectraflow. Sarah has provided among the best customer service I’ve experienced in the 17+ years I’ve been working in prepress and design. I call Sarah to order; things appear at our door on time or early. In the coming weeks, I’ll write more about my experiences with Spectraflow as well. If your shop or studio uses Epson products or materials, call Sarah at (415) 382-8681.

If you are a small design studio or printer looking for an excellent in-house match color solution, you should give very serious consideration to the X880 line of Epson proofers. Our experience so far with the 4880 has been beyond expectations.

Here’s a brief description of the 4880 from Epson’s product page:

“Designed to meet the needs of the most demanding professionals, the Epson Stylus Pro 4880 incorporates a unique, 17-inch wide printer design with a breakthrough, new ink technology, forcing the industry to reconsider what’s possible from photographic ink jet printing.

Epson UltraChrome K3 is the standard by which all other professional level ink technologies are judged. Now enhanced with our breakthrough Vivid Magenta pigments, our current generation ink technology requires only eight colors, including a three-level black technology, to significantly raise the quality levels for professional color and black-and-white prints.

Imagine producing archival prints with amazing color accuracy, gloss level, and scratch resistance, while providing consistently stable colors that significantly outperform lesser ink technologies. Imagine producing professional neutral and toned black-and-white prints with even higher density levels, with virtually no metamerism or bronzing.

With an even higher level of ink droplet accuracy, we’ve developed an all-new MicroPiezo AMC print head, along with an all-new ink repelling coating technology to dramatically reduce nozzle clogging. And, when combined with our new Epson AccuPhoto HD screening technology, at an astonishing resolution of 2880 x 1440 dpi, Epson has once again raised the level of image quality – even exceeding our previous best.

Handling virtually any media type in roll or cut-sheet up to 17-inch wide, the Epson Stylus Pro 4880 incorporates a high-capacity paper tray capable of handling cut-sheet media up to 17″ x 22″. We even incorporated four different ways to load media, including a front-loading straight-through path capable of handling media up to 1.5 mm thick, giving you the ultimate in media flexibility.”

=M=
Creative Director
typeadesign.com

The Adobe Creative Suite 4 family

Adobe just announced that they are dropping support for PowerPC Macs. Future versions of Adobe products will only run on the newer Intel chips. If you are running Adobe Creative Suite on a Power Mac G4 or G5, future versions won’t run on your Mac.

To me, this is not a surprising move and actually makes sense. Apple itself is moving away from PPC support with the latest version of its operating system, Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard.

What does this mean for you in real-world production? Probably not much. If you are always upgrading your hardware and software to keep on the leading edge, you’ve probably already upgraded your machine to the Intel architecture and don’t have anything to worry about for now. Future versions of Adobe products will run just fine on your Mac, although historically, each new version will probably require more and more RAM to run nicely….

If you plan on keeping your older hardware for a while, you’re not out of luck. If your machine runs CS4 or CS3 fine now, it will continue to do so in the future. Yes, you’ll miss out on all of the new features of future upgrades, but you won’t lose any of the functionality you currently have. And I think the feature sets of both CS4 and CS3 are pretty powerful as is.

If you share your work or send files out to any prepress shops, keep in mind that many other designers and prepress facilities may hold off on upgrading. They may not be able to read your new CS files right away.

Software is a tool to help you visualize your creativity. Having the latest tools is nice, but throwing all these great features at you doesn’t automatically make you a good designer. These tools require someone with a knowledge of design, layout, color and typography to produce great results. Clicking a button doesn’t automatically get you good looking pieces. It’s the designer, not the software that makes your ideas come to life.

While it would be really cool if we could all have a short upgrade cycle and stay on top of the latest and greatest, the economics often dictate that we may have to skip a cycle. If you have an eye and the skills to drive your current version of Creative Suite, you should be fine until you can upgrade.

=M=
Creative Director
typeadesign.com

This is cool! I’m writing this blog at 33,000 feet. Right now, it’s a cool novelty, but I suspect that as more and more airlines roll out inflight WiFi, this will become very commonplace. I’m so excited about this, I can barely drink my $6 in-flight beer!

I’m writing this between Dallas and Denver on one of American Airlines’ very old Super 80’s. Our aircraft still has McDonnell-Douglas labels. It’s one of the 2-seat/3-seat aircraft that everyone loves to complain about. personally, I like them because they get me there and because of the seating configuration, there’s a 50% less chance I’ll get stuck in the dreaded middle seat. But because of their lack of in-flight entertainment systems, they are also among the first in AA’s fleet to get inflight WiFi and I think it rocks!

The provider is GoGo Inflight Internet. The cost per flight is $9.95 for a laptop and $7.95 for a WiFi-enabled PDA, such as an iPhone. I think this is a better deal than paid WiFi you often find while waiting for the plane at the airport. In the past, you might drop $8-$10 with T-Mobile or Boingo to get 30 minutes of internet at the gate before your plane boards. Depending on the length of your flight, you can get an hour or two (or more for long hauls) for about the same cash.

Email works. Chat works. You can watch YouTube video. You’ve got access to social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. You can blog from eight miles high. I even have access to my FTP site, where I’ve uploaded and downloaded files. The throughput is good. On this flight, I had throughput of about 575 kbps, comparable to DSL lines from a few years back.

I like to use the time on a flight to get caught up on projects. Now, I’m able to email proofs or tweak code on web pages. I can research projects or surf the web for inspirato. I can probably push my luck and upload pressready PDFs if I have a client emergency while in flight.

I’ve been reading about inflight WiFi for a couple of years and have been looking forward to trying it. I was initially worried that the service would be unreliable or slow. Thankfully, GoGo by Aircell is inflight WiFi done right. Fire up your laptop or iPhone and enjoy the flight!

=M=
Creative Director
www.typeadesign.com