Archive for the 'Printers' category

I do not often present character fonts, but this one is definitely nicer than usual with its elegant 3D effect of folded white paper.

Source: DaniellaSpinat.com.

This was a little event a few days ago: Adobe launched its first beta version of the online PhotoShop under the name of Photoshop Express. As it was easy to predict, it’s not as simple as marketing would like you to believe and you cannot replace one by the other as most of the reviews hereafter will show you:

• Les Numériques (en français): would better use Picasa to share the images prepared with Photoshop Express, and would want to see Raw files management, curves and histograms, and masks.
• Ars Technica (in English): it is rahter a cross between iPhoto and Adobe Bridge, but they love the basic features and (including color correction).
• Baekdal.com (in English) : disappointed; This is not an image editor, by far - just a fun way to apply a few corrections/effects. Woudl rather recommend Splashup, he feels is superior.
• Photojojo (in English): This is certainly not Photoshop but it does very well what it offers (basic image edition/correction).
• LifeHacker: Not the Full PS Package, but Good Web-Based Editing
• Pixinfo.com (in Hungarian): Honest! I didn’t understand what they think about it…

To notice: Photoshop Express is free, limited to 2GB of online storage (easy to reach) and in English only for now.

Sometimes, the economy is not faring well, sometime it’s too good. In both cases, it may lead to astonishing bills. I found some cases, I really loved.

The biggest single US dollar bill

This is not even really a bill since it’s more a tool to manage gold exchanges in an economy that was based on gold: a gold certificate. It was never circulated in the public since 1034, and is only visible in museums.

Source: PurpleSlinky.com.

The weird Zimbabwe bills

In a country where the economy totally collapsed, the Zimbabwe dollar has no value left: Inflation reached several tens of thousands of percents (much more than what hit the German economy of the 30’s), crushing the mere value of any bill in just days.

As a matter of fact, this 10 million dollar bill does not allow you to pay anything (valued a few euros a few months ago, it’s really worthless now).

A guide published by Canon to help you better manage colour with photo cameras and photo printers from this brand.

Canon color management guide (2MB PDF file)

Specially for graphics designers, for those who cannot stop seeing the word in Pantone colors, W2 Products designed coffee mugs branded by Pantone.

Out of stock already.

Would you know what colour cerulean is? Or peach? Or spruce? Or watermelon? Or plum? Or rust?

The HP online color thesaurus is a great way to identify these and to get the precise formal definition of such colours. You type in a name, and it will give you the color, similar ones and anonyms.

Today is Blog Action Day: The day that bloggers chose to try and help save the planet from the impact of Human activity. For my own part, I decided to collect a few ideas to save energy in your computer usage:

• Upgrade your gear
• Dim your screen
• Consolidate and virtualize computers
• Turn off peripherals
• Kill unnecessary processes
• Get a smart power switch
• Enable energy saver settings
• Unplug energy vampires
• Spin down your hard drive
• Shut down the computer

Another trick: Power saving remote computing.

12 monochrome laser printers compared by Tom’s Hardware. These are not the printers that grab all media attention, but a mere B&W laser printer can reduce significantly your printing budget and they come at really low prices.

It is already an old tradition of this site that we keep repeating that color laser printers, without being able to do full photo-quality printing, progressed to the point where they are priced reasonably (often less than $300 and with a price-per-page that is strictly out of range for inkjet printers).

Beyond the comparisons already shown, here is a major update offered by Tom’s Hardware for 12 color laser printers:

• Dell 3110cn
• Dell 5110cn
• HP Color LaserJet 2600n
• HP Color LaserJet 2840 All-In-One
• Konica Minolta MagiColor 2550
• Konica Minolta MagiColor 5440DL
• OKI C3200n
• OKI C7350n
• Lexmark C534n
• Lexmark C762n
• Samsung CLP-600N
• Samsung CLX-3160FN All-In-One

BibliOdyssey is a web site about art in antique prints. You love books, you love quality books, you must stay tuned to BibliOdyssey.

Today, I just want to point to one single impressive post there: Drawing on the Renaissance.

Canada’s National Archive experts are worried that we don’t have enough knowledge about how inkjet prints age. They fear that most of them will die early because the dried ink is much more exposed to external stresses than the pigments of traditional photo paper.

So, they turn to Henry Wilhelm of Wilhelm Research to get some additonal information.

Source: New York Times.

In the spotlight: Sony Alpha 900 Canon EOS 5D Mk II Nikon D700 FX Download Nero for free

Do you happen to know that 5% of all male population is actually affected by some form of color-blindness (females are much less prone to it). It means that plenty of activities that tend to rely on color identification by the user is significantly flawed for about 2-3% of the user population. This can become a real issue for companies willing to support equal employment opportunities for all.

In software, if this was not reason enough to think seriously about it, we should also think about the impact of printing onto black & white printers (they are color-blind too and this affect 100% of B&W printer users). Most of the problems could be alleviated by following some simple rules that should be part of any software requirements.

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