Archive for the 'Color laser' category

2009 starts with some new equipment in Roumazeilles.net home:

• An HP LaserJet 1005. The lowest B&W laser I could find at HP (I am faithful to this brand even if the last LaserJet 1022 failed suddenly far before the end of its normal useful life). It’s a Windows-based printer used on the local network, but it seems that printing over the LAN is nearly instantaneous. Magic!
• An Epson Stylus Photo R1900. Replacing an eon-old Stylus Photo 750, it should bring color photo printing in A3+. It’s amazingly silent.

This is easy to reduce a color photo to a B&W image (any photo software or any B&W photocopier can do it). But the reverse operation seems difficult at best, impossible in most cases. However, a team of French scientists from the French INRIA (Guillaume Charpiat, Matthias Hofmann et Bernhard Schölkopf) presented recently an algorithm that succeeds to rebuild the color information from a B&W photo. And with some success.

On the image on the left, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has been converted to black and white (A), using color data and textures from a similar image (B), the algorithm built a color image again (C) not too far from the original (D).

Analyzing this work, I’d say that part of the differences between the result (C) and the original (D) come from the quality of the conversion to Black & White which led to an image quite hard (a bit more contrast than needed).

Impressive result on photos, you can expect to see it applied to moving images (and movies).

Source: Futura-Science.

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).

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.

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

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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Currently, I am wandering a lot around the the web sites for OEM suppliers to manufacturers of micro-computers. This leads me to observe some apparent trends (at least in the opinions of the experts) that could be of interest if you intend to buy PC hardware in the coming months.

• DRAM memory: All the observers announce plumetting prices, they only discuss the speed of fall. Prices in September will be much lower than today and Vista is not yet ready to push the demand up.
• NAND Flash memory: The market is strangled by demand, SAMSUNG announced that they will increase their production capacity of 90% by year’s end, but in the mean timen prices should climb steeply.
• CPU: The price war between Intel and AMD is not supposed to stop any time soon. Intel seems to be trying to strangle AMD (and they could well succeed if AMD marketing plans are late this year). Double core and Quad core CPUs are driving the market.
• LCD display screens: Prices are oriented downward, but only slightly and for small sizes (including laptop screens) the demand is such that we can expect a slight price climb in the coming months.
• B&W laser printers: In the US, HP started a amazing price fall (entry point going far under 100$) even if nobody really knows why (new laser products coming? upcoming low cost color lasers? entirely something else?)

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

Adobe has been observing the desktop application market and specifically seen Google challenging Microsoft with its online Google desktop suite (spreadsheet, text processor, agenda, etc.). They determined that they want to go the same way in order to ensure a bright future for the Photoshop line.

Currently, Adobe has already split its market niche between entry-level Photoshop Elements and high-level PhotoShop CS suite. From what has been told this week, they wish to go one step further by introducing online version of their image editing tools. It should be free even if limited to a subset of functions.

It is definitely interesting. Do not expect that to translate into free professional-level tools (no free CS4 suite). However it means that, depending on your needs, you will be able to choose from the widest possible spectrum:

• Free online
• Low cost (PS Elements)
• Pro-grade (PS CS suite)

The user (you and me) get maximum choice, the software company (Adobe) covers all bases and reduces the risk of being out-sold from the lower level and provides a consistent upgrade path from $0 to $1000 products. This is the way technology innovation should be used by companies willing to protect their market while serving user needs.

Others, please, take notice.

PS: You should also notice that Adobe is already ben starting this kind of move in relation with video edition announcing Remix, an online video mixing/remixing tool.

PPS: According to Monkey Bites, it would be launched within 6 months and supported by ads.

Again, I come back to the issue of free fonts of great quality. DaFont holds links to hundreds of character fonts readily downlodable for both Mac and PC. Usually, this leads to a bunch of crap fonts. Here, the top 100 list is really of impressive quality. Waltograph is copying Walt Disney’s signature, Evanescence is both sophisticated and elegant, Loki Cola will remind you of some cola brand, Shanghai is the archetypical Chinese font, and all the others are really pleasant.

Now, what is often left aside in most font libraries is the presence (or lack) of accented letters. DaFont tells you clearly which ones have those internationally-needed letters and adds also the Euro sign to it.

It’s pleasant to merely go sight-seeing.

Yes! If you want to get top photo quality, an inkjet printer is the best solution. But the cost is high. To reduce it, look at the color laser solution. Most entry-level printers are sold under 300$ and the operating costs are tremendously lower than those of an inkjet (toners are more expensive than liquid ink cartridges, but they routinely print several thousand pages). Moreover, they are FAST (several pages per minute instead of several minutes per page).

However, the market is maturing a lot and new models are arriving. The proof? Look at the latest color laser printers comparison from Tom’s Hardware and check the list of tested printers.

• HP Color LaserJet 2600n (already tested in November 2005 here)
• HP Color LaserJet 3600
• Magicolor 5430DL
• Lexmark C522n

It is nice to see that one-pass color laser printers become more and more affordable leading to even faster (more silent) printers than was available a year ago.

The conclusion has nothing new for the observer: Lexmark is disappointing, Minolta is bulky (despite or because it is very complete), old HP 2600n has printing cost too high for a large use. The newest HP Color LaserJet 3600 printer is -not surprisingly- the best offer: An excellent compromise like HP has always been providing for blak and white laser printers.

After posting previously about 25 top quality fonts, I also got a link to an interesting web site providing a LOT of free fonts. It does not mean that they are all useful, interesting or good-looking, but you have some impressive choice: 13,000+ fonts in one search engine.

SearchFreeFonts

If you ever dreamed of printing images in much larger size than what your personal printer allows (let’s say 3′ by 6′), you have either to buy a very expensive printer or use a very expensive photo printing service. You see the common words here: very expensive.

The Rasterbator creates huge, rasterized images from any picture. Upload an image, print the resulting multi-page pdf file and assemble the pages into extremely cool-looking poster up to 20 meters in size.

The quality is only limited by your ability to correctly assemble the pages.

Nota bene: It’s much better if your printer uses all the surface of the paper and does not leave a white border.

Some people wish they could cover their precious iPod nano with a decorated paper. The first solution is merely to go and buy to Sector29. But, I really think that $19,95 is a little too much for a piece of colored and folded paper.

The solution? Do it yourself without spending so much. Use the template available on WikiHow. As for a nice confection dress, the template will allow to draw the piece of paper or cardboard to the exact dimensions and to cover precisely your iPod nano. You don’t need to limit yourself to plain white paper. It’s about time your imagination kick in with your photos and your drawing talent.

Feel free to show your trials here.

In the rush for higher resolution images, HAL9000 Iconos has a significant advance over the competition with its 8600 mega-pixel image.

They obtained this enormous image by assembling it from 1145 individual photos of about 12 Mega-Pixel each.

The result is on the Italian web site of HaltaDefinizione.com and it is impressive. You can also get a printed poster copy of the image, if you want to.

Plenty of web sites try to attract you with free fonts (or other free items) and fail to deliver this. If you are lucky you will find a couple of ugly (but still free) fonts. Now, it is quite exceptional to find true top-quality fonts on the web. Vitaly Friedman just did this on his notebook with his 25 Best Free Quality Fonts.

According to my tastes, one of the best is Cardo. Have a look.

Who was not hurt by the weird colors of a digital print? Often, the solution is to use the right color profile from the printer manufacturer (depending on paper, ink, printer, etc.). But it is not always enough. If you have an old printer, you may not find the color profiles; If you use generic inks, there may be no adequate color profile. Worse, for some applications like Black & White printing, the slighest color change is perceived by even the less technical observer.

There is another solution. It can be applied by anybody, provided that you bring some patience: Black and white printer profiling (of a sort).

These photos of China are some of the most beautiful that could be found. Simply one example taken out of the long list of these strongly colored images: