The French Photographer Weblog

February 18th 2010 marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Photoshop. This is probably the piece of software most used by photographers over the last 20 years so I wanted to mark the event by reminding you of the story of this marvel of photo editing.
Here we go for the first 20 years of the story of Photoshop.

1987 - The story actually starts with version 0.67. Thomas Knoll wrote this version on a Mac Plus at home as a side project (he was than working on his doctorate). in 1988 about 200 copies of version 0.87 of Photoshop are distributed with scanners distributed by a company named Barneyscan. The company will later be bought by Pixelcraft, a subsidiary of Xerox, in 1993.
They still deserve the credit to have been the first to believe in the relevance of Photoshop.
In April of 1989, Adobe will be presented with a more finalized version and a distribution agreement will be signed between the Knoll brothers and Russel Brown and John Warnock of Adobe.

February 1990 - this agreement leads to the introduction of Photoshop 1.0. The major features are curves and levels (already), color corrections, image optimization and the clone tool.

June 1991 - Photoshop 2.0 adds support for CMYK, paths, rasterization of ESP files and a pen tool.

February 1993 - Version 2.5 adds palettes, support for 16 bits files and in April Adobe releases the first Windows version (2.5). For 3 years Photoshop has been a software for Mac only.
1993 - Photoshop 3.0 is released in September for Mac and November for Windows. Major new features - the layers.

1994 - a year later, in November version 4.0 brings non-destructive photo editing thanks to adjustments layers and automation with the actions.
So as you can see non destructive photo editing is not exactly a new concept.

May 1998 - Version 5.0 adds the editable text fields, the lasso tool, the history palette (multiple undos) and Photoshop now supports ICC profiles.
At this point Adobe will starts the cycle of one new version about every 18 months.

July 1999 - Photoshop 5.5 includes Image Ready 2.0 and the ’save for web’ command.

October 2000 - An updated user interface is introduced with Photoshop 6.0. It brings vector shapes, layer styles, blending options and the liquify filter.

April 2002 - 18 months later, version 7.0 introduces the well appreciated healing brush and a few other refinements (file browser, new painting engine).

2003 - We have to wait another 18 months but in February Adobe becomes the first software manufacturer to support the RAW photo format. Version 7.0.1 is a small increment but a big step in digital photography.
In October this feature becomes part of Photoshop CS improvements with the real time histogram, new slice tool, hierarchical layer groups and match color command (among many other improvements).

April 2005 - With Creative Suite version 2 (CS2) Photoshop comes with Bridge 1.0 and a lot of new tools and features - spot healing brush (I’m still not convinced of the relevance of this one), red eyes tool, lens correction smart guides, support for HDR, vanishing point and the very valuable smart objects.

April 2007 - Photoshop CS3 for Mac now support natively Intel processorsit also includes smart filters, automatic layer alignment and blending, refine edges tool.

October 2008 - Version CS4 bring the product to a new level of sophistication with advanced tools like content aware scaling (if you have never seen that feature look at the examples video on Adobe web site). The interface of the Mac and windows version are now identical. It’s a very mature product.

Soon - April 2010 - CS5 is coming soon and we already know that one of the major improvement will be a 64 bit entirely rewritten version for Mac. Adobe finally converted Photoshop to Cocoa (the native Mac toolbox) after being criticized for taking so long to make the switch. This should bring a new level of performance and stability.
Although I’m honestly surprised that a software as sophisticated and rich as Photoshop suffers from relatively very little bugs. It’s well known that there is no bug free software development, so it’s pretty amazing that a product which is now 20 years old and has evolved through so many stages turn out to be so remarkably stable.

To finish with a touch of nostalgia, this is the icon of version 0.67 back from 1988.

and the about box.

Oh BTW, Thomas Knoll cannot be reached anymore at this number.

If you read my previous article on this topic and everything I wrote about RAW software converters you already know that Aperture has been a topic of equally great enjoyment and disappointments.
Version 3 is out and so far it sounds very promising.

In no particular order version 3 brings
- Faces, already introduced in iPhoto. It’s about time!
- Places, an awesome support of GPS metadata and geotagging. So far it’s the best support of geo localization I have ever seen in any software.
- Video and audio, the DSLR have included that functionality and Aperture is following this evolution. The support of audio files attached to the pictures is also very welcome. As far as I know, no other software have this.

Expect a full review soon.

Ok, so now we know! It’s out, no more waiting and wondering.
So let’s take a user point of view and see what we can tell about it.

The size

Small is what came to my mind first but like with every engineering project it’s a trade-off, give a little, get a little. The balance looks acceptable.
I tried to type on a 10″ netbook and it’s not really easy, let’s wait for a practical validation of the real usability.

The device

Well… it is an Apple product and you can tell. Great finish, very nice as usual. The technical specifications are unfamiliar. It is powered by a 1 Ghz chip designed by Apple and nobody has any experience with that. On stage the demo looked impressive but we will have to wait and see.
Maybe the greatest achievement is that Apple managed to create a real laptop with no keyboard. Time will tell, if that really works but so far it looks very promising.
And for a change the price is good too. Compared to a traditional netbook the entry level model is rather well priced.

The user interface

Nothing really disturbing here or fundamentally new. It is a touch base user interface just as expected. The attention to detail is even more spectacular than on the iPhone.
But a lot of elements will make it familiar to iPhone users, the tab navigation at the bottom, the home button, the automatic switch between landscape and portrait. Ok let’s say it - it’s a larger iPhone or iPodTouch.

The OS

We don’t know much right now. It looks like it does not do multitasking even if the processor looks powerful enough.
I will study the SDK soon and maybe I will figure out a few things.

The communication and networking

A good wifi chip, ok, what else could we have expected anyway. Blue tooth, normal. 3G, logical.
No contract needed and all devices unlocked. Even better. I assume it is a GSM device so it should work with multiple operators.
I wonder to what extend it is a device that you will carry with you all the time like an iPhone. It’s not like you can drop it in your pocket and forget about it, so maybe the 3G is not fundamental unless you are constantly on the road.
It also looks like you cannot make a phone call with it, even on the 3G model with headphones.

What is a surprise?

No camera!. Why the hell? Honestly I have no idea! Why such a device could not be used at home for video conferencing. I use my laptop for that connected to a wifi network all the time. The iPad would be perfect for that if only there was a basic web cam.
It does not make any sense to me. Except if maybe Apple want to come with an iPad+ in a few months with that feature.
In the meantime, sorry guys but it’s a pretty stupid omission.

What is it good for, especially for a photographer?

No camera. Ok, well, I will miss it for video conferencing but I won’t miss it for taking photos.
Where I see a flow int eh logic here is that this is a perfect device for geotagging due to the integration of the map but the device has no GPS. So what’s the point?
A good part of the presentation was dedicated to photos and it looked really good. It is some sort of iPhoto with a Cocoa touch flavor.
The iPhone was already a great way to show your portfolio the iPad will be even better.
Some people pushed the iPhone pretty far in term of creativity with the built in camera, with a larger screen I think that wee will see more serious photo retouching softwares. Once again it will depend of how sensitive the screen is and to what extend it will replace a graphic tablet. Maybe with an additional pen it can actually replace a Wacom tablet.
Another thing is not clear at all - connectivity. Could the iPad be used as a tethering device connected to a camera. Probably not out of the box or without some specific connectivity and custom software development.

A developer point of view.

To finish, let’s look at the device as a developer. The screen size is different from the iPhone. So the traditional iPhone applications will have to be adjusted, the traditional views won’t fully take advantage of the new device. But that’s not such a big deal. It looks like the screen in landscape mode is like 3 iPhone screens next to each other. For example the Mail application on the tablet gives you the list view of the iPhone and to the right 2 times the size of the list view for the detail of an e-mail. Same thing for the calendar. This was not possible on an iPhone, so the way to develop softwares will change for sure.
Unlike the iPhone there are floating windows and actually more than one window at a time. That will also be a big difference in the way the software function. Ok Apple call that “pop-over menus”, I guess it’s a new concept.

So, overall, no real surprise. No disappointment either except maybe the lack of video conferencing on such a device which does not make any sense. If ATT&T network cannot handle it at least Apple could have enabled this on wifi.

Since my iPhone App has been online a lot of people have been asking me if there is gone be something similar for other smartphones. The answer is - probably not. For various reasons.

First I believe that the iPhone has more or less already won the battle of the smartphones. Apple current market share is still low but it’s rising very quickly. In the US the exclusivity with AT&T is a strong factor to limit the market share but it is likely that this will have an end as soon as possible. In France, for example, during the last 2 weeks of December Orange the largest mobile operator announced that 77% of the smartphones they sold were iPhone. That is the market share we are heading toward in my opinion. Another factor to consider is that most of the cellphones are subsidized by the operators in exchange for a 2 years contract. So users have to wait to get a new device, but once they get one, they are more likely to get an iphone than anything else.

The second reason is simply that the competition is still not catching up with Apple in terms of offer, technology and marketplace.
When the iPhone was released everybody focused on the device and the hardware (yes it was missing 3G at that time) but nobody realized that to go with the iPhone Apple created a mobile operating system. More precisely a version of MacOS that works with devices without a mouse or a keyboard. The iPhone is not a cell phone it’s a computer that can be used to make phone calls.
The magic is that the computer is small enough that you can stick it to your ear.

This OS has been a major investment to create and we can expect that it will be used in other Touch based devices. And to tell the truth, it’s a pretty good OS. Far more advanced than Windows Mobile. And as far as the other competitors, well let’s face it, they have nothing at all even close.
Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone is also a great phone. Apple came up with a nice user interface and some great innovations. We can even wonder why people who have been selling cell phones for 15 years could not come up with something like Visual Voice Mail. Why did they had to wait for Apple to invent it?
But the real strength of the iPhone is not the hardware or the device itself, it’s the operating system and the ecosystem that goes with it.
So, ok, the iPhone has a great OS but what about Google and Android? Well, yes it’s an OS, a modern one, pretty good too.
Will it be successful? Well most likely yes it will, because it is better than anything else (ie Windows Mobile), it is free and if you are a cell phone manufacturer like HTC (those guys do some really nice hardware) it’s your best interest to use Android in your phone. Android lacks the second component that makes the iPhone a success, the ecosystem, ie iTunes, the App Store, Apple review of all the softwares available and Apple strict guidelines on what an App should look like and do.
A lot of developers have been complaining about Apple review process and for sure there has been some ‘disturbing’ stories, but overall Apple strict guidelines and policy make users life much easier.
When you buy an iPhone you are pretty much assured that you will be able to use every software on it. The interface will be consistent.
Unfortunately with the competition it’s not exactly the same, software versions and operating systems differ. One software will work on one phone but not on the other. Screen sizes are not consistent. Overall it’s not nice and slick and a no brainer like the iPhone can be.

It’s a typical case of look a like product. You save a few dollars (not always) you get a product that look like the real thing but when you start digging you figure out that it’s not the real thing, far from it!

Like I said yesterday, 2010 should bring us new devices, Tablet computers and DSLR capable of doing video. To what extend this prediction is accurate does not really matters, I think the real question is - what are those devices going to change in our lives?
And the answer is not always as obvious as it sounds.

Let’s take the example of the DSLR first - having new devices capable of shooting video will allow photographers to… shoot video! Well, it is not that simple. It’s true to a certain extend, for wedding photographers for example, now they will be able with one device to shoot stills and video during their assignments. That’s good and convenient isn’t it?
But if you try to do so you will quickly realize that shooting video is not only a matter of having such a device. Shooting video at a professional level means at least an additional device to stabilize the camera, maybe an external screen to visualize what you are doing and some sort of focusing wheel. Very quickly your gear turn into something like RedRock Video DSLR platform, it’s not cheap and it will take 2 people to operate it. All of a sudden everything becomes a little more complicated than just having a device that shoot video.

So the capability of the device is one thing but what you really end up doing with it is an entire different story.Hence my point, the functionality of a product is not what matters. What is important is what the user do with it and how it changes our lives. It’s not because DSLR will soon all shoot video that photographers will turn into videographers overnight. There will still be people doing video and people shooting stills for ad campaigns.

Now let’s talk about the tablet computer and more specifically Apple latest products the iPod and the iPhone. Tablet computers have been on the market for a while now but never really made a hit. Similarly MP3 players existed before the iPod and smartphone had been on the market before the iPhone was released. But once released those products revolutionized their industries.
Why? Because they were done right, or more precisely in a way that made the users feel different about it.

Sure Apple’s marketing is good but that’s not enough to explain the widespread success of those products.
What strikes me is that the recipe for success is quite simple and still nobody does the same thing as Apple did.
Let’s look at that recipe. What does an iPod and an iPhone have in common?
- a great, as simple as possible user interface.
- iTunes, a companion software also with a simple straightforward user interface.
- an attractive design.
Is it such a difficult recipe?
A pre-iPod MP3 player was pretty much a Walkman without the cassette tape. Usually without a screen and without a menu navigation. The iPod introduced a new way to navigate in your playists.
A pre-iTunes software had the most complicated, heavy, busy interface. All of a sudden Apple came up with something simple, slick, easy to understand and use for everybody… and it worked.
Both iTunes and the iPod have a set of features that is rather limited compared to what other smartphone offer and still people like those simple devices better because they are easier to use and more convenient.
So why companies who have been doing cell phones for 20 years could not think of reinventing their devices? Why companies who have been doing Walkmans for 30 years could not move to the digital age? Those are simple consumers products after all!
Simply because they were still sticking to the same concepts and the same technology.
Once again what matters is not what the device offers but what we do with it. Usability is more important than functionalities.

Let’s apply this prediction to the tablet computer and my bet is that we will see a device that we will be able to use and that won’t be another incarnation of some flavor of a portable computer. A new user interface a new way to interact with a new kind of device which does not have a name yet.
More on that tablet, what is it all about and other comparisons with other Apple products.

I guess the end of a year is a good time to make predictions on what is coming for us (I mean photographer/computer user/iPhone fans/geeks of all sort).

I don’t think I’m being very original here but we can forecast 2 things:

- The tablet computer - or maybe it’s 2010 version. Apple has something coming up. It’s now all over the web and it looks like it’s coming on January 26th. What it’s gone be exactly? We start to have a pretty good idea. It will be based on the iPhone OS or maybe more precisely on Cocoa Touch. But isn’t Cocoa Touch becoming more and more of a software layer built on top of some flavor of MacOS. Apple will need to add a few things to it but they have already so much in there that it won;t be too difficult.

It’s actually when I realized how much Apple invested in Cocoa Touch that I realized that this cannot be just for the iPhone. They are building a full software environment for devices that will actually use a “touch” interface. the iPhone is the first one but certainly not the last.
So it looks like in 2010 we will se more Cocoa Touch devices, whatever they are called.

- DSLR camera shooting video and video camera usable for stills. Ok no big surprise here. Actually I could have written the same thing last year at the same time. What did 2009 brought us.
On the video camera side - A big announcement from Red about their new product but nothing is really shipping here. Maybe it will become real in 2010 and we will have a better idea.
On the DSLR side, a few product actually shipped, some pretty convincing products from Canon and some less convincing attempts by Nikon. But Nikon experience with video does not compare with Canon’s and I’m afraid that they will be playing catch up or the next few years.

Ok those are the products predictions but is that really what matters? I don’t think so, what matters is what will be the consequences of those new products, what are they going to change?

Let’s celebrate the end of 2009 and the upcoming 2010 and we will talk about that tomorrow.

Yes it can be done. I does not involve supersonic traveling, it does involve an iPhone.
Let me explain what I mean.

Like I wrote yesterday my iPhone App is up for download in iTunes and I was thrilled to find out today that it has been downloaded by users in 36 countries in only 2 days!

A million lines have been written about the global world we live in but I have to admit that I’m impressed by the global reach of the iPhone as a consumer product. Especially given that I did not do any real advertising people in Indonesia or Saudi Arabia are downloading my App and having a look at my photos. Not bad.

Having a background in Marketing, I never miss the opportunity to experiement. I thought this was a good test. What exposure would I get by simply being present in the App Store with my iPhone App. I guess this is an interesting answer to my question.

I am very pleased to announce that my first iPhone App has been approved and is now available for download on the App Store.

Over the last two months have been very busy working on this project and it was a great pleasure to see it come to life.
I was quite concerned with getting the application validated for distribution but everything went well without the nightmares experienced by some developers.
The App is free (for now) and available for download by clicking on the badge above.
I will talk more in the near future about the rational beyond this project. For now I encourage you to go have a look at the App.
Inside you will find:
• Latest images from our recent photo shoots
• Models videos
• Great Photo Galleries
• Articles and opinions on photography and graphic design (from this blog)
• Share with your friends via e-mail or twitter
• Online or offline mode
• Automatic content refresh
• Full length articles (also from this blog)

Here are a few screen shoots.

Get your copy now - it’s free.

Let’s look back about 2 years ago? Apple had just released Aperture an entirely new breed of application for photographers. Shorty after that Adobe came up with Lightroom, subsequently renamed Photoshop Lightroom. And the web got mad about which one was the best and the most useful tool. This simple question started a fury of discussions and strong opinions.

Being a professional photographer I had to make a choice like anybody else, so I did my little testing and comparison which led to an article that is still on my web site and is still quite popular actually.

What motivated that article at the time was the purchase of my Nikon D3. With this new camera came a new format of RAW files unique to the camera that required an update to the softwares to be able to process those images.

Now 2 years later I think it’s time for an update on what I called at the time - the RAW Softwares Comparison.

Let’s start with a reminder and a definition of the scope of this article. I will be talking about Apple Aperture and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. There are other tools to process your RAW images but none have a comparable set of features. I will mention them but they are too different to be included in a fair comparison.

Recent professional cameras can shoot JPEG and RAW files. I guess everybody knows what JPEG is, so I will pass on that. RAW is a file format for photographs that allows to record all the ‘RAW’ data captured by the camera sensor. It is often compared to a negative in traditional film photography. As each camera has a different sensor and specifications, each RAW file format is different and when a new camera is released a new RAW file format appears.
A jpeg file can be read by a lot of different softwares, but to be able to get something ‘viewable’ out of a RAW file you will need a totally different software. Camera manufacturers always include such a software in their package (after all it would be quite meaningless to take photos without being able to see what you did) but it is usually a very basic product with limited functionalities. The real players in this market are the more sophisticated products like Aperture or Lightroom and those are the one we will discuss here.

Just a reminder first on what make those software different.
- they are non destructive editors, that means that the original data captured from your camera remains untouched forever. The software only keeps track of adjustments that you do and alter the way the original data is visualized.
- they do transform your RAW file into a viewable photographs allowing you a great deal of adjustments. Actually much more adjustment than we ever dreamed possible.
- they are not pixel level editors. That means that you only edit the entire photo and not only a few pixels of it. Well for the most part because overtime both have added the ability to patch limited areas of the image to correct little details (dust on your sensor for example).
- they integrate some extend of Digital Asset Management. That means that you use them to organize your photos into folders, albums, catalogues, etc. They act as a repository of your photos and as such allow you to export those photos in different formats depending on the use you want to have with it (web gallery, fine art print, etc)

It is very difficult in my opinion to have a definitive opinion on which software is better. People have engaged in almost religious battle over one tool or the other, I’m personally very moderate. I have process ed a lot of images with a lot of different softwares, sometime one software gives me a result that I like better than the other and the next day it will be different. Overall they both do an excellent job at processing the RAW datas and turning it into beautiful photographs (provided that you did a good job yourself when you triggered the camera)
So to me the key points are not in the quality of the processing, it is in everything else. So let’s be more practical than dogmatic.

My experience with Aperture.

I have been using Aperture for more than 2 years now. I have more than 70,000 images in my library.
I like:
- the overall digital assets management. It is very easy to organize your photos move the galleries around on different hard drives, retrieve files.
- the integration with other tools. Being a photo level editor means that if you need to edit a photo at the pixel level you must use another tool (photoshop anybody?). Aperture does that relatively well but over the last 2 years a lot of Third parties have also developed a bunch of plug-ins that allow you to do various adjustments on your files. Both software handle this in the same manner - a new file is created, sent to the plug-in or to the external editor, and when you are done with this file it comes back into Aperture (or Lightroom) where it appears next to the original unedited file.
- the overall integration in Mac OS. Yes I use Macs and Aperture is only for Macs, but being developed by Apple, Aperture enjoys a level of integration unlike few other softwares. Being also an Apple TV and iPhone user (wait a few paragraph before calling me an unconditional Apple freak) it is really convenient to unload the camera into Aperture, select the pictures I like and have them synchronized with my iPhone or my Apple TV in just a few clicks. You don’t even need to export the photos, the synchronization happens automatically in the background. To me it is very convenient and Lightroom has nothing comparable.

Anyway after using the software for 2 years I started to reconsider my decision, first because it’s always good to keep an open mind and look around at what else is available and second because I was worried about the future of Aperture.

What I don’t like with Aperture:
- The future of the product is simply unknown. Apple has not given any clue about the future developments. The last major release was published months ago. It is unknown when the next one will happen and what it will bring. In the meantime Adobe keeps releasing new versions of Lightroom with constant improvements. After a while it becomes very tempting to have a look at what is available. In addition Adobe has a very clear roadmap on their product development. We don’t know yet (well the general public don’t) what will be in the next revision of Adobe Creative suite but we know that a major release happens every 18 months (about). When it comes to professional tools Apple leave you in the dark while Adobe gives you an overall roadmap, which one sounds best to you?
- Some features are badly missing… when you compare it to Lightroom but also when you compare it to iPhoto the (almost free) little brother of Aperture. Apple introduced facial recognition in iPhoto 2009, a convenient feature. Almost a year later this is still not available in Aperture, why? what is the rational behind having advanced features in a consumer product and not including it in the professional line? I cannot come up with a valid reason except that Apple is too busy working on other products (iPhone anybody?) and does not really care about Aperture. than is it really safe to put your eggs in a basket with an uncertain future?
- MacOs 10.6 was supposed to bring great performance improvements and it looked like Aperture was the perfect software to take advantage of that. 3 months after the release of the new operating system there is no sign of even a minor update of Aperture. Once again not very reassuring if a computer manufacturer does not use its own software to demonstrate the ability of its operating system.

So all those facts recently pushed me to start processing my photos with Lightroom and now allows me to make a valid comparison between the two products. I really wish I could trust Apple on bringing back Aperture to the level where it should be but as of today I really have a confidence issue. Let’s hope they will prove me wrong and I will be able to use Aperture again.

Well somehow I’m still using Aperture because I have 70,000 photos in it and those are not going anywhere. It would be a gigantic task to move all that to Lightroom (or anywhere else).
But back to Lightroom for now, and let’s be practical.

My experience with Lightroom.

What I really like:
- the adjustments that are possible on the photos are really great and well ahead of what you can do with Aperture. There are simply more functionalities and more sophisticated controls (split toning or fill light does not exist in Aperture, tone curve is not as sophisticated). One drawback though - it can be complicated and it may take you some time to learn everything that can be done with all those adjustments (split toning or camera calibration for example are not exactly trivial).
- Importing and exporting photos is more powerful and overall the user interface is better in Lightroom for those features.
- The use of preset is everywhere and makes your life much easier. Processing photos is often repeating the same task over and over, so having presets makes a lot of sense and at this game Lighroom does a better job again.

What I don’t really like:
- the separation between Library mode and Develop mode is limiting to me. I constantly switch between the two modes and this separation between the two just make my life more difficult. Aperture has a much better integration on this point.
- overall the user interface feels a bit messy to me. There is more than one way to do the same thing with no reason for that. Things are not always very intuitive.
- after a photo shoot I often come back with hundreds of photos, some of which are very similar, so the first task when I get to the computer is to select the best ones. Both software have this functionality but it is much more convenient to do this in Aperture than it is in Lighroom. Once again Lightroom tends to make things too complicated and Aperture has a nicer more slick user interface. But this is my experience.
- Finally one big feature that is missing in Lightroom as far as I’m concerned is the Onscreen proofing. It is the ability to see on your screen a photo the way it would be rendered by another device, like a printer for example. This is a very valuable tool because it allows to preview and adjust a photo appropriately before it is printed.
I cannot understand why this feature is missing in Lightroom and I certainly appreciate it in Aperture.

A word of conclusion.

I don’t want to get into big debate here about one tool or another. What matters to me is the ease of use and overall set of functionalities. What is important for me is to get the most efficient tool to do the job. As a word of conclusion I can say that if only Apple could bring Aperture to the level of Lightroom on certain aspects, I would be so happy to continue to use Aperture. Overall the product feels better to me but right now it lacks of a strong commitment from Apple. I wish it would get more powerful adjustment tools and a better management of presets. With that it would be a great tool, unfortunately for now my next batch of photos will go into Lightroom because I will have at my disposal better tools to adjust and process my photos even if I will have to suffer from a heavy user interface and some limitations.

Adobe already has Lightroom 3.0 out as a beta preview, there are at this point few new features and nothing really ground breaking (not sure how they made this one a 3.0 release). My only hope is that Apple will manage to come up with a significant release of Aperture that will bring the product back in the race. They have to come up with something big.

I’m very pleased to announce that after many hours of work I have opened my online fine art prints store.

When I started Mindworks Creation I hosted my photos on Smugmug for two reasons.
- they have an incredible level of customization and allow integration of their site into yours.
- they have a lot of printing options on all sort of supports (all sizes of prints or canvas).
The customization of their website is truly amazing but unfortunately I only bumped into issues when it came to printing photos.

Eventually I got curious about mastering the art of printing fine art photographs. I spent a good year studying this topic and finally decided to produce and sell my own prints. Quite a change from Smugmug but well… I was tired of having my photos presented so badly.

Mindworks Creation Fine Art Prints Store opened a few weeks ago. The inventory is growing slowly. For my prints I wanted to use only high quality materials. I picked only acid free museum quality backer boards and mats. Prints are mounted using T hinges and support corners. And of course printing is done on some reputable papers, mostly Ilford Gallery Gold Fibre Silk.
Such a print is rated to be very stable and last for decades.

The prints are offered in two sizes 30 x 24 inches and 16 x 20. The first size allows some large size prints but will still fit on your walls. 16 x 20 is a very common size and those prints are easy to include in commonly available frames.

All prints are delivered ready to frame and signed. We will never make more than 15 prints of each of those photographs.