LensWork Technology Blog

The User Experience

I must be slower than slow about this iPad business. Another forehead slapping moment this morning.

We go to great pains with LensWork Extended to give our viewers a rich visual experience. In Acrobat-speak, this means using a so-called "Full Screen Mode" presentation. Acrobat includes this handy little feature, but does not default to it. That means we have to invoke Full Screen Mode on purpose so that our LensWork Extended monographs don't look like this . . .

. . . with Acrobat tool bars and the clutter of the Windows desktop, etc. to spoil the visual experience.

We'd rather see the monograph be a pure experience, with a clutter-free clean presentation one would expect when looking at artwork or even a paper book— something like this . . .

   

One of the complicating things about making a Full Screen presentation is that all of the normal navigation controls of Acrobat or the Adobe Reader disappear. We therefore make these available in our layouts by including a navigation bar on the bottom that include icons for various actions and encode all the linking actions in Acrobat. It makes for a nicer presentation, but is somewhat time consuming and nitpicky for us to do. Needless to say, we're glad to do it so our readers have the better visual experience.

Things change, however, with the iPad. GoodReader (and maybe the other readers, I don't know) automatically present the PDF page filling the screen entirely. They must have confidence that users know how to flip pages etc. as part of the GoodReader app. For us, that's great because there are no tool bars and desktop icons that need to be hidden to clean up the visual experience. Essentially, by default our PDF monographs will be "Full Screen" without us having to force the PDF into this non-default display mode like we need to do for the PC and Mac.

The obvious implication is that now even the clutter of the nav bar icons and actions can be removed from the presentation. Very nice. Here are a few examples from a test file I designed just to see what it would look like.

 

   

   

   

Sweet! One of the iPad objectives, I think, was to bring the user more in contact with the content and less involved in the software that brings the content into view. This is a good example of how they've succeeded in that objective with their approach to the app implementation. As a publisher, I love it — a cleaner, more impactful presentation without all the visual mess of the app's icons and interface getting in the way of enjoying the real reason you picked up the iPad in the first place. Content really is King, and bravo to Apple and the iPad for understanding this. 

iPad Hands-on

A friend came over last Wednesday with his iPad so we could see it in the flesh and play around with it. My first experience hands-on. Wow.

We loaded up an issue of LensWork and some monographs from LensWork Extended just to see what they'd look like. I suppose the best way I can explain the experience is that I'm ordering one. Double wow.

I suppose I had a somewhat unique experience viewing content on an iPad. As a publisher of fine art photography all these years, it was more than interesting to see my own publications presented with this new technology. Simply said, if I didn't know better, I'd swear they made the iPad specifically for LensWork. By coincidence, the size of LensWork on the iPad is very close to the size as LensWork itself. I didn't expect that.

The screen rendition is spectacular, and just lovely to view. Because the sizes are so close, I could easily read the text without having to magnify the screen image. Sweet.

As for LensWork Extended, the aspect ratio of the iPad is the same as the aspect ratio of our PDFs, so in horizontal mode they exactly fill the screen. Like they were made for it.

I've been slow out of the gate with the iPad, but such whacks to the skull are enough to alert me to the need for us to develop a version of our publications for this technology. Coincidentally, we've been working to launch a downloadable version of LensWork for Adobe Reader use on PCs or Macs which is going public as I write this. As it worked out, we only needed to re-encode these PDFs back to Acrobat 6 format for them to also work on the iPad using GoodReader. Since these are just the magazine in PDF form (no media, no heavy linking, etc.), this was easy enough to do. Voilá, we have our first iPad products — by accident, but we have them nonetheless.

We're still brainstorming about LensWork Extended. Not quite sure how to handle the media, but I'll work on it. I'm now motivated to do so!

By the way, I also thought ebooks looked great on the iPad, too. Movies look great. Web surfing is very good. If I have any criticism it's that the iPad is just a bit heavy — probably the battery. For reading a long spell, a dedicated reader (Kindle) will be more comfortable to hold. I'll find out when my new Kindle arrives in a couple of weeks.

But for LensWork and LensWorkExtended, simply stunning. Breathtaking, even. Consider me a convert.

OneNote Killer App

First there were spreadsheets and word processing — the original so-called "killer apps." An argument could easily be mounted that without them the PC revolution would never have happened. Once we all figured out we could do spreadsheets and word processing, we simply had to have a computer.

A few others have come along since then — email, the Internet, databases, desktop publishing, Photoshop. Where would we be without them? There is another, at least in my opinion, that is so powerful, so game-changing that I think it clearly deserves inclusion in the vaunted "killer app" category.

I continue to be dazzled by Microsoft's software application OneNote. I am tempted to try to explain it and why it's become such a foundation of my productivity, but I simply cannot do it justice. Watch the videos. Download the trial software. Shed a tear if you are a Mac user because this one is Windows only. (Mac folks have some alternatives, but nothing quite as powerful.) Let me evangelize just a bit …

Key things to know about it:

• Think of notebooks that have sections that contain pages. Deep organization.
• A page can have text, images, audio, video, links, drawings, highlights — placed anywhere on the page.
• Pages and sections can be moved, the destination of links from other pages, printed, customized, copied
• Notebooks can be private, shared, located on a network, on a cloud location, and moved anywhere
• If you work on a shared notebook but are not connected, you can still add/change/delete anything on your local copy of the notebook. When you next connect your updates are merged with the actual notebook. A wonderful tool for team use.
• When looking for something via search, you can search a page, search a section, search a notebook, or search all the notebooks you have! Wow.
• OneNote integrates with Outlook in several ways

Here is a screen capture of this blog post being written in OneNote.

Microsoft is touting this as a "place for information." It certainly is, but we are finding it so much more than that. Here are a few examples of how we are using this fantastic software:

• Store notes and tidbits of data we need to find (the obvious use of OneNote)
• We keep OneNote notebooks on our server and in "the cloud" where we can all access them and share data, even if we are remotely located outside our building — like when I'm out photographing.
• We port emails over to OneNote from Outlook where I can respond using voice email. Slick!
• We organize the production of LensWork and LensWork Extended using the task markers. We can easily find what is yet to be done by running a report on unchecked task markers. Task can indicate who is assigned to get an item done as well as whether or not it is done.
• I write all my blog posts in OneNote, edit them as needed, and then post them to our blog host directly via OneNote
• I organize my photo projects, thoughts, notes, even write final text in OneNote. I can include thumbnail images, links to the PSD master files, links to InDesign layouts, audio notes captured in the field on my pocket recorder
• OneNote is how we manage all the submissions information, photographer documents and contact information, as well as archive all email correspondence no matter who in our staff has contact with a photographer. We organize submissions by groups — new submissions, alumni submissions, color work, articles, etc.
• Gather notes from web research with both text captures and screen captures. Web page captures include a link back to the originating web page.
• Archive the transcriptions of our podcasts as well as the original audio files
• Staff meeting notes
• I record training audios or videos and make them available to the staff via OneNote
• The development of the content for our workshops on disc was all done in OneNote, as well as the production tasks and keeping track of proofing progress
• We use it for transcriptions of LensWork interviews. By placing the audio file right in OneNote and then transcribing while the audio plays, OneNote keeps track of the audio location for each new paragraph. If we need to go back to check something, simply click the icon next to the paragraph and that part of the interview plays. Audio indexing — how do they do that?
• We use OneNote for our Tech Support knowledge base
• Brainstorming on steroids, outlining, group reviews, archiving ideas and notes

I could go on, but you can see the versatility. 

It's centralizing, too. We've culled out many other software programs we used to use and replaced them all with OneNote: VIP Task Manager, InfoSelect, TreePad, Evernote, MindMap, Jarte, PassKeeper, and Maple. We almost never use Word anymore because we can do most simple word processing tasks right in OneNote.

If you work on a Windows-based computer, you simply must see what OneNote can do for you. Trust me on this one.

Apples and Blue Oranges

Recently a friend of mine on the East Coast emailed me a lovely little PDF he'd published of his photographs asking for some feedback. This fellow is an accomplished photographer, so I was at a loss to offer my thoughts about the baby-puke yellow toning I saw in his expertly composed images. Yellow-tone? Really? I know that the toning (or split-toning) of monochromatic images is a matter of personal taste, but yellow?

I mentioned this. He balked. What yellow? They're a nice warm brown. Not on my monitor, I explained, and we were off on a productive conversation about monitor calibration. The crux of the story is that his monitor was not calibrated, never had been, and he'd never known it. By using monochrome inks in printing his RGB images, his prints always looked great and in fact looked just like his images on his monitor.

This is the classic example of how minus one and plus one equal zero. It's always possible to take an uncalibrated monitor and make it look like anything you want, including your monochrome prints. That does not, however, make it a zero-calibrated monitor. It might just apply and equal and opposite compensation that happens to neutralize the problem in one circumstance.

And that sums up the problem. He didn't know. How can you know what you don't know?

The answer? Calibrate. How? With hardware calibration. Period. Forget your eyeballs — it's far too easy to be fooled by them. It's so easy to find yourself in a self-deceiving loop of correcting and offsetting errors.

I use Colorvision's Spyder. Mine's an older Spyder 2 Pro, now replaced by the Spyder 3 Pro (about $160), although there is also a Spyder3 Express (about $80) that might do the job, too. I'll let you do the research for the differences between these two. There is also the highly regarded X-Rite Eye One LT (about $150) that I hear positive reports about. There are other models. I'm not sure it really matters which one you use — any will be better than none. Get one, borrow one, use one. If you are a serious photographer, just consider this mandatory.

Here is a minimally informative YouTube video.

In fact, I recalibrate every 60 days — the publishing cycle for LensWork. Monitors drift over time. Not much, but enough that a one-time calibration is not sufficient.

My friend borrowed an Eye One, calibrated his monitor and writes that his yucky yellow images now appear as yucky yellow images on his newly calibrated monitor, too. Well, they did, right up until the moment he's fixed them all to a nice warm brown.

A scare, a rescue, a sigh of relief

Deadline week for LensWork #90. We're hours away from sending it off to the press. So, needless to say, I was just a bit panicked when my computer blew up. Poof, gone, locked up. I tried to three-finger reboot to no avail; I tried to restart through the start button, nothing. As much as I hated to do it, I had no alternative but to cut power.

This is never a good alternative. Sure enough, the little beastie this time decided to take revenge. Immediately after the Windows splash screen — blackness, more blackness, eternal blackness. I tried rebooting; I tried "safe mode" booting; I tried rebooting from my Recover Disc (aren't you impressed than I had one?); I tried repairing the Windows installation. Bupkis. I was just getting ready to sacrifice the goat and pray to the Gods of the Dynamic Link Library when a religious miracle took place. For reasons unknown, on the subsequent reboot, Windows started doing a check disc on my second hard drive. Huh? When it completed the task, Windows rebooted normally as though nothing had happened. I have no idea what I did — or what it did — to fix the situation. Sometimes I think I'm better off not knowing — and this is certainly one of those cases. Thank you DLL Gods. Back to the race to beat the deadline.

I learn about the iPad

This is the tale of a young boy (ahem) learning about the new shiny toy.

Last night I watched the entire lynda.com iPad Tips and Tricks training for the iPad. It is definitely a cool device and has lots and lots of "wow-factor" built in. But, I found myself thinking about actually using it for the things I do — writing, reading, photo editing, managing my digital image files, audio recording and editing, publishing, even blogging — and in every case I had to conclude that it would be easier to get the job done with my netbook or my desktop computer using a traditional keyboard and mouse.

For example, the iPad will do Word documents with "Pages." But, with my netbook I can run Word itself. Same with Excel. The iPad can view PDFs with GoodReader, but not media-rich PDFs like we publish in LensWork Extended.

Maybe my conflict is this: I want to move forward in technology. I'm not sure I see how the iPad moves forward when it offers a limited version of word processing, a limited version of spreadsheeting, a limited version of viewing PDFs, a limited version of audio editing, a limited version of even ebook reading, limited storage, and one-finger typing.

BTW, how do you hold it? Do you have to hold it with your left hand while you one-finger type with your right? If you lay it on the desk, isn't the screen at an odd angle for viewing? I don't hold anything with my netbook nor my desktop and the thought of doing so for hours as I work on an iPad makes me tired just thinking about it.

It has no USB port. Odd. I guess the assumption is that the whole world has Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. But what if I don't? No thumb drive slots? No disc capabilities? I guess they assume you get everything from the Apple store. The "Dock connector port" must be the answer to USB stuff. But why not just include a USB port? What is Apple's logic here?

The display is 1024x768. Really? My ASUS netbook has 1024x768 — and can run Lightroom! Even so, it seems so cramped compared to my 1920x1200 desktop monitor. Quite honestly, I was surprised to learn the iPad display is no better than my netbook in this regard. True, the 132 dpi is impressive, but as a user I'd rather have more pixels than greater density. I think. Maybe it's a better use of screen real estate for movies and videos. Not having had "eyes on" one yet, I'm on shaky ground here.

My primary use a computer is not as passive entertainment, but rather as an active production tool. Maybe that's why I'm not yet persuaded by the iPad.

I might also add that my ASUS costs about $250 — complete with a 160GB hard drive, three USB ports, Ethernet jack, etc. — whereas the iPad is $500-$700 with a fraction of the storage capacity and shorter battery life.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate what the iPad does and the freedom from the desk that the iPad offers. I really — seriously — want to love this platform. As a publisher, you've got to know I'm highly motivated for the iPad to find a long-term permanent place in the technology landscape. (It's probably already there.)

It's just that as a non-Apple guy looking at it from the outside, I'm still struggling with it. Shiny, trick, and popular are not convincing me yet. Maybe I should just buy one with the faith that all of you iPad fans must understand something I'm yet to grasp. I just find myself thinking about what I could do with $700 and what new things I'll do if I spend it on an iPad.

So, those of you who are strong iPad enthusiasts, what do you actually do with your iPad? I'm searching for a reason to buy one, so convince me. Please.

Pilot error

I write my blog posts using Microsoft OneNote and post from there. Last week I upgraded my Microsoft Office Suite to the new 2010 version. Love the upgrade, the new features, the increased integration. Nice job, Microsoft.

In the instructions, they advised uninstalling Office 2007 before installing Office 2010. I ignored it. The first blog post I wrote in OneNote 2010 and then posted did not include any of the pictures. What gives? Lots of fussing, lots of frustration, lots of cursing Microsoft.

Eventually, I realized that the blog was being handed over from OneNote 2010 to Word 2007 for posting. Oops. Because I hadn't uninstalled Word 2007 per the instructions, the images weren't posting correctly. My fault. I uninstalled Word 2007 and the posts worked perfectly once they routed through Word 2010 like they were supposed to.

Which brings up two points. It's so frustrating when software doesn't work like we think it should; seems to me that I should not have had the problem in the first place. Then again, who is really to blame for my frustration when I chose to ignore their advice and thereby created my own problem? It's the age old war of user versus producer.

When we make photographs intended to be seen under X conditions, who is at fault when the images look crappy under Y conditions? (Think metamerism.) Or, here's another example: We publish our PDFs, for example, for use with Acrobat version 9 and state that they will only work properly using version 9 or greater. Every week we get one or two people who call to complain that our discs are "defective" because they can't open the PDF. Once we walk them through this version business, everything works fine and they are grateful for the help. Nonetheless, it always amuses me that their initial reaction is "Your disc is defective."

Whenever I have software problems, I've been well served to assume it's me that is the problem, not the software. Most of the time this turns out to be true. I simply need to learn something, or do something as instructed, or at least not do something that is specifically advised not to do. (Obviously, I forgot my own strategy with the Office upgrade.) On the rare occasion when it really is the software that is at fault, I at least avoid a lot of the frustration by first assuming it's pilot error.

Years and years in photography have trained me otherwise. As "fine art photographers," we always pushed materials in ways they were never intended to be used. Indeed, being a fine art photographer often meant learning how to get materials to do what the manufacturers said couldn't be done. Think Zone System compressions of 5 stops, for example. Tweaking, ignoring instructions, cobbling together products from Company A and Company Z was commonly a fruitful endeavor. Unfortunately, the rewards for doing so with software are far less rewarding. No matter how much we may think it would improve the situation, you simply cannot use Excel as a replacement for Photoshop, or run your database queries through Illustrator. Not going to work.

I find in my fifties that reading instruction manuals and following directions is the new methodology that leads to the best results. Who knew?

The Creative Mind

There is no technology that will ever replace the creative mind, no technology that can give us a creative idea, no technology that by itself can create anything with meaning.

I'm out photographing this week and ― quite honestly ― it's been a bit of a struggle. I have so much technology with me that it's slightly embarrassing. Yet, I'm not really "in the zone" creatively. All the technology at my disposal is not helping. I'm seeing a few images here and there; I've even made a few compositions that might be something ― but nothing that is making my heart pound a little faster. I've simply not yet connected with any theme, any idea, any purpose that will lead me into images with passion.

I've been here before. Indeed, I'm here often. Because it's not unknown territory, I know what to do. Keep shooting pictures, keep asking questions, keep moving, keep looking. All things change and when the moment arrives where the creative spark ignites, I need to be ready.

There is no better way to do this than to keep the mundane aspects of the process honed. Practice, practice, practice. Grease the technological skids so my skills are ready when the muse calls. Come to think of it, perhaps this is one of the best strategies we could have with technology ― vigilant preparedness.

A Division in the Technology

iPad or eReader? Aren't these the same thing in two different implementations? Isn't an eReader just a very limited form of the iPad? Or, is the iPad a really deluxe eReader with lots of extra features?

Confusion reigns. Let me add my thoughts to the confusion ― and who knows, maybe shed a tiny light on the questions from the perspective of a user with experience.

First, I don't see these two technologies as competing for the same customer use. Sure, they overlap, but so do functions on my watch and my cell phone. So do my MP3 player and my netbook. So do my car and my bicycle. This does not mean I would abandon one or the other.

eReaders are ideal for the long-form text. Think books. They are small and lightweight, ideal for holding in one's hand for hours of reading. They have batteries that last for weeks on a charge. Small, ideal form factor for the casual reading of text. eInk "digital paper" is very easy on the eyes. Changeable font sizes are a Godsend for aging eyes late in the day.

eReaders do not have color displays. They are not the tool to choose for images. The will play audio files, but I would never consider them a "media player." They will handle newspapers and magazine type content okay, but not with the aplomb of paper. I occasionally take notes on my Sony PRS-600, but groan the entire process. It's meant for reading, sort of one main thing with a bunch of junior add-ons.  

On the other hand, devices like netbooks and the iPad do much more. One of the things they do is allow you to read a book. But for my money, they are heavy, clunky, hard to hold, a strain on the eyes after a while, and would never be my first choice as a technology device for reading a novel. I love what they do, but see them having a different primary function than my eReader.

 

So, as a publisher, I have an emerging strategy. I could see us publishing books like Letting Go of the Camera or On Being a Photographer for the eReader market. In fact, I know we will. LensWork on an eReader makes no sense to me at all. It belongs on an iPad where images make sense. We're looking at that now. Because of the ease of implementation, we'll probably have books for eReaders before we have something for the iPad, but we're still looking at things and doing a lot of testing, so no dates yet. I can tell you it is a lot of fun!

Kindle 3

Have we reached the tipping point in eReaders? Who knows, but with the newly announced Kindle 3 it looks like we may just be there.

I've had my eye on this technology for some time now. I supposed I'm one of the so-called "early adopters" having jumped on the Sony Reader and become a fan of the entire paradigm of ebooks. As a publisher, I have more curiosity than most, I suppose.

The problem has, of course, been price. The entry level prices of over $250 for a hardware device means that few will be enticed. Following the pattern of all technology devices however, the early adopters pave the way for price reductions and the eventual arrival of the "tipping point" where masses of people jump on board. Think cell phones, for example.

Well, a couple of days ago, Amazon.com announced the new Kindle reader and it was quickly dubbed Kindle 3 in all the chat rooms. What's the big deal. Simply that at $139 it's now a product that will appeal to lots more folks. Lots more.

 

 

As I say, I'm a fan of the whole concept of ebooks. Probably 80% of the books I now read are on my Sony Reader. I love it. Nonetheless, I ordered a Kindle 3. Again, as a publisher I need to keep up on the evolving technology so I can (sort of) justify owning two. But, for those of you who have waited for a reasonable price, I think it just arrived.