Digital BW, The Print

Hey everyone. I've been busy in the last few days exploring the
wonders of Lightroom v1 in conjunction with the newest QTR for OS X. I
must say, the two apps work together wonderfully. Because Lightroom
runs both processors to the max (I've seen it running at 192% in
Activity Viewer with my duel G5) a 30x40 rips in under a minute. Then
it takes about another minute (or less) to copy into queue and then
boom, it's printing. This applies for all images, color and grayscale.
As a StudioPrint user, this "little" app is just blowing every other
tiling software's pants off. I see only three problems right off the bat:

1. The software doesn't let you do per image resizing very well (you
get tiling but they all have to be similar in size). 2. It has a max
file size of 10,000 pixels on the longest side. (I figure Adobe will
fix this soon.) 3. You set your print size based upon the image
margins. In other-words. this program is pixel-based. The meta-data
for the image-size (ala Photoshop) is not used. So you have to know
what size you're printing the image to begin with. For normal users
that is fine. But as a print lab, I have to open the images in
Photoshop in order to see the print-size that the customer wanted if
they are communicating that way. Small but significant.

But aside from that, the goods out-way the bads. Non-destructive image
editing. Full database support that auto-updates to the OS X folder
system. ProPhoto working space. Very comprehensive print templates
that can be saved and migrated to different machines very easily. It's
FAST. Auto updates from Adobe. It costs less than $300.00. It can span
multiple hard-drives (when a hard-drive is off-line the gallery just
shows red but gives you your thumbnails). It does all the hunky-dory
wedding stuff (output to Flash and HTML and Websites, etc etc).

So now that I have a tiling application that can rip an image with
100% of my computer's power, it makes QTR all that more appealing. The
other reason? Because I can do split toning with my SL and WN Quad
printer in 1% increments + split those tones differently in the
shadows mid-tones and highlights. This is something StudioPrint hasn't
even approached.

Just wanted to share this with you. In the last few days this
application pretty much took over my entire work-flow for prints 30x40
inches on down.

I'd be interested in the Aperture side of things as well if anyone's
using that on this board. I stopped experimenting with that program
because it was so slow.

take care all,
Walker Blackwell

Black Point Editions, Ltd.
1932 S Halsted St, Ste 504,
Chicago, IL 60608
312.491.8051