Save Everything - Whales, The World, Old Soap Wrappers, Jpeg's

Everything.

Save it on your computer drive, back it up to your Time Machine hard drive, then back this up to your Drobo, then burn CD's of the files, then print them out on an Epson printer, then rephotograph the prints with a 35mm copy camera and archivally process the film. Then store it in acid-free sleeves in a fireproof contaner.

Then take the discs and the film and the prints and any spare pixels that have fallen out of the back of the machine and put them in a safe deposit box down at the Bank of New South Wales.

You may want to ask the bank to sandbag the St. George's Terrace entrance and post guards armed with Stirling SMG's there - better safe than sorry.

After you have done this, go back and look at the images you started with. Are they really all that good? Is your student portfolio of 365 daily images of a banana on a plate really the stuff of your dreams? Have you advanced? Would it be a good idea to keep one picture of the banana and clean the rest out of the drive?

Just this thought occurred to me some time ago when I noted that the content level indicator on the Drobo drive I use got past half-full. Now the Drobo is a wonderful device for keeping things safe, as long as you keep it safe. I can re-disc it to far more capacity than it bears now...I'll do that eventually, but decided to look into the thing at present to discover what was in there.

Well, I didn't find the missing sock but I did find damn near everything else that I had dumped into it. Including jobs that had a set of RAW files, jpeg finder files, working psd files, and finished jpeg output files. Plus a few tiff's and something that looks suspiciously like a tram ticket. It was like an overgrown garden of pixels.

I set aside my ruth and weeded relentlessly - gaining back valuable disc space and concentrating each division into work that I am happy with. I did allow some wiggle room with RAW files that I may re-work...but even there I have been realistic with what was actually worth re-working. Let's face it folks, we usually get better as we go along, and it is retrograde to go back and try to make silk purses out of our sow's ears. They are never good and it annoys the sows.

Spring cleaning is not just for the carpet - try it and see.

Epson Surecolor SC-P600

We have yet to break the tape seal on one of the new Epson Surecolor SC-P600 inkjet printers here in the shop. Lack of space, not lack of enthusiasm...as soon as someone wants to see in the box we are all going to crowd round and poke our professional noses in.

I expect it will look somewhat similar to my Epson Stylus Photo R3000 -the printer it has replaced in the Epson range. There will be a few new things - bigger cartridges, I believe, and automatic switching between gloss and matte black inks.

I see it has got the wireless linkage and a lot of the funny photo sharing provisions to print from the newer smart phone or pad devices. This scares me, so I just use the aethernet wired socket in the back and that works fine

What also works fine, and I'm a complete fan of this after last Saturday afternoon, is the facility in it to print the labels of CD disks. There is a slick little plastic jig that holds one of the CD or DVD discs that is taken into the printer automatically. Epson have provided a program with the printer that sets up a label design window in your hard drive. You electronically whack it out on the virtual desktop and start cutting, sewing, and daubing. There are a number of suggested design templates or you can wing it on your own.

Put in a background, if you wish - I suggest a lighter image if you are going to have dark colours for the text on the disc. Lighter images use less ink, as well, so there is economy to consider should you be making a large run of discs.

The text commands for the disc are phenomenal, in that you can type them out straight and then curve them perfectly to the shape of the disc. And all with one grab of a dot - I think it must be industrial magic.

You'll spend some time making the disc label design to your own taste, but you'll be amazed how fast the printer can do the rest of the job. From clipping the disc into the plastic holder through the auto loading and then the printing from computer command it is 4 button clicks and takes about 90 seconds Then the machine spits out the printed disc and you can start again. I was terrified of the job but it all turned out so simple - and that is really the trick that Epson have for inkjet printer users:

Epson works, works well, and works very simply. Hooray.