Colour Profiling and Printing with Epson Stylus 7600/4000

Well, I had a guy, named John, come in and show us some paper samples and how to print on them with the colour profiles which came with them (specifically for the 7600 and 4000 printers).

So, he added the profiles to the /Library/ColorSync/Profiles folder on the Root of the Hard Drive.

Next he opened photoshop and loaded his image. Next was a little hazy, but I think he went to Edit > Assign Profile and click "Do not manage colour profile". This makes sure there is no other colour profiling going on.

For the Epson Printers, it is important to go into paper setup to setup whether you want roll or sheet before going to print. Select the printer type first, and then the paper size. For these printers it gives you several options per paper size, i.e. sheet or roll.

Next he went to Print. Under Color Management, he has "Document". And under Color Handling: he has "Photoshop Manages Colors". For the Printer Profile select the paper/printer profile you are using. In this case it is the "HARMANCrystaljetGlossRCEpson7600_1109.icm". For Rendering Intent he suggests Perceptual as it is most commonly used. And tick the "Black Point Compensation". Now you can click Print...

Under the final Print dialogue box there are several  things to note:
Print Settings:
Media Type: Premium Glossy Photo Paper (250) - Although change this to whichever suites (if it's sheet feed for the Epson 4000 then make sure it is 170 not  250, as this is too thick)
Mode: Advanced Settings - SuperFine 1440dpi - MicroWeave - Super - Hich Speed (ticked. There's hardly any difference at all between 1440 and 2880, not worth doing)

Color Management:
No Color Adjustment (so Photoshop can is not over-ridden, although it would actually be added to)

And that should be it.

Camera Tracking with Voodoo and Blender

Well, it's a little bit of a minefield camera tracking using free software as you'd expect. Heres what I've been able to find out in a few hours:

To start with you will need a video file which you want to camera track. I used a simple camera and recorded video on it.

Next you need to convert this to an image sequence (not the most straight forward things to do suprisingly). After 20 mins of looking I found VirtualDub does this and many more video conversions (worth looking at). Also, you can get blender to do it for you by putting a camera with the video in the background and rendering out the sequence (handy).

Now you can get round to using Voodoo. Open the sequence and click on ¨Track¨ down in the bottom right (took me a while to find this the first time! Should be a menu item for it). This takes a while but eventually you'll have a nice bunch of points.

You need to export this as a python script for Blender.

To get this into Blender, you need to open up the text editor, open the .py script that was saved, then click File> Run Python Script (easy!!)

Now you have the camera animated and 3D points corrisponding to points in the real world.

I managed to find the Blender side of things from this web address: http://fictionality.co.uk/doku.php?id=tutorials:matchmoving

I might add to this when I find out more. But I'm still in the testing stages.

3d tree generation

I want to create realistic trees and bushes for a project to visualise Chesterfield covered in trees. I want to use free programs and came across Gen3 - http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:Py/Scripts/Manual/Wizards/Gen3 - http://blendernewbies.blogspot.com/2009/07/gen3-tree-script-url-updated.html for blender and Arbaro http://arbaro.sourceforge.net/

Looks like it is easy to create shrubs and young trees but a little harder to create mature trees. There is some mature trees which look impressive though. Both these programs are based on the findings in the document Jason Weber & Joseph Penn: "Creation and Rendering of Realistic Trees" -PDF - Creation and Rendering of Realistic Trees which gives information on tree generation and some presets for trees. Might be helpful.

iMac (and general macs) "Error loading operating system"

I'm in the process of reimaging 15 iMacs which previously had windows and OS X installed. I updated one and reimaged it only to find when booting into windows it came up with the error "Error loading operating system". So I tried an image I'd used somewhere else. This came up with the error message "Missing operating system"


Thought this would be to do with the operating system so updated OS X to latest (10.5.8) and all the updates (EFI Firmware). Thought that would fix it but no luck.

Apparently the error message is something to do with bootpicker. Reading bootpicker help, a quick-fix isupdating bootpicker. Also typing in terminal:

sudo -s
printf "flag 3\nwrite\ny\n" | fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0

I've since updated bootpicker when the error message was "missing operating system". Trying it on another image as we speak.


SOLVED:


Through trial and error I found that boot camp does not like Windows to be on the first partition on the disk. I think it's because it intends people to use Boot Camp Assistant which then partitions your hard drive for you, thus making the Windows partition at least the second partition.


I knew it would be something simple!!