I currently find myself redesigning an HD PVR service with a rather limited graphical specification for the on-screen display. The set-top box can only handle images with four bits per channel, giving a total of 4096 colors to work with. Not quite what one would expect from an HD set-top-box…

A company called Telegraphics have previously provided the 12bits filter for converting images from 8 bits/channel to 4 bits/channel, but they have not updated the filter for Photoshop CS3. The reason for this is probably very low demand for a filter like this. But if someone else out there are stuck with 4 bit images for some reason, you know how useful this filter can be for tuning images. If you are not one of them, you can safely stop reading now.

Adobe have now released a software development kit (Photoshop CS3 SDK) for creating add-ons to Photoshop, so instead of waiting for Telegraphics to upgrade their filter, I made my first plug-in with the CS3 SDK and Apple’s excellent Xcode.

My filter differs from Telegraphics’ filter by rounding off the color values rather than simply discarding the least significant bits. The result is that each color only changes by an average of 4 levels and not more than 8 levels, instead of being changed by an average of 8 levels and up to a total of 16 levels. This produces an image that is more close to the original. The Telegraphics filter changed the pixels in a way that corresponds to enhancing the contrast by applying an S-curve to the image. The formula I used is p=17*floor((p1+8)/17). Telegraphics used p=17*floor(p1/16).

I have called the filter Fourbits to refer to the number of bits per channel rather than something to do with “12 bits” because this kind of images can also be referred to as 16 bit images if they contain an alpha channel. 

The filter does not do any dithering since I have yet to see dithering look good in any application. I think it is better to create images that take the limitations of the color space into consideration. That basically means that you should avoid gradients as far as possible. The best results are acheived by creating images that contain only flat colors and textured surfaces. Applying a few percent noice before using fourbits reduces banding at the cost of graininess if you must have gradients. 

You can download the filter here: Fourbits.plugin.zip (mac only)

Macheist has a limited time offer for a great bundle of 11 mac apps that I highly recommend. The bundle now includes CSSEdit that I have previously mentioned as the best tool for easy and elegant creation and editing of stylesheets.

It also includes AppZapper, and if you buy the bundle, you can use it to Zap slow and heavy applications like Dreamweaver from your harddrive.

CSSEdit and AppZapper together cost almost as much as the whole bundle, so the rest of the apps are a pure bonus. I have already become very fond of 1password, a small program that lets you securely share passwords across different browsers.

This great tool makes your second mac work just almost like connecting a second display. When you move your mouse off the main screen where you set the other mac up to be, the control of the keyboard and mouse goes over to the other machine. It works smoothly and without noticeable lag.

It obviously doesn’t let you drag windows between the two machines, but files can be dragged and dropped (tip: just wait for one transfer to finish before you start a new one). And best of all: it’s free!

Web 2.0 + good interface design

As the web is growing up, the browser based applications finally start resembling professional desktop application. We have now started using a web based digital asset management system called Fluxiom. It boasts a range of features such as instant thumbnail scaling, search, tagging, filtering, multi-item upload, multi-item select and download, sharing, preview with metadata, and an rss-feed. Many of these features are not unique to this program, and free sites like flickr gives you much of this plus community services. What makes Fluxiom different is the way the elegant and user friendly interface gives you a great overview of all your assets.

I would say the expectations should be quite high since this new feature is only available in the version named Ultimate. It is an ultimate disappointment to learn that the new feature is live video behind the desktop!

Vista has been accused being a shameless copy of an early version of Mac OS X, and the news from mr Gates does nothing to reduce the validity of this accusation. This feature is built into Mac OS X, but it is not promoted in any way. The reason is probably that it is great for showing off, but that in reality it is an utterly useless and resource consuming function.

You can easily take advantage of this feature using the command line or a little program called Quartz Desktop.

Update: A program that probably gets closer to DreamScene is DeskShade which allows you to play movies on the desktop as well as offering a wide variety of slideshow effects.

UPDATE: iWeb has been updated and improved since this was written.

This post is off topic in at least two ways: first of all, this blog is mostly about professional tools, and secondly this site is not about the author’s personal life. No rule without exceptions..

I recently became a father, and that was indeed a great experience! I mention it because it triggered me to start using Apple’s iWeb, and it also explains the low frequency of updates on this site recently. But why would I use iWeb when I already know WordPress so well? Read on and find out.

Easy does it
Our families live in different cities, so we needed a way to show off the new offspring. And it had to be a way that would be quick and easy to use – both for my girlfriend and myself. I considered using WordPress for a while, but choice landed on iWeb together with a .mac-account, mostly because of the great iPhoto integration.

The pros of iWeb
iWeb has virtually no learning curve. It sports a variety of design templates and supports quick and easy editing and one-click publishing (requires .mac). This makes it fun to use and helps keep focus on the content and presentation only.
iWeb allows you to change the layout completely for each post.

iWeb does not have an overwhelming range of features, and you do not get to make your own design templates. In fact, you do not get to use html at all. I contemplated whether I should consider this positive or negative, but I concluded that this is what makes the program so great and easy to use. I use a modified skin for this site that I am not totally happy with, but I still have not gotten the time to change it. You do not have to feel bad about these things with iWeb, because there is not much you can do about it.

You get some great Web 2.0 features in iWeb. RSS feeds are of course included, and Slideshows are automatically created on all photo pages.

iWeb takes away the need for external image editing and uploading. It lets you drag & drop images, scale, crop and adjust all within the application. It even ads nice web 2.0 reflections and drop shadows.

The cons of iWeb
The simplicity of iWeb is only possible because it is an application. This is also the cause of one of the programs greatest weaknesses. All your work has to be done off-line, and it is limited to a single computer. I have often missed the possibility of publishing and editing content on the run – with different computers or even cell phones – like I can with WordPress on this site.

One click publishing requires a .mac account. Dot mac is ok, but I find it rather slow and quite expensive.

iWeb is far less customizable than WordPress, and there are no plug-ins that I know of. It might be argued that this only strengthen its ease of use, but because of this, you miss out on the possibility of using ads, pinging blog-trackers like Technorati, Feedburner for RSS, and using trackback functionality. There are no statistics if you use .mac, so you also miss out on external statistics like google analytics.

Comments are supported in iWeb, but I believe they are only possible if you have a .mac account. A nice feature is that iWeb alerts you of new comments and displays them within the application. You are not allowed to edit the comments, and I do not find comment posting very user friendly, mostly because of the non-apple-ish caption texts (“comment as” vs. “your name”). It seems quite unneccessary that posting a comment requires image verification even when the whole site is password protected.

You are allowed to password protect the entire site. This is a great feature for family oriented sites, but it is really annoying that the RSS feed gets password protected at the same time.

While you may adjust your images, you have no way of setting how large you want the full size images to appear on your site. There is no way of tagging or searching for images in the photo archive.

One thing that is really sad is the terrible localization of the program. I have only tested Norwegian, but that really sucks! It creates a site with a mixture of Norwegian and English. But why am I even surprised? This is exactly how the sloppy and untalented people at Apple Norway treats the Norwegian Apple site – a sad exception to a company with an otherwise great customer presence.

Conclusion and recommendation
Using iWeb for family pictures and blogging has been very well received with friends and family. The ease of use inspires frequent updates and lets you focus on the content.

I highly recommend iWeb, but mostly for private and family use. The lack of a learning curve in iWeb is not necessarily a benefit for serious blogging – it might actually mean that you miss out on learning something useful about the internet, ad systems and the blogosphere. So if you see the value of the plug-ins mentioned above and intend to look professional, you should take a look at WordPress.

Please keep in mind that these are my experiences with iWeb version 1.1.2 after using it for a month or so, but it is in no way a complete review.

Update: This is a small tip to anyone who has bothered to read this far. I recently found out how to have text flow around images in iWeb. You probably know already, but since it was far from intuitive, but I will share it anyway. The trick is to cut or copy the image to the clipboard, place the cursor inside the text area where you want the image to appear and paste the image there. When you now select the image, the option to align the image and break the text will be enabled under text formatting.

Did you find this article useful? Please let me know by leaving your comment below.

One of the many problems with Apple Mail is the way that it handles typography in rich text messages. You are able to set ‘Message Font’ under ‘Fonts & Colors’ in Preferences, but this is a little misleading. What you are actually setting is how you would like to view your own emails, not how others will view them.

Whichever font you choose in Preferences, your messages will most likely be shown in Times New Roman in Outlook. This font is not the first choice for most graphic designers, and I find it strange that Apple has built the application like this – especially knowing how much Steve Jobs himself cares about typography.

Sometimes the solution is almost too simple, and for now I have found that the solution is to make a signature for each account. The signatures will always be displayed using the correct formatting. If you add a few empty lines with the format of your choice before the actual signature, and make sure you always start typing after the second or third line of the new message, your emails should end up looking the way you intended.

Professional Tools

A well established trend for professional graphical software is that the interface should be neutral and occupy as little screen real estate as possible. This leaves the user free to focus on the artwork itself without unnecessary distractions. Adobe has a large collection of professional tools, and they have led the development of interface standards for years. The latest makeover of After Effect was a great example of improving on an already great interface.

The Horror!

My first impression is that Lightroom’s interface is quite disturbing in at least a couple of ways. I realize that it is still in beta stage, so the interface might change before the actual release.

The overall design looks a little webish – a little like “Bridge Center” in Adobe Bridge: This is especially true for the header with the global navigation. The typography is far too large and takes up too much valuable space, and there does not appear to be any way of adjusting the font size.

I find it very puzzling that Adobe has included the ornamental “glyphs” at the bottom of the left and right columns in a professional photo editing tool (see the picture above). The glyphs have no function, and I can’t see that they add anything but an element of distraction to the interface. The design trend of spicing up illustrations with organic vector ornaments has been around for a few years now, and it is already getting a little tired. I have removed the glyphs in the image below, and find it a lot better:

For those who agree that the glyphs have no place in a professional application, I have included a replacement that you can use to remove them from your application. If you are using a Mac, all you have to do is download the empty TerminationGlyph.png, quit Lightroom, and replace the image at /Applications/Adobe Lightroom/ Contents/Frameworks/AgUI.framework/Resources/ (right click on Adobe Lightroom and choose “Show Package Contents” to get all the way in there).

Maya users have been quite nervous about the package’s future since Autodesk acquired Alias last year. Maya 8 has now been released at the Autodesk Siggraph User Group Event as expected, but the release did not meet the users’ expectations.

Recent version history

Maya 6.5 was met with much the same disappointment as Maya 8.0, but is easier to forgive a company for a “poor” X.5 release than an X.0 release. In addition to a few features and speed improvements, Maya 6.5 included an extensive rewriting of the code to lay the ground for new features. The users were skeptical, but Alias really showed us that they were serious about launching new features with the release of 7.0.

SIGGRAPH 2005 and AGUA

I had to cancel my trip to SIGGRAPH 2006 in the last minute, so I can not say how the User Group Event went this year. But I did attend the Alias Global Users Association (AGUA) meeting during SIGGRAPH 2005.

Maya 7.0 was released at AGUA 05. The release was a great performance where Alias’ Principal Scientist, Duncan Brinsmead, personally presented his new Toon Shader. In addition to this, Jos Stam was awarded the 2005 Computer Graphics Achievement Award at the SIGGRAPH Keynote. It was clear that Alias was in the middle of a very innovative period. I do not think I was alone in leaving SIGGRAPH with a strong feeling that Alias would keep their promise of bringing some great improvements to Maya in the following year.

So, what is Autodesk up to?

I find it quite troubling that Autodesk has not made an extra effort to make Maya 8 a far more impressive update. They must have known that the specifications of their first update would be thoroughly analyzed by the user community.

Alias were quite quick to explain the lack of new features in 6.5 and to reassure us of a better future. I know it is still early as I write this, but we have yet to hear Autodesk promise us an equally strong and continued commitment to Maya.

It may seem that the Autodesk acquisition has killed the innovative spirit that we saw in Alias. We can only hope that what we are seeing now is only a passing result of a long and painful acquisition period, and that the geniuses of Duncan Brinsmead, Jos Stam and their colleagues will once again be set free in Maya 8.5.

Update:

Duncan himself did showcase some amazing new dynamic features to be included in a future release of Maya at the User Group Event, so the image may not be as bleak as it appears right now. But according to this report, the audience did not seem quite convinced by his message from Autodesk about their future commitment to Maya.

I have created a PDF of the Maya 8 “What’s New”-pages. This is a more complete list of the new features than Autodesk’s marketing material, and it helps explain all the new features in a little more detail.

image © Apple

Different places, different needs

Startup Items lets you open the same applications every time you log in, but that is not necessarily what you want. I have different uses for my MacBook Pro depending on where I am, and I want different programs started and different servers mounted at work than I do at home.

Removable hardware and networks disks are not always available for a portable computer. If you try to mount disks when they are not available, you are causing unnecessary delays, and you get annoying error messages. And if you do not have a solution for mounting the disks automatically, you have to do it manually every work day.

The solution

I have made a small applescript that solves most of these problems. Just download the script here and double click it to open in script editor. Then follow the instructions in the comments inside the script.

The script works by assuming that you get assigned an ip address within different ranges in different physical places. You tell the script where each range belong, and what you want done when you are at that place.

It’s easy!

If you are new to programming, I can promise you that this sounds a lot harder than it is. Applescript is made for non-programmers like you, and you will easily understand what is going on. At least take a look at the script before you give up!

Update: Alternative solution

I started working on making a more user friendly application to manage locations, but I put that on hold when I found that WiLMa – The WIreless Location MAnager may do the trick. I will try it out, but my guess right now is that WiLMa may be easier to use, and that the above script gives you more control.

Update II: Added functionality

You may now switch behaviour using the Airport network name in addition to the IP address.

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