Drum machine inventor Roger Linn once told me, "A creative mind is a loud mind. It has lots of thoughts popping up in different directions."

For creative people, focusing can be difficult. That's why I was intrigued by Michael W. Dean's recent essay, called simply "Professionalism." It's an outtake from his upcoming O'Reilly book with Alan Lastufka, YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts.

Michael's head must be loud indeed; he's constantly sending me article ideas, and we've published many of them here. But somehow, he has the ability to achieve as well as conceive, and these straightforward tips explain why.

OOo 3 looks like it starts faster than OOo 2 since it doesn't require starting X11 first. However, opening any kind of document file (even a simple HTML file) seems to take a bit longer than I expected at this stage of the game (Release Candidate 3).

Although I never use word processors to edit HTML or XML files, I brought in this blog item into the OOoeditor. Why? I simply wanted to see what its HTML editor looked like. I was shocked to find that it behaved like Microsoft Word and the now defunct Microsoft Frontpage by actually modifying even the simplest tags like the paragraph tag without asking. Then, it automatically saved the changes to the file, again, without asking. I had a backup of this file (which happened to be this blog entry). So, it wasn't a disaster.

However, I'm not going to dwell on compatibility with Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. The main points is that it looks like OOo 3 is nearing a production release and that its long awaited native Mac interface looks good and seems to work well after a couple of weeks of use (I started with RC2 and then updated to RC3 after its release).

While most users may not be affected by the issue, those who are will not necessarily notice. Why? Because one rarely calls one's own voicemail, and check whether the outgoing message is the right one. My natural tendency to paranoia means I have a daily reminder to do just that, and it proved an excellent decision.

The day after switching to my iPhone 3G, my voicemail decided I was no longer the CEO of Webstellung, but rather of Antonia Communication — my company's former, now long forgotten name. Upon calling up Orange I was informed that I was "lucky" as some voicemail accounts had not only been associated with old, long deleted messages, but with messages that did not even belong to their owners!

Since then, voicemail messages have come and gone randomly. Today, I was greeted by Orange's own syrupy voice, while yesterday it was the right recording indeed.

Of course, none of the officially sanctioned methods to save, remove or alter a recording work: neither the buttons on the iPhone, nor the voicemail's own menu options do anything. As for Orange.fr, it's as helpful as always.

On a side note, here is a trick, if you are affected. While you cannot prevent the default recording from kicking in once in a while, you can probably replace the part where your own name is played by something accurate. That doesn't make it any less frustrating, but at least you may be able to erase the name of the number's previous owner.

Now, might you ask, what is Orange doing? We shall never now, but probably nothing at all. I have been twice informed that they've "brought it up with Apple," which, knowing how fast both Apple and Orange work when customer satisfaction in the French market is involved, doesn't bode too well.

After all, voicemail messages flow in normally once the wrong recording has played, so it's merely cosmetic and the situation offers an ideal opportunity for both parties to hold the other responsible until the end of time.

For the time being, and for lack of a better option, I will be keeping my fingers crossed. Apart from that, I hear MobileMe speeds from Europe will soon be worked on too, right after that foul-smelling Mac Pro issue is taken care of.

Back in 2003, Apple introduced Keynote. The first release of this presentation software shipped in a "full-size" carton box, and inside that box you would find a well-written, 97-page user manual that covered every feature of the software. As a complement to that manual, the box also contained a four-page reference card with lots of full-color screenshots.

In 2005, Apple debuted the Pages word processor and combined it with Keynote to create the iWork office "suite." The software shipped in a slightly smaller box (whose graphic design sparked quite a few debates) and, consequently, the printed user documentation was printed on slightly smaller-size paper as well, but it still consisted of comprehensive user guides and reference cards, one each for Keynote 2 and Pages. It did not really make much of a difference that the reference cards did not feature screenshots anymore; what did make a difference, though, was that Apple decided to also reduce the font size for the printed manuals, making them a bit harder to read for people with vision problems.

Packages and enclosed core documentation for Keynote, iWork '05, and iWork '08: ever-smaller boxes and ever-smaller user guides.

Fast forward to iWork '08, and the box in which the software -- now also including the Numbers spreadsheet application -- is sold has been reduced to the size of roughly two stacked CD jewel boxes. Which, of course, is also reflected by the size of the user guide inside the box and, again, by further reducing the font size used inside that guide. Yes, the guide, because only one printed manual remains, and instead of extensively covering all features of all three applications, it presents introductions to each application's core features, filling less than 150 pages total. If you want to learn all the ins and outs of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, you are referred to PDF files on the installer CD, the largest of which is comprised of some 300 pages.

Reducing the size of the carton box makes a lot of sense: it keeps storage and shipping costs low; reduces the use of natural resources for creating as well as shipping each box; and it makes the box look sleaker and more elegant. But this comes at the price of reduced usability of the enclosed documentation.

The usability of software documentation

The concept of usability applies to a software program's user documentation just as it applies to the program itself. Here are five suggestions for attributes by which the usability of a user guide may be judged. Please note that this is specifically about user guides, not online help systems, which differ in some respects.

1. Designed for the target audience

   The user guide should reflect the complexity and depth of the application as well as the expertise levels of the average user. Consequently, a configuration guide for the Apache webserver will differ considerably from a manual for iPhoto in terms of tone-of-voice, usage of technical terms, number of screenshots, verbosity of instructions, etc.

   That aspect of tone-of-voice is important, and even more so when writing beginner guides: no-one likes being talked down to, so it's essential that the author of the guide takes the user seriously, and that the focus for the user is in enjoying the discovery of new software features and gaining new skills in using those features, instead of having the feeling of not knowing anything about an application yet re-inforced by the way the user guide is formulated.

2. Comprehensive, yet concise

   A user manual should be comprehensive by covering every feature in the application. A software developer or user guide author should not try to guess what the user may already know about the software. When keeping #1 in mind, a user guide could address different levels of expertise by special entry-level chapters that an advanced user could simply skip.

   Comprehensive does not necessarily mean verbose, though, and it definitely does not mean that there is room for excessive marketing speak. A user guide is not an outright sales brochure.

3. Easy to navigate

   A well-designed manual can serve both as a tutorial and a reference.

   The best manuals I have seen present their material in such a clear structure that you can work through the book from beginning to end to familiarize yourself with the software as a whole, and yet easily find information on a specific feature if you need help while working with the application.

   For printed manuals, a cleanly-structured table of contents and a comprehensive index make finding what you are looking for simple despite the lack of an active search function as found in online help systems or PDF viewers.

4. Optimized for display medium

   The requirements for printed manuals differ quite a bit from on-screen guides distributed as PDFs, and the design of each should be optimized for the respective characteristics of the medium.

   For printed manuals, a page size should be chosen that can be comfortably handled physically. The font-size must be big enough to read even for users with less than 20/20 vision, and screenshots and graphics need to show enough contrast for the same reason. Some white space next to the text is handy for scribbling down some notes while working through the manual. As a minor, yet crucial detail, a binding that allows the book to lie flat without having to break that binding first, is a major relief for anyone who is driven up the wall by a book that just won't lie flat.

   For on-screen manuals, screen space is a precious resource. It should not be wasted by excessive white space on the user guide's pages even if that would look good in a printed copy. The user should be able to navigate and read the guide without too having to scroll individual pages when viewing the document at 100% zoom. At full zoom, the font size should allow for easy reading of all text -- including, e.g., tables and explanations in screenshots -- and the font should not become distorted or fuzzy too easily even when viewed at smaller zoom settings. Where appropriate, hyperlinks can help the user navigate the document.

5. Include printed manuals for screen-hogging software

   As mentioned earlier, given the economical and ecological costs of printed manuals, it makes sense to reduce the amount of printed documentation that ships with software applications. However, there are some software programs for which resorting to an on-screen manual is just not a viable option.

   When running an application that uses hardly any screen space -- think Calculator or iChat --, there is always ample room left for reading a PDF manual on-screen, so one can easily justify scrapping a printed guide. This is, however, not the case when working with an application of the "never enough screen space" type. If you have ever launched a higher-end media editor like Final Cut Pro, Logic, or ProTools, you will know that, no matter how big your computer's monitor, you will always use the application at full screen and still complain that you could always use another one of the nifty 30" Cinema Displays. For these kinds of applications, I consider an un-abridged printed manual a must-have feature.

   Even when a printed manual is included, also throwing in an electronic version -- that is optimized for on-screen reading -- is a good idea, as it makes the complete reference materials available even when traveling with a laptop.

What about Apple's user guides, then?

So what about Apple's user guides: how do they fare with regards to these five criteria?

The iWork '08 manuals are too small in more ways than one: physical size, font size, screenshot resolution, and content. The full PDF manuals that ship on the CD are comprehensive, but they waste much screen real-estate with white space, require scrolling when viewed at the original size on a MacBook, and when zoomed-to-fit, the font is hard to read. And, as you can see in the screenshot, the iWork applications also are an edge case with regards to "screen-hogging."

Electronic user guides do not work well for applications that use up a lot of screen real-estate.

Unfortunately, the same criticism even applies to at least one of Apple's Pro apps: Aperture. The printed manual that ships with Aperture is titled "Exploring Aperture." While this book provides a very well-designed, easy-to-follow, and fun introductory course to the software, it shares the same size issues found with the iWork '08 manual. Unlike iWork '08, though, Aperture is not an edge case when it comes to screen-hogging: software of this type should definitely ship with a full-size and complete printed manual.

The miniature "Exploring Aperture" booklet vs. the full-size Logic 8 reference guide book. The image does not do the difference in font-size justice: reading the Aperture booklet is much more tiring than working through the Logic book.

Contrast this to the documentation that is included with the Logic Studio audio editing and recording suite: the two main manuals -- one on the application itself and another one on the instrument and effects plug-ins -- offer a luxurious 1,900+ pages' and almost 3 inches' worth of fine reference material.

I would hope that the powers that be at Apple will change their criterium for defining the required minimum size packaging for software products from the current "that installation CD must still fit in there" to "a useable printed manual should fit in the box." At least for complex, functionally "deep" applications like iWork, Aperture, etc., proper printed documentation is not a nice add-on, it's an essential part of the overall product. And with the in-house benchmark of the Logic Studio user guides, the required expertise for designing that proper printed documentation is definitely available.

"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination" is one of my favorite John Lennon quotes. Think about it and you'll realize that it's true. I was thinking about this quote when I was photographing a pond near my house. I was trying to envision how the pond would look if I used Photomatix Pro from HDR Software on a set of seven pictures (each taken at a different exposure setting).

I was trying to Imagine (envision) the possibilities that awaited me in Photomatix when I photographed the scene - which had a very high dynamic range. Sure, with the 11-f-stop range of my eyes, I could see into the shadows and see details in the clouds at the same time - but my digital SLR, with its 5-stop range, cold not capture what I was seeing.

Photomatix to the rescue.. with a bit of standard Aperture 2 adjustments (selective enhancements using the Dodge & Burn tool (which I talk about in this PCPhoto article).

The next time you are shooting in a high contrast situation, think about John Lennon's quote - and HDR. Your reality is only limited by your imagination.

By the way, check out Hydra, one of many Aperture Plug-ins. It lets you create HDR images without leaving Aperture.

Rick
P.S. I am offering one-day, HDR classes in Croton-on-Hudson, NY - one hour from NYC. Drop me an email to get on the schedule: ricksammon@mac.com.

Let me crank back to where I was just after my last entry. I was teaching full-time at SMC, taking an on-line class in serious 3D gaming, and waiting for the baby to arrive. She hit my life like a hurricane November 8, 2007. I barely recovered in time for the Game Developer’s Conference in February, and I've been sleepwalking ever since.

In my lucid hours, I have had time for two loves: electronic music and skydiving. How on earth could these two passions ever intersect than in my wacky life. The baby has continued to grow and my wife and I thought it would be cute to take her camping. And then it all came together….. Burning Man!

I had been musing about the great desert art festival for a few years. How would I rig a performance set-up that would withstand the heat, the dust, and the lack of electricity? Not to mention the acoustic challenge of being outside, in the sun or in the cold of night. I thought immediately of the Korg Kaossilator (mentioned in this column previously) as one of the most versatile music boxes of recent time. It is by nature small, portable, and battery powered.

A quick tap on the pad can kick it into a loop of sound just perfect for the trance like experience of the festival. I then matched it with a pair of portable guitar amps by Smokey. These devices are cigarette-package-sized, practice amps of the most minimal utility. One jack in for the instrument, and one out to pass the pre-amp to a bigger system. The speakers are durable, loud and crunchy, considering that there is no volume control other than your instrument. Distortion is part of the charm! The Kaossilator also has no volume control on its main outputs, so plugging them together meant I just had to deal with the resulting grunge. So how would I use such an extreme performance set-up in this extreme environment?

This brings us to passion #2. As friends will recently attest to, I have changed in the past few years. I have gone from techno-freak to extreme-sport-super-freak. I jump out of airplanes for fun. Maybe not JUST fun. I do compete for skill points, and then there is that saving-one’s-life thing with the parachute. But this is a long story for a different blog.

So, I’m at Burning Man, the big art/performance festival in the middle of the no-where desert. And this is my contribution: I tape the Kaossilator to my chest, under my jumpsuit.

I tape the Smokey amps to my ankles (right and left channels!) and run the cable up my legs. Zip up the jumpsuit, don my parachute rig, and ride an art car out to the Black Rock City airport. After checking my batteries, I board the plane. On the way up to altitude, I’m doodling on the Kaossilator to the annoyance of the other jumpers until I create an interesting loop. I pause it and keep my finger over the play button as I prepare to exit the aircraft 10,500 ft. over the playa floor. (14,500 ft. above sea level). I push the button, take my turn, and jump…

The plan in laymen terms was to meet up with another jumper in free fall, separate around 7,000 ft. and open my chute by 6,000; giving me 5,000 feet of canopy time above the sprawling campsite of 50,000 people (about 10 minutes of gliding), before landing. After my chute opened, I actually could hear the synth loop in the air, AND through my full-faced helmet. I knew it was loud but would it be loud enough? The ride down was stunning and I soon forgot I was blasting music out of my ankles. Swooping over the temporary city was just unreal.

I set up my landing in an open stretch just above the main center of camp and hoped someone would hear the sound. I was rushed by a couple of “burners” asking me how the view was, and then they said it. “Is that music coming from you? Are you listening to music skydiving?” I didn’t have the heart to say it was for them; evidently the entire performance was for the two people that I met on the ground.

What did I learn? Well the first thing is that the amplification needed to be louder for people on the ground to hear me from the air. The entire set-up was also almost too distracting for me to feel safe jumping out of a plane; meaning I probably would not do it again with anything larger or more involved. Thankfully, there was no volume control to think about! And finally, I would have had just as much fun with any of the three activities by themselves: skydiving, playing music, and being at Burning Man. So what the hell am I going to do next year?

Waikiki Apple Store grand opening from Todd Ogasawara on Vimeo.
Please accept my usual apology for my "Blair Witch" style video. And, FYI, footage near the Apple Store starts at 1:21 if you want to skip footage of my walk through the Waikiki beach area.

A friend of mine, Ryan Ozawa, was at the store before dawn. He took a lot of great photos. You can find his photos linked to the sample photo below.

Chiaroscuro refers to a lighting situation in which there is an extreme contrast between light and dark areas.

Katie Rose in Chiaroscuro, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

In Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), I made several passes on the RAW file to exaggerate the chiaroscuro effect. I combined these different exposures from the same RAW file in Photoshop as layers.

It would have been pretty easy to process the noise out of this high ISO image. In fact, I made no effort to process the noise inherent in the photo. Instead, I converted the noise to simuated film grain using the NIK filter set. Next, I partially converted the image to black and white, using two Photoshop black and white adjustment layers, one set to maximum white and the other to maximum black. The point of the multiple black and white adjustment layers was to partially desaturate parts of the photo while continuing the chiaroscuro.

[Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR zoom lens (with image stabilization engaged) at 105mm (157.5mm in 35mm terms), 1/25 of a second at f/5.6 and ISO 1600.]

At StyleFlip.com, you can design your own adhesive vinyl skin for a variety of music gear — turntables, CD players, DJ mixers, drum machines, keyboards and more. (The company says the skins are removable and leave no residue.) The site's Flash-based interface is easy to suss out, and the previews look dramatic.

I stopped short of buying a sticker, as it seemed rather pricey, but I was impressed that a StyleFlip rep called me personally within minutes to answer a technical question I'd emailed.

With so many mass-produced instruments out there, it's great to have an easy way to add some personality. Sure, it's only skin-deep, but even small customizations can change the way you feel about your instruments, deepening your music.

You gotta see this.

How totally cool! Vincent is the man. I will be adding Canon 5D workshops (shooting and editing) to my 2009 schedule. Hope you can make one!

Rick

In talking about the important of a caption for photograph, my friend Dick Zakia, author of Perception and Imaging, sent me this short story:

Blind man with no legs is sitting in a park begging.

Sign beside him reads, "Have Compassion. I am blind." People walk by and pretty much ignore the man, sign and hat for the coins.

A well-dressed businessman walks past him then turns around, stands in front of the man. He picks up the sign, writes something on the back and places the sign back where it was but with what he wrote showing.

People continue to walk by but now are dropping coins and bills into the hat. The blind man is thrilled and collects the coin.

The businessman returns and the blind man inquires as to what he wrote on the sign. The businessman replies, "Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it."
--------
Dick, a former RIT professor, adds: "I always reminded my students that a caption is
part of the photograph, part of the gestalt--just as the choice of mat and
frame, and the size of the print and the surface of the paper, etc."

Comments? Post here!

And, if you have a caption for my photograph of a man I photographed in Hong Kong, which is one of my favorites in my new book, Face to Face, send that, too!

Thank you,
Rick

The browser has, perhaps, the simplest and easiest to use navigation system I've seen on a Mac. It basically shows you the top of the directory tree and lets you drill down to where you want to go without much effort. I was able to quickly browse through large thumbnails of JPG, PNG, and RAW image files. The RAW photos were created using either a Canon PowerShot G3 or G9.

The Orig button in the top menu bar shows the original image before any Style changes were applied. And, speaking of the original image, it is important to note that LightZone never changes the original file. The modified image is saved out to a new file with a _lzn appended to the part of the file name that precedes a period. For example, if you brought in a photo from your camera named IMG_1234.JPG, LightZone would save the modified file to IMG_1234_lzn.JPG.

Here are a few photos I used to learn more about LightZone.

The main thing I learned is that LightZone does not "compete" with my other tools (Pixelmator or The GIMP). It probably doesn't do anything I couldn't do with Pixelmator or GIMP. But, its relighting tool and various Styles let me quickly experiment with the look of each photo. Each single change in LightZone probably would have required a dozen individual tweaks in my other photo editing tools. I'm still using Pixelmator and The GIMP for day-to-day photo tweaks and screen capture manipulation for my various blogging/writing projects. But, LightZone is the tool I'm probably going to turn to when I want to figure out how to make a photo look the way I remember a scene (or to improve on it). I don't use Apple Aperture or Adobe Lightroom. But, I suspect users of those photo management apps might want to give LightZone a try too.

Fixed Mac-specific issues:
- Keyboard shortcuts would stop working in some cases.
- Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indic characters can not be entered (using IME) into text fields in Flash objects (bug 357670)
- Firefox 3.0.1 could not be used when the user profile is stored on an AFP directory (bug 417037)

Between Earth and Sky, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

The week before, at my Point Reyes night photography workshop, I'd been stymied in my idea of stacking photos to produce circular star trails (stymied because it was cloudy). But this time it was clear. The stars were bright, although a little less than on Tomales Point, probably because of the ambient light pollution.

I pointed the camera north, and used a digital fisheye lens to maximize the celestial rotation of the star trails.

First I tested the light with a one minute exposure at ISO 800 at f/3.5. Then I made an eight minute ISO 100 exposure (with in-camera long exposure noise reduction enabled) for the foreground. This image in its entirety is found below (I think it is interesting in its own right, with the still stars at the center and circular star trails around the edges).

Next, I turned noise reduction off, and programmed my Nikon MC-36 remote for twenty exposures, each capture at four minutes, ISO 100, and f/5.6.

It was damp and a bit chilly in the dark, and for a while Mark and I left my camera on autopilot and sat some distance away in my car, listening to the superb and eerie music of Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. After twelve exposures (about 48 minutes) our patience wore out and weariness won. Mark had a plane to catch in the morning for a business meeting, and I've been going on fumes since Katie Rose was born. I stopped the automated exposure process, and packed it in.

This morning, I combined the thirteen images in Photoshop using the Statistics script, choosing Maximum as the method for combination. An airplane trail in one of the captures made it into the stack, and I decided to keep this apparent visual anomaly. Finally, I layered in the longer exposure for the detail in the foreground and boat.

[Above: Thirteen captures, all captures Nikon D300, 10.5mm digital fisheye, tripod mounted; one capture 8 minutes at f/3.5 and ISO 100; twelve captures 4 minutes at f/5.6 and ISO 100; star trails created by statistical stacking of 13 exposures; foreground created by layer with the 8 minute exposure using a gradient and layer mask. Below: Nikon D300, 10.5mm digital fisheye, 8 minutes at f/3.5 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

View this image larger.

And this version has heart. It's not often in the world of software that we get to enjoy something so complicated and refined at the same time. Working in CS4 is like driving a top-tier German sports car. It's responsive, elegant, handsome, and yes, very enjoyable.

But that's not an easy pitch for software in today's economy. You can't just put "CS4 Is Friggin' Remarkable" on a bumper sticker to make it a hit. You actually have to use it, and I mean use all of it: Photo Downloader, Bridge, ACR, and Photoshop. They work together like gears and pistons.

I'll be specific about some of these joys:

• When you make your first Collection in Bridge, you'll smile.
• When you discover the Graduated Filter tool in ACR, you'll want to show your friends.
• You'll become addicted to Open GL zooming and rotating.
• The first time you use the Targeted Adjustment tool in a Curves layer that CS4 created automatically for you, you'll feel like an expert.
• And if you don't try the new Auto Align and Auto Merge technologies, you're missing a true technology treat.

So there's a mere scratching of my CS4 surface. You can learn more about this release in many ways. I'd start with a few including Deke's latest dekePod, Buy or Die: Photoshop CS4 and my podcast, Top 10 Photoshop CS4 Features.

And then there's my pride and joy, the book that covers my Photoshop CS4 approach just for photographers and no one else: The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers. If you read this book, you'll see why I'm so excited about this release of Photoshop.