Not
that long ago, PopPhoto.com’s executive technology
editor Michael McNamara estimated the cost of a gallon of
a certain brand of magenta printer ink at $10,778 US a gallon.
So, it’s no wonder that a recent report commissioned
by Kodak — which just happens to want to push new printers
and inks it claims will save money — shows that the
average computer user and digital photographer is basically
terrified of printing in colour. And many of us will do almost
anything to avoid it.
Fifty-nine per cent of those surveyed said they print in
black and white to conserve colour ink and 57 per cent never
bother with a hard copy of anything, choosing to look at all
their images on screen. I certainly know a lot of people like
that.
Not surprisingly, 30 per cent of those who took the survey
said they simply avoid printing photos entirely.
It’s a simple fact that many, many hard drives are
cluttered with pictures that have been put through expensive
editing software — with everything from white balance
to sharpening to colour temperature adjusted — and then
essentially abandoned. There they sit as nothing more than
a bunch of unviewed digital information.
Maybe we think we’re leaving a legacy of fine images for future generations,
but we’re certainly not looking at what we took only a couple of months
ago, much less something we shot way back in May of 2006.
I have to admit that I’m as guilty as anyone of this.
I’ll use my digital SLR to shoot a bunch of birthday
photos of my granddaughter in RAW format, then choose the
best of the lot, spend a day or two editing them, fiddling
about with all sorts of complicated settings to make them
into high quality jpegs and then, well, nothing really happens
beyond that.
Sometimes, I load these images into Pando — a great free cross-platform
program for sending as much as one gigabyte of files at a time without paying
a cent — and let them loose to go winging out over the Net to my
relatives. Let them print that photo of a cake-spattered baby out if they
want.
Most of them don’t. They simply reduce the size of
the files to almost nothing and post them to the Net where
their friends can look at them. In most
cases, I might as well not have bothered to do any editing at all.
As my daughter says, “Dad, nobody cares that much about the quality of
the pictures. They’re good enough. Don’t spend a lot of time on them.
It’s not worth it.”
And she’s perfectly in tune with her generation.
Another survey, this one carried out by InfoTrends and
released in the past month, shows that sharing (in other
words,
displaying them
on the
Net or
on a computer
screen) is the top reason why people take photos today.
For example, three billion images were shared via e-mail
in the United States in 2006. And, according to InfoTrend
if you factor in the photos
shared via
Web sites, social networks and multi-media messaging services then
well over eight
billion images were shared in the previous calendar year. And that’s expected
to grow, compounded, at eight per cent a year. We’re being
buried in images as if the world were some kind of giant digital
shoebox.
The InfoTrend survey says that those under 25 years of
age are the ones sharing over the Net while those over 45
are more concerned
with storing
and preserving
their memories. The 26-to-44-year-olds are likely to do a bit of
both.
The next big move, according to InfoTrend is to begin looking
at photos on big screen, high definition television sets.
Again, that means no printing.
Meanwhile, as one of the older folks, I’m saving my ink for something important.
What that is, exactly, I’m not quite sure, but I’ll
know those photos when I see them.
Maybe I should do what a lot of those surveyed by Kodak
report, and print at work or at a friend’s house. Twenty
per cent of those who say they use workplace printers report
whipping off a batch of photos every now and then.
How they actually manage to get away with this is anybody’s guess, but
they’re probably printing on plain paper, because loading
an office printer with photo paper is, well, just a tad risky.
In reporting on its survey, Kodak quotes a Dr. Will Millar — who it says
is a “popular cultural psychologist” (whatever that is) — as
claiming that the typical home printer owner fits into one
of three ink personalities.
These are the Squirrels, who
are conscientiously concerned
about conserving ink; the Squids, who just print whatever
they want
whenever they want;
and the Snakes,
who print away from home or have others print for them.
If you want to know just where you fit in you can go to
www.inkisit.com and take a free profile quiz.
Me? I think I’ll just pull up some photos, edit them and then put them
back on my hard drive. It’s a tough job, but someone
has to do it.
One of the major worries I have is that some day I’m
going to have some catastrophic hard drive failure and lose
the key photos I have stored.
I have, of course, taken some basic precautions. Every
night a backup program scours my photography folder for new
images
and
transfers
those to an external
drive. As well, I back up my entire main drive to a second
external drive. Okay, yes, I’m a belt and suspenders
kind of guy.
But that still hasn’t calmed my fevered brow. I worry — because this
once did happen to me — that someone is going to break
into my house and steal my main computer along with my four
external drives and everything will
disappear with no hope of recovery. Or there will be a fire.
And so on.
This has led me to look at all sorts of online ways of backing
up and there are several good services out there, but I’ve
chosen the one offered by Amazon, which is quite cheap, especially
once you have the photos up and stored.
(I know everyone who stores online has a favourite site,
including ones that give you things like the first 20 gigabytes
free, so here’s a good chance for discussion, with everyone
giving reasons as to why theirs is the best.)
To get access to Amazon I use a front-end cross-platform
(Windows, Mac, Linux) program called Jungle Disk (www.jungledisk.com)
, which, so far
at least,
is free. I imagine it won’t stay that way for long, but I’d
likely be willing to pay just a bit to continue to use it,
especially if there are features
added.
So far, I have about 20 gigabytes stored there and the last
monthly bill I got was for $2.40 US. Not free, I agree, but
not bad. And it has given me peace of mind, which I might
value as high as, oh, $5 a month (but don’t tell Amazon
that, please).
Now, Jungle Disk is not the easiest program to set up (considering
you also have to get an Amazon account), but, hey, digital
SLRs, especially if you want to use them properly, have their
own learning curve.
I briefly mentioned Pando above, but I think it’s
worth explaining why I like this program (www.pando.com)
so much
and why you might benefit from giving
it a try.
One thing I always find amazing is how difficult Internet
service providers make it to send photos as e-mail attachments.
My
own from-home service
has something
like a five-megabyte cap on attachments.
Now that might have been quite acceptable back in the days
of limited bandwidth, but it makes sending any more than
a couple
of medium-sized
jpegs at a
time a major hassle for users who don’t have access to higher capacity networks.
And even if I could exceed five megabytes in attachments, there’s
no guarantee that my recipients would be able to download
the photos through their own ISP.
There are, to be sure, sites that allow you to upload photos
and then have your friends, acquaintances and relatives download
them
from there.
Perhaps
the best
known of these is YouSendIt (www.yousendit.com), but you
have to pay for anything beyond 100 megabytes in size, while
Pando’s free service lets you send
as much as one gigabyte at a time.
With Pando, a P2P program, I just fire it up from my computer
at any time then choose the files I want to send and they’re
automatically uploaded. If you’re a professional who
needs to send larger files or bigger bursts of smaller files
then you can easily upgrade to a pay version.
For example, what’s known as the Plus version allows
you to send three gigabytes at a time and costs $40 US annually.
Or you can go to the Pro version
(five gigabytes) for $165 a year or, if you really do have
large needs, you can opt for the Commercial version (50 gigabytes)
at a whopping $420 every 12 months.
To receive the photos the person at the other end uses the
Pando program for either Windows or Mac. I usually use a Mac
and I send to Windows folk all the time with no trouble. With
the free version you can send to as many as 25 recipients
(let’s say you have a very large family) at a time.
And if you use e-mail the photos stay on the Pando servers
for a week — longer if you have the pay versions.
Files can also be transferred via the Web or through instant
messaging.
Basically, it works like this:
All you do is use Pando to choose the files and/or folders
you want to share and say whether you want to do it via e-mail,
IM
or the
Web and
click on “share
new.” The files then upload to Pando’s servers
where the packages are stored.
If you choose e-mail then your recipient gets a 10k or
thereabouts file attachment, which, when clicked, starts
their Pando
download. It’s as simple as that.
And its equally simple using the Web or IM.
Pando has been a phenomenon, with the last figures released
by the company saying that there have been five million installations
of
the software — which
also allows for sending multimedia files — worldwide. Of course installations
doesn’t equal users, but the figure still seems impressive.
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