ParrotTalk

July 29, 2011

Color Wiki: Mac OS X Lion Color Management Migration Tool

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 5:21 pm

Mac OSX Lion update: Here’s a site, ColorWiki, that give a good list of Color Management software, with what runs, what doesn’t and what you need to update, in some cases, to get bach in business under Lion.  The issue, really, seems to be Apple dropping “Rosetta” support, which eliminates any program that is not compatible with the Intel system.  Take a look, here’s the introduction:

This page contains a reference table to aid in the migration to Apple’s OS X Lion (10.7) system software.

OS X Lion does not include the “Rosetta” technology that emulates the PowerPC (PPC) processor. Without Rosetta, any Mac OS X applications which only have PPC code will not run!

To determine if an application is PPC only try one of these methods:

  • Find the application on your hard disk and “Get Info” (command-I)
  • Run the application and then open the Activity Monitor to see the application type.

To view all the apps on your system for PowerPC software, try this:

  1. Click the Apple in the upper left corner,
  2. Select “About this Mac” and “More Info”
  3. Under Contents, open the Software list and choose “Applications”
  4. The “Kind” column lists whether the ap is PowerPC, Classic, Intel or Universal.

Many common Color Management tools and utilities are PPC only and will not be available to users running OS X Lion. X-Rite, CHROMiX and other companies offer tools that have been updated to run on Lion and will perform many similar tasks as the older PPC software you may be accustomed to using. Please refer to the following table to determine if there are alternatives for your tools and needs. Also, if you have an application or need that does not appear in this list, please let us know and we’ll do our best to add it to this reference tool.

July 11, 2011

The Cruse – Some Photos

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 11:26 am

Yeah, OK, feeling a little like a proud grampy showing off baby pictures…  but here.  Look at my baby!  (It’s a b-i-i-i-g baby…)

Enjoy!

(© Ted Dillard, 2011 All Rights Reserved)

July 6, 2011

ALERT: Apple Announce OS X Lion – Time to Upgrade?

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 10:48 am

Our advice?  An Emphatic NO!

July brings with it the release of Apple’s most recent “Big Cat” operating system, Lion.  Where Snow Leopard was all about developments “under the hood” that the typical user enjoyed the benefits of, but didn’t really see in the interface, OS X Lion is all about the interface.

From the Apple OS X Lion “What’s New” page: “People have been doing the same things on computers for years. Clicking. Scrolling. Installing. Saving. With OS X Lion, we’ve challenged the accepted way of doing things by introducing new features that change the way you use a computer.” (link to Apple OS X Lion page here.) It sounds like no less than an effort to change personal computing to the same interface as a smartphone or an iPad.  Very exciting.

Yet, very much a concern for anyone who makes their living in digital imaging.  Why?  Basic tools like Color Management between the OS and Adobe, printer drivers for our daily-bread printers like Epson, HP and Canon, and color management systems are getting caught in the corporate crossfire created by the Apple system changes, and the imaging user is getting left for dead.  Specifically, Snow Leopard, Photoshop CS5, and some specific printer drivers are still, simply, broken.  Apple blames Adobe, Epson blames Apple, Adobe blames everybody…  you get the picture.  But nobody is fixing the problem.  And this is Snow Leopard, the current OS, fuggetabout anything new.

What are we seeing?  There have been some severe driver issues where basic functions like printing with color management turned off are impossible.  Several older Epson printers simply don’t have drivers available for Snow Leopard.  Apple fielded Rosetta, an emulation workaround (remember “Classic”?) that has limited success running legacy software at best.  Color Management in Snow Leopard has produced unreliable results.  It’s an exercise in futility to try to get help from the responsible parties…  even on the forums, the Epson, Apple and Adobe “players’ are playing hot-potato with the issue, and there simply are no workarounds.

What should you do?

If you rely on good color management and predictable results from your printing system, do not upgrade, even to Snow Leopard.  We use Photoshop CS4 and Leopard for our imaging workstations.  We’ve been forced, several times now, to suggest to our clients to bring their old Leopard (10.5) workstations back on line to solve their driver/Color Management issues.  Simply put, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

You should always keep a “legacy” system online, or at least waiting in the wings.  Even if your older system has failed in some way, what seems impractical to repair today, may seem a lot more cost-effective in a year – when nothing will run your printing system anymore.

If you’d like to have the latest, greatest toys, and simply must play with OS X Lion, then do it on a non-essential machine.  Better yet, go buy yourself a new laptop you can play to your heart’s content on…  but don’t mess with your income.  Your imaging workstations are your cash cow.  Resist the urge to tamper with them.

What if you need a new machine?  Are there solutions to running good imaging workflow on OS X Lion?  Not that we’re aware of.  You cannot buy a new Mac and install Leopard on it – it won’t run the hardware.  You can’t “backtrack” the OS.  Will updates and patches fix the issues?  Nobody can say.  There is one possible workaround, and that is to work with a “Virtual Machine”, through programs like Parallels and VMware Fusion. Using these, you can run other operating systems on your Mac.  Like Windows.

And Windows7, ironically, is running imaging systems just fine, thank you.

For some interesting reading (some current information along with some good commentary), check out the Luminous Landscape forum discussing OS X Lion and printing: here.

From there comes the best advice, via David Watson:

“The most important aspect of using a computer as a tool (rather than a software development machine) is that it runs reliably and quickly enough to the job.  Only when applications start to demand an OS upgrade to continue functioning should one consider it. “

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