Winner!

Winner! originally uploaded by Daniel Laskowski.

“Life in shadows: Daniel Laskowski from Windsor expertly captures the otherworldly aura of Marrakech in this photo of the Djemma El Fna square”

The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, January 2010

And here is the photo on its own: www.flickr.com/photos/daniel_laskowski/3600741395/in/set-…

Solution to usability failure?

In Poland the idea of making modern architecture friendly for disabled people is still, it seems, a novel one. Fixing it AFTER the building is finished sometimes results in bizarre solutions.

Here the disabled person must ring the bell, upon which a caretaker comes to aid.

One more thing, the address of the building is Alternatywy 4, Warsaw. This is for those Poles who remember a certain TV series from the 80’s…

How to set your computer to sRGB

1. Set your design software to work in sRGB IEC61966-2.1 colour profile

Both MAC OS and Windows PC users:

Open your Adobe application (Photoshop). Open the “Color Settings” panel (usually it’s Command+shift+K in MAC OS and Ctrl+Shift+K in Windows)

In the “Working Spaces” box, choose sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as the RGB working space. Note: all your Adobe applications (e.g. Illustrator, InDesign) should have the same set up.

Your “Color Management Policies” should be set as per the screenshot.

2. Set up your monitor screens to work in sRGB IEC61966-2.1 colour profile

MAC OS users:

Go to System Preferences and select “Displays”

Then select “Color” and choose “sRGB IEC61966-2.1″.

That’s it, you’re done!

Windows PC users

Go to “Start” and find “Control Panel”

Double-click on “Display” to open “Display Properties”.

Select “Settings” tab and hit “Advanced” button.

Select “Color Management” tab and make sure the “sRGB IEC61966-2.1″ is selected. Hit “OK” or “Apply”.

Done!

NOTE: If you work on two monitors, make sure you set both of them to sRGB (Mac users will notice two preference panels, one for each monitor. Windows users should repeat steps from before hitting “Advanced” in Display Properties.

Jessops CD photos: a dreadful quality

I don’t shoot “traditional” photography anymore, its’ all digital nowadays – but i use to. Recently I dug out an old Minolta camera, and realized there is still a film inside. I had a good idea of what’s on the film though – the last time I used this camera was during a visit of my girlfriend’s sister, in 2004. I remembered the photos on that film were just casual snaps.

I went to Jessops to get the film developed, and I asked for just a CD, no prints (no point to prints anyway, waste of paper and space in my drawers. I put photos on flickr and that’s that).

OK, so they developed the CD, I got it, run it… and certainly wasn’t amused by the quality of images.

Arguably the photos weren’t too hot themselves, but can’t Jessops pull a good black out of that damn negative? Surely I should expect the quality of scans to be less reminiscent of a pointillist painting? Why are they so noisy? And they all have a blueish-greanish cast – where did this come from? The photos were even shot on the Jessops film, so the machines used to develop film should be calibrated to handle their own materials?

All photos on the CD have a very similar digital grain. Click on the image for large version.

Looking at the separate channels, all of them are similarly messed up, the worst is, quite typically in digital scanning and photography, blue.

There are just few photos on that CD and I am glad they were just a casual snaps – it would make me mad if the film contained something more precious.

iPod InvisibleSHIELD goes to the bin

I bought this thing about a year ago. At the time I was looking for some kind of protection from scratches for my iPod, but I didn’t want any bulky shields, cases, boxes or pouches to conceal my gadget – i liked it just the way it was. White and well designed. The InvisibleSHIELD seemed perfect, as it offered a complete protection with just a very thin layer of plastic foil.

It works as advertised, actually. It protects the iPod. My iPod gets no scratch but works and looks the same… Or – does it?

The first (small) issue is that the dirt gets accumulated on the edges, just under the plastic foil of the InvisibleSHIELD. I tried to clean it, but cleaning removes also the glue (or whatever it is that clings the foil to the surface of the iPod).

The bigger problem is that after few months of using my iPod with the InvisibleSHIELD on it, I realized the plastic foil the shield is made of starts to go yellow.

In the end my iPod looked like it belonged to a chain smoker – and finally i decided to get rid of the foil.

The InvisibleSHIELD served its purpose, but in the end it altered the iPod’s look – made it nasty yellow.