Still Struggling With Win Vista...

I smell a Class Action Lawsuit comin...

It's been several weeks since the death of my trusted workhorse 'Image Cruncher', an off the shelf 'Compaq Presario' desktop computer with 1GB of Ram and WinXP Pro. It wasn't a gamer's dream machine with dual channel Corsair memory and an overclocked CPU, but it got the job done, ran Photoshop like a dream and never gave me even one 'blue screen of death' in over two years! It would probably still be running today if I had bothered to blow out the dust gathering inside the case. Lesson learned on that one!

The computer I purchased as a replacement came pre - loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium, which is appropriately named 'Premium' I speculate, because it is a premium pain in the ass, which will cost you a premium amount of money. The way I see it, Bill Gates or some other asshole at Microsoft owes me a month of my time, a few hundred dollars and a fresh copy of Win Xp Pro with service pack (3) ; not to mention the bucks they owe me for June of 2000 and the debacle known as Windows ME, the second worst operating system in the world! I'll let you guess what the current winner is, what I don't understand is why?

Is it really that hard to improve upon something that already works? Can't you just make the window dressing more attractive without re - thinking and irrevocably changing the way even the simplest programs work. Why on earth would you remove functionality from a program and tell the world that it's been improved, or make a simple task 10 times harder than it has to be, just to give the consumer a false sense of security.

Questions I'd like to ask the Rocket Surgeons at Microsoft:

Have you ever watched a teenager use a computer? They will press any number of buttons and agree to any pop - up request from any software company on any website at any time...... just to get to the screen with the Brad Pitt pictures (Substitute Brad with Angelina if it's a boy). They don't even stop to read the warnings and after the 'User Account Control' has popped up 100 + times, most adults aren't reading the warnings either!

Why did you screw up the Windows picture and Fax viewer? How stupid can you be? The program used to display Jpegs at their native resolution in both normal and slide show mode! Now the damn program blows up every picture to full screen during 'Slide Show Mode', even if the picture was never sized for full screen viewing! And another thing that really peeves me! I used to be able to set up my edits ( images ) for preview in one folder, uploaded to the web for my clients. They could download them and open them up in the 'Windows Picture and Fax viewer'. It was simple and flawlessly scrolled through the images at blazing speeds, complete with film strip thumbnails below the chosen image.This gave the viewer a sense of where they were in the editing process. But no! Thats all gone now! Who needs a filmstrip preview to scroll through, not when Bill Gates gives us a huge retarded looking 'Mac wannabe' set of glowing buttons to push.

And what the F*#k is up with the Vista Aero effects interfering with the functionality of Photoshop! Did you think that it wasn't important enough to make sure your GUI worked with the number one graphics / image editor in the world! Maybe you thought that red-eye reduction and the other bullshit in Win Vistas Photo Gallery (the new Win Picture and fax viewer) would be a fair replacement for Adobe Photoshop!

More to come.......

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Time For A New Watermark System

Recently I have given more thought to the importance of metadata and watermarking for images published on the web. I have always been a little slack in marking my images with the proper metadata. I create so many different versions of each image and save them in so many sizes and formats that I more often than not forget to check that I have included keywording and metadata. Even when I remember to mark an image as a copyrighted piece of original art, complete with keywords and warnings; they somehow end up naked and metadata free when they finally show up on a clients web page. No copyright, no keywords, a completely untraceable image. 20 years from now an image could still be circulating in cyber space and I might not even remember that I created it! It's not that I'm that concerned about unauthorized use or suing somebody for damages when they have inadvertently used an image beyond our agreement. I just think it would be great if every image had a simple reasonably small watermark that could point web surfers in the direction of the original content creator. Maybe something as simple as a 3 number system with letters replacing numbers in different positions when the original 999 numbers have been exhausted.

Example: 000, 001, 002, thru 999 then 00A, 00B, 00C and continuing, letters in the first position A01, A02, A03, and second position 0A1 0A2 etc... should give 8,722 different combinations that would be permanently connected to individual photographers worldwide. Each person having a number for life! We would of course have to reserve the number 666 for 'Celebrity Photographer' Annie leibovitz (Just kidding).

If we take it to the next level and use 3 letters and include case sensitive lettering, the possible combinations go far beyond my ability to calculate. After I sell this idea to Corbis or Bill Gates I don't care what the rest of you do with the number system, I'll be living on an island with my harem, counting my money.

Now, the idea in my head is an elegant, artistic font ( Watermark ) that would be uniquely recognizable as a creator tag, possibly contained in a sphere or rectangle with rounded edges. It would definitely have to be so attractive and hip looking that it would be an interesting yet non distracting inclusion into an image. Something like the signature of the artist in an illustration or painting, which we now expect to see on any piece of artwork. For web images, I can't imagine it would be too hard to implement this system. One organization could be created to establish and manage the assignment of each lifetime code with a one time fee that would grant each individual permanent ownership of the number combination, similar to a Brand burned onto a cattle rancher's inventory. To simplify the point, each image is like a wayward steer who has escaped from the rancher's property. Without a brand ( that can't be removed ) the animal's owner cannot be established. An image with a simple code could be connected to you ( Content Creator ) and your website as quickly as you could look up a word on Wikipedia. Without this simple solution, web viewers are unlikely to connect an image with the 'Photographer' who worked so hard to create it. The available options for hidden watermarking and metadata don't address the simple vanity issue of having your work identified with you, the photographer!

People are already accustomed to Social Bookmarking Buttons, favicons in the URL and similar logo identifiers. Why not create something similar for photographers?

Remember, I came up with the idea first! Send your check or money order to......

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