Bright Lights, Big Laptop: Sonja Schenk
I may be one of the few people in the entertainment industry for whom 2002 started on a high note. The entertainment industry was still reeling from post-September 11th fallout, a continuing slump in the advertising industry, and the burst of the dot.com bubble. Those who were lucky enough to have jobs hunkered down to weather the drought. But I was lucky enough to have a job still in progress: the feature film I’d been editing for most of the past year — “Britney, Baby, One More Time” directed by Ludi Boeken — was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival. I spent the first couple weeks of January in the projection room at Dolby Labs in Burbank, California and followed the print, along with the rest of the cast and crew, to Park City, Utah for the best wrap party ever.
I didn’t encounter any mind-blowing new products this year, just improvements on some of the old favorites. Apple released Final Cut Pro 3.0, which offered real-time effects for G4 processors without the need for an added video accelerator board. Avid finally released a Mac-version of Xpress DV (v. 3.5), something that had all the Avid editors I know chomping at the bit. Ben Long and I published a second edition of our book, “The Digital Filmmaking Handbook” (Charles River Media). And both Newer Technology and PowerLogix finally came up with a 500MHz G4 upgrade for the “Pismo” G3 laptop that I’m not ready to part ways with.
Perhaps most exciting — to me, at least — is that I used that same G3 PowerBook to edit another independent feature film — “Tuesday Morning Coffee” directed by Mary Katzke — in early 2002. Sure, laptop-editing systems have been around for several years now, but those are custom-built, “turnkey” systems that cost an arm and a leg. Thanks to FireWire, Final Cut Pro, and Apple, editing technology has finally reached the point where a portable editing system is both affordable and practical. I used my “Pismo” 400MHz G3, two 80GB external FireWire drives, and Final Cut Pro 2.0 and had no troubles in terms of performance. (From the computer, that is — the actors were a different story!) Sound designers have been able to afford workstations in their homes for several years now, but video-editing systems that cost upwards of $100K made a home office impossible for most editors. I do think that the wave of the future — at least for projects with lower budgets — will involve editors working at their own home workstations, a change that I for one will welcome.
Facing Phobias, Learning to Fly: Sharon Steuer
For me, 2001 has been the year of biting the bullet and making some attempts to move forward into the 21st century. Having started in the digital art world in 1983, I’d become one of those “old fogies” lamenting the good old days. Friends (such as Sandee Cohen) will attest to the fact that I’ve been more than a bit resistant to the latest round of digital innovations. Using the term “latest” very liberally, I had actually been in denial about such simple facts such as the need for my own Web site, the need for me to own my own PowerBook, the growing industry shift towards InDesign from Quark, and even the very existence of OS X.
When Apple’s threats to cease producing PowerBook computers that boot in OS 9 coincided with a more stable and available version of OS X (Jaguar), I decided the time was finally right for me to buy a Titanium PowerBook. And I must confess, getting a fully loaded 800MHz with an Airport card (from Clay Baker at PowerMax.com) had completely changed my life. As I write this from my dining room table (Yeah!) I think back to the many other times I’ve been grateful for this Titanium… On our Maine vacation when we could watch DVD movies in front of the sunset, Web-surfing on the couch while recovering from surgery, and while preparing a “Creative Thinking in Photoshop” seminar, knowing that I can use my OWN computer to deliver the seminar, and no longer have to worry about forgotten files or applications, weird preference settings, or whether the borrowed machine has enough RAM or disk space.
As for my other digital phobias… Though I’m still in denial about needing to learn to code in HTML, my Web site is finally up (thanks to my Web guru Adam Z. Lein who created an almost idiot-proof database-driven interface!), and “The Illustrator Wow! Book” will likely be ported from Quark to InDesign for its design and production. In terms of using OS X — I do use it on my Titanium when I watch DVDs! And actually, in the past week I’ve been trying to work a bit more in the OS X environment. So now there’s one last end-of-the-year thing to report: contrary to scare tactics which emphasize that you’ll need to upgrade your Microsoft products to Office X in order to work in OS X — not true! Office 2001 runs just dandy from Jaguar in Classic mode. (Oh, and if you click on an application running in Classic (such as Office 2001 Entourage) you’ll have access to all of your specialty items not running in OSX– even your Scrapbook!)
So remember, if you are one of the zillions of OS X phobics, or are a die-hard Quarkphile: although some Macs may continue to support OS 9 through next spring, you only have until the end of the year to buy a PowerBook, iBook, or iMac that’ll boot in OS9!
Read more of Steuer’s Creative Thinking in Photoshop columns for 2002.
Entering Another Dimension: Sean Wagstaff
2002 was a great year for 3D artists. Alias|Wavefront precipitated a price war by dropping the price of Maya Complete from $7,000 to $2,000, and spread the joy by shipping a real, usable version for Mac OS X to go with its Windows, Irix, and Linux editions. Subdivision surface modeling — now offered in Maya, 3ds Max, LightWave 3D, and Electric Image Universe, to name a few — became an industry standard for creating “Shrek“- and “Monsters, Inc.“-style characters.
And if development of Open GL hardware continues on its present trajectory we are only a year or two away from enjoying real-time cinematic rendering on the desktop for the price of cheap video game hardware. The high-end 3D hardware is even finding its way into portables: IBM’s A31p, Dell’s M50, and Apple’s Titanium PowerBooks are all proving themselves in the field running heavyweight 3-D applications like Maya and 3ds Max. Three-D modeling at the local coffee shop has been one of the highlights of my year.
“Mamma don’t take my Kodachrome away…” On second thought, Mamma, here, take it. Photography will never be the same after Canon’s D60 and Nikon’s D100. These are the first professional-quality 6-megapixel digital SLRs that are tempting to even the most avid film-loving cheapskate. For about double the price of a good point-and-shoot, you can take magazine-quality photos using almost all of your existing SLR lenses, with an uncompromising set of metering, focus, lighting and exposure controls.
And Epson has once and for all opened the door to galleries and museums for digital artists and photographers. The company’s new Stylus Photo 2200 printer boasts photo-perfect archival output with 85 years of color-fastness. Check back with me in 2087 and I’ll let you know if it works.
While Mac OS X made great strides in usability, one thing that hasn’t improved is the ease of color management in OS X, Windows, or any of your favorite graphics programs. Try taking a picture with your new SLR digital, tuning it in Photoshop, dropping it into InDesign with some type, and getting a print out of your archival quality photo printer that looks anything like your original image. I don’t know about you, but after 300 sheets of Premium Glossy Photo Paper, my kids’ faces are still coming out orange. Color management that works and doesn’t require an engineering degree to operate? Now that’s something to look forward to in 2003.
Read more by Sean Wagstaff.
Present Successes, Future Questions: Pamela Pfiffner
I too made the transition to OS X this year and so far, so good (although as dazzling displays of OS derring-do are not usually my specialty, I haven’t really let Jaguar stretch its legs). The emphasis within the creative community on the OS X transition indicates that for design and publishing the Macintosh is still the platform of choice, but I wonder how much longer that will be the case. Apple’s share of the computing market remains steady but small, but it’s clear that Apple sees potential for growth in its “digital hub” strategy in which consumers will be making music, editing movies, and developing photos on their iMacs. As high-end technologies float downstream, will it make sense for Apple to continue to invest in the high-end machines creative professionals crave? I’d bet “yes” for the foreseeable future (it’s where the profits margins are), but who knows about the long term.
Apple’s recent decision to continue to ship OS 9 on some machines until Quark prepares its OS X-ready version of XPress suggests that Apple believes in this market — I even said so in a recent newsletter — but the more I think about it, the more it troubles me. Quark flexing its muscles in the creative space doesn’t surprise me, but Apple caving does. And Apple’s kowtowing to Quark, too, will surely upset Adobe mightily (I’d use a stronger phrase but I’d get in trouble).
Adobe and Apple are not currently the best of friends — Apple strong-arming Adobe over its pace of adopting OS X is just one drop of bad blood — so I wonder what the Quark decision means down the road. Adobe could very well decide to minimize its investment in the Mac platform as a result, although I’m certain the company will continue to support loyal customers. But consider: Adobe — the largest supplier of software to the creative market — said in its recent financial call that Mac products represent about 30 percent of sales compared to 70 percent for Windows (Acrobat, by the way, has overtaken Photoshop as Adobe’s main money-maker). With Adobe making big plays for the enterprise or corporate market, the company needs to invest where its customers will be — and that, my friends, is the domain of Microsoft and Intel.
I’m not trying to be alarmist here — remember I’m a Mac user — but it’s food for thought. I’ll be watching these dynamics closely in the coming year.
For me 2002 was a year in which mobile technologies really came into their own, as I PowerBooked and AirPorted my way through not only managing the creativepro.com site but also writing my book in my spare time. I made certain technology investments in 2002 that will pay off in 2003 and beyond (I came close to buying a second 120GB external drive today simply because it was so cheap — $150! — but since I haven’t filled up the first one, I held off).
On the software front I became an Acrobat convert — now I just wish Adobe would do a better job of marketing PDF as a creative tool not just an enterprise time-saver. Macromedia’s overhaul of its product line was a welcome relief, not only because it slowed the Adobe-news onslaught but also because it showed that the Web remains important. Web development is in a lull right now, tarnished by the fallout from an over-inflated market, but as more mainstream companies and retailers adopt Web technologies to conduct business, there’s no doubt in my mind that designers need to keep current with Web products and strategies. The market for stock images remains strong, and studies indicate that buying images online is the preferred method for many creative professionals. That’s a bright spot in an otherwise dreary scene.
Finally, I end 2002 thankful that creativepro.com is still here to serve you. The year has not been good for free-content Web sites, and quite frankly without the backing of our parent company printingforless.com, we’d be just another archived server-backup. Your support helps us, too. By patronizing our advertisers, purchasing products, and buying services — especially printing — through the site, you help keep us around for another year.
Read creativepro.com editor in chief Pamela Pfiffner’s newsletter columns for 2002.
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on December 31, 2002
Commenting is easier and faster when you're logged in!
Leave a Reply
I’ve been reading with some interest writers such as David Blatner and Sandee Cohen singing the praises of InDesign while chastising poor, unimaginative QuarkXpress. I suppose over the years Quark has not been its own best champion. Pretty stodgy. Set in its ways. I wish for a better table editor, for instance. Transparency. Fuzzy drop shadows. The next level, perhaps, of typographical controls. It seems this time that InDesign has sped ahead of Quark in every aspect but one. It’s a simple one, but one I’m finding it more important with every InDesign job I do:
Quark works.
InDesign (often) doesn’t.
What do I mean by “works”? Quark makes plates that can be used on a press to bring my conceptions to reality. Each color, every element, goes its proper way into its proper place, ultimately finding its way into a printed piece that pleases my customers and keeps them coming back. Even more than that, it pleases my boss who continues to make enough money to keep me employed.
InDesign? It makes really pretty pages–on the screen. Its direct export of PDF is usually at odds with the real world of production, often not working at all. Often crashing my platesetter. All of this causes heartburn. This is something I’m not sure reviewers who are comparing InDesign’s built-in PDF generation with Quark’s Distiller-based feature know about. In my industry (medium-sized printers), Distiller provides the consistent workflow we need for efficiency and profitability. It’s possible to use Distiller with InDesign, but it pouts when you do (double-click on a .ps file generated by InDesign and up comes the InDesign program–not, as one would expect, Distiller).
What about OS X? I think Gene Gable’s right that this issue is “more emotional than real” (/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/story_images/feature/18378.html). We in the printing industry are a lot like those Windows NT network guys that want to keep what works and let the newer things prove their worth–and work out their bugs.
Adobe, obviously, is not finished working out its vision for InDesign, but it has its work cut out for it. In heavy-duty ink on paper applications, Quark has nothing to fear from the current generation of InDesign.