Jon Roemer - Photographer - Blog

Take Two Tablets....

Graduate Student's Desktop Image on His Laptop
Princeton Theological Seminary, 9/21/09

Who knew they snapped together? It would have helped Mel Brooks here:

Back in Matte

A huge sigh of relief will be heard round the world today from photographers, videographers, and others who rely on Apple's MacBook Pro on location. This morning Apple re-introduced the antiglare "matte" option on the 15" MacBook Pro.

Positively Civilized

Earlier this week I noticed that one of the SuperDrives in my Mac Pro was acting funky. It saw any burned DVD as blank. I have *two SuperDrives in the computer so using the second drive confirmed the issues with the first. A call to Apple was in order. Normally, that's not painful but as with any customer service you've got to navigate their phone menu and then hold until a rep is available. Want to avoid all that?

Apple now has a web page called, Apple Expert. Any time, 24/7, you can log in with your Apple ID, and choose a convenient time for them to call you. I requested 9:15am and an Applecare rep called me the next morning at 9:15am exactly. The Apple customer service experience was always very good but this kicks it up a few more notches.

The next day I had a new SuperDrive under a warranty exchange and I'll ship the defective one back to them in the same box.

*In case you are wondering, why have two SuperDrives in a Mac Pro? Two speeds up burning & verifying time. I often have to get multiple DVD's out the door, into FedEx, and make backups. You can run two SuperDrives at once (just duplicate Toast.)  Having the two drives in the computer also saves desktop space, frees up power outlets, and doesn't tax the Firewire/USB bus at all.

A Day in NYC: A Second Brush with Falling Objects, iPhone Email Issues

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A Day in NYC: A Second Brush with Falling Objects, iPhone Email Issues

Firefox 3 - Joins the 21st Century

Firefox 3 was released today.  From my web stats I know that more and more PC users are using Firefox instead of MS Explorer.  So, I thought I'd point out that under Firefox 3 you can now view images online correctly and *accurately. Unbeknownst to most users, Firefox 2 and earlier did not display images correctly.

Of course, getting FireFox 3 to handle images properly takes an extra step or two (Firefox neglected to make it simple by adding a check box in the preferences) but it's easy and painless to get it to fall into line.

You can edit the color management setting in Firefox by entering "about:config" in Firefox 3's address bar, agreeing to accept the risk of voiding the Firefox warranty (what risk?, Firefox is free and you can always re-download it) and then typing "gfx" in the filter field.  Last step is to double-click the gfx.color_management.enable line to change "False" to "True" and you are all set.

If you are not comfortable working under the hood then you can download a Color Management add-on.

*Following either of the above methods will enable Firefox 3 to present images as they were intended to be seen.  Ideally, you still need to calibrate your monitor but using a web browser that can display images correctly is the first step in seeing the true color and tone of image files when they are presented online.

Background Info

Web Browsers and Image Color

International Color Consortium (ICC) Web Browser Color Test

MozillaLinks Blog on Firefox 3 Color Management

CD and DVD State of the Union

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CD and DVD State of the Union