Well, Apple have repeatedly said that they won’t do it. So, after waiting for this year’s WWDC and still no announcement, I decided to take matters into my own hands and go down the route of the “hackintosh” – a Windows machine, hacked to run Mac OS X.

My machine of choice was the Dell Mini 9 netbook. This is generally considered to be the most OSX compatible machine around and much work has been done by people way cleverer than me in order to get it all working as it should. I’m not going to go into the actual setup process, but will instead direct you to www.mydellmini.com where all the information you need is in the very friendly and knowledgable forums. All you need is a Mini 9 (preferably with a 16GB SSD or larger), an 8GB or larger USB stick and a full retail copy of Mac OSX Leopard.

The machine I ended up with was a Dell Mini 9 with 2GB RAM and a 32GB SSD. It also, crucially has a built in 3G data card. You just put your SIM card (any network) in the slot in the battery compartment and you’re online anywhere.

I’m really very pleased with the little machine. Its surprisingly responsive for general web browsing, email, and OS use. It has no moving parts (no spinning hard drive and no fan), its light, the screen is bright and sharp (but glossy) and the battery life seems pretty good so far at about 2-3 hours of real use with WiFi switched on. It even sleeps when you shut the lid, just like a Mac. I’ll go into more detail about its photo-related usefulness shortly.

Are there disadvantages? Of course. The main ones are the screen resolution and keyboard size. But these are pretty obviously going to be small on a laptop with a 9″ screen. The whole point of the machine is that its small and light, so these are compromises that must be made. To be honest, the keyboard is really not that bad once you get used to it (I’m typing out this article on it right now), but if you have fat fingers it may prove to be a problem.

The screen has a resolution of 1024×600. Now this is OK for most applications but there a few occasions where this can cause problems.

Here’s some screen shots of various apps, so you can get an idea of what it looks like in practice…

PhotoMechanic

PhotoMechanic runs fine and is actually quite snappy for browsing through images and viewing previews etc. There are a couple of dialog screens which are cut off at the bottom due to the lack of vertical screen resolution, but if you know the app well enough you can get around this with keyboard commands quite easily.

Photoshop

I’m still running Photoshop CS, so can’t vouch for later versions, but CS runs fine.

Aperture

Aperture v2 is my main workflow app on my Mac Pro workstation. I’ve installed it to the Mini, but don’t really use it much. It runs fine though.

Safari

Safari 4 is nice and snappy, I use a lot of web apps and these run well.

Transmit

For FTP, I use Panic’s Transmit app. No problems with this at all.

So, how does it fair for the day-to-day use that a photographer might want it for?

So far, as you can see from the above screenshots, I’ve managed to install Photoshop, Photo Mechanic, Aperture and Transmit – pretty much everything I need for portable computing.

I’ve also installed and have successfully used the Canon Utilities for shooting tethered. I’ve only tested this with a Canon 5D, but it works perfectly. There is a trick to this however. The Canon installation software complains that it cannot install the latest version of these utilities because it requires a screen resolution of 1024×768. Its easy to get around this limitation. Install the software on your main Mac and then just drag the application onto the Mini 9. It will then run with no problems at all.

So, I suppose the all-important question is this – how slow is the machine at processing images? Its no speed demon but I think its perfectly acceptable for a small number of images if you need to transmit something on deadline, review images with a client on location or use the internal drive as a backup location for dumping cards during a shoot. By my reckoning its about the same speed as my other laptop – a 1.5GHz 15″ Powerbook G4. So not too shabby!

I could do a whole set of timings for various operations, but instead I’ve done a couple of short videos, showing some typical workflows that a photographer might go through on location. Hopefully, this will give you an idea of what using this machine is like in real life – Not just specs and theory.

(hopefully there will be a couple of videos here soon, I’m having some problems successfully recording a good quality screencast with audio, but I’m working on it!)

Some random observations:

• BBC iPlayer works, but its not perfectly smooth, watchable in a pinch. Flash video is notoriously processor intensive.

• Playing a Video_TS file from a DVD off a USB stick or SD card works fine using VLC player.

• The machine gets quite hot when working hard, but then its got no fan, so its no surprise.

• The lack of fan means its got no moving parts. Its silent and you can pick it up and wave it about while its doing stuff! Or, more realistically, you can leave it sending/processing on the front seat of your car while your driving and not have to worry about bumps in the road!

• iTunes, Spotify, Tweetie, Front Row, Plex, VLC all work.

• I’ve successfully calibrated the screen using an X-Rite ColorMunki.

• The WiFi seems pretty sensitive and able to pick up surrounding hotspots without problems.

• iChat works fine with the built in webcam and microphone.

• There’s no way of knowing how strong a 3G signal the internal card is picking up. Connecting via the modem menu bar works fine (once the correct driver has been installed) but you don’t know if a signal is available or what speed its going to be until you try and connect.

This is never going to be your main computer. I treat it as a small, light, convenient machine and use it as such and it has become tremendously useful. I take it with me all the time to places where I wouldn’t take my Powerbook, either because of weight or size or fragility. I can fit this machine in a camera bag instead of carrying yet another separate laptop bag. And I don’t have to worry too much about how much it cost, or what data is stored on it, or what would happen if I lost it.

Now for the bad news – Dell have just discontinued the Mini 9! They’re still available in the Dell Outlet though, and there’s currently a good number available on ebay. So, if you’re interested, get your skates on!

The good news is that the clever people at www.mydellmini.com have already started getting OSX working on the Mini 10v…

Its the same in the world of professional photography.

Shooting the pictures is just one step in the process of getting the image from the digital camera and into print. Here is the post-production workflow that I carry out on ALL of the shoots I do. Note that this doesn’t include things like high-end retouching, CMYK conversion, compositing etc. This is just the standard list of things which must be done with the digital image files after the shoot is complete.

1. Take the memory cards and copy the image files onto the computer.
2. Make another copy of those files in a different location as a backup before starting work.
3. Batch caption the entire shoot with generic information to enable the pictures to be found again at a later date.
4. Work through the entire shoot, editing down to the final selection for further processing.
5. Once the final selects have been made, add additional detail to the captions for individual images where necessary.
6. Take each selected image and make adjustments to cropping, sharpening, exposure, white balance, colour etc.
7. Check each image at 100% magnification for digital dust spots and remove them.
8. Backup the finished images.
9. Take the final, adjusted, captioned images and convert them from the camera’s RAW format into either a TIF or a JPEG of the correct size, for delivery to the client.
10. Deliver the finished images to the client via FTP, email, web gallery or DVD.
11. Upload the finished images to offsite storage system.
12. Reformat memory cards ready for re-use.

As you can see, there is plenty of work to be done by the photographer once the shoot is complete. This work comes under the heading of “post production”. Some photographers will split it up into items like “digital capture”, “file processing”, “digital delivery” etc.. The work requires a level of skill and experience to do well and also requires expensive computer equipment and software. All of this time and equipment must be paid for and the cost of this will either be quoted separately as a “post production fee” or will be taken into account at the quoting stage and rolled into an all-in price.

Some clients will insist that this work is not necessary and that they will not pay for it. Well, the work is only necessary if you want to receive a professional service and a professional end-product. If you just want the photographer to dump all his RAW images files on a DVD for you to deal with then no, I suppose its not necessary. But, trust me, that’s a bad idea unless you REALLY know what you’re doing.

This is the standard request from clients, but it doesn’t actually mean anything.

dpi is an acronym for Dots Per Inch, so 300dpi means 300 dots per inch. So how many dots is that exactly? Well, that would depend on the number of inches…

Digital cameras shoot pictures at a fixed size in pixels. For example, my Canon 5D is an approx. 12 megapixel camera and produces files which are 4372 pixels on the longest side and 2906 pixels on the shorter side. I can’t change that, its the size that the sensor is manufactured to produce. But, I can deliver that file at any dpi I choose. If I deliver a full size file, then the picture, when it is printed at 300dpi, will be approx. 14.6×9.7″. (4372/300=14.6 and 2906/300=9.7). This size is absolutely fine for most uses.

DPI is only meaningful when it is quoted in relation to the final print size. So, if you need a picture to be printed as a full page of a magazine (say 12×8″) at 300dpi then you need a file which is 3600×2400 pixels.

If you only want to publish a picture on your website then you only need 72dpi, the standard screen resolution for web design (although screens do vary). So if you want your picture to appear roughly 4×3″ on screen you need a file which is 288×216 pixels. Easy.

A newspaper generally only needs about 200dpi because of the low quality paper and printing process, so a typical half-page picture in a tabloid paper, say around 9×6″ would need a file of 9×200=1800 by 6×200=1200. This works out to be a 1800×1200=2.16 megapixel image. That’s how news photographers got away with two megapixel cameras for the first few years of the digital revolution.

So what does all this mean in practice?

Generally, for pictures destined for press releases, the web and newspaper use, I supply files at around 10×8″ at 300dpi. For magazines or other high quality print, I supply files at their original camera size. For web only use, a 640×480 file is usually plenty.

It all comes down to this – if the photographer knows how the pictures are going to be used, he can supply the files at a suitable size. Otherwise its just guesswork.

Let’s say you commission a photographer to shoot some pictures of your company’s MD standing in front of the company logo. The company logo is a particular shade of purple. Its important for branding purposes that the logo is the right colour in the photos because all the rest of the company’s material uses that colour and the whole point of branding is consistency.

So, the photographer shoots his pictures, and you receive the files and open them on your computer – but the logo looks blue. So you blame the photographer, right? Well, its possible that the photographer doesn’t work with a colour managed workflow and didn’t take care to keep the colours accurate, but its also possible that the monitor you are using to look at the pictures is not displaying the colours properly. The logo might actually be the perfect shade of purple, but if your monitor displays purple things as blue then its going to look wrong.

So, how do know who is at fault? The simplest way is to look at an industry standard colour chart on your computer’s screen and check that. I’ve got one available to download here.

This is what it looks like…

Download the image to your computer and open it in whatever software you use for viewing images.

The first thing to check is the grey bar down the left hand side. You should be able to see a difference in brightness between each of the squares. If the darkest squares appear to merge together then images will look too dark on your screen. If the lightest squares appear to merge together then images will look to bright on your screen. Try adjusting your screen’s brightness control to see if the separation between the squares can be improved.

Next have a look at the skintones of the models at the bottom. These should look natural with no strange tints or colour casts. For example, if they look a bit green or blue then somethings wrong – the people are human, not aliens!

Generally, if any of the elements of the pictures look a bit off, then its likely your screen is at fault. If you cannot improve the colours or brightness using the controls on your screen then you just have to trust that the colours are correct but your screen is not suitable for viewing them. DO NOT adjust the image file itself using Photoshop or similar software because you cannot accurately see the changes you are making.

The only way to ensure that any display shows colours accurately is to use a hardware colorimeter – a device that hangs in front of your monitor and measures the actual colours your screen is displaying. The accompanying software can then generate what is called a “colour profile” for that particular display. Using this colour profile with your operating system software will then ensure that what you see accurately represents the colour information in the image file. This is what professional photographers, designers and printers use and forms part of a “colour managed workflow”.

So, after all that techy stuff it comes down to this simple piece of advice – Unless you KNOW that your display is accurate and you KNOW how to make colour adjustments correctly, DON’T MESS WITH THE FILE! Trust your photographer and other professionals involved to get the colour right. That’s what they’re paid for. 

I had to go and retrieve all my backup DVDs and I’ve spent the last week copying all the files back onto a brand new Samsung Spinpoint 1TB drive which I’ve mounted inside my Mac Pro machine. I’m sworn off branded external drives from now on – only to be used for temporary backup or storage while on location. If I need a drive to be external, I’ll put it in a box myself.

So, I’m about half way through this tedious task and still haven’t got up to date with my photo galleries for this site. They’re coming… soon…

I’d already decided that if ever I got it to appear on the desktop, I would run out of the studio straight to my nearest PC World and buy whatever 1TB drive they had to get the stuff off quick smart.

So I desperately tried everything I could think of to get the drive recognised by my Mac Pro workstation. No go. So I tried my Powerbook. No luck there either. I tried booting up the Powerbook into Mac OS10.4 instead of the usual 10.5. Nothing. I tried connecting via Firewire, USB, SATA. No files.

Then it just appeared on the desktop like nothing ever happened. I’ve no idea why and I don’t care – the disk is going straight in the bin once I’ve got the files off it. The time of this miraculous event was 7:40pm. PC World closes at 8pm. I wasn’t going to make it, so I found a temporary measure and started copying the files off onto another drive with some spare space.

Now I just need to order a couple of 1TB drives and start a new backup plan which doesn’t involve DVDs. They work, but the prospect of having to sit at my desk feeding hundreds of disks in one by one just doesn’t bear thinking about. My new system will involve three copies of every picture stored on three separate hard drives, one of which will be stored off-site. I also upload all my final selects to my Photoshelter archive in “the cloud”.

Always have a backup plan.

And this applies not just to digital files but everything a photographer needs to run a business. I have a backup camera, spare lighting, more CF cards than I need, spare batteries for everything, two computers and the list goes on. Being a professional photographer is an expensive business. That’s why hiring a professional photographer is not supposed to be cheap. You really do get the service you pay for.

Why do I pay money for this service? It offers me functionality which would be expensive, if not impossible, for me to implement on my own as a small business. I can upload final selects from every job I shoot and have them stored safely online, in two geographically separate locations. I can set up private galleries for clients to see the results of their shoots and choose their final selects. I can licence stock photography 24 hours a day with industry standard fees calculated automatically, I can sell prints to the general public, I can embed pictures and galleries on other websites (including this one) and much more.

All my clients benefit from this functionality, either directly or indirectly, so the money is well spent.