Company: Canon Software
Canon’s software was/is annoying, but still functional for sporadic users, and the machine still works. If you buy any printer and it’s going to sit idle, close it tight. Dust on the wheels can make them too slick for automatic operation–on a permanent basis. Canon RAW Codec Software. ImageBrowser EX. Studio Solution. Web Content Viewer Actions. Camcorder Software. Canon Scanner software, free download - SilverFast Canon Scanner Software, Canon Pixma MP250, Canon Utilities PhotoStitch, and many more programs. True networking seems to be out - the drivers aren't there, and Canon isn't playing nice with the open-source crowd. We got a Belkin switch (F1U201), but it only supports OS X up to 10.2 - tried it anyway, doesn't work.
Web:http://www.software.canon.com
Requirements: Power Mac, System 7.5 or higher, 32 MB of RAM, 80 MB disk space
Price: $34.95
As you’d expect from a division of Canon, this photo manipulation software is excellent. It’s a winner in every way. And as you’d expect from a major publisher with deep roots in Windows, the company’s sales department is not quite up to speed on its Mac products.
It sure is nice to see Canon getting on the Mac bandwagon. So often, when big companies get in the software business, they look at the huge installed base of Windows machines, look at the less huge installed base of Macs, and say, “There’s a big pile of money (Windows) and a small pile of money (Macintosh), so let’s not be idiots, let’s take the big pile!”
Sometimes I call PR departments and ask if a Mac version of some program is in the works, and they chuckle and patiently explain the above paragraph to me. I’ve heard it often enough that I don’t bother pointing out the fallacies, which are:
- You don’t actually get the big pile of money, you get your market share of the big pile of money. If lots of companies are squabbling over the big pile, your share may not be very big.
- Both the money piles are big piles. You needn’t give up the Windows pile to enjoy the Mac pile too.
- Thanks to the iMac, Macintosh is very strong in the home and new user markets, and has always been strong in graphics markets. Sure, if your product is customer scheduling software for dentists’ offices, Windows may cover the market, but for a low cost-photo manipulation product where your main selling points are high quality and ease of use...how many of your potential customers have gumdrop colored Macs on their desks or on their laps? [Hint: more than a couple million.]
Apparently, Canon Software (a division of Canon Computer, which is a division of Canon Camera) figured this out for itself.
Canon Photo for Mac coexists with a Windows product, so we’d expect a bit of interface weirdness, right? Well, we get it, but it’s not your usual trying-to-be-Windows weirdness, it’s more the MetaCreations-Bryce-and-Power-Goo weirdness: not what you were expecting, but clear and easy when you get the hang of it.
I may be showing my own prejudice. I’ve been using Mac OS for so long that the Mac interface seems “intuitive” to me, but with Mac OS X hurtling toward us I may soon have to intuit a whole new set of responses. It’s possible the Canon Photo interface is more “intuitive” (a word which used to refer to intuition, and has degenerated to meaning “similar to what you already know how to do”) than the Mac, since its interface is patterned after that most ubiquitous symbol of public access to technology, the TV remote control.
The Tools palette includes most of the high-end photo tools, such as a Crop tool (upper right), a Magic Wand (one left of the Crop tool), and a Clone tool (the linked brushes below the Crop tool), plus a Red Eye Removal and Dust Removal tools (bottom right). The Red Eye tool erases red only, and replaces it with a similar value of gray, thus making your kids seem human in flash pictures and avoiding the Little Baby Dameon look.
The four icons atop the remote control symbolize Get, Enhance, Share, and Internet.
Click the “Get” button, and you get four source options: Disk, Camera, Scanner, and Internet. “Disk” sends you through the usual hierarchical menu routine we all know and love. Select Open Picture from the File menu, and away you go; and “Scanner” (duh) lets you acquire direct from a scanner. The “Camera” option is nice, in that you can download from a digital camera without messing with any other software, and the “Internet” option offers you a variety of Web sites to search (presuming you have an Internet connection).
Now that you have something on the monitor, the next button puts you in Enhance mode.
Here’s a typical amateurish photo, of two guys hanging around an Alp, taken by a paperazzoid with a cardboard camera costing less than $10. It was blown up to a 4 x 6 print, scanned on a $99 (street price) flatbed scanner, and saved as a JPEG. Thanks to a witty caption and some topical interest (That’s me getting instruction on how to stand like an action hero, and the caption was, “No, it’s shoulders back, stomach in!”), that photo was printed as-is in a trade publication.
Egotist that I am (that’s me on the right, by the way), I rather liked that picture. It might be crisper if it had been shot with an $18 camera instead of a $9 camera, but the magazine was in a rush, and as a story illustration, it did just fine the way it was.
And since I have it filed on my iMac as ActionHeros.jpg, and since the Mac shows files in alphabetical order, this was the first photo I opened in Canon Photo. I switched to Enhance, clicked QuickFix, and...voila!
Is that a significant improvement, or what? The subjects have lost the washed-out look and their features are crisper. The people in the background are more colorful. Even the stonework looks richer and more detailed.
Sure, a hot Photoshop artist with the proper filters (probably Sharpen Intensify from Kai’s Power Tools) could have produced similar results in not much more time, and an adequate Photoshop craftsperson could have done it in an hour of messing with Unsharp Mask and Histogram and Color Balance and assorted sliders for Radius and Threshold, but nobody could do this in the first two minutes of the first time they use Photoshop.
I have a friend who is not yet hip to the arcane ways of computers. She understands them on the level that five-year-olds understand television—if you push the right button at the right time, Barney comes on—so when I called her over to see this amazing transition, she put on her Queen Victoria we-are-not-amazed face and said, “Good, it doesn’t look blurry and snowy any more. So? Computers are supposed to do stuff like that, aren’t they?”
Well yeah, it’s just impressive when a program will do that for $34.95 and one click of a button.
She pointed to the button. “But it says, ‘Quick Fix.’ That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Yes it was. She took it in stride, while I sat there like the aforementioned five-year-old when first confronted by the Thermos Bottle Mystery—it keeps cold things cold, it keeps hot things hot: how does it know?
If you have your own idea of how a photo should be improved, or are looking for a particular effect, select Fix By Example. On the left of your screen, you’ll get nine thumbnails showing eight different versions of the effect you are applying, Intensity in this example, surrounding a snippet of your original...while on the right, your remote gives you a selection of characteristics to change, an Amount of Oomph slider (that’s a technical graphics term meaning a slider with a “+” sign on one end and a “-” sign on the other), with a few work-in-progress thumbnails nearby.
Click on the thumbnail you like best (I chose the center left), and up pop nine more thumbnails, eight new ones surrounding the one you selected. You can adjust Brightness, Tint, and Sharpness the same way.
I prefer to set the Oomph slider (they don’t really call it that) to Minimum Oomph, and make changes in a bunch of little steps. I don’t say to myself, “This needs about seven degrees clockwise hue,” I say, “The middle left picture looks nicer than the other ones,” which is not only more intuitive, it keeps my self from wondering, “Clockwise hue? What on earth are you talking about?”
And like all modern photo editing programs, Canon Photo has a wealth of special effects you can overuse. Squishes and Textures and Paints, oh my!
The Special Effects shown here are (left to right) Under Glass, Cool Edges, and Oil Paint, and (top to bottom) Fracture, Puzzle, and Emboss. Great fun, and I expect to see all these effects in your upcoming birthday cards, interoffice memos, and ransom notes.
The package also includes some nifty features like an Internet postcard creation and distribution system, and templates for everything from awards to baby shower invitations to calendars, and so on. But that’s all frosting on the cake, and I doubt I’ll ever use those features in real life.
The reason I’m giving Canon Photo the coveted Excellent rating is that it is so good at what it’s designed to do. I didn’t give it extra credit for its extra features (if you like ’em, use ’em, if you don’t, ignore them) nor did I give it demerits for extra features it lacks.
Listen, friends, Canon Photo is not going to replace Photoshop. Photoshop is a professional tool with many professional features (layers, for example), and people who make a career of photo manipulation need that kind of power. But photo editing for the rest of us?
For amateur and hobby photography, using Photoshop is like killing flies with a sledge hammer. Compared to the Photoshop/KPT combo gracing professional workstations, Canon Photo is 1/20 the price and at least 10 times easier to use.
It’s even suitable for low-end pro use, such as a freelance writer that needs to illustrate his stories. This story, for example, was illustrated exclusively with Canon Photo—all the shrinks and crops and background removals—and I may never transmit another electronic photo without giving it a hit of Quick Fix first.
This is an excellent introductory photo editing product, powerful enough for prosumer needs, and priced lower than (for example) a shareware screen capture utility. At $34.95 it’s probably the best deal in its market.
Canon Software For Macbook
I’m not yet impressed by Canon Software’s support of this product, but I hope to be impressed by February. At this writing, the Mac version is a brand new product in the line, and the sales department is clearly confused by it. For example, searching the Web site, I couldn’t find any way to buy Canon Photo for Mac—every link led back to the PC version. It doesn’t matter what the price is if you can’t find anyone to take your money. Canon Software assures us this will be fixed by the time you read this article.
Copyright ©2000 Jamie McCornack, jmccornack@atpm.com. Note: in sizing and compressing these photos to ATPM/pdf format, some resolution has been lost. Reviewing in ATPM is open to anyone. If you’re interested, write to us at reviews@atpm.com.
Justin is a patent attorney in Silicon Valley, but don’t let his job title fool you, his life isn’t all fun and games. When he’s not working on law-related stuff, he’s turning down requests to do stand-up comedy, and eating, or thinking about eating. He likes to eat.
He feels it’s his lot in life to stay abreast of the latest in tech and science, and has run a moderately popular, tech-centric site since 2002. He’s neurotic, obsessive, sarcastic to a fault and obviously great looking. He gifts the world a constant stream of wit and satire on Twitter (@jblanton), and recently started answering questions on Formspring. He’s also very serious about his photography.
What is your current setup?
These days my only machine (apart from an iPad and an iPhone 4) is the latest (mid-2010) 15″ 2.66GHz Core i7 MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM (and the new, “hi-res,” 1680×1050 display). Internally, it’s rocking a 256GB Crucial RealSSD C300 solid-state drive. The whole thing is stupid fast. I love it.
My precious usually is plugged into a 24″ Apple LED Cinema Display, and resting comfortably in Twelve South’s BookArc (which I love). (Relatedly, if the MBP is closed, you can bet there’s a RadTech ScreenSavr wedged between the screen and the keyboard.)
I sit in an all-black Herman Miller Embody (which last year replaced a Human Scale Liberty). It’s the best chair I’ve ever owned, and I can’t recommend it highly enough, especially for sitting.
Coincidentally (or not!), my desk also is from Herman Miller. I picked it up late last year after struggling for a very long time to find exactly what I wanted; this came real close, so I decided to pull the trigger. (If money was no object, I’d probably buy BALMUDA designs’ Aero desk.)
Earlier this year, a pair of B&W MM-1s replaced my beloved, if large, Audioengine A5s. I absolutely adore the B&W’s, and feel fairly comfortable saying that they probably are the best built-for-the-desktop speakers on the market today. They’ve their own DAC, which eats up one of the two USB ports on my MacBook Pro (the other is used by the external Apple display, which has its own USB ports and thus acts as a hub).
At one point I claimed that the Griffin Powermate (the round, metal thing to the left of the iPhone in the above pictures) was my favorite computer peripheral of all time, and I still stand by that. I use it 1000x a day to globally pause, play and go to the next track in iTunes, and to control system volume. I love its design, its not insubstantial weight and the satisfying thud you hear when you “bop” it. All computer peripherals should be built with such care.
Canon Software For Mac
I tend to use mice that aren’t built for a particular handedness because I generally prefer them to be symmetrical. My daily driver, and the one mouse I truly love, is the Razer Diamondback 3G (I have three of them!), which runs around on a Razer Destructor pad. Despite the fact that I turn the tracking speed up so high that typically I don’t need a lot of wrist-motion space, I quite like the large surface area of the Destructor. Speaking of tracking, the Diamondback 3G has some of the best I’ve seen on the Mac. (Every time Apple comes out with a new mouse I give it a shot, but I’ve yet to come across one I enjoy using. The tracking speed is never fast enough (even with third-party software) and I feel like right mouse-clicks always require a conscious effort.)
For typing, I make a racket with the Matias Tactile Pro 3, which I very recently switched to from a Das Keyboard Ultimate. If I need to type in secret I use an Apple Bluetooth keyboard.
Other doodads on the desk include a Unite SmartBase (which I discuss here; the iPhone 4 fits it relatively well, but I’m looking for a new solution), a carbon fiber drink coaster (is there any other material?) and an IO Gear multi-card reader/USB hub (it’s nothing special, but it’s the heaviest, least ugly one I could find).
Under the desk you’ll find a Webble. No, really, it’s called a Webble — look at the site! At $150, this one may be a tough sell to some, but to a constantly-moving spazz like me, it’s an automatic buy. It’s incredibly well made, and with materials I’d have chosen myself had I designed it.
For backup, I use a pair of 640GB Seagate FreeAgent Go drives, each of which sits in its own stand located behind the external display. One is sync’d to my MacBook Pro’s internal disk using SuperDuper (every day at 3AM), and the other is sync’d to the same internal disk using Apple’s Time Machine software (every day at 4AM, thanks to TimeMachineEditor). Super-critical stuff is double-encrypted and backed up daily to one of the network-based backup services currently available. (I’ll eventually get a Drobo. I’ve been saying that for years. But I will get one.)
I currently shoot with a Canon 5D Mark II, which I rarely use without BlackRapid’s R-Strap or Canon’s E1 hand strap. I just sold my Canon S90 because the camera in the iPhone 4 is so competent.
Why are you using this setup?
Did you not understand everything I just said? Why am I using this setup?! Because I’m crippled by an unyielding desire to experience excellence.
Seriously though, I’m happily and forever wedded to Mac OS X and so my options are limited with respect to the hardware I can (legally) use. Lucky for me, Apple’s MacBook Pros are incredible machines, and for the past few years have come strapped with more than enough power for my needs. (Also, have you handled/cradled/slept with one of these unibodies? They’re freakin’ brilliant.)
I used to go the Mac Pro + MacBook Air/Pro + sync route, but it became something of a chore and certain things always seemed to break, and so I currently am a notebook-only operation (and don’t see that changing any time soon).
Overall, this setup (the room, desk, chair, peripherals, etc.) just feels very natural to me; everything has its place, and nothing is superfluous.
What software do you use on a daily basis and for what do you use it?
LaunchBar — I hate using the mouse if I don’t absolutely have to. (I know, I know, I ended a sentence with a preposition. It’s OK as long as you acknowledge it, right?) Surely this is a holdover from my early Linux days when I literally lived in a terminal, and kind of loved it. With LaunchBar there’s very little I can’t accomplish via the keyboard alone. (I used to use Quicksilver, but eventually was turned off by instability and lack of development; it just hasn’t been the same for years.)
OmniFocus and Things — I’ve gone back and forth with these task management apps so many times that the only tasks in each of them are, “Try Things again, you insatiable masochist” and “Try OmniFocus again, freak!” As far as I’m concerned, The Hit List was the perfect to-do app (and I really liked its design), but then its developer fell. off. the. face. of. the. earth. I gave up looking for him and grudgingly started cycling between OmniFocus and Things again. Currently I’m using
OmnifocusThingsOmniFocus and for the most part I’m content. Functionally, it’s second to none, but its look definitely could stand to be updated (that said, I’m constantly theming it, so it’s not so bad). Also, its iPhone counterpart is wonderful. (If you haven’t already, now might be a good time to read Shawn’s review of Things. Well, not right now; finish reading this first.)TextMate (together with MultiMarkDown (an extension to the ubiquitous Markdown) and the IR_Black theme) — Quite honestly, if I’m typing anything other than an email or a blog post on my Mac, I very likely am typing it into this app. (Actually, I hacked up a way to use it for blogging at one point too, and, truth be told, I sometimes find myself using that method because it just feels good.)
MarsEdit — 99% of the words found on my site were sent there using MarsEdit. (The developer of MarsEdit, Daniel Jalkut, also makes FastScripts, which I use for this and this, among other things.)
Lightroom — Lightroom may be my favorite application ever, on any platform. It’s just a pleasure to use. It’s a great photo organizer, and an increasingly competent post-processor. I find myself going into Photoshop much less frequently these days.
Default Folder X — I’m not quite sure how to even describe this software, but I can say that I never again want to be without it. I especially like that it allows me to set a default “working” folder for each application, and that it remembers recently-used folders when I go to save something, etc. Basically, it saves me time that I didn’t even realize could be saved. (Full disclosure: the developer gave me a free copy of the software.)
Evernote — I recently migrated to Evernote, from Yojimbo. Again. I definitely have some niggles with it, but it syncs across everything and is fairly stable.
LittleSnapper — I use this any time I need a screenshot or want to save an entire webpage (usually because I see in it some potential inspiration). I go back and forth between this and Skitch when I need to quickly (and usually roughly) annotate an image.
Mint — Is there anything better for web stats? Even if there is, I probably wouldn’t use it because I’ve long had a kind of geek-crush on Mint’s developer, Shaun Inman.
Soulver — Allow me to quote Jonas Wisser: “As far as I can tell, Soulver is the only real advance in calculator technology since calculators were invented. It’s a fundamentally different—and cleverer—way of doing math.” I tried to come up with a better description, but failed. As another indicator of my love for this app, it also owns a spot on my iPhone’s first and 20.
1Password — Um, just buy it. You have no excuse.
iStat Menus — I couldn’t function without having information regarding network speed, memory usage, processor utilization and various internal temperatures available at a glance. I’ve been looking at this kind of information every day for 15 years, and at this point I have a kind of sixth sense about my system’s internal operations. What I’m trying to say is that I keep iStat Menus around just to double-check my gut.
Instapaper — Where to begin? I never shut up about Instapaper on Twitter, and I know real-life friends are sick of hearing about it, but it really has changed my life and I’d be remiss to not mention it here. I definitely owe Marco a few beers. (If he’d give me control over
.htaccessfiles on Tumblr accounts, I’d probably give him a baby, at the very least.)Dropbox — Blah blah blah. Who doesn’t use this?
Path Finder — I almost left this out because it’s become such a natural part of my workflow. I really dislike the Finder. Always have. Path Finder fills in the gaps, and then some.
TextExpander — I’m a whore for efficiency, and TextExpander just makes me feel good every time I use it. It’s like I’m doing myself a little favor 1000x a day.
Cinch — I use this to quickly maximize a window or to cause the window to take up exactly half the screen. It’s great.
Tweetie — Despite the fact that it’s still lacking native retweet functionality, it’s the best Mac Twitter client available. Every time a new client is announced I try it out, but it’s usually just a few minutes before I’ve switched back to Tweetie.
Pester — This is a fairly recent addition to my day-to-day workflow (thanks to Wolf Rentzsch, but I’ve a feeling it will forever be a staple. For more immediate reminders that I know I won’t/can’t snooze, I continue to use my LaunchBar timer script, but for everything else I now use Pester.
Safari/WebKit nightlies — Once Flash became relatively stable on Google Chrome’s developer channel (and there were extensions to block it) I gave up on Safari; Chrome was just too fast (and, well, new and different, so I had to use it). However, I’ve found the recent release of Safari 5 to be mind-bogglingly stable for me, super fast and I’ve been impressed with the extension community that immediately grew up around the new framework.
Little Snitch — This Provides me with added peace of mind.
iTerm — The best terminal program I’ve found for the Mac. I spend a lot of time in this app.
Notational Velocity — I find myself using this application more and more; in fact, I used it to draft these very words. It couldn’t be more minimal (e.g., there is no notion of “saving,” search/create are kind of the same thing, etc.), which really attracts me to it. My only real wish is that it would let me define background and foreground colors; it’s rare for me that black on white is an optimal color scheme for writing.
How does this setup help you do your best creative work?
It doesn’t. My best work is done while grocery shopping. I’m just kidding, I don’t shop for groceries.
I think the biggest piece of the creativity puzzle for me (apart from being comfortable with, and having confidence in the tools I use; e.g., Mac OS X, etc.) is simply having my own space — the “bitcave” is my room. (See what I did there? Instead of “bat,” I used the word “bit,” because I’ve an affinity for computers, and zero qualities of a bat.) It’s important for me to have a familiar, comfortable place that’s mine alone, where I can blast tragic, melancholic music and just brood. Or, I guess, work.
How would your ideal setup look and function?
Canon Software For Macbook Pro
Is this thing on?! I just spent 2200+ words explaining why my setup was the best thing since sliced bread, and now you want me to describe something better? Impossible.
OK, fine, I’ll bite.
In a perfect world I’d like everything that’s currently in my MacBook Pro squeezed into the body of a MacBook Air. Also, I wouldn’t mind putting the external display on a floating arm so that I could move it more freely, and hell, I’ll probably swap my 24″ Apple LED display for the just-announced 27″ model. Finally, I’d kill for a minimalist desk (not unlike the one I have now) that could raise and lower itself under its own power, so that I could stand for half the day. (Yes, these exist now, but I’ve yet to see one I really like that isn’t unreasonably expensive.)
More Sweet Setups
Justin’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.