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disassociatedtinman · 8 years ago

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Alright guys, here it is. I’m usually the type of person who hates to ask for help, but this is getting bad.

Currently there is $1.48 in my bank account. That’s it. I’ve been doing a little bit of work for my dad’s company but due to various issues including my never-ending battle with my mental health, that only pays me at most $40 every two weeks.

At the moment, I am still living with my parents and on their insurance, but I am still unable to work until my medication is completely sorted out, which will take a few more weeks at least. As soon as it is, I will be applying to jobs in the area, and will hopefully find something I’m able to drive to while borrowing my dad’s car, as I clearly can’t afford one of my own right now, and probably won’t be able to for a while at least.

On top of that, I am still struggling to recover from my eating disorder, which is a day by day process, and I am also trying to sort things out and help the person I am currently dating while he battles with his own depression. And meanwhile, I am still hindered from holding down an ordinary job by my chronic fatigue, which still isn’t being treated much because none of my doctors seem to know what’s causing it.

The bright side is that this is a temporary sticky spot, and I know that. I am committed to recovering from my ED, steps are being taken to figure out the proper medication for me (I will be seeing my psychiatrist on Friday after having stopped every medication but my Adderall, and we will work together to figure out what I should be on for my depression, but as those of you who’ve struggled with mental health know, most medications take a few weeks to start working, and even then no one knows what will work and what will make you absolutely suicidal), and hopefully with the help from my family and (I pray) help from the person I’m seeing, I can be back on my feet and working at least part-time while I work on my other health issues.

In the meantime, though, I really do need some help financially, as much as I hate to ask for it. Most of the work I do right now is actually writing, which is why you may have noticed a drop in fanfiction from me. I’m not making much money from my writing anyway, but I am trying to do what I can to make it work, and focusing on my original fiction is a priority for me because as much as I love fanfiction, I pretty much do it for free and at least with original writing I can work on getting something published, as far-fetched as that seems at the moment.

So, to start with, here is my PayPal that you can donate to.

I have made multiple posts about writing commissions, but at this point, I am willing to try writing almost anything if it means that I can make some money so I am not constantly dependent on everyone else in my life for everything. As supportive and understanding as my parents are, even they have a breaking point for how much they’re willing to do for me.

So, as far as commissions go, if you’re at all interested in a piece of writing from me, no matter how short or long, no matter what fandom, no matter what subject matter, please message me on tumblr, send me an ask, or email me at [email protected].

Here is my AO3 if you want to look at examples of my work, though you can also find more examples and some different types of writing on my tumblr. I am serious when I say if I have to study up on a fandom I’m not in, or write something I haven’t attempted before, I will absolutely do it with every ounce of my focus and effort. I’m not one to puff up my own abilities for the sake of looking good, or even out of desperation, but writing is my main skill and after six years of writing fanfiction (ten years of writing in general), I’ve gotten pretty damn good at writing just about anything under the sun.

Which is why in addition to fanfiction commissions, I am also offering editing services, including proofreading, as well as help with essays/English tutoring, drafting business plans or other business necessities, and design services for business/service menus or other basic design projects in Photoshop (literally this can range from something related to business, to icons, to headers, to even character/fandom/basically-anything-that-you-want aesthetics). If you want to see samples of this type of work from me, please message me and I can send you some things I’ve worked on, though I also have some of my edits on my tumblr for viewing (in reality though I have a million more and will gladly show you what I can do). I can also make gifs and gifsets, though those are more labor intensive and usually more difficult for me just in terms of obtaining the files needed.

I’m not putting a fixed price on any of these services, even the commissions, because I am at a point where I am willing to negotiate, discuss, and settle on prices according to each individual project and what your needs/requirements/requests are. Again, you can contact me at [email protected] to discuss any work that you’re interested in having me do.

I really do hate to have to ask for help like this, but I am also not looking for handouts (though if you donate to my PayPal anyway, even if it’s only a few bucks, I will be forever grateful). I am 100% willing to work in return for the help, even if it’s something as small as filling a short prompt or designing a tumblr icon for you in thanks for helping me out.

The problem is, as always, that I am limited in what I can do at the moment because of my circumstances and, as ever, my mental and physical health. I am working on fixing my overall health and happiness, but until then, I am blessed with the fact that I can still be creative. I can still create things. I can still write. And hopefully, I can use those skills to help myself out of this situation.

So thank you for taking the time to read this, and even if you can’t donate or aren’t interested in commissioning me at the moment, please do me a favor and signal boost this? The more people that see it, the bigger my chances are of being able to find someone who is interested.

Thank you again, and please contact me if you want to discuss anything that I’ve offered above, or even if you want to ask me about a different project that I haven’t mentioned. Like I said, I am flexible on what I am willing to do, and it never hurts to ask me about something even if I end up not being capable of doing it for you. At the very least, I might be able to recommend someone else who is better suited to it than me.

Best wishes to all of you, lovelies <3

#long post #help needed #donations #paypal #commissions #fic commissions #writing commissions #graphic commissions #my writing #this was really hard for me to do guys and I'm sorry to have to ask for this help #I know most of you are struggling at least as much as I am #if not more so #but please #if you can at least signal boost this #I am a very tired girl just trying to do her best #as well as the cliche of a starving artist #trying to make a living off her passion #things will get better and I know that #but until they do I am struggling to get by

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52ciab-blog · 5 years ago

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GuiltyAsCharged!!

I have been listening to Matt Payne’s photography podcast “F-stop, Collaborate and Listen” since the day it started and am so thankful to Matt for hosting it. If you haven’t heard, do yourself a favor and check out his podcast. Super chill conversation with some of the best landscape photographers on the planet, many of them including Matt are Flickr users also, so drop in for a listen and get to know a little bit more about some of the people you may follow or admire.

On one of his latest episodes Matt’s guest said one word that I hadn’t heard before in the Landscape community, almost as if it was some kinda sacred word. I pondered the implications of that single word, As I listened I felt a small tinge of guilt starting to creep up in my mind and before long my view of the photography world started to, let’s say, tilt…. Because I knew I would be laid up in bed recovering, I had purchased several top photographers video training tutorials and watched over 100 videos during my time in bed, Enrico Fossatti, Sean Bagshaw, Ryan Dyar, David Kingham, watching these videos had helped me feel better about the pixels I had been abusing in my photos, and the "artistic license" I have applied to several of them. That one word, has been lingering with me ever since. I have been using photoshop professionally for over two decades for top companies like NBC, Walt Disney, Universal Studios Amblin Entertainment as well as several top ad agencies in Los Angeles and Hollywood, for some reason that word “Authentic”, a word I had never really heard in the industry had struck a cord with me. I’m not sure if it’s guilt but it sure feels like cheating somehow. Therefore, I am re-posting this before-after photo to hopefully appease my guilty conscience. LOL. I have tried several times to recreate this same shot from the beginning and never even get close to it looking like the originally processed photo. Is this the facet that makes art, artistic? The simple fact that it would be very difficult to recreate or replicate. I have never had a concrete workflow, the photo usually determines the process used based on how well I exposed or lit the scene. I am thinking about recording my processing sessions so that I can remember the process used on each photo. Who know’s, maybe they might be worth something later on down the road. If any of you would be interested in a processing video made by me, please leave a comment or send me an email so I can judge interest levels before I undertake a project like this.

Click the link below to see the original file.

www.flickr.com/photos/dot21studios/shares/c478Ee

I am pleased to report that I am fully recovered from my surgery last Friday. Monday was the first day in five years that I was absolutely pain-free, that’s before I starting taking photos!!! I am so excited to get back out in the field and make some photos without having to worry about what my kidney stones are going to force me to do, heat pads, hot compresses or simply but painfully ignore them. Thanks for all the well wishing emails and comments I have received, I am truly touched. Thanks again!!

Posted by EricGail_AdventureInFineArtPhotography on 2018-01-17 08:21:24

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The post GuiltyAsCharged!! appeared first on Good Info.

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pauldeckerus · 6 years ago

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Can JPEGs Be Improved to RAW Quality?

Over the years, I have come across this question often: “Can a JPEG image be enhanced to a RAW image quality?” I understand where this question comes from. Photographers are taught to “shoot in RAW” from day one. These days, so many images are only in JPEG format, from phone photos to stock photos, to those priceless old pictures. It would be really nice if we could enhance them to RAW image quality so they could fit into today’s photographer’s RAW image editing workflow!

Full disclosure: This article was sponsored by Topaz Labs, the photographer’s editing toolbox.

Unfortunately, the answer has always been “No.” JPEG format was introduced in 1994 mainly to reduce file size and conserve memory space. Images saved as JPEG are a lot smaller in file size and have also lost a lot of information. From the information theory of point of view, that lost data is unrecoverable and the damage is irreversible. There are changes you can make to the image to make it look a little better, as we did with our Photoshop plugin “Topaz DeJPEG”, which used an algorithm to remove blocky artifacts in near “optimal” sense (optimal Mean Squared Error). However, even DeJPEG simply cannot recover the lost details.

Figure 1. Guess which pictures is JPEG, which is RAW, or something else?

However, I recently became hopeful that my “No” could eventually become a “Yes.” Before I explain further, let’s dig a little deeper into the difference between a JPEG and a RAW image.

RAW images emerged when high-quality DLSR digital cameras started to replace film cameras. A RAW image usually comes directly from a DLSR camera by saving imaging sensor data with minimum alteration so that maximum image quality can be achieved during the post editing. This is possible because DSLR cameras use the best image sensors and high-quality optics, resulting in RAW images that are high quality.

Optics/Lens → Imaging Sensor → 10-14bit per RGB → save to RAW file in 10-14 bits per

JPEG images typically come from small cameras, like your phone, or are saved after editing to reduce image size for the internet. Phone or low-cost point-and-shoot cameras have very small image sensors (the red one in figure 2 is an iPhone imager size, as opposed to DLSR full frame), which will produce much higher noise. In-camera pre-processing has to be used to suppress the noise to make the image looks good. This noise suppression also removes fine details in the images. Then the images are converted to 8-bit sRGB colorspace to further reduce the amount of data in the image. This is a shame because sRGB can only represent about 50% of the colors that your eye can see, as illustrated in Figure 3. Finally, the JPEG encoder compresses the image into an even smaller file size which results in more loss of information.

lens/sensor → pre-processing → (8bit sRGB) → JPEG encoder → JPEG file

Figure 2, camera imaging sensor size

Figure 3, colorspace diagram

To summarize the difference between JPEG and RAW:

Don’t get me wrong. When a JPEG image is saved with “Quality > 70”, it “looks” almost as good as a RAW image. The problems only manifest when you edit the image in a strong way.

With the information losses in JPEG’s encoding and the fact that jpeg cameras tend to have small lenses and sensors, it is easy to conclude that it is impossible to enhance JPEG images into raw quality… well, until recently, that is.

In the last few years, there has been some revolutionary development in Artificial Intelligence and its application in image enhancement. Using “deep learning”, artificial neural networks have achieved some amazing results (see our AI Gigapixel and AI Clear). With these developments, it was natural for us to try to use A.I. to enhance a JPEG image to (hopefully) RAW image quality!

But wait, I just said that it is theoretically impossible to recover the lost information. How can an artificial neural network do the impossible?

The easiest way to explain it is that A.I. approaches this problem from a very different angle. Instead of trying to reverse the information loss, which is impossible, we train a neural network to “remember” what the RAW image should look like before it’s converted to a JPEG image. We train the neural network on a large number of high-quality RAW images together with their corresponding JPEG version so that it learns and remembers the correspondence. After training the network on enough images, the neural network will “remember” to output a higher quality image even when given a new “unseen” JPEG image as input. It’s just like when you see a friend from far away. Though they are too far away for you to make out the details with your eyes, you can imagine or remember what your friend looks like in vivid detail.

Figure 4. This is what the neural network in our brain looks like.

Figure 5. This is what the artificial neural network looks like.

To make this approach work, we faced the following challenges:

RAW image dataset for training. We needed raw images of all subjects and types – lots of them. We searched the internet, we begged people to allow our machine to see their RAW images, we dug out all of our vacation photos, we shot more. Eventually, we built the most comprehensive RAW image dataset that I know of in deep learning fields.

A proper neural network architecture and the method to train it. For this, we took advantage of our previous research in image upsampling (Topaz A.I. Gigapixel) and noise reduction (Topaz A.I. Clear) and used our proven neural network architecture. We went above and beyond though and made it even deeper – over 30 layers of neurons. We also invested in large GPU servers and ran them for months at a time to let the network slowly learn from our large RAW image dataset.

Run the deep neural network fast enough on a PC. We continued to refine our own proprietary GPU based neural network inference engine to allow it to run acceptably on at least mid-end personal computers.

After months of training and a lot of late nights for our team, we are proud to introduce our new software “Topaz JPEG to RAW AI.” Look back at Figure 1: the right image is a high-quality RAW image, the left image is JPEG compressed with “quality=15”, the middle one is the JPEG after being enhanced by “Topaz JPEG to RAW AI”. This is an extreme case and the output is not quite “RAW” image quality, but the A.I. does a pretty impressive job given the JPEG is extremely compressed and has lost almost all details.

Overall, my scorecard for our current attempt to use AI to enhance JPEG is summarized below:

Here are a few more images to compare.

Remove compression artifacts:

Recover details and sharpen:

Remove noise:

Are the enhanced JPEGs now RAW quality? That’s for you to judge. We will continue to work on improving it. We encourage you to try JPEG to RAW AI on your own images by downloading the free trial. Let us know what you think – we’re always open to feedback.

At Topaz Labs, we are so excited about the possibilities of A.I. for photo processing. We are just starting to scratch the surface of A.I.’s potential for photography. In due time, we believe this technology will bring many great tools to assist artists and photographers in their creative pursuit.

Disclaimer: New JPEG standard does allow you to save the image in higher quality, e.g. encoded in 16-bit. However, my discussion above applies to the majority (I suspect > 95%) of the existing JPEG images. Example images used are pretty extreme cases to illustrate the points. Most JPEG images you have probably are not that bad! :-)

About the author: Dr. Yang founded Topaz Labs 12 years ago due to his life-long passion for signal and image enhancement. His knowledge and skills have been instrumental in leading Topaz Labs to be an industry frontrunner in using new technology in their photography products – from innovative masking (Topaz ReMask), best quality photo noise reduction (Topaz Denoise), to Artificial Intelligence-based products, such as A.I. Gigapixel and A.I. Clear. Dr. Yang is also a long-time entrepreneur, co-founder and CTO of Techwell Inc. (video enhancement semiconductors, went IPO in 2006) and the co-founder and CTO of Fortemedia Inc (small microphone array technology for voice enhancement). Dr. Yang received his Ph.D in System Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada.

from Photography News https://petapixel.com/2019/01/29/can-jpegs-be-improved-to-raw-quality/

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sailorrrvenus · 6 years ago

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Can JPEGs Be Improved to RAW Quality?

Full disclosure: This article was sponsored by Topaz Labs, the photographer’s editing toolbox.

Figure 1. Guess which pictures is JPEG, which is RAW, or something else?

However, I recently became hopeful that my “No” could eventually become a “Yes.” Before I explain further, let’s dig a little deeper into the difference between a JPEG and a RAW image.

Optics/Lens → Imaging Sensor → 10-14bit per RGB → save to RAW file in 10-14 bits per

lens/sensor → pre-processing → (8bit sRGB) → JPEG encoder → JPEG file

Figure 2, camera imaging sensor size

Figure 3, colorspace diagram

To summarize the difference between JPEG and RAW:

Don’t get me wrong. When a JPEG image is saved with “Quality > 70”, it “looks” almost as good as a RAW image. The problems only manifest when you edit the image in a strong way.

But wait, I just said that it is theoretically impossible to recover the lost information. How can an artificial neural network do the impossible?

Figure 4. This is what the neural network in our brain looks like.

Figure 5. This is what the artificial neural network looks like.

To make this approach work, we faced the following challenges:

Overall, my scorecard for our current attempt to use AI to enhance JPEG is summarized below:

Here are a few more images to compare.

Remove compression artifacts:

Recover details and sharpen:

Remove noise:

source https://petapixel.com/2019/01/29/can-jpegs-be-improved-to-raw-quality/

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pamelahetrick · 7 years ago

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How successful creatives harness the power of a daily routine

Life can sure be messy. Each day, we’re faced with a series of chaotic events that cry for our attention and ruthlessly gobble up our precious hours. The average person spends their time juggling family obligations and work responsibilities while trying to squeeze in exercise and some level of rest. Add in unexpected dramas and there’s no wonder why we are exhausted human beings. Any free moments we do have are often squandered on social media so whatever precious time is left is easily lost forever at the bottom of a never-ending news feed.

Tomorrow the same pattern will repeat, frustrations will grow and we’ll wonder why we can’t complete the creative endeavors we set out to accomplish. There simply are not enough hours in the day! becomes our hopeless mantra.

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Are there really not enough hours in the day? There are mere mortals among us who possess the same number of earth hours yet produce a phenomenal volume of work. They seem to have figured out how to harness their time more effectively. Enter Tim Ferriss, the New York Times best-selling author, marketing guru and entrepreneur who is perhaps most renowned for his examination of the tactics, routines and habits of billionaires, icons and world class performers. According to Ferriss, “not enough time means unclear priorities.”

Similarly, Derek Sivers, a philosophizing programmer and entrepreneur, who is featured in Tim Ferriss’ book Tools of Titans believes busy equals out of control. “Every time people contact me, they say, ‘look, I know you must be incredibly busy…’ and I always think, ‘No, I’m not. I’m in control of my time, I’m on top of it. Busy, to me, seems to imply out of control.'”

Today, ‘How are you?’ is usually met with the standard response: “Busy. Sooo, busy.” These proclamations of busyness are worn like a badge of honor. But why? According to Ferriss, “If I’m ‘busy’ it is because I’ve made choices that put me in that position.”

Illustration by Sarah Healy

If ‘busyness’ is self-inflicted, why do we take a strange sense of pride in the fact we have resigned ourselves to wade through reams of endless to-do lists and unsavory tasks? And why don’t successful people seem to be drowning in a sea of busy?

Let’s explore the daily habits of successful creatives

When you look closely, the common denominator among the majority of people who get sh*t done is a daily routine—more importantly, sticking to it.

Let’s delve into the daily habits of successful creatives to understand what steps you can take to establish daily habits and reclaim some of your precious hours.

First up is Alex Mathers, a self-taught illustrator and writer who has written extensively on the subject of productivity and how creative beings can unleash their creative potential upon the world. “Taking action trumps all the planning and learning, fidgeting and worrying you will ever do, “Mathers says. “Art will not materialise, life will not get organised, connections will not be made, if you are not taking conscious action steps, big and small, with consistency and self-discipline: exerting boundaries, control, limits and rules on oneself, in order to make positive changes. And yes, you can maintain your level of creativity (if not hugely improve it), with self-discipline.”

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Today, he says, “I’m never really overwhelmed, and I rarely feel as if I lack time. In fact, some days I feel as though I have more time than I need.” However, this was not always the case. He too, previously struggled to harness his time and energy and not submit to the endless distractions that fill an everyday life. So what changed?

Mathers realized that his habits were an obstacle to getting where he wanted to be. So he made a conscious decision to change them. To get back in control of how he used his time, he became extremely strict with how much time he allocated to certain things, specifically:

How much time he spends watching videos or movies

When and how often he engages with social media

When (and what) he eats and how late he goes to sleep

Mathers created a list of rules for himself which he consults on a daily basis. Although this is not a set routine, his personal list of rules provides him with scaffolding that holds up his day, around which he can carve out time for creative pursuits and which dissuades him from falling prey to lazy habits.

Next up is Haruki Murakami, a Japanese novelist, short story writer, and essayist who adheres to a strict daily routine rather than a set of written rules: “When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.” For Murakami, it is not the routine itself that is the important thing. The routine is merely a stepping stone to a deeper state of being which enabled him to do his best work.

Illustration by Sarah Healy

This leads me to Steven Pressfield, an American author who wrote The War of Art in addition to historical fiction, non-fiction and screenplays. Pressfield also stresses the importance of sitting down each day and consistently doing your work.

In his words, “When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us… we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.” In his work The War of Art Pressfield introduces us to the forces at play which attempt to prevent you from doing good work. He calls these invisible, but strongly felt forces “the resistance.”

Daily routines, therefore, serve a dual purpose:

They help to develop the discipline and consistency necessary to begin and complete all creative endeavors

They pave the road to a deeper state of being and deeper thoughts, which is a stepping stone to creating great work

What action steps can you take to begin a daily habit or to begin developing discipline? Daily routines are akin to layers in a photoshop file, it takes many, many layers merged over time to create a final polished masterpiece.

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Here are five steps to get you started:

Step 1: Start with why

Write down exactly why you want to establish a routine. What do you hope to achieve by doing so? When the urge to quit rears its ugly head, motivation wanes and you just don’t feel like doing it anymore turn back to your “why.”

Bruce Lee, an actor, martial artist and philosopher was acutely aware of the power of writing down ‘why’ and taking the time to self-reflect. The process of writing down our goals generates belief in ones self, which is the key to success.

Step 2: Get ready to struggle

There is often a perception that being a professional creative must be lots of fun. Sure, it can be fun, but “professional” means consistently doing the work whether you feel inclined to or not. There is not a lot of room for waiting for inspiration to strike.

As Chris Fox, an author of over 30 books (and he isn’t even 40) concisely puts it, “Understand that this is going to take a massive amount of sustained effort. Many of us assume that because we like writing it will be easy, or fun. It is occasionally fun, but never easy.”

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Step 3: Make a commitment to yourself

I made an unwritten rule with myself a few years ago. I decided that if I said I was going to do something, then I had to do it. If the words escaped from my mouth, they were set in concrete and now had no option but to be realized.

Research shows that it takes 21 days to form a habit, after which we use less mental energy to decide whether or not to do the task—we go on autopilot of sorts. What would happen if you committed to something for 30 days? Could you form a new habit each month? This could potentially lead to 12 new habits a year, or a sustained action to build upon your daily routine.

You get to decide what kind of person you wish to be. Are you someone who carves out time to actively pursue better habits or one who easily succumbs to lazy habits?

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Step 4: Put it on the calendar

The next step is to block out time in your calendar for your priorities. For example, you may factor in two hours of writing every morning or a one-hour workout. Factoring this time into your calendar ensures that these are the most important tasks of the day and must be given priority over other tasks that are less important.

Step 5: Go forth and play!

To remain constantly in work mode is draining both for you and for those around you. It can also be counter productive to the creative process. A brain that is tired and exhausted is less likely to generate fresh and exciting ideas.

It is as important to be able to switch out of work mode, as it is to switch into it. This is where habits and routines come into play. When you have completed your set hours of work for the day you can switch off and enjoy your ‘free’ hours recovering and recharging for tomorrow’s effort.

This means stepping away from the screen, going outside, spending time in nature or with family and friends.

Illustration by Sarah Healy

While rigidly sticking to a routine may seem boring and even counterproductive to the entire creative process, working consistently instills a discipline that will enable us to do our best work.

Jocko Willink a renowned Navy SEAL who co-authored the New York Times bestseller Extreme Ownership: How U.S Navy SEALs Lead and Win says that discipline equals freedom. This advice transcends creative disciplines and can be implemented by anyone trying to form better daily habits. Although freedom from responsiblities and goals may appear idyllic, when there is no shape to your day it can actually be paralyzing. “If you want freedom in life, be it financial freedom, more free time, or even freedom from sickness and poor health, you can only achieve these things through discipline,” Willink writes.

Tap into the power of a daily routine

Prescheduled workouts, routines and habits create a framework for your life. They enable your mind to go beyond the many, many daily decisions we are faced with into deeper, more important questions.

“The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery,” says Steven Pressfield. “Those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.”

At the time of writing this, there are 250 days, 6016 hours, 360983 minutes and 21658998 seconds until 2019. How will you use it? What will you create?

Time is our most precious commodity, spend it wisely.

About the author

Sarah Healy is a freelance writer, designer, and adventurer. She has worked in animation studios creating award winning apps, and for large corporations helping them to tell their unique story through branding and visual creations. She can usually be found competing in ultra-marathons or undertaking crazy bike expeditions and is currently traversing Australia with little more than a backpack and a smile.

The post How successful creatives harness the power of a daily routine appeared first on 99designs.

via 99designs https://99designs.co.uk/blog/business-en-gb/daily-routine/

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myongfisher · 7 years ago

Text

How successful creatives harness the power of a daily routine

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Let’s explore the daily habits of successful creatives

When you look closely, the common denominator among the majority of people who get sh*t done is a daily routine—more importantly, sticking to it.

Let’s delve into the daily habits of successful creatives to understand what steps you can take to establish daily habits and reclaim some of your precious hours.

Illustration by Sarah Healy

How much time he spends watching videos or movies

When and how often he engages with social media

When (and what) he eats and how late he goes to sleep

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Daily routines, therefore, serve a dual purpose:

They help to develop the discipline and consistency necessary to begin and complete all creative endeavors

They pave the road to a deeper state of being and deeper thoughts, which is a stepping stone to creating great work

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Here are five steps to get you started:

Step 1: Start with why

Step 2: Get ready to struggle

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Step 3: Make a commitment to yourself

You get to decide what kind of person you wish to be. Are you someone who carves out time to actively pursue better habits or one who easily succumbs to lazy habits?

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Step 4: Put it on the calendar

Step 5: Go forth and play!

This means stepping away from the screen, going outside, spending time in nature or with family and friends.

Illustration by Sarah Healy

While rigidly sticking to a routine may seem boring and even counterproductive to the entire creative process, working consistently instills a discipline that will enable us to do our best work.

Tap into the power of a daily routine

Prescheduled workouts, routines and habits create a framework for your life. They enable your mind to go beyond the many, many daily decisions we are faced with into deeper, more important questions.

At the time of writing this, there are 250 days, 6016 hours, 360983 minutes and 21658998 seconds until 2019. How will you use it? What will you create?

Time is our most precious commodity, spend it wisely.

About the author

The post How successful creatives harness the power of a daily routine appeared first on 99designs.

How successful creatives harness the power of a daily routine published first on https://www.lilpackaging.com/

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susaanrogers · 7 years ago

Text

How successful creatives harness the power of a daily routine

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Let’s explore the daily habits of successful creatives

When you look closely, the common denominator among the majority of people who get sh*t done is a daily routine—more importantly, sticking to it.

Let’s delve into the daily habits of successful creatives to understand what steps you can take to establish daily habits and reclaim some of your precious hours.

Illustration by Sarah Healy

How much time he spends watching videos or movies

When and how often he engages with social media

When (and what) he eats and how late he goes to sleep

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Daily routines, therefore, serve a dual purpose:

They help to develop the discipline and consistency necessary to begin and complete all creative endeavors

They pave the road to a deeper state of being and deeper thoughts, which is a stepping stone to creating great work

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Here are five steps to get you started:

Step 1: Start with why

Step 2: Get ready to struggle

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Step 3: Make a commitment to yourself

You get to decide what kind of person you wish to be. Are you someone who carves out time to actively pursue better habits or one who easily succumbs to lazy habits?

Illustration by Sarah Healy

Step 4: Put it on the calendar

Step 5: Go forth and play!

This means stepping away from the screen, going outside, spending time in nature or with family and friends.

Illustration by Sarah Healy

While rigidly sticking to a routine may seem boring and even counterproductive to the entire creative process, working consistently instills a discipline that will enable us to do our best work.

Tap into the power of a daily routine

Prescheduled workouts, routines and habits create a framework for your life. They enable your mind to go beyond the many, many daily decisions we are faced with into deeper, more important questions.

At the time of writing this, there are 250 days, 6016 hours, 360983 minutes and 21658998 seconds until 2019. How will you use it? What will you create?

Time is our most precious commodity, spend it wisely.

About the author

The post How successful creatives harness the power of a daily routine appeared first on 99designs.

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michael-wayne-plant · 7 years ago

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Raw Convertors for Raw image conversion

I have been using a new camera for a while now for some of my street photography based social documentary work and I have recently become discouraged with the results that I have been getting out of my usual Raw convertor. I have been using Capture One Pro 9 which does not have a native Raw profile for the camera but as Leica use DNG it will open the files straight from the camera. Part of my raw convertor problem is that I think that Capture One Pro10 will be updated soon, as the pattern has been that Phase One has updated Capture One Pro around December for the past two years and I am not prepared to in Late November take the risk of buying the new version, to only have to buy it again in a few weeks time. So, I decided to experiment with different raw convertors. I have come to the conclusion that a photographer needs to think of Raw convertors like developers in analogue. When photographers used black and white film we were used to using different developers to make the film behave in different ways. If we wanted low grain we might use one developer but if we wanted to push the film to higher ISO’s another. I am tempted to say that maybe we should also think of our raw convertors in a similar fashion. Only problem with that is because Raw convertors now have also become our library programs for cataloguing images it becomes harder to use multiple convertors.

I have been using Capture One Pro for about 2 to 3 years, prior to that I was using Lightroom as it was easy and it was dominant in the photo industry, this was because as a lecturer, I needed to learn how to use it, if I was going to teach it properly. Since I moved to Capture One Pro I have found I like its ability to recover highlights and dig into shadows better than Lightroom, I have learnt how to easily meta tag my images, and manage my library. Now the idea of using another raw convertor up ends that as I have got to the point where I am thinking that maybe it might be easier if my library was different to my raw processor. I do like the idea of process recipes that is also a feature of Capture One Pro, something that is lacking in Lightroom. The reason I am referring to these two programs as they are the ones that I am most familiar with.

The Raw Conversion programs I have been trying out are:

Adobe Lightroom 6 (which I already own) This is going to go to a subscription only model soon, so when I need to buy a new camera that is no longer supported by this release of Lightroom. The thing is this comes with the monthly CC plan for Photoshop, so you are already paying for it if you are paying for Photoshop, It has been problematic as it has been running slow on a lot of peoples computers (mine included) with large libraries. Lightroom will cost £9-98 per month but that also includes Photoshop, which I object to when I can pay if I live in America $9.99 for the same thing. This is one of the reasons I am not happy about Adobe this sort of pricing is not fair as we get support mostly online and I do not see how it costs them more to do business in this country to America.(rant on pricing over).

** A side note on image libraries, I keep all of my images for each calendar year in one Library so that I can find and work on one year at a time, but as I have gone back to full time photography the number of images I make each year has increased, so far this year I have over 27,000 last year I made just under 20,000 images. I found that with Lightroom the more images in your library the slower it got. which is why I moved to images libraries for each year and if I am doing a job that might generate a few images then I will make a specific one for that particular job.

Luminar 2018 I have been impressed with it colours and simplicity of operation, I am yet to see how the library functionality will work, at £64-00 this program is affordable

Iridient Developer v3.2 I really like the control interface on this raw convertor, I would love to see more training (actually) some on this program. As their is very little online that explains how it works. I like the colour rendering and the ability to dig into shadows and pull out highlights with Iridient Developer, at the moment I am considering using this program to convert my images but at £82.39 it is not cheap.

Capture One Pro 9 (the one that started this), I have liked the library part of Capture One pro and have used it to import and catalog all my image for the past three years, primarily because it gave me great colours out of the Sony a7RMKII cameras that I have been using. I much preferred the ability to reach into the highlights and recover detail and dig into the shadows and get out information which I felt this was far better at doing than Adobe Lightroom 6 on the Sony sensors.

Capture One Pro 10 This is the one I like, but for a problem in the colours between my pervious version and the new version, I do not know what it has done to my library but the saturation is different between the versions 9 and 10, Another reason to wait. I like the sharpness that I get with this version and the colour is normally very good for my files on of this software. If you are new to Capture one Pro it will cost €279-00 +vat ($299-00 US dollars) So it is in the premium pricing end of the spectrum, if you are upgrading it is about £99-00 per upgrade, which is why I do not want to buy until I know that I will not be buying another version in two weeks time.

OnOne Photo RAW 2018 I like this program even though it feels different to the others, it will cost you $99-00 for a perpetual licence.

and I also experimented with AccuRaw which I like but for the lack of strong highlight and shadow recovery, so I am not going to include that here, Its colour reproduction I really liked. If you do not need strong Highlight or Shadow recovery then I would highly recommend AccuRaw It also costs around £84-00

I was going to include screen shots of the resulting images but decided that this is something you need to try yourselves as each of us sees differently and the images that I like are not going to be ones you like. For now I am reserving judgement as I need to experiment more, I have another 12 days on one of the trials to see what I think of the software then I will make a decision. I still like Capture One Pro but the colours (saturation) for me are off on the new version, I really like the solidity of Lightroom, it just works, and I like the results from Irident Developer but I want more info on how the product works as their is not a lot on this raw converter online. I am still not sure of both the Luminar and OnOne Photo Raw yet so more experiments on both of these.

The image below was chosen because it has an area that blows out in the highlights and an area that I have pulled out in the shadows where the guys are, Lightroom did the worst at this area, I would have to mask it and manually make it lighter, if I was to use Lightroom. Capture One Pro 10 messed up the saturation, Capture One Pro 9 is soft in the details on skin and hair. Luminar 2018, was not as sharp in the fine details but I admit I need to experiment with its sharpening tools to see what it will really do so I am going to reserve my judgement on it for now, I did like how the software worked and I liked its colour rendering.

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Click on an image above to see it larger.

So In summary, I am thinking about what to do and each option will cost. I also to throw a spanner in the works and thinking am considering using Photo Mechanic as my library program, as I have experimented a little with it and heard good things about it. At this stage, I am waiting for Phase One to update Capture One Pro to version 11 and I am thinking about adding Iridient Developer, for when I want something different from my raw images, so that I can have both options for my raw files, I also have the option of use Lightroom 6 for a while longer, as it is on my computer and supports all my current cameras.

Raw conversion software comparison Raw Convertors for Raw image conversion I have been using a new camera for a while now for some of my street photography based social documentary work and I have recently become discouraged with the results that I have been getting out of my usual Raw convertor.

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