One of the many problems with Apple Mail is the way that it handles typography in rich text messages. You are able to set ‘Message Font’ under ‘Fonts & Colors’ in Preferences, but this is a little misleading. What you are actually setting is how you would like to view your own emails, not how others will view them.

Whichever font you choose in Preferences, your messages will most likely be shown in Times New Roman in Outlook. This font is not the first choice for most graphic designers, and I find it strange that Apple has built the application like this – especially knowing how much Steve Jobs himself cares about typography.

Sometimes the solution is almost too simple, and for now I have found that the solution is to make a signature for each account. The signatures will always be displayed using the correct formatting. If you add a few empty lines with the format of your choice before the actual signature, and make sure you always start typing after the second or third line of the new message, your emails should end up looking the way you intended.

I was recently hired by Opera Software to give a course on television design for the team responsible for adapting the Opera web browser for Nintendo Wii. With more than six years of experience in designing interactive applications and motion graphics for television, I found that this was a great trigger to write down some of the knowledge I have gathered throughout the years.

What does a designer need to know?

There are many resources on TV design out there. Most articles tend to be very technical and detailed, so I will attempt to keep this article focused on what you really need to know as a graphic designer. I have often seen that otherwise great designers without TV experience struggle with getting TV design right, and I have received designs for television from external consultants in many strange sizes and formats. A large and well known advertising company once delivered their final designs in Powerpoint !
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image © Apple

Different places, different needs

Startup Items lets you open the same applications every time you log in, but that is not necessarily what you want. I have different uses for my MacBook Pro depending on where I am, and I want different programs started and different servers mounted at work than I do at home.

Removable hardware and networks disks are not always available for a portable computer. If you try to mount disks when they are not available, you are causing unnecessary delays, and you get annoying error messages. And if you do not have a solution for mounting the disks automatically, you have to do it manually every work day.

The solution

I have made a small applescript that solves most of these problems. Just download the script here and double click it to open in script editor. Then follow the instructions in the comments inside the script.

The script works by assuming that you get assigned an ip address within different ranges in different physical places. You tell the script where each range belong, and what you want done when you are at that place.

It’s easy!

If you are new to programming, I can promise you that this sounds a lot harder than it is. Applescript is made for non-programmers like you, and you will easily understand what is going on. At least take a look at the script before you give up!

Update: Alternative solution

I started working on making a more user friendly application to manage locations, but I put that on hold when I found that WiLMa – The WIreless Location MAnager may do the trick. I will try it out, but my guess right now is that WiLMa may be easier to use, and that the above script gives you more control.

Update II: Added functionality

You may now switch behaviour using the Airport network name in addition to the IP address.

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Personal experience

A colleague and I did a large project involving green screen photography last year, and here are a few words about what we learned from that experience.

There are quite a few sites with blue- and green screen tips and tutorials out there, but most concentrate on video, which is a little different from photography. Whether you should choose green screen or blue screen is much debated, but there seems to be a general understanding that green is better for photographing people since it is further from skin color.

The green screen

The whole point of the green screen is to get an image with a background that’s easy to erase afterwards. If you´re on a budget, you can probably achieve this by painting a wall in the right color, but to avoid reflections you’d be better off using fabric. The background should be large enough to give the photographer some freedom of movement.

Lighting

Using separate lights for the background and the models gives more control over the lighting. The background should be lit evenly and not too brightly. Position the model as far from the background as possible to avoid spill light from the background on the model and shadows from the model on the background. Use barn doors or black screens to further protect the model from spill light from the background. A hair- or separation light hitting the model from the back also helps reduce green spill light.

Casting

Hiring professional models saves a lot of time and frustration, and ensures a better result. This is time consuming work, and a trained model helps getting it right the first time

Styling

The model should obviously not be wearing anything green, but this is less crucial for photo than for video as long as the color is not next to the background. Avoiding loose hair, curls, higly reflective or semi-transparent fabrics and furs etc. will make post production much easier.

Shooting

A photographer will always be tempted to compose the image in camera, but in this case that’s not a good idea. It’s important to allow for a little air on all sides of the model to make the pictures more flexible to work with later. You can always cut off half the head in Photoshop, but painting it in because it was cropped in camera is far trickier…

The photographer should avoid using selective focus. Objects that are out of focus get blended with the background, which makes it really difficult to separate them afterwards. Use an aperture small enough to ensure sufficient depth-of-field to get the entire model in focus, including contour lines. If you absolutely must have selective focus, I would recommend faking it in photoshop afterwards instead.

The image should be slightly overexposed rather than underexposed, but this goes for all digital photography. By shooting in the RAW format, you will be able to tune the white balance losslessly in your RAW editor of choice afterwards.

Stay tuned

Check back for a follow up on keying and color adjustment!

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