I’ve been reading Tim Daly’s excellent guide to creative printing techniques, The Digital Printing Handbook. This beautifully designed book will help you get the most out of your printer.

I’ve been having fun experimenting with techniques for printing on unconventional papers, like watercolor paper. But printing on unconventional paper can be tricky. Most artist papers, for example, are significantly more absorbent than papers designed for inkjet printers, producing unpredicable results. Images may be dark or, because of chemicals in the paper, unexpected color casts can appear. Obtaining good results requires patient trial and error. A great way to save time (and paper) is to print a “ringaround,” a collection of thumbnail images that show the effect of minor variations in color and brightness.

For example, here’s a picture I took on a recent trip to Beverly Hills:

And here’s a ringaround of a detail:

Tim Daly has created a Photoshop Action (used to create the above ringaround), described in the book, but unavailable on his website. I attempted to email him, but the message was bounced back. I scoured the web and found a post in a forum at the Digital Camera Magazine Web site. Since it was so difficult to locate, I’ve made it available for download here (my thanks to Jeff Singer and Gerry Robinson). Be sure to read the Read Me file for instructions. If you have any problems, make sure that your resolution is 200 or 300 ppi and that you select the corresponding Action.

Handpicked Software for Mac OS X is out-of-date and, unfortunately, also out-of-print. But that doesn’t mean you can’t put your paws on a copy. You can buy a used copy from Amazon for $196.37 [I guess those copies have been sold…]! Or, you can read the PDF version for free! The information is woefully obsolete, but many of these applications are still the best and you can always get the lastest versions from VersionTracker or MacUpdate.

Please Note:
This book is offered AS IS. I know it is out-of-date, so expect some apps to have bit the dust, others to be hiding in different places. I don’t have time to add hyperlinks to the PDF files, but you can always cut and paste.

Please feel free to recommend applications that are current and/or provide updated information by posting your comments to this entry.

You can read the book section by section:

Book Cover
Introduction & Contents
Biz & Finance
Development
Games
Imaging & 3D
Math & Science
Multimedia
Net & Networking
Productivity
Utilities
Recommended Reading & Index

Or, read the entire book or download all of the sections in a zipped archive. The archive is 2 MB.

Enjoy!