Stiched Up Is Open For Business

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Chromatophobic now has a new page: Stitched Up Alterations.  It was an idea that sprouted from a throw away comment at an alarming pace.  

A couple of weeks ago a vertically challenged friend asked me to hem some of her pricey trousers and change some pockets and fastenings.  Sweet.  Done.  Easy as pie.  This was followed by a suggestion of generating similar work: "Create a quick flier, and I'll stick it up at work."  A "quick flier" amplified into, well, all of this because there's not much point in doing things by halves.

I decided to create two versions of the poster: one black, one white.  This came about from many a poster mission in days long gone, where I noticed that some noticeboards would be filled with mostly dark graphics, and others - mostly light.  I figured that having the light/dark option would maximise the chances of standing out on a crowded board.

The fliers were stitched in a long garland

All that's left to do is sticking up the fliers in appropriate places.

The funny/sad/utterly mundane thing is that this wasn't the first time that someone proposed I start an alterations/repair service.  I'd dismissed the concept for a long list of reasons, most of which have been pounded out of existence since then.

Etsy Face Update

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After updating the blog banner, I figured that my Etsy shop requires the same treatment.

Out with the old

In with the new

Updated Blog Banner

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Sometimes you get so caught up in the way you operate that you can't see the body for the organs. 

It helps to have a fresh pair of eyes on hand to extract someone else's critical perspective.  Luckily my eye jar is is pretty full; it's great to be surrounded by talented, creative people who are generous with their knowledge.  One such talented, creative person eyeballed my site and advised that the blog banner was in need of not so much a facelift, but some comprehensive liposuction.  A few surgical tweaks later, a leaner, trimmer blog header is here. 

Before

After

How to Print a Photo Book on the Cheap

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As the saying goes, you get what you pay for, so don't expect a glorious photographic masterpiece when using an online printing service.  Fortunately, there are a few steps you can take to get a result that won't make you recoil in disgust.  Not using Comic Sans is a given, but there are other tricks.

To commemorate Zaika's first year of life I decided to print a book of the year's photos and digitised keepsakes.  Back in the analogue days these were called "scrap books" and contained everything from photos to hair clippings to hand prints to possibly dried smears of stool samples.

Nearly a hundred pages, three hundred photos and over two hundred hours of image processing later I had a print ready tome.  It should not have taken nearly four months to complete, but I'm an overzealous pedant when it comes to a balance of chronology and visual flow, and the book was like an all consuming gigantic puzzle that threatened my precarious sanity.

Back cover: one year of damned formula spoons

If I wasn't a bum with no income and could afford to use a professional printing service, all those hours of digital toil would have resulted in a lovely InDesign document where all the images were precisely formatted and aligned with beautifully positioned text in a tidy inoffensive font.  I would be able to use this lovely InDesign document to print numerous copies of the book for the grandparents.  And if our house burnt down, I would reprint the book from my  precious offsite back up hard drive.  The print quality would be excellent, with superb detail, vibrant, true to file colour and crisp text.

Alas, because I am a bum with pretty much no income, the above "if" is wishful thinking.  Instead I had to settle for a daily deal for an online printing service at about a third of the price of a traditional book.  After all, beggars can't be choosers.  I've printed this way on a couple of prior occasions, and I was aware that the layout software offered by these online services is pretty limited, the text is basic, and that the prints come out nearly 1/2 stop darker.  I processed all images to optimise the workflow taking into account these software limitations.  The pedantic pixel management that this required took a hell of a lot of time.  Then I uploaded the processed photos to discover that the software has been "updated" to even shittier functionality.  I swore a lot and proceeded to work around this mess.

How to make the most of the deficient online book printing services after the jump: