Bertrand Bitz

Sortie du CD de Bertrand Bitz le 8 avril 2008.
J'ai assuré le design du CD, du site, les photos, etc..

And the ripper's site is down

Following up my previous post, I've managed to bring down the website of the ripper I was talking about yesterday :)

By the way, since it's December, I've got an ongoing Advent Calendar project, together with 23 artists. You can view it on my DeviantArt account.

This photographer artisticvisionphotography.com is stealing my work

Just a quick note Let me introduce you to M.Raul Sebazco / 321 West 24th St / New York / New York 10011 who is bravely stealing and ripping my work on his website called artisticvisionphotography.com
Now you know why I need to watermark my work :(

No photo book on Blurb.com and here is why

Hello

Some of you had noticed that I was planning to create a 160 pages photo book at blurb.com. I was quite excited about it.

The first time I made a book with another company resulted in a complete disaster: I had carefully scaled down all of my image to the proper pixel dimensions for the page, saving them with the highest JPEG quality. Guess what? Their software recompressed my images before sending them, with a crappy JPEG quality resulting in ugly JPEG artefacts (see wikipedia if you don't know what it is).

So, of course, I had checked on Blurb website and forums - everything seemed fine, no recompression should be done.

Well, I'm afraid, there IS some recompression even if you create a correct file. Fortunately, I've noticed it while sending 4 times less data that I had expected. Hm. This shouldn't be good.

I've ran some extra tests and spent some more time on it, and here is the result:

• any file beyond 2 Mb will be recompressed by the application
• one can assume that JPEG quality 9 – 10 will give a filesize below 2Mb (max quality is JPEG 12)
• Artifacts quite show up at JPEG quality 9 – they are less noticeable at 10, but 9 is really the moment when you can see them. Especially on detailed red tones and edges of objects.

While probably a lot of images will print more or less correctly, I know that the most detailed ones won't (think of these pics with red umbrellas, red fishes, etc)

Therefore, I don't want you (and me) to pay $40-50 for a book that won't meet my quality standards.

Sure, it's the price of 10 photos for me and I would had got 160 of them (not on photo paper, though). But simply due to tentatives on limiting bandwidth and disk storage, these companies fail on providing a good service.

That is, to say the least, quite stupid.

Traditional art and trend in graphic design

Hello my friends,

We have been celebrating yesterday Traditional Art on DeviantArt which was, I think, a good thing as many pieces there are more digital and traditional ones deserve recognition too. Changing our medium offers new ideas, challenges and possibilities - all for good.

I have been noticing for many months how traditional and hand-made/drawn/painted pieces are coming back into graphic design (in a general sense). If we step back, say, 7 years ago in the early 2000, most commercial trendy and cool designs were pure computer-generated stuff. Now, people tend to think that using the computer is too easy and if I consider some of those previously successful designs which were mainly Photoshop filters and various blending modes, I can't say this isn't completely false.

So, where are we now? I think, in the most exciting time: mediums are just mediums: paper, scanner, photoshop, ink... we can print an image and paint on it, scan a drawing and digitally paint on it... that's the time for mix-media. I personally don't care about how many processes are involved, what's important is how the final image will look. I mainly work digitally but this doesn't mean that my images should look digital (think of my paintings for instance).

Now I see on artists blogs, statement such as "[...] when creative design was a more hands-on affair, pens, pencils, [...] allowed designers to express a real individuality in their craft that is not possible with a keyboard and mouse." (this ones come from the cool blog www.cpluv.com ). Well, really, I can't agree. It just seems to me that digital artists are just re-discovering traditional media and feeling excited about it - but this is just a tool!

I've always disagreed with people who think that they know and do "real" art because of the medium they've elected. Like "I shoot film, I'm a real photographer". "I'm using a Leica because all famous photographers had one".

Everything is just a medium. These are just a tools.

It is important to play with them all. Experiment. Gain experience, get ideas, but don't disrespect others' work because they don't use your technique.

You'll get respect by showing some innovative ideas or touching images. But not because you're using a specific medium.

Enjoy and have fun mixing things altogether until you end up with something great and personal.

Pandora

Pandora is the latest photostory that I've uploaded on my website. I hope that you will enjoy it. Another series will be posted soon.

New Canon cameras

You know I'm a fan of Canon - well, not to say that other brands aren't good, it's just that I find all I need in Canon's cameras.

Anyway, even if there's no replacement for my great EOS 5D, Canon has now announced, among other things, a Powershot G9 compact camera. It's one of the few ones to have full manual control and RAW image setting. It'll probably be more expensive than the A710 IS (about to be replaced by a similar A720 IS) but both are really the best tool that you can get for the moment IF you need full manual control (which is, to my mind, mandatory).

Furthermore, the middle-range EOS 40D (replacing the 30D) has a lots a small features that are very well thought of: lens-cleaning system, live view, 3" screen and new buttons and settings. It'll be a great tool for the price. The next update within 12 months will probably be to put the same settings on a new 5D model (I'm not sure that I'll upgrade, though)