The Time Sink

Working on a project. Deadline involved.

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Done!

Okay, so what's been the project that's kept me up late at night for a couple of nights? Patti Digh, over at 37 Days is working on getting a book of her blog essays published. Easy enough; she's a published author several times over, but this is the first time she's worked on something totally derived from her web site. Still, easy enough: she writes very well, and her posts are very thought provoking. ...but somewhere along the line one of her readers suggested artist trading cards as something that would could be matched up to each essay that will be used (37 of them, but some strange coincidence <g>). So she brought that up to the readership, and the ATC crowd all went "Woot!" and started talking.

...and so did the publisher; and the concept morphed into maybe those being used as book art. ....and when the call went out for interested parties on that, I sent in my 'email of intent'. ...and was accepted.

...and then things changed a bit: now the publisher wanted to evaluate exactly how to use these proposed pieces as book art: perhaps in full page format rather than as a 'super cap' for the lead in paragraph to each essay? Oh, man, now we're in my format! A 2.5" x 3.5" card would be doable, but I can get away with some tricks at that size. A full page format would put me right in my target zone. ...only, which essay would I be assigned? ...and how could I interpret it in my medium? ...and while all the painters and collage people have a certain flexibility (or so I feel) in how they can let things flow, my work is often derived from the photos I take. ...and this would be a 'preplanned' thing. Oh, my...

Short version: if you'd like to see what the artists who frequent Patti's place have come up with for book illustrations, have a looksee here. ...and about this time next year, you may see some version of our works in print. ...or not; the publishing industry is somewhat fickle. Regardless, this was an excellent challenge and a way to expand my horizons a bit, and I think the quality of the work you'll find in the Flickr pool is worth a trip by to check out the various media used by a very diverse group of world spanning artists.

This ones for garret and the other phototogs out there who use Lightroom and maintain Flickr accounts or simply post to the net via their own servers: As a tangent to the project in Thursday's post, I ran across a notice from Adobe Labs wherein they mentioned opening up a Lightroom SDK. Okay, sure; I'll go look. After all, I hooked up with Lightroom after finding the public beta on the Labs, so maybe it would be worth a look to see what they're planning.

Well, what they've cooked up is an SDK for the Export section of the show. Okay, now there's something I could maybe use to learn the language they've used to program Lightroom, but hey... No, wait! They have sample code! Hmmm... Oh, my gosh: how about a sample Export function to post directly to Flickr? (no use for me, but...). ...and a direct ftp upload service. ...with resize (constraint-based and selectable)! Oh, it was time to check this out.

Hmmmm... Okay, the ftp service works. I can now process a photo in Lightroom, move it around as needed to LightZone or Elements, pop it back to Lightroom at full size and then send it to the server using my preset 'width limit' parameter (currently 700 pixels). One step in the workflow is gone, gone, gone. Actually two, as I don't have to resize in Elements any longer. ...and for my better shots, I don't even have to leave Lightroom (and as soon as they deal with the unsharp mask function to make it usable for real, for real [and maybe the noise function], I I won't have to leave Lightroom for many blog posts at all). Sweet. So the shots posted since Tuesday (inclusive) have been sent 'upstairs' via Lightroom's beta test SDK Export script.

...and since I just had to try it, I used my unused Flickr account to access the Flickr API and key through the test script from the SDK, and used that to upload that 37 Days challenge piece to my Flickr account before sending it over to the group pool. ...and it 'just worked'.

Short version: Do you need to be a programmer or a full mental geek to use the SDK to access these functions? No. Simply, "no". If you download the SDK, the script modules are fully self-contained in their own folders; all you have to do is place the folders where your Lightroom install can find them, tweak things a bit (both Adobe and Flickr have made it relatively painless), and post away. They both 'just work'. ...and the forum site already has it's first mod posted to one of the scripts from that fellow over in Kyoto who did some of the mods to 1.1.

Catch up day... Daniel is taking his SAT test, and Shelley is making up for missing Black Friday (yes, exactly, sales were off; and now you know why!). Brad's gaming and it's above freezing outside. I think it's time to gather up a few things and start on the garage. ...and work on the yard. ...and catch up on email. ...and rebuild a computer. ...and, and, and.

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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

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