Blogging for Thor: A Reversal of Fortunes!

Osage Orange print -- Golden Rain Tree leaf

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'" -- Isaac Asimov

I had a "that's funny..." moment earlier this week when I checked on an anthotype experiment that had been baking for almost two weeks. I'd checked it a few times before and been discouraged. Despite bright, sunny days (especially for winter) there seemed to be no change at all in the visible portions of the dye. No fading was visible. I presumed the exposure to be a lost cause, and pulled it on day 10.

As it happens, there had been no fading at all. Instead, there was significant darkening of the exposed dye areas. The area that had been covered by the leaf was showing the original yellow color of the dye, but the exterior areas had dulled and shifted to a dull golden hue. This is an absolutely fascinating result, because up until this point all the anthotypes that I've seen, and all my own tests, have been with natural dyes that fade upon exposure to sunlight. This dye, extracted from osage orange sawdust, is the only one that has become darker with exposure.

This raises all kinds of questions. What will happen with more sunlight during spring and summer? How will the dye respond to moisture from fresh plant samples? Does this form of anthotype have the potential to be archival, at least compared to others? If it doesn't fade under UV, will it simply stabilize, or possibly become more visible as time goes on?

I am incredibly excited by this totally unexpected result. Thanks again, Artisan Dice, you guys gave me such a great gift!

Blogging for Thor: An Acquired Affinity

Recently a local photographer posted about a new software being launched as a free beta: Affinity Photo. Supposedly this is a new, Mac-only competitor for Photoshop. I think that's great, because Adobe has not had any serious competition in years, not since they gobbled up Macromedia. Even before that, there hasn't been a serious competitor to Photoshop since the term "photoshop" became synonymous with editing a photograph digitally. Corel's Paint Shop Pro limps along, open source GIMP is pretty gimpy and Aperture didn't last long before being given up for dead by Apple.

So, I was excited to sign up for the free open beta and download a copy of Affinity Photo. There's just one problem: I can barely use it.

Don't get me wrong! The interface looks sleek, things seem to be a bit more intuitive than Photoshop and supposedly it can do all kinds of things at blinding speeds. Well, that's great... in theory. I can't get to that. Let's start off with the fact that I'm running on a mid-2010 iMac. Sheila's a great computer, but she's five years old. That's pretty toothy for a computer being used for heavy image processing. Still, she runs Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5.7 without any issues. I only experience lag during extremely heavy processing, or when loading dozens of images.

Affinity is crawling along. I'm waiting 5-20 seconds for changes I make to be applied. I gave up after an hour of fiddling around with a RAW file. I never even got past their Development Persona (that's what they call modules) because I simply couldn't deal with the lag and delays in processing. We're not even talking heavy changes. I'm trying to edit a contrast curve. Forget trying to reduce noise, that almost locked the program up entirely.

On the bright side, this appears to be a bug. At least, that's what the developers said when they replied to my Facebook post. I hope they're right. Other beta-testers are giving them good reviews, and they're taking feedback seriously. They replied to my post within hours, which is a pretty fast response. I like their videos, I like the features they claim to have put in. I'm really hoping the final product is useful, affordable and successful.

That's all for this post, Spiders. If I get Affinity Photo sorted out, I'll post a more in-depth review.