2 Possible Off-Topic Requests

[Mike Murphy]

Richard

Apologies for the vagueness of these questions, but my copy of Hidden Power Tools is in storage between my old apartment and my new house .

First question is about possible features in Hidden Power Tools 4. Is it possible you might include a way to allocate another printer profile with the colour management? My photo processor has told me how I could do that with CS2, but I have a number of reasons, your tools - and the knowledge I have invested in them - included, for wanting not to make the jump. I have given up trying to persuade myself that it is worth doing my own printing at home, and with the money I don't spend on an Olympus A4 dye-sub, I should be able to afford the upgrade to Elements 4 and 5, as well as the Hidden Tools.

Second, and more certainly off-topic is this. I have an hour or so of digitised 8mm film from the 50s. The original must have been in pretty poor shape, as a result of junk in the camera at the time, and possibly as a result of handling after development. Anyway, are you aware of any programmed clean up tools that would allow me to correct colour casts, remove spots, etc. - at amateur sort of prices? The film is my parents', and as an act of filial piety I would give a couple of hundred dollars to restore it before they get beyond using their computer.

Thanks in advance

Mike

[Richard_Lynch]

Do you mean you would like to embed a printer profile? I am pretty sure I describe how to do that someplace. It involves using the printer preferences and printing to a PDF. I don't believe it is in even the new book, likely because I would prefer the place the burden of conversion on the service. Your file should usually be tagged from your source, not their destination. I don't believe it is best for services to leave it up to the user. We can talk more about it, but I'll need the profile. Do they use a common profile? Why on earth won't THEY do the conversion?

I print with services all the time...CRT or LED printers run quite a lot more than I am willing to spend for the home, and I don't have any idea where I'd have the room. I would look into those as an alternative if you are currently using dye-sub.

The film project sounds like something I would enjoy doing (not that you suggested that), but depending on the length of the film it would take a long time. For editing any way that I would accept, it wouldn't be cheap between scanning (or transfer) and cleanup. At the same time, I would guess there are services that do this type of thing. I have no idea what they would charge.