We have been busy over the last few weeks printing up new portfolios! Keeping the books up to date can at times be a monumental task. And this summer we decided to do a complete revamp instead of just updating them. Last year we found a book maker whose work we really loved and ordered our first set. But doesn’t it figure that when we decided to make the big commitment and order two more sets this summer, she (the book maker) decided to have a baby and consequently closed up shop! Well, we are hoping for the best and going to have the extra sets made by her former assistant – fingers crossed!

Meantime we’ve been married to the computer and printers churning out the new pages. This digital world we live in makes so much available to us so much more instantaneously than we ever could have imagined even a few years ago! Although we have been printing our portfolios digitally for close to ten years now, the constant improvement in quality continues to astonish and thrill us! And although our local labs and service bureaus I am sure are not thrilled, the fact that 99% of what we need to do in the digital world has come in-house makes our life … well easier and harder all at the same time. The easier part is that so much is available here and now. The harder part is when anything or everything goes wrong with these wonderful machines that are supposed to only make our lives easier!

In becoming the mini-technical wizards that we must in order to accomplish all of this, I must say that one of the most important things that we have been able to get a handle on over the past few years… the thing that has made our digital life bearable and actually make sense once in a while, is color management. This was one of those things that seemed so daunting and unattainable that we just ignored it …. for too long! But with the help of Eric Magnusson from Left Dakota (Color Management Gurus, Geniuses, GODS!) we got ourselves on track and turning out wonderful prints! It has made such a difference that we can’t even imagine working in a digital world without color calibrators, ICC Profiles and the 20 different print menus we have to double-check (okay so we exaggerate a little). But it’s the little victories here and there that make it all worthwhile. Now…. if we can just make sure that printers, papers, inks, and computers don’t change in any way, shape, or form for the next 20 years, I think we’ll be set for a while!