1:11:46
– The final time of Lance's final time trial. He wins the stage, and caps his winning performance of the Tour de France. He seemed to by grinning, as he left the start house. Ullrich's performance was exemplary. Again, if there was no Lance, Jan would be legendary. Michael Rasmussen had a terrible day – two crashes and four bike changes. Not only did he miss out on the podium in Paris, he plummeted in the overall classification. At least he walks away with the King of the Mountain title.

:::

Almost-EZ color
Puzzling over why the first printer profile I did with EZcolor was so awful, I had the thought to print the scanning target from Photoshop, instead of printing directly from the Monaco application.

That made a big difference. Importing the scanned print-out went much more smoothly than it had when I printed the target the other way, and soft-proofing with the new profile indicated adjustments that felt more 'right' as I worked. The first results started coming out of the printer as I started typing this. The print looked pretty good when it was still wet, and better yet after it dried.

I'm a happy camper. The new profile is already substantially better than the canned Epson profile.

What happened the first time? It seems that printing directly from the application distorts the print target, causing the profile-building routine to misread the target. The first indication that something was going wrong, was when the profiler asked me to indicate where several of the crop marks on the target were. While I've had a problem with greenish prints, they've never been extreme problems. The first profile really made the raw image look obscenely green...

Now that I have more confidence in the color rendition of my screen, I can go back to learning the ins-and-outs of finessing the finer details in my prints.

While there was a nail-biting moment, the investment in EZcolor seems like another good advancement. I have to say, the documentation was very spotty. I've heard good things about their tech support, but I'm actually happier that I was able to resolve the problems on my own.

:::

T-Shirts I've Seen Recently

• [front] Boy Breaker [back] Break a boy / make a man.
• Jesus Loves Homophobic Bigots
• [back] Firemen do it in heat
• Hotter than your girlfriend
• I like your boyfriend

6500° K
I picked up Monaco EZcolor yesterday, and profiled my monitor this morning. The process was pretty painless, except for one section of the wizard-directed operation, where it seemed for a moment that the 'continue' button had disappeared. I re-read the instructions, and realized that I needed to use the brightness slider to adjust the sample before I could move forward.

The monitor definitely looks different (better) now. I'll spend some time getting used to this new look, and re-set the white point again if I'm not happy with my printing results. That's the real point of this exercise — better soft proofing in Photoshop. I made some prints yesterday, and it was clear that my adjustments were way off. I was getting some awful posterization in the shadow areas. I checked with a friend who really knows his stuff with printing, and he said 'change your profile.'

I'm not sure when Adobe Gamma stopped working, but it doesn't seem to be installed on my system any more. Just as well. It was a crude tool. EZcolor is much better. Of course, the Greytag-Macbeth stuff is even better, but it costs about quadruple the price.

My first attempt at printer profiling didn't turn out so well, though. Adjusting the colors seemed strange, there was no gamut warning, and the final print didn't look anything like what I saw on screen. It was way too magenta. I went back to the stock profile I'd downloaded from Epson. That print was too green... To be continued...

Inside and Out
I'm shooting a lot – even more than I usually do – both in the studio and in the street. The streets were sweltering yesterday, so I couldn't stay out too long. It was great to escape to an air-conditioned studio.

Both of the images below were taken yesterday. I'm happy to know how to light a white background, and I'm really starting to like the softbox a LOT. I might take back the thought I had, that it's over-used. I suppose it all depends on how it's used.

Isabel is an awesome model

David got ticketed by the police for busking in front of Virgin Megastore.
Someone tipped him with an apple.

Fitting Tribute
On the tenth anniversary of the death of Lance Armstrong teammate Fabio Cassartelli in the Tour de France, teammate George Hincapie won the stage decisively. Hincapie is the first teammate of Lance to have both the opportunity and the strength to take a stage since Lance embarked on his first Tour victory, and what a challenging stage he won!

Cassartelli died from a head injury sustained in a crash during a treacherous mountain descent. The crash was so severe, that it seems unlikely that a helmet would have saved him, but Fabio wasn't wearing one. The result was that the Tour de France management imposed helmet rules, prevailing over protests from riders, and the helmet designers went to work designing cooler, safer helmets. Today, it's rare to see racers riding the Tour without helmets.