Graphic Converter

One of my best friends is an astrologer. Three times a year she sends me an email warning me of an impending Mercury retrograde (the latest being June 16 - July 10, 2007) . In a nutshell, when mercury goes retrograde, communication, dissemination of information, and transportation goes haywire. Quite literally wires get crossed, phones don’t work, computers tend to be difficult, buses are late, cars break down. You get the picture.

Anecdotally, I can attest to some miscommunication issues during these periods but for the most part I am as much of a cynic as I am misanthropic so I rarely pay heed. However, the weekend before July 4th was the beginning of a string of unrelated incidents that threatened to trash my status quo and make me a believer. Possibly.

First I got the flu. It was 24 hours of serial vomiting leading to brutal exhaustion that lasted a couple of days.

After a couple of days of lying around like a corpse, I felt well enough to feel crappy. Needing something, anything, to make me feel better, I set off to the pharmacy at half speed. As I dragged myself outside towards my car, I twisted my ankle. Since I was all ready feeling like crap, I didn’t realize until much later how badly I had mangled it. Imagine Fred Flintstone’s ankle- big, square undefined blob- the swelling crushing the nerves leading to my toes- causing a feeling of tingling AND numbness. X-rays confirmed that the tendons that hold the joint together were stretched beyond any naturally imposed limits.

So now I am in worse shape than I was when I left to go the pharmacy cause I felt better. More bed rest. More boredom. 4 days.

Friday, finally. Writers forward me their articles, which I routinely process on Fridays. I have it all automated and such. I am figuring a couple of hours and back to bed. So I fire up my Mac only to discover that the Mac OS X 10.4.10 Update for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac has knocked out my Plantronics headset; iListen was offline (eww, typing); I couldn’t seem to keep my scanner online for more than 2 scans without having to reboot; and the mouse was acting wiggy again.

I’ve told the story of the mouse . Re setting the PRAM did nothing but waste my time. Since other USB entities were having identity problems I decided that the most prudent course of actions was to downgrade to Mac OS 10.4.9.

But first- back up ! 3 hours later, Super Duper had done its part of this Mac Os X regression sequence.

Then, using the original install disks that came with my new Imac, I performed an “Archive and Install”. Finally, I downloaded the Mac OS X 10.4.9 combo updater .

I finally finish the backwards install late Friday afternoon when I realized that, by installing CS3, I had essentially nulled my workflow. Many of the repetitive tasks associated with posting a webpage had, until now, been handled by an ImageReady Batch Droplet set to run in the background while I edited files in other programs. These "droplets" were the only thing I liked about ImageReady but they were valuable enough to me that I made them the central component in every job I have ever worked.

This technique was especially helpful when I worked for the tyrant Location Manager know-it-all. These droplets made it possible to process hundreds of pictures in a hurry without having to explain how to resize a picture or adjust the white balance. The location scouts could seamlessly and consistently process the images in preparation for posting them on the web. Really important when processing 200 location pictures for a Commercial Producer in another state who needs them by his pre-pro meeting in 3 hours.

Yep. I know. I should have allotted enough time to re adjust my workflow when I upgraded my software. But I got the flu. Then mangled my ankle. AND mangled my Mac.

With deadlines looming on the horizon, I needed to turn to something familiar that could batch-process images for this site.

I rediscovered my old college friend GraphicConverter.

If you have never used GraphicConverter , from Lemke Software (http://www.lemkesoft.com/), you have missed out on some robust shareware. I always keep a copy around because if all else fails, GC can open it. Available in 12 languages, it can import over 200 image formats, supports twain interface, imports directly from cameras in RAW format, allows batch conversions in many many combinations, and supports Applescript.

All that for $30. The biggest plus for occasional users is the test drive. You can use this shareware for as long as you want without obligation before buying a license. The only restrictions are a delay in launch and the batch function is disabled.

Believe me, I was more than relieved when Monday July 10th slipped by without incident.