For some reason I’m in the mood to write about this. So - my top tech tools:
- Adobe Lightroom: if you’ve been to a recent workshop of mine you know that I absolutely, positively cannot imagine living without this tool. It is the be-all end-all for cataloging, organizing, and applying darkroom functions to my tens of thousands of digital photos. I have LR 2.x; I notice the 3.0 beta is now available.
- Adobe Photoshop: essential for final edits in cropping, color-correcting, resizing, and exporting images into at least a dozen different formats, not to mention messing around with (moving, resizing, etc.) image elements when I’m playing with a composition.
- Email: I can’t imagine living without a fairly powerful email tool! MS Outlook allows html-formatted emails, so I can create my Artzines in nice table arrangements with pretty fonts, pix, etc. Now that I live on a Mac, I’m limping along with Apple Mail, which (sadly) lacks the power and functionality of Outlook. Looking forward to when Apple mail isn’t so limited…
- yousendit.com: this is my tool of choice for uploading large image files to send to galleries, magazines, my licensing agent, etc.
- Web design: I do my own web design - formerly with Frontpage, now with Dreamweaver. Not for the faint of heart; if you’re not technically inclined, go to one of the providers of full web designs for artists, or of template-based websites.
- Macbook Pro: this beautiful machine goes everywhere with me - workshops, photo safaris, etc.
- External hard drives: I have 4 right now - a 500 GB portable that’s powered by USB and pretty much lives attached to my laptop; two 500-GB Gtech practically bulletproof things; and a new 1 TB drive. All my photos are backed up in at least 3 different places, hence the need for lots of drives.
- Large LCD display: my reference photos are displayed on a 27″ monitor next to my easel. (I *wish* I had the $$$$ to afford a nice big Apple Cinema display! someday…)
- And of course…my pro digital camera and lenses - my bread-and-butter field tools.
This leaves aside things like word processors, desktop publishing tools, and spreadsheets - but I figure those are ubiquitous enough that they don’t need mention.
Anyone else? chime in!
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