Author Archives: Brian Lawler

About Brian Lawler

Brian Lawler is an Emeritus Professor of Graphic Communication at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and was a Guest Professor at Hochschule München from September, 2021 to September, 2022. He writes about graphic arts processes and technologies for various industry publications, and on his blog, The Blognosticator.

Bridging generations (this time it’s the Bay Bridge)

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Brian Lawler

The year 1933 must have been impressive for people living in and around San Francisco. The city is located on the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula, and in that era it was accessible by road only by driving … Continue reading →

Posted in History, People, Photography | 3 Comments

In praise of Data Rescue

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Brian Lawler

For the past twelve days I have been toting cameras around, shooting thousands of photos of musicians playing in concerts around our county. This is the time of the 42nd running of the musical bulls that we call Festival Mozaic. … Continue reading →

Posted in Mistakes you can avoid, Photography, Software | 1 Comment

Why do people (people) put numbers (numbers) in parentheses?

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Brian Lawler

(An interesting note: This has become the most-read blog I have posted. It is also the most-commented blog I have posted with 75 comments. Thousands of people have read it, and it has been the subject of searches tens of … Continue reading →

Posted in Curmudgeon, Language and grammar, Mistakes you can avoid | Tagged , , , , , , | 159 Comments

More Mysterious Forces at work: using Mac OS to repair corrupted JPEG and EPS files

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Brian Lawler

In yesterday’s blog I revealed that I can “convert” PNG files to TIFF files just by changing their suffix in the operating system. In fact no conversion is taking place; the file name is being changed, and that’s it. Somehow … Continue reading →

Posted in Photography, Photoshop techniques, Software | 35 Comments

Mysterious Forces in OSX appear to change file types (but can’t really)

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Brian Lawler

Note to my kind readers (January, 2017): The mysterious forces described below no longer seem to work. I have experimented with this in recent months, and have had no luck in repairing JPEGs using this technique. But read on anyway! … Continue reading →

Posted in Photography, Software | 2 Comments

Image Processor – photo horsepower in a nearly unknown tool

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Brian Lawler

Russell Brown, Senior Creative Director at Adobe Systems, created an application plug-in for Photoshop years ago with help from some of the programmers on the Photoshop team. It was first made available on Russell’s “off-campus” site as Russell Brown’s Image … Continue reading →

Posted in Color Management, Panoramic Photography, Photography, Photoshop techniques | 2 Comments

The first streamliner – photos from the family archive

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Brian Lawler

On March 15, 1934, my father, Russell Lawler took three frames (that still exist) of the first streamlined railroad train in U.S. history. I found the negatives of these frames recently while going through some family memorabilia. I also found … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Photography | Leave a comment

I have created a photo too large for Photoshop

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Brian Lawler

For those who have been following my work to make ultra-high-resolution panoramic photos with the GigaPan robotic camera mount, I have finally triumphed! I made a panoramic image this last Saturday with 1515 contributing images. The resulting image is 384,728 … Continue reading →

Posted in Photography, Photoshop techniques, Software | 4 Comments

The origin of the Stencil font

Posted on July 1, 2012 by Brian Lawler

We are bombarded by font designs, and seldom give any thought to their origins. I enjoy thinking about the fact that some of the most popular type designs being used today were created in the 15th and 16th centuries. These … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Typography | 2 Comments

Pushing preflight upstream

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Brian Lawler

The responsibility for preflighting a job prior to printing has been for a long time the aegis of the prepress professional. It is logical that preflight should be carried out in the prepress department as a job makes its way … Continue reading →

Posted in Color Management, Printing and Printing Processes, Software | 3 Comments