Category Archives: Software

Software for the graphic arts or photography

Of molten lead and ChatGPT

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Brian Lawler

At the core of The Blognosticator are posts about the graphic arts, printing processes, solutions to printing processes, and related items. The blog was originally an arm of Graphic Arts Monthly magazine, who hired me in 2000 to write blogs, … Continue reading →

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Running the Landa Nanopress

Posted on June 5, 2022 by Brian Lawler

Part III [Part II] [Part I] After numerous visits to the printing plant where the Landa Nanopress is running, I have a pretty good idea of how that machine works. I am assisted by a very nice diagram on the … Continue reading →

Posted in Bookbinding, Imposition and Pagination, Printing and Printing Processes, Software, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Lining Livermore, der zweite Teil

Posted on February 27, 2022 by Brian Lawler

This is a continuation of a blog I wrote two days ago. To read the first part, click here. After I put all the letters (called “glyphs” In typography) into a master Adobe Illustrator document, I built the destination environment for the … Continue reading →

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The birth of Bauschrift

Posted on February 15, 2022 by Brian Lawler

I went on a journey last week to buy some foam-core board. En route, I saw a handsome metal sign at the Technische Universität München. In English, this translates (roughly) to: MATERIAL TESTINGOFFICE FOR CONSTRUCTIONFACULTY CHAIRLARGE SCALE CONSTRUCTION The sign … Continue reading →

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A visit to FOGRA

Posted on January 4, 2022 by Brian Lawler

A few days before Christmas I rode a subway to a regional train to another subway, then walked a bit to reach the headquarters of FOGRA, the Research Institute for Media Technologies in the town of Aschheim, just outside Munich. This for me … Continue reading →

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An analysis of the Image P3 color space

Posted on November 13, 2021 by Brian Lawler

About four years ago, Apple changed the color space of the iPhone from whatever it was (maybe sRGB?) to a new color space called Image P3. This is the color space used by flat panel TV screens. This was a … Continue reading →

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AppleScript solves my grid mask challenge in Adobe Photoshop

Posted on August 21, 2021 by Brian Lawler

I pride myself on being a competent user of Adobe Photoshop. I know how to make my photos look good by sliding sliders and pushing buttons and applying filters and adding Layer Effects and all sorts of visual things. Occasionally I need … Continue reading →

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Illustrator graphs show me how my solar system is working

Posted on January 9, 2021 by Brian Lawler

Greetings Blognosticator readers! I (sort of) apologize for my long absence from this blog. I retired from my teaching position at Cal Poly in mid-June, and have been relaxing since then by not contributing essays to this forum. Instead, I … Continue reading →

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Running the five-color
Pearl press postcard

Posted on October 21, 2019 by Brian Lawler

In 2019 I began the restoration of an 1895 Pearl press, a treadle-powered letterpress that was donated to the Cal Poly Shakespeare Press Museum. That press was a rusty machine when we took delivery of it. I took it to … Continue reading →

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Reminiscences of a prepress guy

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Brian Lawler

I am an old prepress guy. I owned one of the first PostScript service bureaus in the U.S. I was there at the beginning. It was painful, but overall it was a great business. We had been traditional typographers, and … Continue reading →

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