To my great delight and profound relief, a two year ordeal of sorts has now come to an end. I'm now able to offer all of my horse prints again and two new ones as well!
As reported in earlier posts, my computer hard drive turned up its toes two years ago without so much as a warning gasp. Since I’d been using an outdated operating system (Mac OS 9.5) it seemed like a prudent time to upgrade and have the latest version (OS X) installed on the new hard drive. That meant that almost all of my old software also needed to be upgraded, including Photoshop, which I use for working with images. I bit the bullet and ordered Adobe Creative Suite CS2 which includes Photoshop along with several other software programs for designers, artists and photographers.
I immediately ran into a big printing problem that has left me dead in the water for the past two years. It seems that the new Photoshop is far more complex than the old, and there are now many more choices of settings than there had been in the old version in order to print something - like my home made reproductions of artwork. The odd thing has been that new images taken with my digital camera print just fine, but the older images, like my reproductions and business cards, came out very dark with over saturated colors. Since I’d only been printing a few of each image at a time, it wasn’t very long before I sold out of the more popular images which ultimately decreased sales since there were fewer images to choose from.
I asked for printing advice online and got a little but never had the time, until this past week, to really crack open the Photoshop books and just try different settings. To make a long story short, I made what turned out to be one key change in a setting and was gratified to find that the old images now printed much better. After many experiments with different settings, adjustments to the image files and many test prints, I was finally able to match my old print images and have now printed some out to replenish inventory. The wind is back in my sails, and although it may be too late for Christmas sales this year, there is at least the increased possibility of future sales in the new year.
I owe it all mostly to the rush to produce a reproduction of “In My Dreams” which I talked about last time. I’ve now added it to my inventory along with the image you see above. Now offered as a limited edition reproduction, “Khatrina”, is an older oil painting that has always gotten a lot of attention on the website and in note card and mini print sales. Arabian images are always popular, and I hope that will prove true for “Khatrina” as well.
The final step to get the ship moving at clipper ship speeds was to revamp the “Prints” page on my website, which I completed last night. It now matches the new design, and all of the prints, minus a few poor sellers, are now available for purchase online once again. Perhaps in these desperate economic times, people will be tempted to spend a little for a lovely horse print to brighten their walls and their moods in place of new saddles or riding boots.
Having spent quite a bit of time reading my Photoshop books over the weekend, it turns out that my solutions weren’t necessarily the “correct” ones, but they work for now and I’m very happy with that. I can learn about calibration and working spaces and profiling later. The big thing is that I can now offer some of my most popular images for sale as reproductions again.
I call that an early Christmas present.
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