It starts with the way an 8 bit file is recorded in your camera.

Here’s a weird egg carton with 8 slots, each one for holding an egg. Keep this in mind, because we are going to imagine all the possible combinations of those 8 eggs.

Now, the number of ways you can combine 8 eggs into 8 slots is 256. For example, the photo shows 0x0xxxxx or one egg in the first opening and one egg in the third. If you use all 8 possible eggs, there are 256 possible combinations. 

The black line divides the carton into the first 4 slots and the second 4 slots.

If we consider the first four slots only, then there are a total of 16 possible combinations of eggs in those 4 positions.

Let’s switch from eggs to shades of tone from black to white – 

If we overlay the B&W tone ramp on that, we see that the first four, which are 2 ^ 4 or 16, and the remaining slots (2^5 through 2^8) bring the total up to 256 possible combinations.

HERE is where the problem can be seen with 8-bit jpg file: of the entire range from black to white, the first half (the blacks) can have only 16 shades represented, while the other half, the whites, can range from 32 to 256, or a total of 240 more shades.

And here is exactly what that looks like in the real world, with a real image:

In case the 8-bit image on the right is too small, here’s a closer look –

The dark tones are limited to 4 slots, and thus to a total of 16 shades. There is no way to “smooth that out.” 16 is 16.

And that WILL show up in a print.

When you use a 16-bit image, there are 8 slots for the darks instead of 4, and so there are a total of 256 possible tones, which is why the 16-bit image not only looks better but has more room for editing without showing the artifacts of an 8 bit file.

(No, converting an 8-bit to a 16-bit will not “fix” it because the conversion does not magically grow all the missing tones; it just spreads  out the existing tones.)

UPSHOT?  If you want good looking images; if you want fully editable files; if you want to make good prints, then shoot so  that your camera delivers better than jpegs. Generally that means shoot ‘raw’ files. Raw, Tiff, DNG.

Don’t feel bad about wrapping your head around this; a lot of folks, myself included, found it difficult…

HTH

(CAVEAT: the above is not exactly nor technically correct, or even complete, but it comes very close. This is a “get the gist of it” explanation, and leaves out gamma curve adjustment to the sRGB among other things.) The actual photo image showing what happens is, in fact, an actual jpg image file.)

To do the this you need an equalizer (EQ) in the sonic path.

Here’s what I did:

1) Took the hearing test on my iphone and ear buds.

2) Took a screenshot of the results.

3) copied down this data exactly: the name and model of your DAC, your amp, and your headphones.

4) Visit ChapGTP on the internet and provide all the information above, and drag-n-drop your screenshot on the the query.

5) Tell ChatGPT exactly what this is and that you want it to provide you the exact settings for your EQ, to get your hearing back.

It will tell you, and all you need to do is set your EQ to its new settings.

Worked like a champ for me. I hope it does for you too!

HTH

It’s a compact 60-page field guide for photographers who know the feeling of standing there with a camera, good light, and every reason to make a photograph, yet nothing seems to come alive.

This is not a book about gear, settings, travel, the ‘rule-of-thirds’ or other usual compositional formulas. It’s about learning to see more deeply by using the formal elements of fine art, including line, shape, space, rhythm, balance, texture, value, unity, and more, as practical tools in the field.

The book grew out of nearly 70 years of photography, teaching, and printmaking, and it’s written especially for serious photographers, artists, students, and thoughtful lovers of photography who want to expand their photographic vision.

The central idea is simple: when nothing clicks, ask a different question.

Available now on Amazon:

You can watch it here: https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/video/SniTwdAuK0KOO9bee2CSCWUl2SkTtiy4/

The episode is “It’s a Good Life” from The Twilight Zone, Season 3, Episode 8.

Uncanny.

As a fine art photographer and printer, I started writing a few books on those subjects. I decided to post a chapter from “Listening to Photographs” entitled “How Art Speaks” and you will find it online, here:

https://valleau.art/books/listening/index.html

The chapter explains the human nature and thus the hidden structure beneath almost all the fine arts. I spent decades believing the formal elements belonged mainly to painting and photography. Then I finally realized that identical structural forces existed in music, poetry, dance, architecture, theater, sculpture, architecture, drawing and film as well. This is why art works. 

If that sort of thing interests you, give it a look.

Tracy

AI will not destroy humanity – our faith in it is what will destroy us.

Computer technology is amazing: it can do trillions of simple calculations in a second. But speed is not wisdom. Computer and technology do only dumb, blind, simple calculations. Being amazed by this is just like watching a magician – there is no such thing as magic.

Computer “knowledge” is not a real thing either… it’s just speed. But we humans have put our faith in computers. AI is an amazing technology… but it’s still just a computer. About 50% of what is says in a general response is wrong (HLE.) It can only get 80% of coding tests correct – 20% is wrong (SWE). Generalized reasoning (ARC-AGI-2) ranges from 0% to 80% correct (and thus from 20% to 100% wrong.)

Over the past 20-30 years we, as a society and culture, have come to believe that there is a technological solution to everything. We are just applying mathematical formula to every question we ask. That’s what computers, including AI, do after all.

That trust is misplaced. We should instead be thinking “here’s the AI advice: it’s somewhere between 20% and 50% incorrect, so we need to add in our own human experience and judgement to get the answer that will best serve our needs.

As an example, look at how AI is being used right now: the attack on Iran is pretty much run by AI. The accuracy of the strikes has been very impressive. But some times, the 20% “errors” creep in and we bomb a school full of children. That’s us putting all our faith in AI, instead of modifying it with human experience and thought.

And as a further example, AI flatly failed our faith in it when Iran started bombing its neighbors and closed the Strait of Hormuz. A simple application of the human condition could have forseen both. AI did not.

AI will not destroy humanity – our blind faith in it is what will destroy us.

Artificial General Intelligence will never happen with computers – all you can get out of massive computing is a massive computer.

AGI is simply magical thinking, used to raise money. That’s why “the bubble will burst.”

Computers, regardless of size, will never be able to experience reality as humans do. They cannot feel emotion nor experience aesthetics, or ultimately compassion…and those change human thinking, reasoning and behavior in irreducible ways.

The tool will never replace the carpenter, nor will the brush replace the artist.

When I look at the Mona Lisa, or a crying baby, or listen to music, my emotional response, though it may be similar to millions of others, is uniquely my own, simply because all my previous experiences are uniquely my own.

Substituting chaos theory for emotion does not cover it. Not even quantum computing can get around the simple fact that space and time constrain unique experience. No computer-in-a-box, existing as we each do, at one time and one place, and regardless of how it calculates, can have achieve more than that.

AI will not destroy humanity. Relying on it as if vast knowledge alone were somehow wisdom, is what will destroy us.

I hope we can wake up.

Tracy Valleau

Welcome back!

Here’s yet another swing at the Presets issue by Don Quixote. Next year, I’ll get a life (maybe…)

This is a followup to my first posting, which has all the technical details,  here at https://valleau.art/blog/printer-presets-no-longer-working-right/

My presets have (knock on windmills) been OK for a few weeks now.  The work for this post was done on a Mac Studio M2, running Tahoe 26.1 on Dec 9, 2025.

Let’s face it: Apple’s implementation of the “split presets” (print jobs and custom jobs) back in Ventura was “half-baked” at best, and has caused a few years of pain now, at least for some users. Unfortunately, the thing is still half-baked, and the bugs and poor design remain into Tahoe. What I have here is therefore not a fix, but a work-around, that will (at least in my own experience) allow you to create and use printer presets without corruption. It takes some setup, and a full acceptance of Print/Custom, along with a caveat or two. 

Here’s the gist of it: Apple completely controls the printing path and the saving of presets.  That is done from an Xcode library that is supplied to developers. That library has embedded errors, and cannot be fixed by anyone but Apple. In other words, the Apple software is broken. A lot of the things that used to work no longer work and give unexpected results. However, there is a safe path through this minefield. That’s what this post shows: the path of least failure. Deviate at your own risk. (If you want to see how to make it break, scroll down to  MAKING A NEW PRESET / Notes / 3,    below.)

(I should note that everything here is based solely on my own individual experience. If something is wrong, there’s no one to blame but me.)

But at least presets are viable again.

Good Luck!

Tracy

—————————

What I suggest and did:

First: why not nuke and pave – reset the entire printing system? Well, that completely removes ALL your printers and you have to start over from scratch. I personally have 3 different label printers; three different full color printers and three Piezography B&W printers. Also a laser printer and a multifunction.

Starting from scratch (especially with the 3 quadtone Rip printers) would be a massive effort, reinstalling 9 different printers, and without any guarantee that all that time spent would actually fix anything.

So I opted to fix only the printer(s) where the presets kerfuffle actually shows up.

—

Overview:

1) reset all the default printer settings using CUPS. 

2) delete current settings

3) create each and every new Print Job preset begining with the Default Settings and NOT with an existing preset. 

4) if you alter a preset and want to save it for future use, you MUST use a CUSTOM preset.

Details:

Here’s what has worked for me:

FIRST:
If you have a load of presets for your printer, take a look at them, make screenshots or otherwise record them because you’re going to remake them all over again.

STEP ONE:

Visit ~/library/preferences/
and find “com.apple.print.custompresets.forprinter.[name].plist” (where [name] is your printer.

(Optional, but wise) Save those current presets by zipping up that plist, and moving it somewhere else.

Trash the plist itself.

STEP TWO:

CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) is here: in your browser at http://localhost:631. The login is your own login to your mac, name & password. If you are asked to activate the web interface, launch the Terminal app, and paste in  this phrase,  “cupsctl WebInterface=yes” and hit the enter key.  I suggest you just copy/paste the phrase without the quote marks.

Select “printers” from the meu bar and from the list click on yours. From the resulting Administration menu, choose “set default options”.

Here’s your chance to set your most commonly used settings. I suggest you do that. The Default Settings will become the basis of all your subsequent presets, so you can save yourself time by having it default to your most commonly used preset options. This will leave you with less to do when you create a new one. Note that the list has about 60 options  most of which you will not need, and is several screens long, so be sure to go all the way through it, because the save/update button “set default options” is at the very bottom.

I suggest that you do NOT leave the main ones, such as paper, blank. Put in something that you use a lot and will help you quickly see that you, in fact, selected the default preset.

Once you have saved your new default settings, you can exit. (Before you leave, it wouldn’t hurt to do a similar ‘refresh’ for each of the printers listed.)

(Why do this? It’s possible that after years of use, and various iterations, the saved setup may have become corrupted for any number of reasons. Can I swear this CUPS rewrite is really necessary? Nope. But as a retired programmer (“been there, done that”) I can say that it’s quite possible. Either way, it certainly won’t hurt to have fresh, clean files behind the scenes. Upshot: just do it. It’s only a one-time thing.)

STEP THREE:

Reboot your computer. Load your printing software and check to make sure all the previous presets are gone, and you have only “Default Settings” at the top of the presets popup menu. If you still have presets, you trashed the wrong plist. Put it back and find the right one.

When you see an empty presets list you can empty the trash. 

MAKING A NEW PRESET

Notes:

1) it was necessary for my printers to be turned ON for this process. With my 3880 QuadTone RIP printer, if it was off, the setting did not “stick’.

2) Further: I made the presets by accessing “Page Setup: Paper & Print settings…” (above item #2, in the image above) and NOT by hitting “Print” to bring it up.

3) Finally, I always use “OK” and never the “Cancel” button inside the Print window – specifically within the “printer options” section of that print dialog. “Printer options” offers color matching, printer settings, roll paper settings, advanced paper control, and HDD settings. Each one of these brings up a set of choices that are either confirmed with the “OK” button or (supposedly) unchanged using the “Cancel” button. You know: the very things you want a preset for in the first place! (This is entirely internal to Apple, and NOT handled by any application. It is broken. The “Cancel” button will “magically” alter your presets! DO NOT SELECT “CANCEL.” If  you want to cancel a change you made, you need to  accept the alteration anyway, by hitting the “OK” button, and then go back in again and change the setting back to what you want. Again: “Cancel” will corrupt your settings.

4) Pay attention. Always check that your desired presets are correct before choosing to save your preset. You can be pretty sure that if you accidentally hit the “Cancel” button to back out, things will NOT be OK!

FROM NOW ON, you will use that systerm Default Settings preset as your starting point for all new PRINT JOB presets. This method creates a pristine new PRINT JOB preset each time, based on the Default Settings  you created in CUPS for your printer.

I’ll say it again because it’s mandatory: you will use that systerm Default Settings preset as your starting point for all new PRINT JOB presets. 

To make this easy, you should set up your printer to always return to the DEFAULT preset, and NOT to “last used”.

Why use PRINT JOBS? Because those are the base from which you make your CUSTOM JOBS.

Let’s say you have 3 papers: Velvet Fine Art (VFA), RAG Photographique (RP) and Hot Press Natural (HPN). You would select the Default Settings preset and from there set up a preset with your chosen ink, bit-depth, print speed, DPI and so on for (let’s say) VFA. Next save it as a PRINT JOB named “VFA” for just the printer involved.

Now go back and load up “Default Settings” again. Make the same changes for RP, and again save it as a PRINT JOB, named (say) “RP”.

For the third paper, go back and yet again load up “Default Settings” and create a new PRINT JOB named “HPN.”

Now you have three print jobs showing in your main presets list for your chosen printer.

Since the whole point of presets is your convenience, so lets make two variations of (say) the VFA paper: one for quick sanity-check prints, and one for the final print that will be hanging in MOMA.

Load up the VFA print job you just created. Change it so that it’s 1440 and bidirectional. Go back to the presets menu and choose “save current settings as preset…” (just like you did above to make the PRINT Jobs) but this time choose to save it as a CUSTOM JOB. Make sure the name is clear to you, such as “VFA Fast.”  (I’d also choose to make it for the given printer, instead of “all printers”. YMMV.)

Go back and reload the VFA PRINT JOB again, and alter it for 2880 and unidirectional. Save that as a CUSTOM JOB similarly, but name it “VFA Slow”.

You now have three presets for your printer when using VFA paper, one in the main menu (the JOB preset) and two in the “presets/presets/custom” sub menu.

TO USE THESE:

Say you want a speedy test print, from the popup menu “presets/presets/custom” and choose your “VFA fast”. (There is a “gotcha” here however. It iis physically possible for you to select one PRINT job and also use a CUSTOM job from another paper. THIS IS ALWAY A MISTAKE! Your printer presets must always start out as the system DEFAULT. ONLY by starting in that state will you be able to make a single selection. You may choose one of the JOB presets, as in the past, OR you choose one of the CUSTOM (from presets/presets/custom) which will ALSO load the proper PRINT JOB from which it was derived.)

Side note:

Before Apple split presets into PRINT JOBS and CUSTOM presets, we would make new presets by simply changing an existing one, and save it with a new name. It’s not that simple any more. 
If you want to make a variation of an existing print preset,  load up whatever you want to use as the base (say Velvet Fine Art) and make your changes, but then (as just explained) you >>MUST<< save that as a CUSTOM Preset, NOT a PRINT JOB preset! (My experience with taking an existing PRINT JOB preset, and creating a variation of it, and then saving that out as a PRINT JOB again is -wrong-, and leads to corruption. It appears that the Apple OS -knows- it’s a variation (aka CUSTOM) and saves different data, which when mistakenly saving as a PRINT Job instead, may result in a corrupted preset. See previous post, linked at the start of this post.)

My presets are generally on a per-paper basis, with perhaps a set of different paper sizes (VFA 8×10; VFA 13×19 etc) or print density/passes (1440 bidirectional vs 2880 unidirectional) or roll vs sheet, etc. Those variations would be saved as a CUSTOM Preset.

My presets also apply specifically to one printer. My label printers have no use for fine-art printer presets, and I don’t want to wade through them when they don’t apply.

WHERE ARE MY NEW PRESETS?
If you are using CUSTOM Presets, you must remember that they ARE NOT LISTED directly in the presets popup list. That list is for PRINT JOBS. If you have CUSTOM presets, they will be listed in the -submenu- “PRESETS” in the main presets popup, above the print jobs (aka presets/presets/custom.)

Here’s the SUMMARY

1) visit CUPS and make a new Default Settings for your printer.

2) visit library preferences and delete the old presets.plist

3) reboot

4) use “Default Settings” to create individual PRINT JOBS for each paper, and for your specific printer.

6) using that PRINT JOB create variations and save each as a CUSTOM JOB.

Repeat steps 4 and 5 to make new presets.

Note:  a PRINT job should never be saved on top of a previous one, with an eye to replacing it. That worked fine for years (decades?) but not so much anymore. Now you need to make a new one from your Default Settings.

And… when reviewing settings during use, click the OK button to dismiss the dialog box. Do not click “Cancel” as it may not be safe to do so. (Myself and others have experienced a “cancel” click causing unexpected results.)

________________________________________________________________________

One Last Thing:

How did Apple screw this up?  I have a hypothesis, and it’s only and no more than that  –  my best guess.

The basic mistake was to allow a what should have been a CUSTOM JOB to be saved as a PRINT JOB. That is, a variation on an existing PRINT JOB >>needs<< to be saved as a CUSTOM JOB. It turns out that the OS knows when you’re “subsetting” a PRINT JOB.  Knowing that, they should not offer the ‘save as Print Job’ button if it’s really a subset of the main job that you are saving. That may, in the current state of things, yeild a corrupted print job, with cascadingly serious results.

At least that’s what it looks like to me as of now… but I’ve been wrong before.  (in 1957, I think)  

This has worked for me, and I hope it will do the same for you.

Finally, my thanks for Joseph Holmes and Roy Harrington for their interest, encouragement, advice and unflagging patience & courtesy. We continue to work on it to this day.

The “Tic-Tac” UAP (Unidentified Arial Phenomena)  is a UFO famously recorded by US Navy airmen, and the subject of a recent full scale investigation by the US Congress. Lots of video, lots of hand wringing, lots of speeculation  that it’s aliens violating the laws of physics.  (Just so you won’t think I’ve joined the tinfoil-hat crowd, here’s the gist of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos.)

The only way this works for me is if the Tic-Tac itself is a hologram.

As a massless hologram it could easily exhibit all the observed traits. (Amazing speed & impossible direction change are easy with lasers.) Probably generated by black ops satellites (or nearby ships). Some types of radar can interact with holograms, ie HSR.

Probably a government project. Certainly not alien. (Would aliens buzz our military, or is it more likely our own military running a test?)

I suspect this project began decades ago, with satellite lasers being tested in agricultural areas of the UK. (The so-called “crop circles”.)

The reason it’s “black” is because they must have figured out how to keep the divergence (width) extremely tight – tighter than the genral public knows. That is, when we shoot a laser at the moon, by the time it get there, the “dot of light” is extremely faint, as it’s about 120 miles wide. But if the point of origin is measured in feet instead of hundreds of thousands of miles, I’d imagine you could generate an unfocused blob, or simple geometric shape. 

As far as public knowledge goes, there are all kinds of technical and theoretical issues with doing this, but again, that’s why it’s “black.”

Additionally, notice that we have no evidence that there is any physical interaction going on. One of these “ojects” sweeps at thousands of miles an hour just feet above the surface of the ocean, at there is no wake nor disturbance of the water. The ONLY way the speed; the changes of direction; the lack of physical interaction can be photographed is if the object is massless – made of light.

No magic; no little green men; no violation of the laws of physics – just a clever black op. It’s the only explanation that actually makes sense, at least to me.

Just my two cents. 

(I have disabled comments on this because of the tin-hat crowd. I’m not interested in discussing it; merely wanted to get it out there.)