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Urban Myths: Parking Lots & Photoshop
October 22, 2007

Have you ever said something, been questioned about it and wondered "Where did that came from?". I was reminded of this - this weekend and this morning. My 16 year old has his drivers permit and is trying to master the art of rolling stop signs. Don’t ask me where he came up with this – because I am sure that I never do that :)

Anyway, he is driving this morning and we are in a Safeway grocery store parking around 5:30 AM  and preparing to park at Fitness 24/7 where we work out. The parking lot was empty because the stores were just  opening and he rolled a stop sign and asked, “Would I get a ticket for that stop”. I responded, “I don’t think so, because parking lots are private property and they don’t ticket on private property without permission.”

And then I had to think to myself, "Where did I come up with that"? Well 40 years ago (OMG - I'm old) when I was 10 years old and riding my minibike in a Pathmark parking lot on Long Island we had to get permission from the store stating we would not sue them if we crushed, got mangled or mutilated. Of course thinking about that now, it occurs to me that that was a long time ago and in different state.

This same thought process occurred to me this weekend. I have been upgrading a training session entitled “Preflighting, Editing and Repairing PDF files” to include the new features of Acrobat 8 (the new preflight repair tool is neat!). In the presentation I discuss that a good PDF file is based on a good application file (InDesign, Xpress, Word). And a good application file is based on good components (JPEG, EPS, etc).

It’s a hands on exercise, done inside of companies, and we work with all applications and discuss how to make good files. In one exercise we work with Photoshop and I talk about how making many smaller moves in Photoshop results in better looking files, then one big move. That means smaller moves when applying noise / sharpening or increasing / decreasing resolution results in smaller artifacts then those resulted from one large change.

But after thinking about ticketing in parking lots I am wondering, “Where did that come from?" I remember early on there were problems with JPEG compression in which multiple saves decreased the quality of the file. I also remember reviewing a software program for Pre Magazine that could increase resolution of files by using a batch function (this was before batching was available in Photoshop). This program made many small resolution moves and mixed between these moves noise and blurring. And last I remember talking about this with my friend and well know Photoshop trainer Taz Talley at the Atlanta Sunbelt Graphics show around the time Photoshop 4 was introduced and he agreed.

But now that  I think about it. like my parking lot memories that was another state and another time. So I don’t really know if you can get traffic tickets in parking lots or if smaller moves in Photoshop actually results in higher quality files. Are these Urban Myths or real?

Posted by Howie Fenton on October 22, 2007 | Comments (1)