We noticed today that the good folks at Jaded Pixel selected one of our clients as their ‘Shop of the Moment’.

Taste Chocolate

Taste Chocolate is a Portland, OR (local for us) company that runs high-end chocolate tastings, similar to wine tastings; and of course sells the chocolates as well. If you are in the Portland area, check it out. It’s a lot of fun and in addition to being a mouth watering experience, it’ll change the way you think of chocolate.

We had a blast with this project, it was a complete identity, from logo design, cards and promotional materials to website to press-kits. Much of the photography used throughout was ours as well, taken at live tastings. This project forced us to really think about how we can use shopify to do things that it doesn’t natively do. We’ve got tag-based product recommendations here for example, which might not seem like a big deal, but gave us a warm-fuzzy.

We were very pleased to see that one of our clients was picked as a ‘Shop of the Moment’ by Jaded Pixel today.

The Green Girls are cool people with cool, eco-friendly products, so check ‘em out folks!

We’re really proud of the site, which is a wordpress / shopify integration that we think works quite well.

We recently picked up a Lensbaby variable focus lens (ours is a 3G) and are absolutely having a blast with it.

Could we replicate the effect in Photoshop? Well, sort of, but it wouldn’t be easy or 100% right.

There is also a random element to using the lensbaby that we love. Often we don’t get the picture we thought we were getting, but what we do get is even better.

Things we love about it:
1. The pictures we take with this are like nothing else we’ve done.
2. Craig Strong (President and Co-Founder) of lensbabies is a truly nice guy, as are his crew and the dedicated lensbaby users.
3. They are locally made here in Portland, OR
4. It looks like a cross between a lunar lander and a vaccum hose.

These things definitely have a bit of a learning curve, but classes and workshops are available (I took one and had a wonderful time). If you get a chance we recommend you try one out, they’re just too fun to miss out on.

We’ve been using Adobe Lightroom (now Photoshop Lightroom) for months now, ever since we stumbled over the beta version in Adobe Labs. We loved the interface, the integration with Photoshop, the ease of use. Pretty much the only thing we didn’t love was the new dock icon. What is up with the new Adobe icons? We can see why they’d want to update the Photoshop feather and whatnot, but the whole minimalist typography thing? Could be done better. That’s all we’re saying.

When it came time for us to actually pony up the cash for the full version of Lightroom, we had a crisis of conscience. What if this wasn’t the right decision? What if we only thought Lightroom was All That? We’d been eyeing Apple’s Aperture for a while; the Quicktime videos on Apple’s site had been pretty impressive, and all our web searching had basically convinced us that we should at least give it a try. And there was a 30-day trial…what could it hurt?

As our Lightroom trial came to a close, we went ahead and downloaded Aperture. Unlike most trials, we actually had to get a trial license from Apple, but it was easy enough and we were up and running in no time. Well – not exactly no time. Aperture took quite a while to load and then grab our RAW files (even though we didn’t tell it to grab that many); we thought this was just because we were starting it for the first time, but future imports would reveal that Aperture, much like iPhoto, is a slow loader.

Aperture sports a weirdly disjointed interface that could use a little TLC from Apple’s design crew. The top of the screen shows a row of icons familiar to iPhoto users (Smart Folder, Book, Web Gallery, etc.) and several editing tools which seem to have been selected at random. Using the tools is a bit confusing, since clicking on them seems to have no effect; one needs to click the tool and then click the image to make a change. The sidebars seem both cluttered and insufficient. They’re different enough from both Lightroom and Photoshop that we are unable to find what we’re looking for. For example: how do we darken shadows? We wade through things like “Chroma Blur” and “Auto Noise Compensation” before we finally find a “Shadows” option, but the slider is already all the way over and our shadows don’t look the way we want them to. Clicking “Advanced” reveals a series of baffling options like “High Tonal Width” and “Radius.” We mess around with them a little, but soon give up in frustration. We miss Lightroom already.

Once we do get an image to look the way we want, we’d like to sync the adjustments with other pictures in the series. We’d like to, but we can’t figure out how. In Lightroom, there was a big, friendly button that said “Sync.” Where are our big, friendly buttons? Oh, Lightroom. We did not appreciate all you did for us.

The “Auto Exposure” button (on the right, under the histogram; it’s a little button shaped like a camera shutter) yields good results. No complaints there. However, our final images look sort of washed-out, and we find ourselves opening Photoshop just to tweak them. Isn’t that what Aperture is supposed to be for?

Want a breakdown? Here’s how Aperture fared in our battle for photo editing dominance:

• Interface elegance: Lightroom’s interface is intuitive and easy to understand for anyone who has experience with Photoshop. Aperture’s seems cluttered and confusing, and there’s a learning curve for new users. Winner: Lightroom.
• Automatic adjustments: This is where Aperture took the lead. Nine times out of ten, the automatic adjustment looked good, if not great. Lightroom’s automatic features are a bit more of a crapshoot. Winner: Aperture.
• Manual adjustments: the way Lightroom handles manual adjustments is identical to Photoshop, if Photoshop only handled pictures. All the sliders and graphs a digital photographer needs are right there. Aperture’s adjustment options range from too simple to too complex, with nothing in the middle. Winner: Lightroom.
• Revert to earlier version: In Aperture, the option to revert to the original is always a click away. However, in Lightroom, one can mouseover every step in the image’s history. Want to remove everything but the first levels adjustment? No problem. Plus, you can preview it in the left-hand thumbnail. Winner: Lightroom.
• Sync: Syncing in Lightroom? Easy. We couldn’t figure out how to do it in Aperture. That doesn’t mean it isn’t possible; it just means we’re impatient. Winner: Lightroom.
• View as slideshow: Now, you’d think this would be where Aperture took the lead, seeing as iPhoto’s slideshow feature kicks butt, and Photoshop’s? Not so much. Imagine our sadness when we clicked the “Slideshow” icon and then had to wait…and wait…and wait while Aperture built previews for each image. Ten minutes all told, and then the slideshow quit in the middle and we couldn’t figure out how to re-start it from the place we stopped. In Lightroom, you just click the “Slideshow” section and it’s ready to go. Winner: Lightroom.
• Save: Both programs make it easy to export images and customize file names. Winner: Tie.

We wanted to love Aperture, we really did, but there’s no denying it: Lightroom has our hearts.

CouldBe Studios (that’s us, in case you’re confused) is many things to many people, but sedentary it ain’t. We shuttle between a home office, an office-office, and several points in between. How do we do it? Here’s a list, in no particular order, of the apps, programs and sites that make it possible to run a business from anyplace we happen to be.

• Basecamp: Having a place where we can communicate with our clients and keep track of notes, tasks and milestones is definitely a good thing. For them and for us.
• Highrise: It’s new, but already we’re digging the ability to collaboratively add notes to contacts. Need to know who talked to the ISP last and what they said? It’s all there. Our inner OCD rejoices.
• Backpack: We still use this to keep more “lightweight” lists, and we’ve even been known to use the Writeboard feature to write drafts of blog posts. Yes, we know we can use Writeboards in Basecamp. We’re just used to them in Backpack. (Did we mention our inner OCD?)

(Note to 37signals: you know what would be really cool? If all these accounts could hold hands and be friends. You know, one login to rule them all? Plz and thx.)

• iChat: While we remain highly suspicious of the A in AIM, we grudgingly admit that we feel a certain amount of affection for iChat, especially for video conferencing. Originally we thought we’d use Skype for video chats, but since our love affair with Skype went sour we thought we’d give iChat AV a try. We haven’t been sorry.
• Ma.gnolia: We bookmark obsessively, but the thing that sold us on Ma.gnolia was the ease with which we can send bookmarks back and forth without having them come up in our bookmark stream. If one of us runs across a site we want to share, we can just click the little “Send Bookmark Recommendation” icon, choose a recipient (or several) from our list, and viola. Especially handy for links we don’t need to act on right away but hope to peruse at our leisure. As a company we’re always working on a million things, so it’s nice to be able to prioritize without missing out on anything.
• Box.net: Essential for file sharing, which is a thing we do a lot of. We miss the friendly little drag and drop-able interface of the previous incarnation, but still think it’s pretty spiff. The new color scheme is definitely easier on the eyes, and since one of us is desperately myopic we appreciate things like that.
• Honorable Mention: Google Reader. We were using NetNewsWire Lite for our extensive and well-documented RSS habit, but once we moved to Google Reader we never looked back. We love the fact that we can view our feeds from anywhere – including our phone. Google, we kind of love you.

And last, but certainly not least…


• BlackBerry Pearl smartphone: Our mobile line is our business line, and we figured that since we’re going to be connected all the time we might as well be really
  connected. Being able to read and respond to e-mail on the bus? So freaking cool. Also, look how much more productive we can be during our commute!

Anything you’ve found especially useful that we didn’t mention? Let us know in the comments!

Technorati Tags:
couldbe studios, productivity, mobile office, basecamp, backpack, highrise, ichat, ma.gnolia, box.net, blackberry pearl

We spend a lot of time working at home or shuttling between home and office, so when we set up the office phone we wanted to make sure it was available anywhere. After looking into several VoIP options, we decided Skype was the way to go. It had a lot going for it: we could set it up on the home computer and the work computer, so it’d be accessible from both, and when we were away we could route calls to the cell phone. And it cost way, way less than regular phone service. Way less – even when we got a SkypeIn number, which we then, giddily, handed out to all our contacts, feeling as we did that we were giving the metaphorical finger to The Man. Sure, the call quality was a little spotty (especially with our cheapie USB phone, which we thought would work with the Mac but were fantastically mistaken) but: free.

Unfortunately, free isn’t synonymous with good. The first hint of ungoodness came when we realized that the call-forwarding feature wasn’t so much forwarding calls. This was baffling, since a) it had been working just fine for months and b) we hadn’t changed anything. We verified that none of the settings had been inadvertently modified, made sure we weren’t mysteriously logged in to the service (forwarding only works when Skype is not running) but – nothing. Calls were just not being forwarded. Huh.

Then we tried taking advantage of the promotional pricing offer for unlimited calling. Half price until January 31st: what a deal! Except not so much, since our order confirmation, sent on January 20th, showed that we were charged full price. Interesting. All the pre-payment screens had showed the promo price, right up to the point where we hit “buy.” Bait-and-switch? Processing glitch? Vast conspiracy between PayPal and Skype?

We sent a support request to Skype, since it’s the only way to contact them. The request went unanswered for a week, at which point we got the following e-mail from Skype: “Unfortunately, we have been experiencing extremely high volumes and as a result we are very sorry that we have not been able to get to your request for Billing Support in as timely a manner as we would like. As many issues have been resolved already, we are hopeful that your request is among them.” Um. The e-mail went on to suggest that if our issue had not been spontaneously resolved, we should contact Skype support. Again.

Our latest indignant support request has, unsurprisingly, remained unanswered. We say unsurprisingly because the Skype forums are bursting with similar stories. Yet nowhere on the official Skype site, not even the Skype blog, is there a mention of the issue. (The closest thing we found was an unsubstantiated series of forum messages from another user – not a Skype employee – claiming that credits would be issued to everyone who overpaid.) What the hell, Skype? Is ignoring support requests a good way to run a business?

We’ve got a business to run, too, and that’s why Skype is not going to handle our phone calls anymore. We’re keeping them for messaging, but we’re no longer enthusiastically singing the praises of Skype to anyone who will listen. Being ripped off will do that. Funny thing.

Everyone knows the best way to stay organized during the holiday season is to make lists. Lots and lots of lists. (OCD? What OCD?) We’ve got lists for home, lists for work…sometimes we’ve even got lists that keep track of our lists. There’s nothing wrong with that. Why, what have you heard?

One of the most satisfying thing about lists, of course, is being able to cross off finished items, and the ultimate evolution of crossing things off is the ticky box. We admit it: we love to tick.

With that in mind, we thought we’d test out some different applications and methods for keeping track of things online – both for the company and for our personal lives (which, lets face it, could use some organization). The three we tested were: a wiki, hosted on our own server; Goplan; and Backpack.

We signed up for a bunch of hosted wikis before installing our own. Some had features we liked, but all had features we didn’t, and eventually we decided it would be a good learning experience to set one up from scratch. We went with MediaWiki, the same back-end that runs Wikipedia. The installation was much easier than we expected; just a little databasing and some configuring and viola.

The learning curve for actually using the wiki was a lot steeper; it uses a sort of proprietary code which limits its functionality, and although we’ve overridden it in places, it’s still kind of a pain to update on the fly. Also: no ticky boxes. We need our ticky boxes! We tried working without them, but it’s just not the same. The lists we put up got updated once and have sat, stagnant, for the past few months.

On the other hand, we found that for things like Christmas lists, (static) link collections and biographies, the wiki is ideal. We’ve added pages for each of us and included picture links for our families, who know our shipping address but are looking for a little inspiration, and have embedded copies of our Google calendar so that anyone who visits can see what we’re up to. We’re in the process of creating link lists to compile all of our various online identities in one place. The wiki is taking off, just in a different direction from what we first envisioned. How much fun is that?

Verdict: great for what it’s great for, but not a to-do list.

We got invited to the Goplan private beta a few months ago. Goplan is a project management service (a la Basecamp) from the folks at Webreakstuff. Although it touts itself as a perfect place to manage everything from party planning to home finances, our first impression was that it would be much more useful for keeping track of business projects than personal projects. We started tracking the behind-the-scenes stuff we needed to do in order to get the business going.

Unlike other project tracking applications, Goplan is relatively bloat-free, which is perfect for a small business like us. We love the smooth interface and the ease of updating; new projects are a snap to create. Also, they’ve just released a developer API, and we’re excited to see what this could offer in the future.

There are some bugs, however, which don’t delight us. These include weird text formatting (it claims to support Textile but doesn’t actually) and an RSS feed which isn’t customizable. The RSS issue is a big one: the feed reports every little change, which makes it functionally useless; after skipping past another “task opened” and “task closed” it’s too easy to miss an actual milestone (as we’ve done several times). These are easy to forgive in a beta. Less easy to forgive? Temperamental ticky boxes. Yes, you heard right. Sometimes the subcategory ticky boxes do not properly tick. Our hearts are still healing from the trauma.

Verdict: Promising, but more business-oriented than personal.

Which brings us to Backpack. (Full disclosure: if you sign up with Backpack using the links in this article, we will get a small amount of account credit. They’re not giving us kickbacks; it’s just an affiliate program. But we will smile like monkeys and possibly do a little dance if credit appears on our account, and isn’t that worth it?) We decided to try it out, since the bottom-tier account is free. Within five days we had upgraded to a paid account so that we could add more pages. And we needed them, since we quickly decided to use Backpack for, you know, everything. We’ve got lists of things we need for the office, lists of ideas for future posts (we actually wrote this post on Backpack’s writeboard), and lists of client-related tasks. But it’s not all business: we used Backpack to keep track of the myriad accessories needed to travel with a toddler when we took our recent vacation.

Backpack’s interface is deceptively simple; the real power is in the application’s flexibility and lack of unnecessary bells and whistles. We can create one list for each page or many; lists and items can be reordered and edited painlessly, and the ticky boxes – oh, the ticky boxes.

In addition to all that, there are writeboards, image collections, notes areas and file uploads, and pages can be shared with individual people or made public with the click of a button.

Everything works exactly as it should. It’s easy to overlook just how much the application is actually doing because it does it so elegantly.

Verdict: We heart Backpack.

Technorati Tags: backpack, basecamp, goplan, mediawiki, wiki, lists, ticky boxes

We’ve been using iPhoto to collect and organize all our photos. Back when we just had a bunch of snapshots, it worked fabulously; now that we’re routinely wrangling not just hundreds but thousands of images, iPhoto isn’t quite hacking it. To be fair, no one ever said iPhoto was the right tool for the professional photographer, but since we didn’t want to shell out the bucks for Aperture, we were sort of stuck with it.

Then, two things happened: we figured out how to disable iPhoto as the default downloader when the camera is connected, and we snagged a copy of Adobe Lightroom Beta.

First things first: turning off automatic importing in iPhoto. When we first set up the computer, we didn’t think twice about using iPhoto as our image-uploading default. Once we got the DSLR and started shooting RAW, we regretted that decision. Sure, it can handle RAW files. Sort of. But since you have to open the RAW files in Photoshop anyway if you want to take advantage of all the format has to offer, iPhoto is not the ideal place for them. Also, once an iPhoto album gets a few hundred images in it, it takes an unreasonable amount of time to load. We like instant gratification. Waiting for iPhoto to get fired up was driving us up the wall.

Turns out it’s the easiest thing in the world to disable this feature once you know what you’re doing. Just open Image Capture (in your Applications folder), choose Image Capture > Preferences and choose another default application. We chose Image Capture itself; it’s quick and snappy, and it has a preset for transferring images to the Pictures folder so we didn’t even have to set anything up. Sweet!

Next, we fired up Lightroom. The dark gray interface coupled with a truly dazzling array of sidebar widgets was a bit daunting at first, but we quickly realized that the options were similar to those in the Camera Raw import screen in Photoshop CS2 – just beefed up and arranged more intuitively. The Library screen, for example, has a “Quick Develop” section at the top right: you can make basic changes to your images right there using common settings such as white balance, exposure and cropping.

You can also continue to the Develop screen, which features all the robust image correction options in Photoshop (Curves, Color Adjustment, Lens Correction, Camera Calibration, and more). This screen also has a clever new feature: at left is a menu of presets which you can mouseover to preview on a thumbnail of your selected image. A similar feature is available for the image’s history. Want to see what that picture would have looked like without the color correction? Just mouseover that entry in the history and get an instant preview. Instant! We love it when we don’t have to wait.

After tweaking your photographs to your heart’s delight, you’ve got several options: create a slideshow, print your images, or publish them to the web. I went straight for the Web screen; we’ve been consistently disappointed with Photoshop’s web publishing features, so we wanted to see what Lightroom had to offer. This is what we came up with: click to see test album.

Everything from the background colors to the company name (you can type your name in or use your own logo) can be customized to blend seamlessly with your site, and publishing an album is quick, simple and painless. As it should be. We particularly like the ability to create a Flash album; it’s ideal for putting together a collection of images from a shoot to show to a client without worrying about resizing images for copyright purposes.

Verdict: Adobe Lightroom Beta kicks ass. Which is too bad, because now we know we’ll have to buy it when it goes out of Beta…

Technorati Tags: iphoto, adobe lightroom beta, adobe, photoshop, photography