TWEAK Digital

As a digital tech since 2006 for clients local, national, and international, Jeremy Wilker of TWEAK Digital provides a focused and reliable workflow both during and after the shoot. With over 20 years of print and prepress experience and extensive Photoshop ability, whatever you or your client dream can be accomplished. Jeremy has spent the past 5+ years working on enterprise-level DAM (digital asset management) systems from conceptualizing to implementation, training and support. He can help you get a grasp on the multitude of assets flowing through your business. From documentary projects to narrative to corporate and industrial videos, award-winning video by Jeremy of TWEAK Digital can help you communicate your message or vision in full high-definition glory and deliver disk, DVD or web formats as required.

TWEAK Digital: digital tech, DAM consulting & HD video.

Paul Boag wrote an article a while back entitled "The 5 hidden costs of running a CMS" over on Vitamin/Carsonified and I really thought it was a useful item to ponder over as a CMS user. Then I thought, "This totally applies to digital asset management software as well, somebody should write up the same thing for DAM." So here goes (with all due respect to Mr. Boag):

The 6 Hidden Costs of Running a DAM System

The ever burgeoning amount of digital items generated by a person or company is quickly outgrowing our ability to handle and track them. These assets (digital images, designs, layouts, training clips, music tracks, digital videos, presentations, documents...) are quickly filling up our CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, external drives and server space and we likely don't have any idea where a particular file might be, much less have any useful information attached to it. We may well be recreating assets that we have lost or don't know exist in some other division of the company. So we naturally turn to digital asset management (DAM) software and hope it will streamline and organize our work.

Besides the initial price tag, there is a lot more to consider when making a DAM investment and achieving a successful implementation:

• The cost of training
• The cost of ingestion
• The cost to quality
• The cost to functionality
• The cost of redundancy and flexibility
• The cost of commitment

Let's take a closer look at each of the six cost areas...

The holidays came a little bit early for me this year due to a shipping address mistake (it should've been a surprise from my geek-girl wife) and when I saw the box label's return address I was indeed very surprised! Thankfully she really knows me and allowed me to open my gift early so I could play with it.
What is it? The OWLE bubo, an iPhone camera rig. The OWLE bubo is a stabilizer and lens adapter, allowing you to get more stable shots and a wider angle of view than with a stock iPhone 3Gs. Since it also includes a stereo mic, the audio is much improved as well. Let's take a look!

OWLE bubo demo from Jeremy Wilker on Vimeo.

While I have no notions of this video going "viral," it sure is crazy to see how many people and sites around the world have linked up to my IgniteMPLS presentation on how to build an HD home theater without spending a lot of money. Take a peek yourself at the google results for "Jeremy Wilker HD Home Theater on the Cheap"

My new video demo reel is done and has been posted on the HD Video page and over at Vimeo as well. Hope you like it!

I finally threw caution to the wind and bought a bunch of iPhone photo apps the other day and thought others might find a review useful. The thing about the iPhone camera is that it is a low-end camera and, sometimes, not trying too hard actually makes it a hell of a lot better, you know?

Take, for example, the couple of iPhone apps that make your shots look like a vintage Polaroid photo. They look great, because they aren't trying to make your photos look like more than they are. The lo-fi image quality actually enhances the subject matter. And they're fun to make and view, too. Or maybe you really love the look of a Holga or Lomo? Easily done. [ShakeItPhoto | Polarize | CameraBag]

But what if you really do want to take better iPhone photos? Which app is the best one and offers the best overall performance? I'm not sure there is a "best one" just yet, but several apps are trying for the title. Photographer Chase Jarvis has an app (and photo-sharing site and companion book, too) called "Best Camera" that aims to be the king in this market. At $2.99 you'd hope it might be the one, and it does perform quite well what with extremely good sharing options, non-destructive filters/effects and ease of use. But I don't find myself using it all the time.

But can the best wanna-be camera take a "PerfectPhoto?" This app seems almost like a mini Photoshop on your phone and gives you quite a bit of creative control over your imaging with fairly extensive menu options (gamma, highlights, shadows, sharpen, color temp, looks, etc). Worth having in your arsenal of tools.

But what about Adobe? "Photoshop Mobile" just launched and is very fast and responsive on the iPhone and produces good quality results. I just feel it is very much a version 1.0 type of app and am waiting to see what future options might include for image editing. They've got the name recognition and great performance so far. More extensive tools would be make this a must-have for anybody, especially at the low price of free.

Finally (and yes, I know there are many others apps out there), my current mind-blowing favorite (and free!) app is called "Mill Colour" and was created by some professional colourists. The color controls and results in this little app are truly astounding and I recommend this as a "must-have" app if you care about color.

So what is my go-to tool? How do I use my iPhone camera? I find myself shooting shots, going to Mill Colour first to tweak overall color quality, then either Photoshop or PerfectPhoto for further adjustments and edits, and then either BestCamera or CameraBag for final effects or looks. It sounds like a lot, but since all these apps can load/save images from your library, you can do the edits as you find the time. Yes, it would be great to do it all within a single program, but that program hasn't been written yet.

At this point, I guess I'd recommend the BestCamera app to the casual iPhone photographer since it has a pretty nice feature set and includes super useful sharing features.

Last week I was hired to put together a fun gleeful musical video for local web development shop Clockwork to debut during the MIMA Summit. It was a short timeframe, done all in one day (including choreography rehearsals) and editing done the following day. I love these small projects where you can just have a ton of fun, come up with ideas on the spot, and enjoy the process. All singing, dancing, musical recordings, etc, was all done by real live web developers! They don't just sling code, people. You can view the results on YouTube - Interactive, The Musical and also over on Vimeo - Interactive, The Musical. Shot on Sony EX3 with Letus Elite and Canon FD prime lenses.

Apple finally published their updated manuals in PDF form for the apps in the Final Cut Studio suite (Final Cut Pro, Color, Motion, etc) and here are the links in one collection for you to download:

Final Cut Pro 7 Manual

Motion 4 Manual

Color 1.5 Manual

DVD Studio Pro 4 Manual

Compressor 3.5 Manual

Cinema Tools 4.5 Manual

Soundtrack Pro 3 Manual