Norman Koren contact information and news
 My e-mail address is

You can usually open your e-mail client by clicking on the above link. I try to answer all legitimate e-mails, but sometimes I get overwhelmed, particularly since I've been working on Imatest. Sometimes an e-mail falls through the cracks or gets relegated to the spam box; send it again if you think I might have lost it. I may not be able to respond promptly when I'm traveling.
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News
November 2010.  See my interview with Michael Reichmann of Luminous Landscape-com.

September 2005.  I am cannot update this site as frequently as I'd like because most of my energy is going into enhancing Imatest.

January 2005. 
I posted images from my India trip, December 2004.

September 2004. Imatest, software for testing sharpness and image quality in digital cameras and digitized film images, was launched September 4. It continues to be an all-consuming project for me.

April 2004. I posted a few images from my trip to Monument Valley/Hunt's Mesa (a workshop with Steve Kossack) and Canyonlands. I'm working on software for testing sharpness and image quality in digital cameras and digitized film images. It's not yet ready for an official announcement-- it takes a lot more work than just writing a functional program.

February 2004. I updated the calculations in Digital vs. film to reflect my experience with the EOS-10D. Digital comes off better than before. I also divided this page into two parts.

January 2004. I visited the Bay area Jan. 18-26, where I spent three days at the Electronic Imaging conference in San Jose. I visited Quang-Tuan Luong and saw his beautiful large format prints. He will be a father soon! I conducted an informal workshop at Point Lobos and Big Sur. It was great fun. I hope to do more, perhaps here in Boulder or when I visit the Bay Area again at the end of May. I'll be travelling to the Northwest-- Portland, Seattle, and beyond. Let me know if you'd like to coordinate a workshop in your area.

I created a new page, Pixels, images, & files, from material in Making fine prints... Getting started, which had once again grown too large. It covers file and image sizes and formats. I extensively revised Color management: implementation and split it into two parts. I expanded the description of image file formats in Making fine prints... Getting started

December 2003.  I added a section on Learning the craft-- a roadmap to Making fine prints: getting started. I added an excellent monitor calibration utility, QuickGamma, written by Eberhard Werle, and an Ultimate monitor test pattern. If it looks good, your monitor is fine; if it doesn't, you need to do some adjustment. Monitor calibration and gamma and Printer calibration are now on separate pages. I split them to make room for improvements in both. Let me know if you find any broken links.

November 2003.  I wrote two new pages. Tonal quality and dynamic range in digital cameras explains how to achieve ultimate tonal quality and access the hidden dynamic range from images captured with digital cameras. Papers and inks lists independent inks and papers for inkjet printers.

September 2003.  I finally added my Images 2003 gallery. I split the EOS-10D page into three parts and added material on Capture One RAW conversion software.

June 2003.  I added resolution tests to my Canon EOS-10D page and updated my Scanners page. 

April 2003. I wrote a page with my impressions of the Canon EOS-10D, which I purchased in late March. So far I like it a lot. Image quality is superb. I have a lot of equipment for sale.

March 2003.  I spent nearly two weeks traveling around southern Utah early this month. Didn't get many great photos, but I learned a lot about the area. I've added travel information to my Technique page. I attended the huge PMA show in Las Vegas and decided to buy the Canon 10D digital SLR.

February 2003.  I moved material on Light & color to a new page with more detail on HSL and HSV color representation. I added a new calibration/test chart for color printers that should be particularly valuable for evaluating  ICC profiles. When I get more results I may put them on a new page.

January 2003.  I put up a series of tutorials, Image editing with Picture Window Pro: Introduction, Making and using masks, Tinting and hand coloring B&W images, and Example: Sunset, Providence, that contain far more detail than my previous tutorials. The content will be used in my book on making fine prints, which is going very slowly. I added a page on Contrast masking with Picture Window Pro-- a powerful technique for adjusting (and taming) contrasty images.
 

January 1, 2004.  Our Chief Feline Officer, Spirit, passed away this morning. Farewell, sweet friend. Spirit had been suffering from feline diabetes, arthritis, and a variety of other ailments. He was promoted to CFO in December 2002. In his previous capacity as people controller, Spirit steered the company clear of financial scandal and grew it to the point where revenues covered web hosting and catfood-- no mean feat for a dotcom, especially since a new web hosting plan was adopted in November 2002 when monthly traffic started to exceed the previous plan's 25 GB limit. We will miss you, old friend. Our late CFO, Spirit the cat, 1999

I made a number of small additions: a new chart for testing and calibrating B&W printing workflows, a section on Depth of field in compact digital cameras, some stunning images by Paris fashion photographer Benjamin Kanarek, scanned on the Epson 2450, and information on a public domain program, ImageJ, for analyzing lens and printer tests. 

November 2002. I added a B&W workflow for the Epson 2200 and a page on Grain that compares different scanners. It also discusses software techniques for reducing grain. A new program called Neat Image does a remarkable job.

October 2002. Busy month. I updated the Digital cameras vs. film page to reflect announcements at September's Photokina. I added a new gallery of medium format images (and one 4x5), mostly B&W, taken before 1984. I visited the Tetons and Yellowstone with Michael Reichmann, Chris Sanderson (editor of  The Video Journal ), Steve Kossack and Miles Hecker. Read about it on Luminous-landscape.com. View Steve's images here. Autumn colors were spectacular for so late in the season. I've posted several images on Images 2002. A sequence of four sunrise images taken at Oxbow Bend is particularly beautiful.

September 28, 2002. I've updated my Epson 2450 flatbed scanner page to a full review. It's a great scanner for medium format and 4x5.

September 23, 2002. I've updated my Making fine prints page. It got too large, so I created new pages on printers, digital cameras and scanners. This is a big improvement in organization and content.

September 9, 2002. I got the Epson 2200. So far it's excellent. I'm updating my section on printers.

July 2002. I put up a three part series on color management. Reviews are starting to appear for the new Epson 7-color UltraChrome printers. Luminous-Landscape.com has a review of the 2200  and a number of informative articles about its use. It also has Alain Briot's summary review of the 9600. Briot also keeps a fascinating diary of his experiences with the 9600. Photo-i (UK) has put up an extensive review of the 2100.

July 8, 2002. Miles Hecker has taken my speculation relating digital image quality to Shannon information capacity and run with it. His excellent article is on Luminous-landscape.com.

Images and text copyright © 2000-2013 by Norman Koren. Norman Koren lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he worked in developing magnetic recording technology for high capacity data storage systems until 2001. Since 2003 most of his time has been devoted to the development of Imatest. He has been involved with photography since 1964.