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Tips To Get The Most Out Of Reid Reviews Our privacy policy can be found here. 1. Important Notice: Apple's Safari 12 (or newer) browsers, as of this writing, do not work well with our three-panel viewers. Older versions of Safari work fine. We are hopeful that Apple will improve Safari in a future update but for now we recommend the following. For reading the site using any version of Safari or any other browser, on any device, we recommend using our single panel high resolution viewer. It provides a very clean and simple reading experience. If using that viewer, remember that clicking the "Reid Reviews" header on any page will bring you to the viewer's home page (with article links and search tool). If one prefers to use our three-panel viewer when reading on a Macintosh, we recommend using Chrome or Firefox. In iOS, as I understand it, Safari is the core browser underlying any others. So, for example, Firefox in iOS is really a shell running over a Safari core. As such, any iOs device using Safari 12 (or newer) browsers, as of this writing, will have problems with the three-panel viewer no matter which nominal browser is being used. 2. The articles on this site are paginated. To make best use of that design, be sure to try the right/left arrow keys on your keyboard (or side-swipes on your touch screen) to change pages. With a little practice it gets pretty speedy. Remember to click on the article itself first to activate your keyboard's arrow key controls. When I'm reading RR on an iOS device, I find it very fluid to be able swipe up and down to scroll and swipe side to side to change pages. But this is a new functionality that most web sites have not yet added so it will be unfamiliar to many people. Like the iPad or iPhone itself, it takes a little practice to get used to. If you end up having trouble with the side swipe (accidentally changing pages when you meant to scroll) you have the option to disable that feature on our mobile viewers. I recommend practicing a bit, instead, to get used to the feature because it makes navigating an article faster and easier than using the page change links at the bottom. But it's up to you. 3. JPEGs on Reid Reviews are very lightly compressed at level 9. Though some may claim otherwise, JPEG compression (used for the web or whatever purpose) does visibly affect file quality. Given their file size, it may take a moment for RR pictures to load (especially if one is is using a Retina/High Res. device with one of our standard viewers). If you're reading on a mobile device and having trouble swiping to scroll vertically or side to side, slow down for a moment and let the pictures load in. They are larger (in file size) than is common on the web and they need a moment to download. Rushing the page navigation can mean a frustrating reading experience for you. If needed, with a lower bandwidth connection, switch to the "lower bandwidth" viewer. 4. If you pay for data usage (ie. it's not unlimited) or if you want the fastest RR experience, and you're using a Retina/High. Res. device, go with the "Lower Bandwidth" mobile browser. It only sends out the standard size pictures. That's faster and, of course, uses less bandwidth. 5. The welcome text that appears in the viewers is really worth reading. 6. By design, your article viewer preference is only stored for a current viewing session. We know that people may use different viewers on different devices, in different situations (good bandwidth vs. bad, etc.) and sometimes even for different articles. The older pictures on the site were all visually adjusted to be used with an RGB 75,75,75 background. The newest pictures are adjusted for a background color of RGB 169, 169,169 (more about this below). Some readers may prefer the dark grey viewers for the older articles (in which the pictures also often have dark grey surrounds). Whatever you like you can choose when you first log in. It takes all of a second to click on one of the thumbnails for your viewer of choice. 7. All of the pictures on Reid Reviews use the the widely supported sRGB IEC61966-2.1 ICC profile. This is an SRG series 2 profile, of course, so it should be supported on most mainstream browsers (unlike sRGB series 4). Nonetheless, I see differences in the JPEG renderings of different browsers. I have not yet checked this on Windows browsers but on the Mac I find that Safari does the best job of rendering JPEGs as I intended them to be seen. 8. The color and brightness of a picture's surroundings, of course, affect the way we perceive it. RR's light grey viewers use a background of RGB 248,248, 248 while the dark grey viewers use a background of RGB 75,75,75 (just like the Flash site). As of mid-February, I am preparing pictures to be viewed at RGB 169,169, 169 which offers the median brightness between those two viewer options. This means that my conversions from RAW are being done with Lightroom set to medium grey (RGB 145, 145, 145 -- which is the closest I can get to my target grey) and the picture reviewing in PhotoMechanic is done using an RGB 169,169, 169 background. 9. Readers viewing the site over satellite Internet connections that use "advanced caching"/"web acceleration" (including connections available on some commercial flights) will need to disable that feature when reading (as one often has to do when viewing other secure sites, such as some used for banking, etc.) That satellite connection feature, designed to hide the high lag times inherent in a satellite connection, tries to download content from the site for local use and that process automatically triggers security features on Reid Reviews. This is a well known problem with satellite Internet, of course and one workaround -- used for Hughes.net for example -- can be found here. Disabling the feature for other satellite services may involve a similar process. Contact your satellite ISP if you need help disabling the feature. I sympathize with those who must use satellite for Internet. Living in a rural area, I once had to do the same and I was very glad to switch once alternatives finally became available. On a commercial plane that relies on satellite for Internet, we recommend not trying to read RR. Enjoy the site when you're back to a normal Internet connection. 10. Using the site requires that the reader digitally sign a "terms of use" agreement which we take seriously. It's not intended as "small print". "From its start in 2005 Reid Reviews has never accepted advertising and has always been supported entirely by its readers. Working that way means that the site content must be available only to people who are accessing it legitimately with a paid subscription. Therefore, the site does not allow pictures or text to be copied, saved, downloaded, printed, etc. without the express permission of the site owner." 11. You're very welcome to buy a Reid Reviews subscription as a gift for another photographer. To do this: A. Fill in a new subscription form online using the gift recipient's name and the buyer's e-mail address. We can later change that e-mail address after the gift is given. B. E-mail us so that we can activate the new sub. manually (since the new subscriber name and the payment name won't match). We will manually set the expiration date for one year after whatever start date the buyer wants to set. Log in here. |