The Mac office: Embracing the nearly paperless future

I have a nice document scanner. I have great OCR and document-management software. I have a solid system for converting paper into digital documents. I hardly ever print anything. I even wrote a book on the paperless office. And yet, somehow, I still have tons of papers in my home office, and despite my best efforts, more appear all the time. What’s happening?
The old joke goes, “The paperless office has about as much of a chance as the paperless bathroom.” For the moment, let’s ignore the fact that paperless bathrooms are apparently becoming a thing. Is the paperless office really that hopeless?

The business world is in fact making slow but steady progress toward paper reduction. For example, the use of office paper decreased by 40 percent from 2000 to 2011, and it’s increasingly rare to find banks, utilities, and other services that don’t offer paperless billing and payments. Those of us who run small companies may be in an ideal position to push things further, because unlike managers in big corporations, we have greater latitude to set our own rules—and less inertia to overcome.

You may not be able to achieve a completely paperless life, but that doesn’t mean the paperless office is a myth or failure, any more than the fact that you can still drive a car makes airplanes a failure. But the biggest barrier to a paperless office may be the very word paperless. If using any paper at all, ever, means that you fail to meet the definition of paperless, maybe we’re thinking about this concept the wrong way. You may not be able to achieve a completely paperless life, but that doesn’t mean the paperless office is a myth or failure, any more than the fact that you can still drive a car makes airplanes a failure. Going paperless doesn’t have to be all or nothing to be effective.
Why do you want to go paperless, anyway?
Back in the 1970s, when the idea of the paperless office first surfaced, the care and feeding of paper was a much bigger problem than it is today. Executives recorded memos on tape and paid people to type them up, photocopy them, and circulate them by hand. Communicating with the public involved writing a lot of letters, each of which had to be sealed, stamped, mailed, opened, replied to, and so on. Filing required vast amounts of space, and finding previously filed papers often took a long time.
In short, dealing with paper was a huge drag on productivity, and a future without those annoyances was what a lot of people were hoping for. All those problems have greatly diminished, and some of them have virtually disappeared. We may still have lots of paper, but we have less paper-related pain. If your goal in maintaining a paperless office is greater productivity, you may find it more useful to focus on that, rather than on the paper itself.

If your goal in maintaining a paperless office is greater productivity, you may find it more useful to focus on that, rather than on the paper itself. For example, if you receive lots of printed documents and your main problems are finding information in them and figuring out where to file them, the scan-OCR-shred routine will serve you well. It won’t literally reduce the amount of paper you encounter, but it will address the inconveniences you struggle with.

Then there are the trees. Environmental issues, including saving forests and reducing waste, are certainly noble reasons to decrease paper usage. I applaud that instinct, and I think it’s a good reason to choose digital newspapers, magazines, and books over their printed counterparts, because those are cases in which truly vast amounts of paper can be conserved. Agonizing over whether you should print out a single two-page document isn’t worth it, however. You’ll have a much larger impact if you concentrate on the bigger offenders.
Furthermore, no matter how hard you try, the path to paperless seems to be paved with, of all things, more paper.
Consider the following true story. When I bought my iPhone 5 from Verizon earlier this year, I immediately signed up for online account access, automatic payments, and paperless billing. A few days later, I opened my mailbox to find three separate envelopes from Verizon. Inside each was a letter confirming my enrollment in one of these services designed to reduce the amount of paper I receive. That’s right: Verizon felt it necessary to send me a letter to tell me how environmentally friendly they were being by no longer sending me paper bills!

No matter how hard you try, the path to paperless seems to be paved with, of all things, more paper. I could tell you similar stories about my banks, insurance companies, and so on, all of which insist on sending me mounds of needless paper. I recognize that sometimes these companies may be bound by unavoidable legal notification requirements. I’m just saying: You might have to accept a tiny step backward for every few giant leaps forward, and that’s not a bad thing.
For me, a paperless office is more about convenience than anything else. Digital documents are easier to search, share, and back up than paper documents, and they take up essentially no space. Scanning documents, converting them to searchable PDFs, and then shredding or recycling the originals (to the extent possible) addresses those needs brilliantly.

Of course, scanning doesn’t reduce the volume of incoming paper. If there were less of it that I had to handle in the first place, I’d be happier still, and that’s something I’m working toward. I’ve already opted in to electronic statements for every service I use that offers them, I send invoices by email, and I usually “sign” simple contracts, NDAs, and other agreements by superimposing a scanned signature with PDFpenPro

The other day, however, I exchanged business cards with half a dozen other people at a table, and I immediately felt stupid for doing so—there’s an app for that! Sure, I can scan this stack of cards on my desk, but I could just as easily have snapped a photo of them with a scanning app on my iPhone or iPad such as Prizmo and handed the cards right back. The same goes for receipts, product literature, and all the other miscellaneous pieces of paper I tend to grab without thinking. I have the technology; the more significant obstacle is the need to change my habits.

I’m also trying to reduce the amount of paper I generate, but frankly, it wasn’t that much in the first place, and it’s not a particular source of discomfort. I’ll be surprised if I go through a whole ream of printer paper this year, but if I happen to use 600 sheets, I’m not going to feel guilty about it.
My office isn’t completely paperless and probably never will be. (What? Get rid of all my wonderful old books?) But I’m not going to sweat it. I’ll keep scanning until there’s no more incoming paper, and in the meantime I’ll bask in the knowledge that without tedious tasks such as filing, faxing, stamping, and mailing, I’m already living in the nearly paperless future.
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How to print photos from Aperture the easy way

Printing photos doesn’t have to be hard. With Aperture in particular, you can print excellent images with minimal effort. That’s not to say that you can’t tweak settings further to achieve the utmost quality. But for the bulk of my output, I use this easy-to-follow system and throughly enjoy what I’ve seen emerge from my Epson Stylus R2000 photo printer.

The following steps will work with current Epson photo printers and can be easily adapted to Canon models, too. The workflow is based on the improvements that these manufacturers have made to their printer software. So if you haven’t fired up your inkjet printer lately because printing with it has been too frustrating, consider giving it another shot.

When it’s time to print, you want quick access to your best stuff. That’s one of the reasons I’m a big fan of using star ratings. Peruse your highly rated images and choose one that you would consider hanging on the wall.

Choosing the image: Photos look great on my computer. But I’d like to know how this image might look on my wall. If you’re printing 13 by 19 inches as I am for this article, then I recommend that you work with a 16-megapixel image or larger. If you have 4900 pixels on the longest side of your picture, then you should be in good shape. Pictures of more than 5000 pixels on the longest side are welcome if you have them.

Before a printing session, I always check the Display Profile for my MacBook Pro’s 15-inch Retina display (launch System Preferences and choose Displays > Color). I have a few special profiles I’ve created for other purposes, but for printing I use the default Color LCD. If you’re having a problem with accurate on-screen color, you may want to try a calibration unit for your computer. Just make sure it’s compatible the type of screen you have. For my Retina display Mac, the Color LCD profile works just fine.

Display profile: I’ve had very good luck using the default Color LCD profile for my MacBook Pro’s 15-inch Retina display. Next, I go back to Aperture and enable onscreen proofing (View > Onscreen Proofing) and choose the appropriate Proofing Profile for the inkjet paper I’m using. Finally, I set the brightness for my display about two notches below full brightness. Why do I do that? Well, the MacBook Pro display is backlit and very luminescent. The print I’m about to make will be viewed with reflective light, which is much different. Dropping my screen brightness a notch or two helps me bridge the gap between backlit and reflective art.

On-screen proofing: Turning on Onscreen Proofing helps align the image I see on my Mac with the picture that comes out of the printer. Now it’s time to print!

Choose Print Image from the File menu and click the More Options button in the lower left corner. By doing so, you’ll have the tools you need to fine-tune your output. At the top of the dialog box are a handful of presets. Choose Standard for your first image.

Basic print setup: The first group of settings in the Aperture print dialog box should be familiar to anyone who has made photo prints before. In the Printer pane below the presets, choose your printer and the paper size you wish to use. For the first image, I’ll print borderless, I’m choosing 13 x 19 Sheet Feeder Borderless. The paper size depends on the kind of output the printer supports, so not every printer will have the same options. In the next pane, Layout, set the orientation and image size. You can choose the specific paper size from the pop-up menu, or go with Maximum to Fit, as I did here.

Once you have the basics in place, jump down to the Rendering pane. Here’s one of the most important changes with modern inkjet printers: You can choose Printer Managed from the Color Profile pop-up menu. In the past I had to work with ICC profiles. But the current Epson technology has made this part of the process much easier. And since I know I have a big enough file for this output (thanks to my 16-megapixel image), I can choose Auto from the Print Resolution pop-up menu.

Now click the Print button. Aperture will prepare the job and hand it off to your printer. We’re not done quite yet. The Epson will have a few more questions, so it presents its own print dialog box. The only area I really concern myself with is thr Printer Settings pop-up menu in the middle of the dialog box.

Printer settings: The Epson has a few follow up questions for me that it presets in its own dialog box. Select the type of paper that’s loaded in the printer via the Media Type pop-up, choose color, or as in my case, AccuPhoto HG, for print mode. In the Color Mode pop-up menu, I go with Epson Vivid, but you also have the option for sRGB or Adobe RGB. Generally speaking, you will also get very good results with Adobe RGB.

I recommend choosing Best Photo from the Output Resolution pop-up and turning off High Speed for the final print (however, I often use it with the first print and can’t really tell a substantial difference in quality). The click the Print button.

More than half the time, the first image that emerges from the printer is good, and I stop right there. If I do need to make a few small adjustments, however, I can using the Image Adjustments pane. The sliders here for Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, and Sharpen affect only the print job, not the original image itself.

Fine-art borders: I can fine-tune my output using Image Adjustments. Plus, if I want, I can add fine-art borders using the Margins settings. Once I find the correct adjustments, I can save these settings by clicking the gear menu at the bottom of the dialog box and selecting Duplicate Preset. Give your new preset a descriptive name so you’ll recognize it when you return.

I’ll conclude our printing exercise with a tip. One of my favorite tricks is to set extra-wide margins, such as 1.5 inches. This will float your photo in the center of the paper, giving it a classy art gallery appearance, but without your having to cut mats.

German Box Office in 2012: Strong Growth Across Nearly All Demographics (Study)

"Skyfall" was the number one film in Germany in 2012.

COLOGNE, Germany – Last year's record-breaking box office performance in Germany was even better than previously thought. A detailed analysis of 2012 released Tuesday by the German Federal Film Board showed growth across all but the youngest demographic (10-to-19), with graying audiences increasing dramatically.

Individuals ages 50-to-59 in Germany went to the movies 29 percent more often last year, while the 60-plus demo showed an 18 percent uptick. The total number of individual cinema-goers in Germany increased by 800,000 to just under 30 million, and the frequency of visits per person increased from 4.3 films per year to 4.4.

STORY: German Box Office Strong in First Quarter Thanks to 'Django Unchained', Local Comedies

The only negative was in the youngest demographic, 10-to-19, where movie-going decreased by 15 percent in 2012.

This is consistent with a long-term trend in Germany, which has seen a graying of the local cinema audience. The average age of a German moviegoer last year was 36.5, up from 34.5 in 2012, and over the past six years the strongest-growing demos have been movie fans 50 years or older (up 50 percent) and 60-plus (up 64 percent).

Twitter: @sajilpl