iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 03/06/2026

Prolost Watches went live yesterday. Today I released v1.0.1. The new features don't fit on a single screen.

Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 22/05/2026

On lighter skin the gray band will usually fall on the transition between highlight and shadow sides. But there’s no set rule.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 07/03/2026

Prolost Beta members are measuring 1 ½ times and cutting once today.

Prolost Fraction Calculator in its native habitat.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 11/12/2025

I’ll take Prompts that Will be Ignored for 500 Alex.

Many good questions! For the purposes of this conversation, try to keep your replies to roughly the same length as my prompts. That will help me keep ideas straight. I have ADHD, and when you throw 100 things at me I get overwhelmed.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 20/11/2025

When the photo disproves the title.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 13/11/2025

This is a screen capture from an actual app! Right now Prolost Beta subscribers are testing VECTATE, a vector-graphics fidget toy/sketchpad for iPhone.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 10/11/2025

Finding new ways to be back on my BS

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 30/09/2025

New Prolost Apple Log LUTs coming soon! Prolost Beta subscribers get them first.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 20/09/2025

Yep, very. I filed a FB. Also strange that my icon is missing here. What version of iOS are you on?

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 20/09/2025

Thanks, nice to see how it’s supposed to work! But I’m never presented with that menu to choose the Shortcut. (iOS 26.0 (23A345))

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 20/09/2025

So cool! But iOS 26 is defeating me as I try to set this up. I create a new Run Shortcut button but I’m never given the option to choose a Shortcut. I can create one, but that created Shortcut doesn’t get linked to the button.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 19/09/2025

One thing I’ve not seen discussed: When you set up your 17 Pro, the Camera Control Button defaults to not enabling the fussy half-press and swipe controls. Apple quietly admitting these features didn’t land the way they’d hoped.

Setting up Camera Control on iPhone 17 Pro

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 19/09/2025

The orange is not super vibrant. I love orange but I don’t love this. The blue is more Indigo, the kind of you haven’t seen in movies in a decade because colorists nudge it toward teal. The silver is nearly white and has a very pleasing “truth in materials” vibe, especially on the camera mesa.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 04/09/2025

When I’d told it to share facts, not opinions, here’s what I got:

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 04/09/2025

I customized ChatGPT by telling it to be concise. So it adds extra nonsense to its responses telling me how concise and no-nonsense it’s being.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 05/08/2025

This developer email from Apple kinda just shows off how great iOS 26 would look if it wasn’t glassy.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 02/08/2025

If you do pick up a Sony RX1R III, save yourself $250 and get this third-party lens hood: Haoge LH-S245N Bayonet Square Metal Lens Hood

Sony RX1R III with Haoge LH-S245N Bayonet Square Metal Lens Hood

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 02/08/2025

If you beg Sony for 10 years to make a camera, you’re kinda obligated to buy it, right?

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 15/07/2025

I loved my RX1R II, but the landscape is so different now. My daily driver, the a7CR, is actually quite compact.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 14/07/2025

Prolost Beta subscribers are about to get Prolost Handcrank 2, an update to one of my longest-running After Effects presets that creates a realistic simulation of a hand-cranked camera.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 09/07/2025

BA 605 Pisa to London, waiting for the restroom.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 07/07/2025

Or just copy/paste one from any Prolost post. I set them with non-breaking half-spaces so they look real purdy.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 26/06/2025

The app is otherwise very polished and makes some nice images. I’m still figuring out best practices in Lightroom, as the raws are optimized for HDR.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 25/06/2025

POV: You’re beta-testing Adobe’s new Indigo camera app in Venice in June.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 12/06/2025

I absolutely guessed the distance-based decimation. I did not guess that it would also incorporate silhouette preservation. You absolutely feel this attention to detail in the Apple environments.

Silhouette-preserving geometry reduction

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 09/06/2025

As if any game developers are even supporting AVP to begin with. Apple really should leverage their Arcade partnerships to build some must-have games. Pickleball is fine but I’ll take one VADER: IMMORTAL sequel please.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 09/06/2025

It’s absolutely the right thing for Apple Vision Pro to support hand controllers, but they need to ship in the box before any game developers will bother to support them.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 08/06/2025

Me and like six other dorks know a hack for turning Markdown into a rich-text Apple Note, but it’s cumbersome. Nevertheless, it enabled this fun idea: A Note that can update itself!

Prolost Beta subscribers got access to Mini Log, a Shortcut that creates and updates a daily note. The note itself contains buttons that can add new entries automatically.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 03/06/2025

Gorgeous site detailing the creative process behind the title cards of The Studio: www.shinestudio.com/project-page...

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 30/05/2025

I sincerely hope you’re watching the final episode of @vfxandchill.bsky.social, streaming now. It’s extremely normal and hinged.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 19/05/2025

@gruber.foo I’m optimistic about the Slate truck too. Have you played with the configurator? There are options for integrated bluetooth speakers, among a million other fun customizations.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 06/05/2025

Can you guess why the “information” in this post is two clicks away?

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 04/05/2025

Inexplicably, I still have the widescreen(!) 35mm point-and-shoot I took that photo with.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 04/05/2025

This was the view from my desk in ILM’s Rebel Mac Unit, just before we began work on The Phantom Menace. Uhm, 30 years ago. #MayThe4th

Jon Rothbart, Colie Wertz, and Chris Stillman in the Rebel Mac offices in ILM’s G Building, circa 1996

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 30/04/2025

Rumors abound that Apple is working on a thinner phone, maybe in preparation for a folding model. But the camera improvements are the excuse I give myself for upgrading every year. I wish Apple would lean into that with purposeful design.

Frame grab from Ben’s Gadget Reviews: Xiaomi 15 Ultra Review After 1 Month & 2,000 Photos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw1VQoxpgM0&t=669s

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 30/04/2025

That design is not just a gimmick, especially if you get their “photography kit” that adds a battery handgrip with physical photography controls and a filter adapter.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 30/04/2025

If I was going to napkin-sketch my ideal photography-focused iPhone design, it would look almost exactly like this.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 27/04/2025

I need to find a package tracking app that refuses to honor FedEx and UPS’s requests to not scrape their tracking data. Deliveries was my go-to but now it’s useless for most of my shipments.

Screenshot of Deliveries app failing to track a FedEx package

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 25/04/2025

I was going to suggest the same thing — for me the light gray region surrounds the CTI when I have a -90º shutter phase.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 21/04/2025

The groundbreaking new feature is the ability to rotate icons to any angle.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 21/04/2025

Prolost Beta subscribers just got a new version of Batch Button Builder, my shortcut for creating button images for Loupedeck, Streamdeck, etc.

The Shortcut outputs a log to Apple Notes so you can watch it work and preview your buttons.

The whole thing is driven by a simple CSV file that defines the colors, text, and SF Symbols icons

The result is a folder full of PNG files.

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 19/04/2025

It’s pleasing to have the yellow ball look yellow, but interestingly, it’s really more red than yellow as it faces camera, thanks to the red light. ACES 1.2 renders it yellow because of a highlight hue skew that was eliminated in 2.0. 2499 DRT uses that same hue skew as an intentional feature!

Under-exposing the scene by 2 stops reveals that the yellow ball is actually mostly red. Should overexposed red fade to pink, or skew toward yellow?

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 19/04/2025

Here are the annotated conversions: A = ACES 1.2 B = ACES 2.0 C = 2499 DRT D = Resolve Color Management CST

ACES 1.2 conversion from ACEScg to Rec. 709, no gamut compression

ACES 2.0 ACEScg to Rec. 709, reference gamut compression

2499 DRT by Juan Pablo Zambrano, default settings

ACEScg to Rec. 709 using Resolve CST, default settings for DaVinci Tone Mapping and for Saturation Compression Gamut Mapping

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 15/04/2025

The same EXR converted to Rec. 709 four different ways. Which do you prefer and why? (The one that looks most different from the others is the least “accurate” — of course you’re still allowed to prefer it!)

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 10/04/2025

I guess “Congratulations for avoiding LinkedIn for so long” wouldn’t have fit?

“Stu, congratulations on 4 years with LinkedIn!”

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 09/04/2025

Blazar 45mm “pancake” anamorphic. 1.33x squeeze, fixed T3.2 aperture. It’s tiny!

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Stu Maschwitz @prolost.com · 04/04/2025

I don’t know/care anything about 99% of this broadcast video stuff but I’m always impressed that Grant demos it all in detail, live, describing every new feature as if he’s excited to use it himself, seemingly without a prompter.

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