There's a veritable pantheon of old-guard Mac Doctors, Mac Medics, Mac Wizards and Mac Gurus out there, all voraciously vying for a hunk of your hard-earned Mac Money. But take a good long look at the Layer Style laden “logos” and over-sharpened stock photos that pollute their paint-by-number promotional materials and ask yourself whether or not you think any of these people know what a spot color is let alone how to set one up for the press.

My name is Nathan Duran and I founded KHI in 2001 with the goal of bridging the cognitive chasm dividing the people who peddle technology from those who use it to create art. Long ago, my own frustrations with the state of early digital imaging software drove me to put down my paintbrushes and start writing my own. After many years of doing this for companies of various sizes, I eventually found myself carrying the lofty title of “Senior Engineer” in the CPU Software division of Apple itself. Unfortunately, I didn't carry it quite the way they wanted me to, so I got canned. But it was a fun ride, and I believe I'm the only Mac consultant out there who can both build camera drivers and use the pen tool without crying.

Unlike your average I.T. guy, I'm not here to make you worship my nerdly prowess or sell you overpriced evangelism from corporate “partners” that slip me commissions under the table; I'm here to clear out whatever technical obstacles are preventing you from getting the pictures in your head onto that piece of paper (or screen, or billboard, or escalator step) sitting in front of you. Whether that involves training, trouble-shooting, calibration, automation or full-blown custom software development, I run circles around those night class know-it-alls because I actually know how your tools work, inside and out.

From kernel code to color management, I've been elbow-deep in places most Apple consultants have only heard about in shady sales training seminars, and my understanding of the operating system's internals—as well as the unfortunate corporate culture which ultimately gave rise to them—is frequently more effective at isolating problems than those knowledgebase articles you can Google yourself for free. Any idiot can drag and drop a Filemaker frontend together or tell you that your computer crashed, but how many idiots can actually read all that gibberty style logspeak slathered all over your screen and tell you why? Never send an I.T. monkey to do an engineer's job.

I don't own a blue suit or a Blackberry, and I don't care if you buy a .Mac subscription or an AppleTV (frankly, I'd prefer it if you didn't since I find them rather silly), but I do show up on time and I take all major credit cards. So if you've got a Mac that's got issues, a camera that won't cooperate, or are just baffled by Adobe's latest bugs, go ahead and give a holler. I have so been there.