In the interests of print quality I've been searching for RIP (Raster Image Processor). They re not cheap, and I spent weeks looking at a lot of them, and in the end opted for Posterjet based on a positive FLAAR report.
My printer is a supported model, and the installation went fairly well, but I couldn't see my various papers listed there. So, I called support and the recommendation was that I print out test charts and purchase printer profiles for 30 euros per paper (the first three being free). In my studio there are a dozen rolls of canvas or of paper, and I'm looking up at them with trepidation! The team in Germany have been very supportive, in fact they phoned me and talked me through the options and settings. and now I'm looking for a decent photospectrometer with a view to making my own profiles. I want to experiment with different media, and I can't stand to be restricted to just a few brands. Quality is everything. I've seen some really terrible exhibited prints, and I'm determined to make the best... £80 Soak Stain (Oct 2017). Quite a large print supplied without a frame. It's a very imposing 24" x 34" Signed on the front, signed and titled on the back. Laughably small edition of just 20 prints...
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I get by.. that's about the limit of it. I can spend months struggling with code and brushes and layers, and then somehow the penny drops, and I realise there was a much easier way. I worry about it for half a second and then move on. I'm always on the edge of something, but never quite there!
A few years ago I was working in an operating theatre, and the guy in charge there - an ODA - got wind that I was interested in photography. He said to me what would you do if your camera meter failed. How would you estimate your exposure? I struggled a bit with the answer, and after heckling me for a while he said, just take a reading from the back of your hand. I'd sold thousands and thousands of pictures up to this point, but he had me beat.. If you corner me with questions about Photoshop, or Illustrator I'll most likely be just as lost, but I can get where I want to be, and I enjoy the unpredictable. Now and then I see an image in my mind, and work towards it, but more often than not the image comes to me. Here's someone who knows what he's on about, and he says it so well too. Stumbled on this blog, and I like the kind of wonder that he portrays. Check it out: https://www.ctrlpaint.com/blog/ How amazing is this? I'd lost the link but I found it by googling: photoshop granparents didnt exist layers blog This is Glass Bike (Oct 2017) ... Only 20 copies !! Physics is a fascinating topic, and this book about the safe breaking, practical joker and maverick physicist Richard Feynman is my coffee-time read at the moment.
If you are ever despondent about where your art is heading, have a read of this. In the book he was talking about physics, but here I've substituted the word ART. "Then I had another thought: Art disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing art. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of art, but whether it was interesting or amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do it. I didn't have to do it; It wasn't important for the future of art; somebody else had already done it. That didn't make any difference: I'd invent things and play with things for my own entertainment. I like to play with it too !! |
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