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Image Presentation

A lot of recent uploads have caused me to ask this question:

After you create your art, do you feel that presenting your drawing in a professional manner is just as important as the art itself? Or do you just want to post it online ASAP?

I used to have this problem when I was on the VCL, I'd get many of my images moved to scraps because I was rushing to get my drawings "out there" as soon as I created them that I didn't take the time to adjust the levels or fix the scanner smudges on my drawings.

As I grew artistically I started putting a lot of time and effort into presenting my images in a professional way to showcase the art as it was meant to be seen.

I really try to put effort into cleaning things up. A lot of people don't have scanners, and that's okay! Digital photos /can/ be cleaned up to look like scans. This is what a little attention can do to a digital photograph:
http://thornwolf.artspots.com/image/5615/smokepaw-in-uniform

And I offer prints of this image at conventions, and I assure you they're as good a quality as the rest of my images that were scanned.

So, my question, is image presentation important? Why do people feel the need to post art that is presented as blurry/dark/grainy photographs?

To me, yes it's important. I'm a designer so perfectionism has poisoned my mind. :)

I always try and fix them up best I can via going through photoshop first since I find the crop tool and the like eaiser there despite now discovering it in OC. If I spot anything later, or me just being nitpicky, I'll try and tidy whatever's bothering me soon as I can.

To me you can always have more than one crack at a scan or photo, that little extra time doesn't do any harm. It does show you up after all.

I think that it is a need to get recognition. That people want to show off their works as quickly as possible in quantity rather then quality, so they look more productive.

This is a problem with a lot of American Industries - as few of them there is anymore - and thus filters over to the general American Mindset. I'm not sure if this happens in other Countries too. But I do feel the general culture where the artist hails from can add to this.

It is the reason why I've been fired from at least two jobs, because I wasn't "producing", as they said. I was, in fact, producing.., but not fast enough or with enough pieces. At the same time they want "high quality". *head desk*

There are a rare few who CAN manage such, but not me. I'm a perfectionist and that oftens gets in my way.

:P

I have even had some of my templates adopted by client companies (boxcovers templates for videos that didn't have covers), because they liked them so much! But all i got was flak for not making MORE, versus making some better. :P

Feh.

~~

So I -think- this need to over-produce lesser "quality" is ingrained in some of us. So even if a piece itself is great, it's presentation suffers.

Thornwolf said:I really try to put effort into cleaning things up. A lot of people don't have scanners, and that's okay! Digital photos /can/ be cleaned up to look like scans.

Certainly; all my art is photographed. And what's a few minutes to do some color balancing and minor touch-ups, if the drawing itself took more than an hour?

There's probably lots of reasons why some people don't do this, but the ones I hear regularly are "don't know how to" (easily remedied), "it was just something quick" (or any other variety of "can't polish a turd"), "I want to show it as it is" (not realizing how complicated it is to actually set up a color-calibrated production chain), and "just wanted to get it online asap" (the quality vs. quantity issue Drakenhart wrote about).

I consider fixing up the image after scanning as part of the process of creating the piece. Though I love to post my art and see the replies, I don't rush after scanning and skimp out on fixing up the image. Cropping, image adjustments, sharpening or blurring, image saturation... all of it would just make the picture even better looking :P

once upon a time, artists didn't have scanner to reproduce their art work.

they didn't even have digital cameras.

luckily now a days there's several resources available for artists to successfully reproduce work for the web and for print. here's a few of them:

free image editing software:
http://www.getpaint.net/
http://park18.wakwak.com/~pixia/
http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/
http://www.gimp.org/
http://www.photoshop.com/express and http://www.photoshopexpresstechniques.com/

tipts and tutorials for photographing works:
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Articles2/2810/87/
http://www.theartistsweb.net/wiki/How_To_Photograph_Artwork
http://www.betterphoto.com/exploring/shootingPaintings.asp
http://arthistory.about.com/od/collecting_and_appraising/l/bl_photoartqt.htm

other tips:
pocket tripod: http://www.instructables.com/id/Pocket-Tripod/
soda bottle tripod: http://www.jakeludington.com/project_studio/20040723_diy_bottle_cap_tripod.html
$1 camera stablizer: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1041948/1_image_stabilizer_for_any_camera_lose_the_tripod/
scanning tips: http://www.allgraphicdesign.com/scanning.html

Pacs information glut is of epic proportions and deserves a reward! Hear hear!

Awesome links and reference there. :D

Personally, I think cleanup is just part of the process. I spend a considerable amount of time cropping, adjusting, rescaling, and in some cases, even pixel-pushing my scans to make them look as close to the 'real thing' as I can. I wouldn't think of skipping these steps; when you're talking about art, the finished product looking good is very very important!

On the issue of more work appearing here that needs cleanup: I think now that AS and JP have merged, it needs to be made clear somewhere prominent that this is a GALLERY for your BEST work, NOT an ARCHIVE for anything/everything (assuming that that is still the direction the admins wish to go in, which it seems to be?).

Rules are for people who need them, but it does appear that we're now getting a few of those people... the ones who upload dark, grainy scans with notebook edges, pictures that are WAY TOO BIG to view comfortably on a screen, etc. I would love to be able to flag such works as 'not allowed.'

Even the VCL has (fairly stringent, I am told) rules about presentation and cleanup... I think we need 'em here, too. Now that things have changed, and the site functions in a fundamentally different fashion (at least on the artist sign-up side) I think it's time to remind people that lined paper, notebook edges, and grainy dark digital photos do not belong in a "gallery."

Good presentation suggests everything was intentional and thought-through, which makes work look more crisp and professional. I view image clean up as just another step to finishing a piece. It's common for artists to take hours on a single image, so cleanup is a pretty small time investment.

After scanning it up, as Pac pointed out, we have easy-to-use tools in this day and age. For art classes, the paper we use is far too large to fit on any scanner, so I'm forced to photograph a lot of it. That translates to extra cropping and balancing, but that's hardly an issue. It's more tempting to cheat and take advantages of Photoshop to improve photographed images, rather than not use it at all.

Like oCe said...clean-up is just part of the process.

I scan my pics in high res, zoom in closely, and begin cleanup. First it gets cropped the way I want it. Then, if there is a white background, I select it, and 'delete' so the white background is truly white (no scanner shadows). I then clean up any specs or dots missed on the background. Then, I go through the scan with the stamp tool and carefully edit out blemishes in the overall pic (ie, dirt, places where the marker bled, lint, scanner lines, any sort of flaw). I then use the levels tool and the hue tool to bring the colors/contrast as close to the original as possible. The end result is a cleaned up high-res file that I use to make prints. I save that file as the .tiff. I then shrink it to low-res and save the shrunken version as the .jpg which I post.

It's only in the past 6 years or so that I've done this. In 2001 and before, I used to post scans that weren't perfect to VCL. Then Ch'marr chewed me out enough times for it (LOL, probably only once or twice) and it really made me reconsider things....he's right...no one wants to see a dirty scan. Besides, I started to make prints, and I had to clean the pics anyway for the print.

Thank you, Ch'marr! =)

I agree it's extremely important. For better accuracy I use Image -> Adjustments -> Color Balance to work out the colors the scan couldn't pick out and also work on a color calibrated monitor.

A side note is I'm curious as to why JP and AS merged. I'm not against it but I agree that there were different degrees of leniency for the final presentation of artwork.

Ahh, I just read the 100+ response page.

*nods* Cleaning up an image is a part of the presentation. Keeping a hi-res scan is also part in par with what I do as well. I have had too many pieces damaged beyound repair, sold off, or walk away without having a good copy of it.

Any of my brand new works I detail as carefully as possible. For me, I don't have a decent enough photographic set up and using the digital camera we have is like pulling teeth. The images are so poor for artwork-imaging that it isn't worth it. :P

So everything has to be scanned. Which means bigger pieces have to be scanned in sections. This means extra work for me as I try to match sections as evenly as possible. It is a lot of delicate work to be sure. Then because of scanner-shadow, the middle sections need to be carefully color corrected. Sharpened. The lines darkened and filled in more, and sections cleaned up in general because my sacnner leaves odd dark marks on it (Even after I've cleaned it).

But as others have said. Its all worth it in the end.

And yes VCL still has a strict policy of clean-ness of its pieces. My first few scans were of older, slightly smeary, pencil works. At that time I didn't know a lot about clean up. I learned quick as my finished works were being shoved into the scans folder ;) heheh.

I would be interested in knowing how to make art look best across all monitors. I find that pictures (art or photos) look fine on my monitor, but look washed out and awful on the laptop. The laptop doesn't have much in the way of video settings unfortunately. I don't know if what I'm asking is possible :-D

If you have Photoshop there's a little app called Adobe Gamma that should be accessible from your Control Panel in Windows. I've used both hardware and software-based solutions for monitor calibration, and if you have a good eye Adobe Gamma actually comes pretty darn close to the results I've experienced with a monitor that has been calibrated with the aid of a colorimeter.

So give that a shot and you should start seeing more consistent results when your stuff is viewed on other people's screens and when printed.

Thanks so much Metsys! Both the laptop and my PC have Adobe Gamma, I'll be sure to fiddle with them.