Tuesday, February 23, 2010

visualization tool - need feedback

Hi everyone!

After today's class I realize that I might need more feedback from others to complete my short paper and to tweak my project. Since I am actually creating a tool, I want to know what you guys see as problems with image editing programs. Are the options in them too varied? Does the machine ultimately have too much control of your image? Are you an author or a co-author?

I have a problem with how image editing programs work. Most of them seem to revolve around editing photos, not creating new works of art. While, I use Photoshop to present and "clean up" finished drawings, I rarely use it as a tool for creating compositions. Does anyone else have this problem? It does not really serve me as an artist. It seems like you have to adapt to them, rather than they suit your needs. I am creating a program/software/application that can organize and reconfigure my own artwork, sort of like a new collage tool. Simplicity is key for me. I want to create new work from my own sketches.

I want it to be more intuitive and easy to use, Perhaps one day another artist would want to work this way with their own artwork. Or, I could easily collaborate with other artists by combining my artwork with theirs. What would you like to be able to do?

4 comments:

Audrey Green said...

Hi,
I use photoshop a lot to edit images but I also use it for creating new images. Photoshop has plenty of filters and other tools to allow you to create new images. what do you mean when you say "creating new images from art work"? Are you talking about making a tool that would automatically create new images from existing ones?

Francesca said...

Yes. It generates the images automatically.

arturo said...

PS is as you yourself say, an image editing program, or rather and image processing tool. As such you would want as many options as needed to effect those operations, why would you limit them?.

You can definitely create something from scratch with it as well. How much control depends solely on your knowledge of the tool and discipline, because as most digital tools, the power is so great that just pressing a filter button will do something "cool" but not necessarily what you envision, which has given rise to a "design by accident overload".

If you want something more akin to pen (or paint) and paper then use something like Corel Painter 11, formerly known as simply Paint. This tool very accurately simulates and replicates the look and feel of all analog paint and draw mediums and their substrate as well (paper, canvas, etc) including dryness and wetness in the case of watercolor for example.

Illustrator, in contrast to PS is a design tool so you get what you put in.

As with any tool (even a quill pen you carve yourself!) you must adapt to it if you are going to make full use of it.

Your wish for a more intuitive and easy to use tool is understandable and a whole field of interaction design. I think the problem has been that as humans it is hard for us to adapt to entirely new things and therefore we resort to metaphors (think 3D, stage, camera, lights etc.) to make sense of them. And as new generations come along that can actually create their own tools it becomes even more difficult for "non-natives to the medium", in this case CODE, to understand what is in effect simply a different language.

In some of these cases (code generated "art") it is clear to me that the boundaries are very blurred or we are simply stuck in the old unresolved argument of craft/design vs. art, since one could argue that the code itself is the art, as is the case in literature for example.

Francesca said...

"the power is so great that just pressing a filter button will do something "cool" but not necessarily what you envision, which has given rise to a "design by accident overload". "

That is exactly my point. By using Photoshop filters, you aren't creating an art you understand and own. You are using the computer to throw on some effects. Whether is looks pretty or not is beside the point.

But I think my questions remain unanswered - what do artists need in a program?

Also, I'm not asking WHICH programs to use - I have used most of them. I am asking what an artist can envision in a NEW program.