I've been thinking that Technology for Artists is kind of a dumb title. It sounds like all I want to talk about is Photoshop and Illustrator and Wacom tablets, etc.
In fact, what I'm really interested in is all of the possibilities of combining art and technology. How is technology used in making art? How is art used in making technology? How do they influence each other?
So, I started a new blog, ArtTechFusion, that is really open to all that stuff. The tech part of the name covers how engineers think about images, video, music, and all forms of digital media. There's a whole area of engineering called signal processing. It's usually taught as a very technical, mathematical discipline, but there are ideas in signal processing that can be understood visually, and can be a really interesting and informative way of looking at art.
The art in the name comes from ... well, ... art. ArtTechFusion is about art, technology, and any combination thereof.
I hope you'll come visit, ask questions, put in ideas, etc.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Graphics Tablets
Someone once said that trying to draw with a mouse is like trying to write your name with a bar of soap. Actually, I think the bar of soap is easier, for reasons I'll get into later.
But if you're trying to create art on the computer, you have several options:
If you create the art on the computer originally, you can simply select and resize those parts of the drawing. You can also make a drawing in multiple layers, allowing you to try different positions for head, hands, etc. Layers also let you do something like pull in a photo and trace part of it (not stepping on anyone's copyrights, of course) or rearrange it to use as a reference.
The most pencil-and-paper like tool for working directly on the computer is the graphics tablet. Briefly, it's a flat board, usually used with a pen-like or pencil-like gadget called a stylus. There are a number of makes and models, but the best known and most popular are from a company called Wacom.
The main difference between a tablet (and stylus) and a mouse is how it positions. With a properly set-up tablet, the corners of the tablet always match the corners of your drawing area, and the center matches the center, etc. So if you pick up the stylus, move to one corner, and start drawing, you'll be drawing in the corner of your artwork on screen. Not so with a mouse. A mouse only measures movement, not position. So if you pick up the mouse and move it somewhere, it has no idea it's been moved, and will simply continue drawing where it thinks it was before.
This may sound like a subtle point, but once you get used to working with a tablet, you won't want to go back. Note, though, that it does take some getting used to. For one thing, you're probably already used to using a mouse, clumsy as it is, and those habits will need changing. Also, unlike drawing with a pencil on paper, using a tablet typically requires looking at the screen while moving the stylus. In other words, your eyes are not looking where your hands are. I don't have statistics, but from years of developing software for artists, and observing artists adopting software for the first time, I can assure you that this is pretty easy to get used to.
Not surprisingly, tablets come in different sizes, ranging from postcard size all the way up to large drafting table size. If you're shopping for one, consider how much space you have to devote to it. You probably want the tablet in front of you, between you and the screen. Since a lot of graphics software uses key sequences to vary brush sizes, etc., you'll want to be able to reach the keyboard, perhaps with your non-drawing hand off to the side.
Also consider your drawing style. If you like to make loose, sweeping strokes, you'll be much more comfortable with a bigger tablet. For some artists, trying to use a small tablet is like trying to draw a masterpiece on a Post-It note. Still others are comfortable working at small size. One advantage of larger sizes: You can place a drawing on the tablet and trace it with the stylus. I've found this very useful on a number of occassions.
But if you're trying to create art on the computer, you have several options:
- Draw it on paper, and scan it in.
- Draw it with a mouse (or keyboard?!)
- Get a graphics tablet
- Use some other exotic device, like a trackball or a joystick or something equally weird.
If you create the art on the computer originally, you can simply select and resize those parts of the drawing. You can also make a drawing in multiple layers, allowing you to try different positions for head, hands, etc. Layers also let you do something like pull in a photo and trace part of it (not stepping on anyone's copyrights, of course) or rearrange it to use as a reference.
The most pencil-and-paper like tool for working directly on the computer is the graphics tablet. Briefly, it's a flat board, usually used with a pen-like or pencil-like gadget called a stylus. There are a number of makes and models, but the best known and most popular are from a company called Wacom.
The main difference between a tablet (and stylus) and a mouse is how it positions. With a properly set-up tablet, the corners of the tablet always match the corners of your drawing area, and the center matches the center, etc. So if you pick up the stylus, move to one corner, and start drawing, you'll be drawing in the corner of your artwork on screen. Not so with a mouse. A mouse only measures movement, not position. So if you pick up the mouse and move it somewhere, it has no idea it's been moved, and will simply continue drawing where it thinks it was before.
This may sound like a subtle point, but once you get used to working with a tablet, you won't want to go back. Note, though, that it does take some getting used to. For one thing, you're probably already used to using a mouse, clumsy as it is, and those habits will need changing. Also, unlike drawing with a pencil on paper, using a tablet typically requires looking at the screen while moving the stylus. In other words, your eyes are not looking where your hands are. I don't have statistics, but from years of developing software for artists, and observing artists adopting software for the first time, I can assure you that this is pretty easy to get used to.
Not surprisingly, tablets come in different sizes, ranging from postcard size all the way up to large drafting table size. If you're shopping for one, consider how much space you have to devote to it. You probably want the tablet in front of you, between you and the screen. Since a lot of graphics software uses key sequences to vary brush sizes, etc., you'll want to be able to reach the keyboard, perhaps with your non-drawing hand off to the side.
Also consider your drawing style. If you like to make loose, sweeping strokes, you'll be much more comfortable with a bigger tablet. For some artists, trying to use a small tablet is like trying to draw a masterpiece on a Post-It note. Still others are comfortable working at small size. One advantage of larger sizes: You can place a drawing on the tablet and trace it with the stylus. I've found this very useful on a number of occassions.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
eCO - electronic copyright office
In the U.S., you can register copyright on any creative work, including writing, art, etc., once it has been set down in tangible form. In other words, you can't register just the idea, you have to actually create the work before you can register your copyright. It used to be that you had to fill out some forms, and send them, along with a copy of your work and, of course, a check, to the copyright office.
Now, finally, the U.S. Copyright Office has come up with a way to register copyrights electronically. You can fill out the form, pay by credit card, and even upload the work in almost any of the commonly used formats. There are still some formats and works that require sending a hardcopy deposit of the work, but there's a vast amount that can be processed completely electronically. You even save $10 on the fee.
There's another alternative that lets you fill out the copyright form on-line and then print it. You then mail the printed version along with your work. The printed version will include bar code data of the fields you enter, so it can be processed automatically once it's received by the office.
For more info on all of these options, check out:
http://www.copyright.gov/eco
Now you have no excuse for not registering!
Now, finally, the U.S. Copyright Office has come up with a way to register copyrights electronically. You can fill out the form, pay by credit card, and even upload the work in almost any of the commonly used formats. There are still some formats and works that require sending a hardcopy deposit of the work, but there's a vast amount that can be processed completely electronically. You even save $10 on the fee.
There's another alternative that lets you fill out the copyright form on-line and then print it. You then mail the printed version along with your work. The printed version will include bar code data of the fields you enter, so it can be processed automatically once it's received by the office.
For more info on all of these options, check out:
http://www.copyright.gov/eco
Now you have no excuse for not registering!
Friday, July 11, 2008
Gaussian Blur
Ok, since I brought it up, here's the deal with Gaussian blur. First of all, any kind of blur is basically a way of mixing colors together. If we have some black pixels next to some white pixels, and we make the black ones along the edge a little lighter, and the white ones along the edge a little darker ... voila! Blur.
So the basic blur operation is to look at each pixel in turn, and mix in a little color from the surrounding pixels. Typically, we still want the pixel to be mostly its original color, but with some of the surrounding colors mixed in. We can come up with a kind of recipe for doing this .... mix so much of this color, plus so much of that color, stir ... etc. Let's look at a simple example.
Each pixel (except the ones at the edge of the image) has eight neighbors ...
like a tic-tac-toe board. So one way to make a mixing recipe is to figure out a percentage of each neighbor's color to mix into the center pixel's color. Since the left, right, top and bottom neighbors are slightly closer than the diagonal ones, let's take more color from them. So one example recipe could be
In other words, to figure out the new value for the middle pixel, we take 40 per cent of its color, plus 10 percent from each of the pixels above, below, left and right, plus 5 per cent of the diagonal ones.
So, suppose we have an image with a sharp edge where the top is black and the bottom is white, for example:
When we're modifying the black pixels just above the white area, the recipe will look like this:
So, in total, 20 per cent will be white, and 80 per cent will be black. In other words, we change each pixel in the bottom row of black pixels from 100% black to 80% black ... dark gray. Likewise, when we get to the next row, the top row of white pixels, they will go from being 100% white to 80% white ... light gray. The result
contains dark and light gray bands along what was originally a sharp edge. In effect, the edge is blurred. Notice that only the edge is affected. When you apply the recipe to one of the pixels in the middle of the black area, all its neighbors are black too, so the result will be ... black!
Of course, that's a very simple example. In practice, we'd use a recipe, called a kernel, that covers a lot more pixels, so for each pixel we're considering, we'd mix in a little color from pixels 2, 3, 4 or more away. This is what the radius setting in Photoshop's Gaussian blur function is for.
So, why's it called Gaussian? Because this kind of recipe, which could be visualized like this
is modeled on a mathematical function called a Gaussian distribution, named after the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. Gauss was a brilliant guy. The story is that when one of his teacher's tried to challenge him by asking him to add all the numbers from 1 to 100, he thought about it for a moment, invented a quick way to solve this, and responded almost immediately with the answer. Of course, it's 5,050, as you knew, right?
So the basic blur operation is to look at each pixel in turn, and mix in a little color from the surrounding pixels. Typically, we still want the pixel to be mostly its original color, but with some of the surrounding colors mixed in. We can come up with a kind of recipe for doing this .... mix so much of this color, plus so much of that color, stir ... etc. Let's look at a simple example.
Each pixel (except the ones at the edge of the image) has eight neighbors ...
like a tic-tac-toe board. So one way to make a mixing recipe is to figure out a percentage of each neighbor's color to mix into the center pixel's color. Since the left, right, top and bottom neighbors are slightly closer than the diagonal ones, let's take more color from them. So one example recipe could be
In other words, to figure out the new value for the middle pixel, we take 40 per cent of its color, plus 10 percent from each of the pixels above, below, left and right, plus 5 per cent of the diagonal ones.So, suppose we have an image with a sharp edge where the top is black and the bottom is white, for example:
When we're modifying the black pixels just above the white area, the recipe will look like this:
So, in total, 20 per cent will be white, and 80 per cent will be black. In other words, we change each pixel in the bottom row of black pixels from 100% black to 80% black ... dark gray. Likewise, when we get to the next row, the top row of white pixels, they will go from being 100% white to 80% white ... light gray. The result
contains dark and light gray bands along what was originally a sharp edge. In effect, the edge is blurred. Notice that only the edge is affected. When you apply the recipe to one of the pixels in the middle of the black area, all its neighbors are black too, so the result will be ... black!Of course, that's a very simple example. In practice, we'd use a recipe, called a kernel, that covers a lot more pixels, so for each pixel we're considering, we'd mix in a little color from pixels 2, 3, 4 or more away. This is what the radius setting in Photoshop's Gaussian blur function is for.
So, why's it called Gaussian? Because this kind of recipe, which could be visualized like this
is modeled on a mathematical function called a Gaussian distribution, named after the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. Gauss was a brilliant guy. The story is that when one of his teacher's tried to challenge him by asking him to add all the numbers from 1 to 100, he thought about it for a moment, invented a quick way to solve this, and responded almost immediately with the answer. Of course, it's 5,050, as you knew, right?
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
A New Beginning ...
Ok, it's been a while, so let's start over again. I'm hoping to make this useful for artists, illustrators, designers, animators, etc. working with technology and the current set of tools out there. I don't claim to be an expert in all of these tools, but I have a pretty good understanding of the ideas and technologies behind them. I want to share that, because I think understanding what the tools are doing makes it easier to use the tools. I don't just mean which menu has Gaussian blur, but what is Gaussian blur. (I'll get to that.)
Some of the stuff discussed in earlier posts will reappear, in friendlier form, but I'm really hoping for comments and questions. That will drive the content.
Some of the stuff discussed in earlier posts will reappear, in friendlier form, but I'm really hoping for comments and questions. That will drive the content.
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