Digital Imaging

magic garden universe – – 2014 – complex digital montage.

Early History – discovering Photoshop.

Digital imaging is by far the largest body of 2D art in my portfolio. The humble beginnings started in 1995 when I got hold of Photoshop 2 because I heard it had the capacity to seoerate images into CMYK. Up untill then separations were an expensive photographic process used for screen printing. At an average of $200 (1995 money) per colour it made 4 colour process out of the range of the studio artist. …. Opportunities were amazingly forthcoming, being able to print the seps for a few dollars. I was in love with Photoshop.

To my amazement, the image editing software did a LOT more than colour separations. My addiction was soon evident as I traversed the rabbit hole of digital imaging. In 2000 I completed a MFAD at UTAS specialising in printmaking/digital imaging. Now days it is common place in the art world but at the turn of the century I was definitely at the cutting edge. Images that now seem rudimentry and simple.

In the early experiments I utilised Hubble Space Telescope images that were published at a ridiculously low resolution. Not because NASA was tight but because images of around 20kb – 60kb was all the internet and the computers at the time could handle. I was developing skills that are now less than basic. Now days a smart phone can manipulate a photograph in a second that would take all day back in 1995/6. One example of what I was doing is the onglaze ceramic decals on commercial tiles. (I had been championing studio ceramic decal making since around 1987.)