Posts Tagged ‘Photoshop’

Atmospheric Disturbance Added to Computer Art Gallery

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Atmospheric Disturbance computer art
Atmospheric Disturbance computer art

I just finished adding another work of art to my web site. Atmospheric Disturbance is a piece I created earlier this month and which I’ve added to my Computer Art Gallery.

The piece came about as a consequence of considering the invisible turbulence that a particle, ball, or planet creates when moving through some intangible medium. Actually it all started with thinking about that old idea that there was an invisible ether that permeated all space and which would affect the speed of photons as they moved through that medium.

I added Atmospheric Disturbance to my Computer Art Gallery because of the tools and workflow used to create this piece. This piece was created using a combination of my own personal computer graphics software and Adobe Photoshop.

I must confess that one of the reasons that I make use of my own software dates back to a number of years ago when I would be walking through the art shows at science fiction conventions. At that time the range of graphics software used by digital artists was less diverse than today and I prided myself on being able to correctly identify the software the artist used in the creation of their artwork. Especially easy to identify were those pictures created using either Bryce or Poser.

To escape being typecast it seemed best to avoid using mainstream software - Adobe Photoshop being the principal exception. It also seemed like a good idea to diversify and to not become too dependent on any one software package - once again with Adobe Photoshop being the exception.

In the early days I would write using the C programming language. Once Java came along I began using that language. In fact I’m proud to say that I used Java to create the first (as far as I know) web accessible database of Martian feature names which included cross references to Viking images. Java has changed substantially since then. Some recent and useful books on graphics programming with Java are:

In addition to Java, I also make use of a great extension to Java called Processing. While the Java programming language can be pretty intimidating, that is not the case with Processing and I highly recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in doing their own graphics programming. To learn more visit the Processing web site.

I seem to be getting off topic here so to conclude, for a better view of Atmospheric Disturbance, you should visit the Atmospheric Disturbance web page which has a link to a wallpaper sized version of the image.

Look for another new art addition tomorrow

Jim.

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Posted in Abstract Art, Art and Artists, Digital Art | No Comments »

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New Wacom Tablet: Intuos4

Saturday, March 28th, 2009

Wacom Intuos4
Wacom Intuos4 Medium

Wacom has just released its new line of pen tablets - the Intuos4.  From the product write ups it looks like it might be time for me to upgrade. I currently use an Intuos2 tablet with my desktop for all my “real” graphics work. My Intuos2 was an upgrade from an older, smaller Graphire tablet which I still use on occasion with my laptop at home and when traveling.

I must say that once I started using a pen and tablet combination for my graphics work, any time I went back to use my mouse it seemed like a giant leap backward. For the Intuos4 it looks like the biggest advances have been made in the areas of pen sensitivity and responsiveness - the very features that attracted me to the Wacom tablet in the first place. If you have never used a pen and tablet in your graphics work, take this test. First, with a pencil and paper write in cursive your signature. Then, with the paint program of your choice, write your signature using your mouse. You will see that your mouse-created signature is no where near as smooth or as natural looking as your pencil and paper signature. Writing using a tablet and pen is very much like writing using traditional media. While not as versatile as a traditional paint brush, the Wacom pen is as close as you can come digitally.

I am not going to go into a detailed list of the Intuos4 features - there is a good summary of the features at the Amazon Wacom Intuos4 Medium Pen Tablet product page.

Once you’ve bought your Intuos4, you will be able to download several pieces of software that come bundled with the product. The software consists of the following two plugins for Photoshop:

  • Nik® Color Efex Pro™ WE6
  • Wacom Brushes 3.0 for Photoshop

and your choice of two of the three following software packages:

  • Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 Windows or Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Macintosh
  • Autodesk SketchBook Express® 2010
  • Corel Painter Sketch Pad

Given that I already have the full blown versions of Photoshop and Painter, I would download SketchBook. While I wasn’t able to find any information about Autodesk SketchBook Express 2010, I did find the following about SketchBook Express 2009.

Back to the Intuos4, it is available in four sizes (dimensions given are for the active area):

The size of my Intuos2 puts it somewhere between the size of the Medium and Large Intuos4. Based on that I will probably upgrade to the Wacom Intuos4 Large Pen Tablet as it is somewhat larger than my Intuos2 and is just over $300 cheaper than the Wacom Intuos4 Extra Large Pen Tablet. Also, the footprint of the Large is a manageable 18.7 x 12.6 inches whereas the Extra Large consumes a hefty 24.5 x 18.2 inches of desktop space.

Only one question remains: when I upgrade to an Intuos4, what will happen to my old but trusty Graphire since my Intuos2 will be reassigned to laptop service.

Ad Astra, Jim

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Posted in Computing, Digital Art, Graphics Software | 2 Comments »

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