Embellishing Digital Prints

Many digital artists embellish their prints to add texture and/or color. In my view, this process may be putting their prints at risk. I want to be clear that I have no argument with protecting the print, canvas especially needs some protection. Nor would I discourage an artist from adding to the print for artistic reasons, such as collage or metallic paint. I merely want to share my concerns about this process from a technical standpoint, and then note the reasons for my discomfort with using embellishment solely for the sake of making the print look like an impasto painting: something it is not.

Texture Gels

I like digital prints just the way they come out of my printer. I also like the depth and richness that a protective coating can add to a print. I do not consider the protective coating to be an embellishment. Embellishments to me are things or proceses that are added to a digital print after it is printed for some purpose other than protection or display. I consider texture, collage, and paint to be embellishments.

I do occasionally add embellishments, although I have reservations about some forms of that process. I must confess to adding brush stroke texture at customer request and not to achieve and grand artistic purpose. I still sleep pretty well. I just think that one should consider the possible effects of doing this and perhaps share the risk of those effects with the customer so that a considered decision is made before the embellishments are added.

Personally, I use gels to add texture only after the prints have been stretched or mounted and protected with a coating. I feel this minimizes the risk of cracking the coating or affecting the ink surface with gel. I use Eco Print Shield applied with a brush to the mounted/stretched canvas. I also keep a small canvas trim piece that I coat just as I coat the print in order to test its flexibility after each coat. Using a brush, two coats is usually enough to keep the scrap from cracking. I let this dry at least 24 hours.

If brush stroke texture is going to be added, it should be done only after the protective coating is completely dry. I use Golden brand gels almost exclusively. Soft/thin gels on relatively low contrast areas like skin and sky, and heavy/thick gels where paint would be thicker or in multiple layers as in trees, rocks, waves, hair, and clothing. As an oil painter, I naturally follow the lines and gestures of the work as though it were an oil painting, and let the gel leave brush texture where it will, along lines of definition and contrast. I think it is important to cover the entire print. I then allow the gel to dry completely and cover the gel with another protective coating layer. It is important to follow manufacturer instructions to prevent cracking, especially if the print will be rolled, stretched or remounted.

Here is the technical rub. I wonder whether the gel texture affects the way light strikes the ink surface and might not alter the inevitable fading process in a negative way. How could it not? The varying heights and shapes of the gel are sure to refract the light in varying patterns onto the pigments, and by this affect them in varying and uneven ways.

Paint Embellishments

Much of the acrylic paint I see used to enhance a print is color that compliments what is already in the print. Perhaps a rich cadmium red highlight in an apple, or a splash of ultramarine blue in water or the iris of the eye. Now, let's say I get that color just right, and it looks great. My question is what will it look like a few years from now? Ten years? When the babies we are all painting are getting married? I just have trouble believing that the ink will change color (fade) at the same rate as the paint, no matter how we (and our customers) protect the paintings in the coming years. Will that cad red stick out like a gash across the apple, or the UMB seem like iridescent pollution in the sea a few years from now?

I do make allowance for the metallic paints and pigments that are used for very special purposes, such as the metallics found in the style of Gustav Klimt paintings. If an artist is going to add paint to a print, I would offer that colors that don't depend on surrounding color for their balance may be the best choices. That really does offer an enhancement that is both worthwhile and less likely to become out of balance with the rest of the painting in coming decades even if it does fade at a different rate than the inks in the print. Again I would be sure the painting is protected both before and after the paint, pigment or collage is applied.

Digtal Artist Pride

I suppose my discomfort with pure brush stroke texturing of a print is that it seems like deception, a trick we play on our customers, or they play on their friends and family, to make the paintings look like they are traditional impasto paint. I do it because customers still insist on it. But in meeting their demands, I don't want to give them a little surprise years from now that might ruin a cherished portrait for them.

Call me conservative, but I use the best printers, the best archival pigmented inks, and the best substrates. I mount the works with care and acid free mounting techniques, and I protect them with environmentally friendly U.V. protective coatings. I can't bring myself to paint on them without having more information about the long term result.

As I noted before, I am thrilled by the prints that come out of my printer. I add coating because it both helps preserve, deepen and enrich the print. As a developing art that is making great strides gaining acceptance by both our patrons and our contemporary artists and critics, I do not believe it is in the best interests of our new art to give appearance that our prints, as and of themselves, are wanting anything. In particular, our work is not trying to be an oil painting or acrylic painting, those too are what they are. Ours is the digital print, and it is more than sufficient being just that. We can always make them more, but let us not try to make them something they are not.

Making an effort to change the print to look like an impasto painting may reflect an uncertain self image by the digital artist and send a signal that the artist is not satisfied with the digital print for what it is. It may risk the long term well being of the print, and it is not worth the risk. For my part, I look forward to a time when our digital prints are accepted and valued for just what they are and not because we can make them look like what they aren't.

Gary

Photoshop Express Online

Just discovered Photoshop Express, a new online photo gallery and online photo editing tool by Adobe. It boasts 2GB of free private or public (or both) gallery space to post your JPEG's for non commercial purposes. (I didn't know non-commercial purposes still existed!!!) It also has online photo editing, also free. From the terms and conditions, I suspect that paid accounts are just around the corner.

Any company that can create a tool like Photoshop deserves a look when it puts an editing tool online and gives it a name that demands such respect, fear even, in photographic, graphic and artistic circles. However, if you already are an intermediate or beyond Photoshop user, I think you will be a little disappointed with the editing tools. While it has some of the right choices of tools, they work in a kind of meat axe way, letting you choose one from a just very few modifications to the original. Unfortunately, most of the choices are are widely different. This leaves you with sort of a which-one-do-I-dislike-least choice/dilemma. I often found myself choosing the original.

All this means to me is that the site is new and that they are trying out the first few steps in what holds great potential. Adobe won my heart a long time ago, and deepened the bond when it first released Lightroom Public Beta!!! So, I remain hopeful that they will also work on providing a bit more useful and user friendly tools.

Does it compare to Picassa? No Photoshop Express is completely online so there is no downloading. The tools have some overlap of purpose but work quite differently online. Photoshop Express does not have any photo organizing of material on your computer. I only took the tools around the block, not on full test drive yet, so I will reserve further discussion on comparisons and detailed reviews of features.

I also notice that Photo Express does not presently handle anything but JPEG images. I really see that as a weakness and kind of shortsighted. More and more cameras in the hands of non-pros are using raw formats, and TIFF's have been common for a while. Adobe argues that raw and TIFF are too large to support. I say they are too useful and widespread not to support. Many of the proprietary software that comes with these cameras are either lacking in usefulness or friendliness, plus you're not always at your handy home computer to handle images. Isn't this a bit of what Photo Express is for? An online tool that would at least convert a raw file for you could be an extremely attractive feature for many people. If you have to convert your photos first with other software, you might as well do the rest of the fixing there too. Why do you need Photo Express?

There is one really nice thing about registering. Your gallery is posted at http//_________.photoshop.com where you get to fill in the blank at the beginning. Pretty cool having a gallery at photoshop.com. In fact, I am now so cool that I can hardly stand it. Yeah, right.

Check out Photoshop Express

Gary Brown

Come visit me at
http://brownfinephoto.com/