Getting up to some Mischief

My disdain for workshop or trainers that just teach their “work flow” as the ultimate (perhaps only) way to use software and carry out various photographic or artistic tasks is continuing to grow. Such attitudes are a guarantee to remove originality, innovation and individual expression. Those that religiously follow the “work flow” rules end up producing much the same work over and over again and whilst it can be good, even excellent it is soon an avalanche of sameness, blunting our interest. If you don’t believe take a look at someone scanning their social media. they thumbs or fingers are barely allow more that 2 second to view any image. Swipe. swipe, swipe….

I favour a lightly slow more honest evaluation of the tools, workspace and characteristics of the material. You still need some instruction in the basics but ability comes more quickly if you just play with the media and tools. Its not unlike many of the early craft guilds (which included painters, or newspapers in the old days when they had staff photographers). Here you where probably apprenticed to a master and they expected you to grind the pigments, mix the inks, wash the brushes and even sweep out the work shop. You got to handle all the media and saw how it was used and eventually you where guided into doing it yourself. Some apprentices adhered to the methods of their master but fortunately for us enough students experiments and expanded on what they had learnt and their masters where wise enough to encourage them. I believe the same approach needs to apply in using the modern tools or art and photography. The masters, can be those guru photographers and the You Tube Stars, you no longer need to be in their workshop but the familiarity with the workspace and the tools is still down to us, the “modern apprentices”.

I’ve told you all this because I want to resume short blog posts about the work space in software and the key tools to use, so that you can understand the steps in the work flows you are taught but also have enough confidence to experiment and try something of your own. I happened upon the Mischief sketching software whilst looking at ways to prepare some composition/notan sketches. It was a it was a real relaxation, simple to use and powerful at the same time, no work flow required. There is a free version which is perfect to get started with, and is what I am using here, If you an make a mark with a pencil on paper you good to go.

The Mischief work space is a single screen and it normally starts in full screen mode. There is the normal windows style menus bar with drop down menu items that run all the programs function. The more commonly used are also shown in a vertical tool bar (normally over on the right). One very unique aspect of this work surface is the “canvas” you work on is that it is truly infinitely. You can scroll off the edge of the screen or zoom out to reveal more canvas. This an incredibly liberating feature. Start by drawing something that runs off the page, pan across a bit and keep drawing. The last two icons are for the the undo (another feature without a limit) and redo. All the tools and functions have keyboard short cuts, if you prefer those (look under help).

The next important set of tools are found in the brush panel (normally down on the lower left). The free version only has three brushes (aka pens) and they only have simple controls on size and opacity but this has been cleverly used to create a faint lines (pencil) for rough sketching a solid line (ink pen) and a thicker chisel style semi transparent line (Marker pen) These three pen will give you a decent sketching experience. probably the thing you will want to change most is the pen size, which uses the [ and ] brackets (for thinner & thinker) r the little slider pull out by clicking on the second bottom tab. the opacity can also be controlled by the number keys (again see the shortcut keys under the help menu.

The final on screen panel is the colour picker, normally on the upper left. Compared with many other packages this is a very simple format, but it does allow select for Colour (the slider under the colour square, Tone, the vertical position and Intensity, the horizontal position on the colour square. Unlike the paid version, the free version doesn’t have the ability to save your own swatch of colour, but size the canvas can be of infinite size you can place a small swtach of colours directly on just visible edge of the canvas, then return to that with the eyedropper to pick one of the few colours you have selected. So for simple composition sketch with 5 grey tone I have just used an approx 25% grey 50% grey, 75% grey & Black, using the white of the canvas as my 5th tone. You can either erase this later or just pan so that it is not displayed on the screen when you export a picture.

A really unique feature of this program (I haven’t seen another implement such a simple idea) is the ability to change the canvas opacity. This basically changes the canvas into tracing paper. By putting a suitable photo full screen and loading mischief over the top of it and either using the Window> Activate Window Opacity function from the menu or just use the slider on the side of the vertical tool bar. Moving the slider closer to 0% makes the canvas more translucent. You can trace lines of colour in the basic tonal shapes.

You really either need a Wacom style tablet of a touch screen with a pen, to get the natural feel of drawing. I have used it with the touch screen on my HP spectre and the touch mode on my old Bamboo tablet, but It is definitely wasn’t as good and trying to use the mouse is a little too fiddly. If you haven’t ever draw3 on a computer screen before the free version of the program is worth a trial. I’m already moving onto the Pro version (mainly to get layers & pins, more about those later hopefully. In the meantime never be afraid to experiment with your own “working methods” and occasionally just have a good “play”.

Thinking about PhotoFlow, rather than WorkFlow

It would seem everything on the Net that is photography oriented will at some time try to sell the perfect workflow. I’m not a fan because these formalised workflows soon become constraints that limit what you can do. In other words I see a rigorous workflow as anti-creativity.
I much prefer the idea the physical flow of the photo  has a lot more to do with being able to work flexibility. (I know it is not truly physical but a spatial workspace is a good analogy). For start I have several mistresses (photosoftware  like Picasa, Lightroom, AfterShot & OnOne) on all of my computers and they don’t exactly play together well. Next I am progressively changing how I organise my photos. There is still an archive of everything (less the photos I cull on import). I now have four places (separate folders on network drives) where I save and work on photos, The most important is Portfolio which is the place I store my best photos, they are not necessarily shared on the net. I have become increasing convinced you need to save your favourite photos in their fully processed view. The three other grouping are PhotoScrapbook, VideoScrapbook & Family are more work places and photos can come and go. If these get post processed the sidecar gets sent to the archive. In all these workspaces I use albums to group the photos (Rather than folder location on the disk).   Finally I have two different ways I share via the Net, the obvious social network places (to open up the image to anyone), and more importantly “private” sharing (where I can select those to share with and only them).
My workflow is still essentially a simple Shot, Edit & Share but I also see it as simple steps to move working photos into a suitable workspace.

Why AfterShoot Pro is my field preference

I’ve been posting a lot about lightroom recently, but it actually doesn’t get as much use as it could. I’ve been seduced into using AfterShot Pro on my laptop and particularly as a way to rank and cull RAW images quickly and easily. I’ve been using AfterShot Pro 2 (in the 64bit version) and it very fast and responsive. My approach is definitely about setting up the workspace I want and not about a workflow. I just want to use a single screen and not have to chop and change between modules.

There are just four components to my AfterShot workspace.

1. I select to use the file system tab and navigate to the directory containing the files I have just loaded, then I collapse the left hand panel to give me more working room (the < at the top left of this panel toggles the panel between hidden or displayed). I normally have the standard view which has both a large image and a line of film thumbnails (like Lightroom’s film strip). I can use my mouse to select from the thumbnails or the right and left arrows to step though the photos.
2. On the right hand panel I select the Standard Tab, which gives me all the Basic Adjustment sliders for simple changes. However I often just tick Perfect Clear, to give me an idea of potential to post process and Raw Noise when appropriate.
3. I can then Rate (and colour label) the photo. These flags can be transferred to other packages like Lightroom and Perfect Photo Suite via Standard xmp files. (How that is done is a subject for a future post)
4. There are several other tools displayed above and below the main image (such as crop and straighten on the lower left tool bar). The tool I use most is the little Magnifier Icon on the upper right. It adds a magnified circle offset from the mouse cursor. As you move the mouse over the image the circular magnifier enlarges that part of the image (no time wasted switching between the original and a zoomed view.)

I can also add Keywords at this stage, but I tend to do that in batches rather than add them individually to photos.
Unless I need an image fast I probably will not process a photo any further in AfterShot (usually I don’t even need anything further for a fast preview or web post). I can use the Star Rating or Colour Labels to filter only the photos with potential for more post processing in Lightroom and/or Perfect Photo.

Learning Workspace & Tools rather than Workflow

I have never been a fan of the idea of “the” workflow to control how you work on images. At least for a creative person this approach will guarantee that your work looks just like almost everyone else’s. Instead I prefer to think a better way to "learn" your own style and skills should be a self exploration of the workspace and the tools available.
I'm actually falling back on the way an artist might be expected to learn to sketch. Some of that instruction might be how to hold the pencil but most of the time will be dedicated to seeing the subject and making the appropriate marks on the page, sometimes using a HB pencil sometimes sometimes much softer like a 4B or charcoal and other times maybe coloured like a watercolour wash or crayons. To this end I began a series of simple post where I described the workspace available in common software (specifically software I have used). This was a lot like opening the page of your sketch book or perhaps a setting up a ready primed canvas and getting out your pencils, pens and/or paints. However once you are familiar with the workspace it is time to find out what tools are available and what they can do.
What I am going to tackle next is an exploration of tool types, by tool type. Not trying to cover everything  but definitely those which I consider the important photo editing tools. This is somewhat like using different media in the sketching but I will be focussing on specific tasks that most photographers and/o artists will commonly encounter. I have picked a dozen common tasks and the tools to do them and divided these into three groups

Basic Tools	Flourish Tools	Special Tasks
White Balance	Sharpening/Smoothing	Noise Reduction
Exposures	Selective Refinements	Red Eye Reduction
Tonal Enhancement	Layers, Masks, Gradients	Lens Corrections
Straighten	Filters, Presets
Crop

You probably don't need to learn all of them or even learn them in the order given. They are just a set of tools I think are important to learn. They are not a comprehensive list of tools to answer every possible modification of a digital photo. I intend to discuss each tool, one at a time, and generally one tool in one or just a couple of software package at a time. I don't intend to explain every possible option for each tools but I want to start you on the journey of learn new tools and which tools can be used for which tasks. I particularly want to leave you with a desire to experiment with those new tools and skills.
So next time you have a photo you think has potential, look at which task/tool is likely to deliver that improvement and start to experiment with just that tool. Shift the sliders both ways. Look at the extremes. Perhaps even try the same image in a different package or the same tool on an on-line service. Like any artist you should become skilled at making your mark in the way you feel comfortable.  You could wait for me to discuss that tools (you might have a long wait) but If you aren't comfortable yet just set aside some time to experiment with the tool, try every which way. The big advantage with digital images is it will cost you little more than your time.

There are dozens of expensive books that follow elaborate workflows but I don't think you can beat learning how to use one tool at a time on a task that is important to creating/enhancing your own image.

Once you know the way in which you want to use the tools and you find yourself doing the same tasks time and time again, then  this is the time to considered work flow, But it should be something that suits you and enhances your creativity.

The Anatomy of (an older version) of PhotoShop Elements

Adobe have released a new version of Photoshop Elements, version 13, surprising as boxed software (not as part of their subscription service!). I must admit my version (7) has languished in the seldom used category and is only running on my studio laptop, and supposedly where I connect to creative cloud). Whilst photoshop elements tends to be looked down on by the purists, it has always struck me as a better way to get most of the features of Photoshop with a much simpler learning curve and a much more affordable price. The new version looks a lot different in terms of the User Interface, so what I am showing here is not likely to be immediately beneficial to a new purchaser wanting to learn how to use the software (and version 13 is clearly aimed at the new user) However I have chosen to show it before my look at the lightroom workspaces because it helps put in place the abobe concepts (and work flow) Organize –> EDIT (FIX) –> Create –> Share and how they have become separate workspaces.. The significance of these “workflow-centric” concepts still pervades adobe’s software offerings.

The screen is laid out in several blocks. There is the conventional Menu Bar at the top and a second tools bar of handy context related tools, depending on what is displayed in the main workspace and which module you are in. The are two extract useful keys with drop down menus. The first controls the display formats (which can include a folder views, which takes away from the space available for the main workspace, full screen view, side by side comparative view etc) There is also a quick edit to access the main edit features. Once you selected and image by double clicking on it, that single image files the workspace and you can work on that images and/or take it into the other modules.

The Fix (aka Edit) modules is where you do most of the refinements and retouching, Each of the buttons on the panel on the right-hand side takes you into a separate tool (or set of tools) to do that task. Several of these begin with Auto and these are essentially wizards that attempt (they are not perfect) to correct or enhance specific aspect of your photo. For any one new to photography they are probably wonderful but more novelty that long term tools. at the bottom are three keys that bring up a separate edit window with the serious edit tools.

There are many edit tools and filter options but the simple icons and small thumbnails on the filters make it easy to understand what they do, so the system is easy to pick up. The big feature that photoshop elements offers that few other inexpensive photo editors do is layers (a topic that requires more detail that I should spend now). The layer controls are simple but are really focussed on copying part or all of the source image and allowing a good range of blend modes between them (ie they are very useful but you probably need to know what you are trying to achieve).. I suggest they require a bit of understanding of how layers and blends work before they become useful to a new user (ie this is one area I trust the new version of Photoshop elements has refined)

There are two more modules, which I seldom have used, but they are likely to be very helpful. However since I have never used them I got a bit lost trying to figure out some basics and that is  when I discovered the on-line help no longer works (See notes at the bottom of this post). I suspect the back ends for the photo book and Online albums may no longer work. An area that many novices get into difficulty is email images, particularly images from larger DSLR cameras, is emailing.They tend to send the full resolution image, which is way to big to display of computer or photo screens and very large to send). The email tool support outlook and resizes the photo to suit viewing in any email browser. (there is a slider to further adjust the image size id necessary)

So whether you spend most of your retime in the organizer windows and use the auto wizards or dive into the more photoshop-like edit windows you should find photoshop elements a well though through image management and processing system, delivering a significant number of features that the full photoshop reputation is based on.. It is clearly marketed as an introduction for new users and is likely to be a great stepping stone towards photoshop. Having said that many would probably be quiet satisfied with it as their only software. Thus selling this as a standalone box software does make sense, at a time when adobe is moving towards subscriptions for its higher spending users

Somewhat interestingly you can only get help on-line, (which is what you get is you press the help key) back to version 11 of photoshop elements.  Don’t despair the user forums have a list of various useful archive references files, covering most things back to version6).

Getting back to Workspaces, where ever they are

 

I am getting more and more convinced that it is being familiar with your workspace and tools is much more important than following a specific workflow. For a creative, how is not an an artificial deadline, the key is being able to find what you want when you need it. That is what saves time and avoids distractions. In a recent status note on known, about the apparent need to “spring clean” my studio I strayed into the issue of roughly organized but not necessarily neat, I realized this applies to computer workspaces as well.

One of the biggest issues today with computing, information and photography becoming more mobile, is the really fundamental issue of where things are. They could be temporarily stored anywhere, on a phone, on one of several computers you have access to or even on the cloud (aka a web based service). The idea that they might be available from everywhere on everything is appealing but most of the offerings at the moment are not quiet magic just yet. I have found a few services that offer at least some rudimentary sharing across devices, my favourite is drop box its low fuss and automatic, The only draw back it is a free account so space is limited. I still like Box but it is a little more effort to use and find files.

I was warming to One Drive (aka SkyDrives) until a I ran into a security check, it would appeared access to my old skydrive stuff has been “quarantined” or lost. I can only assume this has happened in a recent “security” update in windows (and/or the OneDrive service) but it would have been nice to know it was happening, I’ve reconnected a couple of my computers but can’t seem to get the onedrive directory synched (although one note is synching perfectly and I can read my hotmail). So I thought I’d try connecting my older android (damn no longer compatible) C’est la vie. I won’t go into the details but google drive is in much the same camp for me, and surprising the android app is no longer compatible either. I no longer send photos its way, even though it is supposedly sharing the google+ photos space! So both these services fall short for me and I’m not using them either.

One refreshing trend, is that some Browser style software (like Perfect Photo Browser & AfterShot Pro) let you browse in these cloud location. Even File Manager lets you view them providing you have set up the little apps that create and synch directories on your computer. Providing you cloud places are not to large this is wonderful because you can visually scan what's there. Picasa lets you define how you an scan these drives. Other Software that has databases of images and metadata like Lightroom, have to import the images and this can be a hassle if your cloud place changes a lot.

  

This is all well and good for smallish numbers of files, a quick scan of thumbnails is normally all that is required to find the group of photos or photo you were after. It start to become unworkable if you have a lot of images on the cloud spread across several services. I had started to fall into that trap but I’m pulling back. Google+ photos attempt with autobackup to bring all your photos and posts onto their web server and adobe’s are not real solutions for me. Each has some nice features but keeping track of photos could be a lot better.

The cloud is a good place to shares and exchange photos, and browsers that let you see then in conjunction with larger photo collection are a step in the right direction, but storage on-line has a fair way to go, at least for me.

The best solution for me at the moment is still to have a logical network drive (I use the letter S: for Scrapbook, actually the directory name is photo Scrapbook) which I link on all the PCs on my network. (I haven’t figured a way to get my phone connected, but I am considered linking part of it at least to Dropbox.). Do have a scrapbook area on each of my traveling laptops, but I regularly synch these and my recent photos from Dropbox back to the share directory. This directory is backed up to my NAS, but I end up heavily culling this area, since my original photos are archived elsewhere. I only keep the better post processing, and special events stuff. I haven’t figured out the best way to archive this stuff (yet!) so the collection is growing.

The Anatomy of Google’s Picasa Workspace

Whilst Picasa is very intuitive and easy to pick up, it has a workspace that changes as you select different items, in other words its workspace is context sensitive. This makes it very simple to use but there is not one simple layout that applies to all action. In general terms picasa workspace is divided into 4 sections below the menu bar. The menu can access every action but I seldom use it.



The 4 section below the menu are a main screen, which will either display a number of photos in a given folder (as shown above) or a single photo as show below. In the library (or folder) view you can easily change the size of the thumbnail previews using the slider at the top line of the bottom tool bar.

There are then three separate tool bars, they change as you undertake different actions and activities.
The top tool bar has a few typical activities like import, creating a new album on the left and on the right there are filtering and a search option.

The left hand tool bar has two distinct modes. The first in the Library (or Navigation) View when you see several photos in the main window and it will assist you to scroll through your photos on your computer. The second view of this left hand tool bar is a series of tabbed tool for editing your photo and this appears when you have a single photo selected in the main window (see below) Just select and click a single photo in the library of folder view and you get transferred to the edit view. Click on the action key Back to Library and you get back to the main view.

The bottom tool bar performs some basic tasks like printing, emailing and sharing on google+ and there is a handy photo tray on the right hand side to show photos you have pinned (ie selected) and you can ten do group actions on them together.


There are a number of different edit functions, but I will discuss those separately in posts to come. Whilst google are clearly putting most effort into their on-line google+ photos area (which has taken over the on-line component to picasa). The PC version is still available for free download and if you want gain control of an unruly collection of photos it is really a good first stop.

I will finish off this workspace discussion with one of the most basic tools, yet very useful tools, for improving composition, the Crop. In Picasa you see the full image grey out but can view your crop selection as a full illuminated shape (rectangle of square). To aid the selection of standard sizes there is drop down menu, once a standard size is selected the aspect of the crop shape will be locked into that ratio and as you expand of contract one axis the other will automatically change. Here I am doing some preliminary compositional investigation for my Ingredients photo for the patch.

I will return later to the picasa workspace to discuss, metadata, albums and some of the more useful tools and filters.

The Anatomy of the Paint.NET Workspace

It may seem strange to include paint.net in my Photographic Workspace Series. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It is still supported by the original developer (who appreciate donations to help enhance the software) and an active community. The outstanding aspect of this very useful little program is its simple and intuitive to use and a nice introduction into the power of image manipulation. It supports a wide variety bitmap formats (but not RAW formats) and offers all the basic manipulation tools and also has the ability to work with layers, including a number of ways to blend them together (a very good way to familiarise yourself with layer methodology before jumping into more challenging to learn software such as photoshop).


The main workspace, which is called the canvas, has a menu and a tool bar above the canvas and a status bar below. The tool bar has two layers, the upper layer is for the most common actions and the lower layer is context sensitive for the current tool you are using. Unlike a lot of other software paint.net has several floating panels (or windows) that can be positioned anywhere on the screen. These can be toggled on and off using the small icons on the upper left of the screen. The three most useful panels ate the Tools window (where you select the tool you wish to use), the Layer windows and the Colour Panel.

In the example above I am using a gradation layer to modify the photo on the canvas. However I most commonly use this program to annotate screen captures, photos and diagrams, using the text and arrows (also shown above).

The Anatomy of the Corel Aftershot Pro Workspace

This is a wonderful little program (it is about 1/8th the size of Lightroom) that is a repackage version of the popular raw image enhance post/processing program Bibble. It is very much in the shadow of other non destructive photographic management programs, particularly Lightroom. However I think it deserves better exposure particularly for less committed and/or new photographers. It is also worth considered as a fast pre-processing of raw photos (ie before loading into Lightroom Catalogue). As well as being fast it is easy to pick up. Hopefully a quick walk around the workspace and you’ll be ready to use the software in earnest,

The biggest difference with Lightroom is that everything is referenced from one screen, there are no different modules to move between. This has its good and bad points but screen real-estate becomes very important because a lot of options are available on the screen.
However editing a single or group of photos is very simple. Click on the file system tab on the left hand side and the browse through the file system navigation, to select the folder (sub-directory) containing your photos. Then scroll through the thumbnail and select your photo which will be displayed in the centre of the workspace. Now you can use the tools on the right hand side of the image and the standard Tab. Which contains most of the basic adjustments is normally display at the top of the list of tool tabs, there are a few extra tools to crop and rotate the photo on a toolbar below the workspace and some metadata and ranking tools on the tool bar above the works space. You can also easily add keywords (and keyword sets, found over on the tool tabs), making sure your photos are easy to find. You can easily save this in standards XMP file to load into other programs like lightroom.
In the example here I have just used aftershot pro to do a very of very standard enhancement (well my preferred ones) which involve a little bit of tonal adjust to lift the highlights a little and deepen the shadows, then ticking on perfectly clear and a touch of vibrance, Because the sky is a little washed out I have use the colour equalizer (a free plug in I’ve loaded, found at the end of the tool tabs) to reduce the luminosity of the blue (which deepen the blue sky). All done with a few clicks on a single screen.

The Anatomy of The Corel Printer Lite’s Workspace

I intend to write a little about the computer workspaces (what’s on the screen) that I use and how I use the tools provided (the way the software works). Too follow up on an earlier post about workspace not workflow, and some extra inspiration from Beyond Digital Photography. Rather than describing how to use each software package, I just want to show what’s there and where various tools can be found. I am not sure why I am beginning with the Corel Painter Lite workspace, it is not strictly a photo processing program but was included as a bonus with Corel’s Aftershot Pro. It is often available in such good deals, alternatively it is available as a 30 day trial.  It is now in my tool kit because its a really nice little program that lets you paint in a very natural way and it also allows you to work on photos. It is also a wonderful place to learn about brushes, colour mixing tools and layers.

Like almost all windows programs there is a Menu Bar along the top of the screen, this is set of pull down menus that can access all features of the program but I must admit I very seldom use the menus. In the centre of the screen is the work area onto which you load “documents”, which can be photos or blank sheets of paper or canvas. You can have a series of these documents open on your work area at anytime but you can only work on the top one. On the right hand side is the toolbox, which has paint brush, eye dropper to pick colour, bucket fill, eraser, selection and cropping fames, cloning dodge & burn tools. There are also controls for zooming and panning, paper surface and background colour. There is an amazing range of natural media bushes and brush categories, selected with the brush selector in the upper right. Without doubt the brushes work best with a decent quality tablet (such as a wacom tablet, I have both a bamboo for the laptops and Intuit for my desktop) so that the brushes can respond to sensitive gesture hand movement and pressure.The brush properties are shown in a context sensitive property bar on the left hand side, and can be easily customised on the go. In  the upper centre you can choose to display the recent brush list to help if you want to swap back and forth with the same brushes/tools.

On the right hand side is the default location for a number of palettes which you can chose to display. I like the navigator which give you a thumbnail and key data about your current image. The Layer Palette has been detached in my example, and all palette can be detached as floating dialogue boxes. This palette allows you to add one or more transparent layers that float above image or blank sheet (the canvas). Anything you paint on the upper layers covers up what is below, although you can also control the opacity of this entire layer. The Mixer Palette is a marvel, it has three tabs, Colour, Mixer and Colour Set Library (which is a matrix of standard colours, but not an exhaustive selection). The Colour Tab, shows a fairly typical colour wheel and is called the colour Hue Ring. Inside this is an Saturation/Value Triangle. To select a colour, dial up the hue in the outer ring and then the move crosshairs in the triangle towards the right, for full colour saturation, or upper left paler, as in adding white, or lower right to darken the tone. The sliders below the Hue Ring show the RGB values for the selected colour. Alternatively you can set the colour you want with these sliders. The second tab the Mixer work much in the same way an artists would mix colours on his palette. The brush icon lets you mix colours, the eye dropper lets you sample the colours as mixed on your brush in the main work area.

  

As an example of how I might use Corel Painter Lite’s capabilities, I have loaded a photo of some fish oil tablets shaped roughly into a fish shape as my canvas. I scrapped a few extra white lines into this photo to help emphasise an eye, mouth and fins, before I add a second layer and painted over it in greens and blues, rather than the originally over-powering mustard background, and a little red and dark blue emphasis on the fish. All easy steps once you are familiar with the workspace.

 

The Biggest Workspace of Them All

In my post about workspace not workflow, I omitted the biggest workspace, the all pervasive, everywhere at once internet, now often just referred to as the cloud. This oversight may be because I am still uncertain what it has to offer, even what it is? Rather than being on uniform and extensive place, it is a mismatch of different services, formats and connections.

So Why even put stuff there? Well the ease of exchange and sharing is wonderful and services like drop box make it very easy, not to forget email which is over 20 years old now.The other reason often suggested is that social media can be a great way to expose your work to others. In fact all I see is a pervasive pressure to go viral and become an overnight celebrity, that drives a lot of appallingly bad content. So much of what is on offer is boringly the same copy-cat, look at me stuff (eg rise of selfies and LOLcats, need I say more). I am starting to firmly believe it is ok to share what you are working on (as in provenance) your thought and methods and some of your works, but it is more important to be honest in following your creativity (ie don’t worry about the crowd).

I have had negative and unresolved issue with scrapping of my content and unauthorised (aka stealing) of my images. So I only want to share publically via services that offer creative commons licences. I am also not sure that social media is as secure as they pretend. I worry about small things like less desirable people I don’t want to share with, just what is actually being stolen and reused as some one else work or worse sold. I’m very conscious of the filter bubble effect that social media sites like google+ and facebook can create.

So I am very unlike to do much more than token photographic works and art publically in the cloud. I am certainly unlikely to put my entire collection of photos in the cloud even for a backup. Lets see if I am forced to eat my words in the next 10 years!

Its about Workspace, not Workflow

Something has been niggling me recently about many of the changes in digital photo management. Its not the move to store everything in the cloud, or the move to lite apps, auto “Awesomeness” versus subscription services. Ok this trends are not thrilling. I realised what it was when I read Matt Kloskowski’s recent post for lightroom killer tips about the difference between managed and referenced photo organizers.Then it hit me I have always resisted as soon as a software suppliers or “experts” starts talking about “the” workflow, because I know that means they want me to follow a set prescription and they want to take total control. As a creative I want to be in control of my work.

This is not the way an artist wants to works. Certainly they need skill to use their tools and media, which will include knowledge of how to use those tools and media to make the marks, forms and create well made images and object. The procedures and layout of their work places are likely be highly personalized. I suddenly realised the issues that are bothering me, at least the artist side, is about workspace not really the workflow. Providing I am able to assemble the tools I need into the space (both physical and computer based) I have at my disposal, I should then be able to craft photos and images in my own special ways. What’s more as an artist I want to be able to do that in a manner that maintains the integrity of the medium. Further I realise that often it does require a quiet space and time to reflect to bring out the fullest potential of an image. So I am starting with the spaces and computer hardware I have been using and rethinking how, when and why they are connected and where and when I should be using each. Next I need to reassemble the tools to best suit my more creative workspace.