Monday, February 11, 2008

IF- "Choose"

Help me "Choose!"
Should I get a new stove or Adobe Photoshop?



I am in a quandry!It takes a lot of "tweeking" to get my fabric collages back to looking good once I scan them onto the computer. The different textures and even some metalic threads in fabrics go all wacky. I finally gave up on this illustration-with courderoy and metalic tweed. I have been using Corel Paintshop Pro and it takes some doing to get the color and texture back sometimes.
I checked into Adobe Photoshop and of course am salivating at such a cool program- but Is it worth the almost $700 for color correction and digitial fixing? I am rationalizing that Photoshop is about 3/4 of a pretty nice range/stove I was eying and I do really like to cook!!
Anybody got some tips for scanning collages and texture and is it easier with Photshop?

9 comments:

  1. Hi Julia, thanks for your nice comment on my post! Yours is great, despite all your technical difficulties. I have no experience with Paintshop but I love Photoshop. I'd say it's well worth the investment, personally. Perhaps you could try it first on a friend's computer to see if you like it better than what you already have?

    Another idea might be to skip the scanner phase and just take digital photos of your pieces. I've noticed my scanner has all kinds of trouble with texture too!

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  2. Julia it is lovely. I could see the texture quite well on your blog, but I know how much more vibrant it must be in real life. Painter is a great program and costs half of what Photoshop costs. You can tweak quite a bit in Painter, but the learning curve is just as deep as Photoshop. I am hoping that you will have a gallery showing of your work. It is mounting up and it is gorgeous! Happy V Day to you too.

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  3. Anonymous3:28 PM

    i love this fabrick collage! so great and lovely.

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  4. I agree with Nancy... my scanner messes up different textures.. but i dont have a problem when using a digital camera and a tripod.... besides which you get to use it for other things!

    Im impressed with your piece.

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  5. Great work, really nice illustration!

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  6. Anonymous5:12 PM

    Very cute collage and I'm with the digital camera vote. Much easier than trying to scan thick fabric. I have a a SLR and a Canon G9 that has macro, love, love the little point and shoot Canon!

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  7. Anonymous8:07 PM

    Hi there, this is so lovely, but I agree with others who have suggested trying to take a pic with a camera...I think it could be very nice! I use photoshop but I know others who use photoshop elements, which is a less expensive, supposedly less complicated version of photoshop. I haven't actually used it myself so I don't know from personal experience, but maybe it would be worth looking into? I really love that you use real fabric and stitching, it's very cool!

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  8. Anonymous12:35 AM

    So nice to see some of your art again Julia! This is such a great piece! I just love that dog!

    You might consider getting Photoshop Elements. It runs about $99.00. It's a slimmed down version of the big boy. Not sure what they leave out, but I am sure they tell you on their site. They will even let you download it free for 30 days. . .



    Hugs

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  9. nice work...wonderful piece...

    Cheers,
    Diana

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