Comments on: Dabbling in Some Fine-Art Printing for My Office

By: Anne

Anne — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 06:50:10 +0000

It looks so professional. You are “too much”!

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 17:52:06 +0000

Jeffrey – I enjoy seeing your photos, whether “as-shot” or heavily processed with Photoshop & plug-in filters. Sometimes we have to deconstruct something to see the feelings and meaning inside. For me, that means the emotional impact of a photo might be revealed through filtering and painting. My personal favorite filters are ColorEfexPro (NikSoft), Simplify (Topaz), and Texture/Dirty Photo (Totally Rad). Regards, Tom in SF

By: AlexeyD

AlexeyD — Thu, 05 May 2011 22:40:46 +0000

Hi Jeffrey Just wanted to share I did try a few programs like Painter and PS plugins to aid photo conversion to drawing/painting but in the end settled on Dynamic Auto Painter. It's smaller, simpler and easier to work with. Alexey

By: Chan

Chan — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 02:39:01 +0000

Hi Jeff,

Nice pictures, I’m thinking of getting an R3000 myself once it is available. I’ll use it for fine art printing.
Btw there is a program called FotoSketcher to make pictures look like some art painting. You can see the process in progress too

Anyway, do you store all of your photos in one big catalog? Any performance hit on LR ?

For the most part I have one huge catalog (100k images) and it seems to run smoothly. I do keep a small catalog on my laptop for the most recent stuff, adding to the main catalog from time to time. —Jeffrey

By: Marylis

Marylis — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 11:34:45 +0000

Hi Jeffrey,

I’m with those who believe that your photography is so good, the photos do not need gussying up. However, I understand the urge to try out the various “effects’ one can achieve by computer software.

While you’re at it, maybe you can try some extreme vertical crops of photos to achieve the effect of those “pillar post” prints that woodblock artists are famous for. I think it would work very well with some of your ikebana shots, and also vary the perceived widths of the artwork on the closet doors. Just my two cents worth.

Happy shooting!

By: Andrew Shieh, Sunnyvale

Andrew Shieh, Sunnyvale — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:00:20 +0000

I also really like the chalk/paint look of the jogging photo. I don't usually like these automated artsy effects but this one works perfectly with that photo. Do the prints coming out of this Epson look as good as photos from a typical photo processing shop?

I've never gotten matte printing done at a shop, so I couldn't tell you. I'm pretty sure that these would all look horrible on glossy paper. If I were in The States and didn't have a printer-rich friend close by, I'd give AdoramaPix a try. I had printed some wedding pics for my brother with them years ago, and was impressed with their processing system. I didn't see the results, but my brother was happy with them. I've also heard good things about are the printing services associated with SmugMug and Zenfolio.

By the way, none of the effects here are totally automated. I'll post about it in detail soon, but these all required a lot of preparation before letting Coral Painter Essentials at them, and then a lot more attention (in Photoshop and/or Lightorom) afterwords to get a look I was pleased with. I could not replicate any of them exactly the same way again were I to start from scratch. —Jeffrey

By: Royreddy

Royreddy — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:08:27 +0000

I appreciate the PaintedLook Jogging over the camera version. I may be alone on this view, I am OK with that.
This version allows me to see the point, the two subjects front and center. The significance of the relationship.
I find myself taken into the dream experience instead of counting the blades of grass.
The look is reminiscent, by emotional feeling, of a friendly warm fond childhood cartoon.

It is however Ironic in the extreme don’t you think?
Ten thousand dollars in photo equipment
Body $3,000
Lens $2,500
Mem Card $1,000
Computer $2,000
to capture the most excellent sharp, in focus well lit full frame high res digital image in RAW to retain full detail.
Printer $2,000 cannot forget the ’3880

$35 software to wash it all into oblivion like a wet sponge, so that it looks better printed on the wall.
ok, I exaggerate for emphasis.
Hopefully I have portrayed my point.

Toronto(area), Ontario, Canada

If I wanted oblivion, I would have just tried actually painting it myself . I understand the humor of your point, but another way to look at it is a way to value the skill of someone who can paint: I can’t paint, so I need all that stuff just to try to mimic the result. (FWIW, the memory card was one tenth the price you guess, but the computer and software were more.) —Jeffrey

By: Thorf

Thorf — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:25:22 +0000

I have to agree that your photos are better without the art filters. Moreover, I would go as far as to say that some of the parts you are thinking of as being distracting are actually part of what makes your pictures interesting. The one of your wife and son at the wedding in particular I think works better as a photo with the other people around about. I think you're doing yourself a bit of a dis-service by obscuring your already wonderful art with these filters. I do understand your point about distracting details, but for me the filters themselves (with rare exceptions) are far more distracting. I have yet to print anything substantial myself, despite having thousands of nice pictures of my son who will turn 1 a week tomorrow. But I have noticed over the past year that using photos as desktop wallpaper is an excellent way to judge whether a photo has what it takes to stand up under both near and far viewing. I find that some of the imperfections slowly begin to stand out and niggle at me, while others that I might have thought would be awful turn out actually to be quite interesting. And some things that you might forgive during everyday processing quickly turn out to be fatal flaws. Perhaps it helps that my monitors are visible from quite far away (including one in the rather large staff room at work, visible all the way from across the room). Of course in the end you have to print the pictures and see how they work, and if you're happy with them, that's great. But I hope you will give yourself more credit in the future and let your pictures just speak for themselves. I don't think you'll be disappointed if you do.

The desktop-background thing really is a great litmus test for what appeals to you. Some of take my breath away every time they pop up, even though I've seen them hundreds of times. Still, that's just one important aspect of what might make a good print. I don't think any of the original shots on this post would even come close to making a good print, but I'm absolutely thrilled with the "artistic" versions I actually see on the wall.

In particular, the Fumie/Anthony shot (which is certainly not "art"... it's just a snapshot taken in haste) is isolated by the artistic treatment down to the core of what I like about it.... my wife and child... but in a way that leaves the details to my imagination. Maybe that's the root of what I like about these.... I took each shot, and I remember the situation of each, and I don't need much more than a splash of color to bring back the memory. I produced these for myself, and presented them as such in this post, but perhaps didn't realize at the time that their appeal was tied so closely to the specific customer (me). Maybe I'm easily impressed by my own work, but I really really like these results.

BTW, I didn't mention it in the post, but there's one more shot on the wall, a large ("A2") straight-up print of this ikebana shot. It was the first test print I did; it's okay, but I need to redo it with a well-thought-out mat, and I need to find a good A2-sized frame to replace the crappy plastic poster holder I'm using at the moment. —Jeffrey

By: Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:56:01 +0000

I do like your project and the results are even more interesting to learn about. And see.

By: Zak

Zak — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 07:23:53 +0000

I would concur with Ron in saying that the Corel filters detract rather than add to your photos (although I like the jogging one), which is a compliment to your photography rather than an insult to what I'm sure is a cool program. I think the point (to me) is that I would never print some of these as photos. For example, the one of Fumie and Anthony has all kinds of distracting stuff in the photo, but I could hack it out in Photoshop, knowing that the "artification" process would hide the evidence. The end result is a print that finally shows what I've always seen. Much the same can be said for the ballet-slipper shot. The jogging photo is just full of distracting detail in the trees and grass, but I could get rid of that with the drawing treatment. The mounted-archer shot is just a small crop from a larger frame (where a tree truck is blocking most of the rider), so as a photo printed this large it'd be very fuzzy. The silly-face Anthony and the bridge can probably go fine as straight prints (though in that case likely better with a mat). —Jeffrey