Your posted paintings . . . digital or giclee?

[Richard Budig]

When you post a picture of your painting, whether finished or as a work in progress, is it from a simple digital photo you've taken, or from the scanning process of a computer generated giclee?

I'm curious because both methods have their good and bad aspects. Digital photos taken by yourself are cheaper, but sometimes it is necessary to tweak colors and intensities in a photo editor, while the giclee process is usually just plain expensive.

By the way, Garth Herrick (sp?) recently posted a really neat method for removing the usual keystone effect one gets when taking photos of paintings. If you can't find it somewhere on this site, I made a copy and will be happy to give it to you, or post it here. It works well in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

[Mike McCarty]

Richard,

I think most people are posting digital images straight from the camera and into their PC by various means. These images are often tweaked with photo software to bring them back into the artist's perceived reality.

My understanding is that a giclee (in this context would always mean copy) is a copy of that image created onto some archival paper or canvas using archival inks. The image will most likely originate as a digital image (photograph) downloaded onto a CD and delivered to the outfit with the big fancy printer.

I've heard of the practice of scanning the actual painting to produce the digital image, but I think this would be the exception and not the rule.

[Richard Budig]

Mike:

I think you said it better than I did. That's pretty much what I meant in reference to the giclee process. I'm familiar with two of the giclee ways of doing things -- one is to scan on a flatbed scanner the actual painting, and the other is a process where the painting is set up and scanned from across the room. But, the end effect is a huge digital file, which, to my experience, is used for making the giclee copy, and this file is then "smalled down" so the artist can use it for his own purposes. But, the upshot is, the artist gets a much better, cleaner file for posting than he does through the use of a digital camers, which is "puny" in comparison to the giclee making process. I didn't know how to say all this clearly, and I'm not sure that I have. I do it both ways, myself. If it's a serious piece or commission, I take the painting through the giclee process so that I can have a super digital, super clean file. However, with little paintings that are my "fun" stuff, I pop a digital, tweak it a little to, as you say, bring it back to my perception, and go with this smaller, lest exact file.

[Mike McCarty]

I think that's pretty much it.

I think it is possible to get real good images of your paintings with the good cameras and some hard won home schooled technique. However, photographing your painting well continues to be a daunting task. There are, as you know, quite a few threads which discuss various methods of set up to get this done. A large accurate digital image of your painting is a thing to be cherished. From then on you just size it and use it as the application dictates.

[Cindy Procious]

Originally Posted by Mike McCarty

These images are often tweaked with photo software to bring them back into the artist's perceived reality.

Ouch.