Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
In May of 1990 I saw Adobe Photoshop 1.0.7 running at a local com-
puter store, and knew this was an application that would help me con-
vince my wife I needed a new color-capable Macintosh. Goodbye Mac
SE-30, hello Mac IIci with 13” color display. At that time, not a single
topic on Photoshop existed. This left me with the Photoshop manual,
which was actually quite good. I tried to network with any photogra-
phers or service bureaus that had a clue about Photoshop while getting
my film scanned onto my huge 80 mb hard drive. I mention this because
in those days, there was no Internet, chat rooms, forums, or books on
digital imaging or Photoshop. Color management didn't exist, nor did I
know I even needed it!
Today life is both easier and yet vastly more complex as our options
for desktop imaging is simply light years ahead of what was available in
early 1990. By 1993, color management solutions in a very crude form
were starting to show up on the desktop. I will not go into detail about
what was being used at that time since by today's standards, the solu-
tions were primitive, expensive, and usually not effective. Not long after
getting interested in color management and Photoshop, I began to work
with other photographers, helping them set up their systems to work as
effectively as possible. I gravitated toward working with photographers
because I had a good idea of how they operated and how best to solve
their particular color issues. I then began to spend considerable time
working with professional commercial print and prepress customers and
got a good education about how that side of the imaging world operated.
My Pipeline (Work Flow) Philosophy
Work flow is getting to be quite the buzzword these days. I want to be
clear about what I believe it means and then discuss my philosophy. A
friend and colleague, Jeff Schewe, uses the term
pipeline
to describe the
long process we have to deal with when handling images from capture
all the way to final output. I like the term! Within this total pipeline are
a number of work flows that splinter off in different directions depend-
ing on what needs to be accomplished at any given point in the pipeline
of image creation and output. Work flow, in my opinion, describes the
tools, techniques, and processes that ensure optimal image quality with
minimal time and effort. Work flow describes the tasks from beginning
to end in each section of the
total
pipeline that is implemented in order
to achieve this quality/speed ratio. Upon conducting a Web search of the
term “work flow” (using Google, of course), I found many definitions but
preferred this one:
A term used to describe the steps taken in the execution of a task such as
creating and outputting a digital mechanical.
1
Proper work flow is
1
Note that in this case mechanical could be any final, finished product.
