Showing posts with label artwork. Show all posts
Showing posts with label artwork. Show all posts
Monday, 3 March 2014
Artworks need creative titles: an important, but seldom taught, skill.
Written for educators interested in teaching their Visual Arts learners to creatively label artwork.
Why teach creating artwork titles?
Naming artworks is an important aspect of the creative artist's practice. As explained in Don Thompson's excellent overview of the contemporary art market, 'The $12 million Stuffed Shark', an interesting title can be the most important contributor to an artwork's conceptual value, and financial worth. He used Damien Hirst's 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' {1991} as a leading example of this.
By contrast to the important role of titling for practicing artists, anecdotal evidence from my research fieldwork (2009-13) suggests that learners and students are too seldom taught to think about creating interesting titles or even the most appropriate formats to use while labeling digitized artworks. Arguably this is due to Visual Arts syllabi that tend to be dominated by an emphasis on representation, with limited attention being given to communication. According to Kress (2010; 49), representation and communication are distinct social practices: Representation focuses on one’s interest in engaging with the world and one’s desire to give material realization to meanings about that world. By contrast, communication focuses on one’s wish or need to make that representation available to others through interactions.
Despite titles having an important role to play both in representation and for communication, they are often only taught briefly in response to a requirement that artworks be labelled for end-of-year exhibitions. At best, an explanation for this teaching omission could be that creating titles and selecting the most appropriate labeling conventions are assumed to be implicitly understood. At worst, titling may be deemed irrelevant as "just" school or tertiary Visual Arts genres that will seldom be viewed outside the studio or home. Lankshear and Knobel (2003: 107), in particular, have warned educators to avoid this ‘fridge door mindset’ – where project work has no audience purpose beyond the classroom (other than a display on a family’s refrigerator door).
By contrast, a rationale for encouraging learners to think of appropriate titles and labeling conventions {for the (sub-) genres in which work} could draw from these four points:
Titling digitized imagery creatively and labeling them in an appropriate format is not only an important aspect of ongoing e-portfolio design and assessment, but vital in the text-dominant, Internet medium for searchability. Despite this importance, a content analysis of learners' title, format and attribution choices reveals that most pupils had difficulty with; creating interesting artwork titles, adding full labels and consistently formatting them across their artwork project folders. For those that attributed work, several struggled to attribute it to an appropriate source:
Learners were taught to use two formats for labeling; one for the artworks they created, the other for attribution. Both formats are close to those used in their prescribed Art History textbook.In response, five learners chose not to label their artworks at all. "Thembani" was one and explained, ‘I really think that looking at it was to me, more interesting than the title. So, I just thought that the work itself was there. It was important. Like you just see it and you don't need a title saying...'portrait of whatever', because you can just see it. That's what I thought.’ (Int2, 23 November 2012, R19)
Twenty learners used labels that varied from the curricular guidelines and all were inconsistent in not applying a consistent labeling format across all their e-portfolio's imagery. Just one learner achieved consistency for every digitized artwork. There were very few examples of artwork titles being creative; most simply reflected the title of their educator's rubric or artwork subject's content.
Interestingly, two learners took the initiative to use a specific format of labeling for photographic work. In "Hui"'s case, he followed a detailed labelling convention for his photographs. He sourced this format from publications, ‘like National Geographic, when they would give a photo they would say here like give this aperture and all that...’ (Int1, 9 November 2012, R25) He believed that this contributes to making his photographs look more professional.
The 17 independant school learners were taught to sample and publish images that inspired them. 13 sampled works, which six did not attribute. In Thembani's case, he explained that he did not label the images sourced for his Inspiration folder as a side-effect of the Google search itself not showing this information, ‘Ja, when I was looking for inspiration, I just saw artwork which had, um, no title. So, I thought that it would be quite a mission for me to go, like, to go search for titles when I can't really... when I found the work without titles… on the Internet, on Google. So, putting titles on your work was not really important to me... all I wanted to do, was just put work down...’ (Int2 ST1, 23 November 2012, R20). Just seven learners attributed their sources in full.
Recommendations
The poor compliance results that emerged in the content analysis are not surprising, given that educators at both sites did not emphasize titling artworks as an important discipline, nor were learners explicitly referred to interesting titles as inspiration in any e-portfolio lessons. Also, most learners are inexperienced with working in a medium that foregrounds the relationship between the visual (image) and verbal (text) modes.
It is also evident that there is considerable scope to improve pedagogy for labeling in the 'Visual Arts showcase' e-portfolio meta-genre. Below are five recommendations to help Visual Arts educators:
A. Supply learners with an A4-sized, print-out guide.
'Labeling instructions' were part of one e-portfolio lesson's particular curricular materials. Learner feedback was that this was difficult to retroactively refer to. Rather, an A4-sized guide for labeling should be printed for convenient, ongoing reference.
B. Provide (sub-) genre specific labeling formats for learners to select from.
Learners should be encouraged to think how context shapes the the type of format they choose for artwork. Educators can achieve this by reflecting the variety and depth of diverse Visual Culture fields through including varied labeling formats for diverse sub-genres (for example; photography, botanical illustration, poster design and character concept artworks).
C. Check that labeling tools are readily available and that learners are prompted in class to use them.
Learners complained that they did not have sufficient tools at hand to follow the labeling guidelines; in one example "Masibulele" said that he did not have a ruler long enough to measure his his paintings. Ideally, learners should have the tools and opportunities in class to measure their artworks and label them fully. This would be good preparation for their end-of year exhibitions and avoids a tricky problem Hui notes concerning retroactively labeling work, which often required remembering and finding, ‘… the task's name and stuff... so PAT 1.5 'Human Clay' or whatever. So, we had to find all that...’ (Int1, 9 November 2012, R31)
D. Get learners to set file-name titles as a starting point for labeling.
Learners' image file management and labeling can be improved by encouraging them to approximate their image titles in the digitized artwork's file names.
E. Teach interesting titling lessons!
While suggestions points A. to D. may be considered a bit procedural and boring, there's no reason that teaching artwork labeling has to be. Ideally, titling should be included as an important part of the creative art-making process: learners could be referred to contemporaneous works whose appreciation is closely tied to the titles used, for example: Sofia Hultn 'Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment' 2011 or Rodney Graham 'The Gifted Amateur, Nov. 10th, 1962.' 2007. Students could then be encouraged to develop interesting titles themselves, and then only representations for them.
N.B. If you have any other suggestions that could help, please suggest them in the comment box below, ta.
Why teach creating artwork titles?
Naming artworks is an important aspect of the creative artist's practice. As explained in Don Thompson's excellent overview of the contemporary art market, 'The $12 million Stuffed Shark', an interesting title can be the most important contributor to an artwork's conceptual value, and financial worth. He used Damien Hirst's 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' {1991} as a leading example of this.
By contrast to the important role of titling for practicing artists, anecdotal evidence from my research fieldwork (2009-13) suggests that learners and students are too seldom taught to think about creating interesting titles or even the most appropriate formats to use while labeling digitized artworks. Arguably this is due to Visual Arts syllabi that tend to be dominated by an emphasis on representation, with limited attention being given to communication. According to Kress (2010; 49), representation and communication are distinct social practices: Representation focuses on one’s interest in engaging with the world and one’s desire to give material realization to meanings about that world. By contrast, communication focuses on one’s wish or need to make that representation available to others through interactions.
Despite titles having an important role to play both in representation and for communication, they are often only taught briefly in response to a requirement that artworks be labelled for end-of-year exhibitions. At best, an explanation for this teaching omission could be that creating titles and selecting the most appropriate labeling conventions are assumed to be implicitly understood. At worst, titling may be deemed irrelevant as "just" school or tertiary Visual Arts genres that will seldom be viewed outside the studio or home. Lankshear and Knobel (2003: 107), in particular, have warned educators to avoid this ‘fridge door mindset’ – where project work has no audience purpose beyond the classroom (other than a display on a family’s refrigerator door).
By contrast, a rationale for encouraging learners to think of appropriate titles and labeling conventions {for the (sub-) genres in which work} could draw from these four points:
- Unlike working in particular media, titling and labeling original artworks (and attributing others) are far more likely to be continuously practiced throughout learners' lives {whether at work or as a hobby}. These skills are not limited to visual imagery, but can be applied to all media;
- While learners often are given the same subject material to draw in class, encouraging them to reflect about how they might differentiate their work using titling will be of interest to the truly creative;
- Encouraging thinking about; titles, varied labeling formats and attribution can help learners better appreciate key attributes of their work's (sub-)genre, the visual creative worlds and better facilitate the relationship between their work and potential online (and offline) audiences;
- Titling is particularly important in the contemporary era of Internet search, where search engine services use text descriptions to deliver image results (whether on Google Images, online portfolio services or other sites) and savvy searchers look for distinctive content with very particular word combinations. In publishing distinctively-labeled imagery online and making it searchable (with appropriate file names, distinctive meta-tag combinations, etc.), learners can pull and cultivate audiences for their particular creative niches.
Titling digitized imagery creatively and labeling them in an appropriate format is not only an important aspect of ongoing e-portfolio design and assessment, but vital in the text-dominant, Internet medium for searchability. Despite this importance, a content analysis of learners' title, format and attribution choices reveals that most pupils had difficulty with; creating interesting artwork titles, adding full labels and consistently formatting them across their artwork project folders. For those that attributed work, several struggled to attribute it to an appropriate source:
Learners were taught to use two formats for labeling; one for the artworks they created, the other for attribution. Both formats are close to those used in their prescribed Art History textbook.In response, five learners chose not to label their artworks at all. "Thembani" was one and explained, ‘I really think that looking at it was to me, more interesting than the title. So, I just thought that the work itself was there. It was important. Like you just see it and you don't need a title saying...'portrait of whatever', because you can just see it. That's what I thought.’ (Int2, 23 November 2012, R19)
Twenty learners used labels that varied from the curricular guidelines and all were inconsistent in not applying a consistent labeling format across all their e-portfolio's imagery. Just one learner achieved consistency for every digitized artwork. There were very few examples of artwork titles being creative; most simply reflected the title of their educator's rubric or artwork subject's content.
Interestingly, two learners took the initiative to use a specific format of labeling for photographic work. In "Hui"'s case, he followed a detailed labelling convention for his photographs. He sourced this format from publications, ‘like National Geographic, when they would give a photo they would say here like give this aperture and all that...’ (Int1, 9 November 2012, R25) He believed that this contributes to making his photographs look more professional.
The 17 independant school learners were taught to sample and publish images that inspired them. 13 sampled works, which six did not attribute. In Thembani's case, he explained that he did not label the images sourced for his Inspiration folder as a side-effect of the Google search itself not showing this information, ‘Ja, when I was looking for inspiration, I just saw artwork which had, um, no title. So, I thought that it would be quite a mission for me to go, like, to go search for titles when I can't really... when I found the work without titles… on the Internet, on Google. So, putting titles on your work was not really important to me... all I wanted to do, was just put work down...’ (Int2 ST1, 23 November 2012, R20). Just seven learners attributed their sources in full.
Recommendations
The poor compliance results that emerged in the content analysis are not surprising, given that educators at both sites did not emphasize titling artworks as an important discipline, nor were learners explicitly referred to interesting titles as inspiration in any e-portfolio lessons. Also, most learners are inexperienced with working in a medium that foregrounds the relationship between the visual (image) and verbal (text) modes.
It is also evident that there is considerable scope to improve pedagogy for labeling in the 'Visual Arts showcase' e-portfolio meta-genre. Below are five recommendations to help Visual Arts educators:
A. Supply learners with an A4-sized, print-out guide.
'Labeling instructions' were part of one e-portfolio lesson's particular curricular materials. Learner feedback was that this was difficult to retroactively refer to. Rather, an A4-sized guide for labeling should be printed for convenient, ongoing reference.
B. Provide (sub-) genre specific labeling formats for learners to select from.
Learners should be encouraged to think how context shapes the the type of format they choose for artwork. Educators can achieve this by reflecting the variety and depth of diverse Visual Culture fields through including varied labeling formats for diverse sub-genres (for example; photography, botanical illustration, poster design and character concept artworks).
C. Check that labeling tools are readily available and that learners are prompted in class to use them.
Learners complained that they did not have sufficient tools at hand to follow the labeling guidelines; in one example "Masibulele" said that he did not have a ruler long enough to measure his his paintings. Ideally, learners should have the tools and opportunities in class to measure their artworks and label them fully. This would be good preparation for their end-of year exhibitions and avoids a tricky problem Hui notes concerning retroactively labeling work, which often required remembering and finding, ‘… the task's name and stuff... so PAT 1.5 'Human Clay' or whatever. So, we had to find all that...’ (Int1, 9 November 2012, R31)
D. Get learners to set file-name titles as a starting point for labeling.
Learners' image file management and labeling can be improved by encouraging them to approximate their image titles in the digitized artwork's file names.
E. Teach interesting titling lessons!
While suggestions points A. to D. may be considered a bit procedural and boring, there's no reason that teaching artwork labeling has to be. Ideally, titling should be included as an important part of the creative art-making process: learners could be referred to contemporaneous works whose appreciation is closely tied to the titles used, for example: Sofia Hultn 'Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment' 2011 or Rodney Graham 'The Gifted Amateur, Nov. 10th, 1962.' 2007. Students could then be encouraged to develop interesting titles themselves, and then only representations for them.
N.B. If you have any other suggestions that could help, please suggest them in the comment box below, ta.
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Location: Cape Town, Western Cape Province, RSA
Cape Town, South Africa
Wednesday, 18 July 2012
Digitizing one's art and designs for an online portfolio
Written for those Visual Arts and Design learners (and their educators) interested in digitizing artwork for upload to their online portfolios.
2. Organize access to digitization tools.
Once you've collated the artworks you want to digitize, you must organize access and help with the appropriate tools. The type you need to digitize your artworks should depend on their size and dimensions:
If you are at a well-resourced school with a computer lab and
library, you should be able to organize scanner assistance with either
your Visual Arts or Design educator, your computer lab's IT manager or a librarian. You may also be able to ask your Visual Arts or Design educator to setup a well-lit area for you and your classmates to take pictures or video-record your bigger works, too.
If you do not have access to a scanner, camera or video-recorder at school, you should investigate alternatives. These could include:
8. Backup your archive.
Finally, there are two types of computer users on earth; those who have lost data through computer hard-drive failure, and those who are about to! Rather than regretting that you didn't backup your digital artwork archive, you should schedule regular backups and do them to at least three different sources (i.e. external hard-drive, CD and USB memory stick). To find out more about backing up, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_backup and to take you backup practices to the level of best practice, check out www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1847364,00.asp.
I trust that this post provides learners and their educators with the background they need to digitize their art and designs for the online portfolio services they use. I would like to thank the independant Visual Arts Head of Department and IT curriculum integration specialist, whose curricula, 'Digitising, Presenting and Publishing', was sourced in preparing a few sections of this post.
Please let me know if you have any suggestions on improving it in the comments box, below?
Making good digital copies of artwork is a core competence in creating an online portfolio that does justice to your originals. This post was written for novices wanting to achieve this through sufficiently understanding the process and key concepts of digitization. Links to other website articles and online videos have also been provided for more in-depth assistance.
The digitization process
There is a eight-step process you must follow in digitizing your art:
- Collate your best artworks and designs;
- Organize access to digitization tools;
- Get your work ready for digitization;
- Digitize your works with a scanner or camera;
- Save each work to your digital archive with an appropriate filename and format;
- Edit your files to get them upload-ready;
- Upload your files;
- Backup your archive.
1. Collate your best artworks and designs.
You online portfolio should showcase your best art to viewers. So, it is important to keep your digital up-to-date by digitizing your latest (and best) artwork and design projects. It is helpful to review your curricular tasks and sketchbooks to check what you have done, and should these creative works are at different sites (such as home, school studio, boarding house, art center, government exhibitions, etc.), you must plan a schedule for collating them. You should also consider diarising a digization session on a regular basis; this will prompt you to set the time aside for updating your personal digital archives and online portfolio.
2. Organize access to digitization tools.
Once you've collated the artworks you want to digitize, you must organize access and help with the appropriate tools. The type you need to digitize your artworks should depend on their size and dimensions:
- For very small (21.5cm x 35.5cm), two-dimensional (2D) works and small, relatively flat three-dimensional (3D) ones use an A4 flatbed image scanner;
- For small (297 × 420) 2D and flat 3D works, use an A3 flatbed scanner;
- For medium and large 2D works use a tripod-mounted camera (or mobile phone camera) in well-lit studio;
- For medium and large 3D works use a tripod-mounted camera, video-recorder or mobile phone video camera.
If you do not have access to a scanner, camera or video-recorder at school, you should investigate alternatives. These could include:
- Getting help from family and or friends at home or at their work;
- Receiving support at an Arts Center or your local library;
- Or paying for assistance at your local photocopying shop or internet cafe.
3. Get your work ready for digitization.
Once you have defined where and when you can digitize your images, you should order your collated artworks and designs in descending order; from your best, downwards. This will ensure that should you run out of time, you at least have digitized your best works first.
Checkpoints
4.1 Useful online resources for scanning or photographing your works:
A4 or A3 scanning introduction
Search for other resources
If you are having problems digitizing works, use a search engine like Google or Bing to see if there is helpful content on the relevant terms: i.e. If glossy surfaces are posing a problem, search using 'How to photograph shiny surface',
N.B. To cut down on editing time, please ensure the layout of your artwork matches that you want to see in your online portfolio when your (ie. with minimal or no background showing, nor upside down or at an unusual angle!)
5. Save each work to your digital archive with an appropriate filename and format.
Checkpoints
- Any small drawings in smudge-able media (like charcoal or pastel) should be sprayed with fixative, so that they do not change whilst marking the scanner!
- All glass-framed work should be removed from its framing, since photographing or scanning a glass surface without reflections is more complex.
- Check that any fragile work is safely stored for transport to the digitization venue.
4. Digitize your artworks with a scanner or a camera.
Working with digitization tools means learning some new terminology: you will use these tools to create 'raster images' made up of 'pixels'. Designers and digital artists distinguish between 'vector' and 'raster' images; vector images are images based on mathematical primitives, whose expressions are used to create computer graphic images, and are generally used for typesetting and graphic design. Raster images, or 'bitmaps', are going to be used when you create your photographs and scans. These images are made up of tiny colour squares. These colour squares
are pixels (there is a parallel between the pixels and the tiles in
mosaics).
Raster graphics are resolution dependent and cannot scale up to an arbitrary resolution without loss of apparent quality (unlike vector graphics, which easily scale up to the quality of the device rendering them). Before digitizing work, it is important to decide what you may want to use your digitized artworks for in the future. For example, you may have two objectives: in addition to using reduced images for your online portfolio website, you may want to print your digitized works on A4 paper.
Defining your objectives are vitally important; they should determine the initial resolution in 'dots per inch' and image size settings you choose when scanning or photographing imagery.
'Dots per inch' (dpi) refers to the number of dots of colour a colour printer creates when printing work, while 'pixels per linear inch' (ppi) refers to the number of pixels per linear inch in a raster image. For example, you would choose a high resolution, like 20,000-ppi, and a large format if you wanted to reprint your artwork at the same size. Or you would convert imagery to a small size for speedy display on a webpage (and at a low resolution, though this need not be a low, 72 dpi!) N.B. Please note that if you are only able to gain access to a mobile phone camera, its sizing is generally much higher than that used in internet imagery, so you can readily create online portfolios imagery with it.
Raster graphics are resolution dependent and cannot scale up to an arbitrary resolution without loss of apparent quality (unlike vector graphics, which easily scale up to the quality of the device rendering them). Before digitizing work, it is important to decide what you may want to use your digitized artworks for in the future. For example, you may have two objectives: in addition to using reduced images for your online portfolio website, you may want to print your digitized works on A4 paper.
Defining your objectives are vitally important; they should determine the initial resolution in 'dots per inch' and image size settings you choose when scanning or photographing imagery.
'Dots per inch' (dpi) refers to the number of dots of colour a colour printer creates when printing work, while 'pixels per linear inch' (ppi) refers to the number of pixels per linear inch in a raster image. For example, you would choose a high resolution, like 20,000-ppi, and a large format if you wanted to reprint your artwork at the same size. Or you would convert imagery to a small size for speedy display on a webpage (and at a low resolution, though this need not be a low, 72 dpi!) N.B. Please note that if you are only able to gain access to a mobile phone camera, its sizing is generally much higher than that used in internet imagery, so you can readily create online portfolios imagery with it.
Given the wide variety of scanners and cameras (including video and mobile) available, this post cannot possibly address techniques for specific equipment. It's up to you to take the initiative and either find help at your school, at home, outside or 'Do-It-Yourself' by referring to the online resources below (and/or finding the relevant equipment's manual(s)!).
4.1 Useful online resources for scanning or photographing your works:
A4 or A3 scanning introduction
Scantip's beginner guide at www.scantips.com/begin.html by Wayne Fulton is a great resource that will help you no matter what type of scanner you use.
Photographing your painting
Photographing your painting
Tyler Stalman's introduction at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpj28da03JQ&feature=g-like is a useful guide.
Photographing your sculpture
Chris Warner shows at www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jNbVdNKaBo how to use artificial and natural light to photograph sculptures.
Same size imagery from scanning or photography
If you want to create same size imagery from your scans or photographs, read Lar Matré's article at http://matre.com/731/print-prep/ to learn how complex this is.
Video screenshots
You can use a video camera to take still photos of your work or your can take lower-resolution screenshots of video with a screenshot (on PC see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGG-58qnsnk {with your volume low} or on Mac, watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKNfjrFsO3E).
Photographing your sculpture
Chris Warner shows at www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jNbVdNKaBo how to use artificial and natural light to photograph sculptures.
Same size imagery from scanning or photography
If you want to create same size imagery from your scans or photographs, read Lar Matré's article at http://matre.com/731/print-prep/ to learn how complex this is.
Video screenshots
You can use a video camera to take still photos of your work or your can take lower-resolution screenshots of video with a screenshot (on PC see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGG-58qnsnk {with your volume low} or on Mac, watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKNfjrFsO3E).
Search for other resources
If you are having problems digitizing works, use a search engine like Google or Bing to see if there is helpful content on the relevant terms: i.e. If glossy surfaces are posing a problem, search using 'How to photograph shiny surface',
N.B. To cut down on editing time, please ensure the layout of your artwork matches that you want to see in your online portfolio when your (ie. with minimal or no background showing, nor upside down or at an unusual angle!)
5. Save each work to your digital archive with an appropriate filename and format.
Based on my design experience, I would recommend that you should first
capture your imagery in a high resolution (at 300 dots per inch, or greater) TIF image file format and then export this as a small size JPG format. The reasoning for this is that you can keep your TIF files in reserve (for larger image work, like poster creation, for example), than you would be required when using small JPG files for Carbonmade uploads.
Check that your scanner or scanner is set to scan TIF files at high resolution after the image preview is shown. You should save the source TIF scans in a folder, and create a sub-folder within it for the JPG exports. You should also give your exported files different names to ensure its easier to spot the difference between the large and small versions. For example, 'table mountain sketch 17 July 2012.bmp' is exported as 'table mountain sketch small 17 July 2012.jpg'.
6. Edit your files to get them upload-ready.
Check that your scanner or scanner is set to scan TIF files at high resolution after the image preview is shown. You should save the source TIF scans in a folder, and create a sub-folder within it for the JPG exports. You should also give your exported files different names to ensure its easier to spot the difference between the large and small versions. For example, 'table mountain sketch 17 July 2012.bmp' is exported as 'table mountain sketch small 17 July 2012.jpg'.
6. Edit your files to get them upload-ready.
You set your scanner or camera's software to edit and export imagery in JPG format. Alternatively, you can use Microsoft Picture Manager on PC, Preview on Mac, or GIMP on Ubuntu. Simply click on the appropriate link for a tutorial.
Open the jpg file(s), then focus on learning how to get the appropriate image dimension, cropping technique, colour-balance and size:
6.1 Try out different image dimensions
You will need to experiment with the dimensions that work best for you, but it should not be smaller than 448 by 336 pixels, as you will see on the 'appropriate image sizes for uploading to web/adding to documents/sending by e-mail' listed below:
A. 1024 x 768 ppi Large document
B. 800 x 600 ppi Small document
C. 640 x 480 ppi Large webpage image
D. 448 x 336 ppi Small webpage image (unsuitable– too small, low quality)
E. 314 x 235 ppi Large email (unsuitable)
F. 160 x 160 ppi Small email (unsuitable)(N.B. These may vary to some extent depending of original dimensions of image captured).
Please check that the sizing you use for digitised imagery is consistent for your portrait and landscape formats, respectively; if these sizes vary significantly it will create a jarring visual effect for the viewer scrolling through your works. That's fine if it's deliberate, but a poor show, if not!
6.2 Cropping
An important aspect of presentation is to ensure that the digitised images of your artworks are cropped neatly to the edge and no extraneous background should be visible, unless this is consistently done. For example, including the wireframe of your sketchbook may be an interesting touch when done in all sketch scans, but odd if done just for one.
Open the jpg file(s), then focus on learning how to get the appropriate image dimension, cropping technique, colour-balance and size:
6.1 Try out different image dimensions
You will need to experiment with the dimensions that work best for you, but it should not be smaller than 448 by 336 pixels, as you will see on the 'appropriate image sizes for uploading to web/adding to documents/sending by e-mail' listed below:
A. 1024 x 768 ppi Large document
B. 800 x 600 ppi Small document
C. 640 x 480 ppi Large webpage image
D. 448 x 336 ppi Small webpage image (unsuitable– too small, low quality)
E. 314 x 235 ppi Large email (unsuitable)
F. 160 x 160 ppi Small email (unsuitable)(N.B. These may vary to some extent depending of original dimensions of image captured).
Please check that the sizing you use for digitised imagery is consistent for your portrait and landscape formats, respectively; if these sizes vary significantly it will create a jarring visual effect for the viewer scrolling through your works. That's fine if it's deliberate, but a poor show, if not!
6.2 Cropping
An important aspect of presentation is to ensure that the digitised images of your artworks are cropped neatly to the edge and no extraneous background should be visible, unless this is consistently done. For example, including the wireframe of your sketchbook may be an interesting touch when done in all sketch scans, but odd if done just for one.
6.3 Colour balance
You can also try out the different colour-scheme in the editor, as listed on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_scheme. Once you have defined a scheme, you can also explore how changing an image's colour balance settings enhances (or degrades) your image's appeal.
6.4 Image size
Once you are happy with how your image looks, you need to check its file size. If you have followed the dimensions guide (6.1) it should be less than 1 Megabyte. If not, you need to be aware that a
large file size may take a while to upload and the download-time for your viewers will also be slow if they are on slow connections.
7. Upload your files.
Log into your online portfolio service and upload your files. If you have a slow connection, it is safest to upload your files one at a time since batch upoads may time out when your school's broadband is being heavily used by other learners.8. Backup your archive.
Finally, there are two types of computer users on earth; those who have lost data through computer hard-drive failure, and those who are about to! Rather than regretting that you didn't backup your digital artwork archive, you should schedule regular backups and do them to at least three different sources (i.e. external hard-drive, CD and USB memory stick). To find out more about backing up, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_backup and to take you backup practices to the level of best practice, check out www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1847364,00.asp.
I trust that this post provides learners and their educators with the background they need to digitize their art and designs for the online portfolio services they use. I would like to thank the independant Visual Arts Head of Department and IT curriculum integration specialist, whose curricula, 'Digitising, Presenting and Publishing', was sourced in preparing a few sections of this post.
Please let me know if you have any suggestions on improving it in the comments box, below?
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Location: Cape Town, Western Cape Province, RSA
Cape Town, South Africa
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