Interview: John Paul Caponigro

Adobe Photoshop A-Z

A special series working through the best features of Photoshop

E IS FOR EYEDROPPER The Eyedropper tool is one of the most useful features of Adobe’s imaging app. Found in the toolbar, the Eyedropper is teamed with the Color Sampler tool (found by clicking on the arrow in the icon). The Eyedropper’s main use is for gathering colour data for adjustment and comparison purposes. The Eyedropper is also used for selecting foreground and background colours, and for identifying tone values when in the many command dialogs such as the Gradient Editor, Replace Color, and Curves, and it can be used to select colour even from outside Photoshop.

and for identifying tone values when in the many command dialogs such

D&AD awards

Get your work known with the D&AD Global Student Awards

ith the release of the beta preview of CS3, the wealth of new features is inspiring many of us to put pen to tablet and start creating new and uplifting works of Photoshop art. But don’t keep them all to yourself. Get your work out there and recognised by entering it in the forthcoming D&AD Global Student Awards.

It’s a fantastic chance to impress future employees

Celebrating its 29th year, the organisers have implemented key improvements to its structure, ensuring the awards evolve accordingly with new trends in the creative and technological industries, and added new categories, so there’s something for everyone.

Categories include Digital Design, where the brief asks potential winners to design a website which creatively demonstrates a typical day in your life, and What Else Do You Do, where daring entrants can attempt to assert the stature of their creativity.

Overall winners can expect to receive the coveted D&AD Student Yellow Pencil – a mark of excellence that will shine out on your CV.

If you have an enquiry about eligibility for entry or would like more information, check out www.dandad. org/studentawards07. The deadline for entries is 23 March 2007 at 17:00 GMT.

RESOURCES

New website o ers types galore URBAN FONTS FOR URBAN LIVING

ering both useful and winsome typefaces, UrbanFonts.com is a new Web 2.0-powered site that is a must-visit for all font fanatics. UrbanFonts also o ers a great virtual community thanks to its forum, and provides visitors with a series of articles covering all aspects of typography.

Providing a ready source of free and paidfor fonts and dingbats for users of both Macs and Windows PCs, users can learn about and participate in an online community dedicated to the art and craft of typography. We contacted Brandon, one of the guys behind the site: “Of course fonts may not be as exciting or as sexy as the latest in Flash technology, but they can be just as vital

Get a healthy stock of fonts over at the UrbanFonts site to the success of your web design, if not more so,” he says. “Without the right fonts in place, even the best-looking website can be di cult to navigate and di cult for customers to use.” To see what the site has to o er, visit www.urbanfonts.com.

EXPOSURE

WORTH 1000

www.worth1000.com Photoshop users are a competitive bunch. Looking at a painting from a 15th Century artist and wondering how to turn it into a modern-day wonder is what makes us tick. Worth1000 gives its members the chance to go head-to-head to win competitions, as well as giving you access to a thriving community.

PORTFOLIO CITY www.portfoliocity.com PortfolioCity.com is an online gallery that contains the portfolios of artists and designers from across the world. The site was founded by London-based graduate Jeremy Baines to promote fresh artistic talent and give creative people their own space on the internet, providing portfolios from free, up to a premium (£67/year) package.

Updates... THIS MONTH IN SHORT

New additions to the world of Photoshop

Poser 7 announced

Take your

Photoshop work to the next level with 3D wonder Poser 7. Improving on past versions by enhancing lip-syncing, multiple undo, nonlinear animation and universal poses, you can buy Poser 7 for £129, or you can upgrade from Poser 4 for £69.

OnOne Genuine Fractals 5.0

Due to be shown at Focus on Imaging, onOne has announced its latest version of its popular scaling software. With faster scaling and compression technologies than previous versions, as well as a new interface, Genuine Fractals 5.0 looks an exciting upgrade. See www.ononesoftware. com for details.

ALERT! | DON’T FORGET TO ENTER OUR READERS’ CHALLENGE – SEE PAGE 98

Make a date

At a loose end? Here are the must-see events this month

12-16 FEB

LONDON FASHION WEEK What better place to scout out the upcoming trends than the home of British fashion. Watch the models do their stuff and gain invaluable advice. www.londonfashionweek.co.uk ON UNTIL 18 FEB

ALAN FLETCHER – FIFTY YEARS OF GRAPHIC WORK (AND PLAY) Get inspired or simply pay your respects to one of the most infl uential fi gures in post-war British graphic design. www.designmuseum.org 25-28 FEB

FOCUS ON IMAGING Europe’s biggest annual imaging show comes to Birmingham NEC. Get inspiration for your whole creative process – from taking your initial source shot to printing it out. www.focus-on-imaging.co.uk

IN THE INDUSTRY

Two of the best… Photoshop is Reuters fave

FREE FONT SITES

dafont.com

www.dafont.com

There’s no shortage of free fonts sites; just a quick search in Google brings up over 38 million hits! So fi nding one that delivers top-quality goods, at no cost, to both Mac and PC users can be a tricky task. Dafont is one of the best known font sites, with thousands of designs available free via this user-friendly site.

FontFace

www.fontface.com

Standing out from the ever-increasing free font crowd is FontFace. This highly interactive site offers typefaces perfect for the creative. Not a Times New Roman or Helvetica in site, FontFace is jampacked with Crazy Killer and Catharsis Requiems. Not sure exactly what you’re looking for? Check out the Font of the Day for inspiration.

Getting two thumbs up from the world’s top new agency

hotoshop has integrated itself into almost every facet of the design and photography world, and the latest company to embrace its might is Reuters. Although Reuters and other news agencies have to adhere to rules regarding the authenticity of images, colour tweaks and other small alterations that don’t a ect the substance of the image are allowed.

In order to meet the demand for everfaster photo coverage of news stories, Reuters in London has developed a new system that beats all others for speed, accuracy and quality pictures: Paneikon.

Kevin Coombs, senior picture editor who conceived the idea for the system says: “Paneikon has transformed the way in which top quality photographs can be sent around the world, ready to publish within minutes. It has signi cantly changed the way we edit, allowing us to assign specialist editors to picture stories regardless of their geographical location.”

A Reuters photographer anywhere in the world uploads all their low resolution images with the push of a button to the Reuters global server in London. An editor will then download those pictures, choosing the image they want. They can crop the photo and send it to another editor to tone in Photoshop and add a caption ready for transmitting to customers.

Yet again, Reuters has achieved a global rst in photo technology. In 1997 Reuters was the rst to use wi- to transfer pictures from photographers’ laptops to editors in a sports arena, and the rst news agency to fully operate with only digital cameras.

Reuters has seen the fantastic potential in Photoshop

PLUG-INS Upgrade your plug-ins to meet the CS3 demands Maximum Mac power The team’s wish list ixelGenius, the creators behind the PhotoKit, PhotoKit Sharpener and Pure material delight… PhotoKit Color 2.0 Photoshop plug-ins, has announced the release of a iPhone Universal Binary version of each app, designed for Mac users. The latest launch from Mr Jobs is the The release comes swiftly after Adobe announced it was making CS3 available in beta, and it won’t be the only one. With the release of Photoshop CS3 beta, all developers fantastic looking iPhone. Although not available in the UK until later this year, we’re sure pre-orders are going to be of plug-ins will need to release Universal Binary versions of their plug-ins in order to work huge with loads of features, like desktopwith MacIntel from Apple. class email, web browsing, searching Mac users with the public beta version of Adobe Photoshop CS3 will be able to use the plug-ins (which are still in beta form themselves), without having to give up their full and maps, packed into this petite package. For more details and pricing see PixelGenius products. PhotoKit is a digital photographer’s ideal plug-in. Comprising e ects www.apple.com. that o er accurate digital replications of analogue photographic e ects, the toolkit is a handy o ering, while PhotoKit Sharpener provides a complete sharpening work ow. Finally, PhotoKit Color applies precise We want it because… colour corrections, automatic Let’s face it, everything colour balancing and creative Apple is cool. A wealth of gizmos are on the market colouring e ects. especially designed to www.pixelgenius.com match that white Mac in your studio, so why should your phone be any different? Thanks to the iPhone, work has never been so portable.

All images courtesy of John Paul Caponigro THE STORY BEHIND… John Paul Caponigro

John Paul has been using Photoshop to enhance his photography and create beautiful images. Find out more here…

John Paul’s favourite words of wisdom

01 “There’s nothing worse than a sharp picture of a fuzzy concept.” Ansel Adams

02 “F8 and be there.” Jay Maisel 03 “Chance favours the prepared.” Jerry Uelsmann

04 “I photograph a thing not only for what it is, but also for what else it is.” Minor White

05 Above all, be honest with yourself and have the courage to call it like you see it. Do the work you need to do; do the work that pleases you. All else will follow. ohn Paul Caponigro enjoys creating colourful and evocative images. He’s very keen to share his knowledge with others, and is involved not only in Photoshop workshops but also books. Here he tells us a bit more about how he works and where he gets his inspiration.

How did you rst discover Photoshop? In 1991 I became an artist in residence at Kodak’s Center for Creative Imaging. I took three workshops back-to-back and produced an exhibition, fi nding it was a perfect marriage between the disciplines of photography and offset printing, and it satisfi ed the surrealist in me. I never looked back. Photoshop was (and still is) an affordable solution that quickly transcended all previous limitations.

Where do you draw inspiration from? Visually, my father (whose vocation is black-and-white fi ne art landscape photography) and mother (a painter turned graphic designer) have had a profound impact on my artistic development. Eliot Porter infl uenced me greatly, and I fi nd kinship with the work of many contemporary photographers such as Edward Burtinsky, Adam Fuss and Jerry Uelsmann. Of course infl uence extends far beyond the medium of our choice, so I must also list Mark Rothko, William Blake, Pablo Neruda… when should I stop? One of the most important infl uences has been the countless anonymous artists across the world and throughout the ages who’ve worked on sacred sites, producing artefacts for sacred functions. It’s a wonderful world with a lot of wonderful people in it. Do you have more lectures planned? The lectures are constantly evolving. Refl ections focuses on my work with water and has been expanding the most, in preparation for a museum tour and monograph. Wastelands highlights my work in deserts and will be expanding soon. Illuminating Creativity has been rapidly expanding. It’s my passion. And I fi nd there’s a hunger for inspiration and useful perspectives on the creative process.

Which type of photography do you nd the most inspiring and enjoyable? I look for insight (something that enriches my perspective on life or the world). That’s not genre- or media-specifi c, so I fi nd inspiration in everything and everywhere.

Which area is most challenging for you? Expanding the limits of my perception is most challenging and rewarding. I fi nd it’s useful to identify my creative habits and to systematically test them through focused experimentation. (You’ll fi nd a PDF called Breaking the Rules on this on my website.)

What areas do you plan to cover in your next books? Technically – Professional Inkjet Printing; R) Evolution – Revisioning Photographic Practice; Creating A Master File – a fi ne art workfl ow; The Power of Color – colour management, theory and adjustment. I’m sure a book on creativity (Illuminating Creativity) will develop. A fi ne art monograph is inevitable and will quite likely appear soon.

Do you use any specialist photographic equipment or plug-ins to enhance shots? I try to keep my toolset stripped down to the essentials. The less I have to keep track of the more I can focus on creativity. A tool has to offer signifi cant performance for me to incorporate it. I often use a polarising fi lter. For software, Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop do almost everything I need.

What photography or digital art projects are you working on now? I produce several works at once. Currently I’m focusing on a series involving drawing light in photos (Lux), a series centring on the icon of smoke (Suffusion) and two place-specifi c bodies of work based in Antarctica and White Sands, New Mexico. You can see some of this work on my site and will be able to see a lot of the new work in August this year online, concurrent with my annual open studio exhibition.

John Paul draws his inspiration from the world around him and has produced some evocative and striking images

WEB | SEE MORE OF JOHN PAUL’S WORK AT WWW.JOHNPAULCAPONIGRO.COM