Cutting to the Art of It

I am sometimes asked if I use Photoshop when I produce my prints.  I have Photoshop and Lightroom, but having it and using with any kind of skill are two very different things.  More often than not I use the software only to crop my art (and when I get really frustrated, I print the piece and cut it with scissors, albeit extremely sharp scissors).  Nevertheless, if you happen to own one of my original works on paper, lift the matte - I didn't always crop - I relied on the matte to do the job of getting rid of the scrappy portions of the art that I now cut off.   

If you've watched my videos, you'll see that many of my pieces have a rough existence.  They start out on a page in my sketchbook.  Invariably, I rip the page out of the sketchbook after the piece has started to look like it might "be something" that I want to continue to work on.  Eventually, the paper buckles (because I decide to add paint to it), so I end up pressing it under a pile of books to flatten it (and it could be under there a very long time if I forget out it!).   When I decide that the piece is worthwhile after all of my abuse, I sign it, date it, and then photograph it so that I can post it to my website and offer giclee prints for sale.  All of that sounds tidy and easy, but in reality, after I photograph it, my battle with the software begins.   

As much as I like to convince / fool myself that I have photographed a piece of art at 90 degrees to the camera (the camera on a tripod and the art on an easel), when I view the image on my monitor using Photoshop or Lightroom, I find problems - the focus is not crystal clear from top to bottom or side to side, so I shoot it again (and again...). Admittedly, I'm a perfectionist; I magnify the image to the point that I can see the brush strokes and texture of the underlying paper, canvas, panel, etc. because I want my Giclee prints to be as close to the original art as my collectors deserve.   

I invariably photograph my art a ridiculous number of times.  And before you ask, yes, I've tried hanging the art on the wall to achieve 90 degree, but the walls aren't flat or square to the floor and the floor of the studio is so slanted that my cat's ping pong balls are collected in the lowest corner of the space. Perhaps there is some magical way for Photoshop or Lightroom to fix an image so that it is in focus across the entire plane of the image, but I don't know it (but I haven't really dedicated myself to learning the programs, I tinker and experiment, but mostly I just crop).   

All of that being said, if this brave new world of AI has something to teach me, I will try to keep an open mind.  In the meantime, I will keep trying to get the art photographed at 90 degrees the first time (I can dream!).