Digital Camera Exposes Original Paintings

Digital cameras have come a long way in the past ten years. The quality of the pictures continue to improve. The number of megapixels continues to rise. But I read about a digital camera today that is truly mind-blowing. It shoots at 240 megapixels.

This camera was specifically developed to photograph "Old Master" paintings. You can read about how it was used to restore one of Leonardo da Vinci's paintings. The detail was so good that you can actually distinguish da Vinci's fingerprint in the paint!

What is truly cool about this is that the technology allows the painting to be virtually restored to how it originally looked. Colors that have been hidden for years will suddenly emerge. Dirt creating a haze can be removed and none of this poses any danger to the original painting.

You can read even more if you go to Lumiere Technology's Web site. For example, there is a press release describing the virtual cleaning of the Mona Lisa. If you go to the home page of the site, there is a twelve minute movie showing how the Mona Lisa was photographed and how the technology works. All in all, it is just fascinating. My only wish is that there was a way to download some of the restored, high resolution images. I'm sure that will be possible some day. Then we can all have some of the finest paintings ever created on our own walls.

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Do You Have 1,000 True Fans?

Many of you create some sort of artwork as a way to make a living. If you are not already doing this, you have a desire to make a living from it.

I read a really good blog post entitled 1,000 True Fans that anyone creating "artwork" for sale should read. The idea is that you don't need a bestseller to make a very good living, you simply need 1,000 true fans. A number of good examples are cited and I'm sure you will get some inspiration from it.

I'll add my story to this. I wrote six books for major publishers. Isn't the dream of every writer to get picked up by a major publisher? Well, it was good for a while, but it certainly wasn't any way to make a living. I got a measly royalty payment for each copy of the book sold. So while there were a much larger number of copies sold, the amount of money that filtered down to me wasn't so great. Finally I told the publisher that I couldn't do it any more.

It took me a few years to develop a book I could self-publish. CorelDRAW 12 Unleashed was the first version. It was good and it sold well. Heck, it sold more than I had initially projected. While it sold only a small percentage of what the "major publishers" sold, it was much more profitable that any of the books they published. I was proudest that the book I published was a more complete learning tool than what the "major publishers" produced with their large staffs.

With Corel's development cycle between versions of two years, I had time to build upon CorelDRAW 12 Unleashed and give the book even more of what "true fans" want.
CorelDRAW X3 Unleashed had more information (page, movies) and I even created the special DVD-ROM edition as a way to provide more for those who wanted to spend a little bit more. It sold even better than CorelDRAW 12 Unleashed, yet still only a fraction of what the "major publisher" sold.

Now I'm nearing the finish line of CorelDRAW X4 Unleashed. I've taken what I've learned from the first two books and providing even more of what the "fans" want. I don't know what the sales will bring, but I'm guessing that it will sell even better than the previous books. Yet it will never approach the numbers of the "major publisher".

A funny thing happened not too long ago. I got a call from a "major publisher". They wanted me to write a book on CorelDRAW X4 for them. I politely told them that I'd been self-publishing and that I was very happy with this. They suggested I could write two books, one for them and one that I self-publish. This is physically impossible since it is all-consuming just to write a single book. I told them that my profits for my self-published books far exceeded what I got for my "major publisher" books. The "major publisher" still didn't understand why I didn't want to write a book for them.

In the music industry, the big publishers are struggling to change with digital music. From my conversation with a "major book publisher", it was clear that they didn't get it either.

So for all of you creatives working for yourself, I can only agree with the 1,000 True Fans theory! Put out some great work, build your fanbase and you can do it alone!

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The Wide World of Clip Art

Just recently a user upgrading from CorelDRAW 8 to CorelDRAW X3 commented their disappointment that the new version only included 10,000 images. I gave that user a quick answer about the clip art that is available to CorelDRAW users and I thought I would expand on that in a blog post.

One thing that I think this user forgot is that you can still use the clip art from older versions in CorelDRAW X3. I personally copy the clip art from the CDs of older version to my hard drive so I have them available when needed. If you don't have the old versions, maybe you can pick up a copy of them on eBay for a reasonable price.

If price is your main concern and you want a whole bunch of images, then Nova Art Explosion 800,000 Clip Art is probably right up your alley. 800,000 images on 34 CD-ROMs for only $79.99. If you owned a previous version, there is even a $30 rebate. There are many more packages of this type listed on our Web site.

The downside to these megacollections is that you are paying for quality and not necessarily the most useful images for a production workflow. So it all depends on what you need for your business.

A really inexpensive option are the packages from Dover. If you've ever seen the old Dover clip art books, these collection put that artwork on disc for you. No longer do you need to scan the pages out of the book. Some of this artwork is supplied as a bitmap and some is in vector form. But there are a ton of choices and none of them is more than $15.

For those of you in a production environment, many of these large collections just aren't that useful. Working with the files to get them prepped for output as a vinyl sign, an embroidery stitch pattern, laser engraved and more is a lot different than print work.

One source of great artwork is Clipart deSIGN. All of their artwork is design for vinyl cutting which means it can easily be used in all areas of production work. If you need flames, tribal designs, vehicle graphics or pinstripes then you definitely want to check out this collection.

By far the largest collection of production ready artwork is from Digital Art Solutions. There are over 30 packages to choose from with over 100,000 total images. Yes, these packages cost more than the mega packages because they are designed for those creating shirts, signs, plaques and other physical products that have to get out a lot of usable artwork in a short period of time.

Hopefully all of you can find some clip art to meet your needs in the many collections I've listed. If you know of other collections of interest, I'd love to hear about them.

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New Artwork for Wide Format Graphics Creators

The folks at Digital Art Solutions have released a new collection of artwork templates geared toward users creating wide format graphics. The Wide Format Graphics Volume 1 collection provides all artwork as vector objects that can easily scale to any size of output needed by users. In total there are 360 templates, 210 vector backgrounds and 200 included fonts. Put that together with a full-color sales portfolio and you have a very powerful collection.

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