Digital Photo Editing
50 years passes since the first digital arts works were published, and people still don’t know what they mean. Because of the many variations and meaning of terms used in digital arts, because of their virtual complex and of their different real-life meanings, many people don’t even bother to understand them We call sometimes web galleries full of edited images an online art gallery, and maybe we should also call the photo printing of these images a form of digital art also.
In a pure esthetic acceptation, the digital arts and its components, digital photo printing and editing, can not be discussed outside the context of the new media devices that make it possible. The history of digital arts has different starting points, depending on what you are trying to emphasis. Most people are referring to the tendency that is specific to the 70’s – 80’s when digital photography started to appear.
Today, digital arts have their own social environment. Past art collection were made up of unique and original object and no copies were as valued as the original, regardless of the improvements they might’ve brought to the art object. The objects kept the thoughts of the artist within its shapes and colors, made the artist still breathe throughout its meaning. That’s why, when you are buying a piece of traditional art, you buy in a way a part of the artist’s body. In the case of digital arts, there is no artist connection, there’s just an abstract creator behind the display. The image edited by the digital artist will be an abstract packet of megabytes on a hard drive. It can become an object, if printed on a material, in a format that can be decided by the artist or by the client. When printing, we give up the lights game we see on the computer. Computer works have a certain light disposition that is lost through printing because the monitor possesses self illuminations while paper requires a source of light in the exterior. The digital photo printing process can change the object in such a way that it become unrecognizable, because after printing it will be transmuted in an environment that offers an outside source of light. Of course, the artist could make a few test prints of its design and see how it looks on paper, but that wouldn’t be art anymore, it would be commerce.
Fanatic collectors can buy the digital photo in its initial format, on a computer disk from some galleries. The wonder of digitalized arts is best seen on a computer, that’s why digital frames under the form of large LCDs are exposed in digital art galleries. snapfish
BA Hons Fine Art Course – University of Plymouth, UK
