[Matthew]

A lot of good things has been said here so thank you for sharing your views of things people.
In Sweden I guess we have been really screwed with those Retirement Savings and the funds runned by those bank people, they really screwed up and placed the most of the funds in bad investments so I am not sure what my Retirement will look like, not sure if I care though, I guess I should but what can one do really.,I hope to be doing art til the day I die so no retirement needed hopefully.
That also leads me to another concern and it feels pretty scary at the same time. I started with this Art-field very late and sometimes I wonder if I am ever gonna make it, I will never give up though so sometime things should clear up.
I am really thinking of going to the states cause it seems like most of the jobs are there when it comes to games and movies.
I am not sure how to apply to the game-jobs though and that would mean you have to promote yourself very good and I have never been good with promoting myself, must be an American thing cause you American guys seems to have a real good confidence when it comes to promoting yourselves and such.
Maybe someone have a tutorial on how to promote one self.

ok not sure what I wanted to accomplish with this post, I guess I felt talkative.
About the upgrade, hmm, no.
Socar, I am with you there, let us only do Traditional Art from now on. :)

later
Matthew

[henrik]

Craig>

First, my comment was unncessary, my apologies if it did seem ignorant. But it raised an interesting discussion. I am grateful and humbled for every comment or advice you can give, it makes sense and you are a person worth taking advice from. Please elaborate as you wish.

Yes, you're right when you're talking about how big FX/game studios work. Young and starving artists is easy to keep as cheap work force. To be perfectly honest, I think the phenomenon you are explaining here is wide spread, and sure, employees can do little but accept companies continuation of exploitation. They need the job done, regardless of who does it.

Going into art direction is not something I can see happening at this point. Company politics and bureaucracy has never appealed to me, well, it gets to you in one way or another whether you want it or not. In my few years in the art field, I've seen people being screwed pretty badly, including myself. I'm done with that.

Fyi I have never really had a problem with long hours since I started moving around as a freelancer. I like to think that I'm fairly smart, well smart enough not to get burned twice by the same fire. I am interested in the business side of art, sometimes it just makes me sick to see what people do to get into the field. Financial problems is not an issue - (recently invested by buying 2 houses) - I have just never been very good at it. But it slowly gets better as we live and learn. It's good to have people around you to give good advice when you start out. Sometimes they say that it's good to live through it and get experience the hard way, I'm sure it is, but it would have been nice to have some support when I started out.

No you are not "intruding", however my comment seems to have raised an eybrow or two perhaps in vain. Again apologies for that, but thank you for your insightful commnents Craig.

EDIT: Now when reading through your comments a second time something strikes me as a little odd. Having a family and work for with a steady monthly income is a common thing, very very few people have the luxury of being able to retire at a (relaitively) young age from doing art. I have personally never met anyone in the art field, or any other field for that matter, who were able to make such an amount of money, to retire and make a decent living in a sunny country. So this equation doesn't seem to sum up. People work at companies, whether it's based upon art or not, and still make a decent living by an average standard. Why would we be different? Or are you talking about "decent" as in the excess of luxury I can live without, then we might have different perspectives on things. Honsetly, it seems as if you are approaching this in from an american point of view. My I ask what inspired you to write those comments? Please don't take this in the wrong way, I am merely interested in your thoughts.

Edit no316: I spell like crap.

Back to painting...

(Sorry if this sounds too focused on me, but since my situation was brought up I wanted to comment on it.)
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[Lunatique]

Guys, listen to Spooge, he's got it down tight and true.

Absolutely write everything off that you're allowed to legally. I've been lucky that I learned very early on about the business end of art because I started doing freelance work in comic books just out of high school. The other pros taught me that I can write just about anything off.

Doing freelance, you have to take care of your own taxes--meaning either you bite the bullet and do it yourself, or have an accountant do it for you. I have a guy that I've been going for for years--one that I trust. I kept all of my receipts--and I'm talking EVERYTHING, from gas station receipts, restaurant receipts, supermarket receipts, to movie ticket receipts. As a freelance artist, you are entitled legally to write off anything and everything that can be classified as reference material(books, magazines, toys), inspiration(CD's DVD's), business expenses(phone bills, rent, electricity bills--and treating an editor to dinner counts)..etc. If your studio is based in your home, then you calculate how much space is actually used for your business, and you can deduct a percentage of all domestic costs as business expense.

There were years when I didn't have to pay any taxes, and got money back instead--because according to my expenses vs. income, I was taking a loss. THAT is why you should write everything off that you can.

And about getting screwed--it's not enough to sign a contract. A company can always file chapter 11, and when that happens, you won't see a cent. I got ripped off for my very first freelance job. I was 18, and worked on a comic book for almost a year, and ended up getting paid only 25% of what was owed me--and that put me in a financial hole so deep that it almost finished me off. So, if a company looks/smells shady, don't do business at all--a contract and a few signatures means jack shit if they are determined to not pay you.

Artists are notorious for being clueless about taking care of finances. It's really a bad excuse, because everyone else in the world has to take care of their financial lives--artists are not immune to mundane responsibilities. Get started now, and build up some good habits. I was young and foolish--until I got married. Boy do you learn fast once you have a family. . ..

[spooge demon]

Henrik,

The American way of life is to spend 20 percent more than you earn, always. Your eyes would fall out is you saw the figures on consumer debt in this country. All those zippy cars you see on the 101 freeway? Money they don't have.

I am saying do exactly the opposite of the American way. Live on 20% (or more) less than what you make, it can be done. I shop at the Salvation Army and buy used stuff when I have to buy stuff at all. A lot of my clothes I find in the jungle, from people who don�t put em back on after swimming in the waterfalls here. Find you pleasure in making money as opposed to spending it.

Yes, I am a cheap bastard and it runs my wife crazy.

Why? Ever priced a college education? Retirement is getting longer as life spans increase. They are redoing the actuarial tables now. Doesn't there always seem to be an odd expense that you never counted on? Ever see a 70 year old working at McDonalds or driving a cab? People who shaved things a little too close or who were a little too optimistic. In the 1970�s when money markets were making 17 percent people retired and moved to Florida expecting that this would continue. They had to go back to work, like my Uncle, selling shoes.

Whatever you are making now, even if it is good, you cannot plan on it continuing. Ask some of the Feature animators who were making solid six figures in the mid 90�s. Not a cloud in the sky then, off to the BMW dealer. They are hurting pretty bad right now, so now it�s off to Maya classes. Expect reverses and things unforeseen, they will happen. In my case, I think the world is filling up pretty rapidly with fake digital Sargent imitations. I am planning for the day I can�t give my crap away.

The only way to really insulate yourself from things like this is to live well within your means, whatever that may be. That is not the American way at all.

[henrik]

Craig> I agree 110% on what you are suggesting, that was never the issue to begin with anyways. I do not like the buy and waste way of life that can so often be seen, not seldom in the US. Nor do I like the extreme capitalism that can be seen here. Palo Alto is a perfect example, so that explains my reaction. It seems like the mentality of "us" (as in we) does not exist here. Maybe it's just me, maybe it's just the Bay, or maybe there's a need for an honest attempt to regain control of this ship.

Thanks for the advice, I will think ahead for sure. Your thoughts are considerate. Mind you, you are approaching this from an american perspective, which is not to say it's bad or good. The phenomenon to live outside your means is not as widespread outside of the US, at least it's been obscured to me. I am the only person (with a job) who does not drive a car, (bus or train) pay a huge amount of money for rent and bills every month, and I sleep in a room so cold and with no heating it makes Sweden look like Thailand. (Thanks to my cheap housemates).

I was talking to one of my friends here at work recently, and he gave me a thorough introduction into the american lifestyle. People put themselves in debt by paying with money they do not have. This is a phenomenon that does not exist outside of the US. They go shopping to aid their needs and to get comfort. "I felt down therefor I went shopoing"...makes perfect sense.

Does your wife pick up her clothes in the jungle as well? I take it you don't care about the latest fashion out there.

Oh well, lots of crap. Keep painting.
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[B0b]

[Impaler]

Outspending your gross income is a big-time American thing.

To put it in perspective, the United States' gross domestic product is around 10 trillion dollars, more than twice the next closest country (Japan, at 4.8 trillion), yet it ranks fifth on the list of GDP per head at 35,000 bucks a person, while European countries with much lower GDP's outrank us. Even worse, our deficit is around 18 times larger than the next country on the list (500 billion or so in the hole).

It's the prevailing American attitude that debt is simply a way of life. You buy a house you can't afford, a car you don't need and slave in a job that you don't like until you're fired, replaced, or forced into early retirement, because there are no other realistic options. Still, it beats the hell out of living in Botswana.
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QED, sort of.

[spooge demon]

My wife is a normal human, me not so much. I like wallowing in compost piles in the rain, as long as it is warm.

OK back on topic, I have PSCS installed.

1) 16 bit is cool. The overhead is large, file sizes are big, supposedly because "16-bit info does not compress well." I will just have to live with it, as the flexibility in adjustments without destoying information is too cool to give up.

2)The scratch sizes explode. Open a tiny 100 k file and the scratch file is 500MB right away.

3)responsiveness seems the same as PS7.

4 ) had a bizarre error saying the file I was trying to save could not be saved because it was left open. Duplicated it, it finally saved.

5)When in the middle black screen maximize mode (just the image and toolbars showing) you can now scroll the image all over. Very nice.

6) save layers to separate files-a huge help for effects folks. Probably game as well.

7) file browser much better but still not as good as ACDSEE

6) the damn flashing cursor bug is back (my post on adobe forum)::
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When using the painting tools (and selection tools) there is a slight pause as the watch cursor shows up for a brief instant. I assume that PS is updating previews and writing undo buffers and so on.

1) As I paint with PS as my primary use, this slight delay and flashing cursor is running me nuts and ruining the flow of painting.

2) PS7 does not do this.

3) I remember a previous version of PS did this, but it was resolved in the point release. I was on a mac then, now a PC. My PC specs are very current and have no other problems.

Does anyone have a work around, or remember the previous fix?
-----------

IMHO, skip this one, buy 9

[AliasMoze]

Note: If in Hawaii, don't go skinny dipping in waterfalls within walking distance of Craig's house. Some guys are the types that will GIVE you the shirts of their backs. Now we've met the other kind.

[tayete]

SPOOGE: You mention you feel the responsiveness of the new PS the same as PS7: I have noticed that big brushes (100 pixels or more) act a bit like Painter's big brushes: the stroke appears after a while (lag). In PS7 I hadn't this problem. Have you suffered this or is it only me?

I have 2 Gbs RAM, so I supposse that shouldn't be a problem...
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[Tinusch]

Why the hell is PS becoming so damn expensive? We're up to $1000 now?

[Ian Jones]

Tayete, must just be because he has dual Xeon's...

[B0b]

the $1000 is for the suite of apps, not just PS 8

[dr . bang]

[spooge demon]

tayete, I did some tests and PSCS is a little faster with mondo brushes, at least on my machine. Also, and more importantly, it feels that way.

The watch cursor blight has been solved! Get rid of the histogram.

bang, if I were to put up a bunch of bad digi photos from my trip to jersey I would probably get Adobe's attention more. That, and several billion like it, are the big meaty target.

[B0b]

ROFL Jersey..

hmm just thought about that.. prolly not talking about the Jersey off the coast of france right?!

[cheney]

Craig, a few questions:

Does the software have any advances in hardware access or scratch disk setup? I know you now have a dual Xeon system as well. Are you able to run Photoshop with any increase in performance with Hyperthreading enabled?

What is the purpose/benefit of 16bit over 8bit that comes at the horrible price of a further saturated scratch disk? Please do not waste your time defining 16bit encoding in too much detail, because I can simple research this on google at the expensive of my own time.

Are there any improvements in scratch disk efficiency, compression, resource tasking and so forth? The last image I created corrupted my WinXP install because it was 1808mb when saved as a PSD, but it must have been larger that 20-25gb when open in scratch disk. I cannot imagine how horribly evil it would be to multiply that out for 16bit.

Saving layers into their own files would be insanely awesome. I am really hating to waste 1+ hours just while Photoshop opens a massive image. I also hate having to save a single image into multiple PSDs merely to overcome the shortcomings of working large.

--------

Being deployed out to Kuwait is so damn boring so far. I have been gone for 2 weeks as of yesterday, and I am still in Georgia. Atleast I will be leaving country in a few days if everything goes as planned. I hope to get there as soon as possible, because my 1 year tour does not start counting down until I get to Kuwait. I suppose it could be worse though. There are other units here waiting to deploy as well, except they have been here a month longer and won't deploy until mid-Feburary. Worst of all I will miss my kid taking her first steps and I already completely fucking miss Photoshop. Atleast I will have more than $40,000 saved up for an investment or for a down payment on a small $90,000 house.
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[zaar]

The ones here who's used CS might know that one of the new features is to make custom keyboard shortcuts. This is something that I've wanted for a long time. Not because I need to reconfigure every shortcuts there is. No, I'm quite satisfied with how the default shortcuts are laid out.
What I want is to make shortcut to the color picker (the big window the opens when one clicks the fore-/background swatches). And now it seems it's one of the few things that are not available in dialog where one creates the keyboard shortcuts...
Good job Adobe! You've got a application where almost every single little thing already has a shortcut, and the ones that don't can't be connected to one.

Or did I miss something?

[Snakebyte]

GOOD LORD the scratch disk usage!! I read someone here mention it so I opened up the same image in both PS7 and PS8....NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
A WIP drawing I have going on now is 144.5MBs (Scratch Size) in PS7 and 912.6 in PS8, that�s bad. Task manager shows that 358MBs of actual ram in use for PS7 (with other apps running) and 753MBs for PS8 for the SAME image (yes I closed PS7 before opening .

JESUS CHRIST AHHHHHAHAHAHAHH I just tried one of my 300MB files NNOOOOOOOO. Photoshop7�s scratch size went to 1.92Gigs with all 2Gig of ram in use�normal�. SAME PSD FILE in photoshop 8 had a scratch size of �.are you sitting�5.63GIG�S,INSANE I tell you, nightmares of working with my old Pentium 150 are coming back��

I need therapy now..
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www.darkesthorizons.com

[Torstein Nordstrand]

Does this happen only with 16-bit images, or with standard 8-bit as well?
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[B0b]

i'll wait for my new rig b4 getting that then..

[Snakebyte]

If your refurring to my comment I was only using standard 8-bit psd's. Also, the WIP drawing that used 912Mb scratch in PS8 was Created in PS8 while the 300MB image was a PS7 drawing. (if you have no clue what I'm writing about look up a few post)
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Kevin Moore
www.darkesthorizons.com

[Snakebyte]

[Torstein Nordstrand]

Thanks Snakebyte. What the hell kind of advantage can justify that leap of scratch disk usage?

I'll sure stay with 7 for the moment...
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[henrik]

Wow, this is going to help people working in print...o_O. My VAIO laptop is intimidated by all the CS memory stuff, I can feel it tremble.
So what confuses me is that Adobe didn't consider this a huge problem...a 300MB file is not THAT big, however 5.5 gig is....
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[spooge demon]

I sometimes wonder about PS reported scratch size and real performance. When PS 3 came out people were pissed that a scratch file was created automatically, even if you had enough RAM to fit 5 times the document. People were quite sure that this was slow! They demanded a way to turn it off. It did not seem to really affect anything and PS was worked that way since.

I have played with PS CS for about a week now, and I see large scratch files, but no decrease in performance. PS is running on 1.7 GB, and the scratch files can be 2.5-3 GB. So what I mean by this is I overrun my installed RAM by almost a GB, and it seems quite OK. And the conventional wisdom is I should see everything STOP, regardless of how fast my scratch disk may be.

I think that you have to trust the engineers that write this stuff to a certain extent. When I was first introduced to PS by one of the brothers that designed and wrote it, I got a glimpse of how complex it really is. And that was version 2!

The conclusions you draw by large scratch sizes are probably simplistic and in error, is what I am trying to say. Is the scratch file from one image or many? Is it a large dimension image or many layers or a hundred alpha channels?

Cheney, there are some switches that come on the CD (registry hacks) that can change whether or not the scratch file is compressed or not, and a few other tricks. I think they were available in previous versions. Like I said, performance on big files seems better to me, even with the huge reported scratch files.

I can see the benefit of 16bit to people who like to torture scans. But I think it is pretty far out there on the cost/benefit curve, out there with 10000 pix files 

I would use it for very dark images that are going back to film. Would have some in very handy on Matrix. But for light or midtone or more �expanded� images, I think it gets pointless. And on the dark images the work around was to paint lighter with more info and crush it later. Worked fine.

Speaking of, do you really need to work that large? I suppose in absolute terms it is �better� but practically speaking, I wonder. I find diminishing returns past 6-7K. Increasing rez is not linear in terms of quality. There is a big difference between a 500 px and 1000 px file. But between a 5000 and 10000, there is less of a visible difference. If my client is an anal retentive art director with a sharp eye and a 30x loop, maybe. There are (were) effects supervisors who would not let people use PS because of the 8-bit, and they had to work at 4k. And this was with 128 MB machines. They work looked no better. Final Fantasy was done at 1800 pixels. With a tad of sharpening. Looks good to me. I know that moving images are a different world, and print resolutions are much higher, but the printed images I have seen that started life at fairly low rez look fine as well. Send a mail to the guys who did the Expose book. They had a line on some cool fractal tools that allowed them to print from very lo rez stuff at adequate quality (I have not seen the book) The only place where I see files that big are scans of big negatives or stuff meant for really high rez billboards. But even then what is the viewing distance? Big prints meant to be seen up close need rez. But anything else really doesn�t need it beyond a certain point.

Just a few random thoughts. I am sure you have your reasons, and they must be good ones to put up with files that size.

You are going to miss the first steps? That sucks more than anything..

[zaar]

This is not very scientific but I fired up PS CS opened a small PSD file and checked the memory usage in the task manager, then I closed CS and opened PS 7 and even before I had opened the PSD file (which was really small) the memory usage was higher. I haven't tried it a lot yet but it doesn't feel that much (if any) slower when I paint. And the new color adjustment tools are great! The lens blur filter is cool, and might come in handy if I need to composite 3d stuff in photoshop.

So CS isn't that bad at all. Now I just want to figure out a way to make a shortcut to the color picker.

[cheney]

Your questioning of my insanely large resolutions is certainly valid. The largest I have ever needed to work is 6000x9000px. I enjoy seeing my art in print for my own benefit even if nobody else will see it. The largest print size available to me from the print service I use is 20x30in. So, I prefer to create art at 300dpi.

I actually notice a slight difference in quality from 150 to 200dpi, and a much larger difference in quality at 300dpi. The benefit is minor texture elements that add a whole new world of realism. Even if the composition of my images is horribly boring I do have to admit the final texture qualities of my larger images is incredibly stunning.

Another benefit is absolute crispness of sharp lighting. Diffused lighting is not really effected so much through higher resolutions, but small sharp lines of light are far more brilliant in higher resolutions.

The third benefit is the least noticable, but it makes a difference for the most anal-rententive of details. Anti-aliasing of pixelation is always reduced the higher resolution you print. Above 150dpi pixelation becomes a less problem, but sharpness will always improve as resolution increases.

Size benefit is the last issue. This has been an issue that has concerned painters since the time of dirt. Larger images contain finer details, and more impressive subject matter. Larger finished projects are more impressive. As a result the cost benefit is to produce the largest possible prints at a high resolution. I don't know what the benefit above 300dpi is on large prints since I have never attempted anything radically larger worth comparing. I have seen my images printed at insanely high resolutions for smaller prints, but smaller prints are always less impressive. Nobody wants to whip out a magnification glass to see details in a small print.
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[B0b]

i nearly forgot Spooge! has it managed to break the 2GB RAM barrier? i'm guessing not as u've got it @ 1.7GB..

[B0b]

i agree with u on the size of print spooge, i do a few jobs that are done for shows, roll-up, maxibit etc. they've always asked for 72 or 150dpi work.. with print, it all depends on lpi, 200dpi u can get away with 150 lines, where 300dpi is for 200 lines..