The Résumé:

A resume is an organized list of your skills and experience, nothing more. Several pages of fluff can frustrate an employer who is trying to find key information. Like your cover letter, you should tailor your resume to the position for which you are applying. If the job requires any special information, such as salary history or requirements, please give detailed and correct figures instead of writing “negotiable” or “average.” Make sure your resume is honest, correct, and up-to-date.

A good resume will be no longer than two pages and will include:

1. Contact information (phone numbers, email address, and mailing address)
2. Objective (the exact position you are applying for, and your goals)
3. Work experience (employment dates, job titles, and concise descriptions of responsibilities)
4. Skills (C++ and Java, 3D Studio Max, Networking, Excel, etc.)
5. Education (degrees, certifications, and additional training)
6. Other relevant skills (related skills, personal notes)\

The Cover letter: A cover letter explains why you want this particular job at this particular company. It gives the employer better insight on your desire, writing skills, and personality. A good cover letter should be one page, with three full paragraphs describing why you are exceptionally qualified for the position for which you are applying. Remember, this is your opportunity to stand apart from the hundreds of other people who are applying for the same position. A letter that seems very general will only give the impression that you are mass mailing your resume out for any job available. Also, make sure you proofread and spell-check your cover letter. Spelling and grammatical errors suggest a lacking attention to detail.

University of Michigan School of Art & Design/ Cover Letter Writing www.art-design.umich.edu/pdf/cover_letters2.pdf

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http://www.ebsqart.com/ArtMagazine/za_545.htm

Scanning or photographing large pieces of art requires specialized equipment, precision, and optimum lighting conditions that are very difficult for the average person to achieve. Selling professional quality prints at its core, requires good input, or in other words - very high quality digital images. I'm sure everyone here has heard the expression "Garbage in Garbage Out", and it's important to realize that it could not be more relevant here.

As well, even with photography one should consider that the final output size of a print will ultimately be limited by the available size and resolution of a digital file.  For example, an original photographic work, or even a photo of a painting with a 10 mega pixel camera will only yield a file around 3872 x 2592 pixels.  We’ll get into the subject of resolution in a minute, but basically, a file that size would only facilitate a print of about 38x25 inches MAX.  Using even a "prosumer" grade scanner on your film negatives has a very similar limit.  So get your work professionally captured - it’s worth the investment.

Therefore our discussion assumes you're already in possession of high quality images, and so we will begin with where to go from there. Let’s get started!.

I've broken this presentation down into three topics that always seem to be at the forefront of our own customers' questions. We’ve decided to leave out the fourth topic which was to be Simple Image Correction since this really deserves its own live presentation. These topics are:

• File Formats and Image Quality
• Resolution and Image Size
• Color Management Basics

Each of these topics plays an important role in ensuring the success of your print reproductions and it's my aim today to dispel some common myths while providing everyone with a rounded overview of the important elements regarding each one. I say rounded because I want to keep the less experienced users involved without confusing them with high level terminology, while focusing on the key points to understanding and working well with your digital files.

As much as possible I will provide images to illustrate some of these points and will be relying on Photoshop CS2 as the primary example image editing software application. Those of you using other image editing software should still be able to use most of these principles in your work flow.

As always, I'll run through the presentation in its entirety and then open the floor for a Q&A session afterwards where you can ask more directed questions, and I will do my best to answer them!

File Formats and Image Quality

So first of all let's begin by discussing what we mean when we talk about digital images. What is a digital image? Quite simply a digital image is an electronic file that is a visual representation of something.  There are two main categories of image files: "Raster" and "Vector" files.  We’ll touch on both, but start with raster images.

What is a raster image file you ask?  It is a technical name for the type of image file you are likely most familiar with. It is an image file that visually represents something by using a finite amount of dots otherwise known as pixels or rasters. These pixels are the building blocks that collectively make up the image as we see it on screen and ultimately on print.

Pixels can also be explained as tiny squares of light and color that get stacked together both vertically and horizontally and are assigned a dark to light value between 0 (solid black) - 255 (pure white) to represent the image or picture. Unlike traditional film media which is a purely continuous tone process, digital imaging and printing relies on these dots or pixels to create the illusion of continuous tone both onscreen and in your output to print. I mentioned that there is a finite amount of these pixels or rasters, but we'll touch on that a little later when we discuss resolution: the size and/or frequency of these building blocks. We'll also compare rasters to vectors to illustrate how scaling can impact the quality of your image. Now that we've defined what an image file is, we'll talk about some of the different file formats that raster images can exist as. The most common image file formats used today are:

• JPEG
• TIFF
• PNG

We’ll go through these one by one and explain some of the pros, cons, and correct usage of each.

Perhaps the most common and widely used image file format used is JPEG. In fact, most all digital cameras today output image files as JPEGs by default. For those who are interested, JPEG is an acronym for "Joint Photographic Experts Group" and is simply a form of image compression created to reduce the file size of digital images.  JPEGs are compressed image files. We'll get into that in a minute.

In contrast, TIFF files are also image files but are "uncompressed" images meaning they store all the data in an image.

PNG files are image files that use compression algorithms but in a "lossless" manner, meaning they uncompress back to their original quality.  Usually a PNG file is best used with a specific type of image, such as one with limited colors, as it will create a smaller file size (in MBs) than a TIFF, but retain all of the images information.

These file formats are often referred to as either "lossy" or "lossless".  This simply means that a file type will either lose some information as it is created, or ultimately keep it.  A similar subject, but not the exactly the same, is compression.

So What is Image Compression? The primary difference between these three types of files is in the way they store data and more importantly, how much data they store. JPEG's as I mentioned above use file compression to reduce file size. File compression essentially looks at an image and either removes data that is duplicated or has little value to the image or saves it in shorter form.

For example if you had an image that had large blocks of solid red, only one pixel of that color red would be saved along with all the other locations of the color. When the image is displayed or "uncompressed" it would apply that bit of data to all the red areas in the image. The degree to which data is discarded of course depends on the quality selected which many of you already know it is possible to specify when saving as a JPEG. Higher quality equals less compression and vice versa. Here is an example of an original image (top) which we've saved both as a high quality & low quality JPEG.

As you can see the image to the left has little compression and shows smoother gradations or transitions between colors and highlights/shadows… the image on the right was saved with lots of compression resulting in a small file but an image that is not suitable for printing. Along these lines, I should point out that another primary caveat to using JPEGs is that JPEG compression suffers from generational loss meaning that every time a JPEG file is opened and re-saved it degrades further and further. This is less noticeable if you always work with the highest quality JPEGs but can manifests itself when printing at larger sizes. What file types should you be using? Ultimately, one should look at what the destination or use is for an image. For most people, JPEG's are simply the smarter choice. They are great when you are trying to conserve space on your hard drive or when you want to email them to friends. They look great on-screen and will even look good in print if the image is of high enough quality.

Photographs tend to look better as JPGs than more graphical images, as they have a range of tone.  Graphical images with large areas of 1 or 2 solid colors can be misinterpreted by JPGs and thus may be more suited for PNG files. However if professional print quality is the ultimate goal, TIFF files are probably what you should be working with. While TIFF's can be extremely large files sometimes exceeding 500MB or more in size, they will faithfully reproduce all of the information or DNA stored in your image to print and especially do not suffer from generational loss like a JPEG.

As an alternative, or if sending huge files across the internet doesn't work for you, one could build their workflow around TIFF files with the final version being exported as a JPEG, saving that JPEG with the highest quality setting (12). Using this model, all image editing is done in a lossless environment with compression added only to the final version of the file. OK... Moving on...

Resolution and Image Size

Resolution is perhaps one of the most confusing and misunderstood topics related to print production. I know from personal experience at Imagekind, that it is one of the more popular questions that we get. It generally goes something like this: "I want to upload images to my gallery but I need to know what resolution you guys require"? For reasons that I will try to describe below, this is quite literally an impossible question to answer with a blanket response. You see, image resolution is directly dependant on output size... so here we go… While resolution can be used to describe display devices like a monitor or TV (screen res), our focus here is on IMAGE RESOLUTION and its impact on PRINTED OUTPUT. We're going to talk primarily about pixels and their relationship to resolution. Previously I had mentioned that images are comprised of a finite amount of these pixels which collectively make up the images we see. This concept is particularly important to remember as we discuss resolution. Simply speaking, image resolution is a term used to describe the number of pixels present in a unit of measurement. As our focus is on print production, the unit of measurement for most of us on this continent is inches. Otherwise known as PPI or pixels-per-inch, it is the primary measure of image resolution relative to its output size or print size.

Remember now that because there are only so many pixels present in a given image, the effective resolution of an image will change as you alter the desired output size for your prints. For example, increasing the output size (of your print) will simply redistribute the same number of pixels over a larger area and DECREASE your print resolution. Conversely, reducing the desired size of your print or document size, will pack those pixels closer together increasing your print resolution. I'll illustrate this in a  minute. Now, quite often people like to refer to resolution as DPI or dots-per-inch. While most people generally understand the inference, it is technically incorrect. DPI is a term used to define the resolution of printed output (your prints). It is NOT a measure of image resolution (PPI).

While we now know that images on screen are created with pixels, it's important to understand that printers use dots to re-create images. On an inkjet printer these would be dots of ink and in the case of a laser printer these would of course be dots or particles of toner. Either way, as modern printers are capable of producing dots far smaller than a pixel, DPI should always be higher than PPI. I almost can't stress this enough -- Once people begin thinking about their images in terms of pixels and in particular pixel dimensions, resolution begins to make perfect sense.

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An Artist Statement is Not a Marketing Tool
By Ariane Goodwin http://www.artist-statement.com/links.html

That's funny, you might be thinking, isn't everything in the '90s a marketing tool? Our competition-driven culture tries to sell us the Scarcity Story, and in this myth Marketing is the Head of State. There are too many artists, we are told, and too few places for art. Scarcity is the dark handmaiden who drives up prices, all for the good of our impending fame and fortune. What more could we possibly want? In this impoverished world view, the artist statement is pumped up as a marketing tool: your secret weapon.

But this perspective puts the cart before the horse and does a dis-service to the spirit of your work. Like art that is made strictly for the marketplace, an artist statement which focuses on the shallow "point of purchase" technique looses its authenticity, its authorship and its unique reflection of an artist's work.

It may be that your artist statement ends up being used as an effective marketing tool--one of several possible applications--but that is not what it is. This is an important distinction. Separating out what an artist statement is from how you will use it is crucial. Writing is hard enough; the last thing an artist needs is to try and satisfy the illusive and enigmatic "market."

      ·        start with something familiar, closer to home: the uniqueness of your work.

Herein lies the power of an artist statement.

An artist statement is not a personal critique of your work, nor a resume, a list of accomplishments, nor a historical summary of what you've done. An artist statement is

·        your reflection about your work,

·        a distilled essence of what you do.

·        a celebration of your art,

·        a personal revelation,

·        a psychological bridge between you and your audience.

 Practical uses for your artist statement: Brochures

• Press releases
• Art festivals
• Grant applications
• Biographical notes
• Exhibition & Performance notices
• Galleries
• Media articles

Most importantly, an artist statement enriches an artist's connection to their work. It becomes a point of validation and affirmation, a place to allow connections to emerge between unconscious symbolism and conscious living, much like dream work. Understanding and naming what we do through language is not to have the beauty or mystery dismantled; though, as artists, we often fear this. Language gives us the sense of irrevocably fixing something in time and space. Actually, it is no different than fixing, say, a painting in time and space. An artist makes choices: this lemon, not that vase. This red, not that yellow. This curve, not that angle. When we use words, we are doing the exact same selection, with the same freedom of choice. Like your work is bound in the material world by its physical manifestation, your artist statement is also bound--by your choice-- and can be unbound, or actually, re-bound again and again, by your continued choices. Keep in mind your power to undo or redo what you choose in one moment, or another. From this perspective, the fear that an artist statement will fix us, like cement, in some permanent state becomes groundless.

The next hurdle is the writing. For artists immersed in a visual idiom, words often feel like shackles. There is a deep mistrust of language that shows up as "My art says it all," or "I have nothing to say." Which really translates into "I have nothing of importance to say," as if we cannot face the authority of words that might end up belittling us. It is good exercise to challenge this assumption. Try on the opposite response. Imagine that you have a lot to say about your art, which is neither self-important nor trivial, but relevant, revealing, and wonderful. Because, the good news is: you can recover your own words. In spite of the self-conscious fears about writing that we were given in school, in spite of the judgmental authority of justified art "criticism," there is an un self-conscious language, which you use all the time when thinking or talking about your work. The trick is to learn how to catch yourself doing it and then deliberately write it down. Gather up as much material--good, bad, and indifferent--for your artist statement as you can. Above all, in the beginning, don't censor yourself. Every single thought is grist for the mill. Here are a few suggestions.

 Most importantly, an artist statement enriches an artist's connection to their work. It becomes a point of validation and affirmation, a place to allow connections to emerge between unconscious symbolism and conscious living, much like dream work. Understanding and naming what we do through language is not to have the beauty or mystery dismantled; though, as artists, we often fear this. Language gives us the sense of irrevocably fixing something in time and space. Actually, it is no different than fixing, say, a painting in time and space. An artist makes choices: this lemon, not that vase. This red, not that yellow. This curve, not that angle. When we use words, we are doing the exact same selection, with the same freedom of choice. Like your work is bound in the material world by its physical manifestation, your artist statement is also bound--by your choice-- and can be unbound, or actually, re-bound again and again, by your continued choices. Keep in mind your power to undo or redo what you choose in one moment, or another. From this perspective, the fear that an artist statement will fix us, like cement, in some permanent state becomes groundless.

The next hurdle is the writing. For artists immersed in a visual idiom, words often feel like shackles. There is a deep mistrust of language that shows up as "My art says it all," or "I have nothing to say." Which really translates into "I have nothing of importance to say," as if we cannot face the authority of words that might end up belittling us. It is good exercise to challenge this assumption. Try on the opposite response. Imagine that you have a lot to say about your art, which is neither self-important nor trivial, but relevant, revealing, and wonderful. Because, the good news is: you can recover your own words. In spite of the self-conscious fears about writing that we were given in school, in spite of the judgmental authority of justified art "criticism," there is an un self-conscious language, which you use all the time when thinking or talking about your work. The trick is to learn how to catch yourself doing it and then deliberately write it down. Gather up as much material--good, bad, and indifferent--for your artist statement as you can. Above all, in the beginning, don't censor yourself. Every single thought is grist for the mill. Here are a few suggestions.