Mac for artists??? Still don't see it.

[Jim Campbell]

In my personal view - hands on experience counts much more then a degree, either you have a knack for it or you don't..

Hands on experience ≠ self-taught. I don't have any formal design qualifications, but I worked my way from paste-up monkey to senior designer and production manager positions in the newspaper and magazine industry.

For print work I would argue that "self-taught" is likely to leave you with large, possibly catastrophic gaps in your knowledge. If you don't understand trapping, gamuts, ink limits, and any number of other pieces of print-based esoterica then you may find your work differs from both screen and proof when finally printed, which may cost you money for reprinting and goodwill by making you look incompetent. Many of these things are obscure and often counter-intuitive and if you can't rely on having a sympathic person in pre-press to fix your c*ck-ups.

That's not a go at you, Yamcha, and I've done enough web-design to know that the discipline has its own battery of obscure and confusing quirks waiting to trip you up, but the print field seems to suffer disproportionately from people with no experience and a hooky copy of Photoshop they snagged off BitTorrent thinking they're designers.

Cheers

Jim

 

[Mac_Max]

...
In all honesty, and I don't mean this to be rude, it sounds like you need to brush up on your day-to-day computer skills before you should be diving into design.

^There.

This is as much a Mac v.s. PC issue as it is a Mac v.s. Potato issue.

 

[kevinfulton.ca]

Hands on experience ≠ self-taught. I don't have any formal design qualifications, but I worked my way from paste-up monkey to senior designer and production manager positions in the newspaper and magazine industry.

For print work I would argue that "self-taught" is likely to leave you with large, possibly catastrophic gaps in your knowledge. If you don't understand trapping, gamuts, ink limits, and any number of other pieces of print-based esoterica then you may find your work differs from both screen and proof when finally printed, which may cost you money for reprinting and goodwill by making you look incompetent. Many of these things are obscure and often counter-intuitive and if you can't rely on having a sympathic person in pre-press to fix your c*ck-ups.

That's not a go at you, Yamcha, and I've done enough web-design to know that the discipline has its own battery of obscure and confusing quirks waiting to trip you up, but the print field seems to suffer disproportionately from people with no experience and a hooky copy of Photoshop they snagged off BitTorrent thinking they're designers.

Cheers

Jim

Cheers

Jim

Well said Jim! Though I would also qualify as a "self-taught" I was VERY lucky to have helping hands along the way to help me understand how the print process works. Being somebody in a print house that prepares the artwork for print gives me a pretty solid look on the state of graphic designers and I have to say that it's not very pretty. Unfortunately, understanding how the print process works seems to be turning into a lost art, even though the need for those skills is still quite high. Just the other day I needed to explain to a senior designer, from a major design firm, what a halftone was........let that sink in......a SENIOR DESIGNER!! My advice for anybody looking to teach themselves would be: Yes you CAN do it, but you need to be VERY motivated, read lots of books, watch lots of tutorials,and have somebody experienced who you can bounce technical questions off of because not everything is written in books. Good luck to ya!

 

[gorjan]

OP:
Art as in WordArt? That seems more like what you're after. :roll eyes: Of course you need tools to be able to do what you want.

 

[doug in albq]

10's of thousands of free fonts, cover any and all design styles, can be found and downloaded with a two-word search on Google. Quite easy to install with fontBook.

hint: "Free fonts."

 

[AppleMacFinder]

How could the application cost the half of a high-end computer?
They should update their price policy, or they will never stop the piracy.

 

[6749974]

How could the application cost the half of a high-end computer?
They should update their price policy, or they will never stop the piracy.

Well I think the price makes sense for agencies and professionals, and especially made sense when they were empowering their customers. But their price certainly isn't matching the pricing needs of students or hobbyest/professionals just starting out, hence the mass torrenting, and Adobe certainly isn't empowering current users as much as they used to. So I think a competitor is now welcome in this space. They made the bed.

 

[THX1139]

How could the application cost the half of a high-end computer?
They should update their price policy, or they will never stop the piracy.

You obviously don't know the difference between designing a computer vs designing software. Computers are made up of (fairly cheap) parts that are designed by other companies and sold to be assembled. The computers are designed, then they are mass produced and sold... then they move onto the next iteration. Meanwhile, software has thousands (even millions) of lines of code and is constantly changing according to operating system changes and customer needs. It takes a very large highly paid team going full time to manage, write, and rewrite software... not to mention the initial outlay to concept and code the application. It's not unusual for high-end software to take a year or two of a team of full time coders to work on it before it even gets to market. Take FCX for example. It took Apple a couple of years to get that rather unfinished product to market. They probably invested a couple million before they saw the first dime.

And for what it's worth, there are applications out their that cost double what the computer system price is. Check out Autodesk Flame. It's a finishing program used for film production. Last time I checked, the software alone was over $125 thousand (it includes Flint, so that's a bargain I guess). Now Adobe CS seems cheap by comparison!

 

[sehnsucht77]

no pictures = no care

 

[THX1139]

Well I think the price makes sense for agencies and professionals, and especially made sense when they were empowering their customers. But their price certainly isn't matching the pricing needs of students or hobbyest/professionals just starting out, hence the mass torrenting, and Adobe certainly isn't empowering current users as much as they used to. So I think a competitor is now welcome in this space. They made the bed.

It's getting better... but there is still a huge disparity on the cost of software for beginners and students. Often, they can get a discount... but by the time you add everything up, it's still too expensive starting out. The initial cost outlay to learn a program that you're not able to make money with is what causes most piracy. Some people have a dream to enter the industry, but first they need to build a portfolio and acquire the skills. That can easily run into thousands of dollars to invest in learning a skill to enter a highly competitive industry that you're not sure you're cut out for. A friend of mine bought a full version of Final Cut Studio back in 2006. He had an interest in becoming a video editor and wanted to be legit. A year later he had only edited 2 short films and one 20 minute documentary before discovering that wasn't the career direction he wanted to go in. He didn't make a dime off the software. So, he's out $1500 just to have the opportunity to learn that he didn't want to do that. In hindsight, he said that he would have been better off to pirate it, then decide later whether to buy it.

A few years ago, I was working on a short experimental film. I needed a special effect that would take me several hours to recreate (if I could do it at all). I did a search and found a plugin that would do exactly what I needed. Trouble was, it cost $400 for the plugin. I actually found myself looking for a pirated version because I couldn't justify the cost of something that I would only use once, and it would bring me no financial return. It would be like buying an iPad and being able to only use it for the weekend. I wound up changing my concept because I couldn't use the plugin.

----------

no pictures = no care

Reading can be difficult for some people.

 

[Apple OC]

about 15 years ago ... Graphic Design created on a PC created problems for the Printing Industry ... some Printing companies couldn't even work with PC files.

Also there was a time when Adobe was only used on a Mac

 

[opeter]

about 15 years ago ... Graphic Design created on a PC created problems for the Printing Industry ... some Printing companies couldn't even work with PC files.

Also there was a time when Adobe was only used on a Mac

But fortunately, this was in the past. Today you can get the same quality on the PC platform too. Since most of the (design) applications are the same.
The exchange of file formats has radically improved.
Not to mention OpenType fonts ...

So, today, there is no need for a Mac, to do quaility design job.
The modern Macs (since Snow Leopard) default monitor gamma set today is 2.2, as it was always on the Windows side.

It is mostly a personal preference: if you like MacOS more, than you will use a Mac. That is the only difference. And there are some specific software, that works only on one or only on another platform. But these are rare cases.

Stability? Not an issue for me on the PC. The Adobe apps are freezing on both platforms.

 

[smali]

OP is either bad at trolling or genuinely clueless.

 

[testcss]

OP is either bad at trolling or genuinely clueless.

Genuinely clueless. Read the OP's other posts. Coming from an IBM to a mac is a big jump and can be frustrating if one doesn't take time to learn the about the OS.

 

[ktbubster]

How has no one pointed out the op not being able to see fonts in his designs during layout??? Thats not anywhere near normal. Sounds like a reinstall is in order......

 

[ezekielrage_99]

Either trolling of epic proportion OR really is like my 90 year old grandmother trying to get the gist of vi.

Anyway this thread has been an awesome read.

BTW OP with Pages you can view fonts rather easy by going to Preferences (apple + ,) and select the preview box. Also with font, most OS only come with a select few font if you want good quality professional packs you're going to have to pay for the them, otherwise I'd suggest hitting Font Squirrel and Smashing Magazine there are some very nice freebies there.

Also Windows comes with just as many fonts as Mac OS, if you're judging an entire ecosystem on fonts and M$ Paint that's a very short yardstick and I'd understand if you're underwhelmed.

 

[MonkeySee....]

I've seen some wind ups in my past but this is takes the biscuit!