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      COMPUTERS


      
In the late 80's I was working
      as a graphic and production artist in a screen printing company.
      I was vaguely aware of computers being used for producing art.
      Then John, who was working on his thesis on computers at one
      of the private colleges in Honolulu, approached the owners of
      the company about setting up a network of computers for our shop.
      The owners agreed. John asked me a lot of questions about what
      I did in the art department to get an idea what I needed. He
      had planned on getting the art department up and running first
      before anyone else in the shop. The computer platform he decided
      to use was the MacIntosh. The Mac II family of computers were
      the latest models for Apple around that time. The Mac OS was
      called System 6.

      
It took me about six months to
      get comfortable and understand how to really use the Mac. John
      tutored me a little bit in the beginning but I pretty much had
      to learn on my own on the short amount of time I could spend
      on the computer. The computer that John set up for the art room
      was a MacIIcx. After asking me some questions, he chose Freehand
      over Illustrator for my drawing program. John figured out how
      to use Freehand and then showed me how to use it. I've never
      used a computer before so it was a whole new experience. The
      problem was getting me to use it on a regular basis. There was
      so much work to be done and I had to get the jobs out as fast
      as I could. Since I hardly knew how to use the computer I would
      end up doing the work the old way, which was actually faster
      because that was what I was used to. I did use the Mac for a
      lot of typesetting but I couldn't do a complete job on it. I
      finally resolved to learn how to use the computer. I would stay
      after work, on my own free time, and familiarize myself with
      the machine. I even did actual jobs, just the very simple ones
      first and made sure I completed them from start to finish. The
      Mac transformed the way work was done in the art room after I
      finally got used to it.

      
 

      
MacIntosh Computers

      
Things changed for the better
      when I started using Macs for art production and design. Macs
      made it a lot easier to create, revise and do color separations.
      It made everything fast and convenient. I could create a design
      for a customer, have the customer come in, and while he's there
      make changes on the spot. In the old days, any changes had to
      be redrawn all over again and the process took time. The early
      days of using the Mac was an incredible period of learning and
      discovery. It changed the way I did my designs and the way I
      worked. Macs and the graphics programs took away a lot of the
      technical aspect of designing and freed the artist to concentrate
      more on the creative process.

      
The two most popular vector drawing
      programs, at least for the Mac side, are Adobe Illustrator and
      Macromedia Freehand. Freehand changed hands a few time. If I
      remember it right, it was owned by Altsys, then marketed by Aldus
      (where I started using it as Aldus Freehand 3.0), then Adobe
      owned it for a brief period of time before the creators of the
      program took it back, then it became Macromedia Freehand, which
      is what it is now. Freehand is the one I'm most comfortable with
      for drawing. Adobe Photoshop is the most widely used image editing
      or paint program. For desktop publishing, Quark Xpress is king.
      Adobe Pagemaker was its main competitor until Adobe came out
      with InDesign. There are many other graphics programs to choose
      from. Corel has Corel Draw and Photopaint, which I've used to
      some extent. There's also Canvas, which is a combination drawing
      and paint program. There's Painter that simulates the many different
      paint tools. These and other lesser known programs are the ones
      you'll most likely find in the computers of graphic and production
      artists.

      

      
 

      
PC's and the
      Windows platform

      
I was hired by a sign company
      in 1997. The computer they used in the art department for typesetting,
      graphics and plotting was a PC. I was curious about Windows and
      wanted to learn how to use it. The Windows version they were
      using at that time was Windows 3.1, which was a far cry from
      Windows 95. I got to use it for about 6 months then it got upgraded
      to Windows 95. We're now using Windows 2000 on a Dell computer.

      
    

      
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