As an artist, designer, photographer or craftsperson, you may want to have samples of your artistic creations accessible on the computer so you can manipulate and enhance the images and display your talent on the Net.

How to get your artistic creations onto a computer

If you have photographic prints or slides of your artwork, you can go to a computer services company, like Kinko's and they can scan the art for you. The cost is approximately $10 per scanned image. Scanners have become very affordable so you may even want to invest in one; consumer scanners are available now for approximately $250-$500. Shop around for deals and remember the quality of scanned output is very dependent on price. Scanners comes bundled with scanning software and in many cases include additional software like PhotoDeluxe or Photoshop.

If you are serious about your art, and have many slides and a history of your work, it would be wise to take the film negatives and slides to a film processor who can transfer them to a PhotoCD. It costs around $1 per image. This will provide you with a digital file of your art work and the capability to archive each piece. Click here to see some of the author's paintings from her PhotoCD. Of course, this means you need access to a CD-ROM drive to view your photo CD's. You can rent a CD-ROM computer at your local computer services company for between $10-$20 per hour. However, it probably is worthwhile to buy a CD-ROM ($200) now because so many of the popular multimedia software products come in CD-ROM format.

Draw/Paint & other software tools to enhance and manipulate images

If you own a Windows PC, your system probably came with the Paint software. This program is very basic; it can only save files as bitmaps or (bmp). You can print these files out on a color printer but you cannot use them on a web page or in most of the desk top publishing programs. In order to create line drawings (vectors) and mix them with your photos (bitmaps), you need a programs like CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator.

You should invest in programs like PhotoDeluxe or CorelDraw if you aspire to create professional grade artwork. PhotoDeluxe is new and is at the low-end, meaning it is inexpensive and contains most of the things you'll need to edit photos (bitmaps). These programs are capable of reading and outputting many types of graphic file formats. Both the PC and the Macintosh run many of the same software programs.

If you own a Mac, the preferred program used by computer professionals is Adobe Illustrator, a drawing or vector program which can output Postscript files. Another program on the Mac for illustration is MacroMedia Freehand which is my personal favorite. With these vector or Postscript programs, you can create both precision and freeform drawings. I often create my drawings first and then bring them into Photoshop which converts them into bitmaps.

I use the features that paint programs are known for like airbrush, watercolor and paint brush effects. Special effect filters like "Mosaic" or "Trace Contour" can add more appeal to the drawings. Photoshop is highly recommended for photo-manipulation and it can also manage palettes. By managing palettes, I am referring to creating the colors that are contained in a graphic file. It is also very useful for putting artwork that you've created into the proper file format for output, as you'll need to create gifs and jpegs for the web.

Putting your Artwork on the Internet

Do your own home page! Getting a home page up doesn't require too much technical skill if you buy one of the software products that lets you assemble a home page through an easy-to-use drag and drop or menu interface. Products like Microsoft FrontPage, and Adobe Pagemill, Deltapoint's Quick Site (all $100 or less) allow you to construct the page without writing any HTML code. Join FolksOnline's helping hands forum about home page creation to discuss your questions and ideas.

Many ISP and online services provide a free home page for subscribers. Check out the offer from your current internet access provider or switch to another service that does offer a home page as part of the basic less than $20 monthly package.

Find places to post or showcase your art on the web

If you don't want to make your own home page, there are plenty of places to display your work on other people's sites. However, since there is such a diversity of artistic creations, there is no central Web site with links to the best places for posting your art work. Most non-commercial sites that showcase other people's contributions are unique to the whims and style of its creators. So the best approach is to spend time browsing around to find sites that invite participation and have the same flavor and personality as your art work.

One of the most exciting things about the web is that it enables each of us to display our creativity for the whole world to see and enjoy. So don't hesitate to show off your talent for others to appreciate.

Mary Mooney is an interface designer and information architect who began her career in the creative fields as an award-winning fine artist. Her portfolio includes work with Time-Warner's Pathfinder, Lycos, and many other major corporations. She is also the artistic designer for FolksOnline.

Glossary

Bitmap (bmp) - a computer graphic file format where an image is comprised of dots of color that correspond directly to information bits that are stored in memory of the computer.

Bit Depth - the amount of bits assigned to each pixel (the smallerst dot the screen can display). The more bits per pixel the more colors a computer or graphic file can display. For example an 8 bit graphic file can only display 256 colors and a 16 bit grafic can display 65,000 colors.

Gifs (Graphics Interchange Format) - Compression file format for a computer image file requiring a specific decoder to view.

Vector - Vector files rely on a language that defines the file mathametically (for example, PostScript) to describe how to draw a graphic.

JPEG (Joint Photography Experts Group) - A still image compression standard developed by ISO (International Standards Organization) which can be viewed on Macintosh and PC.

HTML Hyper Text Mark-up Language - this is the computer language that describes the visual look and contents of a web page.

Scanner - Hardware for digitizing images. Scanners come in several versions, from grayscale to color, and are capable of scanning a variety of bit depths