Architects and Planners alike have a great time always blaming there education system and its lack of this or that, for not using tools available nowadays at their disposal. You don't necessarily have to learn the program yourself - there are guys called CG Artists, alot of whom are on unemployment benefits, dead-end jobs, going nowhere fast, who would be only too glad to do Photoshop etc, for you. I have seen my employers (Architects and Planners) squander small fortunes in certain areas of their business, while often they said they could not afford to buy me Photoshop, 3DS MAX, etc to do meaningful worthwhile presentations of urban designs for them. I quite often witnessed guys using illegal copies of those softwares in an attempt to compensate for the employers lack of vision and narrow-mindedness in using computers. It got to a stage where my employer expected workers to use illegal versions of Graphics packages. Even though the jobs we were working on, were worth millions. I refused to use illegal copies of anything, and even went and bought a copy of 3DS myself to down the employers graphics work for master plans. Then i had to buy my own computer too, and then i decided i was better off not working there anymore. This is the way that you the professionals have been treating some of your best people - not giving them due attention/credit/opportunity.
I myself I lobbied my employers to change there thinking, i showed them my work, gave them tutorials, blah, blah, blah and still at the end of the day when it boils down to nuts and bolts... they seem to have more money for office parties and personal expenditure bills (including laundry and personal cell phone) than on giving people like me proper tools to work with. That is good feedback thankyou very much. I think the general outcome of the 'Photoshop for Planners' thread was a very, very incorrect one however. It basically gave the impression to anyone reading the thread that Photoshop was somehow an inferior product, not just a different product or a more difficult product to use (maybe PHotoshop is just for experts) to Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator. This is a VERY misleading and self-centred sort of advice to give to young people or even old people trying to learn computers for work, personal use etc. I agree 100% with the statement about learning GIS/Planning methodologies etc, and not having time to worry about Photoshop classes. In fact, i don't honestly expect anyone here at Cyburbia forum IS in fact going to suddenly start uploading 'corrected versions' of their gallery pics.
However, what i am point out, is alot of digital photography and scanned photography is FAR from being optimised, to give the best impression, sense of place, environment, feeling of a space etc. You have been clever enough to use Photoshop and think at the same time - your images to provide street lighting to an otherwise bleak stretch of urban motorway is a Tour de Force, and i take my hat off to your efforts. But since, most Planners don't have time to do Photoshop classes, i considered it worth my while to make up a decent tutorial and to post it here at Cyburbia, so that Planners here could perhaps become more aware of Professionals out there who can clean up, improve, scan old collections of Planning images etc, etc. I am a CG Artist most of the time, and i appreciate how busy you planners actually are nowadays. I respect that, but i also believe that planners should encourage/use young CG Artists such as myself more frequently and to the best advantage, than simply discounting Photoshop or any other CG software totally as of no use to Planners.
You only have to look at the PDF documents from Greenbelt.org, which i myself do appreciate from both a planners perspective and also from the point of view of the CG Artist who had to produce the visuals in those documents. Without them, i think you will agree, the text would have been alot more live less and meaningless to alot of people reading it. Having said all i have to say now, i would love to hear your opinions on this guys attempts at doing an urban design visualisation:
http://www.cgarchitect.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=4;t=000278 I did insult many very genuine posters/participants here in the Gallery, i am sure. But things had to be said, the discussion had to be made a lot wider than it was in the 'Photoshop for Planners' thread - otherwise guys like he who did the Utrecht visualisation and myself, would quickly find ourselves job-less.
My final words would be, Planners, don't try and restrict your presentations to what you can manage using Corel. Use the CG Artist guys, support them and make your presentation pulse with life and vitality. Otherwise, when you really want to create a nice splash visual, the artists able to do it, will not be around. I advocate Photoshop as a 'Looking and seeing' tool for all Planners. Even though the professional CG Artist will always be the top of the pile, i cannot see anything wrong with Planners playing around with a few photos either, even taking a PHotoshop class or two from the same experts who (speaking for myself) are very willing to educate all kinds of amateurs alike.
