As promised, I've added a retouching section to my website. I've developed some new techniques so I'm scrapping my old work and starting a new retouch portfolio with better examples of my work using these new techniques. As a result I don't' have that many images to share with you, but I will be adding more as I go along, so check back soon. You can view the original state of the image by moving your mouse curser off the image.

This year I've decided to set aside a certain number of hours a month to dedicate to volunteer projects. With so many things going wrong in the world, graphic art at times seems to be a somewhat irrelevant profession. What the world needs are doctors, nurses, teachers, policemen, social services... people that contribute to the world in a tangible way. Considering I'm none of these things I will use what skills I have to help get the word out for those doing amazingly selfless things. So if your charitable organisation needs any design materials (websites, brochures, flyers, logos and so on), drop me a mail and I'll see how I can best help you out.

The other day I upgraded my OS from Leopard (10.5) to Apple's new OS, Snow Leopard (10.6). Initially all seemed fine and dandy. I got some extra gigs back, my iMac was running fast, and there were a plethora of small but nifty additions to the interface. Then I tried to create a PostScript file from Quark only to find the Adobe PPD I use to create the PS file had disappeared. After doing some reading I discovered that Acrobat no longer uses PPDs to create PostScript/PDF files. Their solution was to use the new "save as Adobe PDF" function. The problem with this is two fold: firstly the PDF writer crashes half the time before the PDF is created, and secondly it rasterises vector elements so they tend to come out fuzzy - not good for high-end printing. Ultimately I can't work on Snow Leopard until this gets fixed properly so I've downgraded back to Leopard for now. If you're having the same problem I found these sites here helpful: Adobe Tech Note, Adobe Forum and InDesign Secrets Discussion Thread.

I've been working especially hard the past couple of months which explains the lack of updates on this site. I've finally caught a break and my working hours have returned to normal, instead of the 16 hour days I was putting in before. I suspect my workload may become less and less as Christmas approaches so I'm going to be focusing on my image retouching during this period. If you're interested to see what's been keeping me so busy, flick over to my print portfolio and have a look at the National Geographic and Discovery Channel DVD artwork I've done up to this point.

If perhaps you get Advanced Photoshop magazine - flip to page 17 of the latest issue (61) and you'll see some of my work there. They contacted me and about 5 other designers a few weeks ago asking for us to help promote their website. They wanted us to write a short blurb about what we like about their site, and they would publish that along with a few of our designs. Here's a quick pic of it:

New York based graphic designer, Roberto Blake, kindly interviewed me for his website - you can view the full transcript here. Roberto has been a staple voice of encouragement on various digital art communities - you can find him on Advanced Photoshop, Photoshop Creative and DeviantART to name a few. You can view his full portfolio blog, complete with tutorials, interviews and design news, right here!

To coincide with my new online portfolio at Model Mayhem, I will be adding an extra section on to this website exclusively for image retouching and editing. This service is offered to photographers, models, actors, musicians, advertising agency's, corporate portraits and anyone who wants to add some magic to their photos. I will be adding some more information about the format requirements and quotations, as well as a before-and-after portfolio to the portfolio section of my website to demonstrate the quality of my work. If you have any questions regarding retouching, please contact me on info(at)omegared.co.za. You can view my Model Mayhem page here.

Just a quick note to thank everyone at Model Mayhem who voted for my Niyo design which won Pic of the Day on 23 July 2009. You can view my Model Mayhem page here.