Funny What You Can Do With Photoshop These Days.

Actually I guess that title is wrong. It should read “It’s amazing what printers can do these days”. Gone are the days of the 5 colour print. Digital printing onto fabrics has revolutionised the role of the print designer. Our days used to be spent trying to get a print to look as good as possible with a limited number of colours that were dictated by the cost of screens and the limitations of the factories. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lots of that going on, especially in kidswear, but with the price of digital printing slowly coming down and the quality constantly going up, I wonder how long the old fashioned screen and roller printing factories have left. The images below are all prints produced in photoshop for Yumi and Uttam Boutique, some are more obviously digital then others.

SS16 Digital Prints

Some more of my SS16 prints have hit the stores. This Palm Springs inspired photographic print has arrived for Uttam Boutique.

For the print I used photos of Palm Springs architecture mixed with a variety of cactuses and a desert vistas at sunset. I added some paste filters and found a tutorial on how to give images give them  that bleached out high contrast look to get the effect I wanted.

 

Reinventing the wheel

One of the things you hear a lot of as a designer is “I want the same, but different”. If something is a best seller, buyers always want to recreate the success. Yumi had a best selling tunic shape, it was used every season here’s a few examples how I had to reinvent it… without actually changing it!

Finding some hidden gems

One of the great things about updating your website is that you get to sort through some of your old work and find some hidden gems! I’m terrible when it comes to buying clothes that carry prints that I have designed, by the time it’s in stores I’m working on something new and that is much more exciting! One of the things I enjoyed about designing the prints for Uttam Boutique was that I’d be doing totally different things from one day to the next, one day it would be a photographic print and the next I’d have the watercolours out.

I found this print today, it’s made from antique botanical illustrations. Once I’d found a relevant piece of art I’d have to painstakingly cut and piece it all together in photoshop.