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Funny… just thirty minutes ago I was giving a sort of guest lecture to some UX students, one of my key talking points was that old “should designers learn to co

Funny… just thirty minutes ago I was giving a sort of guest lecture to some UX students, one of my key talking points was that old “should designers learn to code?” chestnut. (If you're not familiar, and want to see dozens or hundreds of people instantly start arguing on Twitter, go ahead and ask.) I come down firmly on the side of “yes,” and started my explanation of why with the photographic work of Salvador Dali. The guy was an absolute darkroom master. He wasn’t just a person who had a vivid imagination and could paint, he had an engineer’s understanding of optics, physics and the chemistry of photography. This led into a sort of point about programming not being an end to itself, but that programming is a part of of the toolbelt of a modern digital designer. ANYWAY. This guy, not just busting out a camera and photoshop, but actually taking apart and rebuilding lenses, more of this. Get dirty with your tools.

shahar2k 6y ago
100% correct, I am an artist working in realtime visual effects (previsualization) and it's surprising how often knowledge of how realtime 3d works on the hardware and software end enhances what I can do with my art! (and how little fellow artists want anything to do with anything technical) there's so much you can do if you realize how textures are mapped or what gets affected by polygon sorting order...
- paulmd 6y ago
  I don't work in computer graphics, but I've always gone the other direction and been amused by the analogies of digital image processing to the physical ones. An example is the "contrast-adaptive sharpening" that AMD introduced a while back in their driver. I've been using contrast-adaptive sharpening for a long time in my film development. I use a developer (Agfa Rodinal, with many clones such as Compard R09) with a solvent effect that tends to increase edge sharpness. If you use it in high dilution without any agitation then highlights or sharp edges will tend to "locally deplete" the developer and reduce the rate of development. In combination with the edge-enhancing nature, this compensating effect tends to help reduce the haloing from the sharpening (and of course it also helps pull your highlights back a bit in general). Which is basically what contrast-adaptive sharpening does! And of course there's all those skeumorphic terms we've adopted that we no longer consciously think about the origins of. Dodging and burning, unsharp masks, and airbrushing are all real things that people used to do by hand!
paulmd 6y ago
I think coders should learn to shoot and develop film, and ideally learn to wet print. not that it's something that you'll need at your day job, but it's just such a fun hobby for an engineering type person. The basic process is simple and yet infinitely modifiable, and there's numerous deep rabbit holes you can go down once you master the basics. It's definitely one of those "a moment to learn, a lifetime to master" type hobbies. And it's really enjoyable for someone who stares at a screen all day to work with your hands and do something that is completely analog. I've been meaning to put together a personal blog with Jekyll to learn the tool, maybe that would be an interesting subject for some posts.
- sand500 5y ago
  I've been wanting to implement some of photoshop and Lightroom functionality from scratch to really understand what all the sliders are doing to the image.
- barrenko 5y ago
  I started the other way around! Film cameras are a marvel. First time looking through a really good viewfinder, and you'll feel like you're in your own private cinema.

shahar2k 6y ago

100% correct, I am an artist working in realtime visual effects (previsualization) and it's surprising how often knowledge of how realtime 3d works on the hardware and software end enhances what I can do with my art! (and how little fellow artists want anything to do with anything technical) there's so much you can do if you realize how textures are mapped or what gets affected by polygon sorting order...

paulmd 6y ago
I don't work in computer graphics, but I've always gone the other direction and been amused by the analogies of digital image processing to the physical ones. An example is the "contrast-adaptive sharpening" that AMD introduced a while back in their driver. I've been using contrast-adaptive sharpening for a long time in my film development. I use a developer (Agfa Rodinal, with many clones such as Compard R09) with a solvent effect that tends to increase edge sharpness. If you use it in high dilution without any agitation then highlights or sharp edges will tend to "locally deplete" the developer and reduce the rate of development. In combination with the edge-enhancing nature, this compensating effect tends to help reduce the haloing from the sharpening (and of course it also helps pull your highlights back a bit in general). Which is basically what contrast-adaptive sharpening does! And of course there's all those skeumorphic terms we've adopted that we no longer consciously think about the origins of. Dodging and burning, unsharp masks, and airbrushing are all real things that people used to do by hand!

paulmd 6y ago

I think coders should learn to shoot and develop film, and ideally learn to wet print. not that it's something that you'll need at your day job, but it's just such a fun hobby for an engineering type person. The basic process is simple and yet infinitely modifiable, and there's numerous deep rabbit holes you can go down once you master the basics. It's definitely one of those "a moment to learn, a lifetime to master" type hobbies. And it's really enjoyable for someone who stares at a screen all day to work with your hands and do something that is completely analog. I've been meaning to put together a personal blog with Jekyll to learn the tool, maybe that would be an interesting subject for some posts.

sand500 5y ago
I've been wanting to implement some of photoshop and Lightroom functionality from scratch to really understand what all the sliders are doing to the image.
barrenko 5y ago
I started the other way around! Film cameras are a marvel. First time looking through a really good viewfinder, and you'll feel like you're in your own private cinema.