About this Website

Welcome to my non commercial website.The focus of the content is mostly image editing for prepress using Adobe Photoshop, with the level of information often geared toward intermediate and more advanced users.

After joining various internet graphic arts related discussion groups in the mid 90's, I found myself repeating a lot of information in the form of links to relevant articles or comments of my own that I had made in previous posts or at different discussion groups. I originally created this site to simplify my forum posts. Over the last decade, This site has undergone numerous content and design changes, although the core purpose has remained unchanged.

The site has not had a serious content and design revision since 2003, so this 2006 update is long overdue. This is the first time that I have used frames on this site, so I would like to apologise in advance to those who dislike this navigation method (a home link is provided on each page if you prefer to view the content outside of the original frame layout). I hope that you find the site useful and that the articles and how to guides are informative.

I would like to extend a special thanks to Dave Elfving for granting permission to use his photography, found on the main home page. I love the dynamic style that Dave used to capture the vault, as opposed to the more traditional views of vaults which are more commonly photographed. Visit Dave's creative website or view more examples of his photography at flickr.


About Me

Thanks for stopping by and reading this section. My name is Stephen Marsh. I entered the prepress trade in 1980's as a compositor. This was back when phototypesetting and camera ready, paste-up reflective artwork was common. By the time I had finished my apprenticeship training, the Apple Mac and the desktop revolution had sounded the death bell for traditional typesetting and artwork assembly and the trade as many knew it. Graphic reproduction remained unaffected at the high end for a few more years than typesetting did. It was not until around 1995 that desktop systems really started to threaten high end proprietary graphic reproduction systems from Scitex and other prepress vendors. My original training was in a high end prepress system from Purup Electronics that specialised in four colour and multiple spot colour layout and separation for packaging and security print work, which did a good job of preparing me for general prepress work on the desktop platforms which later replaced these expensive proprietary systems.

During my career I have worked for print and design firms in securities, forms, packaging, advertising, magazine, newsprint and commercial print settings. Over the last ten years I have been active in various graphic arts and Photoshop related forums such as the Dan Margulis Applied Colour Theory in Photoshop list, where I am part of the moderating team. As a Photoshop Beta Tester, I have had the pleasure of interacting with the Photoshop Development Team and my industry peers on the pre-release program. I have also made contributions to and tested other Photoshop related software from other software vendors, such as Curvemeister. I have been an instructor for an introductory Photoshop course for the School of Graphic Arts, Sydney, as well as performing freelance graphic arts consultation work. Performing freelance technical editing of Photoshop books for Sybex Publishing has also been another highpoint in my career. 

Although I am no longer as active in online graphic arts discussion groups as I once was, I can often be found on the Dan Margulis Applied Colour Theory list where I perform moderating duties and still manage to make the occasional contribution. I hope that this site continues to be of use to both regular visitors and new. 

I can be contacted at this email address: 

binaryfx@ozemail.com.au

 

Binary FX: Photoshop Tech Vault © Stephen Marsh, All rights reserved.