Ever since I was a small boy I wanted to become an artist. Making pictures fascinated me. I later trained and became a professional artist (see my website at http://janesmann.com). I worked part time in the DTP business with Photoshop/QuarkXPress lay-outing a magazine and also with Pagemaker for a publisher. But my main program is of course Photoshop. I began with Photoshop 4 because I needed to edit scans of my paintings for printing invitations and other PR material. I made this material my self in Photoshop.

Later when I set up a website, I needed to edit pictures of my paintings and I soon discovered that Photoshop could not do, what I wanted to do in order to make the screen images look like the real paintings. This began almost ten years ago now and after some years of continual frustration, I began dreaming of writing plugins to do the jobs. Alternatively I could have dreamt of a whole new graphic application, but with Photoshop advanced layer editing options and the fact that virtually any professional uses Photoshop, I decided to write additions to Photoshop.

Three years ago I founded Power Retouche. The first major filter was the invention of a sharpening algorithm that did not create edgelines like unsharp mask does. Then in the years to follow I developed the other filters partly from my own ideas and partly from the suggestions of photographers who were so kind as to ask if I could solve some problem or other - like the radial density correction.

Digital Photographers have provided me with constant encouragement and kind suggestions for improvement and for new filters, and I can truely say that without the many enthusiastic emails I have received, Power Retouche would not have been what it is today.

My artistic medium is traditional painting. For some reason I have always loved the smell of oils and the texture of paint, so I have never done much artistic creation in the digital media. My working experience in the digital media is and has always been, retouching - both in my parttime job in the DTP/Publishing world and with my own art. So the name Power Retouche came naturally out of my intentions and talents.

But when I create, I need the feel of manipulating solid mass, paint. I miss that with digital imagery. I have begun exploring printing on various media like cottonpaper and the new printers can produce lovely textural images on ragpaper, but I think I will reserve this for doing a crossover between traditional graphic prints and digital imagemanipulation.

Somehow toned prints or pure black and white retain more papertexture than full color prints do, so in terms of making artworks where the texture is as important as the subject matter, then toned prints or B/W prints are superior to color - but this will probably change as pigment based printers become more available and affordable insted of dye based printers. Dye based colors have a translucency which sinks into the paper fibres and robs the paper of texture. Pigment based prints are more dense.

Traditional art has always values texture immensely. Something which too few modern artists are aware of because we mainly meet art in books and completely miss that aspect. Look at Rembrandt or any other old master and you will see how texture brings the subject to life.