Interview with Creative Retoucher Marcus Byrne

Your works show that you have a lot of skills in Photoshop, what inspires you to having these skills?

When I was studying Graphic Design, Photoshop was a tool we got to play with in small doses, you could say I was hooked from the beginning. I could see that Photoshop was a huge step in the design world as one could create anything at all imaginable and let their imagination flow. I come from a traditional printing background as my father owned a silk screen printing business. Seeing the change from paste up artist to digital compositions was fascinating. I continued to teach myself by buying Photoshop magazines and took various courses to learn advanced techniques. Of course the abundance of online tutorials we have now are incredible. The surreal art world of Dali, Escher and H.R. Giger were early influences and the album cover designs from Vaughan Oliver and Peter Saville certainly made their impression on me.

What are your projects for 2015?

I am working on a 3D visual with a music icon theme which I will re-visit again soon and I hope to develop the School of Thought brand as it continues to evolve.

Aside from profits, what else do you get from your work?

I get great satisfaction from seeing an idea through from concept to being published. I also enjoy writing Photoshop tutorials and sharing knowledge in the design space.

Is there any artwork of yours that you are most proud of? Why?

Yeah I have a few projects that I can think of.

VIDEO: When travelling through India, I had an idea for a music video for one of my favourite artists, guitar legend Preston Reed. The track was Night Ride. I captured footage while travelling on the trains through rural India. When I returned about four months later, I finished editing the video and sent it to Preston. He loved it so much that he decided to use it as an official video. It nearly didn’t happen, at one stage during the trip, my bag containing all the

Digital Video Tapes were nearly destroyed from falling off a boat into a dirty river. I was lucky. Preston was thrilled with the video and asked me to create another vid for his track Tractor Pull. I shot him live in a small bar in Dublin while I was back visiting family. He is based in Scotland so he flew over for a few days. It was a huge honour and a privilege to get to work with such a talented musician. Links here

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