Panoramania!

For this project, I went out to the only place I could think to get a decent panoramic shot, Auke Bay. Armed with my Nikon camera and tripod, I took 4 panoramas (one didnt turn out very well). Because I've had a lot of experience taking panorama shots before, and the prescence of the tripod, made this project a breeze. It's 1:45 am and it's been a long day, so I'm going to upload the 3 images with and w/out text then the individual images later on, as they are over 3mb each, 5+ pictures each, thats a lot of time resizing...

The first image I titled 'Day at the Beach'. Someone had created some sort of rock display, so set the tripod low to the ground and used the panorama assist to take the picture. Stitching it together was rather easy, but one of my shots was slightly blurry, and I also had to trim off a lot of the edge because of the angle.



Next, I walked up into the trees and set my tripod up on a stump and got an almost 360 degree panorama. I titled this one 'Green Canopy'. I spent the most time on this one and it shows. I didn't have to play with any levels because it was a really cloudy day, and being underneath the canopy made for even lighting.



And for the last one, I simply walked along the beach, taking care to walk in a straight path, and took pictures of the rocks at my feet. It's titled Rocky Road. I was moving while taking the pictures, as opposed to using a tripod in the others, so assembling it was a bit harder. I hate the typeface, but finding something to match such a chaotic scene was rather hard.




Come morning I'll edit in more details and some of the original pictures, I just wanted to get this up before class at 9am.

Filters

For this assignment, I took a picture of my cat, Cinderella, sitting upon the windowsill on a sunny afternoon.

My first filter I used I wanted to give the impression that it was a sort of distorted glass window, like the kind you see at a Dr's office. I used the Distort, Glass filter to get this look.




>> For my second application I wanted to make something a bit more intriguing. I played with the artistic filter, Cutout to come up with the image you see to the right. It's reminiscent of cel-shading animation, a favorite graphic style of mine.








For my last assignment I was a bit lost. Concerned that any filter I would would be more for ' it looks cool ' than an actual direction, I strayed from the path a bit. I found the extract filter which allows you to isolate a selection of the image. Below is my selection:

Above is the final selection I chose, but I did have a few alternatives when figuring this out, as shown below.



For the final picture, I edited a small cities skyline, creating a new layer, and applying a variety of filters. Here are my two favorites. On the left I used a variety of filters, but have seem to lost my exact list in what order. On the right I simply used a watercolor filter.

Paint, Edit and Heal

I started off by mirroring the image and making the appropriate selections. From there it was basically filling in areas, using various paint brushes with different sizes and nothing but creative fun. I wish I hadn't turned this assignment in a bit late because it really wasn't difficult. Here are the blank mirror image, an initial coloring, some work with a paintbrush inside the lions face and finally, I added some grass using brushes that work like blades of grass. There was also another brush I used in creating the clouds, alternating in size and intensity to give them that fluffy, cloud feel. Overall, I think it looks pretty nice, kind of like a cover of a kids book.

Selections Part 2 cont...

For my second picture I wanted to try to put my face onto someone elses head. It was a much more difficult task than anticipated but I like the results. It also allowed me to use some of the lessons learned in the last chapter to make the image more realistic.

I choose a picture of Conan the Barbarian, I know being humorous was not part of the assignment, but I felt comfortable enough with the material that I could make a humorous image with relative ease. Throughout the process of making this image, I decided to take screen captures, since I am a very visual-oriented person, looking at these helps jog my memory on the steps I took, and also allows people to visualize the process as reading.

Let's start off with my picture and the picture of Conan, who is played by current Californian govener and long-term movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger.





The first step I took was to remove my face from the image. I flipped it horizontally and used the magnetic lasso tool to select a similiar edge to Arnold's face.



Refining the edge, I made it more round, removed the feather and took away any 'radius'. This made a clean 'cut' and allowed me to past the image right onto the face.



Using the opacity feature again, I lined up my faces features and Arnold's, making a decent match. Because of our actual face proportions I slightly stretched my face vertically to make it appear more realistic. Ideally, I could have cut my face out identical to how his was, matching with the shadow, but I found a sort of 'work around' I'll discuss later.



Our skin tones are way off. (That lack of Juneau sun really shows!) so I altered the curves, as well as the color balance to make them more similiar. I find out here that matching skin color can be extremely hard. I now understand a reason behind the 'dancing images' being black and white. I also used the smudge tool to slightly blend under my chin and on the side of my head.



I added some noise to the image next, to make our skin texture more similiar.



The final step I wanted to take was to make the lighting on my face more similiar to that in the original image. Because I didn't include the 'face shadows', I wanted to darken the back of my face and increase the brightness on the front. This feature is extremely easy to use and helps in making depth in the image.

I am fairly happy with the results. Because of my troubles with matching the skin tone I also converted it to black and white just to see what it looks like. The images are juxtaposed below.

Selections Part 2

This was fun! I've done something like this before, but not with Photoshop. I wasn't too fond of the dancing pictures (not that I didn't like them.... it's just not 'me', and I felt like making this project a bit more 'personal')

This is my first attempt and it turned out quite well. I randomly found this image the other day and thought it might be a good image to start with. I had to retake the pictures of myself because the backgrounds were not only too busy (made it hard for clean selections) but also because the lighting was too off.

Let's start off with my 'scary mug' and the image of 'Neo'




I started of by using the magnetic lasso and removing my face from the image. This is a really handy tool, but I had to try a few times before I got a good selection. I refined the edge and removed the feather and also smoothed out the edges.

Here is a screen capture of the process.


You can see in the screen capture I had removed Neo's head. This was from previous tooling around. I was attempting to use the "Paste Into" feature, but I realized it would only clip my head, resulting in a non-realistic image. Instead, I pasted my head directly onto the 'Neo' image.



Making the image opaque allowed me to visualize the placement of my face, lining up the nose, eyes and ears.

As you can see here, it is a fairly close match. I scaled the image to give it a more exact proportion.



Removing the opacity from the image. I was left with the process of making my face seem less like a 'cut and paste' and more realistic. I turned up both the Hue and Saturation. I then used a filter called 'Add Noise'. This gives the image a grainy feel. My face was crystal clear and the 'Neo' image was most likely a capture from a video, because of this the textures were way off. I added 2% noise and it made a pretty good match.

Here is the finalized picture.


It actually turned out pretty good. The shadows on my face is what throws the image off. So, instead of retaking my picture, I tried making a more 'theatrical version'. Adding a small lens flare on the middle left of the image in combination with using Lighting Effects (Spotlight) from the direction of the Flare gave it a slightly more lively feel.



If I've learned one thing with selections, taking a step back to look at the image really helps in making more appropriate changes. Looking at this Neo image I made the other day I already know a few different approches or techniques I could've used.

Right now I am working on a second image with my face, but I just wanted to post this and take a quick break.

Selections Part 1

I am already rather familiar with the selection tools in Photoshop so the initial selection assignment took me all but 10 minutes. Using the square selection tool, I made the 4 boxes at each corner of the 8inx8in image. Next, using the Polygon selection tool, I made the 'plus sign' within the 4 boxes. Using the 'subtract from selection' option and using the circle selection tool, I 'took out the middle' of the 'plus sign'. Using 'subtract from selection' with the Polygon selection tool allowed me to cut out the 4 triangles. Simply right clicking on the selection and pressing 'Fill' gave me the option to fill in everything at once. Easy peasy. Overall, this was a rather simple assignment but hands down it's one of the most useful things to learn in Photoshop. The ability to pick and choose what parts of an image you want to use is imperative for graphic design. As mentioned above, I am somewhat familiar with the selection tools in Photoshop (similiar to those in Gimp) so this was a nice 'refresher' for my memory.



I'll post the other assignment later today, still working on it.... the lighting of my 'mugshots' was a terrible match.

Color and Balance

Just waiting for class to start, so I was goofing off with Photoshop... took a panorama picture from a few years ago near the glacier and made it much more 'alive'. Never thought a slight adjustment in colors and levels could really change a picture. What was once a dreary Juneau day now springs with life!