Image Manipulation

Today we were tasked with creating a Billiard ball which is similar to the example piece above. We had to attempt to create the billiard ball with no guidance to see what our level of skills were. After we made our first attempt, we were then given a demo on how to create a professional piece. 

The image above was my piece before the tutorial. I created this piece using the gradient tool, elliptical marque tool and the paint brush. Firstly I used the gradient tool to create the background which was black to white. After this, I used the elliptical marque tool to make the shadow circle and used the transform tool to squash it. I then used the blur tool to resemble a shadow. Next, I used the elliptical marque tool to create the billiard ball and the white in the centre. I then simply used the paint brush with a 0% hardness, a low opacity with black and white to create the dark and light areas. To finish the piece off it used the text tool and inserted the number seven to the centre of the billiard ball. 

After we attempted to create a billiard ball, we were then given a tutorial on how to create a professional looking billiard ball.

Today we created a shattered text piece. Firstly we attempted to create the piece by ourselves and after we created our test piece, we did a tutorial on how to create it professionally.     

We started by opening a document of 1000x800 and filled it with black. We then used the text tool and added in a piece of text. 

On the text layer, we went into layer style and went to Bevel and Emboss. Made the technique chisel hard, the depth 100 and the size 150.

After this, we rasterized the layer and used the polygonal tool to brake up the image by making triangles and moving them .  

After we broke the image apart, we then use the lasso tool to create a rough circle and then went to select, modify and feather.  filter, render and clouds. 

After we added the clouds, we then used the radial blur which is shown below.



After this we adjusted the hue and saturation to what we wanted, I chose red.



To finish it off we added a stroke to the text to make it stand out better.

Oliver Ottner

Oliver Ottner was born in 1974 and lives in Vienna, Austria. In 1999, he founded the advertising agency iService, which works for clients such as Estée Lauder and the famous Vienna Zoo. His private works, such as his naturemorphosis and dualism series, as well as original Photoshop tutorials, can be found on his personal site www.effectlab.com. Oliver has been a National Association of Photoshop Professionals member since 2001, and his work has been recognized in various photography and digital art publications, including New masters of Photoshop.

Oliver Ottner creates some interesting and unique art. Work like this is not seen very often, but it is not a complex procedure to create work like this.

Today we recreated the work of Oliver Ottner by using different textures, applying them to an image provided and adjusted the blending mode, using the eraser tool or layer mask to erase the unwanted texture. I like this process because its interesting to try many textures to see what works and what doesn't.   

3D images

Firstly we had to create 2 layers with the same picture.

We then went to image, adjustments and clicked curves. We selected Green and blue which created the red layer and made settings 0 and 251.

With the blue layer we went to image, adjustments and clicked curves. We selected green, red and made the settings 0 and 251.

We then change the blending mode to lighten and the move the layer on top to the left.

I did this process on different images and I think that the tiger image works best.

 Rhino Leopard skin

Today we learnt how to use the liquefy tool to give the rhino a new skin. Firstly we enlarged the leopard so it is the size of the rhino and once it was a close fit, we would use the liquefy tool the manipulate the leopard so it would look realistic on the rhino. We then changed the blending mode and added a layer mask to remove unwanted leopard skin.

I created my own version by using a Duck and a Tiger using the same process.

Bert Monroy inspired underwater scene

Firstly, to create the underwater scene, we took a garden picture and adjusted the hue and saturation to make it blue.  

Next we added a new layer and used the gradient tool with a dark blue to light blue.

Then we went to filter, filter gallery and went to distort and chose glass, we made the setting for the distortion 20, the smoothness 5, texture frosted and the scaling 200%. 

With the gradient selected, we then used the transform tool to rotate it by 180 degrees.

Next we used the distort tool to stretch the gradient at the top of the gradient.

We then made another gradient and stretched it to the bottom so it did not reveal the garden scene.

We added noise which gave use an effect of plankton in the water.

Next, with the lasso tool, we made a triangle, feather the edges and filled it with white. I then repeated the process another time and adjust it with the transform tool.

I then lowered the opacity to make it look a bit more realistic.

We then added an image of a plane underwater and had to copy the top and extend it because it didn't reach the top of the screen.

After the plane was added, we then used the pen tool to cu out the shark from an image. I found this difficult as I rarely use the pen tool but I feel I made a good attempt.

After we did that we moved the shark and changed the blending mode.

Bert Monroy

Bert Monroy is an artist who works in Photoshop and focuses on extreme detail. He goes and takes photos of places or things and recreates them to the last and leaf. His most impressive piece of work is a piece called Times square which he spent four years creating in Photoshop and Illustration.

Firstly we started off with an old image which had scratches and was in black and white. To start off with, we used the patch tool to edit out the scratches on the background and on the jacket, hair and ear. 

 After we edited out all the scratches with the patch tool, we then duplicated the image and changed the top layer to lighten.Next, we changed the mode to RGB as it was originally grayscale. When we did this, we were able to make selections and adjust the hue and saturation to give colour.  

Define

JPG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, PSD

JPEG files are files which are mostly used and are compressed and image quality is lost as the file size decreases.

PNG supports palette-based images, grayscale images and full-color non-palette-based RGB images. PNG was designed for transferring images on the Internet, which is why transparency is kept and is used for logos with block colours.

TIFF stands for "Tagged Image File Format" and is used in the printing and publishing industry. TIFF files are larger than JPEG files and can be uncompressed or compressed and layered images can be stored in a single TIFF file.

GIF is a compressed image file format. These compressed image files can be quickly transmitted over a network or the Internet, GIF files are used for small icons and animated images, but don’t have high quality.

PSD is Photoshop's normal file format. PSD supports all available image modes Bitmap, Grayscale, Duotone, Indexed Colour, RGB, CMYK, Lab, and Multichannel.

PSD can save an image with layers while every other format must be flattened on export. Being able to save an image as a layered image is useful as it allows you to edit different parts of an image any time you want.

Sliced apple

This was my attempt at creating a square apple before having the tutorial. I think that is good but after the tutorial, it looked a lot more professional.

To create the square apple effect, I used the liquefy tool to turn it into a cube and added some highlights.

I then drew a line around the front of the apple using the lasso tool and selected it. I then went to the apple core and went to edit and paste special. This placed the core onto the front of the apple.

We got an image of a person and painted a medium grey around the mouth area on a new layer.

Next we went to filter, noise and add noise. We made the settings as 5 on the amount and checked  Gaussian and monochromatic. 

Next we added a radial blur with the settings at 10, zoom and best quality. Move the blur centre so the lines are moving down.

After this, we change the mode the hard light. 

We then used the levels to increase the darkness of the beard. Next we add a layer mask and then messed around with a the style of the moustache /beard.

Websites for contests

http://www.worth1000.com/
http://www.pxleyes.com/

I submitted an entry for a contest on pxleyes for image manipulation using a light house image provided.

 

 

 

 

Artist choice 
http://cargocollective.com/signalnoise

James white

James White was born in 1977 and calls Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada his home. His parents were never able to keep typewriter paper in the house as James would steal it for drawings as early as the age of 4. Upon graduation of highschool he attended a Graphic Design course in his hometown where he was introduced to Photoshop and Illustrator, tools he still uses today. His professional design career began in 1998 where he started designing websites and print campaigns.

James never stopped creating and working on his own projects that took up his evenings and weekends which resulted in the creation of Signalnoise Studio. James’ personal projects gained recognition in the industry and led him to working with Toyota, Universal Music, Nike, MTV, Google, Wired and many other clients.

After looking at his work I saw that a lot of his work consisted of straight lines, 3D, bright colours and light. I attempt to create a piece of work in the style of James white by using lines, 3D, bright colours and lighting. This piece is a good attempt of his style, but this image doesn't really look similar to his work. I feel that I can do better and I will develop my work further.

My presentation on James White

Digital matte painting

Digital matte painting is when Photoshop artists create backgrounds for films by painting an image to look realistic which is then used on green screens.

Dylan Cole

Dylan Cole is a digital matte artist who has created create artwork for films such as lord of the rings. Because he works for Hollywood films, he has to work at a high level of detail.

Content aware

Duplicate the horse image and make a selection around the horse using the lasso tool.

We then use the quick selection tool with minus so it takes away some of the unnecessary lines around the horse. 

Then we went to edit, fill and chose content aware. This gave use a clear background.

Then with the duplicated image of the horse, we then repeated the process and click refine edges.

Make the view mode 'on black', check smart radius and increase the radius to around 5. Use the tool to refine the edges and then make output to 'new layer with layer mask'.

Then press okay and you will be able to edit the horse with layer mask and move it around. 

Refine edges

To create this image I used the quick selection tool and refined it by using the negative and positive to take away and add to the selection. I then went into refined edges and made the hair visible by using a white background and them inserted the beach scene provided.

Sin city

I used the same technique that I used for the beach scene with the refine edges and turned the image to grayscale to make it black and white.