27/08/19 - 29/10/19 (Week1 - Week10)
Ng Mei Ying (0340563)
Digital Photography & Imaging
Exercises
INSTRUCTION
EXERCISE 1:
27/08/19 (Week 1)
During the first class, Mr. Jeffrey and Mr. Martin were introduced to be our lecturers. We were introduced to the Adobe Photoshop interface. Photoshop is one of the most popular software to create non-constructive editing. During the first class, we had a primary understanding of the basic tool in photoshop like pen tool, the quick selection tool and so on. I started my warm-up exercise which was creating a believable combination of the picture by “photoshopping” Nezha into Hearst Mansion picture. It was quite hard for me to do a photoshop work by using a Mac PC at the beginning as I’m a Windows user.
Below are the skills I had learned:
- Using the Quick Selection tool to make a selection in the fastest way.
- Using the pen tool to make a path to create a selection in another way.
- Using the masking tool to create a mask.
- Ctrl+T to make a transformation (Transform, Rotate, Scale, Skew, Flip).
- Hold Cmd/ctrl -/+ to zoom in and out.
- Hold space bar to move the pictures
- Hold shift key when scaling to scale in proportion.
- Click Bracket key { / } to adjust the size of the selection tool
- Ctrl + U to adjust the Hue and saturation.
Besides, I also learned about how to make a color matching, ripple effect, blur effect and adding noise to ensure the final outcome of the combination looked realistic.
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| fig. 0.1 Poster of NEZHA |
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fig. 0.2 Picture of Hearst Mansion
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| fig. 0.3 Use the quick selection tool to do selection and create a mask. |
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| fig. 0.4 Hold shift to scale it and create a colour matching and noise effect. |
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| fig. 0.5 Create shadow and reflection. |
After we did our warm-up exercise, here came the exercise 1 which was editing ourselves into Hearst Mansion. I start exercise 1 after my classmate helps me to take a photo of mine. I try my best to apply all of the skills that I had gained from the warm-up exercise.
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| fig. 1.0 Create a reflection shadow of myself. |
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| fig. 1.1 The final reflection shadow of myself after masking and adding effects. |
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| fig. 1.2 The final outcome of exercise 1. |
EXERCISE 2:
03/09/19 (Week 2)
During our second class, Mr. Jeffrey helped us to do some verbal revision for the skills that we had learned from last week. After the revision, we were given the second warm-up exercise which created a combined photo by using the picture of a ghost, a High house, and a dark sky. We had learned the following new skills such as lasso tool, gradient tool, inverting mask, blending modes, convert between rasterize object and smart object. We also learn some new short cut keys for cycling through the blending effect (Select Move Tool {V}, Hold shift key and click +).
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| Fig. 2.0 The ghost bride |
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| Fig. 2.1 Dark sky |
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| Fig. 2.2 High House |
To make the ghost bride be more realistic, I added the motion blur effect on the ghost to let it seemed like it was moving if high speed. Besides, the dim glowing effect was added too to make it like it was glowing in the dark.
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| Fig. 2.4 The final work |
EXERCISE 3:
10/09/19 (Week 3)
During this week, Mr. Jeffrey launched a little activity of "Human Photoshop Game" to help us do a simple revision for last week's lesson. He also mentioned to us the importance of doing revision to solidify our knowledge. Below was some basic knowledge about PS.
- RGB Mode: (Red, Green, Blue) For Digital Screen
- CMYK Mode: (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) For Printing
- Pure white code: 255,255,255
- Pure black code: 0,0,0
- 8 bit: 2 to the power of 8 = 256 color range
Today we were given a greyscale black and white portrait image of a western old man. We were going to bring the image to live by recoloring it. Firstly, start trapping the specific area by using several tools based on the situation of the image like a magic wine tool, quick selection tool, lasso tool, and pen tool. After the selection, create a mask for the area and start painting at the foreground layer by using a bucket tool or soft edge panting tool. When we need to do a copy & paste of a layer just on the same place, just key in shortcut key ctrl + J will do.
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| Fig. 3.0 The Greyscale Old Man |
To make the skin tone looks more natural, we have to add several layers of skin tones like yellow, blue, red, brown and so on, then adjust the opacity and change the blending mode to ensure that the skin tone looks natural. To get a precise skin tone, we could search the color code of skin tone in google and apply it into our work. To ensure the connection of different color looks natural, soft edge pen tool with lower opacity is a great tool to blend the color in a natural way.
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| Fig. 3.1 The Coloured Old Man |
After finishing the warm-up exercise, I searched a grayscale picture of an Indian boy from google as my first attempt. I did the recoloring process again same as what I had done for the previous work Fig 3.1.
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| Fig. 3.2 The Greyscale India Boy |
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| Fig. 3.3 The Coloured India Boy |
Below was a greyscale image of an Arica young girl searched in google for my exercise 3. I played around with the multiple layers color of the skin tone to ensure the final skin tone looked natural. The shirt and the jean were colored separately in yellow and dark blue color which could create a visual balance in the colors. Just a little blush is added to the face of the girl to ensure that the skin tone is close to the actual appearance.
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| Fig. 3.4 Greyscale Africa Girl |
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| Fig. 3.5 Coloured Africa Girl |
EXERCISE 4:
17/09/19 (Week 4)
In this week, we were introduced to a new photoshop technique --- Displacement Mapping. This technique was very new yet interesting to me. Displacement Map is a grayscale version of the same image that you are working on, saved as a Photoshop File (.PSD). This displacement map is then used to apply a texture to a flat graphic via Displace filter (Filter > Distort > Displace). It distorts the graphic to conform to the shape of the map. This gives the plane flat graphic a more realistic 3D effect by wrapping the art around objects seemingly make it hug every contour. We can apply this technique a logo, text, texture and so on. If black and white means show and hide respectively in Masking, then black and white means the direction of the contour in Displacement Map Technique.
The first warm-up exercise was given 2 images, a flag Fig 4.0 and a silk contour Fig 4.1.
Create a Displacement Map PSD file for use later on:
- Open Fig 4.1 in PS, Create a greyscale copy file in (.PSD) format.
- Image > Adjustments > Desaturate (Window + Ctrl + U)
- Save the greyscale displacement file as (Disp_Map_Silk.psd)
Duplicate image and Adjustments :
- Open Fig 4.0 in PS new window, copy-paste the image on Fig 4.1
- Select > All (Ctrl/Cmd A)
- (Ctrl/Cmd + C) to copy, (Ctrl/Cmd + V) to paste on Fig 4.1
- (Ctrl + T ) to transform, hold shift to scale down, rotate it
- (Mode > Multiply/Screen) to add blending mode
- Adjust the opacity of the flag
Displacement Mapping :
- Select the flag layer, (Filter > Distort > Displace...)
- Set the scale of displacement base on the image size (10,10) click ok.
- Select the greyscale displacement copy file (Disp_Map_Silk.psd)
- Do final adjustment of the opacity and blending mode
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| Fig 4.0 The Flag |
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| Fig 4.1 The Silk |
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| Fig 4.2 Final Result |
After we complete the first warm-up exercise, Mr. Jeffrey continued gave us the second warm-up exercise to strengthen the skills and technique that we had learn for the previous exercise. We were going to use back the same greyscale portrait Fig 4.4 to do the displacement map with snakeskin Fig4.3. The editing process went smooth and I had master the skills set in a better way.
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| Fig 4.3 Snake Skin |
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| Fig 4.4 The Greyscale Potrait |
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| Fig 4.5 The Final Result |
As usual, we kick-started our 4th exercise by searching for some resource image on Google. My first attempt was to do a displacement map by mapping the peacock tail feather to the parrot wings and tail. I tried to do some transformation the peacock tail to catch the direction and the texture of the feather pattern. I did several layers for the mapping layers by adding different blending mode to ensure that the overall mapping effect looked natural just like the parrot was mean to born like that.
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| Fig 4.6 Parrot |
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| Fig 4.7 Peacock |
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| Fig 4.8 Final Result |
The final attempt for the exercise, I prepared myself with the image of a human and a fish scale. I wanted to create a squamose human figure something like a mermaid or Aquaman. To avoid the human looked like a snake, I adjusted the hue and tone of the fish scales a little bluish. I only applied the scales at certain part on his face and his coat to create a natural yet connected visual effect.
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| Fig 4.9 Fish Scale |
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| Fig 4.10 Fish Scale |
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Fig 4.11 Final Result for Exercise
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EXERCISE 5:
24/09/19 (Week )
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| Fig 5.0 The Castle of Pyrenees. |
This week, we were going to work on an advanced exercise which we needed to applied and utilized all of the skills and techniques we learned throughout the previous week. First thing first, The masterpiece <The Castle of Pyrenees> by Rene Magritte. It was one of Magritte's best known and most-reproduced images. It embodies the artist's typical disturbing juxtaposition of familiar objects, combined with captivating poetry and mystery.
We need to analyze the 3 main elements inside the picture which were:
- The sky
- The Boulder
- The Castle
This time, we were going to create our own version of the floating castle. The next thing to do was to search for the materials on the internet and start to work on it using adobe photoshop. It was a fun exercise that provide a chance for us to play our creative freedom to create our personalized artwork. I applied the sunset sky as the background and did the masking for the desired castles and floating rocks. I continued to do the color matching to ensure all the elements will match the color of the background.
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| Fig 5.1 The sunset. 1 |
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| Fig 5.2 The Rock 1 |
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| Fig 5.3 The Castle 1 |
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| Fig 5.4 The Attempt 1 |
I was quite satisfied with the first attempt, but the ambiance tend to be more realistic. I wanted to create a dreamy and surreal floating castle. Hence, I came out with the second attempt. Finally, I was satisfied with the tone of the image.
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| Fig 5.5 The sunset. 2 |
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| Fig 5.6 The Rock. 2 |
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| Fig 5.7 The Castle 2 |
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| Fig 5.8 The Final |
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