Some of my work from the digital imaging course.
Me and My Raptor
Our first assignment, to mix two photos, was relatively easy for me because I have done a fair amount of compositing. The hardest part was finding a couple of pictures that I thought would blend well. I found a picture of me taking a picture of Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor in Chicago. I added another picture I took on the same trip; my favorite raptor from the Natural History Museum.
ZZ Top at the “Surrender of General Burgoyne”
Our assignment was to mix new elements into an image of an older painting.
I was searching through historical paintings on the Creative Commons, and for some reason I thought of ZZ Top when I saw the “Surrender of General Burgoyne” by John Trumbull, which hangs in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. I also found pictures of the fuzzy guitars the band ZZ Top used and one thing led to another. Fifteen layers later I had an anachronism composition.
One of the hardest effects to insert were the guitar straps. I tried several times to just paint them on, but that did not work. The solid colors looked unrealistic compared to the texture found in the painting. I finally copied a rectangular piece of the coat from the opposite character and then warped those with the transform tool. I also had to build the beard on “Dusty” (on the left), because he was faced straight forward on the picture that I grabbed the beard from, so the angle was wrong. In the final composition, the mustache is actually turned up-side-down.
All-in-all, this was a fun project and I learned how to cut out images with brutal efficiency.
Images:
Surrender of General Burgoyne by John Trumbull, I found on Creative Commons.
The fuzzy base guitar came from 1001galleries.blogspot.com.
Billy’s guitar came from gitaar.net and had the logo for “Dean Guitars” on it.
The Frank Beard drum photo came from Wikipedia.
The photo I grabbed the beards from was on the official ZZ Top web site at http://www.zztop.com/2014/story-behind-beards-zz-top/. The photographer was uncredited.
Climate Change Meme
A couple of months ago, it struck me as odd that the U.S. Senate would vote on the legitimacy of climate change. It seemed even more bizarre that they would also deny the effect of humanity on this process. Our assignment was to create a meme, so I thought I'd highlight some evidence about global warming.
Along the way I learned how to create custom brushes. I wanted to inject a little flower power into the composition, so I found a photo of a daisy which I'd taken and used the Adobe Brush app to produced three different brush styles, which I then applied.
Images:
The daisy photo used for the brush was mine.
US Capitol west side.jpg, by Martin Falbisoner, created on September 5, 2013. I found this on Wikipedia though the Creative Commons.
Astronaut-EVA.jpg, by Robert "Hoot" Gibson, created on February 7, 1984. I also found this on Wikipedia.
Help Me! Help Me!
Our next exercise was to play "Photoshop tennis."
When I saw this image (without the fly) the ending scene of the movie “The Fly” popped into my head. This is my homage to it and was called Help me! Help me! It was easy to produce, I found the images on Google, cut and pasted them using layers, added a little text, and voila!
One of the fun parts of this game was working under pressure. The images were being updated so quickly that you had to focus and produce your changes quickly, or someone else jumped in. A good real-world lesson.
Images:
The fly: public-domain-image.com
Geoff Goldbloom: commons.wikimedia.org
The Thought Balloon: clipartcotttage.deviantart.com
Blue Sky: Nondestructive Editing in Photoshop
Our last assignment was to create a lesson plan for a basic photoshop exercise.
Objective:
Teach students the importance of nondestructive editing, emphasizing that making this a habit will benefit them throughout their careers.
Overview:
There are many habits that professionals cultivate in order to work efficiently. Two that work together are saving your work regularly, and nondestructive editing. Saving work protects you against equipment and power failures. Nondestructive editing is necessary so that you can always go back, in case you, or your client want to make changes. While most software and even hardware can be programed to auto save, nondestructive editing is usually a choice. If you make it a habit, then even if you auto save, your originals are safe.
Tools:
Adobe Photoshop is a professional tool that lets you work the way you want to. You must choose to work nondestructively.
Creative commons is also a tool. The best way to respect images on the web is to search for materials that are labeled as "free to use, share or modify." Also credit the creator, when possible.
Images used for this exercise.
Exercise:
- Discuss file saving choices: Edit/Preferences/File Handling.
- In creative commons, find two pictures to blend such as a local architecture or outdoor sculpture that has a cloudy sky in the background. Also find a nice blue sky. Demonstrate how to determine the attached rights.
- Bring the cloud layer into Photoshop.
- Save the project using the "save as" function to select a Photoshop PSD file and give it a "project" name that is different from the original file. This protects your original assets.
- Caution students about renaming or moving assets.
- Open the architecture or sculpture image and select the whole image with the rectangular marquee tool. Then copy and paste that image into the "project" file as a new layer.
- Explain the use of layers. What you see is dependent on the order from top to bottom. You can practice nondestructive editing at this point by making a copy of any layer.
- You can also use a layer mask to work nondestructively.
- Demonstrate a variety of ways to replace the cloudy sky using the selection tools, erasure tools, and transform tools.
Conclusion:
Discuss different ways to work nondestructively in Photoshop. Students should demonstrate an understanding of nondestructive editing techniques including the use of a project "named" PSD, copying layers, and using layer masks.
