Week 1 (27/09/19) - Week 5 (24/09/19)
See Zi Yi (0340094)
Digital Photography & Imaging
INSTRUCTION
Week 1 (27/08/19): Introduction & Hearst Mansion
Today's the first lesson!
Mr. Jeffrey had everyone to introduce themselves and he said my name is pretty easy to remember. That was actually much to my surprise, since most people I met find my name to be difficult to remember lol. He started off the lecture by teaching us a few shortcut keys on iMac.
- To screen shoot: command + shift + 3
- To select a part to screen shoot: command + shift + 4
These are very useful when it comes to documenting our process while working on the exercises, as we can attach the screenshots on our e-blog.
As for today's exercise, we learned how to photoshop Shazam (Fig. 1.1) into Hearst Mansion (Fig. 1.2) with Adobe Photoshop. Mr. Jeffrey also taught us more shortcut keys on Adobe Photoshop, such as:
- To select an image: command + T
- To increase/decrease the brush size: Fn + ] / Fn + [
- To fit screen: command + 0
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| Fig. 1.1 Shazam |
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| Fig. 1.2 Hearst Mansion |
To begin with the exercise, we used the Quick Selection tool to extract the figure of Shaam. We the masked, copied and pasted it on Hearst Mansion. We also utilized the Free transform tool to resize the picture nicely. To make Shazam appear more convincing, we color matched him with the background, tuned the hue and saturation, duplicated another layer for its shadows and water reflection, and added on filters like noise, ripple, and Gaussian blur.
Thanks to Mr. Jeffrey and Mr. Martin, I now learned how to deceive others with Adobe Photoshop. Below is my final outcome of the exercise (Fig. 1.3).
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| Fig. 1.3 Final outcome |
As for our homework of the week, we have to photoshop ourselves into Hearst Mansion and submit through Google Classroom (Fig. 1.4).
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| Fig. 1.4 Final outcome of my exercise |
Week 2 (03/09/19): Ghost Bride
As for the second week, Mr. Jeffrey began the class by recapping what we have learned last week. He also reminded us that the main objective of masking is to show and hide parts of an object. The in-class exercise for this week was to combine different pictures into one. Below is the first picture (Fig. 2.1).
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| Fig. 2.1 Night sky |
Upon opening the second picture (Fig. 2.2), we had to copy, paste it to the first picture, and scale it proportionally. The pictures' opacity should also be reduced for position checking.
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| Fig. 2.2 House |
As for cropping, we could choose to apply either the quick selection tool or the polygonal lasso tool. Applying techniques like masking, color matching, tuning hue, and saturation, we further enhanced the house. On a side note, Mr. Jeffrey mentioned if our object is a smart object, the matching color option won't be available. To resolve this issue, we have to rasterize the object. As for the difference between a normal object and a smart object, it is shown that the quality and megapixels of a smart object won't be affected when enlarged, which is not applicable to a normal object.
To add on to the spookiness of the overall image, a ghost bride was incorporated into the picture (Fig. 2.3). We cropped it with the rectangular marquee tool to retain the part we want. The blending mode was also changed from normal to screen.
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| Fig. 2.3 Ghost bride |
A glow around the ghost bride can be added by creating a new layer, changing the blending mode from normal to multiply, and adding a radial gradient to it. To cycle through the blending modes, we can use the shortcut key:
Below is my final work (Fig. 2.4).
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| Fig. 2.4 Final work for the first exercise |
Upon submitting our first exercise, we were assigned the second exercise: to incorporate a picture of a house on either a sunset or a blue sky background. I attempted on the blue sky and here is my final result (Fig. 2.5). Gloomy vibes for this!
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| Fig. 2.5 Final work for the second exercise |
Week 3 (08/09/19): Recoloring
As for a recap about last week's class, Mr. Jeffrey had us to play a round of "Human Photoshop" where everyone will recite the steps of week one's exercise. He also enlightened us with some information about Adobe Photoshop, such as RGB mode is for the digital screen, whereas CMYK mode is for printing purpose. Also, if we want to get pitch black as our color, our RGB should be tune to R(0), G(0), B(0), because there's no color in black. To attain white, we should set our RGB to R(2), G(2), B(5).
This week's exercise was all about recoloring. We were given a black and white picture of a man (Fig. 3.1) and utilized Adobe Photoshop to recolor the portrait. We were taught to trap the area we wanted to color with the Quick Selection tool, color it, and create a mask. On a side note, Mr. Jeffrey also reminded me that I can use Ctrl + U to tune the layer's hue and saturation. Below is my final outcome for today's in-class exercise (Fig. 3.2).
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| Fig. 3.1 Original image |
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| Fig. 3.2 Final result |
For our homework, we were assigned to pick a black and white portrait (Fig. 3.3) with a minimum size of 1920 x 1080 and recolor it. I chose a picture of one of my favorite Chinese celebrities: Faye Wong for this exercise. The final result is as shown in Fig. 3.4.
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| Fig. 3.3 Original image |
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| Fig. 3.4 Final result |
Week 4 (17/09/19): Recoloring
For the first in-class exercise, we were to create a silk-textured cloth with the Indian flag imprinted believably on it. To begin with, we opened up the pictures of the flag (Fig. 4.1) and the cloth (Fig. 4.2), and proceed with desaturating the cloth. The cloth should be saved in PSD to be used as a displacement map later. The reason why we are having the displacement map is that the map contains information to shift the pixels left and right.
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| Fig. 4.1 Indian flag |
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| Fig. 4.2 Cloth |
After placing the flag on the original cloth picture, we proceeded to distort the flag with the displacement map we saved previously by 5 pixels. We were told that the higher the pixels, the more distorted the flag will look. However, the white part in the Indian flag wasn't visible, hence we duplicated the layer and changed its blending mode from "normal" to "screen". Its opacity was also tweaked. Fig. 4.3 is the final result.
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| Fig. 4.3 Final result |
We also utilized the portrait (Fig. 4.4) from week 3's in-class exercise and applied a snakeskin texture (Fig.4.5) to the man's face. Fig. 4.6 is the final result.
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| Fig. 4.4 Portrait |
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| Fig. 4.5 Snakeskin |
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| Fig. 4.6 Final result |
For our homework, we had to create a hybrid animal by displacing the skin of an animal with another. I picked a picture of a baby penguin (Fig. 4.7) and decided to displace its fur with fish scales (Fig. 4.8).
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| Fig. 4.7 Baby penguin |
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| Fig. 4.8 Fish scales |
By applying the techniques taught in class, I came up with the image below (Fig. 4.9).
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| Fig. 4.9 Final result |
Week 5 (24/09/19): Castle of Pyrenees
This time, instead of learning new Photoshop skills, we were told to apply the skills learned from week 1 to week 4 on today's exercise. We were introduced to a Castle of Pyrenees (Fig. 5.1), a 1959 painting by Rene Magritte which features a floating rock with a castle atop. Based on this painting, we were assigned to recreate our own version of Castle of Pyrenees.
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| Fig. 5.1 Castle of Pyrenees |
To begin with, I searched up for images of rocks, castles, and skies. For my castle, I settled on a Hogwarts castle as it was the first castle that came into my mind (Fig. 5.2). Then, I opted for a blue sky with some clouds as my background image (Fig. 5.3). However, it took me quite some time to settle on a rock image as most of the rocks in PNG images are very roundish, but I knew I wanted a pointy one. Fortunately, I found one that I think best suits my castle after rounds of searching up the Internet, which is Khao Phing Kan, also known as the James Bond island in Thailand (Fig. 5.4).
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| Fig. 5.2 Hogwarts castle |
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| Fig. 5.3 Blue sky |
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| Fig. 5.4 Khao Phing Kan (James Bond island) |
After choosing my images, I started with placing the Hogwarts castle on the island. Then, I placed the blue sky at the back of the floating castle and color-matched the floating castle with the background (Fig. 5.5).
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| Fig. 5.5 Working in progress |
In addition to the floating castle, I wanted to try adding other elements to the composition to create an illusion of depth. Hence, I searched up for an image of a flock of birds (Fig. 5.6) and also a picture of an eagle (Fig. 5.7).
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| Fig. 5.6 A flock of birds |
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| Fig. 5.7 An eagle |
Below is the final result after adding on the new elements (Fig. 5.8).
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| Fig. 5.8 Initial attempt |
After receiving feedback from Mr. Jeffrey, I realized the angle of the eagle isn't correct. Hence I tried to find another alternative to it. Below is the final outcome of this exercise.
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| Fig. 5.9 The final result |
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