.jpg "Don't Lose The Music")
The photography slideshow on digital publication is complete with 12 photos that the user will be able to tap and play and swipe through with their finger. I would like to add a short clip of music for the user to play if they wish to listen to, whilst swiping through the slideshow. I have already created a 1 minute clip of the ambient version of Moby’s song, Isolate. All I need to now is create a simple button in photoshop, so that the user can tap to play and stop playing the music.
Landscape View Portrait View
I’ve made some changes to the outcome of the photos to make the subject stand out more.
Initial Outcome
Latest Outcome
In some of the photographs, the subject wasn’t quite distinguishable to pick out because the image had to many layers trying to show through. I later decided that it would be better to cut around the subject in of the photographs and layer it on top of everything else. That way the subject would stand out clearer. I’ve selected one of my images as an example of the changes I’ve made. I also made some colour correction to the final images so that they correlate with the grading of the documentary. I went for the 2 strip Technicolor look as I felt it blended well together with the colours of the footage I shot on the 8mm app.
I also cut around the shadow of the subject, as a different layer, and aligned it over the previous image.
Like this:
I’ve done some changes to the images and the layout of the text of the poem, which describes isolation. Firstly I changed some of the background images, because I felt the other images were really distorted to the point that they didn’t project anything to the overall piece. The reason I chose this poem is because it’s very descriptive of the emotion that isolation gives off. I think this helps convey’s my message that I’m trying to get the audience to understand.
Landscape View Portrait View
I’ve animated each sentence so that they appear one by one down the page. This is meant to help the user navigate through the publication. I’m a new user to Indesign, and I’ve been having a great difficulty animating these versus as they disappear after the animation is applied. I was informed by Phil that the animation feature in Indesign is not working properly, so I’ve had to turn to After Effects to create the animations. I created simple keyframes that increased the opacity of each sentence from 0-100%. Here is a montage of all the pages in both Landscape and Horizontal view.
Update!
Unfortunately, these videos didn’t work smoothly in Indesign. I was unable to have the last frame freeze on the page so that the user could read the excerpts of the poem. The video would just return to the beginning of the animation and become quite pixelated. I decided that since I’ve not been able to create animations in the first place in the digital publishing suite, then it wasn’t meant to be. I was hoping to make the publication appear a bit more dynamic, but as I’m progressing through the production stage I’m constantly having to take a step back.
Here is another layered image consisting of separate photographs that have been taken at different moments within the same location. I’ve laid out a step by step process of how the final image developed. It’s a very fiddly process with trying different opacity levels and different blending modes. The settings I used varied between all the other layered images I’d be working on. I just continually tweaked each setting until I was satisfied that image showed the events of each shot clearly in the overall piece. I altered the opacity of each image to help show each subjects change of position in each shot.
The first photograph in the screen shot above, shows the first photograph of the sequence with people standing on an empty platform.
The second photograph shows the same people on the platform, but in the distance , you can see a train pulling into the opposite platform.
The third image combined with previous two shots shows the train fully arriving to the platform. This to generate a sense of time and movement within the shot.
The fourth image was taken when a second train pulled into the station but at the platform I was standing on.
The final shot shows all the images layered on top of each other. The fifth photograph consists of the passengers getting onto the train. With all these shots combined, I’ve captured a series of moments in one image to generate a unique narrative.
I wasn’t too convinced by having a series of photos that the user can swipe through. It doesn’t come across very interesting or unique so I’ve been trying to work out how I could merge the sequence into one still image. Then it occurred to me that I should try and layer the images onto of each other in chronological order and play around the with opacity settings to bring through all the positions of the people in each different shot.
This image, called Violent Women, was created by Duane Michals as well. This gave me the idea of taking a photographic sequence and compiling it into one image, which allows you to see the different movements and positions of the subject. Back when Michals did this technique, it would haven a bit more technical for it to work accordingly. It’s obvious from the photo that Michals used a tripod to capture each different shot. Having the camera stabilised into one position makes it easier to compile the other photographs of the subject moving from one end of the shot to the other.
When I did this with all the eight images, it looked incredibly messy and too confusing to look at so I selected only three images instead. Combining three mages together that have been taken at the same location, but at different times really conveys the concept of generating a small narrative within a still image.
Unlike Michals example, I shot these images handheld instead of a tripod. This is why they’re quite blurry as not all the images match up exactly because I’m making slight movements each time I take a photo. I think if I spent more time in Photoshop I could perfect a bit more, but if I had shot the photos whilst using a tripod, they would match much better.
Update!
I’ve just come up with another idea for how this sequence could be viewed instead of a still image. I decided it would be cool to turn the sequence into a video to show it developing into a series of different shots merging together. This way I could also record some sound of that particular location and adapt it to the scene to make it more dynamic. I think this would make the idea behind this technique much clearer by showing the image develop.
As I’m focusing on technology disconnecting people from their surroundings, I decided that it would look better if I separated the man listening to his mp3 player from the other people in the scene.
I could have easily have just video recorded this to capture the same little narrative. However, there’s something quite unique about watching the images transform from the beginning to the end.
Here’s an image I created in Photoshop.
I hadn’t used Photoshop in a while so I wanted to mess around with some of the tools and features, just to keep me refreshed about the program. I ended up creating a poster image of Netsky to co-incide with his new album. I never realize how obsessed I am with photography until I go onto YouTube and start searching through some liquid DnB videos. I always come across some amazing pictures and they always relate to the music really well.
For my image, I took some long exposure photos of some light, which creates the light streaks. In the far background I’ve used images of clouds, which I’ve taken from my own images I took from Bournemouth beach. I used the ‘overlay’ effect in the layers menu to make the cloud images appear through the light streak images. I prefer this method than having to change the opacity to make the background show through. For the logo, I used a simplistic font, accompanied with a fine green glow around the edges to make it fit in with the overall piece.
This is a very interesting take on digital painting. The methods used are not the traditional ways to create digital paintings so this is a nice alternative. The outcome is vibrant, and the whole process of creating can be a bit difficult, but fun at the same time, since you could use your own materials like custom paint splashes. I found this image really eye-catching. This style of art really appeals to me because it reminds me of street art and I’ve always been interested in Banksy’s and Mr. Brainwash’s work. I find it hard to believe that pretty much most of the work gone into the image has been created digitally. We are definitely living in the digital age!
The creator of this piece is, Jill Tovey.
“Most of my work is mixed media, I use Corel Painter, Photoshop as well as lots of different paints, scans and textures – mostly just playing until I have something I feel happy with.”
Jill mentions she used Corel Painter, which I’m guessing is the program she used to create all the paint brush textures in. Since the new release of Photoshop CS5, it now has it’s very own paint feature which allows you to create and apply different brush strokes and mix colours together, just like traditional painting.
When I was doing Art Graphics for GCSE, I remember I introduced myself to Photoshop by scanning work I had sketched out and then applying effects, then printing it off working into it again and then re-scanning back into photoshop and so on. I found that process very therapeutic.
After seeing Ricky Gervais last Wednesday, I felt inspired to create a David Brent image in photoshop.
My street art styled Image (Bournemouth Beach)
I’ve been really into street art the moment and I decided to have a go at making my own street art styled image in photoshop. I owe it to Banksy and Mr. Brainwash who have influenced me to indulge myself in their artistic world. Although street is not entirely legal, it’s a great way for artists to get their messages and opinions across to the public because they are forced to see it.
Here is the original image that I took at Bournemouth.
I went into photoshop, duplicated the layers and altered the Threshold to get the black and grey tone effect. I’ve already done a post on this process a while ago. Here is the image after I adjusted the threshold.
The next stage I took was creating a grungy looking background. I opened up a new photoshop file. I then went to the colours pallet and chose a very light creamy colour and filled the new blank with that colour using the paint bucket. Next I went to the filter tab on the top bar, and scrolled to render and selected clouds. The cloud filter seemed to dominant on the page so I went to edit and then fade to make it look more subtle.
The image below is a small section of my photoshop document to show what the cloud effect looks like over the cream colour.
Ok, I felt the cloud filter wasn’t enough for the background as it looked a bit plain and needed to have bit more texture. I managed to download some new brushes that were specially designed for creating grungy looking backgrounds. Before I applied the brush effects, I created a new layer and then I was able to freely add more detail to the background using the brushes. There was some adjusting needing to be done with the opacity after applying the brushes so it mixed better with the cloud filter. I also used a couple of different colours, black and green so effects stood out. Below is another small section of my photoshop document after the brush effects were applied.
Lastly I imported my original photograph into photoshop and dragged it onto the grungy background page. I duplicated the photograph and selected the top layer. Then I went to the threshold and altered it’s settings. The reason I chose to alter the the threshold for the top layer is so that the colour from the original photograph will show up through.
Image above shows just the top layer. Image below shows the bottom layer (original photo) underneath because the colour is showing through.
I took some photos of a tunnel at Bournemouth train station. I was planning to have a shot of a tunnel at the end of my animation to represent, habituation, which is the breaking of the cycle of tinnitus. I went into photoshop and created layers for the walls and the pathway. Then I imported the photoshop file into After Effects and created a 3D environment so I could use the camera tool. I then moved the camera forwards to create the illusion of someone walking through the tunnel.
Here is a practice piece of the animation.
I will be adding special effects to the tunnel shot. I’m not quite sure how I exactly want it to look yet, but once I’ve tried out a few effects I should have some idea.
This is my animation I did in After Effects using my photoshopped image of the river Thames.
