Tag Archive for 'Photoshop'

Moving Subjects Within a Photo

Published
by
Michael
on September 24, 2008
in Creative
. 0 Comments

Composition is one of the areas that distinguishes experienced photographers from amateurs. Part of learning composition is learning to see a photograph for only what is in the photo itself. In other words, don’t assume the person viewing the photo will understand the bigger picture — the parts of the scene you have cropped out, or the relationship between objects that would be clearer when seen in real life.

Another important part of composition is learning how to honor the subject. Although the background may be really awesome, if the subject is a person, the focus needs to be on them — even if it means cropping part of that oh-so-inspiring background out of the photo.

Consider this example, which I received for a 3ABN World article some months ago:

Before

In the photo, it appears that Rita is a midget; the top of her head doesn’t even reach the midpoint of the photo. You would think from this photo that the subject was an afterthought, and the photographer was more interested in an unobstructed view of the church behind. Not only is Rita situated very low in the shot, most of her body has been cropped out, leaving the background to dominate the photo. Even the less impressive parts of the photo — the dirt, the low bushes — have more space devoted to them. Looks like a job for Photoshop!

Although many people think of Photoshop’s selection and layer tools as a way to combine parts of separate images, they also work well for altering the parts of a single image. 

After

What we’ve done here is created a selection around the subject, copied it to a new layer, and moved it up in the photo. Although we didn’t have much of a person to work with, still in this setting she looks more important, more confident, and more up-close-and-personal. The church has not been altered or cropped, but now it appears more for what it is — a background object that merely provides context, rather than dominating the scene.

Of course, it would have been better to compose the photo correctly in the first place. But with a little care, we can improve the photograph without creating something that looks contrived.

Photo Retouching

Published
by
Michael
on July 8, 2008
in Creative
. 0 Comments

A friend asked me to do a personal favor of retouching a photo. Here is the progression.

The original image (cropped to the face—the whole image is much larger, but I wanted to show the details):

1start

Brightness adjustments:

2brightness

Color adjustments:

3color

The eyes could not be salvaged from the original data, so I redrew them from scratch in Photoshop:

3eyes

“Our Heritage” Rock Skipping Photo

Published
by
Michael
on May 15, 2008
in Creative, Journal and Photos
. 4 Comments

The first installment in my series “Our Heritage” appears in the June 3ABN World magazine. I wanted a creative introduction to this first story, and this is what I came up with:

I stand at the edge of a small lake. It’s quiet here—a good place to meditate, to think. As I skip a rock across the water, I notice the ripples. At each point where the stone strikes the surface of the lake, waves radiate outward. Together they look like a series of points, each sending out signal waves in every direction. In a sense, that’s what this series is about. Our Christian heritage is a string of pivotal events, each with its own lasting repercussions in the stream of time. It’s a story that inspires me every time I think of it.

I thought it would be cool to add a little thumbnail illustration. I tried to look for stock photos of a rock skipping across a pond, but couldn’t find any. So Adam and I headed down to the nearest little pond, and this is what we got:

The original photo:

Skipping1

Unfortunately, despite numerous attempts, we couldn’t quite capture the feel of skipping stones. The surface of the water was really icky. We did get some nice splashes, but they just didn’t look like what I wanted to convey.

Add “Pond-Scum-Be-Gone” (aka, Photoshop):

Skipping2

Ripples:

Skipping3

A nice reflection:

Skipping4

Some nice early morning mist, and we’re done!

Skipping5

3ABN’s Facebook Page Art

Published
by
Michael
on May 8, 2008
in Illustration
. 0 Comments

I recently created a page for 3ABN on Facebook. I needed something for the picture, so after a little brainstorming and experimentation, I created this:

export2

It was created with a combination of SketchUp, Swift 3D, and Photoshop.

One trick was to create a picture in which 3ABN’s logo would look OK, once automatically scaled down and cropped by Facebook’s software. This was part of the inspiration for having a screen with the logo in the center, surrounded by other screens. To be cropped correctly, the logo must fit within a space defined by a perfect square with a width and height less than the smallest dimension of the image.

Apollo 13

Published
by
Michael
on September 28, 2007
in Illustration
. 3 Comments

UPDATE: Art has been updated since the original post.

For the November issue of 3ABN World, we needed to illustrate a devotional article based on the famous Apollo 13 mission. After a futile search for a useful clipart image, I decided to take the plunge and make my own composition. Keep in mind that I do not have much experience in 3D — I think I could count my 3D illustrations on one hand — and I had only six hours or so across two days to work on this. Besides that, my tools were a clunky 3D application called Swift 3D 4.5 (nothing “swift” about it), SketchUp 6, and Photoshop CS2.

I found a number of 3D models. Interestingly, each one was different in various ways, including in regards to the colors and materials used for major pieces of the Apollo command module. So I compared them all, noted the common features, and also perused some online articles about the Apollo 13 mission (characterized by fuzzy, black and white images). In the end, I went for as accurate as I could guess, along with adding a few random stylistic elements that are almost certainly not true to life, but which make it look more believable.

Here is the base model that I downloaded. Note the absence of color and detail, and that the dish antenna is completely missing:

Apollo original

I added basic colors, materials, and textures in Swift 3D, and got the angle set to what I wanted. Then I exported it as a PNG image, and opened that in Photoshop. Then I added more color, shading, and texture. I also added lettering, rivets, the words “United States,” and other little do-dads. In the background I added stars (using a real photo of the night sky, not just random stars), and a view of Earth.

Originally I had added a dish antenna borrowed from another model, which I retouched in Photoshop. But I was not happy with the result. The new graphic below shows the new antenna that I made from scratch using SketchUp, Swift 3D, and Photoshop.

Here is detail of the craft:

Apollo cu

Here is a small version of the final image. The full size one is 11 inches wide at 300 ppi.

Apollo