Night to Day: Matte Painting

To begin my process I first removed the sky from the original background. I did this by using the color range on the sky and after that applied a refine edge for a better selection. Then I placed my selection in a layer mask. Next step was to remove the people and tent. The spot healing brush was used to accomplish the removal of the unnecessary items. While doing the spot healing process some of the railings from the building were taken away, to get back these railings the clone stamp was used with a soft brush. For the remaining development of turning this building into a night scene, adjustment layers were the basic fundamentals. Working with the building, first adjustment layer I used was the brightness to really bring down the shadows. Next was the levels and this brought out some of the mid-tones back into the image. I slightly applied some curve to the image to gather some more darkness. One major adjustment layer was the hue/saturation. This brought out more of the dark tan colors in the building and the green in grass. Lastly the photo filter was used to add a slight shade of violet over the image. Now working the sky was my next goal. I added brightness/contrast, exposure, and color balance were the adjustment layers I used to get a fitting picture to match the building and its lighting. Also I duplicated the moon to add to another layer where overlay blending mode was used.    

ORIGINAL DAY IMAGE



MY REDONE NIGHT SCENE

Proffiency

Here is a collage I have made for my Game Design II class. We were to find a poem or haiku and create an inspirational piece from it. After finding a haiku that I liked it was now time to put a picture to it. With the haiku that I picked I wanted to go for twilight zone feel, almost calm but eerie. The next step was to find an image which was done on flicker.com. The background, communication tower, flat line, hand print, space ship, and the silhouette of the house are all separate images that have had selections removed them. The selections tools I used were the magic wand along with quick selection. For the communication tower I took a different approach and used the color range to remove the background and leave the tower by its self along with the grassland. Almost all of these selections were put into mask layers. Also I used some adjustment layers to balance out the picture. And for the flat line and hand print different blending modes were applied to fit the whole image. These were the main steps I used to create my collage.

Research and Development 1

This video was helpful for showing some really good ways to select and remove items but also by doing it in non-destructive way. I really liked his first example were he used the Blending Options from the Layer Styles to combine two images to make one. Although it was unconventional I appreciate that he still showed this because it can always come in handy for later work. Another technique to remove selections that I was not aware of was the Color Range. Color Range is similar to the Magic Wand tool but with slightly more control over the tolerance of pixels/colors that would be selected. By using the Color Range you can get rid of some difficult backgrounds and have them replaced. The most important technique to be taken away from this video is the Mask tool. By always making selections into a Mask you can achieve a non-destructive work flow, plus can do more with the Mask tool. Refine Mask is also important for improving your selections which include contrast, radius, and shift edge, etc. These were the main topics that had been discussed in the video along with some key boards short cut to these tools. One final thing that I took note on was his progress of work. He says and I believe to find true is to start by making a rough selections and improving upon that step by step to get a better selection, instead of trying to take care of the situation in one huge step. All of these techniques will be used on my assignment for class were I will make a collage inspired by a poem.