Matte Painting Pratice: Cliff

In class we are now working on matte paintings. Matte painting can be a photo or multiple photos combined with painting done over to create a whole new mood and/or scene. Given three photos, I had to put them together to create my matte painting. Only beginning the process we are just working with adjustment layers to color correct the images to fit together. I begin with the photo of the man, which he was removed him from the background. I did this by using quick mask tool and I decided to remove the background instead of painting over the man to get the selection. This seemed easier to me after examining the photo. Refine edge was used after getting my selection were I did a few modifies like smooth edge, shift edge, and contrast. After that I then placed my newly selected man into a different background which seemed more adventurous. Now with my man in the new background I needed to replace the sky. Again I used the quick mask tool to on the sky to get a selection, after that I deleted it to make room for my new sky. The photo of the new sky to my convenience fitted nicely and all I had to do was insert the photo. To begin color correcting I started using color balance on the entire photo and brought out colors I thought necessary. Then hue/saturation was applied to lighten up some of the colors. Now I began using levels separately on the three different images to bring the shadows and mid-tones to the same level. Brightness/contrast was used on the sky and the man to help with the balance. To help finish my piece I added a warming photo filter. Last adjustment layer I added and I thought was necessary was the vibrance and this made the image to look gloomy. My one thought on the piece while working on it was the achieving a nondestructive work flow. It’s a step I missed but it was only while working the quick mask.

Blending Colors with Brushes

For our assignment we had to properly blend colors by using only the brush tool. To start a quick tip is to use the magic wand on an empty shape to color in. This is useful because when the marquee appears around that shape and you start paint it will allow for you to stay within that marquee line. I first approached the rectangle and begin working with a hard surface brush. A quick way to obtain a color is to us the eyedropper tool. So I jump around and still with the hard brush I paint the top, bottom, and couple of strokes in between those to get a rough of what colors I’m going to blending into. After that I switch over to a soft brush and start painting in between those strokes. The blending still wasn’t done and I went back a third time, still with a soft surfaced brush but this with the opacity and flow turned down to around 85%. This took care of any eye catching color transitions that didn’t look right. That would finish my blending for this rectangle shape. Next and for me the more difficult shape was the circle. I approached this the same way as the rectangle but I soon realized this was not going to work. To solve one my problems I applied the rulers’ tool so that I can bring the guides out. The guides allowed me to divide the circle into sections and help me blend and gather colors. Again I started with the hard brush to color inside the inner circle. That’s the end of hard brush because it didn’t appropriately for the rest of the blending. Now the soft brush was my main tool and I went back and forth, painting this circle trying to get all the colors and to blend properly. Even with the opacity and flow lowered I did not like the blending that was done. Although very minor the change I did to help get the blending I wanted was to make the brush size bigger. This helped and in the end I achieved an accurately close blend of colors.

Creating custom brushes can be done in Photoshop are useful for adding textures. For my brushes I gathered a few images from flicker.com. Each of the images was enhanced by using the levels tool. Brightness/contrast was used to touch up a few images along with the shadow/highlights tool. For the water drops and spider web the lasso tool was used to get a selection I wanted. Only for the ground with cracks I converted the image mode into grayscale, then use Threshold to isolate the cracks. My other two images were left as is. The next step after getting my custom brush selections was to modify them with preset option. My best preset brush was the cracks brush. It develops good cracks that could be used for walls or ground images. The bark and spider web brushes were so so and I could be improved after explain my troubles for other brushes. Some problems I had are getting the brush to be realistic and also to flow well. For example the water drop brush was something I had in mind that I thought ideally could be used on any object. After doing an image adjustment and making my selection I had spent some time in the preset option but I could get what I wanted. Along with the rust brush I wanted to create a texture but as much I played around with the preset it seems like I couldn’t make a difference. The most I got from the preset options was different shades. In the end some images worked better than the other.

Blending Pratice

Here I present you two images that I have blended into one. The goal of this assignment was to use new tools which would be the blending modes, layers styles, and within layer styles the blend if. The images I choose where the Alder Planetarium which I had taken a photo of and I wanted a beautiful sky image which I had to find of the web from flicker.com. My first steps were to color correct both images. Then after that I decided both images were color corrected I put a blending option on them. The sky had multiply and the planetarium had darkened blending modes. By doing this it poorly blended the images so to get a better look I added blend if to the sky to get an equal amount of sky to go through the planetarium image. Last I decided to throw some layer styles on the planetarium.

Color Correction 2

 

To the left you see a photo that I have taken from Millennium Park in my Chicago area.  From it I will display more color correction techniques to improve this photo. To add more dynamism I selected two objects from the photo and individually developed upon them. The two objects I enhanced were the blue and yellow circles. I selected these by using the same methods and that is by means of color range and quick selection tool. After which I manage to a get selection around my objects I then applied a refined edge to get a more thorough piece. From here I knew I wanted to work on these objects first and then balance out theoverall photo/image. Adjustment layers were utilized and will always be executed from here on out be to perform a non-destructive work flow. On the blue circle brightness/contrast, levels, and hue/saturation adjustment layers were used to achieve a more lively blue. Next for the yellow circle the same adjustment layers were repeated as the blue circle, but I removed the curves layer later on to better fit the piece. Also with the curves layer removed it showed more shadows around areas where needed that brought out the shapes of this artwork clearer. Now with both circled objects color corrected it was time to fit the background appropriately with those. The first adjustment layer that was used was the color balance. This did an alright job of bringing out the green in the trees and it slightly effected the overall environment. It was not until I applied the hue/saturation layer to get more real green for leaves and cleaner quality for the concrete and buildings. Also througout using these layers I kept in mind the Crown Fountain (tower with face in the background) to develop and keep its color. Finally the brightness and levels layers were the last touch to my photo to bring a pleasant clear day. You can see resluts below.

Color Correction 1

Here are my color corrected pictures. Displayed on the left sides are the original picture and the right side is my work. So first is the bird which I ended up having an old photo feel to it. Right away I noticed an issue with the upper left corner that casted a shadow, bringing the brightness up in the photo made that part very distorted so I decided to turn the brightness down. By bringing down the brightness it lowered many tones of the pictures colors, so my next step was to use the levels tool to bring out some mid-tones along with a slight brightness to the birds feathers. Still the photo had an unnatural look and to fix this I added curves that improved the red color of the bird’s beak and at the same time incorporated a nice mellow yellow to overall photo.

Next for the rooster in the shadow I immediately knew I wanted to make it a day scene. Being the photo was really dark I started with the levels tool to quickly get a rough day scene. After that I used blue channel within the curves tool to lightly add blue to it. Now at this point this I kept rolling and decided if I was going to add brightness/contrast to this photo it was no longer going to be a day scene, but an morning scene with the idea of the sun being above the rooster. With the limitations of only use the top image adjustments for Photoshop for this assignment I used curves again to bring some color in the photo. Lastly to convey a shine around the roosters head and back the levels tools was used.

Now for the Quirigua monument I started off going for night scene. I do so at first with the brightness by lowering it. Then with the levels tools I ended up bringing out a cleaner darker green for the leaves and the grey tones with the monument. Now to my surprise I wanted to make to sky darker and so I thought that by using the blue channels within the curves this would do the job, but instead it made the trees and grass greener. Here is where my original idea switched from night to just improving the photo overall into a beautiful day. I went and added a second brightness/contrast and notched them up. And lastly I incorporated another curves this time from the green channel and this made everything come together attractively.  

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.