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Thematic (Final Assignment)

This is our final assignment that demonstrates what we have learned throughout this course. The topic for the Thematic is: "All of the Sudden." At firstI was going to do "All of the Sudden Time Stopped." I got this idea when I looked at a clock in a classroom at school and it froze midway through class. We all laughed at this, but then I thought, 'what if time stopped when the clocked stopped?' Once I had my idea I went back to my favourite search engine Google (of course). I found a picture of a glowing clock and a picture of Usher walking down the street with a group of people:


I opened Photoshop Elements and got to work. First I created a new file and dragged the picture of Usher and the group onto a layer and named it "Usher". Next I dragged the clock picture over the Usher picture, which automatically created a new layer. The first thing I did was go to the layer settings menu on the bottom right corner and change the Usher picture's "Blending Mode" settings from Normal, to Exclusion. This got a cool effect that they usually use in some movies to show time freezing. Well usually when time freezes the colour of everything changes from normal to strange.

Next I dragged the clock to the top right corner using the move tool and resized it a bit so that it didn't go over top of the people in the picture. Then I changed the Blending mode to Lighten, which got rid of the dark background around the clock and made it look like it was a floating/ glowing clock.

I had many plans for this theme. I was going to add glowing crosshairs on Usher and a clowing timer ontop of their heads butAt this point I went on Christmas break and came back with a brand new idea. I left the clock idea incomplete and moved on to my next Theme: All of the Sudden I Was Falling...

To create this image I went back to Google (again?) and found an image of a person falling from a building in first person view. Next I found an image of a person falling (but the person is very small and can barely be seen) and a picture of an eye floating in a dream like world.



I started by opening these image files from my saved image files. Next I created a new file and dragged the first falling image onto it  and labeled the layer "Fall 1." Next I dragged the second picture onto the new file and adjusted the layer so that it was ontop of the "Fall 1" layer. Then I labeled it "Fall 2." I took Fall 2 layer and adjusted it so that it covered a bit of the Fall 1 layer then I created a new layer between them and selected the Gradient tool. I used the gradient tool (on a pixelated looking setting) on the new created layer by selected the area in the middle of both pictures. At this point a dark shade appears on the bottom of the new layer. Then I selected Fall 2 (suppose to be on the top layer) and pressed Ctr G. This blended the layers together. Next I dragged the dream picture using the move tool onto Fall 2. I resized it, distorted it and chaned the blending options to Hard light. Next I blended the fall 2 layer with the dream picture and then used the stamp tool to add the finishing touches.




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Movie Poster


The object of this assignment was to find a movie poster and recreate it so that you are inside it (as if you were starring in the film). I was looking forward to this assignment and had major plans for it but unfortunately they fell through. I struggled throughout the whole project until I only had a week left to complete it. So I got to work.

As I said above I started this project with many ideas and expectations. Google is always my friend when searching for images, so the first thing I did was go to Google and type “movie posters” into the search box. After two pages of nothing I spotted an Angels and Demons poster that caught my eye.



I stored it into my pictures file then moved through more pages until a Spiderman poster jumped out at me.
I decided to do the Spiderman poster instead (should have done Angels & Demons poster) since I thought it would be easier to do. It turned out that it wasn’t but we’ll get into that later.


 I asked the teacher for a digital camera and took a few pictures of myself so that I could use Photoshop Elements to add my picture to the poster. I uploaded the pictures to the computer and saved them to my picture files.



I opened Photoshop and opened the Spiderman picture file, then created a new blank file. Then I opened the picture that matched the poster the best. To begin I had to correct some things, namely the resolution, colour, hue, shading, angles, and background of my picture. This took up about two full days of class.

After 3 good attempts at somehow fitting my picture over Peter Parker’s face and matching it with the mask shape, I gave up. I went back to Google and began searching for another poster. At this point we were given a two week Christmas break. I came back lazy and unfocused so for two weeks I played around with other pictures instead of working on this assignment.

After a small wake up call I went back to the assignment and decided to try to recreate a Matrix Reloaded poster of Morpheus.


I gathered images of his glasses and began cropping another one of my pictures to create the poster. I tried to get the lighting and re-shape/ fit the glasses onto my face but eventually I grew tired of this poster and moved on to another one.

 I went back to Google and found a Star Trek poster that I saved in my pictures file with 2 weeks left before final presentations.
Unfortunately as you guessed it, I got tired of the Star Trek poster as well. At first it went well. I went home and took pictures of myself with my own camera, then I sent the pictures to myself.

                                            
I began with a blank file. I went to Google and found a black background, then cropped some of the movie poster to go overtop. I dragged my image (after some editing) onto a new layer I created and tried to blend the cropped portion of the poster with my picture using the gradient tool.


As you can see there are three people at the top of the poster and I only have one image of myself. I tried to add myslef ontop of the guy in the middle of the poster but it didn't work out. Then I tried to get two of my friends to send me pictures of themselves so that I could put them in the place of the girl and guy, but that didn't work either.

 At this point I realised that the poster has three people at the top of it while I only had one. So I erased everything and tried to put my picture over top of the movie poster, but that didn't work because my hair got in the way of the others faces. After one week I gave up on this poster too.

My last hope was a Rambo poster I discovered while surfing Google for images for my Thematic. It looked like a simple poster but I had no more alternatives and no more time to go back and forth between anymore posters.

I began with the picture I took for the Star Trek movie poster.

I created a two layers, dragged my picture onto Layer one and then duplicated it (just in case I made a mistake). Next I played around with the picture using the Filter settings. I choose artistic and stencil lines. I couldn't quite find a setting that matched the spray painted look of the original Rambo poster but this did come fairly close. It came out like this:
I switched to the stamp tool to edit my hair and made it look like it is dripping down like in the orinigal poster. Then I fixed the resolution of the picture, resized and distorted it, and added shading on the neckline.

Final Product:

Once I Finished with my picture I added the text. Unfortunately none of the text options available on Photoshop Elements matched the poster text, but this text came pretty close. I added my name, the name of the movie and the date. Then I adjusted the size of the text and placed them like the original poster. Hope you enjoy it :)
P.S. Sorry for the speedy explanation I was pressed for time.

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Impossible Reality

For the next assignment we were suppose to create a picture that showed something impossible happening in reality (hence the name impossible reality). It took about a day for me to fully think of an idea for this assignment and then begin creating it to match my imagination. My idea was creating a picture where something is jumping out of the TV or breaking out of the TV. I came up with this idea while surfing Google images and finding an image where a hand was coming out of the computer and handing money to the owner of the computer.

First thing I did was find the images needed to create the assignment (using Google of course). I found a face breaking through a surface:



and a TV with a nice calm image on the screen (I didn't want a black screen here because it wouldn't come out as good).

After finding the right images, I went and created two new files on Photoshop Elements so that I could desplay both pictures side by side. Once both pictures were safely placed in Photoshop, I went to the TV image. 

On the right in a side bar is the layers of the picture. I decided to play around with layers in this assignment. There are already 2 layers in the side bar, one is the TV layer that I was working from and the next layer is the background layer. The first thing I did was created a new layer which I named "Face" (third layer).

In the "Face" layer I pasted the actual face image right ontop of the TV image. Here is where it got tricky. At first I used the eraser tool to delete the background (white space) on the "Face" layer,  that was pasted on top of the TV image, but it cut off the little cracks and surfaces that I wanted to keep to make it look like the guy was trying to rip himself out of the TV. So I used undo and started where I was (where the image was pasted on top of the TV image), then switched to the familiar stamp tool.
 I selected the stamp tool, changed to the layer where the TV was and selected some pixels near where the Face image was covering the TV. Then I re-selected the "Face" layer and began to remove the white strips around the face, using the pixels taken from the "TV" layer. I used a big stamp tool at first to get rid of the large amount of white background in the picture. Then I began to use medium sized/ smaller tools to get rid of the smaller areas of white near the cracked hole where the face was trying to break out of. 

I finished removing the background of the "Face " image and began to blend in the corners of the image with the calm picture on the TV.
After another day of rest, I continued to work on the "Face Layer."  Getting rid of the white areas that I didn't need. I kept some flaps from the orgininal face picture so that it looked like the guy was trying to rip his way out of the TV. I was planning to remove the small white crack on the left side of the face, but it would have looked odd and forced me to delete the flaps (making the image look weird). The point of my image is to show someone trying to rip themselves out of a TV (which is impossible in real life). The flaps and some cracks that I left in the picture, emphasize this. Here is my finished product:


I finished removing the white strips and touched up the remaned of the TV then posted the final on my blog.


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Disappear Assignment

   After completing the three photos for the Photo Restoration Assignment I was relieved and decided to take a well deserved break, until I was told I had to produce 2 more assignments by Friday (the horror!!!). So I was quickly forced back to work once again after a very short break.

The next assignment we were given was Disappear. In this assignment we were to find a picture (from online, magazines, or using the templates provided on the computer), then using Photoshop Elements, we were suppose to make something vanish from the picture (with the stamp tool) as if it was never there to begin with.

With the time constraints and me being in a bit of a rush, I found a picture online of the Simpsons (the cartoon) and quickly got to work. First I originally planned to get rid of the whole Simpson family. But again due to the time I decided to only get rid of Lisa, Bart, Maggie, and Marge (since removing Homer was going to take longer than I have time for because of the tube he’s floating on, and the beer he has in both hands).

I started with Lisa. Using a large stamp tool I took pixels from the large brown rock behind her and easily removed her head, her right arm and a large chunk of her left arm. I left the bottle of sunscreen she was holding for later, and then moved to her body. I got rid of her stomach but saved the outline of the stomach and merged it with the rock. This created another rock that I used to make the picture more natural. Then I moved to her leg and feet. These were tricky since her leg was blocking the grass and the rock, and her foot was in the water. I started with her leg. I carefully removed the part of her leg that was covering the grass, by using a medium sized stamp tool. Then I worked on her leg/ foot that was touching the water. This took some time since I had to remake the little ring that was half cut off by her foot (using a smaller stamp tool to clean it up and make it look more natural). Next I moved to her other leg where I got rid of her foot (small stamp tools). Then, using the outline of the leg and the line that showed the leg was bent, I turned (the leg) into a rock and added the shading on the left side of the rock and changed the leg to match the colour of the rocks behind her. After all that I returned to the bottle of sunscreen she was holding, and using medium/ small stamp tools I sampled the colour of the rock where her head was, and made it vanish.


After finishing Lisa, I moved to Bart. I started with the corner of his head that was touching the clouds. Using medium stamp tools I sampled the cloud and used it to remove his head from the picture and rebuilt the cloud to the best of my ability. Then I got rid of the little swish marks that appeared around him to show the direction which he was jumping. I got rid of this using the medium stamp tool. Now came the tricky part. The sky itself had nearly 10 different shades of blue that layered itself in a certain way to come off as a naturally clear sky. The problem was maintaining these layers as I got rid of the rest of Bart, without disturbing the sky's natural flow. I took my time with this part. Using small, medium, and large tools to make sure the sky layers matched the picture. When I did this some layers crossed over and some were pushed below where they were before but it came out okay.


Maggie and Marge took the most time out of  all 4 to disappear. Both Maggie and Marge's heads (also Marge's hair), where blocking the bushes behind them and both were blocking the grassy area, the rocks, and the water. I started with their bodies that were blocking the water, rocks and grass. I had to remake the rock so that it connected to the other side near Homer, and then I had to remake the grass. Next I got rid of the body parts that blocked the grass, and the rock using medium and small stamp tools. Next I focused on getting rid of their body parts in the water (here is tricky). I had to redraw the little water circles, and fill in the water again using medium, and small stamp tools. I left the hardest part for last. I slowly got rid of Marge's hair using medium/ small stamp tools and began rebuilding the bushy area where her head was. I had to Improvise at the far left where her hair covered a small portion of the rock. I tried to rebuild the rock and make it look more natural.


I easily got rid of the tube Maggie had in her mouth then moved to the top part of her hair where it touched the sky. I tried to get rid of her head while continuing the layered shades of blue and then rebuilt the bushy area where her head was. I used medium sized tools to get rid of her body and small tools to remove her feet (as well as the water dripping from them. Then I took pixels from around the water and fixed the area where her feet had been.


Next I went to Homer, who I had originally planned to get rid of (but changed my mind) and decided to get rid of either the beer in his hand or the beer floating beneath his arm. I attempted both and found both results not so pleasing so I gave up trying to make Homer or any items he had or was on disappear and left him there in my final Image.







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Photo Restoration (Final)

The moment you’ve all been waiting for….the last photo is FINALLY finished!!! YAH!!!!

WARNING
(Sorry, but your about to read a long endless supply of writing that is as long as an essay but I'll try and explain what I did using less paragraphs as possible but I'll make no guarentees...)

 
Anyways, this was the hardest of the three photos by far. They call this one “the gas guy.”

I took my time with this one and started fixing the easiest pieces of “the gas guy” first, (I figure that if you start with the small things you can get the big things out of the way much faster…or maybe it’s just me?). So I started with his ear, (simple enough). I took a medium sized stamp tool and took pixels from a complete part of his ear, then quickly fixed the little rip and used a smaller stamp tool to touch up the ear so that there was no pixely look and I used it to help round off the ear, making it look more natural.

Next I moved to the background. Here I took pixels from the lighter shades of the background and filled in the rest of the background using that specific shade. It didn’t take too long and the only trouble spots were trying to redraw the borders around the photo, but again it took only a few seconds to fix.

My next target was the wide brim of his hat. This portion of the assignment took a fair bit of time. First I fixed the hair underneath the hat (using medium and small sized stamp tools) and then I moved to the shadow of the brim which took awhile because for some strange reason when I tried to sample pixels around the ripped or patchy areas, the gray colour would come out a different shade then what was there, so I had to adjust and move to other places of the body to find the shade of gray that fit that area. Next I played around with his hat and patched over the faded out dark shade with a darker almost black shade, to make the hat brand new (also touched up the shadowy lines on the hat and the belt thing that runs through the bottom half of it). The brim took awhile since I had to re patch it in and shape it. This took forever...There were times where the brim would look un-even or out of place, or had different shades of gray.

I worked on the chest area and the little necklace he was wearing next. These didn't take too long to fix. The necklace gave me a small bit of trouble because it would repeat itself just above where it orignially was and would look like a random chain coming out of his skin. So I fixed the shain with small stamp tools and continued to fix the white patches and shadow on his chest.

My next target was the "Esso" tag on the right side of his shirt. This part took little to no time. First I tried to fix the area of his shirt around the Esso label using medium/ small stamp tools. This took some time because again, the shirt has a lined pattern through it so if I didn't get the right pixels in the right place, the lines would go crooked and the pattern would look pixely or strange. I started with the second "S" on the Esso sign and pretty much took pixels from the first one to make the second one look complete. Next I patched up some of the little patches inside the label and slowly began to replace the stained portion of the label with the grayish colour of the label.
Now the hardest area of the whole picture came forward and I had to face it....the huge stain on the "gas Guy's" shirt in the bottom right of the photo. The shirt was a nightmare. One you didn't want to face but had to. So I selected small stamp tools and got to work. I started with the little white patchs on his collar working my way to the stain. I started by slowly fixing the shirt on the outer region of the shirt then I started to slowly move in on the stain from the top. I fixed the shoulder using small stamp tools then moved to the stain again until I came to the pocket of the shirt. Then I worked on the left arm of his shirt (yes it's his left arm, turn to face in the same position and you will know that its his left arm, even if it is on the right...). This was the hardest area next to the stain (since it had the stain, rips, patches and it was cutoff from the side).

Yes, it came out pixely. Why? Because there wasn't a good place to sample the pattern of the shirt to fit the direction of the ripped/patched/ stained portions of the arm, so I had to try and create it from scratch. I took some pixels from the shirt (which had the pattern going in the right direction) and tried to fix the arm. It became pixely when I used the same pixels too much. The top part of the arm, near the shoulder had lines moving in a different direction than the bottom part of the arm and it took forever to link up the two. I gave up trying to fix it after the third attempt (which made it look worst, so I didn't save it and started from before I edited it).

Next I tried to fix the folds on the shoulder and near the chest. The stain kind of fused with the shadow and I tried to use it to seperate the shoulder, from the arm (worked alittle but you can see what was the stain and what was shadow).

Lastly I fixed the rest of the rips/ patches in his shirt and moved to the pocket. Extremly hard...The pocket was covered in the stain and was challenging to uncover. First I had to remove the stain. This took about a week (using medium/ small stamp tools and slowly using pixels from the shirt to fix the pocket), next I made sure the pocket was the right shade of gray and that it matched the picture (took forever...). Finally I fixed the top of the pocket (to make sure the shading/ top part was there) then worked on the bottom part. The bottom part took another day to fix since it had stains under there too. I cleared those away using pixels from other parts of his shirt, then used the stain to form a small shadow under the pocket (to seperate the pocket from the shirt).

I looked it over one last time, then posted it for your viewing pleasure...


Start



Day 1-3


Day4-6



Finished...


In the end I decided to post 4 slides of my progress since this photo was the most time consuming and I put the most effort into making it look half decent. So enjoy.

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Photo Restoration Project (4 People)

Hey again, just finished my second photo called "4 people".

This one took the shortest time to complete of the three (doesn't mean it was the easiest).  I started off with the background first, fixing the huge rip at the top of the photo and editing the clouds using stamp tool. I took pixels from other clouds using a medium sized brush, then slowly went over the rip. I had to shift some clouds and re-arrange them to make it look natural inside the picture. Next I focused on the little creases and white patches that ran on the clouds, the hills behind the people, and the little white house.

Next I focused on the lake??? (I don't know if it's a lake but I guess it is since there are hills on the other side and the people are standing on the grass). This took me a few minutes. I used a small stamp tool and took pixels from fuller parts of the lake to clean up any creases or white patches.

Once I finished the lake I focused on fixing the 4 people. This part gave me trouble since 3 of the 4 people had their arms cut off but cuts and creases in the photo. It took me a while to make sure that their arms were fixed. I especially had a bit of difficulty with the boy standing up on the far left. His elbow was completely cut off and it took me 3-4 days just to draw the outline of the arm and then another 2 days to fill it in and make sure the elbow was correct. At times I found the arms looked odd, almost like the person had some type of skin disease....but I eventually fixed it and moved on to the faded/ white/ gray/ black spots and patches in their shirts and pants.

Finally I finished the black shadow at the bottom of the 4 people's pants, shoes, arms, ect. then moved to the grass. The grass gave me some difficulty since it had the most creases and damage on the whole photo so I used a medium sized tool and took pixels from a lighter shade of gray, which caused the grass to came out in one shade of gray (came off pixely) but I like the end result. On to number 3...

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Photo Restoration Project

Hey.

Finally given first assignment for digital art class. It’s called the Photo Restoration Project; basically students use Photoshop Elements to repair a set of damaged photos (3 in all) and make them look brand new without it ‘screaming’ Photoshop.  On the first day of class we were introduced to the stamp key. We learned the key shortcuts (pressing “S” for stamp, “Z” for zoom, and so on) and learned what the stamp key does, (basically takes pixels from one area and moves them from one to another).

After a brief introduction to the stamp key, and a few days of practice we began our assignment.

 I started with what I thought would be the easiest: called “the lady.”

Things started off positive. I began with her hair, which was faded and full of rips/ creases/ white patches. I highlighted the darkest pixels of her hair using the “Alt” key then fixed the faded grayish-brown patches to make them the same black shade as the highlighted area. It took time to fully fix her hair though, since there were patchy moments where a strange dark gray pixely color appeared in her hair. When this happened I went over it with the dark shade again, making sure that the hair was one flat black shade. Another area of trouble was the small part near the center of her face. It was way to high and looked funny when I left it as it was; so I quickly cut it down lower to suit the new hair do she was receiving. It was tricky finishing the outline of her hair since some spots were faded curls, that I had to patch over (now they look like black clumps of hair), and the little areas where hair had to be fixed in the crown was no walk in the park either…(used small stamp tool for these).

The crown itself was a struggle, since I discovered that most of it had rips and white patches in it. I used smaller stamp tools to fix the patterns on the crown and erase the big/ small pieces of rips that I could spot (not sure is I got them all but I did the best I could), and then moved on to the face.

Her face was easy for the most part. The only parts that bothered me was when I tried to get the stamp tool to collect the right shade of gray so I could fix the little patches on her skin. I used medium and small stamp tools to fix this, and tried to fix the strange dark gray marks on her forehead (looked like scars???). Next, I worked on her lips, which took me a few seconds (just fixed some dark patches and reformed the shape of her lips), and then I moved on to her shirt (oh my…).

The trickiest part of the photo so far was her shirt because it had a lot of white patches and was cut off at the sides of the photo. I started with the small missing patches of shirt first.  Then moved to the collar of her shirt where I struggled to fix the shadows using medium and small stamp tools. Next I worked on filling in the bigger portions of the shirt using a medium stamp tool (some used the larger stamp tool here but I thought it came off too pixely, well I think mine came off a little pixely anyway…).

Once the shirt was finished I fixed the background by taking the darker pixels of background. This was not easy, since there were almost several different shades of gray in the background (I chose 1 and stuck with it). I covered the whole background with a darker shade of gray using the medium sized stamp tool and filled in missing corners or sides of the background using a smaller stamp tool (I think it may have come out a little uneven on some sides but it looks good from far), this was tricky since at some points since I had to also gather pixels from the outer border and separate the white area from the rest of the picture.

Once I did all that I finished the project and…here it is!

Enjoy.


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