Image Manipulation and Compositing - Week 8 - #oneperday18 - Photography (QUT DXB202)
For this week, we had to take four individual photos (or create original illustrations) and combine them together into a composited Photoshop image. I wanted to go with a space theme due to my love of space, and also the fact that I wanted to use my digital rendering skills in After Effects, and space was a natural fit for applying those skills.
Image 1 - Space Background with Star
Technique –
This image was created in Adobe After Effects CC 2018, with Fractal Noise, Particle World and VideoCopilot’s Vibrance and Sabre plug-ins.
Process –
I began with creating the starry background with Particle World, and then wanted to add a nebula effect using flares and Turbulent Displace. Unfortunately, it didn’t look too good so I scrapped it and just used a simple green haze over the scene with about 50% opacity. For the star itself, I created a fractal noise pre-composition layer that I then turned into a CC Sphere and used VC Vibrance to bring out the orange colours. The Sabre plug-in gave me the final touch of adding the nice orange glow across the edges.
I tried to incorporate a little bit of colour theory into this design when it came time to decide on the colours for the stars and haze. With the bright orange star in the centre, I tried to use a split-complementary colour scheme with green and purple as supporting colours. The haze was made green, and the stars in the background were made purple, and I think this added a slightly higher level of thought behind the composition.
Reflection –
Overall I really am quite happy with this image, it came out a lot better than I was expecting! Video tutorials helped me figure out the technical details while I fiddled with bits and pieces to get the look I wanted. In future I would like to try and get a cool nebula background but I’m completely fine with this.
Image 2 - Mars Bar Cookie
Technique –
This photo was taken with my Moto G4’s camera in class (Z2-203).
Process –
I was struggling to think of what I could use for my space environment and was eating from a bag of 20 Mars Bar cookies from Woolworths, and had the idea of photographing the bag because “Mars”…get it?? Like space!! Yeah, very clever. But then my friend Vidida said “why don’t you photograph the cookie itself and use it as a planet or moon or something?” and I said “you’re a genius”. So I put the cookie against the white desk with the flat ceiling lights for the best possible photo and took a few shots. That’s about it, really.
Reflection –
I don’t really have too much to reflect on with this one, since it’s extremely simple. In future, if I could get truly flat lining for the composite that would have been nice, but the slight shadowing actually helped me in the long run.
Image 3 - Disgusting "Self-Portrait"
Please ignore the Funko Pop boxes, I hate those things and did not buy them, they were gifts I SWEAR. Funko Pops are grosser than my face.
Technique –
This photo was taken with my front-facing camera on my Moto G4.
Process –
So I was trying to think of more photos to add in my composition and thought of doing something silly with my face, and since this was around 3-4pm the afternoon sun was coming through my window upstairs. I took a photo of me with the cleanest background I could and tried to get the sunlight through the blinds to land right on my eyeline. I also made sure to make the dumbest face I could.
Reflection –
This image is a bit blurry, no thanks to the front-facing camera on my phone, but since it’s a dumb “selfie” anyway, I don’t exactly care? In future I would rather have someone else take a flat portrait of me with a proper camera and under better lighting conditions.
Image 4 - Water Bottle
Technique –
This photo was taken with my rear camera on my Moto G4 in the rumpus room at my house at around 11pm.
Process –
While creating the final composite image, I needed one last object. Looking around my house, I thought of maybe photographing my LEGO DeLorean Time Machine, or my Samus Aran figma, but I decided on grabbing my gradient-filled water bottle to make it look like a rocket ship. I used the bright light of our pool table in the rumpus room against some white paper of my sketchbook to get a clear background. I also had a white spotlight but it made the scene too bright, and I couldn’t hold the light and take my photo at the same time. With how close I had the camera to the bottle, the image was quite distorted vertically, so I had to move back and zoom in. This meant that the image quality was a bit worse, but it created a flatter image which was what I wanted.
Reflection –
I would have preferred a higher-quality image but that’s more down to the limits of my phone’s camera, and since this image is being used in such a minor way for the final composition, it doesn’t bother me too much.
Image 5 - "2018 - An Insanity Odyssey" - The Final Photoshop Composition!
Make of that title what you will. This year has been pretty hard with university work, so consider it a metaphor for the state of my mind. I also like space. And cookies.
Technique –
This was image was created in Adobe Photoshop CC 2018.
Process –
The first step with this was to add my face to the star through a circular mask. I then started adding the cookies as moons/planets, and giving them distinct colours with gradient overlays to show the light of the star effecting them. This is where the natural light from the original photo actually helped, because I could just rotate the cookie around so that the shadowed side was aiming away from the star. I did lots of messing with adjustment layers for colours, curves, hue and saturation, along with blending options for colours, gradients and other things. Finally I added the water bottle as a rocket ship, with more of AfterFX’s Sabre plug-in being used to generate the fiery thruster effects. I added motion blur to all of the rocket objects and also created some text to try and make it more like an actual ship. It’s also the Back to the Future font, so that’s a “fun fact”
Reflection –
I’m pretty happy with this final outcome! I managed to create this entire image – including the background and the water bottle photos – all in one night, so that was cool. The only thing I wish I could do better is the rocket ship water bottle, but I expected it to not look amazing since it was more of a last-minute addition as I had to think of something else to include on the spot. But I feel compared to everything else throughout this assignment, this kind of shows that my strengths can lie more in digital work surrounding rendering and image manipulation. I’m an animation student so this field is more my speciality.
