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Chapter 10 Sandbox
From Digital Foundations
Contents |
[edit] Download Materials For Chapter 10
For these exercises you will need two images: the first all female space crew and a cropped image of Amelia Earhart.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:C-130_-_First_all_female_crew.jpg
Download the cropped image of Amelia here.
By the way, the cropped image of Amelia Earhart was derived from this original file:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amelia_Earhart_-_GPN-2002-000211.jpg
Download our final file here.
Note: we reduced the image size in our final file so that your download time would be faster.
[edit] 10. Repetition and Cloning
Digital tools empower creators to transform visual imagery with ease. Media-makers have the ability to change the appearance of virtually anything with techniques such as copy, paste, mask, and clone. Given the opportunity to change any image, message, or text, where would you begin?
Your answer depends upon your goals. Some creators use the tools for fun to make graphics such as LOLcats. Others create professional graphics such as advertisements, news, or entertainment content. In this chapter we review the Billboard Liberation Front and the Anti-Advertising Agency, who have created parodies of pre-existing advertisements. These artists reclaim media messages by altering the images themselves. The messages might appear in museums, on city streets, or in cyberspace. The aesthetics of the altered media rely upon the viewer’s visual and intellectual understanding of the original, pre-altered visual references.
Not too surprisingly, this counter-cultural, playful method of protest has already been co-opted by the advertising industry. In her book No Logo, Naomi Klein illustrates how advertisers, like contemporary artists, exploit the audience’s familiarity with cultural references to create brand awareness.
[edit] Visual References
http://www.billboardliberation.com/manifesto.html
The Billboard Liberation Front is a group of San Franciscan message-makers who aim to repurpose and “improve” billboard messages by painting or pasting on top of preexisting billboards. The group began its mission in 1977 and has grown into a worldwide phenomenon by collecting images on the web.
From the Billboard Liberation Front manifesto: “And so we see, the Ad defines our world, creating both the focus on ‘image’ and the culture of consumption that ultimately attract and inspire all individuals desirous of communicating to their fellow man in a profound fashion. It is clear that He who controls the Ad speaks with the voice of our Age.”
http://peopleproducts123.com/
People Products 123, The Anti-Advertising Agency, project website.
The Anti-Advertising Agency creates subversive media that opposes the role of advertising in contemporary society. Many of their projects are participatory, which means that viewers become doers or art-makers. In People Products 123, participants download package designs that feature images and information about the workers responsible for producing the consumable product. The participant prints the package designs, and shop-drops the re-covered product in the store, where an unassuming shopper would purchase the product contained in the newly informative packaging.
[edit] Results of Chapter 10 Exercises
[edit] Exercises 1&2: Original images and final file result
We begin with a group image of the first all female crew that NASA sent to space.
Also, we'll use a cropped image of Amelia Earhart.
In the final image, Amelia Earhart's head replaces the head on the center figure of the NASA crew and the image is rendered in black and white.
[edit] Exercise 1: Replacing part of one image using the Clone Tool
| The first all female crew can be downloaded from Wikimedia at this link:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:C-130_-_First_all_female_crew.jpg
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In this exercise, we will use two US government images from the public domain. We begin with a group photograph of the first all-female crew of an Air Force C-130 Hercules on a combat mission, photographed and made public by the Air Force. The second image is a cropped photograph of Amelia Earhart from NASA. In the final image, Amelia Earhart's head replaces the head on the center figure of the Air Force crew and the image is rendered in black and white.
1. Download materials for this chapter from the wiki. Open the group image of the crew in Photoshop. Zoom in on the central figure of the crew. We will start by replacing her head with a sample of the flag.
2. Create a rectangular selection around her head with the Rectangular Marquee tool. As long as any selection tool (aside from the Move tool) is active, when you place the cursor inside the selected area the tool changes into a white arrow with a small rectangular selection icon. Drag the selection marquee straight above the figure's head so that part of the flag is selected and the head is no longer in the selection boundary. You are only moving the selection — no part of the image is moving.
3. Copy the flag from the background layer and paste it. Edit > Copy followed by Edit > Paste will create a new layer. Name the new layer flag. Use the Move tool to position the flag on top of the head. The head has been replaced by a sample of the flag on a new layer.
| Key Command: Command+J is the hot key to float, or copy and paste part of a layer onto a new layer directly on top of the selection. |
4. Choose the Clone Stamp tool from the Tools panel. Set the brush to about 20 pixels. Check the Align button and make sure that Sample All Layers is selected from the pull-down menu in the Options bar.
Create a new layer called clone.
The Clone tool is used to replace small areas of a layer with a sample of an image. The Clone tool is applied with a brush. Using a soft brush will make the cloned sample appear to blend into the original image, even though we will do all of our cloning on a new layer. Be careful with your application of the Clone tool. The soft brush creates a little bit of a blur on the image. A small amount of blur is necessary in order for the sample to blend in, but clicking with the soft brush repeatedly will result in a blurry area in your image. The purpose of cloning is to create an unidentifiable image hoax. Creating a blurry area on the image will draw attention to that area. In order to achieve the hoax, the clone must be made in such a way that the viewer is deceived!
| Tip: Click on the down arrow next to the brush in the Options bar to modify the brush settings, such as the hardness or softness and the brush size.
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5. Now for the most important part of this exercise — sample parts of the flag in order to blend the areas around the edges where the pasted image is an obvious manipulation. The Clone tool requires that part of an image is sampled before it is applied to another part of the document. Sample part of the flag near the edge between white and red by Option-clicking in that area. Then position the mouse on top of the corner where the pasted flag needs to be blended, and click once to cover it with a soft, brushed sample. Pay close attention to the brush work. Determine if the first click is blended by looking at the surrounding values. Decide if your new sample is blending in. If it is, move on to the next area. Always Option-click to create a new sample before brushing. If the first click did not blend perfectly (it probably did not — this takes some getting used to), use Command+Z to undo the last step and try it again.
Work around all the edges by creating a new Option-click to sample the flag and then clicking with the brush to apply the clone. Command+Z will be used often in this process! We finished the clone in about 30 mouse clicks.
6. View the clone layer by turning the eyeball icons off for all the other layers. When viewed alone, our clone layer looks like random, abstract shapes. When viewed with the original layer, the clone layer helps create the illusion of a seamless background for the next exercise: replacing the head.
[edit] Exercise 2: Add Amelia Earhart to the image of the crew
1. Since the image of Amelia Earhart was originally a black and white photograph, we should change the image of the Air Force crew into grayscale. Use a black and white adjustment layer on top of the clone layer. Apply the adjustment in the Layers panel. Save your work in Photoshop format. The file should have the .psd extension.
2. Open the image of Amelia Earhart, select her head and neck with the Rectangular Marquee tool and choose Edit > Copy. Toggle back to the Photoshop document and choose Edit > Paste. Use Edit > Free Transform (Command+T) and hold Shift while scaling Amelia Earhart's head down so it is in proportion with the body. Name the new layer Amelia.
[edit] Exercise 3: Add a layer mask
Add a mask over an image to hide part of it. Masks do not delete or alter image data, they simply hide or show parts of images. Masks operate in black (hidden), white (revealed), and shades of gray (transparent, partially hidden). We will use a layer mask on the Amelia layer to blend her into the new background.
| Note: Other types of masks include clipping masks (see Exercise 4 in Chapter 9) and vector masks, where vector data instead of bitmap data determines what is black and what is white. We will work with layer masks in this chapter and in Chapter 11.
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1. Create a layer mask on the Amelia layer with the Add layer mask button at the bottom of the Layers panel. This mask will hide the background around Amelia's head. Notice that the layer now has an icon for the image and an icon for the mask. The mask is currently active — there is a frame around the mask icon.
2. Click on the Brush tool and make sure that the default colors are loaded into the foreground/background color chips (black as foreground, white as the background color) by clicking on the small black/white color chip icon to the top left area of the actual color chips in the Tools panel.
3. Notice that the icon for the mask is white in the Layers panel. Since everything on the layer is revealed, the entire mask is white. Use the Brush tool with black paint on the mask in order to hide the background. If you make a mistake, switch to white paint to retrieve hidden parts of the image. Practice painting with black and white paint. Paint with different size brushes and notice what happens with a soft or hard brush, or with the brush set at different opacities.
We used a soft brush for the background area and kept it far away from Amelia's head. As we brushed closer to her hair, we reduced the opacity of the brush in the Options bar to about 40%. At a reduced opacity, clicking a few times near her head with black paint removes the background while keeping her hair from being cut to an unnatural shape.
[edit] Exercise 4: Burning and dodging
The last step is to correct Amelia's skin tones. Before you can do that, you will have to click back on the content portion — leaving the mask — of the Amelia layer. Photoshop indicates which part of the layer you are working on by bracketing the corners of its icon in the Layers panel. The title bar in the document also reflects the area that is currently active. If the mask is active, the Burn tool used in the next step will affect only the mask, so make sure Amelia’s layer content is active!
1. Notice that Amelia's photograph was taken outdoors, while the Air Force crew was indoors. The harsh light on Amelia's face is noticeably different from the light on the Airmen’s faces. We will make a quick adjustment to Amelia's skin tone in order to create a more realistic collage with the Burn tool. Burning and dodging are photographic manipulations native to the traditional darkroom. In the darkroom, additional exposure time increases the amount of light hitting the paper. This can be done selectively, resulting in a "burned" area of the image. Burning darkens the value of that portion of the print. Light can also be blocked during the exposure by dodging over image areas where the tonal values are too dark with a small tool, resulting in a lightened area of the print.
Use the Burn tool with a soft brush set at an exposure of about 10%. Quickly brush over Amelia's face with the Burn tool. Each time you click the mouse, the tones will darken.
2. Repeat Step 1 with the tool options set at both midtones and highlights.
