Ten Second Film Festival - Production (Part 1)

Now all the planning is complete, I can move on to producing my video. Because all my lego is at home, I'll be creating the actual animation over the Christmas break. This meant any other work needed doing before the break, such as titles and credits, which I have now finished.

I created a project and deliberately left a ten second "hole" in the middle of it, which is where the animation will fit.

I will upload a video tutorial of how to create titles shortly. I will also be adding the movie so far to the blog, so watch out for an edited post!!

EDIT: Apologies for having no video tutorial as promised. The motherboard in my PC has decided to die.. and the student loan won't fund fixing it :( boo!

Ten Second Film Festival - Planning (Part 2)

Welcome back to the Ten Second Film Festival! This post is the second stage of the planning of my project.

The previous post thought about the idea and concept of the movie. Now I have to look at things like frame resolution, music track, set design etc.

I have found a suitable music track (Cahill featuring Nikki Bell - Trippin On You) and have edited it to the desired length. I have edited it so that I have an introduction for opening credits and titles, a middle section for the actual movie (this section lasts ten seconds) and then a final part for the end credits. To listen to the edited track, click below:

Click Here To Listen To Soundtrack

Note that a WAV version of the file above will be used in the project to maximise audio quality. The file has been compressed for online hosting.

I have designed my set using a virtual lego designer, which will make it much easier to create the real model. Remembering my idea to include a bar, dj booth, and dancefloor, my model will look (hopefully) similar to the following (click for larger view - requires Quicktime Player):


As you can see, the set design is not complete, there is still quite a bit of work to do, but now both yourself and I have an idea of what the animation set is going to be like. Several features are still missing, such as loudspeakers and lights. This is due to the software I used not having all the bricks I needed within it.

The frame resolution of the animation is stil undecided. I am going to have to work on a project at 25fps (the PAL standard), which means that using a 12fps rate for the still images might cause problems. For this reason I might end up doing the entire thing in 25fps, which will mean taking 250 stil images for the full ten seconds, but I am going to try do some research into whether I can create the animation in 12fps, and use 25fps for the beginning and end credits. I will update this post when I have come to some decision.

Referring to the Gannt Chart in the previous post, if the project stays to schedule I will begin filming next week. The filming will take place one day and I will hopefully be able to shoot the whole movie in one session because I have taken good care over the planning. Using my storyboard I will be able to shoot scenes quickly and efficiently.

That more or less concludes my planning, although this post may get updated in the next week with any changes that I might make to the film. The next post looks at the production stage of the project, and will give a detailed explanation of different camera techniques and shot types that I will try to demonstrate in the short space of time I have got to present something spectacular.

Ten Second Film Festival - Planning (Part 1)

Welcome to Part 1 of my planning stages for my Ten Second Movie.

As mentioned in the previous post, I have decided to choose a challenging Animation theme. The idea which I am working with is as follows:

I will construct a nightclub out of Lego, with a DJ booth, bar, and dancefloor. This will allow me to use a variety of different settings in my ten second movie. The sequence will be cut quickly to a thumping dance track. Cutting scenes quickly gives the notion of a fast paced environment, which is what I am going to try and portray in my Lego Club.

I thought about vital information I needed before I could start the production process, and can list the following:

MOVIE NAME: A Visit To Club Lego
CLUB NAME: Club Lego
CHARACTERS: Lego Men. A Large Crowd, Bar Staff, a DJ
SETTING: Custom-Built Club (See Design Later In The Planning Posts)
MUSIC: Dance Track with a Driving Beat

I have created a Gannt Chart, which outlines the production schedule in details, and gives me a time scale to work to. This can be seen below (click on the thumbnail for full view)

I have also finished storyboarding the film, and detailed shot types (I will be posting about different shot types later) where possible. Again, click the thumbnail below for a full view of the storyboard. The storyboard was designed by imagining actually creating a film of this idea. This enabled me to better show camera movements between frames. This storyboard will be used to create the animation and will aid greatly when shooting the images that will be sequenced to create the film.

That's all for Part 1 of the planning. Check back for Part 2 early next week.

Ten Second Film Festival - Introduction & Ideas

The time has come to start thinking about Assignment 2 - The Ten Second Film Festival. The task is to design, plan and prepare a Ten Second Movie for considered submission to www.tensec.com, a website for hosting ten second films.

The first step to creating the movie is actually coming up with ideas of what I might use for the film. After thinking carefully about what would be physically possible in ten seconds I came up with the following ideas:

Timelapse Movie
Animation
Narrative

Timelapse

A Timelapse movie is one where a long piece of footage is sped up so that it fits inside a shorter time bracket. For example, the easiest way to create this idea would to be find a nice big open space and film the sun setting or rising. This of course takes a lot longer than ten seconds, and could involve filming for nearly two hours (or sometimes longer!). With the camera recording in the same position for the duration of the sunset, the footage can then be edited to create the timelapse scene. The editing process isn't all that complicated. It is simply a case of trimming the clip and than time stretching it to fit inside ten seconds. Easy peasey! And it created impressive results.

Animation
A difficult choice to choose, but one that also has the potential to demonstrate a lot of different production and post-production (shooting and editing) techniques. The number of frames in one second (frames per seond, or fps for short) is between 24 and 30 (depending on which part of the world you're in and what format you're watching on), which means that do create an animation I would have to shoot between 240 and 300 still images, and then edit them together in quick succession.
Animation is very effective and I could create an impressive end product, but it means a lot of work. However, I have not ruled out this option just yet!

Narrative
My final idea was to create a narrative film. This would most likely be a short sketch with just two people. It would be very hard to create a good, catchy sketch with more than two people in the short space of time I have got to present it. By doing a narrative film I could demonstrate a range of different camera shots and techniques, and could vary my shots from wide shots to close ups. I could also use advanced editing techniques in post production, such as split screen, transitions, overlays etc.

My Choice

I have decided to choose the Animation idea, and I will be cutting the movie to a fast paced audio track. I am going to use Lego to create a Lego Club, and I will choose a variety of shots from different angles and shoot enough images to be able to cut the sequence to the beat of the music, which will be chosen at a later stage. Shooting will probably take place over a week period, because it will be hard to take all 240-300 images at once. I have thought about using just 12 frames per second, as this might be enough to create something effective. I will however decide the frame rate during my full planning stages, which you will be able to read in the near future.

Keep checking back for developments on the planning of my film! Hopefully within the next week I will have a storyboard completed, and know exactly what I want to film.

Big Stock Photo - The Results

Below is an email from Big Stock Photo. Please note that I uploaded the first three images before my final photograph. So I'm still waiting to hear back from them about my final submission.

Peter Littlewood,

The batch of 4 files uploaded on 2007-10-23 09:53:31 has been processed by our Image Approval & Moderation team. Below you will find the status of the files in this upload:

Approved Photos
----------------------------------------------------------------
The following files have been approved and will be scheduled to be added to the website on the next update (within 24 hours).

2208801 A Modern Office Building In London

2208803 High Rise Office Block In London

2226635 Looking At The Cathedral Through An Old Window (Lincoln, United Kingdom)


Not Accepted Photos
----------------------------------------------------------------
The following files were not approved with a descriptionof why they were not accepted:

2208802 High Rise Office Block In London
Reason: We have enough of this subject already...sorry...


Thank you for your help with BigStockPhoto.com!
BigStockPhoto Approvers

Well at least my favourite photo got accepted! Because of the reason they gave for denying the image, I cannot do anything to get it accepted as anything I do will not make any difference to whether they want the photograph or not!

Added on Tuesday, 20th November 2007 at 14:49 -

Yesterday I got the grade back for this assignment. I got 72%! A First!! I'm very proud of this grade as it is my first big assignment of my university life. So hopefully I've started as I mean to go on, although I'm sure that work will get a lot harder!

Big Stock Photo - Image File Formats

Because this subject often causes confusion between the types, I thought I'd take a few minutes to try and outline the key concepts of some common image filetypes and explain the pros and cons of using each method.

The image filetypes that I will look at are:

JPEG - Joint Photographic Expert Group
GIF - Graphics Interchange Format (Compuserve)
PNG - Portable Network Graphics
PSD - Photoshop Format
RAW - Found on expensive digital cameras
TIFF - Tagged Image File Format
BMP - Windows Bitmap

The above is a list of the most commonly used filetypes. Now, depending on how an image is to be used, depends on how the file should be saved. Each format offers it's own method of compression, be it lossy or lossless, but if an image is to be posted online, factors that should be considered are: file size (for download time) and compression to quality ratio. First let me explain the difference between lossy and lossless compression.

The difference between LOSSY and LOSSLESS compression is that the lossy method uses a complex compression algorithms that get rid of bits of data, for example parts of the image that the eye physically can't see and won't be missed. Of course, this does create issues with the quality of the image. If the image was to be resized (large OR small), the user will be able to see the degradation in quality, which is not a good thing if it was being used in a professional photography environment. For internet use however, lossy compression reduces file size, and is generally ok. The lossless variant of image storage is again a complex set of algorithms that stores image data without getting rid of any bits of the file. Files using lossless compression generally have a larger file size, making them unusable on slow internet connections, as large files take longer to download.

From the list above, here is a breakdown of which formats use lossy and which use lossless compression.

LOSSY Formats: JPEG, GIF
LOSSLESS Formats: RAW, PSD, PNG, TIFF, BMP

Lossy file formats are generally used on the internet because the file size stays low, even on images with large dimensions.

So what are the differences? I'll start by comparing the lossy file formats, JPEG & GIF.

JPEG (Joint Photographers Expert Group), has the ability to store images with a HUGE compression ratio whilst keeping a 24-bit colour palette (true colour). Excellent results are produced when images are saved in this format, and the format is widely used on the internet, because of its superb compression to quality ratios. File sizes stay low, but the image quality remains high.
JPEG works by making unnoticable changes to an image, and removes parts of a file. Where the format falls is on sharp edges and abrupt colour/subject changes. Saving as JPEG removes any abilty to resize an image greatly (either larger or smaller). The more you compress a JPEG file, the more colour information will be lost, reducing image quality further.
In comparison with other formats, JPEG will easily compress an image around 2-3 times better than the GIF format.

The GIF image file format was developed by Compuserve and is an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format and was designed for graphics rather than photographs. Because of the applications it was designed for, GIF only supports an 8-bit colour palette, making it bad at handling photographic material due to its reduced number of colours. Unlike JPEG, GIF supports transparency and interlacing in images, making it ideal for diagrams and logos. It is also possible to save GIF as a vector graphic, meaning that it can be resized as big or small as the user needs it, and the quality will not be degraded.
GIF is still, and always has been, most favourable for web page design components, such as simple backgrounds, logos, buttons, and small animations (banners etc), but when asked to handle anything with more than 256 colours (unlike the 16million colours of the JPEG), the format will fail.

Moving on to the more favoured formats in the photography and design industry, the BMP file format was devloped by Windows and is an abbreviation of the word Bitmap. BMP works by storing information on every single pixel in an image, which explains any large file sizes! Each pixel has a value for each of the Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) values in the colour system. The main disadvantage of this file format is the lack of cross-platform compatibility. This file type was developed for just the Windows platform, making it unusable on any other system.

The PNG (Portable Network Graphics) file type is probably the only lossless format used online, as file sizes stay reasonably low. Typically compressing 5-25% better than GIF, PNG image data is compressed across rows AND columns, whereas a GIF file is compressed just by rows, which gives it that slightly bigger file size. Again, PNG supports transparency and up to a 48-bit colour palette, which is more than the JPEG format. Be aware though that using a 48-bit palette for a picture that was to be uploaded to a website would be a bad idea because the file size would be much higher than using a 24-bit colour palette.

The TIFF image format is another lossless compression algorithm that is accepted across a number of different platforms. A TIFF file contains only original image data with all the information intact. This in turn makes file sizes very large and people tend not to use TIFF images where big files are an issue, such as on the internet.

RAW is a filetype that isn't widely used, but can be found on some expensive digital cameras. The name gives a slight clue as to how images are stored, in their "RAW" unchanged and original state. Similar to and a genral alternative to TIFF, any image data remains intact. Like TIFF, this file type is very platorm friendly and is easy to transport between systems and applications. The main disadvantage of the RAW file format is that a lot of image specifications have to be set before it can be used effectively.

Finally, I will talk about the Adobe Photoshop PSD file type, which is what I used for the images in the BigStockPhoto project (although the final images were saved as JPEG files for internet use). PSD is becoming more and more accepted in the image editing world because it is a very flexible format, offering support for an (almost) unlimited number of layers, image channels, and paths, making it great for editing, because any changes would be made on a separate layer, and if there were any unwanted layers at the end of an editing session, they can easily be deleted. The PSD file has an option to "flatten" an image, which means to mix all the layers down to a single layer, but if file size is not an issue, store images with all layer information intact, as it will make editing much much easier. Because of the flexibility of this file format, file sizes are often very large, so buy a big hard drive!!

To end this post, I will include an image file size comparison table, just to give an indication of the compression ratios that each file format uses. The image I have used is a downloaded RAW graphic, 1615 x 1465 pixels. The file was saved in all seven formats and the results are shown below (ordered largest to smallest file size):


It was interesting to see that the TIFF and BMP files ended up larger than the original RAW file.

Big Stock Photo - The Upload Process

When submitting image to BigStockPhoto.com, there a number of parameters the need to be set before you can upload each file. These are the following:

Image Name
Image Description
Tags
Category

All of the above are very important, as they are what website searches are based upon. If no tags are set, the images will never be returned in search results, which makes the photographs pretty useless!

The first thing I had to do for each picture was to give it a name. I had to keep this short and to the point as much as I could, because it is the first thing that a user sees when scanning through search results.

The image description is a brief paragraph explaning what the image is of and where it was taken etc. Any information can be input here, but I tried to keep mine brief because the description is shown on the search results pages, and users need an at-a-glance view of what the image is about. When I personally look through search results for any search, I am only quickly skimming the returned pages/images. I think that is what a lot of people tend to do, so keeping the image description quite brief is something I felt I must do to have a chance of selling more photographs.

The categorisation of each image is equally important to the other parameters. Luckily, the categorisation of each of my files was easy enough, because there is an Architecture category, which reflects my theme perfectly. Within this category, there are the several sub-categories to choose from including:

Churches / Religious
Office Buildings
Residential
Exteriors
Interiors

At the bottom of this post, you can see which sub-categories I assigned each image to. A photograph submitted to BigStockPhoto.com can be put in up to three categories. I used all three entries, because I want my images to be easily found and returned in the maximum number of searches possible.

Image tagging is the process of assigning keywords to an image. When I was thinking of image tags for my photographs, I thought first about the age of the building (modern/traditional). From these two keywords I could enter three or four tags. For example, for the modern London building I could use: modern, new, contemporary. For the Cathedral building i could use: traditional, old, historical etc. My tagging process continued by next looking at what was in the picture itself (eg: cathedral, offices, high rise office and so on). From here, I thought about what the building was made of. Keywords here include stone, concrete, glass etc. The more keywords I could assign to an image the better, and as with the other parameters, the upload information for all the photographs I took for this project are at the bottom of this post.

Other fields could be edited, like what camera was used to take the shot, LIST OTHERS

Below is the information I submitted with each of my photographs.

Image One
Image Name: High Rise Office Block in London
Image Description: A High Rise Office Block in London (United Kingdom)

Categories:
Architecture >> Exteriors
Architecture >> Office Buildings
Architecture >> Residential

Image Tags: architecure, office, workplace, high, rise, sky, skyscraper, tall, building, flats, house, housing, windows, reflections, reflected, reflect, bricks, concrete, modern, new, contemporary, design

Image Two
Image Name: High Rise Office Block in London
Image Description: A Tall High Rise Office Block in London (United Kingdom)

Categories:
Architecture >> Exteriors
Architecture >> Office Buildings
Architecture >> Residential

Image Tags: builing, london, skyscraper, high, rise, flats, office, block, sky, windows, reflections, bricks, concrete, towering, tower, workplace

Image Three
Image Name: A Modern Office Building in London
Image Description: A Modern Office Building in London (United Kingdom)

Categories:
Architecture >> Exteriors
Architecture >> Office Buildings
Industry >> Construction

Image Tags: modern, architecture, office, block, windows, reflections, tall, symmetrical, workplace, sky, high, contemporary, design, new

Image Four
Image Name: Looking At The Cathedral Through An Old Window (Lincoln, United Kingdom)
Image Description: Lincoln Cathedral shot Through A Window At Lincoln Castle

Categories:
Architecture >> Churches/Religious
Architecture >> Exteriors
Industry >> Construction

Image Tags: traditional, old, history, historical, building, cathedral, worship, church, window, stained, glass, concrete, stone, brick, hand, crafted, intricate, detail, castle, god, bible, choir, large, tourism, interesting

I also uploaded some other images to BigStockPhoto just because I thought they were good shots. These images were not edited at all. To look at these, click to BigStockPhoto.com and browse my portfolio. My photographer name is petelittlewood. I will write in my last post about this project whether my additional images were accepted or not.

Big Stock Photo - Image 4

For my final image I decided to try and do something a little different. I wanted to demonstrate the "frame within a frame" technique. This involves taking a picture from behind a framing object, such as a doorway, archway or window etc, and using this object as a frame for the focal point of the photograph. Ok, so that's a pretty bad explanation of the concept of the technique, but if done properly, it can look very effective.

In the end, I decided to keep the architecture theme throughout the project. But for my final image, I turned to something a bit more traditional, rather than modern office blocks like in the other photographs. A lot nearer to home, my final image is of Lincoln Cathedral. As mentioned above, I tried to create a frame within a frame shot of the building and I got some impressive results.

Here is the original photograph:



The frame of the photograph was very dark, so the first thing to do was to try and highlight parts of the stone. To do this I began by making two layers from the image. I cut the middle of it out and created a new layer with it. Doing this meant I could highlight just the frame (window), which was now in a frame of its own. Photoshop has a built in Highlights and Shadows editor, and adjusting the Highlights shadow to around 50%, I managed to bring out the stone detail of the window very well indeed. The results of this are shown below:



Creating two layers from the original shot created some very thin lines round the middle of the picture, and you could quite clearly see where the middle had been cut out. To repair this problem, I flattened the image and used the Clone tool to patch up the gaps. Whilst using the clone tool, I got rid of a fairly obtrusive weed from the right hand side of the shot. Compare the image above with the results of my repairs below:



From here, I was slowly getting nearer to completing the image. The next stage was to crop out any parts of the image that needn't be there, so I took out the edge of the window frame. This wasn't a major change to the photograph, but helped bring out the focal point a bit better. With the cropping done, the image now looked like this:



I could have left the completed image like that, but you can see how grim the day was! So, like in all the other project photos, I decided that the day definitely needed brightning up. If i'd have realised how much of a hard job it was going to be with this shot, I might not have bothered! It took a very long time because of all the intricate detail around the top of the cathedral building. But after much perseverance and hard work, the sky became blue again. As with the previous three files, I created a new layer and painted over the sky with a nice blue colour, before setting the layer blend parameter to Overlay.



Because I'd made the sky blue, the rest of the picture looked a bit dull, so to fix this I adjusted the colour balance. Now whether or not I did this effectively is judged by yourself, but I think it looks better with the colour balance adjusted. I boosted the yellows slightly, because that's what "colour" the sun makes things look. So adding a few yellow highlights to the image brightened the whole thing up. I hope you agree that the completed picture looks a lot better than the original. The image was also resized, as it did not need to be as big as it was originally (over 3000 pixels high!). Below is my final submission to BigStockPhoto!!

Before	After

I couldn't decide whether it looked better with the colours balanced differently or not. I tried my best to warm the image up but don't know if I went the right way about it. I got the best results I could so feel free to leave me comments about this photograph. I used a number of editing tools and still think I ended up with a very impressive completed photo.

So that's it for the BigStockPhoto project as far as taking and editing images is concerned. The next posts explain how each image was uploaded, and whether or not it was accepted. I have also posted a detailed look at file types.

Big Stock Photo - Image 3

This one I'm extremely proud of! And if it's not accepted on BigStockPhoto.com I'll be very upset! This image definitely took the longest to edit but the results were ultimately the most impressive (and I'm hoping you'll agree when you see the finished product).

This was my final image used from my photo shoot in London. Taken on the same grey day as Images 1 & 2, this photograph is an excellent piece of architecture (although I didn't always call it excellent when I was editing it!). Here is the original:

Before I could take a stab at editing this photograph, I had to decide how I wanted the finished image to look, and how I would tackle the editing process. I had a few options open to me:

1. I could keep the image exactly as it is and just remove any obstructions from the bottom half of the picture.

2. I could make the building symmetrical and just work on the half that needed less editing doing to it.

3. I could remove the bottom of the building to make editing easier.

I decided upon option 2, because it would make the editing slightly less frustrating and also because I didn't think it looked QUITE as good if it wasn't symmetrical (so if the architect of this building is reading... take note! Next time, build it my way!!) I swayed against option 3 because i didn't want to lose the character of the building. Removing the bottom of the photograph would have taken away a focal point of where the building meets at the bottom in the middle, which is what makes the building exciting. Option 2 was definitely the way to go, so I began the long editing process.

The first step was to crop the image to cut down on the amount of editing I needed to do. This was quickly done, and the results of the crop are shown below:



I could then begin work on warming up the nasty grey sky that is on the original photograph. Like the previous images, I did this by making a new layer and painting over the sky in a nice blue colour, before setting the layer blend parameter to Overlay. This image gave the most impressive sky when compared with the other three images, and you can see the results of this below:



From here on, I could ignore the left hand side of the focal point (the building) of the image because I wasn't using any of it. I started work on the manipulation of the image which was a very slow process. If you look at the high resolution original, you will see that there were so many things to get rid of, and I hope you agree that I did a good job and the end result is impressive. I started, as most people would, with the easy bits! You will notice one sign (I think it's for Lloyds bank) on the side of the building. This HAD to go, otherwise there was no chance of BigStockPhoto accepting it due to an infringement of copyright. I plodded away using the image clone and the healing brush, which are a godsend in this situation! Eventually, after a few hours (although it was probably more) I had removed street lights, people, signs, railings, traffic lights, flowers, and all sorts more! I was then almost ready to copy the right hand side of the image and create a mirrored image, and a complete building! The last change I made to the image was to turn the railings into some kind of boxed walkway type thing. You will notice the difference. After I'd cloned through the railings, I'd actually made quite a bit of a mess, and the image looked untidy, so I decided to block out the railings, making it look a bit like painted wood, which doesn't look too bad.

At last I could copy the right hand side of the image to the left and complete the image, which you can see in all its glory below! I hope you like it:

Before	After

This was the image submitted to BigStockPhoto.com. I hope it gets accepted because of the amount of time it took me to complete! I think it's a very good image and I have used the editing features of Photoshop to a great extent to make an attractive and aesthetically pleasing end product. The only thing I'd change about the photograph is the bottom of the image that used to have railings. It was too difficult to edit effectively though without getting rid of them and blocking them out with black.

Check my final post to see the results of my uploads!!

Big Stock Photo - Image 2

My second image was also shot in London and was by far the most well photographed piece in the project. It required very little editing before I could upload it to BigStockPhoto.com. Again, it is of a high rise block taken from a different angle, and the original image is shown below:

The only thing that I felt was necessary to change about this photo was, again, the sky colour. I followed exactly the same procedure as I did in image 1, by creating a new layer and simply painting a blue colour over the sky, before setting the layer blend parameter to Overlay. The finished result wasn't much different, as you can see from the before and after images below.

Before	After

I didn't occur to me until I had uploaded this picture to BigStockPhoto.com, but I could have made the sky look better by actually painting it a completely different colour. I could have used a nice light blue colour to make it look like a clear blue sky. This may have caused problems however with the reflections of the sky in the windows, as it would have made these the wrong colour if the sky was made blue. The window reflections would have been quite hard to edit to a blue colour that looked like it was reflected, so maybe it was best to leave it as it was.

Like with the previous image post, check back here or on the final post (when I write it!) to find out if the image got accepted into the BigStockPhoto.com library, and if not, why not!

I think this is a very good photograph that required very little editing. If anything was to be changed I might adjust the brightness and contrast, or the highlighting just to brighten up the bottom of the block which is slightly dark.

Big Stock Photo - Image 1

Welcome to the demonstration of my first image for BigStockPhoto.com. Here I will guide you through the processes that I followed to turn my first image into something that was worthy of being uploaded to the royalty free image website.

Here is the original image, taken in London on a relatively nice day

There wasn't too much to do with this image which made the process relatively of editing the photograph quite straightforwards.

The first step was to crop the image to the part that I wanted to use. This would take remove the need for any unnecessary editing. Cropping the image also meant that the obtrusive lamp post on the left hand side almost disappeared. You can see the results of the cropping below.




Step 2 involved removing any parts of the image that I didn't actually want to include in the final image. This was done by using the clone tool to copy individual or groups of pixels close to the section that was being removed. The following sections were removed from the image: the rest of the lamp post, the fluorescent lights present in the windows of one of the floors, and some other messy objects in some of the windows. The results of this stage are shown below:




Step 3 sorted out the awful sky colour. I wanted to make it look like the picture had been taken on a nice day, and as you can see from previous images, the sky was very grey. I therefore decided to create an artificial sunny day! This was done by creating a new layer and simply painting over the sky in blue, and setting the layer blending parameter to "Overlay." It took a while to find the right blue to use, because some blues didn't look "real" when overlayed onto the background layer beneath. I ended up using #004ae2 as the colour for the sky, which worked well, as you can see from the finished product!

Before	After

So there we have it. My first image, ready to upload to BigStockPhoto.com. Check back here to find out if the image was accepted by the site (fingers crossed!), and if not, why not. I'll also be doing a separate post at the end of the Big Stock Photo project to outline the acceptance of the images to the site, or to correct any errors stopping them from being published in their catalogue.

On evaluating my work on this image, I think the only thing, if anything, that let me down was the dark reflections at the bottom of the block. However, I think my camera skills were excellent, and that this is a strong photo that should have no problem at all getting accepted to BigStockPhoto.com.
My next post will demonstrate how image 2 was edited before being uploaded to BigStockPhoto.com.

Big Stock Photo - Introduction

So I've FINALLY got round to doing something about this assessment!

In short, the task is to capture, edit, and upload four still images set around one or two themes. The images will be taken by myself on a 7.1 megapixel Fujifilm Finepix A700 digital camera (click here for specification). I will edit my photographs in Adobe Photoshop CS2, using the skills I have learnt in previous workshops, and when the editing stage is completed in a week or so, I will hopefully get all four accepted by BigStockPhoto.com.

The first thing I needed to complete was my registration with BigStockPhoto.com. This involved submitting my details and completing a tutorial to make sure I understood the terms of submission to the site. My registered details are shown below:

Photographer ID: petelittlewood

Use the photographer ID to search for my portfolio of work.

After thinking about the theme for a while, I decided that one of my themes to use would be:

• Architecture

Taking the photos
When taking the photographs it was important for me to explore the features of the camera I was using, rather than relying on automatic exposure and flash etc. One thing I was advised against was using the flash for my photos. For the outdoor images, it probably wouldn't have made a difference to the shot, but for close shots indoors, the flash creates artificial light and shadows, which often spoil the picture. For this reason, I always used a supressed flash (no flash) when using my camera.

I also explored other camera features such as ISO settings. The ISO setting on a camera determines how much light is exposed to the camera when taking a picture. A LOW ISO setting lets through the least amount of light, and a HIGH setting lets through a lot of light. Be warned however, using a high setting can sometimes result in grainy and noisy images. To get the best image, it can be necessary to take the same image (easily done by using a tripod) with every setting, then edit the best parts of each image together in the post-production stage.

Setting the Exposure Compensation value (EV) to the correct figure can also result in a better photo. Exposure Compensation (hereon referred to as EV) is similar to the ISO setting, and determines the amount of light that is subjected to the camera when taking a picture. Changing the EV may on some cameras alter the shutter speed of the camera, but some cameras change the aperture while keeping the shutter speed constant. A technique called Exposure Bracketing involves photographers taking a shot in every EV setting, and again, like with ISO, taking the best parts of each image to make a perfect shot.
As an example of bracketing, see the two examples below. The image on the left is taken with an automatic exposure setting (set by the camera) and the image on the right was taken with a +1 (positive) exposure setting. See the difference?

Another setting that is invaluable is the shot type. For example, on my FinePix A700, I can take a number of different shot types which are simply presets of the above settings. If I chose the shot type "Sport," this has a quick shutter speed for catching moving objects, or sports games. Using the "Night" setting, the camera uses a slow shutter speed and maximum exposure.

When taking photographs it is very important to consider the depth of field in the shot. This is the distance in front of and beyond the focal point that is in focus. For something that is very detailed, it is probably best to have a short depth of field so that the subject is the only thing in focus. For a landscape or architecural scene, a bigger depth of field is recommended.

Sourcing My Material
I went to London a couple of weeks ago and took some photographs of some of the buildings in the capital city. I though these were too good to go to waste, so this was when i decided about my first theme.

Here are the originals of my architecture pictures. Click on them for a full resoultion image. There will probably be more to add so keep coming back to look!

I decided to use all three of these images and thought about how I would go about editing them. Two of the images didn't need much editing at all, and it is clear to see from above which images these were. The photograph on the left however, needed a lot of work, and definitely took the most time, which is why I started this one first. I will be completing a separate blog post for detailed information into how I edited and manipulated the images before uploading them to BigStockPhoto.com.

During this project I will be working closely with the Criterion Reference Grid, and as I always aim high will be trying to attack the Criterion for a First grade.

That's all for this post, but I will be posting again very soon to talk you through exactly how I edited each image, and I will upload the finished results. Keep checking back for my fourth image, which might be a totally different theme (I haven't decided yet!)

Photoshop - Composite Images

Todays task was to create a single image using a series of different images using the techniques learnt over previous weeks. As a review of what I have learnt, I will use layering, selection, clone, and colour balance features of Adobe Photoshop.

As a guide of what I am going to demonstrate, the image below (click thumbnail for larger image) illustrates the four original images, and the final image that I created in Photoshop. The four original images all had something wrong with them, and were either over exposed or under exposed. Using image correction techniques outlined above, I was able to create a realistic image from properly exposed parts of each image.

The first step was to decide which parts of each image I was going to use. Once I had done this, I thought about which would be the easiest way to construct the "perfect" image. I could either:

a) Copy each of the four original images in their entireity and paste them as separate layers or

b) Copy the parts of the original images that I wanted to use and paste them as separate layers.

I decided upon option A, because choosing option B would probably cause problems when layering the images. Option A meant that I could use a layer mask on each layer to dispose of the parts of each original image that I didn't want, and I would have more control over the selection of the originals than using the process option B would have faced me with.

Once I had chosen to do it this way, the way in which I created the final image was relatively straightforward.

On each layer I created an image mask, and simply masked out the parts of the original images that i didn't want. This meant that I could easily construct an image that looked unedited and properly exposed. The process took time because of all the masking I had to do (to hear about masking and selection refer to the tutorial from the previous workshop below), but masking each layer was almost all that this task entailed. With everything masked, I could have left the final image as it was, but I wanted to make a few extra changes.

You will notice that at the bottom right hand corner of each of the original images there is some kind of photographer copyright watermark. This was easily removed in the final stages of the image creation process. Firstly, I flattened the image (flattening an image simply merges all the layers into one), then using the clone tool I got rid of the copyright image. This probably isn't strictly legal but for educational purposes and demonstration I got rid of it.

The final, very subtle change I made to the image was to slightly reduce the amount of red colour in the picture because it looked a bit too warm. Using the colour balance tool I took the red out by -10 and the photograph was complete.

So here is the final image

On evaluating my work, I thought that the only minor problem was with how the tree turned out. If you look closely there is a slight shadow line that shouldn't be there. I couldn't seem to get this to disappear and so in the end left it as it was. Any comments on the final image would be appreciated.

Until next week, Stay Creative!!

Photoshop - Masking & Selection

The second workshop session involved more advanced work Adobe Photoshop. You can read out my learning in last week's session further down the page. As well as using techniques I learnt last week, today I tried to demonstrate my ability to use masking and selection tools to create an "Eggman."

The procedure isn't all that complicated, but colour balancing and layering is quite difficult.

The project for the session consisted of three images (all shown below). A bald man, an egg, and a spoon. Here are the original images:

The idea for the project was create an image of the man eating egg out of his head with a spoon. This would be done by masking and selection techniques within the software.

I decided that the easiest way to show how I got my end result was to do a video tutorial. This was done by using screen capture software and I narrated about what I was doing at the same time. To watch the video simply click here (video opens in new window to view full size)

The end result of my workshop session is shown below (click thumbnail for full resolution image)

That's it for this week. So don't forget, stay creative!!

Introduction to Adobe Photoshop

Today was the first workshop session for this unit. It introduced me to the fundamentals of Adobe Photoshop, and I learnt a lot of new skills during the two-hours because I was unfamiliar with Photoshop prior to the session.

The first features of the program I discovered were the Image Adjustment tools. I was given a number of old photographs which I had to bring back to life using some of the image adjustment tools. The first photo required the use of the Hue & Saturation tool found under the Image | Adjustments menu. I hope you agree that the repaired image looks significantly better than the original. I think it added a lot of warmth to the image and certainly gave it lots of life through the new colours that were added. To get the results shown below, I had to decrease the Hue property ever so slightly, and increase the Saturation by about 50%. I left the Lightness property alone as I was happy with my result:

Click the thumbnails below for a larger version (large images may be slow to download)

Before:	After:

The next image adjustment tool i used was for adjusting Colour Balance. Again, this feature is found under the Image | Adjustments menu. The original image was definitely in need of restoration, and to do this I had to alter each of the colour balance properties. The results are shown below:

Before:	After:

The final task was to repair a very old photograph which had been subject to tears, sellotape, and folding. This made use of a number of different tools, including the Clone Stamp and Healing Rubber, which were used in conjunction with simple copy and paste methods to bring this image back to a much more presentable state.

I am very pleased with the result of this task, and I hope you agree:

Before:	After:

And for my best image restoration of the day:

Before:	After:

That's it for today, So until next time, stay CREATIVE!

Welcome! & A Bit About Me

Welcome

Welcome to my blog for unit CMP1014 (Creative Technologies) for my BSc (Hons) degree in Audio Technology at the University of Lincoln.

This blog has been set up to for both me and my tutor to keep tabs on the work I do over the academic year (07-08). Throughout the year, you will be able to find out just what I'm up to in this unit.

A Bit About Me

My name is Peter Littlewood, I'm 18 years old, and VERY enthusiastic about technology and electronics. I completed a BTEC National Diploma in Music Technology in June and got the highest grade possible (DDD) and at the same time studied AS Level ICT which I passed at C grade. I love music, video, and image manipulation, so my hobbies will all be brought together in this unit to hopefully produce some exciting and impressive results.

Please keep checking back for constant updates of what's happening in the world of John Hamlin's Creative Technologies unit, which looks set to be an exciting topic of study!