TABLE OF CONTENTS
LECTURE
Double Exposure Photography - Refers to merging multiple images to create surreal, emotional, or humorous effects. While it may seem complex, it’s easy to achieve with in-camera settings or Adobe Photoshop. With editing tools, ordinary photos can be transformed into masterpieces.
With double exposure, you can:
- Use the tilt-shift effect to create soft works of art.
- Create fake reflections.
- Combine simple portraits and detailed textures.
- Convert results to black & white, strengthening emotions in your works.
- Compositing images with only silhouettes.
- Combining two random photos.
- Make everyday objects look fascinating.
- Compositing images with shadows.
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| Fig 1.1 Works Using Double Exposure |
Blending Modes - Commonly used blending modes like multiply are usually used for darkening, whereas screen is for lightening, while overlay and soft light for creating contrast.
Blending modes also helps with compositing difficult objects like glass, smoke, fire, and lightning. The figure below shows how the screen blending mode allows the user to composite the musicians and the fire.
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Fig 1.2 Screen Blending Mode
Showcase |
TUTORIAL
Digital Imaging - Students use Adobe Photoshop as a tool for doing digital imaging, compost different images into one final output.
PRACTICAL
This week, we were tasked to place our own portrait into a background
(Hearst Mansion) that was chosen by Mr. Fauzi. The portrait has to made
in way where it blends into the background naturally. As a practice, a
picture of Shazam was used to introduce us into the exercise.
Hearst Mansion With Shazam
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| Fig 2.1 Portrait & Background / Week 5 (27/10/24) |
I first used the quick selection tool to select tool to quickly select large areas of Shazam. However, since the selection isn't very clean, I used the lasso tool to clean up the messy edges. Then, I scaled down the image so that it looks proportional with the props in the background.
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| Fig 2.2 Post Selection and Scaling Down / Week 5 (27/10/24) |
To make Shazam blend into the background, I used the curves and hue/saturation adjustment layers to make the colors match the backgrounds better. I also manually drew on shadows into the background and Shazam using the multiply blending mode to make it look more realistic. In addition to that, I used the noise filter to make him blend better as the background was more pixelated compared to Shazam.
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| Fig 2.3 Before and After Adjustment Layer and Shadows (Body) / Week 5 (27/10/24) |
To make it even more realistic, I added his reflection into the pool. I added the ripple filter but made sure it's not too strong as the surrounding objects' reflections aren't too distorted. I also used the curves and hue/saturation adjustment layers because the reflection should match the colors of the pool. Because the colors get darker on the deeper ends of the pool, I added a gradient using linear burn blending mode so his head and torso's reflection isn't too bright.
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| Fig 2.4 Before and After Adjustment Layer and Shadows (Reflection) / Week 5 (27/10/24) |
Final Result
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| Fig 2.5 Final Hearst Mansion With Shazam / Week 5 (27/10/24) |
For the next exercise, I took several pictures with the help of my fellow classmates. I decided to do different poses so that I can have many options to choose from for the final work. The following are the pictures I thought to have the best potential to put into the mansion.
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| Fig 2.6 Self Portraits / Week 5 (27/10/24) |
The process for this is generally similar to the version I did with Shazam. I used the quick selection tool to quickly select large areas of myself and refined the selection with the lasso tool. I chose the leaning pose to do first since that seemed to be the standard pose everyone did.
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| Fig 2.7 Post Selection and Scaling Down / Week 5 (27/10/24) |
Just like the process for the Shazam piece, I also used the curves and hue/saturation adjustment layers to match the colors, manually drew the shadows into the background, manually drew the shadows and lighting on my portrait, and added the reflection into the water too.
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| Fig 2.8 Before and After Adjustment Layers and Shadows / Week 5 (27/10/24) |
Because I had the extra pictures, I decided to do another version with all my selected pictures. The process was the same with the previous processes. However, since every picture has slight differences in the lighting and color, I readjusted every picture to make it also blend well with the background. The difference in positioning also made creating the shadows and reflections different for every portrait, so this was definitely a challenge.
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| Fig 2.9 Additional Unedited 4 Portraits / Week 5 (27/10/24) |
Final Results
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| Fig 2.10 Final Hearst Mansion With Self Portrait / Week 5 (27/10/24) |
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| Fig 2.11 Final Hearst Mansion With 5 Self Portraits / Week 5 (27/10/24) |
REFLECTION
As I usually use Photoshop to draw, I rarely get to use the photo-editing tools of this app. This project gave me more opportunities to train my photo-editing skills which was great. However, this project was one of the more tedious ones so far as trying to get the adjustment just right for every picture definitely took some time. It was enjoyable though since I found the results to be very satisfying.