I’ve recently been looking for some fresh ideas or ways to help beef up my art profile for when I introduce an arts section to my business (Web Rich) and while browsing the magazine shelves at our local Lotto shop, I came across some mags on scrapbooking. It was more out of curiosity than anything I bought a 3 for 1 deal as well as an Alfresco mag (a little indulgence of mine) and then happily trotted over to BJ’s cafe for a coffee and some…research.  I say ‘research’ because at the moment it’s what I’m doing in regards to the scrapbooking concept, reading and finding out as much info as I can before I give it a thumbs up and decide to take it on-board.

My 3 for 1 purchase

Now, I didn’t know there was such a thing as Digital Scrapbooking until this morning when I did a Google search and low and behold, there were pages and pages dedicated to it.  I thought to myself ‘duh!‘, there is usually a digital side to most things.  And amazingly enough it took me a good few days to actually do a search for it *slaps forehead*.

While trolling through the vastness that was my search, I was soon drowning in information, websites, links, freebies, ideas, shopping carts, ebooks…it was awesome!  I barely managed to drag myself away from my laptop to have a bite to eat for lunch before hurrying back and plunging myself back into the digital world of scrapbooking.  So far, I’m liking what I’ve seen, in both the traditional form of scrapbooking as well as the digital, both present an elegant form of artistry and what makes it even better, is it’s easy, and you are never without help, support, or ideas – which is great.

So for me…it’s a no brainer.  I am going to put my photoshop skills to the test and create some layouts and post back in a couple weeks with an update.  But for those who are interested in the idea of scrapbooking here is a list of  links to sate your curiosity for both forms of scrapbooking:

TRADITIONAL SCRAPBOOKING:

• Everything-About-Scrapbooking.com
• Make A Scrapbook
• Scrapbook Art
• Scrapbooking Ideas and Layouts
• SimplyScrapbooking.com
• ScrapWow

DIGITAL SCRAPBOOKING

• Free Digital Scrapbooking
• Designer Digitals
• Scrapbook Flair
• ScrapWow
• Digitals

The list is endless as is the information and the tons and tons of ideas, galleries, resources and magazines….its just awesome.  So if this is your thing and you can see yourself getting into this then this is something you should definitely check out.

Simple Scrapbook Collage using photoshop

Perhaps a taste of what’s to come? I’ll find out in a few months if I’m close or not to what ever they end up going with. Been wanting to do this one for a while as we’ve been getting more and more Thor news leaking out, I went more Norse armour-ish and less superhero like.

I’m not to keen on Chris Hemsworth as an actor, but I gotta say as I was designing this up I could see he’s definitely got the right look.

Star Wars, banyak yang tidak menyangka bahwa film dengan penghasilan franchise terbesar sepanjang masa ini awalnya adalah proyek ambisius yang ditolak oleh hampir semua major studio di Hollywood. Belakangan karya George Lucas ini justru menjadi salah satu fenomena pop (pop Culture) dunia yang memilki jutaan penggemar yang sangat ambisius (biasa disebut fanboy).

Tentu banyaknya penggemar ini menjadikan mereka layaknya sebagai mesin promosi gratis bagi Lucas film, para fanboy membahas Star Wars dari segala aspek, termasuk mengaburkan kisah fiksi tersebut dalam realitas sejarah nyata. Beberapa karya yang berhasil saya kumpulkan mulai dari poster propaganda, hingga foto-foto bukti otentik sejarah yang, menurut saya, sangat menarik untuk disimak.

Left halves are the originals and the right halves are the afters

This is a picture I took of the Truckee River in Reno, Nevada last summer, on the way to swim with some friends. The water was freezing, but the rapids were beautiful and the sun was bright and warm.

Armand si Roxana .

acum sunt doi.ii privesti si imediat iti este evident : se potrivesc.

iata o farama de fericire

Iconography for theHUB.c-hab.com

I believe Emily took this photo with my camera one artwalk many moons ago. I have no strong opinion of my caption (Oh-hoh!) but I do enjoy the photo and felt like I should do something with it.

Photo manipulation is the application of image editing techniques to photographs in order to create an illusion or deception (in contrast to mere enhancement or correction), through analog or digital means. Its uses, cultural impact, and ethical concerns have made it a subject of interest beyond the technical process and skills involved.

Types of photo manipulation

In digital editing, photographs are usually taken with a digital camera and input directly into a computer. Transparencies, negatives or printed photographs may also be digitized using a scanner, or images may be obtained from stock photography databases. With the advent of computers, graphics tablets, and digital cameras, the term image editing encompasses everything that can be done to a photo, whether in a darkroom or on a computer. Photo manipulation is often much more explicit than subtle alterations to color balance or contrast and may involve overlaying a head onto a different body or changing a sign’s text, for example. Image editing software can be used to apply effects and warp an image until the desired result is achieved. The resulting image may have little or no resemblance to the photo (or photos in the case of compositing) from which it originated. Today, photo manipulation is widely accepted as an art-form.

History

Before computers, photo manipulation was achieved by retouching with ink, paint, double-exposure, piecing photos or negatives together in the darkroom, or scratching Polaroids.

The first recorded case of photo manipulation was in the early 1860s, when a photo of Abraham Lincoln was altered using the body from a portrait of John C. Calhoun and the head of Lincoln from a famous seated portrait by Mathew Brady – the same portrait which was the basis for the original Lincoln Five-dollar bill.

The 1980s saw the advent of digital retouching with Quantel computers running Paintbox, and Scitex imaging workstations being used professionally. Silicon Graphics computers running Barco Creator became available in the late 1980s which, alongside other contemporary packages, were effectively replaced in the market by Adobe Photoshop running on the Apple Macintosh.

Political and ethical issues

Photo manipulation is as old as photography itself; the idea of a photo having inherent verisimilitude is a social construct. Photo manipulation has been regularly used to deceive or persuade viewers, or for improved story-telling and self-expression. As early as the American Civil War, photographs were published as engravings based on more than one negative.

Joseph Stalin made use of photo retouching for propaganda purposes.[3] On May 5, 1920 his predecessor Lenin held a speech for Soviet troops that Leon Trotsky attended. Stalin had Trotsky retouched out of a photograph showing Trotsky in attendance. Nikolai Yezhov, an NKVD leader photographed alongside Stalin in at least one photograph, was shot in 1940 and subsequently edited out of the photograph. See images altered by Soviet censors for more information.

In the 1930s, John Heartfield used a type of photo manipulation known as the photomontage to critique Nazi propaganda. The pioneer among journalists distorting photographic images for news value was Bernarr Macfadden and his composograph in the mid-1920s.

The style and techniques of modern digital photomontage were anticipated as early as the late 1960s, particularly by the surreal album cover photography of the British design group Hipgnosis.

Some ethical theories have been applied to image manipulation. During a panel on the topic of ethics in image manipulation Aude Oliva theorized that categorical shifts are necessary in order for an edited image to be viewed as a manipulation. In Image Act Theory, Carson Reynolds extended speech act theory by applying it to photo editing and image manipulations. In How to Do Things with Pictures, William Mitchell details the long history of photo manipulation and discusses it critically.

Use in journalism

A notable case of a controversial photo manipulation was a 1982 National Geographic cover in which editors photographically moved two Egyptian pyramids closer together so that they would fit on a vertical cover. This case triggered a debate about the appropriateness of photo manipulation in journalism; the argument against editing was that the magazine depicted something that did not exist, and presented it as fact. There were several cases since the National Geographic case of questionable photo manipulation, including editing a photo of Cher on the cover of Redbook to change her smile and her dress. Another example occurred in early 2005, when Martha Stewart’s release from prison was featured on the cover of Newsweek; her face was placed on a slimmer woman’s body to suggest that she had lost weight while in prison.

Another famous instance of controversy over photo manipulation, this time concerning race, arose in the summer of 1994. After O.J. Simpson was arrested for allegedly murdering his wife and her friend, multiple publications carried his mugshot. Notably, TIME Magazine published an edition featuring an altered mugshot credited to Matt Mahurin, removing the photograph’s color saturation (perhaps inadvertently making Simpson’s skin darker), burning the corners, and reducing the size of the prisoner ID number. This appeared on newsstands right next to an unaltered picture by Newsweek.

There is a growing body of writings devoted to the ethical use of digital editing in photojournalism. In the United States, for example, the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) have set out a Code of Ethics promoting the accuracy of published images, advising that photographers “do not manipulate images [...] that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects.”  Infringements of the Code are taken very seriously, especially regarding digital alteration of published photographs, as evidenced in a recent case in which a Pulitzer prize-nominated photographer resigned his post following the revelation that a number of his photographs had been manipulated.

Social and cultural implications

The growing popularity of image manipulation has raised concern as to whether it allows for unrealistic images to be portrayed to the public. In her article “On Photography” (1977), Susan Sontag discusses the objectivity, or lack thereof, in photography, concluding that “photographs, which fiddle with the scale of the world, themselves get reduced, blown up, cropped, retouched, doctored and tricked out”. A practice widely used in the magazine industry, the use of Photoshop on an already subjective photograph, creates a constructed reality for the individual and it can become difficult to differentiate fact from fiction. With the potential to alter body image, debate continues as to whether manipulated images, particularly those in magazines, contribute to self-esteem issues in both men and women.

Photoshopping

Photoshopping is slang for the digital editing of photos.The term originates from Adobe Photoshop, the image editor most commonly used by professionals for this purpose; however, other programs, such as Paint Shop Pro, Corel Photopaint, Paint.NET, or GIMP, may be used. Adobe Systems, the publisher of Adobe Photoshop, discourages use of the term “photoshop” as a verb out of concern that it may undermine the company’s trademark.

Despite this, photoshop is widely used as a verb, both colloquially and academically, to refer to retouching, compositing, and color correction carried out in the course of graphic design, commercial publishing, and image editing.

In popular culture, the term photoshopping is sometimes associated with montages in the form of visual jokes, such as those published on the fark.com website and in MAD Magazine. Images may be propagated memetically via e-mail as humor or passed as actual news.[18][19] An example of the latter category is “Helicopter Shark,” which was widely circulated as a so-called “National Geographic Photo of the Year” and was later revealed to be a hoax.

wikipedia.org

So the idea behind this D-D challenge came after I stumbled upon Johnson Koh’s blog 10Steps.SG and found a tutorial entitled “Making a Beautiful Pair of Fantasy Eyes.” It looked pretty cool and I thought it would give me a good excuse to fool around with photo manipulation in Photoshop, so I suggested the idea to Tatge and started looking for a nice pair of eyes. I used an image a found on Flickr, Tim in sanhazzay’s Mr Gray Eye, as a starting point and started messing around using the tutorial as a general guide. I ended up with the eyes posted below. During all this I learned a lot more about using Blend Modes and Adjustment Layers, however, the real lesson learned here was Brushes, Brushes, Brushes! So much creative potential that I was almost unaware of until now. I ended up download lots and lots of new brushes after finding a list of free Photoshop brushes on Tutorial Blog and now I’m in the midst of making sense of it all… which should keep me busy until I think of a new Design-Dhursday challenge for next time.

With a new year approaching quickly I want to make plans for my photography.  I will be moving to Athens and hoping to get a job.  I am really praying that God provides me with the opportunity to be a photographer’s assistant or to work in a photography studio.  I will also be starting a photography challenge of my own at the beginning of the year.  I want to embark on the 365 project.  This will be extremely difficult for me, because I hate to be in pictures. I prefer to be behind the camera, not in front of it.  Hopefully this will push my photography to a new level.  I also want to take a still-life that goes along with the self-portrait each day. Until then, I will just keep practicing and get in the habit of taking photographs every day.

The photograph is not from the photo-walk I went on with my brother. I am going to be uploading those today. Here goes about 10 hours of work.

I watched the Supergirl movie for the first time in years recently and, as bad as it is, there’s something sweet and charming about Helen Slater in that role. Anyway, upon sitting through it I decided it was time to do an updated Supergirl manip. Bit of a viewers choice in this piece of casting, I couldn’t figure out who could be a potential Supergirl for a modern film so I asked around the net, the winner by popular vote was Amber Heard, which on reflection should have been one of the first names I thought of (dah!).

Based the outfit off my Superman re-design, although made it slightly different to represent her side of the family. This was originally gonna have Brandon Routh’s Superman as well in the manip but the lack of decent size images from Superman Returns put a dampener on that idea. Probably about 14 hours work.

This is a little project I have been working on that I titled “In the Garden of Pan”. I wanted to take some of my photos and create something artistic with them. This is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy it and please feel free to let me know what you think of my forray into the world of digital manipulation.

“Class Description:

During this workshop on the basics of visual design best practices, we’ll examine examples and counter-examples of great design, the basics of layout, simplified color theory, rules for fonts and legibility, images and photographs, designing stamps vs. pages vs. slideshows vs. billboards, copyright and creative commons, and free and open source design tools (photo manipulation, illustration, layout, catalogs, and quick editors).

By the end of the program, you will:

* Find and evaluate web-based resources for great design
* Choose the best colors, layouts, fonts, and graphics for other design projects
* Respect copyrighted work by finding imagery and other materials that are freely and legally available
* Become inspired about your design projects
* Move beyond Word and Publisher to more sophisticated design tools”

from Graphic Design Best Practices – METRO Professional Development at Mon Nov 16 2009 23:26:02 GMT-0500 (EST) on http://metronylibrary.augusoft.net/index.cfm?method=ClassInfo.ClassInformation&int_class_id=284&int_category_id=1&int_sub_category_id=61&int_catalog_id=0#

Presentation: http://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0Ad-YsRMv5bPqZGNrZm05ZndfMzkyZHB0eGZ3ZnA&hl=en

Evan took this photo of me at the bowling alley. I’ve decided to poison this simple photo with my terrible messages!!