Here is a sample of what we have been up to over at the Focal Impulse Studio:

All tied up for the Holidays

we have been super busy making this shit happen! We have two potential paid shoots, and two test shoots upcoming for January, and since I am quitting my day job to do this full time, there will be more than that to share as well. that includes well planned blog entries and such, so stay tuned…

namaste,

D.Markus Witt

Ainda em ritmo de piores e melhores de 2009, o site buzzfeed selecionou as 25 piores photoshopadas do ano.

Todo mundo sabe que o photoshop é uma grande arma. Dá pra deixar as pessoas mais novas, eliminar uns defeitos aqui, adicionar uma argamassa ali. O problema é que quando ele é usado indevidamente o resultado pode ser um grande desastre.

Nem sempre o erro é na manipulação da imagem em si. Pode ser que o trabalho até fique bom, mas a essência é que pode ser prejudicial. O número 1 da lista deste ano é um bom exemplo disto.

A Microsoft fez uma propaganda na qual executivos estão sentados numa mesa, aparentemente vendo uma apresentação. Algo totalmente inclusivo, um oriental, um home negro e uma mulher branca. Porém ao utilizar a mesma propaganda em outros países resolveram substituir o homem negro por um homem branco. A manipulação da imagem até que não estava tão ruim, exceto pelo fato de que a mão do homem negro continuou na foto!

Mas a grande discussão girou em torno do porque a Microsoft substituiu o homem negro. Seria isto uma espécie de racismo?

Dentre os 25 piores do ano constam ainda outros três casos semelhantes. Em um deles um homem negro foi adicionado à imagem, nos outros dois foi substituído.

Nossa, você está meio cheinha, hein?

Outro caso que ficou famoso este ano foi o das modelos da Ralph Lauren. Elas estavam tão magras que nem o Dr. House descobriria qual o problema com elas. Nem mesmo o famoso Slim Control, aquela cinta vendida nos 1406 da vida conseguiria algo tão incrível!

Isto gerou uma bela discussão sobre o incentivo que isto daria às pessoas que sofrem de anorexia e quantas adolescentes seriam influenciadas pela magreza da modelo.

Para acessar a lista completa feita pelo buzz feed clique aqui.

E pra finalizar, um caso brasileiro que não consta na lista. A revista Veja publicou uma edição sobre emagrecimento (só podia ser) e para estampar a capa colocaram uma modelo usando uma folha de alface gigante como vestido. Ok, podemos parar com as fantasias por aqui, mas olha só a perna direita da moça. De onde é que ela está saindo?

Yesterday the stars showed up for the the launch of VEVO, the world’s premiere destination for premium music video and entertainment.

Nick & Mariah were hugged up she premired her video H.A.T.E.U at the event.

John Legend was there also when are we gonna hear new music John?

50 cent & Mary posed for a quick picture.

Lady Gaga was also there all eyes on her again I love It!

Rihanna and Adam Lambert got together to a quick picture.

L.A. Reid, Pete Wentz, and Jeezy were all chilling together ( why is Rihnna in the back like that lol)

Ciara looking very bight in this golden number.I can’t wait to hear this new album that your working on C.

LIMB FOR THE WIN!  That’s the shot on the right, and the shot on the right in the shot on the right is the completed version.   Today I’m going to go through the making of, and all the main steps.  I took in creating it.  The first thing I have to say, is that there was no photo shop or retouching in this photograph.

…If you’re still reading, and haven’t left from disgust, thanks!  I actually lied this was a huge photo shop process for me, and the arm coming from my groin isn’t really mine.

Alright, where to start?   About a year ago I was thinking about interesting things to photo shop on to each other.  At first I was gonna do a nude self-portrait and photo shop an extra arm over my genitals holding a TV remote on the couch.  My real hands would have a coffee mug and a cookie or something.  That idea only got canceled because our living room was a mess, and it’s not big enough.  A short while later I thought of this idea.   It took me a while to come to the day that I’d actually do it, and then one day at the beginning of second year in college I decided I would try it.  I didn’t plan much, I just grabbed the pants from a thrift store, threw on a wife beater, borrowed the suspenders from Amanda, and the hat from Jordan.  The apple was another final touch.  Now I will describe each Polaroid in the main photo, you can see them in full size.

Polaroid 1 – This is where the groin arm came from… Mark.  I positioned him with the idea of the final shot in my head.  Then I got him to move away while I held the position for another shot.  In photo shop I took the second shot without Mark, and covered the original shot.  I erased the area where his arm would be showing on the second image, to reveal the arm.  I spent a while making the pants pattern line up with both shots.  I copied and pasted a selection of the pants over top of where the arm met the zipper, and added some shadow at the opening.  I did some other quick touch ups, and then thought I was finished.  That brings us to Polaroid 2.

Polaroid 2 – Here I thought I was done, I was excited to hear what people thought, and so I uploaded it to the net.  I got some great reactions, then a friend of mine, Sophia Lemon suggested that the image may be stronger if the chair were a different color than red.  I took her advice and gave it a try, that’s when I changed the chair color to the dark green it is.  I also noticed the apple would look nicer red than the green/yellow it was, so I changed that too.  The first large image in the background on the left was the completed version, for a while.  I’ll continue in a moment.

I entered the picture as it stands at a PPO (Professional Photographers of Ontario) Photo Competition, and got it accepted.  That means that the picture is well done basically.  It’s harder that you may think to have one of your photo’s be accepted, it is an accomplishment of its own.  I won a ribbon (seen here) for it presented at a later PPO meeting.  The ribbon says student division, but it was a full PPO competition (all photos are viewed anonymously) and only one other student entered something, I think they gave me the wrong ones…  But yeah, the other shot I won an award for was this piece.

About a month later (last week) I joined CAPIC (Canadian Association of Photographers and Illustrators in Communication) and I decided to enter, “Limb for the Win!” into another contest.  This time it is a national student contest, and it costs twenty dollars per entry.  I didn’t want to waste the money, and I obviously want to win.  So I took some more previous critique to heart and made it better yet.  A while ago Jim Kost said that he wished I was wearing a shoe or something on my foot on the chair, and I agree it doesn’t match the rest of the outfit.

Polaroid 3 – I took Jim’s critique to heart as well, and decided to put a shoe on that foot.  Since I wanted the light to be the same, and I only have one pair of shoes I went through the other shots I took that night, and there happened to be one shot that was taken before I took my shoes off.  You can see this in Polaroid 3.  I cut the shoe out and pasted it over top the sock.

Polaroid 4 – This part was tricky, since the shoe was partly covered up by the arm rest of the chair, it took some cloning work to fill that area in and make the shoe look complete again.  You can see how I used it to cover the sock up as best as I could.

Finally on the final-final shot (big back one on the right),  I covered up the tip of my sock sticking out from under the shoe, and lowered my pant leg to decreased the amount of sock showing.  I also copied the front of the arm rest and pasted it on top of the shoe to make it look like the shoe is resting halfway down it.  I did a couple other minor touch ups, and BAM I was on to Polaroid 5.

Polaroid 5 – PARTY!  I finally completed, “Limb for the Win!”  It took me a long time, but I’m finally happy with it (for good I hope).

I submitted it to the CAPIC contest the other day, and I hope to make it at least to the top 40.  The top 40 photographs and illustrations will be displayed across Canada at the main CAPIC locations.  I want to know what more people think, so feel free to leave me a message.  I put a lot of work into this to describe, so let me know what you think, or your first impression.

Thanks for reading!

Jonathan

***

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Well, I was just fiddling around with some images on the web, and searching for some gold textures to add a golden touch to my own images, when i came up with this, just half an hour back. Fully motivated, here it comes as a first entry on my first graphic blog.

The source images I used are in  noway mine, neither do I take the credits for them. They were just random images from google search.

Well, the image in the middle is my final image, the first one being the texture and the third one being the source.

Open the source (Image 3) in Photoshop and paste the texture on a layer above that, and set its blend mode to ‘Luminosity’.   it should look like this :

Now, click on the ‘Create Mask‘ icon (Bottom of the layers palatte). Select the mask arena, and with a soft round brush, with a selected color of black, paint around the part of the layer that goes outside the yarn visible from the bottom layer.

Now duplicate the texture layer (alongwith the mask) by right clicking on the layer in the layer menu and selecting ”duplicate‘. Now add blending options by right clicking on the third layer on the layer palette and selecting ‘Blending Options‘. The blending options dialog box opens up.  Add the following settings on the blending options dialog box.

Now you can see the glow around part of the image. Now we are going to use the same trick to add eyes, etc. Select a soft round brush of appropriate size, and color white and paint around the places on the mask so as they resemble as eyes and mouth.  The main part of the image is complete.

The actual smiley we wanted to create is complete, but you can always add a few more effects to add depth or looks to the image. What I did was duplicating the layer, and erasing off the mask leaving some area for hair and setting blend mode to multiply, then again duplicating the layer and setting blend to ‘lighten’. It gave me a good effect for the hair, and my final image is like the one you can see in the beginning

Here is how my layers palette looked at the end :

And finally , Let your creativiti run wild, and best of luck, lets see what you come out with. A candle on this cookie might look very good. You can post your own images here in the comments. Enjoy, Have fun

Lucielle(Art.1)
Upload feito originalmente por Eduardo R. V.

Foto da minha amiga Lucy…

Esse efeito é uma vez na vida… já que ela tinha editado a imagem no Photoshop antes de me passar… e ela esqueceu o que tinha feito!

Tentativas de reproduzir em outras imagens não deram muitos certo. Já esperava, afinal cada foto é uma foto.

Haha! Tocmai am terminat un sig(signature). ‘Lucrarea’ este pentru concursul de SOTW(signature of the week) de pe forumul Wizzart, un forum cu si despre photoshop. Acolo veti gasi tutoriale despre photoshop, creatiile user-ilor, resurse photoshop si nu in ultimul rand, o comunitate primitoare.

Acum sa trecem la sig-ul meu:

Enjoy and have a great night!

LE(later edit): Dupa 10 minute de incercari, in sfarsit am reusit sa aflu cum fac sa se vada poza! Damn!

edit: fixed fullsize images not showing

Last week I finished making a game along with two other people, and we only got to spend two weeks on it, the reason for that was that it was for a competition with a deadline, and we entered really late :p Nonetheless we managed to make a somewhat finished game just before the deadline ended. First price in the competition was $10 000, although winning that seems miniscule since there were 200 other entries and some of them spent over 2 years on their submissions hehe. I’ll write about the way I made some of the 3d models for the game further down along with some pics. I was in charge of making the level and all the environmental models and textures.

I use a method called modular modeling, its a method that is widely used when it comes to modeling for games and saves both time and texture space, and its easy to prototype different solutions with it.
I start off by modeling the different parts/modules of the house:

modular parts

click to see full size

Then i unwrap the different modules and paint textures for them. Unwrapping is a way to translate the different surfaces on a 3dmodel on to a 2d plane so you can open it up in photoshop and start giving it a texture. I use a program called xNormal to render out a 2d map that portrays where the dark areas of a model are and put it on top of the regular texture -called the diffuse texture. This saves tons of time when i comes to texturing, since painting it on manually takes time and it wont be as accurate. xNormal can also render out normalmaps etc. but I didnt have time with such a short deadline.

Rest of the modules with textures:

modular parts with textures

After texturing all the parts its time to put it all together into one piece, since its modular its possible to make lots of different variations real quick without any effort:

Modular parts put together in Maya

And here it is ingame!

click to see full size

Couple of more screens:

click to see full size

click to see full size

aand a youtube video:

in the game you need to collect cake thats spread around in the forest, watch out for sheeps and wolfs that may come after you and steal your cake pieces :p

When dealing with defining love, it seems like we all fall back on analogies, some that take us very far from the real meaning. Now, I love a good analogy; it’s how I communicate 85% of the time (this estimate is not backed by anything eligible to be taken as fact). But, I think we forget that we have already received the perfect definition of love in its complete form.
The farther we get away from God’s definition, the farther we get away from the real the definition.

Zakładam, że w ten sposób Microsoft Polska potraktowałby owcę, gdyby miała się ona pojawić na ich stronach. Mają do tego smykałkę.

* Jak wiadomo krów w Polsce jest znacznie więcej niż owiec [PDF].

You see a lot of photomanipulations in this genre, and the favorite seems to be Supergirl. The quality of the manips varies quite wildly but I must give much respect to Iskander Salim for this superb effort:

Go to his site and you’ll get an idea of his attention to detail. I do a bit of photoshopping etc.. but get bored after 10 minutes and just want it done, which means I’ll never get near this guy. Another lovely Elisha Cuthbert as Supergirl manip is this one:

Not sure who did this one but again it’s lovely work, would like to see more of this quality.

It has been a while since I’ve posted the winners of the Gizmodo photoshop contest. This week is particularly interesting as the task was to take popular fine art and remix it with a Star Wars fanboy flair. The result is hilarious as usual! See for yourself.  And if you have any level of photoshoping skills, you should enter one week.

Photshop Eğitim Seti III

Sonunda Hazırladığım Photoshop Eğitimlerinin 3. Setini Sizlerle Paylaşıyorum! İçerisinde 20 Adet Ders Vardır. Ayrıntılar Konunun Devamında…

Photshop Eğitim Seti III

Palin Calls Photoshopped Images ‘Atrocious’

http://www.switched.com/2009/06/26/palin-calls-shopped-image-of-her-and-child-atrocious/?icid=main|main|dl5|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.switched.com%2F2009%2F06%2F26%2Fpalin-calls-shopped-image-of-her-and-child-atrocious%2F

(link from AOL News)

I’ll let you read the article if you have time, but here’s the cliff’s notes:

1 ‘Journalist’ (we’ll call him Journalist, only because I suspect there are many more who this also applies to) wants to access public records that indicate wrongdoing by Palin.

2 Palin’s goons try to charge Journalist thousands of dollars for reasonable access to public records.

3 Journalist starts a website to raise the money for said public records.

4 Journalist photoshops an image of Palin holding her son, with her ‘political baby’s ‘ face in the place of the actual child (whose face does not appear, and is not the one whose motives and standards are being brought into focus by the pic) on the fundraising website.

5 Palin accuses Journalist of making fun of her retarded kid (which is not at all the statement made by the photo, and she knows this; you should know this too, unless you are on the far right,  in which case, you still haven’t caught onto the scam of  ‘they’re immoral’).

Palin has buried records of her political wrongdoing, and is charging thousands of dollars for access to public records (of her aforementioned heinousness) in an attempt to keep out a blogger and a political rival.  So, in an attempt to conceal ANOTHER Troopergate-esque (Troopergate II, actually, let’s not forget Bill Clinton’s “Troopergate”, and Hillary’s “Whitewater-gate”) she is now attacking the fundraising effort against her (and, by the way, this is THE go-to move for the far right) as immoral.

Normally, making fun of an autistic kid is simply without class, and she would actually be right. If this were simply playground bullying among thirdgraders and not a beautiful allegory of how she has (probably illegally, since she’s trying to cover it up) swayed an election in the direction of her hand picked puppet (special interest, special needs; not the best pun, but I stand behind the cause…), I would be assigning essays, or benching someone during recess…but it’s not. These are grown-ups, playing for big stakes, and while not the most tasteful image I’ve ever seen, it’s worth noting that the person who made the pic of Palin with her “son” is doing so to raise the money to pay off Palin’s goon squad so that her mis-deeds will be known and she can be investigated AGAIN…this time by the public, who by now knows that we need to be rid of her, and just needs a good reason.

This woman has mocked a fair election system and the very idea of living in a free country. She has abused the power vested in her, by the fine people of the state of Alaska, on numerous occasions. She has embodied the Republican standard of looking down upon the people they were elected to serve as peasants and serfs (or otherwise, not a free people), and engaging in (as McCain once made the mistake of accusing Obama of) ‘class warfare’.  She has joined the likes of Nixon in viewing her own position as Executor of the law, as being somehow ABOVE the law.  But worst, after all this, she wants to cry ‘no fair’ when someone is on the verge of proving that she is utterly without a moral backbone.

Shall we recap?

1 Pro-life abstentionist with a knocked up teenage daughter…

2 Abusing her office to pressure her brother-in-law out of a job as a state trooper…

3 Abusing her office again to pressure her own state’s investigation committee to not publish evidence of #2…this is what Palin thinks of ‘due process.’

4 …and this is just weird.  There is footage of her with some kind of Shaman, on youtube somewhere, in a church, and I’m not making this up…the guy in the footage is best known for having run a witch out of a village in Africa (presumably they killed her old-school style).  I’m not a huge Olberman fan, but he covers ‘the sins of Palin’ nicely…

5 During her campaign press were denied access to Palin (in an area where access is normally granted) because the news reports had “not been favorable.”  This is what Palin thinks of the ‘First Ammendment.’

6 …this is my favorite, but not necessarily the strongest argument… The ‘by and large’ opinion of those who’ve worked directly under her, as it has been relayed to me through media sources, is that #’s (2) and (3) are not isolated, but rather, standard operating procedure around Mrs. Palin.

Thoughts for the day.

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5 different colors

size : 1200 × 900

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To be frank,

I freakin love this song D:

It’s only recently though that I started to get addicted to this D:.

Anyways finals came an happy ending. YAY

However, regents are only days away… so I can’t celebrate that much about the end of finals, can I?

Well recently I found crocheting very amusing… mainly because of my friend Jessica. She’s really good at it even though she only started few months ago.

What amazes me more are the amigurumis D:. They are freaking adorable.

& I has pictures of them

Aren’t they so adorable D:?

Well summer is just near by. I’m pretty much spending that vacation by studying my butt of the SAT exam :p.

I do also plan to learn how to crochet. Why not? After looking through all these amigurumis, my urge to learn shouldn’t such a surprise xD. I also plan on learning HTML/CSS.

After looking through my deviantart account, I also though I should take advantage of this summer to improve my photoshop “skills” and try to experiment into differnt fields. I might try to up my vector techniques and try out freehand vectoring.

In addition, I also plan on learning basic german xD just for the hell of it. I might as well learn hindi too, or some other Indian language D: lol.

Last but certainly not least, I also want to obtain a permit… real bad.

Aights, I shall go off and study for chemistry. Hopefully my later entries wont be as short as this.

-the one and only susu

may u have accidentally stopped flexnet service
control panel — Administrative Tools — services -flexnet services start manually — apply
should be fine yet

The best way to automate tasks in Photoshop is to create actions of common tasks. When you are working with multiple images, you don’t want to keep selecting an action and clicking on the Play Selection icon. Speed up your workflow by enabling Button mode. In the Actions panel flyout menu, you can select Button Mode, which will let you run your actions by simply clicking on the action in the panel.

This is a great blog I ran across dedicated to the photography / graphics design / & works of art created by Dreamglow .  She will be launching a dedicated site soon at www.dreamglow.org to showcase her vast portfolio . Definately have a quick look , her pictures are all over Flickr & the net being showcased as we speak.

So, wie versprochen und besser spät als nie, FLAVOR FLOWS VOLUME 3, die Sagenhafte, Unglaubliche….Viel spaß damit!

TRACKLIST:

Intro
Tupac-friends
kool keith-living astro
Red one-no fuss
Queen Pen-My melody
Dave Bars-Air Em out
Xzibit-Year 2000
Dujeous-Internet Friends
Lil Tip-Rap Killer
Black Rob-I Love You Baby
People under the stairs-Acid Raindrops
Reef the lost Cauze- Deadly Combo
Lil Wayne-outstanding
Reservoir Dogs-The difference
Shyheim-Shouts on the Outs
Lakey The Kidd-Hip Hop Love
Grand Agent-it´s only right
V.A.-Stranded on Death Row
Bahamidia-the hard way
V.A.- Manifest Destiny
The Game-Start from Scratch

DOWNLOAD: FLAVOR FLOWS VOLUME 3