in CONCLUSION

After doing this blog and researching how widely used Photoshop is, I have come to find that it is used in allot more areas than I first thought. It is pretty much used an all forms of visual media whether it be the main tool or just a feature tool having a small part. The extensive use of Photoshop discovered in this blog has opened my eyes wider to the opportunities I have have when graduating my course. I have a vast range of business areas I could go into to use my Photoshop skills and to progress in my career as a designer.

PHOTO RESTORATION

In the field of work I am in at the moment I use Photoshop to restore damaged photographs. These particular photos are either old and faded, creased , ripped or generally in bad condition. the tools I use to restore these photographs are high powered scanner to scan them in to Photoshop and then use a series of cloning tools and blending tools. Also using the colour balance levels and sharpen tools. I find this process very long and frustrating to do well and it takes allot of time and effort. However when seeing a customers reaction after restoring an old family photograph the time and effort i put into the job seems worth while. I have put an example of the before and after prints of a damaged photograph.

PHOTOSHOP AND FLYERS

Photoshop is one the mostly used programs when designing flyers for clubs. Designers use a wide range of tools in Photoshop to create great pieces of work. This particular piece is a favourite of mine and the designers come up with something unique and outstanding every year this event is on. There are a number of layers used here and possibly Illustrator generated images which then have been com posited on Photoshop. The colours stand out to me the most and it projects a feel that is true to the event its promoting (an outdoor summer music festival in an airfield). I imagine the curves and contrast tool has been used on the woman's face to make her blend more with the other colours and the whole piece has increase brightness and saturation.

OVER USE OF FILTERS

In my recent look into album covers in a previous post I also noticed the use of Photoshop Filter on some of these covers designs. When I first started using Photoshop I found that Filters were the most interesting thing on the program and I involved them in allot of my work. Now that I am more experienced in Photoshop I try not using filters in my work. This is because I feel that they are the easiest tool to use to give a wacky or strange effect to images, and that allot of amateur Photoshop users involve loads of Filters in their work and it results in an over worked, piece of work with elements contrived by filters that have been seen a million times before. So when I saw these album covers I was not impressed.

PHOTOSHOP AND WEBSITES

Most website pages are originally deigned in Photoshop using effects for buttons and layering images, menus and backgrounds. Images that you see on websites are tweaked on Photoshop before going on the site. They are sharpened and their contrast and colours are adjusted to suit the sites design. The over all mood of website are determined by all the variables used to make up the sites pages ie. colours, style, and layouts. This is all decided in a Photoshop document then moved to Dreamweaver or another web-design program. This is an example of a good, Photoshop designed web page from the Nike website (www.nike.com).

HOOKED ON PHOTOSHOP

As I researched the world of advertising for signs of Photoshop, the campaign that stood out to me the most was this NHS’s antismoking posters. They have cleverly used a play on words and imagery for shock value and to emphasise the seriousness of the subject. I do not think that the NHS advertisers actually made these people stick a hook through their cheeks. I think it is more likely that a skilled Photoshop designer/photographer had something to to do with it rather than a sadistic fisherman.
A photograph must have been taken with the woman's lip being puled painlessly and then via cloning tools the hook was manipulated into the photograph. With the expression on the woman's face and the skilful use of Photoshop cloning tools the poster achieves its realistic shocking effect that this campaign was after.

PHOTOSHOP RETOUCHING IN FASHION

After researching this subject I found it amazing what Photoshop could do to average looking women. In fact I didn't realise the extent of the use of Photoshop tools used on allot of the models we see on billboards and magazine covers. Even the most beautifully perfect super model has retouching done to her photographs to make her look that much more perfect. I do not necessarily agree with what is going on in the fashion industry at the moment , because the power of Photoshop in this day and age can transform women who are , lets just say not very pleasant to look at , into a sexy model look-a-likes worthy of being on a magazine cover. Also it is projecting a false image and message to all women that this is what they should look like ; by using a very powerful and influential form of media. However, having said that they are are nice to look at ! I added a link and used images from a demo on this site showing the before and after shots of magazine cover model .

Images taken from the demo :
“Media Photoshop Retouching” demo.fb.se/e/girlpower/retouch/

On the site :
www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=14537

USE OF LAYER MASKS IN THE DIRTY-SOUTH

Whilst doing my research on Photoshop I found allot of the artists I listen to have definitely used Photoshop to design their album covers. In hip hop there are several areas in America where the style of music changes with this genre of music. Some of these areas are the West & East Coast, the Mid-West and the Dirty-South. Whilst researching album covers from all these areas I found that the covers from the South (ie. Texas, North Carolina and Tennessee) all use Photoshop Masks to blend images in a similar style. This makes all artist’s albums from this area instantly recognisable to people that they are from the Dirty-South. I have added a few of examples of different artist's album covers from the Dirty-South on this post, see what you think ?

LAYER MASKS AND MOVIE POSTERS

One of the most commonly used and effective tools in Photoshop is using a layer mask to create a fade or to blend images together. This is often seen in movie posters when a character is taken out of the original background they were shot in and put on another background for the poster for the movie. the reason layer masks are used is to precisely cut out a subject form an existing picture without cutting any part of the original shot that is not need and resulting in a strong ,sharp image that can be used for another piece.
The example I have used is the Kill Bill poster where they have used several layer masks to blend 5 characters together on one main background. The opacity of the all the characters apart for Uma Thurman have been decreased to make the leading character of the movie stand out the most. This is a good example of how the movie industry uses Photoshop.

CONVERTED TO PHOTOSHOP

After reading about the how widely used Photoshop is I picked up on how traditional artists have been converted from using their normal methods for creating art to using features on Adobe Photoshop. One of these artists is Alessandro Bavari,(see image), whose work is some what mythological and religious based he used traditional hands-on methods to create his pieces but after being introduced to Photoshop he has since been converted into the possibilities of digital image manipulation. He says “I dint think my style has been subsumed by the digital technologies, instead it has improved and evolved.”
Pierre-Paul Pariseau is an artist who has also been converted to Photoshop and has taught himself via Adobes tutorial features and is now a successful artist know for his extraordinary photomontages.

INTRODUCTION

In this blog I will look at the how widley used Adobe Photoshop is. I will look in to the differant areas of visual media that Photoshop is involved in and what aspects of Photoshop these areas favour. With each blog i will include a visual example and I will end this blog with an overall conclusion stating what I have learnt about how vast the use of Photoshop actually is.

ADOBE WALL

Adobe have created an new interactive for the general public in New York, they have unveiled an interactive wall on the side of Virgin Megastore. As pedestrians walk past the wall, infrared sensors will lock on to the person closest to the wall, who will then be able to control a projected sroller feature on the wall.
This scroller will control the amount of animation, colour and music that projects on the wall, depending on how fast the person walks past, and will decrease back if the person walks back the way he or she came. When the person reaches the end of the wall it stops creating .
Each person that has walked the along this wall and had control of the scroller will have the final design of their wall in full view , above the campaigns message
“ Creative licence : take as much as you want.”
The wall is 7 feet high and 15 feet wide, and will be created in London's Piccadilly circus Virgin Meagstore later this summer.
The wall was created using Adobe tools, by Brand New School, a directing collective that designed the animation, and Obscura Digital, a San Francisco based technology and video deisgn agency. The wall is intended to switch its attention, and control of the slider, to anyone who gets close to it, but even activity and movement in the background will affect some of the animation.
The idea was to make the wall “ a single and multiuser experience simultaneously” and I think it has defiantly achieved their goal of doing so and look forward to seeing in London's West-end.