Photo Extremist: Creative Photography Tutorials, Photoshop Tutorials, Instructional Videos

3Oct/091

Scanner Art: How to Melt your face by Scanning it With A Scanner

You can easily make surreal face art just like these using your scanner. You can also use hands, pencils, and other various objects. Simply push the scan button and move your face along with the scanner light line. When you move your head along with the line, it will become stretched.

lwf14

Pretty gruesome huh? The more you practice, the more you'll be making faces look completely mutated. These images came straight out of my scanner and have not been photoshopped in any way. You can see that the black background isn't 100% black. You can fix this in Photoshop by clicking on Image > Adjustments > Selective Color, once there, select Blacks as your color, and then move the slider to the right. This will darken your background substantially. If it isn't looking 100% black to you, click Image > Auto Contrast, and then try doing it again. It should work after Auto Contrast.

lwf27 lwf24

Have fun! Another way to make scary faces is to manipulate your face in CS4 using Content Aware Scaling.

Tagged as: art, experimental, face, flesh, photo manipulation, photography, photoshop, scanner, scary, strange, surreal, unreal, weird 1 Comment

29Sep/094

How To Make A Photorealistic Pixelated Animated GIF in Photoshop

These animations are great for avatars and ID's for websites.

Ok, so here is how you make these things.

Open up your image in photoshop.
Resize the image (Image > Image Size) to something similar to the examples. Animated GIFs aren't supposed to be huge. I'd say no more than 500x500 pixels.
Crop the image if necessary.
Sharpen the image if you want to (Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen)
Here is the fun part. In order to get the pixelated look, go up to Image > Mode > Indexed Color. Select Local (Adaptive) for the pallet. 3 for the Colors. Then set your Dither setting and the dither amount:
Now, change the color back to RGB mode. Image > Mode > RGB Color
If you want to make the image have a transparent background, erase the background to be completely white. Then Select the Magic Wand Tool, set the Tolerance to 0, and untick Anti-Aliasing and Contagious. Click on the background and hit the DELETE key.
If you want the dissolving animation look, go up to Window > Animation. Duplicate your frame by clicking the little page icon on the bottom right of the Animation window.
Select the FIRST FRAME, make it invisible by unticking the little eye icon by the layer in the Layers window.
Now select just the SECOND FRAME, and make sure the eye icon is activated.
Now, select both frames by holding down the CTRL key while clicking on both of them. They should both be highlighted.
Next, click the Tween button on the bottom of the animation window.
Depending on how long you want the dissolve effect to last, a short number amount of frames (like 10) will dissolve the image quickly. A larger number (like 30) will make the dissolving effect last longer. Set the frame rate by selecting all the frames and then there is a button in the lower right.
Select the second frame, then, while holding down the SHIFT key, select your last frame (this will select all your frames except the 1st one)
In the layers window, set the blending mode to Dissolve.
You're pretty much done! You can add other things as well, like multiple frames.
To save the animation properly, click File > Save For Web... Make sure "GIF" is selected in the second drop down box in the top right.
Save it.

Tagged as: animated gif, animation, avatar, gif, Macintosh 128k, photo, photoshop, pixel art, pixelated, transparent 4 Comments

24Sep/091

Make Symmetric Symmetric Faces in Photoshop: Cat

This image was easy to produce, and can be used on faces and other things as well. The original picture from the camera was kind of dull and dark, but adjusting the levels fixes that right up. It was taken outside on the grass on a sunny day with a basic digital SLR.

DSC_2245fyk

Straighten the image so the nose isn't slanted (use the ruler tool and then hit Image > Image Rotation > Arbitrary)
Crop out the empty space after the rotation
Adjust the Canvas size (Image > Canvas Size...) to 200 percent with the left or right arrow selected. Duplicate the layer and then mirror it by hitting CTRL+A, CTRL+T, Right click, Flip horizontally. You can also just use the QuickMirror plug-in.
Adjust levels, curves, tones, etc. Dodge/burn if you want.
Resize for web
Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen twice