If you have a photo in need of foliage, fire up Photoshop and generate for a 3D rendered Sakura Cherry Blossom, Redwood, Young Maple, Palm, or nearly three dozen other trees. Just go to Filter Render Tree and let your creativity, er, take root. This curious feature even enables you to tweak the leaf sizes, branch height, and other variables. But what's the story behind this curious feature? From Input:
The trees, it turns out, came in response to architectural artists who wanted to be able to drop trees into their work but struggled to smoothly integrate them into the image. Before the tree filter was introduced in 2014, designers would have to cut out a preexisting image of a tree taken at the right angle and then paste it in.
“We thought it would be convenient if you could generate customizable trees that fit illustrations,” says Daichi Ito, the technical research artist who developed the tree filter for Adobe. “By ‘fit,’ I mean it doesn’t have a strong style; it’s somewhat realistic, but not photorealistic.”
Ito created the project as part of the development of an engine, codenamed Deco, that would help Photoshop create generative patterns. “Daichi came to us and said, ‘I can actually write a bunch of interesting scripts that leverage that Deco engine and allow us to generate all kinds of things,’” recalls Stephen Nielson, director of product management for Photoshop at Adobe. Ito spent a month writing the algorithm that created the generative images. “Generating tree data took me some more time,” he adds.
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Twitter user @sydneywhitson reported that "her coworker called in (yet again) and said she had a nail on her tire that caused her to have a flat" and reportedly sent in the above photo as evidence. Zoomed version below. Of course, Twitter delighted in the stupidity.
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I've been using Photoshop for years, but I don't know what I'm doing. When I get stuck, I often turn to the YouTube channel Phlearn to learn how to do something. In this easy-to-understand 10-minute video, I learned how to use adjustment layers to make changes to all colors in an image and how to use layer masks to changes the colors of certain areas of an image. I wish I'd learned about these a long time ago. Read the rest
Ard Gelinck poses celebrities with their younger selves. Fantastic. More on Instagram at: photo_time_traveling
(via Kottke)
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What the hell is this? Well, it's "Babies With Teeth." Read the rest
Photoshopper James Fridman completes badly-phrased Photoshop requests to the letter, like Come take it away, which is obviously not what the requester expected. Read the rest
In their new video, the band Spoon pays homage to the designers who slave away on Photoshop all day manipulating images. Read the rest
Reality, and all the facts and things in it, are negotiable. Even the clocks on the wall.
Soon after a two-hour secret visit to Afghanistan by Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson on Monday was publicly disclosed, the American Embassy and the office of President Ashraf Ghani made statements about their productive meeting in Kabul.
The problem is that the meeting was not in Kabul, but in a windowless room in Bagram, the heavily fortified American military base a 90-minute drive away. The misinformation, apparently meant to obscure the true venue, was betrayed by discrepancies in similar photographs released by the Americans and the Afghans.
The photoshopping here was done by the Afghan side. Still, a good example of how the administration has a knack for exposing the stupidity of everything that tries to cooperate with it.
Trumpistemology: the incompetent free-range rewriting of the world that occurs after consensus reality is marginalized. Read the rest
Anna Christova snapped this fantastic street art project called "CTRL+X," which paints items tagged with graffiti to look as if they've been selected and deleted in Photoshop, revealing the default transparent layer. Below is the before photo: Read the rest
This is so cool! San Francisco-based artist Josh Ellingson has posted a detailed tutorial on how to make a 3D illusion effect in Photoshop. This type of 3D art is called an anaglyph and it requires those special red and blue glasses to see its depth. (Interesting side note, Josh recommends wearing a pair of those 3D glasses just to work on the art itself.)
He writes:
One way to merge two images together from different vantage points to simulate the distance between your eyeballs. Another method is to have software shift the red and blue using what's called a "depth map". There are even apps that allow users to cut up a flat image into chunks and then adjust how far forward or backward to move the chunks. All of those ways are destructive to the final image and are usually done as the last step in the creative process. As it turns out, there's a much more flexible way to do this buried inside of Photoshop's 3D functionality. It's easy and I can't believe it's been right there for a long time.
Spoiler alert: As it turns out, Photoshop has a robust "3D workspace" that includes an anaglyph feature.
Josh made the 3D artwork that's featured in the tutorial for the cover of sci-fi surf rock band's Aloha Screwdriver's 7-inch EP, Above Snakes. When you buy the 4-song album, there's no need to source a pair of 3D glasses too. Donald Bell, the guitarist for Aloha Screwdriver, tells me the record comes with them, "of course." Read the rest
When Mike Mitchell noticed that Trump's chin(s) had a bit of a ranine quality, the shoops started rolling in. Behold: Read the rest
Tiny Trumps is a new subreddit page that features the little fella in his daily life. From Melania making sure he doesn't take a tumble to Obama doing his best not to laugh to Trumpkin entertaining Justin Trudeau, Tiny Trumps is my current go-to when I need a good chuckle. Read the rest
Brides Throwing Cats is a site dedicated to "photoshopping cats in place of bouquets" in shots of brides (and occasionally grooms) hurling bouquets.
No cats were harmed in the making of this tumblr and we certainly don’t encourage anyone to throw a cat ever, let alone on their wedding day. Still reading? Well one last time, seriously, this is fake.
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I'm much more comfortable with Adobe Illustrator than Photoshop, but I enjoyed this short video about Photoshop users talking about the powerful image editing application.
For over two decades, Photoshop has been an essential part of the digital artist's toolset. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, we've taken a look back at Photoshop's history: from the rise of desktop publishing and digital photography, to the evolution of Photoshop's tool palette and its sometimes controversial but necessary role in modern photojournalism.
We interview early adopters and pioneering artists such as Bert Monroy, Chris Orwig, and Douglas Kirkland, as well as the people responsible for guiding Photoshop's development: John Nack, Russell Brown, and current product manager Bryan O'Neil Hughes. Konrad Eek and Sean Adams also explain what life was like before Photoshop and how this beguiling tool has democratized design and darkroom photography.
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Steven Lear mashes up beloved albums with beloved Star Wars characters to delightful effect. Some highlights below:
See the whole collection here.
• whythelongplayface (via Taxi) Read the rest
