Digital Photography and Imaging - Week 6 (PROJECT 1B - PART 2: Recoloring Black and White)

21/10/2024 -  1/11/2024 Week 5 - Week 6

Komugi Uchibori / 0363900

Digital Photography and Imaging / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media

---

LECTURES

• Poster Design - The 7 principles of poster design

Emphasis 

Balance & Alignment

Contrast: creates space between elements in your design. The background needs to be significantly different from the color of your elements so they work harmoniously together and readable.

Repetition: If you limit yourself to two strong typefaces or three strong colores, you'll soon find you have to repeat some things. If only one thing on your band poster is in blue italic sans-serif, it can read like an error. If three things are in blue italic sans-serif, you’ve created a motif and are back in control of your design.

Proportion: is the visual size and weight of elements in a composition and how they relate to each other. It of ten helps to approach your design in sections, instead of  as a whole.

Movement: controlling the elements in a composition so that the eye is led to move from one to the next and the information is properly communicated to your audience.

White space(Negative space): is the only one that specifically deals with what you don't add. White space is exactly the empty page around the elements in your composition.

fig.1-1 The 7 principals of poster design (top left to bottom right)

---

TUTORIAL

This week's tutorial is about Photography basic and Here is the note.

ISO: camera sensors sensitivity higher=more light but more noise. suits for scene.

Aperture: high=smaller hole & low=bigger hole. suits for subject

Shatter speed: how much motion is need

fig.2-1 Aperture, ISO & Shatter speed

Image too dark: slow shatter speed, lower aperture & Raise ISO

Image too bright: lower ISO, raise shatter speed & aperture

---

PRACTICAL

• PROJECT 1B - PART 2: Recoloring Black and White

EXERCISE 1 (Practical)

This class is conducted in online and I watched instruction video to color monochroic portrait using Photoshop. Basically, the process is Coloring with brush tool, changing brush size and hardness, applying blending mode and filling in color.

Shortcut keys

Ctrl I= invert

] = Increase Brush Size

[ = Decrease Brush Size

Ctrl + Alt + Right drag = Brush hardness

alt ctrl G = gripping mask

fig.3-1 Original portrait

fig.3-2 After painting by me

EXERCISE 2 - Part 1

This task is about coloring by using eyedropper tool with picture for hair and skin color. It was a bit different from Exercise 1, and I followed instruction videos and finished this one. The quick coloring processes are following:

Using rectangle marquee tool to extract skin and hair parts from pictures and making small color pallete by eyedropper tool, copy and paste. 

fig.4-1 Extracting colors

At that time I Changed sample size to 5 by 5 average. After that, There are basically 2 ways to color:

1. quick selection tool - property- select and mask- +2 radius - refine edge brush tool (soft edge) - use layer mask - add solid color layer - replace the layer
2. solid color, invert, change to foreground color (X), Brush, blending

The first one is for larger part and the another is for small or fine parts. 

fig.4-2 The process in coloring

Here is the finished one:

fig.4-3 EXERCISE 2 - Part 1

Part 2 - choose 2 pics and coloring

We are given to list and chose 2 pictures which are different races respectively. I choose Black and White people. 

fig.5-1 Original pictures I chose

• Black (Obama)

This coloring process is the same as Part 1 so I'm going to simplify the explanation but with specific numerous value for each blending layer and so on. At first I searched pictures for skin and hair on the internet. Next, I extract colors from them with eyedropper tool. 

fig.5-2 Small color palette for skin and hair for Black (Obama)

After that, I color Obama using the 2 ways, one is with Brush tool and another is with quick selection tool.

fig.5-3 Coloring process with Brush tool 

fig.5-4 Coloring process with Quick selection tool

I finished coloring by repeating this process until the end. Here' re specific numerous value and types of layers for each parts (% is opacity):

• skin - overlay 58%
• hair & eyebrow - softlight 72%
• lips - soft light 47% + hue/saturation (adjustment layer)
• tooth ridge - soft light 42% + hue/saturation
• tooth - softlight 74%
• eyes - softlight 70%
• Y-shirt - colorburn 76%
• tie - softlight 46%
• suits - color dodge 65%
• flag (border) - softlight 90%
•      (rectangle) - lighter color 34%
• background - vivid light 38%

fig.5-5 Final coloring of Obama

• White

The process is also the same as last one. Here's a small color palette and extracted pictures.

fig.5-6 Small color palette for skin and hair for White

Coloring process pictures are following:

fig.5-7 Coloring process for White

However, this picture has difficult part, which is her thin bang on the left side. When I try to select this part, the tool included her skin parts, so after selecting roughly, I went to select and mask button and then use brush tool located third from the top on the selection brush tools. As a result I could overcome this problem.

fig.5-8 Coloring thin bang

I completed coloring and here's the detail for each layers (% is opacity):

• skin - soft light 74%
• hair - soft light 90%
• eyes - linear light 30%
• eyes (white space) - soft light 47%
• lips - overlay 42%
• clothes - color dodge 21%
• nail - color burn 62%
• background - overlay 47%

fig.5-9 Final coloring of White

---

REFLECTIVE WRITING

This coloring task was quite fun for me because the process of extracting my favorite colors from photos and editing evokes imagination and nostalgia. Personally, I thought it would be fun to take a black and white photo and try different colors when I'm not sure what color to dye my hair. I didn't find the process difficult, but when coloring the hair and background, I had trouble selecting parts, so I had to use the brush tool to fix the small details, which took a lot of time. But overall, as I said earlier, I had fun for this task.