Monday, January 26, 2009

Real : Surreal

This past weekend I spent some time playing with Photoshop and a program called Photomatix, as well as an additional plug-in tool that works inside of Photoshop. My Photoshop skills are lacking, in spite of my profession. I'm much better with Illustrator, but I'm working on developing my talents with various programs, and right now I'm having a lot of fun experimenting.

The first image below is a picture I took at work with my sub-par Canon SD1000 "point & pray & click" camera.
The image below that is what I came up with after running it through several different filters and tools. Also, I added a crow that I had found in a picture that someone else had taken, both because I love crows, and because I thought it gave the image that much more of a surreal feeling. Clearly I wasn't going for realism here. Oh, and I also flipped the image, as it just seemed to flow better with the "action" going left to right. And while I don't think that this little exercise demonstrates any greatness from an artistic or technical level (I imagine most "real" artists would rip this apart in seconds with a large list of mistakes and flaws), I like it personally. It's the look I was striving for, and it makes me happy. So I'm sharing it with you.






5 comments:

  1. I think its awesome Chris.. I brought photoshop and its gathering dust...just couldnt get a handle on the layers and with a click things just kept disapearing...

    We have crows in common & I love the colouring... great work...:)

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  2. Thanks! In spite of the probably numerous flaws and areas that could have been better, I love it.

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  3. wow! they're great!...
    i'm really wanna b a person who can edit pics in this way... but don't get the talent!

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  4. I know what you mean, Ursley. The stuff I want to do, I don't know how to do yet. It all just takes time, which can be hard to find as an adult, but I find that it's worth it once you finally get to that next level. Thanks for the comment!

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  5. i have a version of photoshop - and I don't use it for my profession but I love what you have done here. If I could get that much out of the tools I have I - I would be stoked! nice stuff man.

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