Grilled Paninis, Vodka Martinis, and Nick Antonini

So I thought this assignment looked really tight, So I gave it a try and played around with it a little bit.

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/averaging-concepts-using-flickr/

Basically you take 50 photos with similar tags and average them into one picture in photoshop. They can make some pretty slick graphics. To start I used Bulkr to download the flickr images. I used the keyword ‘happiness’ as the anchor point for the pictures. I set all the photos into a folder and opened photoshop. Go to Files>Scripts>Load Files Into Stack, and make sure to select to align them and to generate a smart object from the layers (it just saves time later on.) After that go to Layer>Smart Objects>Stack mode from here on out it’s pretty much up to you about how you want the photo to look. I used mean and median (both displayed below. Play around with it and you can get some cool results.

Here’s the two that I did using the technique stated above:

Mean

Median

Now I deviated from the instructions a little bit to see what could happen. Instead of loading all the images and creating one smart object, I simply loaded them into separate layers and adjusted the opacity of each layer. The bottom layer being at 100% and the top layer being at 2%; increasing by 2% intervals. This pretty much allowed me to choose what I wanted to be in the foreground a little more. I know that this really isn’t Averaging, but screw it, the end result was cooler anyway. It think it shows more emotion. But hey, I’m a business student, I don’t know much about art.

So I was working on another assignment, but I don’t think I did it right so I did this one too.

I used photoshop to do this assignment. I created two layers of the same color image. Turned the top layer to a grayscale, and lowed the contrast and brightness a little. Next I used the background eraser to show the color of the body of the guitar. I used the the magic wand a little to select portions to erase… but it’s a little difficult to use on a black and white image with a lot of gray.
Here’s the original:

I didn’t see too many people do this one so I figured I’d give it a shot. Plus it’s three stars. http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/troll-steals-axe-challenge/

Basically you have to take some famous guitar player and replace their guitar with another famous guitar player’s guitar. So I took (one of) my favorite guitarist, Mark Knopfler, and replaced his guitar with the infamous fender custom strat of Stevie Ray Vaughan.

To start I opened the original picture into photoshop along with the guitar I wanted to photoshop.

I started by deleting Mark’s guitar from the picture. I used the magic wand to get rid of most of the object. I then used the lasso tools and background eraser to fine tune everything. I then had to adjust the size and rotation of the guitar and then paste it into the picture. Any opening there were, I used the clone tool to fill stuff in so there was no whitespace. I then blurred the edges of the guitar and adjusted the saturation and contrast to match the environment.
And that’s about it.

Here’s a little Knopfler fo yall

So while I was sitting home last night with a temperature of 104, I was thinking: I really hate hipsters. It’s not really that cool to think your not that cool and you don’t care. So I directed today’s assignment to hipsters.

I got this two star assignment from http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/demotivate-yourself/

Now to start out i went to flickr’s creative commons and search hipster. I’m guessing most results were pictures in Richmond (hipster central.) I ended up finding this picture I opened the picture in photoshop, did a little croppage and adjustage of the brightness/contrast, and BAM done. Now to make the actual poster I set the background to black, adjusted the canvas size to fit the words, put a couple of white and black triangles in the background to give it that matted look, and gave the poster a couple of words. Pretty easy assignment but definitely fun.

So here we have a fat cat. Fat cat is on a boat. The original painting was Young Lady in a Boat by James Tissot. (Riveting title… I know) So I’ve renamed this new painting to Fat Cat Being Rowed in a Boat by James Tissot feat. Nick Antonini.

I got the original pictures from:

and the fat cat from

Basically to start out I went into Photoshop and open up my fat cat picture. I took the selection tool to try to erase all my unneeded background graphics. Afterwards I used the lasso tool to fine tune the erasing process to get as close to the fur as possible. For this i would recommend doing this free-hand. Don’t use the magnetic lasso, well you can, but be careful of the frequency and edge contrast if so it doesn’t look like a bunch of straight lines. After you think you’ve trimmed the picture down enough it time to put some effects on it. Take a look at the picture you paste the fat cat into. My painting was an oil on canvas so I had to try to simulate this on my fat cat.
Now back to the fat cat: Go to the filter menu on the menubar and click filter gallery. This place shows all the cool filters you can put on your image. I used a crosshatched brush stroke. (Keep in mind that you can adjust the strength and sharpness of the effect.)
After I got an effect pretty similar to the painting, I rotated the image 10 degrees CW to fit in the picture correctly. (it’s kinda just trial and error here.) Next I took out the blur tool from the toolbar, lowered the strength down to roughly 30% and blured the fur of the cat on the sides. Then I took quick strokes over the rest of the fur to blend a little better. Lastly I adjusted the brightness and contrast of the fat cat.

So now to the last part:
I opened the painting in photoshop and created a new layer… we’ll get to that in a sec. I used the polygonal lasso tool to cut out part of the image and paste it onto the new later. This is the portion where the cat kinda disappears under the plank of the boat.
Now create another new layer beneath your previous layer and paste the cat to that layer.
Position the cat to look less awkward and your good.

Bam! Done! Fat cat in a boat.