Recently in Design Category

Mannequin. Ridiculously underexposed with a Nikon D200. Brightened greatly in Lightroom 3 (beta). I thought it looked interesting.

click to enlarge somewhat

It's not very painterly to put black holding lines around objects. That device comes more from the world of illustration and comic books.

There is nothing wrong with illustrations and comic books, though, so in the right settings, black holding lines are very cool. (and yes, I was a Patrick Nagel fan)

I think an improvement on black lines can be dark lines of the same hue as the color they are surrounding. That can be a nice look.

I was struck recently by a twist on the theme I hadn't noticed before: a hybrid between holding lines in some areas and none in others. I think this illustration (above) is pretty effective in conveying depthby using dark holding lines only around selected foreground elements, and pushing the background into the atmosphere by color choice, and by not trying to outline the background objects.

Some programs and plug-ins of interest:

Hypatiasoft - Knotsbag & Seamlessmaker

Artlandia Symmetryworks & Symmetryshop

Imageskill TileBuilder

Xaos Terrazzo II

scan-13, originally uploaded by jfrancis.

I bought a vintage Chinese newspaper so that I could scan it for interesting textures.

I have no idea what it says, or what it is called, but the eBay seller told me it was from Hong Kong, 1946.

The peachy paper is actually browner and more subtle in person. I should have toned it down a bit.

Click through to the flickr set for more.

Torn Paper Edges, originally uploaded by jfrancis.

Real (not simulated) Torn Paper Edges, originally uploaded by jfrancis.

Some torn blue paper with a ragged white edge scanned against black.

There should be enough value and chroma difference to separate the blue from the white, and enough contrast value difference to separate the white from the 'black'

The real thing. Not simulated in Photoshop.

Paper is plain blue wrapping paper for sale at Target.

Click through to the flickr set. I'll add some more...

Pussycat Theatre / Pussycat Cinema, originally uploaded by jfrancis.

A study of the vintage graphics and typography of the now closed Pussycat Cinemas. I used Adobe Illustrator to make vector art. I couldn't find a font for the lettering along the bottom of the illustration. I assume the letter forms were custom designed. They might form the basis for a new display font.

Wouldn't mind having it as a T-shirt, either.

Background article: When Cathouses Ruled California

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I'm working on a virtual 3D version in Maxwell for another entry in my Nothing is Real but the Girl series. I'll derive a Maya / Maxwell model of the sign from the Adobe Illustrator curves in the artwork at the top of this page.

Crackle Pattern 04, originally uploaded by jfrancis.

I've started a flickr set dedicated to various crackle paint textures.

The one pictured is Golden brand Gel Mediums Crackle Paste over Golden brand Black Gesso over an Ampersand Hardbord.

I used the side with the faintly printed logo thinking you'd never see it. Somehow the ink from the logo leeched up through the gesso and crackle paste to the point where it was clearly legible. I guess I should have also sealed the Hardboard with a primer, as the manufacturer advises. (Or just use the pristine side, although I had planned to be frugal and use both sides of every $5 board I bought.)

I had to use the Photoshop Black and White filter to pull yellow out. Even though the logo seepage pattern looked black, pulling yellow out made the logo invisible. It also made the image black and white, but that could be considered more of a feature than a bug.

If it looks a little gray, it's because I didn't clip anything to white. You can always make parts of it white later. You can't really undo that once you've done it.

UPDATE

I documented the retouching process. It ended up being fairly interesting. I used the Black and White adjustment layer, and LAB color

Colorize inked art for comic books and digital paintings by putting the line art into a layer mask. You get lots of control over ink color, paper color, and the line art itself, this way.

You can even throw in blend modes if you wish.

UPDATE 7/8/09

In addition to the Layer Mask method described in the video above, a 2-color Photoshop gradient map also makes a good method for certain types of art. And a 3-color gradient map can be even better, because it gives subtle control over the hues of the edge tones.

The median filter tends to preserve edges, which is good but it also tends to round corners, which is sometimes not so good. Unless you want that effect. Then it's actually pretty interesting.

As an experiment I tried it at various settings on a stochastic FM screened halftone. I like some of the results.

Median Filter radius = 3

This one is pretty crazy. Like a circuit board. It would be time consuming to make any other way.

Median Filter radius = 2

Median Filter radius = 1

UPDATE 7/14/2009

The median filter's behavior in the first image is so transformative, and so neighbor-dependent, that it reminds me of John Conway's Game of Life algorithm. It makes me want to implement the Game of Life in Photoshop.

...and as I look, not only do I find it's been done, but quite recently.

Even has a closeup of an eye represented by a stochastic halftone. That's kind of eerie.

We have the same eyeglasses. lol

The Dissolve blend mode turns blurry edges speckly. The median filters turns speckly edges rough.

Good for torn paper, grungy type, rough edges.

I make a hexagonal grid in Photoshop from regular equilateral triangles.

I then extend the technique to demonstrate how to make a hexagonal (triangular) mosaic without the use of special plugins or anything more than the standard Photoshop square mosaic tile filter.

I plan to use these techniques in conjunction with the 17 Wallpaper Group Plane Symmetries of programs like Artlandia Symmetryworks, TileBuilder, or Xaos Terrazzo to make even more elaborate pieces.

More on the topic of Distorting Photoshop Filters Without Distorting the Underlying Image

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Shawn Hargreaves has an interesting approach to hexagonal mosaics: he makes a Photoshop displacement map that fools every pixel in a hexagonal region from getting its color from the same pixel. I prefer an area average to a single pixel sample - that way a fleck of noise can't influence a whole hexagon - but the results look pretty good, and I like the ingenuity of the idea.

The Photoshop 'Dissolve' blend mode reduces a layer to random dots in a density based on that layer's opacity. If the layer opacity is controlled by a grayscale image layer mask, then a simple stochastic halftone can be produced.

More on halftones in Photoshop (using the 'Hard Mix' blend mode)

More on using the 'Dissolve' blend mode (for additive color mixing)

UPDATE 6/29/2009

For comparison here is a real stochastic error diffusion FM frequency modulated halftone screen made by putting together three Photoshop bitmaps.

Click to see pixels at 100% - they are brighter - downsampling to fit the blog layout artificially darkened the image.

A simulation of additive RGB color mixing using the Photoshop dissolve blend mode.

Photoshop uses the same pixel patterns for a given opacity for each layer, so you have to build from the bottom up...

Set the base layer to 100% opacity.

Set the middle layer to 67% opacity. That will reveal 1/3 of the base.

Set the highest level to 33% opacity. That will reveal 2/3 of the mix of the first two.

Now you have each of the 3 layers revealed at 33% coverage.

I was unable to simulate subtractive CMY color mixing using the Photoshop dissolve blend mode.

UPDATE

It occurs to me that a highly magnified (nearest neighbor algorithm) blow-up of 16x16 pixel images of dissolve pixels in the right opacity proportions would be a great way to make the masks that randomly 'texture bomb' (shuffle) the 'Truchet tile'-style maze described here.

UPDATE

I see the same pixel patterns for a given opacity on multiple images (or the same resolution) - it doesn't randomize for each new file. So if you want to images of random pixels it may be best to (for example) cut them from different places in a larger image.

click image for a closer view

An experiment in combining CMY subtractive color channels into a full color image using Photoshop's Normal blend mode.

The bottom layer must be set to 100% (one over one)

The middle layer must be set to 50% (one over two)

The top layer must be set to 33% (one over three)

This effectively averages the images into a 1/3 intensity composite. A final 300% dimming curve (pinned at white and deepening the blacks) compensates.

The subtractive primaries do not really want to mix in this way. The fact that I was able to do so relies on the final compensating curve that pins white at white and drops black severely. I'm not sure that effect could be reproduced in the real world.

click image for a closer view

An experiment in combining RGB additive color channels into a full color image using Photoshop's Normal blend mode.

The bottom layer must be set to 100% (one over one)

The middle layer must be set to 50% (one over two)

The top layer must be set to 33% (one over three)

This effectively averages the images into a 1/3 intensity composite. A final 300% brightening curve compensates.

I expected the multiply blend mode to properly combine CMY separations into full color images.

It does.

I was surprised to see how well the difference and exclusion blend modes accomplished the same task. You may assume it's because they are subtractive in nature, and so should be expected to perform subtractive color mixing, but in fact they mix pairs of colors in surprising and unnatural ways.

More on blend modes.

I refuse to accept the explanation that the Exclusion Photoshop blend mode is simply a watered down, low contrast version of the Difference blend mode, suitable for nothing more than image alignment. There has to be a 'killer app' for this blend mode.

One such 'killer app' is its ability to capture midtones in images, and its ability to isolate the edge regions of soft masks.

(another way to create an outline)

Midtones and edge outlines are both useful as masks for color correction.

Photoshop's Hard Mix blend mode seems nearly useless. It does have one 'killer application,' however.

The killer app for Photoshop's Hard Mix blend mode is creating halftones.

Here is a brief tutorial in how to create custom halftone effects in Photoshop using a gray scale photo, a grayscale pattern, and the hard mix blend mode.

I'm compiling a list of all Photoshop blend mode killer apps here

Blend Mode Killer Apps

I'm compiling a list of blend mode tutorials. It is incomplete for now. I'll add to it over time.

I'm particularly interested in the 'killer app' for each blend mode, and the best way to demonstrate it. I think that any collection of tutorials that uses the same pair of images and only varies the blend mode combining them is not demonstrating each mode in the best possible way.
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The Normal Blend Modes

• Normal

Additive RGB Color Mixing using Photoshop Normal Blend Mode

Subtractive CMY Color Mixing using Photoshop Normal Blend Mode

• Dissolve

I used dissolve to create the chalky white line in this illustration

A Simulation of Additive RGB Color Mixing using the Dissolve Blend Mode

The Darken Blend Modes

• Darken
• Multiply

Multiply Blend Mode | What it is and why you need itSome Thoughts on Photoshop Multiply,

Soft Light, Overlay Blend Modes

Photoshop Screen and Multiply Blend Modes as Logic Gates

Additive Color vs Subtractive Color

Color Transparency in Computer Graphics

Colorize Black & White Art by Keymixing

Creating an Outline

Subtractive Color Mixing using Multiply, Difference and Exclusion

• Color Burn
• Darker Color

The Lighten Blend Modes

• Lighten

• Screen

Screen Blend Mode | What it is and why you need it

Photoshop Screen and Multiply Blend Modes as Logic Gates

Additive Color vs Subtractive Color

• Color Dodge
• Linear Dodge (Add)

Additive Color vs Subtractive Color

Simulating 2D Metaball Blobbies with Photoshop

Compositing Premultiplied 3D CG in Photoshop

Colorize Black & White Art by Keymixing

• Lighter Color

The Contrast Blend Modes

• Overlay

Some Thoughts on Photoshop Multiply, Soft Light, Overlay Blend Modes

Overlay and Softlight are good for non-destructive dodging and burning. Float a gray layer above your image and 'carve' it with lighter and darker grays

• Soft Light

Overlay and Softlight are good for non-destructive dodging and burning. Float a gray layer above your image and 'carve' it with lighter and darker grays

Some Thoughts on Photoshop Multiply, Soft Light, Overlay Blend Modes

• Hard Light
• Vivid Light
• Linear Light
• Pin Light
• Hard Mix

Custom Halftone Pattern in Photoshop

Hard Mix Photoshop Blend Mode Killer App

Photoshop 'hard Mix' Dual Brush

The Inversion Blend Modes

• Difference

Difference vs Exclusion Photoshop Blend Mode Killer App

Subtractive Color Mixing using Multiply, Difference and Exclusion

• Exclusion

Difference vs Exclusion Photoshop Blend Mode Killer App

Subtractive Color Mixing using Multiply, Difference and Exclusion

The Component Blend Modes

• Hue
• Saturation
• Color
• Luminosity

The Miscellaneous Blend Modes

• Divide

Transparency Mapping and Matte Lines
Compositing Premultiplied 3D CG in Photoshop

• Unmult

Transparency Mapping and Matte Lines
Compositing Premultiplied 3D CG in Photoshop

Alpha Channels
Alpha Channels | premultiplied, straight and uncorrelated
Alpha Channel as a Clipping Channel
Alpha Channel as a Holdback Matte
Image Arithmetic
Blend Modes
Compositing Premultiplied 3D CG in Photoshop

Other Web Sites

SimpelFilter - Blending Modes of Photoshop & Co

A brief look at two methods of combing colors - additive color, which uses red, green and blue as primaries, and so-called 'subtractive' color, which uses cyan, magenta and yellow.

Additive color describes the way colored light combines.

'Subtractive' color describes the way colored filters stack up, or the way certain pigments mix.

We usually teach children the 'subtractive' method, which uses cyan, magenta and yellow, first. We often simplify and approximate magenta as 'red' and cyan as 'blue,' so most school children think the paint primaries are red, yellow and blue.

Why do I keep putting the word 'subtractive' in quotes? Watch the clip and you'll know in 3 minutes from now.

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There are actually two kinds of 'subtractive' color mixing. One, described above, is multiplicative. The other, described here, is closer to averaging.

Something I was noticing. If you posterize a color image (maybe somewhat in the vein of the Shepard Fairey Obama image) you seem to get more 'intuitive' results by posterizing in Lab color space.

The RGB image posterized to 4 levels each of R, G, and B, and each set of bands in each channel fall in different places, which causes what I consider to be some unexpected color combinations.

The little padlock symbols in the Photoshop Brush Palette probably don't do what you think they do.

Logic would dictate that locking an attribute, scatter, for example, would make it impossible to accidentally uncheck scatter on that brush.

Completely wrong.

If you lock scatter on one brush, then every other brush in Photoshop also becomes a scatter brush.

Good function. Poor implementation. I'd at least go for some kind of 'global' symbol - not a padlock. Padlocks have a different meaning.

I was playing with spirals, possibly as a prelude to making a spiral photo mosaic, and noticed some interesting aspects of them.

A spiral in a polar coordinate system unwrapped into a rectangular coordinate system becomes a series of diagonals. I figured it would.

A hand drawn, irregular spiral, when unwrapped, still tiles seamlessly. That was interesting.

A tiled, unwrapped spiral re-wraps into a multi-armed galaxy-type spiral. For N tiles there are N arms and each arm wraps N times fewer around the spiral. Also interesting.

Scar13 Hula Mosaic Tapa Cloth 2, originally uploaded by jfrancis.

Scar 13 dances in a grass hula skirt. I've rendered her in patterns reminscent of Polynesian Tapa cloth.

You can make fairly complex patterns in Photoshop by randomly shuffling simpler patterns. This is a Photoshop reprise of material covered for Maya here.

This 'maze' is composed of 4 randomly shuffled tiles.

The tiles are interchangeable. They all connect in the middle of each edge.

Each tile was defined as a pattern and filled as a repeating sheet.

I also made a 16 x 16 image of noise, blew it up 'nearest neighbor - no interpolation' to match the sheet sizes, tone-leveled it and posterized it to 4 values: black, dark gray, light gray, and white.

(click image for a much closer look)

I magic-wanded (non contiguous, with 0 tolerance) each of the 4 gray levels and turned them into layer masks. This caused the tiles to randomly 'shuffle.'

The maze tiles with itself, even if rotated in increments of 90 degrees.

In computer graphics this technique is called texture bombing.

BONUS

Instead of matching grays to random tiles, I matched them to hand drawn patterns of appropriate values, and create an artistic dither or simple photo mosaic.'

I hand drew symbols of appropriate brightness (using Filters > Blur > Average to gauge the average intensity of the image) My hope was to create a portrait of the model Scar 13 in Hawaiian wardrobe that looked as if it were made from Tapa Cloth.

(click image to see full size)

I used the Threshold tool and a set of known values (in this case of 16 zones I went from from 0/15*255 to 15/15*255 -- see 1:43 video for a rapid spreadsheet solution). I selected, magic wanded, and layer masked ever smaller, brighter areas as I rose level by level through the Photoshop layer stack.

What I ended up with is a bit like overstrike ascii art from the 1970's, which is what this process produces when tile values correspond to mosaic tile values. So if that's something you want, here is a method for 'eyeballing' a custom one just for yourself. (The work is mainly in creating a set of correctly weighted tiles) When I first started playing around with photo mosaics in the early 90's I originally experimented with Chuck Close-style abstract painted targets and swirls. I was reminded a lot of those days while I painted these Tapa cloth tiles. : )

UPDATE 5/28/2009

So I was visiting Filter Forge to see if I could implement this 'maze' pattern and maybe earn myself a free copy of the $300 plugin, when I noticed there was a similar (but simpler) pattern already there called Truchet tiling, which uses only a pair of triangles, or the arc pair tile above. I think I like mine better. :)

UPDATE 6/19/2009

It occurs to me you can use the Photoshop dissolve blend mode to create the random noise patterns.

UPDATE 9/23/2009

I had imagined generalizing this into interlocking tile illustrations for a game or children's mural. I noticed on boingboing tonight that someone was also thinging along those lines.

Makers 5x5 tile game

UPDATE 1/1/2010

While researching Japanese patterns for an upcoming image of mine I came across a NYT article on the repeating Truchet-style patterns of Japanese artist Asao Tokolo. Quite interesting.

The Post-Materialist | A Pattern's Math Magic

I'm going to start keeping track of online sources of fonts that look interesting. Some free. Some not free. The main criteria will be, do I want to 'bookmark' this link? They are in no particular order.

Fontex free fonts

Walden Font Co

Font Diner

House Industries

HPLHS Vintage Fonts

Old Fonts Texas Hero

P22 Type Foundry

Dieter Steffmann - quite an amazing collection of free fonts

Hype for Type (twitter)

17 Remarkably Professional Looking Free Fonts per Web Design Ledger

A list of free fonts assembled bt creattica.com

25 High Quality Free Fonts for Professional Design from tripwire magazine

20 Free Graffiti Fonts (1 or 2 of which I like)

45 'Outstanding' Free Vintage Fonts (All 45 are not 'Outstanding,' but some are)

(click image to see larger)

Use the Black and White adjustment layer to eliminate col-erase non-photo blue pencil sketch lines from a scan of inked artwork. (or many other pencil colors - experiment with hues other than blue - this approach is more versatile than those methods involving eliminating or copying a single color channel)

(click image to see larger)

Adjust one or more sliders, use mainly the cyan slider in the case of Col-Erase non-photo blue, until you target the precise hue of pencil you need to eliminate. The process occurs interactively as you adjust the slider.

Redrawn Flammarion Woodcut - not original, originally uploaded by jfrancis.

I needed a clean, high resolution version of the public domain image known as the Flammarion Woodcut, so over the course of several days this week I completely redrew it in Adobe Illustrator. I am returning this particular version under CC license. (a reasonably close comparison will show that virtually every line in the image is different from the original) So if you like it, you'll find a high resolution version of it by clicking on it and going to the flickr page. Just keep in mind it's not the original version.

Sort of clockpunk, I think.:D

surfBoards, originally uploaded by jfrancis.

I've been going through old hard drives and uploading to this Flickr set anything that seems worthwhile.



"You never know what you gonna get..."

I picked up the April, 2009 issue of Spin Magazine to pass the time on my flight back from Easter with the family. On page 37 I got a bit of a surprise: a campaign for the 60th anniversary of Onitsuka Tiger designed by Amsterdam Worldwide featuring a visually ambiguous model of a sneaker-slash-island (the island being Japan)

The image caught my eye because I'm currently working on an ambiguous island model of my own, only mine will have a tropical 'tiki' motif, complete with a volcano and small trees rendered in Maxwell. (don't go too much by the illustration above - it's for position only, at the moment)

One thing I noticed was the decision in the sneaker print ad to frame so loosely as to reveal the edges of the painted sky backdrop. The other thing that really stood out to me was the subtle, but visible electrical cord in the ad. The volcano in my image will be internally lit and I also plan to incorporate a visible (CG) electrical cord into the composition.

In the same way that I hung my Tiki Moon on unnecessary 'wires,' or built my CG hot rod flames within the limitations of 4' x 8' sheets of virtual plywood, I like to add these misleading cues to my computer graphics.

"My philosophy is to use 3D CG to 'fly under the audience's VFX radar.' No matter how well you render a robot, the viewer will evaluate the work as VFX. If you render a painted wooden wall and some throwing knives, hopefully the viewer will evaluate the work as an image -- one with nice production value and a healthy budget for props and styling, but an image nonetheless."
-- A quote from my cgsociety.org gallery

More on multi-plane theatrical backdrops and photography.

More un CG celestial bodies on unnecessary wires: Paper Moon (game)

3D CG model with additional Photoshop handpainted details. More after the jump.

Powered by Coffee is a joke logo I came up with back in 2002. As I Google around, I see I was not the only one to think of it. The 'Powered by' meme seems to have been a popular one, both in gag logos and in serious ones.

I have forgotten what the original 'powered by' logo was, but I know it was for something technology-related, and looked like something you'd find at the bottom of a web site or on the back of a computer. The Powered by Coffee people for the most part seem to have drifted away from that key concept.

The coffee stain was sort of orange-y, and everyone knows the color for coffee is green, so I added purple to round out the secondary color palette.

A little needle and thread banner I designed for modestneeds.org back in 2002. I thought the 'stitch in time' idea worked pretty well. I was also enjoying playing with my scanner. I don't believe the design was used.

The needle and thread is available Creative Commons at 3k resolution at my flickr photostream.

Another idea I thought had promise based on the 'For want of a nail...' proverb. The wording in the banner is maybe a little awkward. The texture for the CG horseshoe nail was one I had developed for some tests for the steel sphere in the main titles to the movie Rollerball (2002)

I don't believe this one was ever used either.

LITE logo design.

Maxwell Render light transport and depth of field test. I like the look of it.

According to Wikipedia the prohibition sign (also no symbol, circle-slash symbol, or universal no) is a circle with a diagonal line through it (running from top left to bottom right), surrounding a pictogram used to indicate something is not permitted. The No symbol is usually colored red.

Notice the definition calls for a 'pictogram,' not a word written out letter by letter. A written word defeats the whole purpose of the sign. 'Circle slash' signs are supposed to be able to communicate to an international audience across many languages.

If you are going to skip the icon, you might as well skip the red circle and diagonal slash as well, and just add the word, 'No.'

Just saying.