Hand colouring photos

Hand-colouring has been used to add colour since the invention of photography. Used primarily to add colour to black and white formal portraits, hand-colouring for this purpose went into a serious decline in the 1950's caused by the emergence of colour photography in the same year.

The art form survived, however, re-emerging in the 1960's. It soon became part of the mainstream advertising and fashion photography of the time when it was rediscovered by a new generation of photographers, primarily in the United States.

Hand colouring also became a way of restoring faded or damaged photos, caused by many things like water, sunlight, air and neglect, bringing the colours back to life.

This technique can also bring vibrancy to dull, bleak images that require a bit of colour to brighten them up.

Painting Colour Onto Black And White Images

For this task we were asked to take a head to toe, portrait of each other or someone random. We then had to change the image into black and white and print it off.

We were then left to paint to our hearts content, adding colour to the image. Once the painting had dried we scanned the image into the macs.

I feel this is quite a good way of enhancing certain aspect of the image to hide blemishes. For example, my model had a bright green lanyard on, which i hadn't noticed until I uploaded my image onto the mac. I painted pieces around the lanyard, in bright colours, which has as a result almost made the lanyard invisible to the eye as the bright colours of the paint take your eye away from the spot it is.

Also outlining the neck of her top, overlapping the lanyard, has also made it appear as though she wasn't wearing it.

Evaluation . . .

Over the past six weeks I have produced an equestrian magazine cover in photoshop, replicating the cover layout that HORSE & RIDER use for there covers. I shot all my images on location at show grounds in derbyshire, each one portraying a particular discipline.

I started off with ideas for replicating an album cover and film covers, however, I was going to find it a problem in capturing the images i would of needed in order to re-create these images. So i then went on to thinking, as i read a lot of horse magazines, i thought it would be quite fun to replicate a cover, using my own photos.

I didn't really come across any problems with this idea. I had the images i needed for the cover and the rest of it could be done through text on photoshop. I did however, have to alter the design of the cover i was replicating slightly as i was struggling to replicate the image of schooling cards. To fix this problem i simply found another issue of the magazine to copy the bottom design from. It may not of been an exact copy of the magazine i was working from, however, it did work out quite nicely and it had been commented on that peers could not tell which magazine cover was the one i had created.

Overall, i am extremely pleased with how my final image turned out. It achieved the desired effect i wanted it to have in that it was unrecognizable against the original covers Horse & Rider magazine use. If i were to do it again i don't think i would change anything about my image. I feel i have done the best i can on it and if peers can't define it against the originals, then i don't see a need to change it in the near future.

Final Piece

For my final photoshop image, i chose to recreate a horse & rider magazine cover. I looked around at previous covers of the UK's best selling equestrian monthly magazine, HORSE & RIDER and worked from them. These are the two covers i used to work from:

I began by placing and image of out of focus shrubs as the background for the whole image to give the illusion of a really shallow depth of field.

Once i was happy with the positioning of the background i then went on to choosing an image of a horses head to place in the foreground of the shrubs.

I used the magnetic lasso tool to select just the head and neck, of the horse. Once i was happy with the selection I right clicked to cut the selected area out and then pasted it onto the background i had created earlier. Once i was happy with the position of the horses head, I deselected the image and moved on to the text.

I worked on the text from top to bottom as i thought this would be a nice and easy way to work.

I began by selecting the text tool from the left hand tool bar and selected an area on the image. I first typed up the word HORSE, using the Arial Black font in black, moving it to my desired position. I then duplicated this layer but changed the font to white, nudging it slightly down and right to create a shadow effect on it. I repeated this process for the word RIDER and for the &. Once i had position the 6 separate layers and was happy I merged them together to make it into one layer of text.

I then moved on to create the text 'A real passion for horses'. Again i used the text tool and typed out the words, this time using the Arial font in white. I re-positioned and once i was happy with the layout i merged the layer down with the HORSE & RIDER layer. I finished off the top piece of text with the date of the magazine issue and did exactly the same thing as the last piece of text i did but instead of using white text i used yellow. Once i was happy with the positioning of the text i merged it down with the HORSE & RIDER layer. As i want the horses ears to be above the text I moved that layer forwards so that the text layer sat behind it. Once i was happy with the positioning of the text layer i merged it down onto the background layer.

I then moved on to create this piece of text to replicate the same 'stamp' on the original cover. To create the circle in which the text is place i had to select the Ellipse tool and change the colour to white. I then clicked, dragged and released in order to create the first circle. I then went on to duplicate this layer, changing the colour to yellow, and transformed the circle to make it slightly smaller than the white circle. Once i was happy, i merged the two layers and positioned it just in front of the text i had done earlier.

I then went on to creating the text to go inside the circle, by using the text tool again. I typed up the words, highlighted the words 'UK's No1 BEST-SELLING' and changed the font colour to red. I finished off this part by positioning the text within the circles i created previously and merged the layer down to the circle layer. All that was left to do was to bring the horses head layer forward so that it sat in front of the circle and text.

At this point i knew i wouldn't need to move the horses head layer anymore so I flattened the whole image so I wasn't to accidentally move any of the layers and so that i didn't get confused with which layer to select as i went on.

I then went on to creating the text up the side of the cover, to show topics that are included within the magazine. As before with the rest of the text i had done i used the text tool to create the text. I started from top to bottom again, working my way through each bit. I changed the text colour, size and position relevantly for each piece of text in order for it to fit around the horses head. When 'Topics' were listed with bullet points, to make it visually clear as to when each topic started and finished, i alternated the colours from white to blue and back again. For the last bit about 'OUR VET EXPLAINS ...' i used the same colour for each ailment as it was all under one topic within the magazine, only changing the bullet point colour to red to make it clearer.

After finishing the text for the side of the magazine and was happy with the positioning of it i merged the layers down so they were all one layer that i could easily re-position later if i needed to.

To create this piece of text pictured above, I again used the text tool as before. I first created the text '55' in white and a large size positioned it where I wanted it to be and then went on to creating the rest of the text in blue. I positioned this layer of text next to the '55' layer, merging the two together when i was happy with the layout.

Finally all i had left to do was to create the topics at the bottom of the cover, with the barcode for scanning. To start with i used the Rectangle Tool, in blue, to create the blue background in which the text and images will be placed above. I merged the layer down so I didn't accidentally move it in the process.

I then used the same tool, in a salmon pink colour, to create the two boxes that will contain the text for each section. 

I created then typed the text up for each bit one at a time, using the text tool. Once i was happy with all the colouring and position of the text layers i merged them all down onto the blue background.

I then used these two images for the small pictures to go beside each section of topics to represent one of the topics from each list ... e.g the show jumping image to represent the topic 'Local Show Jumping Events' and the dressage image to represent 'Dressage'. I used the magnetic lasso tool to cut out each horse and rider and placed them both onto the magazine cover.

I re-positioned them accordingly and flattened the whole image once i was happy with the positioning of everything.

All that i had left to do was to position the barcode in the bottom most corner of the cover and flatten the image again once I was happy with it.

I then went on to save my finished image as a JPG file and was done.

Research for final image(s)

Today we were asked to look around for images we would like to re-create for our final pieces. As i have a horse of my own i thought it would be a good idea to do something involving him. After looking around and not really finding anything interesting and different, I decided i would like to re-create a horse magazine cover.

I had a browse around for magazine covers from a variety of different magazines and found these examples for inspiration:

Lars Brandt Stisen - Frozen in Time Berlin

Lars Brandt Stisen is a Danish, commercial photographer based in Berlin. He is involved in advertising, fashion and editorial photography, image editing and art projects.

Stisen's series 'Frozen In Time' is all about traveling in time and the closet thing to this is a photograph. The older a photograph becomes the further you travel through time when viewing it. A photograph is more precise than a memory, more present than a motion picture and closer than a dream. It is a fragment of time and a place, replaying in front of your eyes in an endless loop and is in someway continuously moving back in time and thereby pushing closer and closer to reality.

Photoshop Workshop - 3D Images

This workshop will show you how to make your images 3D wether it being in colour, black and white or images with text. The following workshop applies to all colour, black and white and text images.

Once you've opened your chosen image you first need to duplicate the layer by selecting:

Layer --> Duplicate Layer

Once you have done this you need to make sure the top layer is selected. For this one you need to select:

Image --> Adjustments --> Levels ...

Change the channel in the drop down menu to Red as shown below and then change the output level values to 0

 

Once you have done this you need to make sure the bottom layer is selected. For this one you need to do the same again: Image --> Adjustments --> Levels ...

However, for this layer you need to use the Green Channel from the drop down menu and change the output levels to 0 and then the same again for the Blue Channel. Once you've done this click OK.

Once this has been done you need to make sure the top layer has been selected. For this you need to 'screen' the layer by selecting screen from the drop down menu in the layers box.

Once you have done this all that is left to do is to select the move tool from the top of the left hand tool bar and move the top layer right a bit and down a bit.

All you have to do now is to flatten the image and save.