22nd February 2014
Morph Suits for Photo editing
I have ordered two morphsuits one black and one blue.
Morphsuits are tight full body costumes normally made out of a spandex mix. So that the human form is kept almost perfectly while removing any hair from the image.
I purchased the blue morphsuits to use in a mixture of ways.
Firstly I thought I could use this to create more images like the one of the ‘Arabian woman in space’ but using more solid colours and the physical forms of people
The other idea would be that I use the blue morph suit as an ‘invisible person’ I previously mentioned that blue and green are common colours when chromakeying. So when a person is in the blue morphsuits like the green screen I should be able to key out the blue person this will be useful if I want to make an object levitate etc. However, I will need to test this idea first I may have to buy a green one to accompany my green background.
18th February 2014
Photoshop Research
After further research into using Green-screens and Chromakeying within photo editing I thought it would be best to do a post on exactly what I learned.
Both green and blue screens are used in photo editing amongst many other colours depending on the purpose. This is as the ‘keying’ process used to isolate a single colour or brightness in a picture works best when the colour you want to key out is only on the bit you want gone. You are then able to make that specific part transparent, allowing another image to show through the keyed out areas.
To remove the background using a green screen I needed to make sure the model was not wearing any green or parts or all of the green on her would disappear with the background.
Green and blue are the most commonly used colours as they are the furthest colour away from the human skin tone so it won’t take out half the persons face along with the background. Another reason it that they are both bright colours that most people don’t wear on a regular basis. Hence I chose to buy a green screen as me and my friends personally don’t own any green clothes however we do own a few shades of blue throughout our wardrobe. Green screens are also cheaper to light.
15th February 2014
Greenscreen Practice
I have now started to experiment with a few images I have taken using the green screen in Photoshop. Unsure of exactly how to edit out the green screen from the main image; I immediately tried to use the quick select tool and tried to select only my body. It quickly became apparent this was not the best way to do so.
Parts of the green screen were still visible and I didn’t want any green halos on the image. Selecting all of the green around the image was proving difficult using the selection tools in the Photoshop toolbar. The tools were leaving jagged edges to the person being edited as well as parts missing completely.
I will need to do more research on how to Photoshop using a green screen to improve my results or I will have to Photoshop people only in clothing in block colours (no patterns).
13th February 2014
Acetate
While editing images using Photoshop I can’t help but start to think about how I would go about presenting my photographs in the degree show. I know it is still early and my ideas are changing constantly but my main thought at the moment is to print the photos onto acetate.
This idea has arisen from my use of Photoshop. When editing in Photoshop each part of the image you edit has to be done on a separate layer. I could use acetate to generate a non-digital format for my original Photoshop documents.
To display my work in this form I would have the background layer as a photograph printed on photo paper. Then each layer in front of that will be onto acetate possibly only having one image on each piece of acetate.
I will need to further research this idea as I’m not sure on what sizes of acetate you can get and also what the quality of printing will be onto acetate.
