Tag Archives: Term 4

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY: IMPOSSIBLE IMAGES Spring 2021 – Part 1

Objective:

Students will be able to make an “impossible image” by using digital photography, selection tools, clipping masks and transformations in Photopea so that they can demonstrate their ability to use real digital images to produce realistic (but impossible) image compositions.

Links:

Impossible Images (CNN): https://www.cnn.com/2015/02/19/world/gallery/photoshop-artist-martin-de-pasquale/

Topics Discussed:

  • Photopea
  • Selection Tools
  • Clipping Masks
  • Transform Tools

Assignment:

Over the past few days, we have tested our acquired Digital Imaging skills by fixing a Photoshop Disaster. Today, we are going to use our acquired digital photo manipulation skills to create something entirely new, and completely impossible.  

  1. Visit the above website for inspiration. Notice how many of the images use scale (size) to make the images impossible: some of the elements are impossibly big or impossibly small. Others place elements in places where they don’t normally belong (i.e. a giant mouth where the subject’s stomach should be).
  2. Your goal is to produce an Impossible Image, just like the ones in the example link, with the following restrictions:
    • You may ONLY use photographs that you took yourself. You MAY NOT use any images borrowed from the Internet, from other people, or from any other source other than your own original photo collection.
    • You may use your own phone camera or laptop camera, but you must provide the original photo files as proof that you are the photographer who took the pictures. If you do not have a camera or phone with camera capabilities, you may use the camera built into the laptop.
    • You must use at least THREE original images to comprise the final composite image.
    • Your image should depict a completely impossible scenario, situation or condition, but should look as realistic as possible.
    • Your image should be 11″ x 17″, (or 17″ x 11″, if you’re making it landscape).
    • Note: In Part 2 of this activity, the final image will be placed in Vectr, in a photo frame with a 1″ colored border.
  3. Apply whatever modifications you feel are necessary to make the image look as realistic as possible. Pay close attention to detail, shadows, scaling and your selection edges. Don’t make this into a Photoshop Disaster!
  4. Save (Export) your image as a .png file.
  5. Upload your Photopea image (.png) into the “Impossible Images – Part 1” post on the Google Classroom page by the end of the day on Friday, April 2nd.

Assigned: March 31st, 2021
Teacher Pacing Due Date: April 2nd, 2021

DIGITAL PHOTO MANIPULATION Spring 2021 – THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

Objective:

I can recognize the variety of ways professionals use photo editing software to manipulate digital images, as well as their reasons for doing so.

Links:

Hacker Factor Blog: “Body By Victoria”

Refinery 29: “Confessions of An Anonymous Victoria’s Secret Photoshopper”

Kotaku East: “A Brief History of North Korean Photoshops”

Google Image Search Result: “Photoshop Disasters”

Assignment:

This week, we tested our acquired image manipulation skills by building a composite image using several smaller images. Today, we are going to look at some examples of professional digital photo alterations using Photoshop. Some good, some not so good, some gone horribly wrong.

Keep in mind as you view these images, that these were done by professional Photoshop artists who were paid for the work.

Read the Hacker Factor Blog article entitled “Body by Victoria” to see firsthand what kind of modifications are applied to even the most beautiful supermodels’ bodies using Photoshop tools.

Read the Refinery 29 article entitled “Confessions of an Anonymous Victoria’s Secret Photoshopper“.  We’ll discuss why virtually all clothing companies feel the need to manipulate the images of women to fit a subjective ideal body type, and why you should never, ever read beauty magazines or bodybuilder magazines (spoiler: they will only make you feel ugly and inadequate using Photoshop trickery).

Even governments get into the act. Read the Kotaku East article entitled “A Brief History of North Korean Photoshops” to see how the North Korean government uses Photoshop to (badly) alter images for their own purposes. The images may be good for some chuckles, but we’ll discuss in class the implications of government-sponsored image manipulation.

Finally, Do a Google Image Search for “Photoshop Disasters” link. Look through the examples of Photoshop Disasters, and have a good laugh at some professional Photoshop artists who probably had a really bad day at the office when they made these obvious mistakes. As you browse through the disasters, be on the lookout for one that you think you can correct using the image repair techniques we have studied in class. (Keep it school appropriate!)

Tomorrow, we’ll select a prime example of Photoshop fakery and use our skills to recover some of these “Photoshop Disasters”.

Presented: March 23rd, 2021