Unit 03 Concept Visualization: Photo-montage

The photo-montage of Unit 03 was by far the most enjoyable part of the unit. It allowed me to explore more options and tools in Photoshop that I did not have much experience using. My photo-montage is set in the area west of Noyer. Before starting the montage, I first went out an took a photograph of Noyer, once I had uploaded the jpeg into Photoshop, I began the process of separating the building from other elements in the picture. This was a multistage process of cutting out different areas with the Polygon Lasso Tool, Magic Wand Tool, and Quick Select Tool. Once I had the building separated I placed it into an other Photoshop file which I had already created and had placed a desaturated sky picture. Next, I placed textures for the ground-planes into the composition. Using the perspective of Noyer as a guide, I use the Transform Tool to warp the ground-plane textures into the paths and grassy areas of the composition. 
Once these were in place, I began adding trees to the composition, scaling them and arranging them in an appropriate way. Next, I placed scale figures into the composition, again scaling and arranging them in an appropriate way. After this was complete, I began to add shadows to the trees and scale figures. This process included duplicating the layer, increasing the exposure, then lowering the opacity. Once this was complete, I used the Transform Tool to warp the shadow. 

Class Demo 1/29/2013

Today in class we learned more about creating photo-montages. Similar to the previous photo-montage demonstration, we went through a myriad of tools to create a photo-montage using Photoshop. This exercise was particularly helpful in combination with the brief introduction to these tools and techniques shown quickly in the previous class. 

Unit 03 Concept Visualization: Composite planting plan

This part of Unit 03 was also quite enjoyable. It helped me to better understand the process involved with creating a digital plan of a design. To start off, I first opened up Google Earth to retrieve an image of a site. For this exercise, I used the grassy area between Noyer and the Whitinger Business Building. I saved the image to my computer and then opened it up in Photoshop. Once in Photoshop, I cropped out the Google logo and the Street View/ Zoom tools from the image. I then duplicated the layer and went to work on creating a planting plan. I desaturated this layer and began to map out paths and connection points using the Line Tool. Using the lines created with the Line Tool as a guide, I used the Polygon Lasso Tool to crop out areas I wanted to become grassy areas. Next, I found an image of grass from Google Images and pasted it into my planting plan to represent the new grassy areas of my design. I placed this grass layer between the duplicated Google Earth layer and the background so that the grass would show through the holes that I had created using the Polygon Lasso Tool. Once this was complete, I put in the paths. I created a new layer for the pathways, then using the Polygon Lasso Tool, I traced the guide line that I had created earlier. Once this was done, I colorized the selected areas using the Paint Bucket Tool.
Once the ground-plane elements were in place, I added trees and scale figures to the plan. I used the Ellipse Tool and trees on the Google Earth image (to get an scale of how large they should be) to create circles that would represent tree. Once the circle had been formed, I added color to it using the Paint Bucket Tool and then lowered the opacity. Next I used the Fx feature to add an inner shadow to the trees. I felt that this gave them a greater sense of dept. Also in the Fx feature, I added a "dropped shadow" to the trees to also give them a sense of depth as well. Once the trees were completed, I used the same process to create scale figures. 

Unit 03 Concept Visualization: Image Enhancement

The image enhancement portion of this unit was the more interesting part of the Photoshop unit. Being able to bring to life a dull and lifeless photograph was quite enjoyable. I started off with a scanned photograph of the Boathouse at Prospect Park. The first thing that I did was to crop the unnecessary parts of the image that got scanned in addition to the photograph using the marquee tool to select the area of the photograph that I wanted to used. Next, I duplicated the layer and went to work on enhancing the photograph. I messed around with the Brightness/Contrast, Levels, and Exposure features until I found the best fit for the photograph. After this, I began the process of adding color to the photograph. This part of the process was particularly fun and interesting because I have never attempted to add color to an image that was not already in color. I used a combination of the Magic Wand Tool, Quick Select Tool, and Polygon Lasso Tool to go through the photograph and select the different areas that I wanted to colorized. Once a particular area had been selected I used the Color Balance feature to adjust the hue of that area. Much like using the Brightness/Contrast, Levels, and Exposure features, this too was a process of trial and error until I found a color that worked. 

(I did not add the texture that appears to be added to the photographs. Uploading them onto the blogger page must have changed them somehow. I'm not sure how to correct this.)

Class Demo 1/24/2013

Photoshop can be an amazing and powerful tool while creating digital-renderings. One way of creating such renderings is by creating a photo-montage  a sort of collage of different images placed together to create a sense of space and the atmosphere of a particular space. Photo-montages are created by layering  various images which have been trimmed down to only include a specific figure or by adding .png files. For example, someone could separate a scale-figure or a tree by using one of several different tools (marquee tool, one of the different lasso tools, the magic wand, or the quick-select tool) and cut the figure from the photo and place it into a new photo-montage  Once that figure is in the photo-montage  a shadow can be created by duplicating that layer, transforming it into the desired shadow shape and then dropping the opacity and adjusting the exposure. These techniques as well as other can be used to transform many different photos that can then be combined to create a photo-montage of a particular space.

Isolated Tree

Photo-montage

Class Demo 1/22/2013

Unit 03 was introduced to us today and we learned a little about photograph correction (which forms part of Unit 03) by changing the contrast, gray-scale, and other tools to make an existing photograph better. We also followed along with the demonstration on how to make planting plans in Photoshop. We learned various techniques on how to make trees, paths, and ground textures by adding and manipulating layers.  

Class Demo 1/17/2013

Today, we learned about saving photos from Google Earth and then manipulating them in Photoshop by adding multiple layers, changing the gray-scale and  hue/ saturation levels

Unit 02: The web we weave

For this project we were asked to investigate the different possibilities that exist between the many different programs that exist and how they interact with each other. For mine, I looked at several different programs, but mainly focused on Rhino (Rhinoceros) and the Adobe programs Photoshop, In Design, and Illustrator. Reading left to right, my web takes one from a simple hand sketch through Photoshop, In-Design, and Illustrator and then onto various destinations such as internet website, emails, and the plotter. Or it could take a much different path through Rhino and from there onto Illustrator and the laser-cutter or into 3ds Max and onto V-Ray. Throughout the web the  paths become intertwined and circle back onto other programs showing the non-leaner and often complex process of computer based design. 

Unit 01: Who are you?

This was the first assignment of the class which required us to investigate the various possibilities of computer-generated design. I chose Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn, NY to research. Brooklyn Bridge Park is public park space built on disused industrial land and piers along the East River. It was designed by Michael van Valkenburgh Associated Inc. The park was built on old piers in the East River. They imported materials such as stone and dirt to raise the land in certain locations to create a more divers topography and placed stone along the river to allow for a more naturalistic appearance.

Plan:

Section:

 Collage/ Photomontage:

Diagram of a system: