July 2013 Tutorial: Packaging and Perspective

[Gare]

You want to watch your lighting, stygg. The left side of the building is in shadow, but your signs are in broad daylight.

Perhaps don't change a thing and call it a Surreal composition, like Renee Magritte used to paint.



-g

[stygg2003]

I should have noticed the left hand side of the building in shade and especially the car shadow, bad observing by me so I've shaded all the signs on the left hand side and moved the shadow over on the no parking sign in keeping with the car shadow position.

Stygg

[Gare]

You did good on the revision, Stygg. As I mentioned earlier, the car is a rendered model, not part of the original photograph. But I tried very hard to make its shadow on the pavement accurate vis a vis the original photo.

I'll assume that Blockbuster Video is a troubled American company and not an international one.



Now, two more things, stygg: the white text on the right might look more photorealistic if it was just 5% less bright. Few things in the real world are perfectly white. Other considerations are : blurring the inserted shapes by .7 pixels or so, to better mimic the imperfection of camera lenses and 2. Consider occasionally modulating solid colors to create lighting fall off and also using Noise, again, to mimic the noise in JPEG photos. I'm not saying you'll find these artifacts in the example files, but these are overall considerations, okay?



And what I've done here is NOT a "rule": you need to look for stuff in the photo to artistically match, and no two photos are identical.

My Best,

Gary

[Barbara B]

Hi All--

The XaraXone is up and operational now on new server hardware.

[Begin Gary EDIT]

Now, if you still can't see some of the pages such as these two screen snags Gary just did moments ago with IE, believe it, the new server is (mostly) operating as the guaranteed card attached to it promises it will, or we get a refund.




There are two member problems at the moment, neither of which are insurmountable:

1. The new server has a different name than the old and busted one. This means that all the servers on the net need to get and adopt the new DNS, and this can take a while, especially with connections that have to go through several points to get to The Xara Xone. The solution is to: wait a little while.

2. Your web browser needs to have its cached files cleared. We have very little way of knowing each members' browser, but we do know that with IE and FF, if you press F5 while on the page, this generally refreshes the location and/or clears your cache.

Please PM Gary or Barbara, and don't post if you are still having a problem, okay? Let's get back on topic here!

[/END Gary EDIT]


Many thanks to Dan M at Xara for working on a Sunday night to make this happen as soon as possible.

--Barbara Bouton

PS Please pardon the cross posting but I want everyone to be sure to see this.

[stygg2003]

Thanks for the feedback Gary in #23, that's some really useful tips I would not have thought of using.

Stygg

[stygg2003]

Here is my 3D attempt for the Car park, I could not implement all the things you said as I'm still using XP&GD7, never the less I enjoyed doing it, just got a bit confused about what you were saying about angle 2 ? My second attempt at the Car park scene I put in some of the things you suggested in #23 to the text and board, shade so on and blurred the whole scene slightly to try and make it more photo realistic. This is a really good tut. and hope you do more of the same, especially all the things you mentioned in #23,colour modulation?

Stygg

[Gare]

I will try to start a new thread on "Detective Work: learning from the photo you're retouching".

Because everyone appears to be interested in photorealistic additions or other modifications to photographs, and to do this successfully, you need to understand (sorry I can't be more specific here!) "what's going on" within the photo. Examples: camera angle and field of view (wide angle, telephoto, and so on), type of illumination (sunlight, indoor diffuse lighting, and so on) noise or grain, focus, lots of stuff, you know?

Funny thing is that Big Frank earlier replied to my question about the VW Beetle in the picture. Try as hard as I could with the time available, I just couldn't make the car look totally convincing as part of the original photograph!

So we try and we try, that's all.

And that's how we learn and refine our craft (or hobby).

-g

[pauland]

I'll assume that Blockbuster Video is a troubled American company and not an international one.

Blockbuster is pretty troubled here in the UK too.

[Gare]

Okay, after doing a vigorous Google, I learned that Blockbusted (!) isn't just in financial straits here in the US.

There's a joke going around here:

Q: How do we get our government to close Guantanamo overnight?

A: Rename it to "Blockbuster."

-g

[pauland]

LOL

It's sad really. Their business model from the old videotape days is in huge trouble and where they've tried to go digital and postal they have immense competition.

There used to be a good margin between rentals and retail purchase, but that's reduced and my cable provider or a multiple of other outlets will let me rent films on demand.

I hate seeing these kind of operations go under - people work there and it's a bit less social interaction in the community if they go under.

I can't remember the last time I rented a film, but sometimes I go there to buy popcorn.

Lets not even mention the passing of "Be kind, rewind"..