Adobe Photoshop - Day 3 (May)

WHAT I DID TODAY:


Today I followed this tutorial edit, where it transforms a picture, into a comic style art. This consisted of just using tons of filters and colours. 


This is the tutorial I followed:

This was the original photo I used;

This photo is from a Korean drama

This is my final finished edit;

My final edit

This was a really nice turnout in my opinion. I think it's one of my few edits that I'm very happy with because it looks really cool and legit. And for once it seems clean and not messy like some of my past edits. I also got to play with a bunch of effects I didn't know existed before, so I got to learn quite a bunch of new things with this effect.




WHAT I LEARNED:


So as I expected when going into this tutorial, I knew I would be learning more about filter effects and adjusting different hues/saturation. (which is what I need to work more on to get the idea of it and doing things by myself.)


- The first thing I learned was that there was a filter effect that instantly blurs everything! This was very simple, but I saw this effect often everywhere on social media when people edit their photos, and I didn't have a really clear specific way of knowing how to do it, but now I know.


All I had to do was go to the top bar Filter < Blur , then from there, it blurs everything. I kind of don't understand how the blur played out in this edit, because everything ended up looking sharp, but it still did teach me how to do it.

example of how the blur effect works

- The second thing I learned was that if there is a png photo, which is like the spikey things in the photo, instead of personally erasing the background, you can most times just go to blend effects and click the correct blending option to delete the transparent backgrounds from pngs.




WHAT I WILL BE DOING TOMORROW / NEXT TIME:


Considering how I've been working on digital art for 2 days in a row now, I will switch it up and do something different. I want to work more on photo manipulation, and something that could potentially be helpful in the future.

This is the tutorial I will be following next. If it's not obvious from the thumbnail it's basically converting a photo from daytime to nighttime. 

Adobe Photoshop - Day 2 (May)

WHAT I DID TODAY:

Today, I was going to follow a tutorial on this glow in the dark effect that I posted yesterday, but I found something cooler and decided to follow through with it. Today I made a cartoon-ish portrait/painting in photoshop. 

-I followed this tutorial..

This took me much longer than I anticipated. I actually thought it was going to take me 2 days or something to fully complete this but I just tried to finish everything in a day.

This is the original photo/reference:






This is the final product:






I used the pen tool, filling in colours, and the brush tool.



WHAT I LEARNED:

Today I learned how to use the pen tool. Before I've always just been using either the eraser or quick selection tool/magic wand but now I realize the pen tool is really easy to use especially when drawing/painting. It works well with curves and just in general it is a really helpful tool that I wish I knew about sooner.



I learned that most people actually use this method to draw online and that it's much easier than people actually think.

ex of pen tool

The diagram above shows how pen tool works. You just connect the dots and it forms the shape of anything you want.





WHAT I WILL BE DOING TOMORROW / NEXT TIME:


After doing this effect, I suddenly became really interested in digital art, so I found another cool effect I want to try. It's like converting a specific image into a comic book type of art. This is the tutorial I found.

Adobe Photoshop - Day 1 (May)

WHAT I DID TODAY:

So due to circumstances, I am not able to continue my previous project which is the After Effects glowing effect video. After thinking about what I can transition to, with so little time left, I decided to venture out to Photoshop. 

I was originally thinking about doing coding again however, I came to a realization that there isn't much time left until the semester ends, and I wouldn't have enough time to be able to learn enough in order to do a final coding project. I thought about what I can do that will still help me in the future, what I enjoy, and something that enables me to start anywhere and working at any pace.


My plan for the rest of the following blog posts will be me following photoshop tutorials and then re-creating my own edits. (So basically what I was doing for video editing) This way, I am able to learn a bunch of new things and develop new skills at the same time. Despite having done photoshop before in the past, I never really got to spend an adequate amount of time on it, so I think it's a good idea to do this and fully develop my skills.



- My first photoshop tutorial that I plan on learning is, a silhouette type of edit. This seems like a good first edit and it's really cool so I want to learn it.


This is the video tutorial that I will be following along with.

After following the tutorial, this is the final edit I came up with.

my final product

This was a really good first assignment/tutorial for me as it kind of eases me back into photoshop, a well as it plays around with selection tools, masking, and colour effects. For this edit, I used 3 different images. I used a photo of a couple, a moon, and the ground in order to create that final product.

WHAT I LEARNED:

So since I have done photoshop before, this project contained things that I've somewhat learned/done before. However I did learn something though.

I didn't learn anything new in photoshop itself but I did learn something in the process of making this edit.

I believe that looking for images was the hardest and longest part when photoshopping sometimes. When I was searching for potential images for my edit, it actually took me quite a while because I learned the hard way that it's definitely better to use high-quality images, which Google did not offer often. I realized that though after editing a few images from google that did not work out well in the end.

I then learned about stock images. There are a few websites that offer thousands of free high-quality images that are perfect to use in photoshop. All the photos I used are all from pexel. (a website)

pexel website

WHAT I WILL BE DOING TOMORROW / NEXT TIME:

Next time I will be following a tutorial on a simple glow in the dark edit. I chose to do this edit next because I feel like my weakest points when photoshopping is dealing with either colour correction or just using the colour effects in general, so hopefully after tomorrow my understanding of these kinds of effects will be better.

This is the tutorial I'm planning to follow next!

Adobe After Effects - Day 14 - (March)

WHAT I DID TODAY:

Today I tried to fix the problem I was having last day. Basically what happened was my new brush effects weren't showing up ever since I added in a circle. 

It took me most of class time to solve this problem, but I did end up succeeding and am back on track now. I was also able to add in a few more brush effects, but due to the the time I spent trying to fix this problem, I couldn't get as far as I wanted.

All I had to do to fix this was way simpler than I thought. I tried looking at everything, key frames, blending options etc; but the problem was the circle itself. I probably didn't add in the circle very properly because I did it myself and didn't follow a tutorial.


But eventually, I made the circle its own layer, and the paint effects on a separate layer. This did the trick!

BEFORE VIDEO:

AFTER VIDEO:

WHAT I LEARNED:

• I learned that when I add a circle in, it should be on a separate layer or else the paint brush effects won't show up in the composition itself.

THIS IS MY TIMELINE WITH THE CIRCLE EFFECT ON A SEPARATE LAYER

(THIS ALSO MIGHT COUNT FOR OTHER EFFECTS TOO, I'LL KEEP THIS IN MIND FOR THE FUTURE)

WHAT I WILL BE DOING TOMORROW / NEXT TIME:

Now that I fixed this problem, I for sure next class will just do what I've been doing and using the brush tool to make more effects!

- I realized that for this edit, you must think very creatively because you have to personally think what effect would match at a certain moment, which is why I also might watch a few more videos for inspiration while working on my own!

Adobe After Effects - Day 13 (March)

WHAT I DID TODAY:

Today I was planning to add more effects, but I ran into a problem, which I am still currently trying to fix as of this time. I was working on the project and got to add in some effects, I decided to preview what I did so far only to find out that the new brush effects I've added don't appear in the composition.

Basically, all the effects appear in the layer itself, but when viewing the actual composition, the effects don't appear at all. (so I can't show a before v after video because the rendered video doesn't show my newly added effects.)

I've been searching online or just trying to solve the problem and so far no luck.

THIS IS EFFECTS WITHIN THE LAYER

THIS IS EFFECTS THAT ACTUALLY SHOW UP IN THE COMPOSITION

(if you look at the top left there's a composition option as well as the layer. I'm supposed to be adding effects to the layer itself, but now for some reason the effects I add aren't showing up in the composition which is what the rendered video will look like.)

WHAT I LEARNED:


Since I was technically spending the whole class trying to solve this problem, I only learned something small. It may be common sense too but I didn't really think of this so I learned it the hard way.

• What I learned was that when I was using the brush tool, I had to zoom in and sometimes the video was too blurry that I couldn't even see the parts where I wanted to outline, and that sometimes caused a messy after effect. So what I want to say is I should've used a more HD or high resolution video to make these kind of edits.

EXAMPLE OF THE BLUR (BUT THIS EXAMPLE ISN'T AS BLURRY AS OTHER ONES)

WHAT I WILL BE DOING TOMORROW / NEXT TIME:

Next time I will try to fix this problem so I can continue editing and adding more brush effects.

Adobe After Effects - Day 12 (March)

WHAT I DID TODAY:

Today I continued to add paint effects to my video. I got through 9 seconds out of the 1 minute. I actually added something new today instead of doing the same old things.

As you are aware, this whole time I have been just adding in lines frame by frame using the brush tool. But at this certain part of the dance, I wanted to add a circle that was growing. I couldn't find any tutorial on that so I just tried to find a way and do it myself.


This was where I used AE's circle effect. I imported a circle into the timeline then used key frames to make the circle expand frame per frame. This all may sound a bit vague or confusing, but that's what I did today, you'll see what I mean below.

WHAT I DID TO MY CIRCLE KEY FRAMES

I think I mainly only got through another few seconds today is due to the circle. It took me a while to figure everything out.

BEFORE VIDEO (LAST POST):

AFTER VIDEO:

WHAT I LEARNED:


The first thing I learned was super important. While I was working on this project, I really needed this but didn't know what or where it was. 

• This was about layers. When I was working on this project, I would make mistakes and the CTRL Z button wouldn't simply work. I wanted to know how to delete what I just currently did but there's more to it when working with frames. I learned that all you need to do, to see your layers from the brush tool, is go over to the left side of your timeline, and click the arrow on your layer.

CLICK THOSE FOLLOWING ARROWS TO SEE YOUR PAINT LAYERS

• The second thing I learned was of course, how to add a circle. I just went over to AE'S effects library, then search circle. I then dragged it into my timeline and that's all there is to it.

HOW I ADDED A CIRCLE TO MY VIDEO

WHAT I WILL BE DOING TOMORROW / NEXT TIME:

Next time I will continue to be adding brush effects to my video. My goal is to do more than a few seconds next time but that isn't super easy to do. I also want to take my time with this project so it turns out nice.

Adobe After Effects - Day 11 (March)

WHAT I DID TODAY:


Today I started making the scribble glow effect edit. This kind of edit required me to go frame by frame and use the paint tool. You can probably imagine how long this edit will take when I say I had to go frame by frame. 


This edit is very time consuming and requires tons of patience, but I think it'll feel very worth it in the end! 


This is the main tutorial that I was following, but at some parts I had to figure it out myself and find a different way due to certain circumstances. (and because at some parts I found out that there were easier ways to do it than the person explaining.)

THIS IS HOW FAR I GOT TODAY:

(THE VIDEO IS ONLY A FEW SECONDS BECAUSE I RENDERED THE VIDEO TO THE PART WHERE I GOT TO)

ORIGINAL VIDEO - FOR REFERENCE:

WHAT I LEARNED:

• Today, the first thing I learned was that After effects is such compact editor with many features. I know this is already obvious but more specifically I learned that AE has a toolbar on the top left. 

With this toolbar, there were many things such as panning across the video, drawing shapes, brush tool, and eraser tool. I find this very fascinating because I usually only see these type of tools on programs like Photoshop.

WHAT THE TOOLBAR LOOKS LIKE

• The second thing I learned was the paint tool/brush tool. This is the main tool that I am constantly using to achieve this edit. 

How it works is I double click the layer of the video I'll be editing, that way I'll be editing in the layer itself and not the whole comp, then I click the brush tool. I then adjust the settings of the brush like size/color then from there I use CTRL + > OR < to go frame by frame. Each frame I draw something, then click the next frame to do something, I think you can kind of get the gist of it.

THE PAINT SETTINGS THAT I USE

WHAT I WILL BE DOING TOMORROW / NEXT TIME:


Next time I will be doing the exact same thing just using the brush tool, and going frame by frame to draw more effects. (my goal is to complete the whole dance video.