Meeting 25

Creating an Electronic Woodcut and Other Tracing Techniques
Custom brushes
Making Electronic Contact Sheets
Make a Quick Web Portfolio
Picture Packages
Image Calculations
Other Tips

Stump the Chump
Another toning challenge picture.

Creating an electronic woodcut
This exercise follows steps on pages 204-205 in the Photoshop 4 WOW book. Use Redtomato.tif and redtomato sketch.tif files (Exercises 5) for this exercise.

	+		=
Original Photo		Traced Photo		Electronic Woodcut

Steps:

Print out a copy of the original photo or illustration to be modified.

On a light table (or using thin tracing paper), trace the contours of the objects within the scan on the back side of the paper. Use a pen for black lines and make the overall appearance medium gray when you squint at it. There should be an equal balance between black line and white space in the tracing. You need to have lots of lines, closely spaced! Avoid making shadows heavy with ink and highlights lighter because following steps will do that automatically.

Scan the tracing. If you traced on the reverse side of the photo printout, be sure to flip the image (Image>Image Rotation> Flip Canvas Horizontal) to match the orientation of the original.

Slightly blur the tracing using Gaussian blur to put a bit of a gray edge to the drawn lines. Try around 2-3 pixels with the redtomato sketch.tif file in Exercises 5.

Select>All of the traced artwork, and Edit>Define Pattern.

Open the original photo or artwork (redtomat.tif).

IMPORTANT: The width of the two pictures, in pixels, should match. In this exercise, the scan is saved as redtomato sketch.tif in Exercises 5 and it is NOT the same size - it is substantially larger than the sketch picture.

Size information is needed to closely match the picture sizes of the two files. A quick way to check picture dimensions is to click on the document size information at the lower left of a picture's window. The tomato picture is 1543 pixels wide. The sketch picture is 1157 pixels wide by 752 pixels high.  The mismatch between the width of these two pictures requires resampling in the Image>Images Size dialog box...

Image>Resize the red tomato picture to 1157 pixels wide to make it match the image specifications of the sketch picture. Resample image should be checked.

Duplicate it once. (Image>Duplicate)

Apply grayscale mode to the duplicate tomato picture. Adjust gray tones to suit.

Image>Mode> Bitmap and choose Custom Pattern in the Method drop-down list. This should produce a black and white line-image having solid, blocked-up shadows and open highlights. It should bear a resemblance to the scanned tracing, but have varying line weights based upon the original image tones. Note that this alone might be suitable for a striking illustration that somewhat resembles a scratchboard illustration or a woodcut.

Select all of this image, and copy.

Close all windows except for the original photo or illustration.

Edit> Paste. This creates a new layer containing the line art.

Choose Screen as the method of interacting between the two layers in the Layers palette. Adjust Opacity to suite.

Experiment with Soft Light, Multiply, etc in the Layers palette.

Experiment with a Layer Mask filled with a black to white gradient. (Soft light, partial opacity, and the layer mask are good combinations.)

More Variations on this Theme (Thanks to student Adam Birkan for suggesting these possibilities!)

NOTE: Photoshop CC 2014 removed the Oil Paint filter necessary, but later updates may have reinstalled it for newer Mac systems. Your Mac computer must have a video card capable of using OpenCL (Photoshop > Preferences > Performance and click Advanced Settings in the Graphics Processor Settings part of the dialog. Once you do that, you can find the Oil Paint filter under Filter > Stylize. My office computer is a 2009 model, and incapable of running the filter any more, so I can't fact check this claim.
You can employ the traced image in a different way with the original to achieve an unusual appearance. It's much better than a  "push-button filter" run on a picture because of the hand-work involved in tracing the outlines to match picture shapes.

I've put the steps on another page for the curious.

Another Tracing Technique! - Thanks to Catie Peterson for devising the following method
This is another tracing technique that employs the Cutout Filter from Photoshop's Filter Gallery. The hand-drawn tracing adds the human element that elevates the illustration from a merely filtered photo. No "push-button" filter can give the kind of results seen here. Catie's original photo was used in this example.

I've put the steps on another page for the curious.

Other Tracing Options
Tracing a photocopy of a picture on a light table is an excellent way to begin an illustration if you want some degree of "handwork" to appear in the finished picture. This method differs from the previous example in that all the original traced lines remain intact, and are added to a modified version of the original photo.

	+		=
Tracing of photocopy		Original photo after levels and watercolor filter applied		Finished illustration combines both

Trace the original photo on the backside of the printout on a light table using a black pen. Sharpies tend to bleed too much - I like gel-ink ball-point pens best for this work. Scan the tracing and save it as a file.

Treat the original grayscale photo with a levels adjustment and a watercolor filter to render shaded gray areas without much detail. Erase, overpaint, blend, or otherwise remove unwanted detail by hand.

The files rucellai2drw.tif and rucellai2gray.tif in Exercises 5 are downsized versions of the original file to use in this exercise.

Copy the hand-traced picture (rucellai2drw.tif)  and paste it as a new layer above the grayscale version.

Blend the top layer with the bottom layer using the "Multiply" mode in the Layers palette. Multiply mode makes the white parts of the tracing layer disappear, leaving only the black tracing lines superimposed on the bottom layer.

A magnified detail of the illustration shows clearly how the line drawing layer is superimposed over the modified grayscale information. The white areas of the line drawing layer disappear.

Tracing techniques are sometimes used professionally in Hollywood productions. One particularly beautiful sequence of artwork includes the ending credits for the 2009 Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr. These credits were done by the company called Art of the Title.

The following three frames were samples captured from their online video...

The full video can be seen on Art of the Title's web site - http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/sherlock-holmes/

Here is an email ad from a woodworking company that exhibits usage of tracing techniques and texturizing of the background. I stacked and animated several of the items offered for sale in the email.

Image Calculations
Using Image calculations:

Open Moosehead.jpg and Moosehead2.jpg. (Exercises 5)

With both files open, choose Image>Calculations.

Click to place Moosehead.jpg in Source 1. Choose the gray channel.

Click to place Moosehead2.jpg in Source 2. Choose the gray channel.

Click on the Blending choices, and pick Difference. This compares   the two images and displays their differences as lighter shades on a black background.

In Result, choose New Document to create a new image that contains the result.

Click OK.

Amplify any visible differences by going to Levels and adjusting for a higher contrast.

This method is a good way to check to see if a picture has been modified. I have used it to compare two Graphic Key assignments that were suspiciously similar.

It is also a good way to see subtle changes to the picture made when you use the JPG file format vs. a non-lossy format like TIF. Compression artifacts (areas that showed changed data) in the JPG files should show up easily.

It can be used also to check a scanner's repeatability on sequential scans. First scan an image and display it in a Photoshop window. Without changing anything, scan the same item again into Photoshop. Then compare the two scans using Image, Calculations to see how different they are. Most scanners will show a little variations, but too much variation is unacceptable. The best target to scan is one with much fine detail. Some use a twenty-dollar bill because of all the fine print found in the bill.

Custom Brushes

Creating custom brushes and using extra Photoshop-supplied brushes in the Presets>Brushes folder.

Load a new set of brushes by clicking the drop-down arrow icon in the brush size part of the Options Bar, which opens a dialog box. In the dialog box, click the little "gear" icon in its upper right corner, and choose Load Brushes.  Also listed in the menu at the bottom are preset choices that include Assorted Brushes, Drop Shadow Brushes, Square Brushes, etc. You can choose these to replace the current brush set or append to it.

A new elliptical or circular brush can be created by first choosing the Brush palette (Window>Brush). Click the Brushes tab in the resulting dialog box, then click on the Brush Tip Shape in the left column. Adjust brush parameters to suite.  You may change several characteristics of the brush to create the shape you want. Size controls the size of the brush in pixels, Hardness changes the edge feathering of the brush, and Spacing controls the space between adjacent applications of paint. When Spacing is set to 25%, it looks like paint is applied in a continuous line when you drag the mouse - the adjacent dots of paint overlap enough to create the illusion of a continuous line. If you want a dotted line for example, make the Spacing greater than 100 %.

If you want to create a brush from a drawing or photo, create the new brush shape from a grayscale picture, then click Edit>Define Brush. The new brush will be appended to the list of available brushes.

TIP: If you want to quickly change the size of a brush while working, simply press the keyboard bracket character ([) to make it smaller and the left-facing bracket (]) to enlarge the brush.

Making an Electronic Contact Sheet of Files in a Folder

Note: The steps that follow are an alternative for the older File>Automate>Contact Sheet command in Photoshop. It used to be very simple to make contact sheets from a folder full of files.

This method uses Bridge to select the files, and it uses Bridge's Output workspace. You will make a PDF contact sheet using this method, and then print either from Acrobat, or when the PDF is opened in Photoshop.

In Bridge, navigate to the folder full of files for which you desire contact sheets. Select all the files you wish. For this example, I copied the contents of Exercises 5 except for the video about using CS5's refine mask dialog box (I don't think making a contact sheet of a video is the wisest thing to try!).

Click on the Output section of Bridge (top right), and click on the PDF button. Select the paper size, choose how many thumbnails you want in columns and rows (I chose 5 across by 7 high to mimic what I'm used to with 35mm film), choose a small typeface so all the filename has space to show, and click Save. You can click the Refresh Preview button near the top of the command stack to get a sense of the layout within Bridge.

To print, either print from Acrobat, or from Photoshop after you open the file in either program.

Creating a "Quicky" Web Page of a Photo Portfolio
 Adobe has removed another useful feature from Photoshop. A quick way to make web sites (for portfolios, etc.) used to be found under File>Automate, but it has been eliminated. This capability, in changed form, is now part of Bridge.

In Bridge, navigate to a folder full of photos, PDFs, or other suitable content. Select all the pictures, designs, etc. you wish to include in the web site.

In the Output section of Bridge, click the Web Gallery button, and select any of the premade templates. There aren't as many free templates as before, but that's progress.

Click the Refresh Preview button to get a preview of the web site's appearance. You can navigate down the command palettes to select other options (contact info, etc.) to include or modify. The stack of palettes is tall, so don't neglect to scroll to the bottom to see all the options.

Once you are ready, you can select a save location (folder on desktop, etc.), or it appears that Bridge will offer to upload the contents to a server using FTP. You would need access to a suitable server to use this function.

As an Ohio University student, you may have network storage space available to you, and it may include a hosting service for web pages. There will be a limit on how many megabytes are available. Check the Ohio University OIT web page for usage details - http://www.ohio.edu/oit/webservices/personal.cfm

I run these web notes and other webs from the university server here at OU. More examples of Photoshop generated web sites (but sometimes tweaked under the hood) can be found at:

https://www.afterness.com/into_italy

https://www.afterness.com/digital_samples/index.html

https://www.afterness.com/yagi/

Picture Package This section may go if the feature hasn't been added back in.
Sadly, this nifty automation appears to have been deleted from a standard CS5 install. It is available as a free download (10.4 MB) from Adobe though. Type in "picture package cs5" in Google to find a page that leads to downloads of several of the missing Plug-ins. The information below is included in case you wish to download and install that plug-ins on your own computer. Here's a screen shot of the download page at Adobe...

Often it is desired to place a couple of copies of the same image on one page. For example, you may fit two 5x7 inch pictures on one 8x10 sheet, and cut them apart after they are printed.

The File>Automate>Picture Package function in Photoshop automates resizing of a picture and places multiple copies on one page. New in version 7 is the ability to specify several different page sizes for the printout including 8x10, 10x16, and 11x17 inches.

In the File>Automate>Picture Package dialog box, choose the picture that you want to use.

In the Layout part of this dialog box, choose one of the selections of different sizes and quantities of photos to be printed on the page. Choose a suitable resolution for the printer that you may use (i.e. 200 - 300 dpi for the Epson) and choose the mode that the printer uses (i.e. choose RGB for the Epson inkjets -- they work better with that mode).

Click OK and the program begins building the page with the pictures ganged upon it.

The picture below shows a typical output from Picture Package (2 ea. 5x7 and 4 ea. wallet size) ganged together on one sheet.(citation: picture from Adobe's web site)