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So for our face swap project I decided to go with Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man from “the amazing spiderman” movies. I did so for a few specific reasons. The first being the obvious, being a super he has a lot of qualities that many people would admire. Kind and brave, always being ready to help people even if it puts himself in danger. Also very intelligent, both in the movies and comics spider-man is always shown to be very smart in many cases working along side professors, in the movie he even makes his own webbing material. But there’s also a reason I went with this particular spider-man and not either of the other 2 representations we’ve gotten of him in the past few years. To be fully honest the reason is because this particular version is how probably many people my age would act (including myself) if we got his super powers. He’s cocky, sarcastic, sometimes selfish and a little bit arrogant. He had faults that go beyond the normal super-hero tropes. He wasn’t a goody two shoes do nothing wrong knight that we typically see in comics and cartoons when we’re kids. And that is one of my favorite things about this particular spider-man, because I know very well that even though I would try my best to help people and be as heroic as possible. I would still have my days where I’d be a 24 yr old kid who can do some cool sh*t.

The actual process of the face swap was pretty difficult. First I tried using the original tutorial provided in class, and I also tried using the one linked below. But there were a few issues. the first issue being the angle of the face, because neither of the faces are looking off to the side there isn’t enough face “content” to fully do the method in the linked tutorial which basically has you cut out the shape of your face from the face you’re replacing and using photoshop’s auto-merge tool to have it blend it for you. With the original tutorial the problem that I had was that the skin on the spider-man picture is quite a bit darker because of the shadow but it also had a lot more dark red in the tint almost as burgundy basically. So I ended up doing a little bit of both with a pinch of my own blending using masks to try to get the skin tones to blend into one another and transition rather than to change my skin tone completely. I would be able to explain it to another student but I feel that it would have to be something that would be hands on and face to face. I don’t think I would be able to explain it very well over text for the simple fact that I kept going back and forth on which style I was using depending on what part of the face I was working on. For the tutorials, strictly speaking on the way they convey the message, I definitely like the second one way more because even though both had pictures I felt as if though the second did a better job and showing pictures of every single step, which for me in a Photoshop tutorial of all things is a MUST.

linked tutorial:

https://clippingpathindia.com/blogs/tips/photoshop-image-swap-blend-technique-10-easy-steps

Today we will be going through the steps of my take on a double exposure.

I decided on the images for a few reasons, my biggest passion is cars and racing. The car shown is called the Hoonicorn, it’s a 1400hp all wheel drive 1965 mustang custom built for the infomous Ken Block. it’s a marvel not just for racing but for any car builder as well. There is so much custom work on this car that in an interview they mentioned the only thing left of the original car is the pillars holding the roof, as someone who loves working on cars and customizing them I knew that I wanted to use it in at least one of my projects. the picture I used of myself is one taken a few years back and the reason I chose it is because at the time of the picture I was actually about to start a race, albeit a go-kart race but a race none the less, so I thought It fit really nicely with the theme (and it’s also the nicest side profile picture that I have). I went with the double exposure because it allowed me to represent a very literal sense of self portrait with something that means a lot to me. without further adieu, let’s dive in.

These are the pictures I used but you can use which ever ones you like the steps will be the same for the most part, you just want to make sure that one is of you and the second is of something that connects to you and your identity, for example my second picture is of a racing car because I have a deep passion for cars and racing. Fair warning: A lot of it is going to be subjective, I will provide the settings I used but I strongly encourage you to play around with some of them to see what works best.

Open both images in Photoshop. Go to the picture of you and we’ll make it black and white by going to Image> Adjustments > Desaturate.

Next, go to the image of the car. The first thing I did here was flip the car image because I wanted it to be more uniform and face the same direction I was. You can do the same by going to image> Image rotation> flip canvas horizontally (you can flip yours vertically if you want, no judgement here). Next you’ll want to grab the rectangular marquee tool (M) to select the entire image and copy (crtl+C for pc command+C for mac)

And then head over to the document of the picture of you and paste (crtl+V or command+V). Once you have both pictures in the same document resize and position the picture of the car (or whatever it is that you picked) the easiest way to do this is to change the opacity to 50% for more visibility and then going to Edit > Free transform and resize to your liking, you can hold down shift while dragging the corners so that the ratio of the picture stays the same. This way you don’t have to worry about it being stretched when you finish resizing, just remember to set the opacity back to 100% once you’re done.

Next we’ll be moving the picture of yourself to the top most layer. You can do this by going over to the layers menu and clicking on the lock icon to unlock the layer when the menu pops up just hit okay, and then simply drag the layer to the top

While we have the layer of you selected we will change the blending mode by hitting the arrow key to bring down the menu that’s right next to the opacity setting, right now it will say “normal.” Play around with all of the modes to see which one you like best, for the tutorial I went with “Hard light”

Select the bottom layer (the picture of the car in this case) then go to the very bottom of the layer menu and select “add layer mask” here we’ll hide parts of the car picture that we don’t like without erasing any of it. Make sure your foreground is set to black and paint away I set mine so the car is only on my face and nowhere else if you accidentally hide something that you didn’t mean to, all you have to do is set the foreground to white and paint over that part and it will reveal that part of the image again.  Once this is done we’ll play around with the levels to make it pop a little. Select the layer of you again, go to Image> Adjustments > Levels. Here you’ll want to play around with the settings a bit to see what you like best. The settings I used are below. You can slide the black, gray, and white arrows left and right to adjust it instead of typing random numbers, the further right you move the black arrow the darker the blacks become and the further left you move the white arrow the lighter the whites become. Once done just hit OK

Next I desaturated the car pic a little bit but you can leave yours with color if you want. First select the picture of the car, Since we aren’t fully desaturating the picture this time you’ll want to go to Image > Adjustment > Hue and saturation. And move the middle slider to the left until you’re at a spot you’re comfortable with. I set mine to -70

If you aren’t happy with where your image is (like I was when I got this far) there is still a way you can move it, if you look in the layers menu you will see the layer with the car picture has a chain between the layer and the mask. You can click it to unchain it, this will make it so that you can move the picture around while still only showing what’s on your face, just make sure you select the actual picture layer before moving anything or it will move the mask instead, once you’ve made sure the layer is what is selected you can move it by either using the free transform tool or by holding ctrl and dragging (command dragging) to where you like it.

Last thing you can do is remove any harsh transitions by selecting the mask, select black as your foreground set the brush size to 500 with a hardness of 0% by clicking on the menu drop down next to the current brush selected. Then with this huge brush use only the edge to start hiding, no part of the car should be inside the circle of the brush, you just use the outside of the brush to do some light blending for you, if it’s erasing too much try having the brush further away. Depending on the resolution of the pictures you selected you may need an even bigger brush. Once you feel comfortable with the blending you’re all done!

For my self portrait I focused on the occupational and social/recreational sections. I’m currently an undergrad going in for Welding Engineering, And I like art (hence the name of the blog ha). Because these are two of the biggest areas in my life I knew it’s what I wanted to focus on. Went through a lot of steps, failed attempts, and scrapped ideas to get to the final piece but here we are. So I decided to join the two as best I could. I took some of the more common materials science and metallurgy equations. I couldn’t find a suitable background that didn’t turn them into indecipherable gibberish, So I made one. with the painting itself I wanted to do a few things, I left negative space so that I would have a good place to put the equations without having the issue that I was having with the stock photos I found online. I decided on flowers because that’s mainly what I typically paint and draw the most (and planets would’ve taken a lot longer). part way through I realized that with the time I had and midterms coming up I wouldn’t be able to do the painting justice. But the more I thought about it the more I liked it unfinished because it’s an accurate representation of how many of my non school related projects end up until I have enough time to actually finish them. And sometimes even when I do have enough time I end up changing my mind about the direction I want the project to go or have a new idea altogether. So I left the three flowers blank and left the initial pencil sketching in to show they are a W.I.P not just white spots. Onto the background, I chose this background specifically for a few reasons. One it’s my living room and it’s where I spend the majority of the time when I’m at home, but we also have a lot of dark earth tones which contrast very nicely not just with my colorful painting but also with some of the other elements I wanted to showcase in the picture such as the pillow because I’m usually so tired from school and work that it’s what I end up doing  when I’m finally home. Towards the bottom you’ll notice my palette with standard brushes and my airbrush because I frequently use both to get the desired effects I’m after. At one point I started getting too deep into the rabbit hole of meanings of things, for example the holder that the airbrush is sitting on is a DIY holder that I made out of pvc pipping because I like DIYing anything and everything. But that’s where I decided to stop there because I started getting afraid of making the project too busy. So here we are, pretty happy with the outcome and blend of physical and digital media. This was my “brief” paragraph, hope I didn’t bore you to death.

Pattern- orderly repetition of visual elements

Balance- distribution of equal visual weight

Proportion- Scaling of objects

Contrast- a juxtaposition that accentuates difference

Value- objects brightness/darkness

Color- an objects chromatic value

Unity- harmonious arrangement of visual elements

Shape- the contour of a flat object

Movement- directional path of optical motion

Emphasis- accentuation of importance

Repetition- arrangement forming a line

Space- an objects internal/external areas

Line-a path of a moving point

Texture- tactile quality

Form- a 3D object having depth

Dear Stephanie,
My friends call me Fed but I’ve had many nicknames including but not limited to Fred, Fez, Fedex the list goes on. I’m a Welding Engineering major but have always loved art. It started with drawings since middle school and eventually progressed to acrylic painting. I was first introduced to acrylic painting in my high school art class and it’s been my corner-stone ever since. school and work can put a ton of stress on my life. and many things in life aren’t guaranteed, maybe I won’t get to graduate, maybe I won’t get a job in my field. but I know my brushes and my headphones will be there when I get home. If I had taken a different class there’s a chance I never would have found out my passion for painting, we’ll file that under the expanding “things I don’t know nor want to know” list, all I know is Mrs. Baker helped me shape my life to what it is today. In highschool I also picked up phothoshop but only as far as photo editing, which is what brought me to this course. It takes two mediums that I deeply enjoy to make something completely new and unexplored by me. I don’t know whether I’ll fall in love with it like I did with painting or if it will just be something that passes, But I wanted to at least try. I felt it would be a huge injustice to myself to not at the very least try. Who knows, maybe this is the first step to something bigger in my life. My biggest concern would definitely be the middle schoolers, mostly just because I’ve never been that great with kids to begin with and I never know whether I should be treating and talking to teenagers like kids or adults. I’m not always the best teacher so I just hope that I can pass along some knowledge well enough that it inspires someone.

Sincerely Nervous,

Fed