December 2009 - Digital Group Meeting - Artmaster & Buzz
Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 12:15 pm
The Pottery Room was packed, with 32 attending this month.
LAYER MASKS
The beginners lesson built on last month's basic layers tuition with coverage of Adjustment Layers and Layer Masks. It should be noted that whilst the former are an integral part of both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, Layer Masks are only included with the full version of Photoshop. However a small download from here re-instates this functionality into Elements for free!
ARTMASTER & BUZZ SIMPLIFIER
Our guest speaker this month was Oliver Bangham. Oliver has recently retired from Kodak and decided to spend some time utilising and promoting Artmaster software which is capable of turning digital photographs into painterly artworks. Whilst initially sceptical, Oliver's impressive images grew on us and by the end we were converts. Even Rod was becoming excited!
I have been a fan of the Buzz Simplifier Photoshop plug-in since 2002 and this is the underlying 'sieve technology' behind Artmaster. The algorithms were invented by Oliver's brother who still holds the patents for them and they work by selectively eliminating image detail based on it's size. This simplification is akin to the process that artists utilise to reduce a subject to it's essence without loss of sharpness or edge detail. The company Fo2Pix was set up to create products and market the technology but it ceased trading and the software has been unavailable for several years. Oliver now has permission from the University of East Anglia, who funded the venture, to make the software available once again as freeware, although there is currently no technical support for it.
Using Artmaster involves a series of steps to simplify, shade and colour the image, often followed by the re-introduction of local highlight and shadow detail. These steps can be fully automated or controlled manually with brush strokes. The results at each stage can be unpredictable and sometimes unattractive but are always reversible and with practice, Oliver showed that stunning images can be produced which retain the subject matter from the original but none of it's photographic characteristics. This raised the inevitable discussion about their acceptability in club photographic competitions! However, don't forget the upcoming Off The Wall exhibition on 25th January and the display boards available on Monday nights for ad-hoc print display.
Oliver kindly made two copies of Artmaster available for free distribution within the society and I will add the Buzz Simplifier and make further copies available for members. Many thanks indeed to Oliver for his time and infectious enthusiasm - everyone found the talk very stimulating and slightly subversive!
Given that technical support is not available for these products, I will also start a new topic on the APS Forum for installation and usage hints and tips.
STAMP VISIBLE LAYERS
We only had a short time for members' images this month but two useful but obscure Photoshop tricks were brought to our attention;
Having created a number of layers, it's often useful to create a single composite of all visible layers (eg to perform sharpening) without losing the original layers. This procedure is known as Stamping Visible Layers and there are a couple of ways to do this - both undocumented.
Either: Alt+Merge Visible or (...and this is news to me...) a remarkable four-key shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E. Thanks to Malcolm Cartledge for this one.
Note that in some earlier versions this overwrites the currently selected layer so it is necessary to create a new empty layer first. This can be done in the usual boring way with the Create A New Layer button or if you are feeling ambitious you can use the exciting FIVE key combination Ctrl+Alt+Shift+N plus E.
CLONE STAMP - REVERSED OR INVERTED
It's all too easy to find that the clone tool has produced a visible repeated pattern in your image which is a tell-tale give-away of repair work. Here's a great tip to create reversed or inverted cloning, prompted by a question from Paul Keene;
Photoshop: Choose Window>Clone Source then specify a negative number for the width or height values (eg just put a minus sign in front of the '100'). The Clone tool now produces a reversed or inverted version of the original source.
Photoshop Elements: The above feature is not available in this program but a work-around is possible:
- Create a layer containing the piece of image from which you wish to clone
- Flip or invert this layer
- Clone from it with the Sample All Layers button ticked.
The prize for this most obscure of tips goes to Mike Hynes!
NEXT MEETING
Thursday 7th January, Small Barn Hall.
LAYER MASKS
The beginners lesson built on last month's basic layers tuition with coverage of Adjustment Layers and Layer Masks. It should be noted that whilst the former are an integral part of both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, Layer Masks are only included with the full version of Photoshop. However a small download from here re-instates this functionality into Elements for free!
ARTMASTER & BUZZ SIMPLIFIER
Our guest speaker this month was Oliver Bangham. Oliver has recently retired from Kodak and decided to spend some time utilising and promoting Artmaster software which is capable of turning digital photographs into painterly artworks. Whilst initially sceptical, Oliver's impressive images grew on us and by the end we were converts. Even Rod was becoming excited!
I have been a fan of the Buzz Simplifier Photoshop plug-in since 2002 and this is the underlying 'sieve technology' behind Artmaster. The algorithms were invented by Oliver's brother who still holds the patents for them and they work by selectively eliminating image detail based on it's size. This simplification is akin to the process that artists utilise to reduce a subject to it's essence without loss of sharpness or edge detail. The company Fo2Pix was set up to create products and market the technology but it ceased trading and the software has been unavailable for several years. Oliver now has permission from the University of East Anglia, who funded the venture, to make the software available once again as freeware, although there is currently no technical support for it.
Using Artmaster involves a series of steps to simplify, shade and colour the image, often followed by the re-introduction of local highlight and shadow detail. These steps can be fully automated or controlled manually with brush strokes. The results at each stage can be unpredictable and sometimes unattractive but are always reversible and with practice, Oliver showed that stunning images can be produced which retain the subject matter from the original but none of it's photographic characteristics. This raised the inevitable discussion about their acceptability in club photographic competitions! However, don't forget the upcoming Off The Wall exhibition on 25th January and the display boards available on Monday nights for ad-hoc print display.
Oliver kindly made two copies of Artmaster available for free distribution within the society and I will add the Buzz Simplifier and make further copies available for members. Many thanks indeed to Oliver for his time and infectious enthusiasm - everyone found the talk very stimulating and slightly subversive!
Given that technical support is not available for these products, I will also start a new topic on the APS Forum for installation and usage hints and tips.
STAMP VISIBLE LAYERS
We only had a short time for members' images this month but two useful but obscure Photoshop tricks were brought to our attention;
Having created a number of layers, it's often useful to create a single composite of all visible layers (eg to perform sharpening) without losing the original layers. This procedure is known as Stamping Visible Layers and there are a couple of ways to do this - both undocumented.
Either: Alt+Merge Visible or (...and this is news to me...) a remarkable four-key shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E. Thanks to Malcolm Cartledge for this one.
Note that in some earlier versions this overwrites the currently selected layer so it is necessary to create a new empty layer first. This can be done in the usual boring way with the Create A New Layer button or if you are feeling ambitious you can use the exciting FIVE key combination Ctrl+Alt+Shift+N plus E.
CLONE STAMP - REVERSED OR INVERTED
It's all too easy to find that the clone tool has produced a visible repeated pattern in your image which is a tell-tale give-away of repair work. Here's a great tip to create reversed or inverted cloning, prompted by a question from Paul Keene;
Photoshop: Choose Window>Clone Source then specify a negative number for the width or height values (eg just put a minus sign in front of the '100'). The Clone tool now produces a reversed or inverted version of the original source.
Photoshop Elements: The above feature is not available in this program but a work-around is possible:
- Create a layer containing the piece of image from which you wish to clone
- Flip or invert this layer
- Clone from it with the Sample All Layers button ticked.
The prize for this most obscure of tips goes to Mike Hynes!
NEXT MEETING
Thursday 7th January, Small Barn Hall.