Extra Credit Opportunity - Assemble all your daily photos into a perfect grid

A few students have requested extra credit opportunities. I am offering two such projects for extra credit. One would be to assemble all your daily photos into a single grid with perfect spacing by setting up a grid. This will require you to do some math to determine the size of the individual image and the final grid image. It wouldn't be adequate to just use the 'pixel shim' method for this. The instructions for this are below.

 

How to assemble all your daily photos into a grid with perfect spacing

Now, you are going to take your individual images and combine them into a single image consisting of a grid of portraits. You are going to create the completed grid with adequate resolution and quality to make a print of no less than 16" in the shortest dimension @ 300ppi. Since 16 x 300 pixels = 4800 pixels wide, this would be appropriate resolution for your width.

Before you begin, be sure to have your images fully edited. I suggest you edit them all at once using Adobe Camera Raw. Browse to them all using Bridge. Control click (right click) and select open in Adobe Camera Raw. Edit them all. Save them all into a new folder.

Then open PS. Go to File > Scripts > Image Processor. Re-size all you images to an appropriate size. Be sure save them into a new folder (though I believe by default it will save them into a folder named JPEG assuming you are saving them as JPEGs). In class, I decided I wanted them all to be 2" wide, so each image was 600 pixels wide (300ppi x 2"). I decided to use 1/4" borders between everything. So, each border is 75 pixels.

If you have an assortment of horizontal and vertical images, you have to make a few decisions. One option is to crop them all to the same orientation. If you only have a few, then I suggest you go that route. If it is roughly a 50/50 mix, then I suggest you re-size all your images so that the longest dimension is 600px.  Then, layout your grid as though there are 600x600 pixels squares for each image. Then just center your image within that area of the square. That will results in borders that are not uniform in width, but all the images will be equidistant from each other based on their centers (which is to say, it will still look good).

Using Bridge, browse to the folder containing the newly re-sized images. Select them all, then from the main menu go to Tools > Photoshop > Open as Layer Stack. This will open them all up as individual layers in a single image.

Save that image.

Re-size your canvas. For this one I set the width to 4800 pixels wide as discussed above. The dimension that you pick for the height isn't that important now as you can add or crop off canvas from the bottom as needed. I suggest you just go with 4800 pixels high to get started. Keep the stacked layers in the top left when you do the re-sizing.

Then go to Image > Canvas Size and set the width to 16".

Turn on the grid. Make sure snap is on. By default, it is marked every 1/4 inch. If that doesn't work for you, then you will have to go into Preferences and change the grid preferences.

Select one of the layers. Move the layers into place and let them snap to the grid. Not the that your layers are stacked. Are they in the right chronological order? I suggest that you order them chronologically. If they were all taken with the same camera, then they should be automatically stacked in the right order. If you use multiple cameras, you will have to sort the layers out before placing each image within the grid.

Keep doing this until you run out of space. Add canvas to the bottom as needed. When you are done, be sure to save a version with layers intact as well as a version with the layers flattened.

To add a background color, just make a new layer at the very bottom of the layer stack and fill it with any color that you want.

I encourage you to keep up on this project. You can always add more canvas to the bottom of your image to add the additional images whenever you have the time.

NOTE: I want you to have space between all your images.  

How to Assemble your Daily Photos into a Video

Full HD resolution: 1920x1080 pixels. The HD definition corresponds to the 16:9 format, as per modern TVs (Plasma/LCD). This is the size I want your video to be.
If you want, you can even go with what is know as UHD video which is 3840×2160. 

Here is a very nice write up on how to create a video like this using Photoshop. 

You need to get all your images to the same height. If you shot all your images with the same camera in the same orientation, that will be very simple to do. Just put them all in the same folder then open them up as a layer stack. Resize the images to 1080 pixels tall. Then make resize the canvas so that it is 1920 wide. This is essentially what you did for the Multi Faceted Personality assignment.

If you have images taken from various cameras or in various different orientations, there are a few more steps. First you sort them into folders by camera/orientation. Then you do the same thing as above to resize them. Then just copy all the layers and paste them all into the same image.

If you prefer or have cause to, you can import all your images into a layer stack and then make a video from that.

Turn on the Timeline window.

Change Create Frame Animation. Click the button. From the drop down menu select Make Frames from Layers.
Change the time that you want each image to appear (how many seconds).
Play it to make sure everything is as you wish. Then export it to Video.

How to render this with good resolution.

Steps:

File-Export-Render Video-MPEG4

Click Settings

~file format: MP4

~video format: H.264

~image size: 1920x1280

~frame rate: 30

click ok

click render

*make sure you saved it in the right location and with the name of the file you want!!

You need to host it on YouTube or Vimeo to get credit for it. Personally, I prefer Vimeo. YouTube may be faster as you probably already have a Google account of some kind and can use that to log into YouTube.

You should have 92 daily photos by today - April 15

The total number of days between Tuesday, January 15th, 2014 and Tuesday, April 15th, 2013 is 92 days. Thus, in a perfect world you would have 92 daily photos.

I know that a number of you went away for Spring Break. If you were photographing something that was Ann Arbor location specific, then I will give you a grace of 7 days. If you fit this criteria, then you should have 85 photos.

Your daily photos should all be on Flickr. I have asked you several times to post them to Flickr every week or two. By tonight, they should all be on Flickr. If they are not, this will negatively impact your project grade.

If you haven't kept up on this assignment, please do not try to pull a fast one and shoot 92 images on a single day and tell me that one was taken each day. It won't work. I can read the data from the files. That would constitute academic dishonesty and I would be required to report it to the university.

If you don't have 85 daily photos, then you can keep shooting through our last day of class, Tuesday April 22 which would allow you to take another 7 photos and assemble and host your video prior to class. Nothing will be accepted after class though.

In addition to having those photos on Flickr in a Set, bring those files in today on a hard drive or flash drive so that you may assemble them into a video during class.

Online Print Providers - ordering prints online

AdoramaPix - FYI - currently 40% off until March 31st
They offer prints on rigid aluminum sheets

MPix
Their Black and White is particullary interesting as it is 'real' black and white paper which is to say gelatin silver prints.

ShutterFly

SnapFish

Paper choice
set the color space
sRGB is important - check of Flickr images in wrong color space
quick primer on monitor calibration


Fuji Crystal Archive 

11x14 Print

$7.99

I want to order a few prints to see how this all works and how good the prints look. 

I want you to order at least 3 8x10s or 2 11x14s. Should be under $20. Maybe a bit more with shipping. Optionally, you can order a photo book. 

I would like at least one of your prints to be from photos taken during the semester. 

color spaces and Flickr

It is important to keep your files in the sRGB color space for use on Flickr (or for any screen use for that matter). If you upload images in Adobe RGB color space, they will experience a very noticeable color shift.
Below is a screen grab from Flickr showing an identical image except for the color space assigned. It isn't supposed to be purple.
When preparing an image for print, use the Adobe RGB color space which works with a larger range of color.

Your Happy Place - Student Examples and write-up

NOTE: You need to create two of these!!

For this project, you will create an images dealing with the notion of an individual's idea of their Happy Place.

Essentially, you are going to take a portrait of someone and then combine it with a photo of the place in which they feel most happy, most at peace, or most sacred.

You will combine the images to make into one composite image. The technical aspects are really pretty easy.

I would like you to follow this link and watch the video to more fully understand the process. If your camera doesn't support multiple exposure, or you don't want to combine them in camera, then you can combine them in your image editing application.

Some Canon Digital Cameras offer a very fancy way to do this where you can select a starting image and see that overlapped in real time with what you are shooting for the second image. Here is a really nice write up and video on the topic.

This may sound crazy, but don't worry about how the two images will go together. Just try to create two compelling photos. How they go together is part of the happy accident/magic of the whole thing. You may even want to combine horizontal images with vertical images. I would take multiple portraits of the same person and multiple shots of the happy place so that you have some to choose from if necessary.

Here are some nice multiple exposure portraits created in the same way.
And some more…
Here are yet some more, but they seem less 'happy accident' and too forced for my taste

In Summary:

If you are shooting digitally, see if you camera supports in-camera multiple exposure. If so, you may want to go that route (especially if it supports Live View overlay of the first image). If not, shoot the two shots, convert them to Black and White (for this assignment anyways) then combine the layers in your image editing program.

If you are shooting film, see if your camera supports multiple exposures. If so, you may want to try it that way. Of course, the problem with this is that you have to shot the second shot right after shooting the first shot. Not a big deal if you take the photo of your subject in the place where they are happy.  If you camera doesn't support multiple exposure, then you just shoot both things separately, scan the negs, and combine them in you image editing program.  If you camera doesn't support multiple exposure, but you really want to do this in camera, you can take the portraits first. Then you can rewind the film and advance it to the correct frame to shoot the happy place over it. Tricky, but doable.

In order for the final composite to look good, you have to take two really nice photos. The composition of the portrait is particularly important as it is largely responsible for the composition of the final composite. Beware of too much negative space. Think carefully about the posing. Can you include a hand or arm to break up the space and not just take a 'senior photo' 'head and shoulders'  looking image?

The images must have some contrast. The partial obfuscating of the portrait with the image of the place only happens where there is changes in tone. If both images are flat, expect an unsatisfactory composite. When shooting Black and White film, consider the use of color filters when appropriate to create difference in otherwise similar tones.

When shooting in color, it is very important that you take time and care in your black and white conversion in your image editor.