PhotoShop Fo’ Real

This came out at least five years ago, but it’s so damn clever, I thought it warranted some more exposure for the creators. 

(And it’s a very large picture, so if you want to examine it in detail, just right click and open in a new tab.)

Done by Jakarta ad agency Bates 141. And if you would like to see some behind the scenes, making of photos, they can be found here.

More Photo Restoration

Another one I think is only partially done, but still an improvement over the original. I want a job doing this stuff.

Photo Restoration

I realize that more than doing web design, which I am currently going to school for, I would much rather just do PhotoShop stuff. A job restoring old photos would fill my soul with joy. Imagine how happy you could make people fixing up their old destroyed mementos of family. Deciphering cuneiform as my brother so aptly puts it, no, that makes my brain ache.

This is a photo of my pal Brian’s grandfather. Still have a bunch I want to do to it, but I figure this is a good start for something I just did over my lunch break.

FotoShop by Adobé

Too funny not to give it a plug.

Lego and PhotoShop

Yes, two of the most fun things in the world, together. I could add one or two other things to the mix, but then my brain might implode.

My nephew has been expressing a lot of interest in PhotoShop lately. Which I think is great!

He had a book about ghosts from the library the other day. Tried to convince me that ghosts are real. “Look! See! Here are photos of them!” On the one hand I felt bad about being such a bummer, but I felt I had to break it to him that those were all examples of advanced for their time photographic techniques. That when people didn’t know any better, it was easy to fool them. “These aren’t ghosts buddy, they’re hoaxes. People may well have done these to get rich off of. There’s nothing honourable about profiting from bamboozling people.”

I took him over to the computer, opened PhotoShop, found a picture of one of his school pals standing against a blue back ground (made it very easy to crop her out - didn’t want to spend too much time on the demonstration) turned her about 35% opaque, found another picture, dragged the selection over, and presto, his pal was now a shimmering ghost.“What I just did is a more high tech version of what people were doing in a dark room 100, 150 years ago.”

On the one hand I felt bad about bursting his bubble, and yet at the same time I want to make sure that he is media savvy. I guess you have to start that conversation at some point.

Coupled with that, he’s been expressing a desire to have a blog to show his Lego creations, “just like Uncle Thomas has.” To him it’s the most natural thing in the world. He’s grown up with it. Yet there are some thorny issues surrounding a 7 year old wanting to have a blog. While on the one hand I think it’s great if it inspires him to want to make stuff, practice writing, learn about taking photos, using a computer, etc., there may well be some bigger issues involved in it that he doesn’t entirely grasp yet.

While babysitting him for a while on Saturday, we of course spent a delightful hour making stuff out of Lego. I let the box of parts speak to me and I felt “wheels.” So I made a car type of thing. He told me his creations was going to have wings. And of course, it ended up with a whole bunch of blasters. Can’t forget the blasters.

When we were done he asked if I could take some photos. “And then could we do what you did with those photos? You know where you made it look like it was flying?”

So we went outside, snapped some pictures in the backyard, and then back inside to give him a lesson in PhotoShop.


Showed him a whole slew of things, and I heard the phrase “That’s amazing!” several times. I don’t know how much of it he’ll retain, but you gotta start somewhere. I told him that I’ve been using it since day one, and I’m still learning things all the time, so not to feel bad if he doesn’t remember everything. 

Explained to him the concepts behind masking. “Remember when we were painting the wall and we put masking tape along the edges so we’d end up with a nice straight line and the paint wouldn’t go on the baseboards? Well this is sort of like that. Pretend that I’m putting tape all around the edge of your ship. That way I can paint over it and not get anything on the ship itself.”

I didn’t get too fancy with it, and none of this is anything I’d put in a portfolio necessarily. But the main aim was to introduce him to some fun stuff you can do with PS. And I think I succeeded in inspiring him.

Showed him the clone tool and what it could do, and that elicited a “That’s amazing!”

“Can we do another one?”
“Sure.”

“That’s so awesome! Can we do another one?”
“Sure.”

Tried to take a few photos against the sky, but this is the only one that turned out halfway decent. Would have gone back to do more, but after the computer noodling, it was dark.

Probably touched on way more things than he can possibly retain, but he prattled on about it the rest of the night, rightfully amazed at the awesome power of PhotoShop. (I may have just blasted Adobe and their handling of the whole FreeHand debacle, but PhotoShop is something I can’t fault them for.) I hope these two introductions to some of its capabilities inspires him to want to learn more. I’d be delighted to sit down with him any time and teach him anything I have learned over the years. I was already an adult when I got my hands on PS. Imagine what a kid could do with it.

Live Action Blog Header

A few years back I was up in the French River area with Jay and I had a sudden thought. I was wearing an orange shirt, green pants, and I had a boreal background behind me. I no longer had crazy hair and instead had on a hat and no monstrously big rucksack, but....I had the idea to get him to take some photos so I could play around with the imagery I had been using for years as my forum avatar.

That image was created by the late great Scott Harder.

So, years later, I finally got around to playing around with the photo in PhotoShop, to try and cartoonize it a little.

I keep meaning to create a similar image with Lego, and also one with Playmobil. One of these days. I figure it’ll be a fun thing to do with my nephew, show him a little about photography and then compositing it all together in PhotoShop.

Fun with PhotoShop

Then again...when is PhotoShop not fun?

I offered to help with scanning some pictures for an event coming up here in the neighbourhood in a few weeks.

It’s an event to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Crystal Palace, which stood for a little over 30 years in Victoria Park just a few minutes walk from here. Modeled after the Crystal Palace built in London, England 9 years before, it was intended to house the Provincial Exhibition and other cultural events. The city, assisted by surrounding counties and municipalities erected the building in 1860 at a cost of $20,964. 31 years later it was declared unsafe and condemned.

There aren’t a lot of pictures remaining of it, and even fewer of the interior. One of the few found of the inside was an engraving of a sketch done by F. M. Bell Smith, of the Grand Firemen’s Gathering on August 6th, 1874. A copy was found on the Library and Archives Canada website. Which of course is a crummy low rez JPEG.

Another version of the image was found in a history book. It was a line drawing which I could scan at a pretty high resolution. But part of another image was overlapped in the top left corner.

Hmmmhhh....

So I cobbled this together. Don’t think I spent even 5 minutes on it. Not perfect, but it’s better than the blurry JPEG, it’s better than having part of the image obscured with part of another picture, it’s better than chopping the image off so that the balcony disappears altogether (which would have negated the sense of scale). I suspect 99.9% of people looking at it will never suspect a thing.

Colour By Numbers – Scott Harder

I inked these two illustrations by Scott Harder. They were just pencil sketches and I inked them in PhotoShop. Used for a club night posters and flyers. Scott was still inking everything with tech pens and markers, but wanted to learn how to do it in a computer, so I showed him how.

Some of you might recognize a similarity between those two drawings and the image I use as my header and avatar. You would be correct. It was done by Scott.

Christmas of 95, he came over, and was profusely apologetic as he gave me a gift.
“It’s kind of lame, but it’s all I could afford.”

I opened what still remains one of the most amazing gifts I’ve ever received. He had done portraits of a bunch of his friends and family, each one astutely observant and utterly poignant. Each portrait had been copied onto mylar, with nothing more elaborate than tin foil behind it, and framed in black cardboard. (Also included was a simple photcopied booklet that showed what everyone else had gotten.) Really simple and it left me speechless. It was anything but lame. Despite the fact that he was easily one of the most talented illustrators I’ve ever known, he had no money to buy gifts, so he did these instead. It was a thousand times cooler than any gift that he could have purchased with money.

The portrait he did of me in his inimitable style, showed me with an appropriate background, cargo pants, pockets stuffed with all sorts of treats and useful doodads, belt with accoutrements and gadgets affixed to it, shirt with a cool graphic on it, freaky hair, tattoos, ring through my septum, rings in my ears, big pack on my back. Oh, and he got the upward perspective bang on too.

On December 6th 2000 I received one of the biggest shocks of my life. Three weeks before they were due to be married, his fiancé found him dead on the floor of their house.  At the autopsy they discovered that he had Cardiomyopathy, scarring on his heart, probably from an illness or disease early in his life. What made it even more shocking is that the doctor stated it was a miracle he had lived as long as he had and that he hadn’t been an invalid. Given that he was passionate about riding his bike, played baseball and road hockey regularly for years, this was indeed surprising.

Scott was truly one of the finest people I’ve had the privilege of knowing. Besides being an awesome illustrator who inspired me to no end, he was hysterically funny, could charm a room full of people, loyal, honest and incredibly generous. He was a great friend and I remember him often and fondly.