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Esquire goes over the top, too

Posted by Arno on December 25, 2008
Posted in: Photoshop. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 36 comments

I figured I wouldn’t be writing anymore this year, but I just couldn’t let this go by unnoticed.

Being a graphic artist and a photographer I read (or page) through a lot of magazines and photographs (hence my interest in the National Geographic contest, and e.g. (little) projects in Photoshop and Lightroom).

So… The past days in between all the courses of food during the christmas holidays I was reading through the Esquire (American edition). Great magazine, for most part.
When I came to the end of the January issue I ran into this spread:

Esquire, January 2009 issue

Esquire, January 2009 issue

For those of you who don’t know what a spread is: it’s a left and right page in a magazine. So whenever you open a magazine, whatever you have in front of you is a spread.
Don’t mind the quality of the scan (the guy looking like a freak isn’t due to the bad scan, he really looks like a freak 😉 ).

Now, I always thought that a quality magazine has quality graphics, quality editors and people who are able to produce graphically pleasing and responsible images. And usually this is the case in Esquire. However, this time… I don’t know if it was the stress to get everything out and mailed before Christmas or what, but what you see here is a plain awful butcher job. A very poorly executed example of copy-paste-rotate.
And they even took the head from the same spread. If anything in the graphic editing land is a big no-no, it’s that.
I’m sure the photographer shot 1000 pictures on this shoot and sure, that particular head on the left version of Adam Rapp  may have looked a bit funny, but the mask could’ve been at least turned so that it looks as believable as on the right page.
And the person who did that, and the poor masking / cutting / pasting job, should get a boot up his behind.

Oh, and happy holidays once again!

Alternatives…

Posted by Arno on September 15, 2008
Posted in: photography, Photoshop, weather. Tagged: , , , . 2 comments

When the weather’s so bad that you can’t go out to shoot pictures, you have to find other things to occupy your mind with.
I sometimes go to places where I can make my own weather. My good friend Photoshop has helped me several times to create my own little planet. With good weather.

My own personal planet, with good weather

My own personal planet, with good weather

It doesn’t work with all images, but if you have the right image, you can make something fun out of it.
You need a panorama for it (don’t tell Middleton! 😀 ). The best would be a 360° panorama, but with some tweaking a bit smaller would work just as well.

It’s a pretty painless process with only 5 steps:
1. Open your image in Photoshop
2. Make sure that the left and right side of your picture line out, i.e. if you have for example a city scape with buildings, make sure that the building on the left side is equally high to that on the right side, or if you have a water scene, make sure that the water on the left side of your picture is on the same height as on the right side. Use the guides (you can pull them from the rulers on the top of the screen, View – Rulers or Ctrl+R if they don’t show) to check if your image lines up.

Line up the ends of your image

Line up the ends of your image

3. Make the image as high as it is wide (Image – Image size). Don’t forget to uncheck the box “Constrain proportions”.

Height = Width

Height = Width

4. Rotate your image 180°, so it’s upside down (Image – Rotate Canvas – 180°). It will also work if you don’t rotate it, but then you will have the sky in the wrong place. Try it out and see what happens. It gives funny effects some times.

Rotate your image 180°

Rotate your image 180°

5. Apply the filter Polar Coordinates (Filter – Distort – Polar Coordinates). Check “Rectangular to Polar” if it’s not already selected.
Make sure that your color mode is set to 8 bit, other wise this filter doesn’t work.

Apply the filter "Polar Coordinates"

Apply the filter"Polar Coordinates"

Select "Rectangluar to Polar" if it's not already selected

Select "Rectangluar to Polar" if it's not already selected

Click ok when you’re done and voilà, you have your own little planet (the voilà might take awhile, depending on the speed of your computer)!