009: Stock Rage

What harm presents itself when using royalty-free images, brushes, or stock media in general?

I don't remember what I was Google Imaging when I stumbled across this image:

My Beautiful Mommy, a book aimed for the children's market about plastic surgery. Yeah.

 The first thing I thought while looking at this wasn't "well, this looks absolutely weird" as my friend did when I showed it to him but "isn't that Obsidian Dawn's Glitter Brushes set?" 

Then. "I'm going to assume the layer the brushes were on was set to Overlay Mode." 

Some excerpts from the book found on Josh Harris' blog. Brushes, brushes everywhere.

In my defense, I used and abused that brush set to the point where without it I don't think my products they were used for would have looked as good - but I can recognize Comic Sans MS and Calibri from a distance as well as who used too much Feathering around that woman on the pizza brochure. Brushes, though, add flair and magic to your illustrations without too much additional stress or effort on your part. I love brushes. This, in my opinion, isn't entirely a bad thing - I personally still need to purchase my commercial license from OD since I do like their brush sets as much as this illustrator clearly does - but there's obvious flaws to using stocks:

1. There's arguably no originality from the use of these and you can no longer really call it "your work".
2. They look tacky, poorly made, and do not match the style- you're better making it yourself.
3. They are overused and you are at risk getting called out on it quickly by losers like me.

There are many other dangers. There was this manga that had a plot point about this company using a stock image, untouched except for text and information on it, for their product...at the same time another company or business used the same stock image for their product. Two of the workers had to stay overtime past closing, way into the evening, to fix the image and re-print dozens of new copies. (I forget the name of it, but graphic design only played a small part in it. Like a really small part. It's incredibly NSFW too.)

Here's the thing, though - if I do not want to put too much more effort into what I am doing, or if I really suck at designing a certain effect, stocks are perfect. I'm not a photographer, so if I need a certain photo, I go to Morguefile. Photoshopping specific kind of sparkles takes too long, so I go to Obsidian Dawn. It helps, and it shouldn't take full credibility away from your work. To make a properly executed gunshot scene in a movie, you need a combination of a muzzle flash, maybe a 3D render of bullets, and blood squibs as well as a Photoshop layer or two for bullet hits. God knows how much more hours that would take if you had to make all of that from scratch, but the fact is, it's only one detail in the whole production of the movie, your movie.

The logo for Obsidian Dawn's website, which provides brushes, vectors, and stocks.

This is why stocks make your life easier - it's quick access without money to what you want or need, and you lose less hours over the effects if you want it done as soon as possible with some great results if you know what you're doing. (It will still take you time, though. For gunshot example; I tried this once and it took two hours. I used Premiere too instead of After Effects. Don't do this kind of stuff with Premiere.) If it's free - or better yet, if it has a use and purpose whether or not it costs money or not - then why not use it? That's what Video Copilot packages are for, that's what Morguefile is for, that's what Dafont is for, and that's what Obsidian Dawn is for: to provide a bountiful amount of readily available products of varying quality for whatever you want or need.

As for overuse and easy recognition...well, it's a given and there's not too much you can do about it. If it's good, of course people will use it more often than others, like O Fortuna as their cinematic trailer music. Why else do you think obviously breathtaking masterpieces* like the Wilhelm Scream are still around?

*Given what the Wilhelm Scream is and what it defines in its place in cinema this statement is either sarcasm, truth, or to each their own. You decide.

008: B&W Lip Contrast Rage

Why do I have to make lips darker when I use auto B&W filters?

It's been awhile, yes. But that's because I was trying to come up with a few topics I should cover that are more graphic-related than whatever's happening in New Media for this entry. I couldn't think of anything I wanted to really talk about, though...until lately when I had to do this.

As some of you gamer geeks may know, Pokemon Black and Pokemon White came out on March 6th. This is relevant because today, I'm going to be talking about black and white digital quickshops - not necessarily photos, but quickshops, those times where you want a cool filter on your Facebook profile photo and you don't want to stress too much time with whatever it is you're doing. But beyond black and white quickshopping, I'm going to talk about my biggest quirk with it - lips.

This is my demonstration subject, a profile mugshot of a young Milo Ventimiglia of Heroes fame from his Gilmore Girls days. Note the contrast between his lips and his skin - a very obvious coral pink from the rest of the yellowish-peachish skin colour, both standing out on their own. (This shouldn't be too hard for the ladies.) I'm going to make Milo black-and-white by running a Desaturation filter. Pay attention to the difference in detail as I will place the original photo next to the result:

Now this is the reason why most people don't tell you to use a Desaturation filter when it comes to making your photos black and white - it's the wrong way of doing it. Granted, you could probably play with Brightness/Contrast or Levels and Curves but why bother taking additional steps not recommended at all? This also applies to Grayscale mode - don't do it. As you can see, we've lost Red Alpha Channel (a.k.a. we've lost many details in the lighting), but worst of all, Milo's lips are practically the same shade with the rest of his skin and they no longer pop out as much.

For some, this might be okay. I mean, I think it's okay, but we're talking about Milo Ventimiglia - I could care less if there was a rainbow gradient over him, it's not distracting from Milo himself. Actually, this is a pretty good photo in general of just running a quick auto-B&W filter on because it still keeps enough lip shade. Here's the same photo, but with that quick auto-B&W filter applied:

There's a little colour you notice in the B&W filter compared to the dull grey of Desaturated, there's more preservation in lighting, and best of all, his lips contrast with his skin a little more. Awesome. Always use the B&W filter on Photoshop to get the desired lighting, alpha, and control you want with B&W photos. There's also Channel filters but since I'm still studying Channels (which are really handy, by the way), we won't go into that. This is for quickshops, something under five minutes.

Now let's say the only thing you knew was Desaturate. Okay, well, we're going to take our Desaturated photo, and we're going to brush black over his lips. Yes, we are essentially putting digital lipstick on Milo Ventimiglia. He's probably used to real-life makeup on set anyway.

As you can see here, we did this in three steps: 

1. Painted black over Desaturated Milo's lips using a brush
2. Applied an Overlay/Soft Light filter to the paint layer so it's more natural-ish
3. Dropped the Opacity down to about 15% - 20% so it's more natural and no longer ish  

Here's the before and after side-by-side:

As you can see, it's very subtle, but there is contrast between the lips and the skin now. 

Now, let's place the Lip-Coloured Desaturated Milo with Auto-B&W Milo and Milo and see the contrast similarities:

I'd say that's pretty good and now, they more or less match each others' contrast. But to conclude, I wish I didn't have to do this lip-colour-contrast thing as much. The B&W filter itself, auto or maual, works far more superior over Desaturate or Grayscale filters for better preservation of alpha and lighting, as well as control over those - but I personally like to see a little more lip contrast on B&W photos, even if it's subtle. That's something I require another layer for.