Tutorial Digital Manipulation

INTODUCTION

I was inspired by a video tutorial in internet on how to create water splash from a glass, after knowing the basic processing, I came with an idea to make something different, where the water splash is created not only to show the splash, but also to create an abstract story as if the glasses are living things.

I tried several glasses in different shape, from cocktail glass, wine glass and ice cream glass, and also took several splash shape. It was a messy shooting in my backyard, as I have to throw different colored water to shape the splash, until I got these two simple splashes, which are able to translate my idea.

The idea was to put the glasses side by side to visualize a loving couple, with reflections below as if they were standing on a thin water surface and throwing stone on the surface creating a water wave.

I choose the orange color for the water as this color is more eye catching compared to other color such as blue or red.

The picture is a combination of 4 main pictures:

1. The Ice Cream Glass upper part with splash

2.  The Ice Cream Glass lower part

3.  The Martini Glass upper part with splash

4.  The Martini Glass lower part

THE PICTURE

The preparation to take the picture, the area of the shooting must not have the ambient light, such as direct sun light, due to it will affect the freezing of the water. Too much ambient light will cause the water having the motion effect. The help of flash with 1/32 power setting is to get freezed movement of the water. For this picture I took them on my backyard during the sunset around 6 p.m.

Then I prepared a large white acrylic background fitted on a white board frame, around 1 meter above the ground and put a plastic chair in the front to put the glass. My camera on tripod was positioned around 1 meter from the glass. The lens in auto focus setting with wireless trigger attached. I lifted the glass and try to lock the focus on the lens and then change the lens setting to manual focus. During the focusing process make sure that the glass position is exactly above the plastic chair, if necessary, you can add an “X” mark on the chair to make sure that during the shooting the glass position is exactly above the “X” mark.

Next preparation is to prepare a bucket of colored water. I used food dye, as the coloring is easy to clean and harmless. I also prepare clean clothes to wipe any water splash spoiled the background after each shooting, and make sure no water splash spoiled your lens.

First picture taken is the lower part of the Ice Cream glass.

Second picture taken is the lower part of the Martini glass.

The third picture taken is the upper part of the Ice Cream glass with a splash. The splash is created by moving the glass to front and then back as if we whip.

The fourth picture taken is the upper part of the Martini glass with a splash. The splash is created by moving the glass to front and then back as if we whip.

   

POST PROCESSING

The post-processing all done using Adobe Photoshop CS6.

1.      Select each glass one by one Quick Selection Tool, zoom it to maximum (100%) for better editing

 2.      Click the Refine Selection Edge button

 3.      Select the View Mode “Overlay”

 4.      Select the Output to “New Layer” and then click OK

 5.      The Result will be like this:

 6.      Repeat the same process on the other glasses picture, until we get 4 glasses are cut.

 7.      Combine each upper and lower part of the glasses using masking tool

 8.      And Rotate Horizontal the Martini glass, until the result like this

9.   Another masking on the glasses to give transparent effect, by setting the brush opacity to 10%.

 10.  Until the result is like this

11. Create 3 new layers, Fill with light blue, orange, and light yellow, so the composition of the layers will be like this, and then masking the layers to create a gradient colors.

      12.  Flatten Image

      13.  Add water reflection effect by using Flood plugin from Flaming Pear

14.  Make some adjustment to the picture such as Level, Brightness, Contrast and Hue/Saturation if necessary.

      15.  Crop the picture as your preference, which for this picture I choose to use 1x1 composition, and the final result is like this:

HINTS

      1.      Color selection is the most important thing in this picture to help the glass visually pop out from the background and show the dimension. Appropriate setting on the Level, Brightness and Contrast also help the picture’s sharpness, but don’t over process it, especially on the Hue/Saturation as it may lose the natural look of the picture.

      2.      All pictures must be composed accordingly to show it as a full story. The fact it is a combination of several pictures should not disturb the overall impression. The masking must be very neat, otherwise the picture will not give good impression as the editing is not perfectly managed.

      3.      It is not necessary for the glasses to be sharp, as we want to show that this picture is taken naturally, yet for the water, we need to increase the clarity.