NAno. by Itokin Park on iPhone 3GS
Spring Colour Lucha Bear by Itokin Park on iPhone 3GS
Spring Colour Lucha Bear by Itokin Park on iPhone 3GSNot much to add but a few photos I took with my iPhone. Just wanted to share with you these beautifully designed kaiju toys by Itokin Park (aka Kazuhiko Ito).
Hellboy: Museum Style Sculpture by Mike Mignola & Randy Bowen on iPhone 3GS
Brutal Legend: Eddie Riggs by Mark Newman on iPhone 3GS
Billy 2.0 by Blamo Toys: Spencer Hansen - Dr. Destruction by Muttpop - Tic Toc Apocalypse by Amanda Visell on iPhone 3GS
Koibito by Yoskay Yamamoto on iPhone 3GS
Koibito by Yoskay Yamamoto on iPhone 3GSWanted to play around with the vinyls again with the iPhone. I found the last set of photos seemed like product beauty shots. This time around I wanted to try to play more with lighting and dramatic angles to get a better sense of mood. I was very happy with the Hellboy shot. I used natural lighting with a half closed curtain to get the matted reflection off of my flat screen television as a backdrop. Hoping that I will be able to recreate this shot with my SLR camera so that I may be able to make a large print of it. The difficulty in that task is that I used natural light, the SLR is less forgiving and I do not have a macro lens. Will keep you posted...
PhotoForge App on the iPhone 3GS OS 4.0Many people have asked me for tips & tricks regarding photo retouching. Color adjustments, light balancing, masking, cropping for composition. There's no real fixed formula you can use for every photograph because each shot has their own nuances, mainly due to lighting. Techniques such as masking may seem easy at first but difficult to do seemlessly. Retouching requires a good eye and patience. Most of it is tedious when you get the hang of it. For this blog posting I'll share a tip for highlight balancing using a basic tool such as the PhotoForge App on the iPhone. I mainly use Photoshop on my PC for retouching photos,. The reason why I'm using the iPhone this time around, is to demonstrate how easily it can be done with such a simple tool. I prefer the PhotoForge app over the Photoshop app on the iPhone, because I find the Photoshop app on the iPhone is limited in functions.
(before & after)As you can see in the Before & After shot the highlights are washed out and the subject loses a lot of the tonal gradations. Notice the whites on the head, as well as the hilights on the body and right arm. When the hilights are blasted like that the colors also tend to become over saturated. Although saturation in color may be desired at times, it loses softness in an organic shape as well as a natural realistic look if that is to be intended.
Filter/Curves
Reverse S CurveOpen the PhotoForge app. Open the image you want to adjust. Click on the "Filter" tab (looks like a funnel, middle icon at the bottom). Click on "Curves". (For Photoshop on the PC: navigate to Layer/New Adjustment Layer/Curves...). This is your "Curves" graph, which you can adjust the image as whole, or if you want indivual colors as well. For this demo we'll be adjusting the image as a whole, so keep your default settings on "RGB" and "All". Click and drag to add or move a bezier point on the graph. Multiple points can be applied to the same graph. Shown above is the general reverse S Curve I would usually apply when adjusting for highlight balancing, with tweaks depending on the lighting in the shot. I find it works really well for organic smooth surfaces and portraits.
