Hello,

I was abit lazy the past few weeks. Still not having found a job somehow got to me. Once i even got drunk and talked shit somewhere in the forums. Please forgive me for that =( It´s kind of funny. When you work everyday you feel like "uh i really could need a break" but as soon as you can sleep as long as you want to, you can´t wait to get up early and go to work again.

Anyway lets talk about pictures and not about my midlife crisis at the age of 24

Lets talk about why some pictures look good and others don´t and why it matters if you do something for yourself or something for an audience.

Oh yeah and check out the previous parts here:

http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/photoshop
http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/photoshop/rss

The difference between Art and Advertisement

Keep in mind the following is just my oppinion. I dont want to talk about "what is art" because it´s different for everyone.

When i started to get into Photoshop i was fascinated by digital art. I surfed sites like depthcore for hours. I then thought "maybe i should visit some museums" but soon told myself modern art is either something i dont understand or bullshit (i kinda think most is bullshit). So i was back to the world wide web looking for pretty pictures. And of course i started to try to make some myself. I searched for raw looking pictures and tried to turn them into something i felt was appealing to me.

When things got more serious during my education i learned some valuable lessons. I started to understand that my personal feeling about what looks good isn´t that much helpful when you work for clients. They just might have a different taste and this can ruin your day. But when you follow certain rules things start to look good no matter the taste. On the other hand if you do a personal work, it´s all about you. You like girls? Cars? Landscapes? Abstract objects? Minimalistic things? Thats what you want to do. I guess real artists do what they please and it just happens other people like it too. But if you work in advertisement your taste matters much less.

And of course there are exceptions to this rule i made up for myself. There are advertisment that you maybe could call art. There are highly paid artists working for companies and so on but thats not where we are right now. Maybe one day.. one day

I guess we can all agree that this car looks absolutly amazing. Lets try to analyze it why it does look so good:

[image loading]

(This is actually a 3D-Rendering. Amazing huh? This is made by a company located in germany called RTT. But for practical reasons we act like its a normal picture)

First thing we need to understand is this is a Studioshot. Meaning the picture is taken in a controllable enviroment. Mostly a huge empty warehouses covered in black, full of lights, white or black shapes that reflect in the care and so on.

First i want you to notice that no matter where you look there is "something going on". There are no "dead" parts because there is not enough light. There are no parts that "burn" away because there is too much light. Notice the front where the light burns on the engine bonnet, there is still this little grey line so the car seperates from the white background. The car looks very very glossy but actually the only reflection is on the glass and on the side, very suttle but still it adds alot to the picture. Eveything else is just light shining on the car making you understand the shape and supporting the design of the car. There iare so much details still the picture looks very "smooth" and "clean". Only thing i dont like that much are the tires. There should be more details i think. But who am i to critique this picture

There is much more to it, for example the camera setup but figure out for yourself what looks good and what doesnt. Just dont stare at billboards too long while driving

Now while you need to be artistic in some way to achieve such a good result, this is not art and the person (mostly a team) who made this may even think the car itself is ugly. What i try to say is this picture looks good. It´s not a question of taste.

Now lets take some random pic from a random news site, where the focus is not on good pictures rather the information about the car.

[image loading]

Look at the back of the car. It´s just black. In german you say its "dead". Same goes for the tires and the inside of the car. Nothing to see here, move on!
The shape of the car just isnt that obvious as the first one. Somehow it just does not make sense as much as the other picture. The yellow looks dirty. Is it yellow or orange and the light just turns it into yellow? Even the ground the car stays on is just going from wood (?!?!?!?!?) into complete black. Never seen that in reality, right? This is not a picture you would see on a billboard.

Of course there are also more artsy kind of car pictures. There you can start to break certain rules. You can make certain parts too dark or too bright just because you want to highlight a different part of the picture. But this is much much harder to do and you really need to know what youre doing.

So if you want to sell your car and make a good looking picture of it make sure to get some references. Dont try to be an artist! Try to make changes that make sense. A little more light here, maybe darken the windows so you dont see the used leatherseats and so on.. If you want to make a wallpaper of your car make a cool looking background and just do what feels good. Maybe even use blur so it looks like your car is driving 300km/h :D enjoy your freedom!

I know i only talked about cars and some may think "wtf i dont care about cars" but same idea goes for alot of things. And i hope this helps you because when i started i often had this feeling "i don´t even know what im supposed to do next. I have all those tools and a picture i want to work on but where to start? What is it i want to do?"

Now something i´ve done

You see there is nothing artsy going on. The artistic things were done by the guy who made the picture. Follow simple rules. Sharpen the pictures, make the skin look flawless, the white in the eyes, make the red of her lips look sexy. If the model did not sleep alot make her look fresh

And so on..

Less is often more.

When you have a good reason why you changed something, its a good change. I can say "i made her lips more red because the picture is supposed to look sexy. I changed the skin tone because it was too yellow. I sharpened the picture because it was unsharp". If i start to change her eye colour into green i dont have a logic explanation. It would just be me liking wemon with green eyes. Think like Mr. Spock from Star Trek does. He is a very logic thinking person

But If you want to make art, dont think that much. I hope this makes sense.

Alright slightly shorter entry without any spotlight on tools or functions. I have something in mind regarding this but i fear it will be an entry for itself. So i guess the next one will be very technical heavy.

Hope i didn´t bored you guys :o)
Feedback and questions are welcome as always.

-leech

Coagulation

United States9633 Posts

August 03 2011 20:44 GMT

I like to use photoshop to draw in a more traditional fashion. I generally dont give a shit if other people find the results aesthetically pleasing cause I find that If I start working to please what I perceive as something that someone else would find visually acceptable than I lose sight of the original motivation/inspiration of the piece in the process. I dont work in the commercial art business or anything tho and I can only imagine the discipline required to abandon your own creative process/vision in favor of someone who is paying you for results they want.
Why is that bitch eating that dudes face?

disciple

9070 Posts

August 03 2011 20:46 GMT

Hmm tbh I was expecting something slightly different from this blog. Even if you try to educate good taste and feel for aesthetics, I think the title you put on your post is rather misleading, cause ppl would tend to expect some practical advice. And you cant really speak of "proper" way of learning with the examples you picked which are very subjective. All Lotus prototypes from last year, including the one you show here, have been vastly criticized for their very generic lines and silhouettes. Unlike regular automakers, luxury brands like Lamborghini are doing ad campaigns for a completely different reasons, and not really to improve their sells. Its all about the brand image. Thats why the big yellow car looks nasty and beasty in the shot as opposed to the sterile and clean shot of the Lotus.

RHCPgergo

Hungary345 Posts

August 04 2011 09:14 GMT

Yay, thanks! I always thought clients just want you to make the picture look cooler and they didn't really care how.

leecH

Germany385 Posts

August 12 2011 17:37 GMT

On August 04 2011 05:44 Coagulation wrote:
Why is that bitch eating that dudes face?

i can only speculate. The company who uses this picture sells expensive clothing (suits from BOSS and stuff) so i can only imagine its appealing to wemons working in managment or something. you know like "the tuff bussiness wemon biting cruel cruel mans" or something ahaha

but really i have no idea. but i like the picture

On August 04 2011 05:46 disciple wrote:
Hmm tbh I was expecting something slightly different from this blog. Even if you try to educate good taste and feel for aesthetics, I think the title you put on your post is rather misleading, cause ppl would tend to expect some practical advice. And you cant really speak of "proper" way of learning with the examples you picked which are very subjective. All Lotus prototypes from last year, including the one you show here, have been vastly criticized for their very generic lines and silhouettes. Unlike regular automakers, luxury brands like Lamborghini are doing ad campaigns for a completely different reasons, and not really to improve their sells. Its all about the brand image. Thats why the big yellow car looks nasty and beasty in the shot as opposed to the sterile and clean shot of the Lotus.

im sorry you expected something different. i got a PM from someone who told me he likes that i dont just talk about the program itself but rather take a bigger perspective on things and personal insight. so this part was basicly inspired by feedback i got. my last few blogs had much less visits and feedback thus i went into the direction i got from feedback. since you are the best feedback i got thus far i guess i will do something techy next time. but i just was offered a job (YAAAY FINALLY) and i have to move and start to learn new softwares so my time is limited. But make sure to check once a month for updates. Next part will be just for you.

But i have to disagree on what the proper way to teach photoshop is since i feel i have both of my foots in the industry. So if i talk about astethics in car pictures (which is relevant to photoshop) i do this because 1 year i basicly did nothing else then working with cars. So unless you can tell me you have more experience i´d like you to respect my opinion on those 2 pictures above.

Now about the hole Lamborgini and brand image topic. I did not talk about corporate identities (which i may should have thinking back now). But still, you can make a beastly looking image of a beastly looking car without the picture being bad. You dont communicate beastly by having a sucky images. If the picture would be created right the lamborgini would look even more beastly.

And i dont care about what people think about Lamborginis and their design let the journalists be the judge of it. When you work with Photoshop your job is to get as much out of the picture you can. And the yellow Lamborgini picture is a good example of a picture where alot of things went wrong. Id love to show you a high quality picture with professional retouch but those are not open to the public.

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