Key portions of the image assembly work done to produce the photo-art here below and here (but later) rely upon the blending of individual image layers using Photoshop. In essence, two or more different versions of the starting image are superimposed so as to gain an output which contains some of the features of each separate component. Such superimpositions have been possible since early editions of the Photoshop software program. Several of the modes available for blending are, however, newer to Photoshop and its users than are others. In tutorial material they are most often (all) illustrated by using two entirely different images (to demonstrate the superimpositions); fully different by virtue of content and coloration, on more-or-less a random basis. Given the complexities and subtleties involved in the different (sometimes even related …) blending operations, this can be the source of a great deal of confusion, even nightmares, at the beginning (never minding the end ..!).

This post just includes an outline description of a far simpler set of guidelines for analyzing the blend mode operations. Subsequent posts here – all tagged under the Photoshop category – will examine each successive mode, one at a time.  Additionally, I’ll try to capture some of the “fine tuning” options available in specific cases. Hopefully this will all be made simpler via the use of a set of related (actually correlated) images.

It should be noted, as just a part of this introduction, that all of the blend modes available in the newest version of Photoshop (CS4) rely upon strict computational mathematics. But, in addition, that this mathematics – which is proprietary – makes use of color models which are not used regularly directly at the user interface. For example, the majority of the Photoshop work I do is monitored, in output form, via the standard RGB color model, with all three channels active. I suspect this is a workflow option selected by the majority of users. But, the “behind-the-scenes” computations that Photoshop makes when blending operations are invoked may rely upon individual channel information within an (also proprietary?) HSY model (see, for reference, here).

Therefore, a tutorial which attempts instruction via the mathematics involved will run into a different complication. And, potentially, much bafflement. So, in a search for simplicity (at least to start with here), I’ll be using the image layers shown in the following two screenshots and, initially, in the black-and-white-only versions included there – without any accompanying algebra.

Here the layer designated as the overlay is simply a flipped version of  the layer underneath it in the stack (the underlay).

I’ve demonstrated - by use of just a single example here (!) – that one primary and initial objective of the Impressionist school of painters was to break away from the traditionalists just in terms of subject matter (never minding the style in which they painted those subjects). Provocative group portraiture, urban street scenes, portraits of less-privileged and working class people – all of these became mainstays of the French Impressionist school. To the point that the traditional, national institutions which supported the arts in Paris turned away many pieces of their work, so forcing the artists to mount their own exhibitions outside of what was considered to be the mainstream opportunity for recognition and reward.

Even compositionally, matters were progressive for these artists before their painting style had developed truly impressionistic features. In the single example already used, there is a still life assembly included (with a certain deliberation) in the foreground. Below there’s another early work by Manet: ‘Le Balcon’ (1868-1869), one which was accepted for the official Paris Salon of 1869. Nevertheless, it’s clear that there is a lot of experimentation going on here. From a compositional standpoint, the work as a whole is disconcerting, with each of the three principal figures gazing off in totally different directions. Also, they are painted in different ways. And then there’s a fourth figure in the background. It’s as if nobody in the group knows one another or is meant to know the others …. Again there are “added” still life components in the foreground – in fact, only the flowers at the far left (plus the lady’s dresses) are really painted in what would become to be considered as the standard impressionistic (?) – certainly less-defined – manner.

It’s always been an intrigue to me as to why the French Impressionists worked so hard on still life subjects. The best of the work accomplished in just this narrow specialization is truly stunning. But, was this influenced in any way by progress made within the photographic arts during the same time period? I’ll be returning to this topic later, particularly with reference to the work of Gustave Courbet.

Here is a re-rendered, photo-art image, based upon this original photograph (and many steps from the starting image …). The (fully) black background has been used deliberately, to support a specific form of presentation – the digital pictura translucida – which I’ll post about subsequently.

Somewhere below and earlier (i.e., here) there’s a slideshow made up of individually digitally filtered images, all derived from a single, starting image. Back in 2005 I wrote a short online article (it’s here: http://www.dpandi.com/howtos/artmasterpro/) covering some aspects of such filtering. Unfortunately, the source of the Photoshop-independent image processing software featured there – the Fo2PiX company – is no longer in business. But, nevertheless, a number of other filtering tools have become available in the intervening period, up to and including full “auto-painting” routines.

A key individual function of the Fo2PiX software was to introduce pictorial simplification. Basically this was achieved by the elimination of fine structural detail in the starting image (and the associated averaging of color across the larger, more prominent, contiguous areas of the image which remained). This was targeted – as an artistic objective – in order to emulate what traditional painters do when adopting an impressionistic style.

Nowadays much the same functionality is available in the Topaz Labs Simplify plug-in. One neat feature of this newer software product is that the degree of simplification produced has a set of fine sensitivity settings which scale correctly with the overall size of the starting image. However, one series of settings will provide a rendered image with a fixed degree of uniform simplification for the image as a whole. There is no ability to directly restrict the amount of simplification in one or more areas of the original other than by creating a mask within Photoshop (usually before launching the plug-in).

One consequence of this which occurs with images where the subject has been deliberately isolated (or “cut-out”) from its original background is that some of the simplifications at the edges may remove and/or distort the isolation.  The first two images below have been cropped from an isolated version of a starting image introduced earlier and re-worked using Simplify. It is easy to see there that portions of the (white) background have now become blocks of color derived from the floral portions of the image. By using the mask – the one which was first built to isolate the full bouquet – we can arrive at the last re-rendered version of the image included here (the third in the group below). Now the “block” simplification of the floral components at the core of the subject material is independent from the definition of the edge. This is different from, and, perhaps, better than, what a conventional painter might choose to do in portraying the same type of subject (i.e., a floral still life). More will be written later on forcing distinctions between the edge and core regions of digitally re-rendered images.

some baseline and uniform simplification

an increased amount of uniform simplification

the same  increased amount of uniform simplification, but using an isolation mask – just two steps from the original photograph

Somewhere (but exactly where ….?) I once read that the availability of photographic studio portraiture in France by the mid-1800s was one catalyst for the advancement of Impressionism in painting. It seems to me now that the argument was that painters could no longer gain a steady stream of commissions for portrait work, which required too much time (and hence money) in comparison with photography. And so they dived off into other artistic waters. Well, that seemed less than fully credible at the outset, and, the more I’ve learned about the Impressionist school, the more implausible it has become over time. (Anyway, what’s perhaps more worthy of some better understanding are the influences that photography and painting had one upon the other (within France, in that same timeframe, wherein both had a preeminent standing).)

As far as painting by itself is concerned, there’s no doubting that the Impressionists very deliberately set themselves apart from the conventional establishment. However, it is often argued that one of the key catalysts in this was the invention not of the daguerreotype but of flexible metal tubing. This permitted paint to be stored for prolonged periods, and to be transported, and to be used outdoors – a key step in allowing plein air sessions (and painting away from the confines of the studio). So, as an example of the innovation which this brought about, Claude Monet painted almost all of the 23 foot wide canvas which became ‘Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe’ (1865-1866) outdoors, from nature, only being able to complete his work at the top of the piece by lowering the bottom into a man-made ditch. Actually, it seems as though Monet’s primary intention was to (literally) dwarf a work with the same title completed in a studio just two years before by Édouard Manet (see below). The earlier piece had, however, set a new standard in France by virtue of its supposedly non-virtuous subject – the nude female, sitting in the center foreground of the work, gazing directly at the painter/viewer, while in the presence of two bourgeois, clothed gentlemen, has always been assumed to be a prostitute.

More follows here (but later).

So now there should be (above) a simple slideshow, showing the starting photographic image and a set of components which rework the colors, shading and outline of the original. Generally I build a small library of these component images. All are isolated – the subject(s) being set against a white background. They become, individually and in simple combinations, the layer contents and/or layer masks in several Photoshop files. This is the means by which Impressionistic renderings are assembled. Some components are quite subtle; others more complex.

Currently there is no finished rendering accomplished within this project. I will post one or more of those later.

Here, at the very least for today, is an original photograph from which I have derived some new work recently. Basically the overall intention has been to shoot some still life subjects and to render the original photographs in a manner similar to – but not slavishly duplicating – the Impressionist school of painting (circa 1860 to 1890 or so).

… there was a new realization. While struggling to place digital imaging within some context set by the classical and pictorial fine arts, and while forgetting chunks of what had seemingly been appreciated no more than six months earlier, there could be an advantage to writing things down! So, this is it – an attempt to build an online repository for thoughts and observations, maybe just my own, or maybe (even) later including some shared by others. The thoughts and observations themselves follow the byline given in the header above “photography as, and into, art”.  And the byway to be followed itself thus does not include the word digital. There is, in this day and age, simply no need to add that. Absolutely everything to be seen and read about here does have digital processing at its core.

However, there already arrives the very first paradox. Whilst digital engines running complex software routines have become invaluable generators in creating both two- and three-dimensional artwork, the Internet – as a sort semaphore driven by the same engine – does not do justice to the artwork itself. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to appreciate art via the tools of the web. Even true size and scale are hard to grasp, let alone the nuances of hue, reflectance, texture, etc.

But recall: these are notes on a journey. And though details of the thoughts and observations to be argued and presented are important, they don’t always need to be illustrated by a full work or image. Hopefully what will follow in the next posting is a sort of deconstruction of a current project of my own (though only if I get to master what appear to be some of the more complex components of the WordPress blogging arsenal) … please stay tuned.