As part of Assignment 4 (Pixel Art), we’ve been looking at art that uses pixels in some way. As you work on this project, you may find it useful to draw in Photoshop in a way that gives you control over individual pixels. Here are some things to remember:

• Photoshop has many filters which you can use to ‘pixellate’ an image, including the Mosaic, Pointillize, and Crystallize filters. You can also reduce an image to a small number of pixels by using Image Size to resize it to a very small image.
• You can use the Pencil tool to draw pixel-by-pixel. The best way to do this is to choose the Pencil tool, then select the 1px brush from the Basic Brushes library. The Pencil tool is better than the Brush tool for pixel art, as it will fill in individual pixels without anti-aliasing the surrounding pixels. Similarly, you can use the Eraser tool on individual pixels by selecting a 1px brush and setting the eraser mode to Pencil.
• You can draw circles and other shapes as filled pixel areas without smoothed edges. To do this, choose a shape tool such as Ellipse, then click ‘Fill pixels’ from the context menu at the top (it’s the third option, and will fill in pixels instead of creating a path). Then uncheck the Anti-alias option.
• If you try to enlarge a pixel-art drawing, Photoshop will try to resample the image, which disrupts the pixel-art effect. To avoid this, choose Image Size, then select “Nearest Neighbor” from the Resample Image drop-down menu at the bottom.
• Photoshop will automatically show a Pixel Grid when you zoom in to work on a small image. You can turn this off by click View → Show → Pixel Grid. You can also turn on and off the regular Grid, and you can adjust colour and size of the Grid using Photoshop’s Preferences settings.
• You can use the Window → Arrange → New Window command to create a second window for the image you are working on. This is useful when working on tiny pixel art images, as you can view your image at its actual size in one window while working on it in a second, zoomed-in window.

This OSXDaily blog post details a couple of other techniques for creating pixel art in Mac OS, including a neat trick to use Mac OS’s Zoom feature and screen capture to quickly create pixellated versions of anything on your screen without using Photoshop.

There are also many web-based tools you can use to draw with pixels or voxels (3D pixels):

• Piq
• Pixie
• Q-Block
• Voxel
• Cubescape

During this class we critiqued everyone’s work for Assignment 3, which asked you to use Photoshop to create an image that both presents a truth and contains an element of fiction or fabricated reality. It was great to see so many different approaches to the assignment, although I’d like to see more particpation during our group critiques.

We’ve started Assignment 4 already. For this assignment you’ll be using the idea of pixels to create an artwork which is not a digital image. Pixel art usually involves digital images drawn pixel-by-pixel, a time-consuming process that generally involves very small images. Many pixel artists work with Photoshop, although there are also software tools designed specifically for pixel art. eBoy is a group of artists who create elaborate pixel art drawings. We’ll look at some other examples during our next class.

In this class, we watched Art 21: Paul Pfeiffer, and took a look at some Photoshop tools and techniques:

• Free Transform is used to rotate, resize, or distort the contents of a layer. You can also transform multiple layers at once by using Shift+click to highlight multiple layers before choosing Free Transform.
• Advanced selection tools include the Magic Wand (to select areas of similar colour), Magnetic Lasso (to draw an outline that snaps to edges), and Quick Selection (to paint a selection area that automatically snaps to edges). You can also choose Color Range from the Select menu to select a range of colours from your entire image.
• Layer Masks are a great way to hide part of a layer so that the layer beneath it becomes visible. It’s better to use Layer Masks to create transparency rather than the Eraser tool, because Layer Masks are nondestructive – they preserve the image data on your layer, which means that you can easily modify or remove the mask later.
• Similarly, Adjustment Layers are a nondestructive way to apply adjustments such as Brightness/Contrast, Curves, and Hue/Saturation to your layers, because they can easily be modified or removed later. By default, an Adjustment Layer applies its adjustment to all layers below it. To apply it to just a single layer, check the box that says “Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask” when creating the adjustment layer.
• Hue/Saturation adjustments can be used to modify the saturation of various colours in your layer. You can also use it to tweak the Hue, or click the Colorize box to apply a colour tinge to the entire layer. Hue/Saturation can also be used to make your layer black and white, but try using a Black & White adjustment layer to do this, as you have more control over the result.
• We took a quick look at Content-Aware Fill, which is a way to have Photoshop automatically, seamlessly fill an area with content from another area.

During this class we also started Assignment 4 (Pixel Art).

In this class, we watched a short documentary about the work of Jeff Wall (from the Contact 2 series), and looked at a book of his work. Wall is an artist who is particularly interested in truth and falsity, which relates to our third assignment. Here is another interesting video of Wall discussing his work: “I begin by not photographing.”

If you are interested in reading more about Wall’s work, check out Jeff Wall In His Own Words on MOMA.org.

I was away during this class, but Pierre visited and did a Photoshop demo. As we learn more about working with Photoshop, you may notice some terms that you aren’t familiar with. Here are some you should know about.

Screen resolution refers to a setting on your computer which determines the number of pixels displayed on your screen. Setting your computer to a higher screen resolution gives you more space to work with, but will usually make interface elements such as icons and text smaller. Most LCD monitors have a native resolution which is the optimal setting for that monitor, as the number of pixels shown on screen matches the display resolution of the monitor.

Anti-aliasing is used in raster imaging software to make lines and curves look smoother – for example, if you draw a black line on a white background with the Brush tool, and then zoom in, you will notice that the edge of the line is made up of grey pixels.

When working in Photoshop, remember to save your work in Photoshop (PSD) or TIFF format, so that your layers will be preserved. Your digital camera files and images that you find on the web will usually be in JPG format, which is a very widely used image format. However, when you are working on a project, saving your working files as JPG is a bad idea, because JPG is a lossy format. Lossy means that image quality is compromised in order to make the files take up less disk space. This means that every time you edit and save a JPG, the image is compressed, which results in a loss of information (and therefore image quality). Compression artifacts are distortions in an image that result from too much compression.

Working with Photoshop often involves working with photos – modifying, manipulating, or mashing them together. You can use your own photos, but sometimes you will want to find other sources of photos to work with.

The web is a limitless source of images – you are probably familiar with Google Image Search. However, when searching for photos which you intend to make use of in your own work, it is a good idea to try to find images that you have permission to use. A good way to do this is to search for images that are public domain or are licensed for reuse.

Public domain refers to intellectual work (such as writing and art) for which the property rights have expired or been forfeited, which means that anyone is free to use the work as they please.

You may have heard of Creative Commons, which is a way for creative people to specify how they want to allow their work to be reused. Some Creative Commons works can be used without restrictions, while others are free for non-commercial use only, or require attribution. Flickr has a Creative Commons page with links to images licensed in this way. You can also use Google Advanced Image Search to restrict your search to images that are labelled for reuse.

Here are some other sources of high-quality images that you can use:

• morgueFile is a “public image archive for creatives by creatives”.
• The Library of Congress’s American Memory collection focusses on American historical images, but contains others as well, such as the map of Placentia Bay above.
• Pixabay is a collection of high-quality public domain photos.
• Wikimedia Commons is a huge repository of media files which anyone can use.
• Wikipedia: Public domain image resources contains an extensive list of links to archives of public domain images, including historical photos and paintings.
• Public Domain Sherpa has a great list of sources of public domain photos.
• WebMuseum has many high-quality images of famous artworks.
• Ars Publik is a limited but high-quality collection of public-domain images.

Isabelle Hayeur is a Canadian artist who creates intriguing, metaphorical landscapes by digitally manipulating photographs. The subtle illusions in her photographs often play with the ways in which the environment is presented in advertising and other media. In an interview with Mason Journal, she says “In my earlier works, like the Uncertain Landscapes series, I use digital photomontage to show what we don’t see in our artificial spaces by confronting dreamscapes with disenchanted spaces in the same image. In the Model Homes series, I try to highlight our usage of counterfeit cultural values, postmodern pastiches and synthetic construction material. By creating a hyper reality that reveals the fake and the absurd, I am hoping to show the misrepresentation of these manufactured spaces. I use the digital illusion to highlight the fabricated “lies” that we encounter in reality.”

In the artist statement on her website, Hayeur provides a compelling description of the ideas behind her art practice:

“We have the privilege of constructing our world: the world we inhabit and the world that inhabits us. This is, of course, not a new phenomenon, but we have unprecedented means for achieving these ends. We give form to worlds that were once impossible and even unthinkable. We act on our surroundings and intervene in the course of events as never before. The universe in which we live has become malleable. It seems clear that our visions and lifestyles have a much greater impact on the world we occupy than in the past. It thus becomes particularly important that we assume responsibility for the landscapes we create and the worlds we imagine. These are the reflections that have informed my work over the past several years.”

Assignment 3 asks you to think about truth and fiction in the digital image. Here are some related links we looked at in class as we started this project.

Examples of artists working with Photoshop and image manipulation:

• Filip Dujardin (imaginary buildings; see also Escape Into Life post)
• Isabelle Hayeur (see Model Homes)
• Cassandra C. Jones (wallpaper patterns from clip art)
• Matt Siber (removing text from photos, floating logos)
• Mattijn Franssen (placing himself in fantastic landscapes)
• Craig Hunter Parker (surreal photo-illustrations)
• Michael Najjar (see High Altitude)
• Ben Heine – Pencil Vs. Camera
• Alex Cano (digital collage)
• Andy Baio – Meme Scenery

Historic photo manipulation:

• Alfred Gescheidt (photomanipulations made before Photoshop)
• Photo tampering throughout history
• The Ethics of Digital Manipulation