Personally, I am a graphic designer, and I also do video post-production, and I have fun with flash and realserver application programming.
I have been using the things I have been using in all my work on self-taught classic diving. I can say without hesitation that I have learned a lot from the classics. I think self-study and asking less questions is the best way to learn. If you search my posts on BI, you will know that I rarely ask questions. Of course, it’s also very selfish. I almost don’t answer any questions = =|||
Not only do you need to know how to do it, but also why you do it.
I’ve read a lot of posts in the Photshop area (hereinafter referred to as PS), and there are posts that I absolutely don’t understand just by looking at the title. I will click in to see the content. For example, "broken paper effect", "crystal word effect", "XXX effect"... I personally think that such posts are almost completely nutritious, and I even personally think that reading such things is harmful. Many PS students around me hold the book "1000 Examples of PSXXX Effects" and something like that every day and look at it. Whenever they come across something they need to do at work, they run to check if there are any ready-made effects. If it doesn't work, they Came to ask me if I had any ready-made materials. To such people I always answer "no". And these people, especially when it comes to dealing with things like portraits where the image needs to look as real as possible.
Why is this so? Because many people who learn PS only know how to do it, but don’t know why they do it.
For example, if we want to create a sphere with a crystal effect, many people just click on the crystal style that comes with PS, then adjust it themselves, and it's OK. But if I take a complicated object (such as a snake-shaped object that bends around) and ask him to make it look like a crystal, he will be depressed. If I get something like this, I will definitely adjust the color levels first, make the highlights and darkens, and make the selection, and then it will just be a matter of coloring and correcting the light. To be clear, style is just a simplification of optical issues. The relief effect will never be as beautiful as hand-painted selections. Of course, I'm not asking you to complicate the problem. I'm not asking you to use a hand-painted tablet to make a button. What I want to say is that we need to know why we do what we do in order to deal with complex situations.
Since my job is in the fashion industry, a lot of it has to do with portraiture. For me, this is no more than simply drawing buttons. If I cannot correctly understand the concept of channels and correctly use optical formulas to process images in PS, it will definitely be a disaster for my work.
Let’s talk about some of the problems in processing portraits and natural landscape photos that I am best at.
Restore the reality first and then process it
to get a photo. First of all, you must not think about what the finished document will look like, what kind of lace it will have, whether you want to add some blue sky and white clouds to the head of the person. The first thing we need to do should be to restore the truth. That is to say, remove the unreal things in this photo. These things are unnecessary elements in the design.
PS is a mathematical thing. For example, you only need the value of the X parameter, but now that the real photo has not been restored, the Y parameter is also attached. If you don't do the step of restoring reality, then all subsequent operations will carry the Y parameter. The Y parameter, a design junk element, will cause more and more damage to the image as your image processing steps increase. Especially after you perform some mathematically irreversible operations, you will never be able to escape the impact of this Y on the final result.
Example: There is an image with a color cast. If you don't correct the color first and directly perform an irreversible operation like blurring, then no matter how you adjust the color in the future, the final result will be different from the correct result obtained by adjusting the color first and then blurring it.
I mentioned several reasons for poor image quality in a post before:
1. The light source is abnormal. For example, color cast, abnormal contrast, excessive light exposure, etc.
2. Digital camera noise includes the material texture of the scanned image, etc. 3. Defects in the photographed entity itself, such as freckles on the face, unwanted bug eyes on the apple, the sound of the picture being watermarked, etc.
We should solve these problems first. After that, we can further process the image and add the design elements we want.
I have always had a pursuit of truth. If time permits, I would like to use entirely mathematical and optical methods to process my images. And I wouldn't do anything that would damage the natural data of the image unless absolutely necessary. For example: the color of a picture is very difficult to adjust, but the number of colors in the image is very small. At this time, others would just remove the color and re-paint it. I will definitely start with color levels and channels to restore the image as much as possible. I won't give up unless I know from the channel information that harmful and mathematically irreversible operations have been performed on the image.
Maybe some people say that what I said is so complicated, I just want to show it off. Let me give you the simplest example. There is a hole in the middle of an apple. Now we're going to remove the hole. Obviously everyone will use a repair tool or a stamp to copy nearby pixels to repair them. Wouldn't you be so stupid as to take a brush and pick up the color and then draw a stroke to fill the hole? !Actually, everyone knows that it is right to keep things as real as possible. It’s just that many are not as experienced and good at summarizing as I am.
I have already mentioned the correctness and importance of restoring true thoughts. Now let me talk about some things I learned about PS.
Learn in depth from algorithms and principles.
When I first came into contact with PS, I was using FW at an intermediate level, and I didn’t even know there was such a thing as PS. The reason why I later chose PS and completely gave up on FW was because one day I saw a person fill in 0.5 when feathering the selection in PS! I originally studied software engineering, and I have always wanted to pursue accuracy when it comes to numbers. I was depressed at that time, why can PS be so accurate, but FW can only make a 1-pixel selection? Moreover, FW's W tool is absolutely rubbish compared to PS's W tool. So I turned to learning PS on the spot.
I was still a student at that time, and it was not easy to get online. I had no idea that the world was so big and there were textbooks everywhere. I finally got an E version of the PS6. There were no instructions or teaching materials, so I had to click on the tools one by one to see what they could do. Then I guess what this PS tool does based on my familiarity with FW. Since it is a guess, it is bound to be wrong. In order to avoid errors, the easiest way is to understand programmatically what operations it does. In other words, it was at that time that my interest in understanding PS filters from mathematical formulas was promoted.
It was not until many years later that I finally had the opportunity to visit the darkroom of a photographer friend and look at the photos posted under the red light. At that moment, I suddenly understood what a channel was. I also learned that it is most intuitive to learn PS and understand it from the optical formula.
These ideas have always influenced me to learn the particle system concept of 3DsMAX, the lens effect concept of AE, the FLASH formulaic motion concept, etc. It can be said that pursuing the reality of mathematics and physics benefited me greatly from my later study and understanding of various software.
When I say these things, I want to point the way. The important thing in learning PS is to learn what operations each tool performs mathematically, and how you can intuitively understand it and use it from an optical and physical perspective.
Although I am not an expert, I can say that I have gotten started with PS. For those who haven’t started yet, revise your learning methods. We must use professional methods to solve our work problems. Pursuing authenticity is the professional approach.