Media Arts and Technology

Create one or more images using blur, noise, scaling, reduced bitmap, and other standard image processing functions that will result in an evocative and/or conceptual outcome. Ed Ruscha's paintings from 1986-1990 at http://www.edruscha.com/site/workList.cfm?year=1990 is our reference for this assignment but also check the other examples shown in class. The intent is to transform an existing image or stacked images into something new through the process of transformation. Do not go into the image and assemble by hand, and stick to the basic Photoshop filters.

For this assignment, I explored the transformation of images when you resize it down to 100 pixels, so from 960 to 96, and then back up again, but under the "Nearest Neighbor" interpolation. I did this process a few times, and then played with adding noise and using a bit of gaussian blur. I came up with the following results:

I took an image overlooking the ocean from a cliff, and applied these image processing techniques. I also used other filtering techniques such as adjusting the Brightness/Contrast, Levels, and Curves. Here, I took an image that contained the edge of a plank of wood, that was placed on the top of a cliff overlooking the beach. I slightly adjusted the Brightness/Contrast, and completely lowered the Saturation before slightly adjusting the Color Balance - added a slight warm tone to the image. I took an image of two picnic tables with an orange fencing in the background, and make similar adjustments to it. I reduced the image resolution by shrinking and enlarging it, and then applying gaussian blur and adding noise to the image. I adjusted the contrast as well as saturation. I took an image taken at night, and added more gaussian blur filters as well as changing the contrast and making the image black and white. I'm not sure if I went a little too far with this image or not. The people in the background were pretty much lost in the filter, except for the person closer to the camera. I added noise to the image at the end, and put in some more contrast as well. With this image, I experimented with gaussian blurring a picture with three people close to the camera. I took out most of the saturation to try to get a washed out effect.

I went and took pictures of Isla Vista Elementary School. For this assignment, I knew that images were going to turn out to be not distinguishable, so I focused on trying to distort and blur the image but still be able to tell what the original picture is.

First I made all of the images in larger pixels and then applied several changes to them. Blurring function was mainly used and then noise function was used. Blur and noise functions were used over and over.

I worked with two series of photos that I had taken. One is of a walkway up in San Luis Obispo leading to Pismo. The other one is of close ups that I took. I wanted to experiment with the sense of recognition and pattern of the object that I had taken a closeup of.

I took two of my black and white photos and played around with noise, pixilation, halftone, bitmap, enlarging, and other photoshop techniques. The ending picture resulted in a pattern of noise.

For these series of photos i played with different blur, pixilation, and noise techniques.

For my images, I started out with the concept of looking at Time magazines' photo collection. I decided to use their 2011 archive in which they took one photo from each day of the year (http://lightbox.time.com/category/365/?iid=lb-365). To sort them, I used pictures of mine and my sisters' birthdays. I then changed the resolution by adding blur and resizing and then added noise. The last few photos were using the same techniques but rather with random images that were visually appealing.

For each of these images I added noise and a gaussian blur to varying degrees. I also adjusted the contrast and saturation. In the first image I made the original picture 200 pixels wide and then enlarged it to its original size. In the second image I also condensed the width and stretched it vertically.

These are all made from first reducing to a lower image size and then increasing it once again. This was usually done more than once time.

Other basic adjustments such as image stacking, opacity, noise, motion blur, levels, and rotation were used too.

I worked with several images around with resize, noise, different blur, curves and contrast. I am trying to distort them but keep the connection between them and the original ones. Most of the techniques were used over and over.
Man with pigeons
Flowers on the roof of garage
Humminbird
Shadow of tree