There are a multitude of photoshop tutorials on the internet showing various techniques, but most of them are very specific- too specific. One tutorial I found breaks from that pattern and proves to be especially useful in multiple ways.
This tutorial in particular described how one might make a picture appear to be a film photograph while also showing one of the most fundamental aspects of photoshop: the filter.
The picture I started with was a color photograph- but I soon made it into a film grained image with selective color.
Immediately, I set the saturation to zero to make it black and white, and then began following the tutorial. It first explained how to use a filter in combination with a layer- in a method it called "non-destructive editing". Soon I had created a film style image, but I wanted to try one more thing.
I wanted to give a close-up to exhibit the grain, it's really remarkable how much it looks like film.
Finally I decided to do something on my own- selectively color a piece of the image. I used the magnetic lasso to select a piece of my filter layer and then deleted it, leaving that piece of the background unfiltered. This created a sort of selective color effect.
Saturday morning cartoons were a large part of my life when I was young- they were something I looked forward to fervently each week. I've since grown, however, one cartoon in particular remains in my life: Adventure Time.
Adventure Time is a cartoon hosted by Cartoon Network about a boy (Finn) and his dog (Jake), and their adventures in the Land of Ooo. It that has an aesthetic all its own with unusual characters and protean environments.
The characters are interestingly designed, but where the art design really shines is with its backdrops. Each set is intricately laced with subtle details, for example Finn and Jake's home is a hollowed out tree with a multitude of details.
Perhaps the reason I so enjoy the show is that it has an undeniable sense of humor regarding itself, the art is extremely varied and interesting, and the undertones are surprisingly adult- most children would miss this of course. (For example, the land of Ooo is actually a post-war zone. The war is referred to as the Great Mushroom War, which perhaps refers to the dropping of atomic bombs across the land.) Overall the show is just amazing, and should be given a watch by all people of all ages.
