Todays session with Andy was a useful one for me. I didn't understand how batch processing worked in Photoshop. I knew it existed, but I never had to use it to be honest so I never looked in to it. Recently I've been resizing a lot of photos for the internet, and now, well...I feel like an idiot for doing them tediously one by one.

Seeing the photos on a monitor was good. We could flick through them in a slideshow to get an idea of what the final animation might look like. I'm still dying to get the images in to premier though, thats when you really get to see them in motion. At the minute I'm applying some filters and stuff to the photos and just experimenting. One thing which caught my attention is that filters which usually look shit for a still photo can really shine in motion. You can get "A Scanner Darkly" look.





Just thought I'd post a few images of what I'm doing. They might not get used, but it's good to try everything.











My first attempt was a simple one, I just tried out auto levels to get all the photos looking more professional. It was an easy way to start using batch processing and it's a viable option for my final animation. I thought it was a bit boring but then when you watch films they don't start putting crazy filters on them, so why should I? Then you realise that it's all about experimenting, so I got a bit more daring with the second set of images. I went for the cut-out filter which is pretty nifty at creating an animation effect. The colours get simplified and desaturated, so in motion it can look like a cartoon. While I was playing around with filters I thought I'd give "glowing edges" ago. I'd like to point out that I hate this filter with a passion, but like I pointed out, in motion it can come in to it's element. I'm not sure about this one right now. As you can see in the image above it gets really dark. When this is played in a 10 second clip it's going to be hard to see details or distinguish objects. The last technique I tried was a graphic novel look. By desaturating the colours, adding a sepia tone and making use of the halftone effect I think it's getting there. Until I see these in motion I can't really comment on their success, but right now I'm just giving everything a go.

Who hates waiting for their photos to be processed? I'm probably just impatient.