Here’s a neat kitchen gadget — a toaster that “prints out” toast. It allows you to feed multiple slices at once from the feeder at top, and spits out finished products from the bottom. It’s a concept by Othmar Muehlebach, and it won second place at a design contest in Switzerland last month.
This might be the most fun you’ll have in photoshop all year.
Presenting a tutorial to transform any image into 3D using depth maps.
Difficulty rating: 3/5 dimensions
What you will need:
● 3d glasses (red/blue lens)
● Photoshop (6.0, CS, CS2, CS3, CS4)
Step 1: Image selection
Any picture can be made 3d. But if you really want a cool 3d image you have to search for one with interesting features. I’m choosing a pic of Harper (found in the press photos for threadless) for my test as he is obviously in the zone, and also because he is creating motion with the ping pong balls. There is some good depth between him and the table including the net bottom frame. The wall also gives us some restrictions which is good.
Things to look for in your image:
● Good depth between camera and objects
● Sense of motion
● Various objects & people
● RGB image (if in cymk convert to rgb)
● Try not to get images with red, blue or white in them (as you can see in some of my tests below the red and blue mixes with the channel displacement. Greens and dark earthy colours are great.
Step 2: Setting up your Image
Open your image in photoshop and save it as a .psd document. If you’re familiar with photoshop then you know all about layers and will breeze through this part with your shortcuts.
For others here is a quick guide:
● Create a new layer from menu bar (Layer → New → New Layer)
● Name it whatever you want, or call it ‘3d’ to remember what you’re using it for.
● This layer will be used to paint over the original image.
Step 3: The Depth Map
Now the fun begins…
We’ll be using a depth map which is a grey scale representation of the distances from the camera to the objects within your image. (thanks to Rafael for the definition)
The closest object represented will be white, the farthest, black and all other objects in between will be given different shades of gray.
Study your image to locate any objects you would like to pop out in the final picture.
Step 4: Greyscaling your image (“A Whiter Shade Of Pale…”)
It’s time to brush the objects from white to greys to black.
For the people learning photoshop you can just use a hard or soft brush and work on the layer we created earlier for all your various greys. Make sure you work from white to black and greys which you can do by clicking the colour button and selecting colours on the far left of the colour picker.
For the advanced photoshop users you might want to trace the objects out with a path to get a sharper image. Fill in the paths with your various shades of grey later.
Things to watch out for:
● Make sure the entire image is covered with greys, whites and blacks
● Don’t go outside the lines of your object
Step 5: Saving your depth map
So now you have an image covered in greys. It looks pretty boring right?
This step may get a little tricky so I’ll do it in point form.
➊ Click the channels tab next to layers
➋ Select either a red, green or blue channel
➌ Right click on the chosen channel
➍ Click duplicate channel
➎ It will ask what you would like to call this channel
➏ Call it whatever you want, maybe ‘MAP’ for saving purposes
➐ Under destination, click the drop down and select NEW, also give it the name ‘MAP’
➑ Photoshop will open it as a new file (you can blur the image a little bit if you want to soften the edges)
➒ Save this file as a .psd in the same folder as the image you are currently working on
➓ Close the newly created depth map
Step 6: Applying your depth map to the original image
After going back to your original image you will want to turn off the greyscale layer that you painted over the top of your original picture.
Make sure all the channels are visible again.
As this is a menu step I’ll do point form once more.
● Click the layer of your picture
● Click channels tab and highlight the red channel by clicking it.
● Make sure all the channels are still visible but the red channel is just highlighted.
● Click the menu bar at the top for Filter → Distort → Displace
This part will require some back and forth, apple z, ctrl-z moments as you calibrate the level of 3d you need before it starts to break up. It’s kind of like a sweet spot you need to find.
Have your 3d glasses ready to test the effect of the 3d map.
As you clicked the red channel you’ll want to horizontally shift the depth map to the left. Using integer scales.
So to do this set the horizontal scale to -5
Set the vertical scale to 0 (as you don’t want it to shift up)
Make sure the displacement map option is: Stretch To Fit
Undefined Areas: Repeat Edge Pixels
Click OK. It will ask for you to choose the displacement map which should be where your original image is located on your computer. Open the one you labelled MAP (or whatever you called it)
Yo Wow! the image should be 3d!
But now we need to shift the blue channel in the opposite direction to make it more 3d.
So repeat the steps for the blue channel that you used on the red channel. However this time instead of setting horizontal scale to -5, set it to 5, as it needs to go to the right. Select the same map again and the image should be 3d!
Now you can undo a few times and try stronger shifting on the displacement values, try doing from 1-10 and see how extreme the displacement effects the image.
Step 7: Find a New Image & Repeat!
Keep practicing on different images, and adjusting different horizontal values to get the 3d effect to pop better.
For more advanced 3d effects you can also use gradients to simulate perspective and vanishing points which are effective on walls and roads.
Some more pics:
Read more please visit Source: Threadless
A taster of Empire’s exclusive, star-studded shoots paying tribute to some of the most iconic moments in movies of the last 20 years.
Keira Knightley & James McAvoy
Atonement (2007)
Photographed by Adrian Green at Big Sky Media, London, UK, on March 12, 2009.
Mel Gibson
Braveheart (1995)
Photographed by Sarah Dunn at 5th And Sunset Studios, Los Angeles, USA, on March 27, 2009.
Matt Damon
The Bourne Series (from 2002)
Photographed by Keith Bernstein at the WP Rugby High Performance Centre, Cape Town, South Africa, on March 25, 2009.
Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson & Rupert Grint The Harry Potter series (from 2001)
Photographed by Matt Holyoak at Leavesden Studios,
Herfortshire, UK, on March 20, 2009
Michael Sheen
The Queen (2006)
Photographed by Sarah Dunn at Grovenor House, London, UK, March 29, 2009.
Simon Pegg & Nick Frost
Shaun Of The Dead (2004)
Photographed by Sarah Dunn at Foto Theme,
London, UK, February 17, 2009.
Christian Bale
American Psycho (2000)
Photographed by Sarah Dunn at 5th And Sunset Studios, Los Angeles, USA, on March 16, 2009
Tom Cruise
Minority Report (2002)
Photographed by Robert Gallagher at 5th And Sunset Studios, Los Angeles, USA, on March 28, 2009.
KING of pop MICHAEL JACKSON died last night after a massive heart attack.
He collapsed and stopped breathing after an injection of a powerful painkiller named Demerol.
Jacko, 50, was said to be addicted to the drug – similar to morphine – and it is feared he took an overdose.
Paramedics who raced to his Los Angeles home after an emergency call found he had no pulse. And frantic attempts to revive him failed.
The Thriller star, who had been fighting skin cancer, was due to start a series of comeback concerts in London next month.
Instead, millions of shocked fans around the globe are today mourning a legend.
Emergency … paramedics’ monitor shows Jacko – a ‘50 year old male’ – was ‘not breathing at all’ when the 911 call was received
May 19, 2009—Meet “Ida,” the small “missing link” found in Germany that’s created a big media splash and will likely continue to make waves among those who study human origins.
In a new book, documentary, and promotional Web site, paleontologist Jorn Hurum, who led the team that analyzed the 47-million-year-old fossil seen above, suggests Ida is a critical missing-link species in primate evolution (interactive guide to human evolution from National Geographic magazine).
(Among the team members was University of Michigan paleontologist Philip Gingerich, a member of the Committee for Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society, which owns National Geographic News.)
The fossil, he says, bridges the evolutionary split between higher primates such as monkeys, apes, and humans and their more distant relatives such as lemurs.
“This is the first link to all humans,” Hurum, of the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway, said in a statement. Ida represents “the closest thing we can get to a direct ancestor.”
Ida, properly known as Darwinius masillae, has a unique anatomy. The lemur-like skeleton features primate-like characteristics, including grasping hands, opposable thumbs, clawless digits with nails, and relatively short limbs.
“This specimen looks like a really early fossil monkey that belongs to the group that includes us,” said Brian Richmond, a biological anthropologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the study, published this week in the journal PLoS ONE.
But there’s a big gap in the fossil record from this time period, Richmond noted. Researchers are unsure when and where the primate group that includes monkeys, apes, and humans split from the other group of primates that includes lemurs.
“[Ida] is one of the important branching points on the evolutionary tree,” Richmond said, “but it’s not the only branching point.”
At least one aspect of Ida is unquestionably unique: her incredible preservation, unheard of in specimens from the Eocene era, when early primates underwent a period of rapid evolution. (Explore a prehistoric time line.)
“From this time period there are very few fossils, and they tend to be an isolated tooth here or maybe a tailbone there,” Richmond explained. “So you can’t say a whole lot of what that [type of fossil] represents in terms of evolutionary history or biology.”
In Ida’s case, scientists were able to examine fossil evidence of fur and soft tissue and even picked through the remains of her last meal: fruits, seeds, and leaves.
What’s more, the newly described “missing link” was found in Germany’s Messel Pit. Ida’s European origins are intriguing, Richmond said, because they could suggest—contrary to common assumptions—that the continent was an important area for primate evolution.
Read more abt this at
Peru Modern Architecture – if only I could decide what’s more fascinating: the house or the location?
The only thing that rivals the awe-inspiring cliff-top view in Punta Misterio, Peru, is the amazing Lefevre Beach House designed by Longhi Architects. Overlooking the waters of the Pacific Ocean, this contemporary home blends raw nature and modern innovation, landscape and architecture. Built into a rocky cliff, this cool house boasts sand-garden roofs that bring a bit of the desert landscape into the design. Contemporary stone tiles surround a rooftop lap pool – a luxury oasis in this desert setting. And cantilevered over the edge of this cliff, a glass box boldly hangs above the ocean, connecting desert, water and architecture. Inside, expansive windows invite the magnificent outdoors in. Beyond the views framed by expansive windows and sliding glass doors, nature comes alive inside this house on the rock walls, sleek stone floor tiles, skylights, and the balconies and terraces that wrap the home’s facade. Longhi Architects
via Arch Daily
photo credit: CHOlon Photography
How much better would you feel about drinking juice from a box if they box actually looked just like the fruit you were about to imbibe?
That was the question raised by Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa when he created these amazing looking (and fresh!) fruit juice boxes.
We think the banana and fruit designs are delicious and pretty, but we’re not really sure what the bottom ones are. Are they coconuts or kiwis, and is that box really appetizing? Can you imagine a giant Tropicana jug covered in orange peel? Now that would be cool!
If you carry a Blackberry, iPod or iPhone, do you have to look like you have no style at all? Cute accessory bags are fine for weekend hiking trips, just like boring “business like” cases are fine for, well, boring people, but for the power lunch with the merger guys or cocktails in high places, you’ll want this bag made of gold python-print Italian leather.
Grab you platinum credit cards, a few large bills, your well-travelled passport, and your ever-present favourite device/s — there’s a slot for each in this baby — and you are set. The bags are hand-made in Spain, the internal lining is satin and the colour options are gold and black with new – Anthracite, Pearl and Cobalt Blue with a hot pink snake trim.. Oh, and you need to decide if you’d prefer python or rattler. Of course, you could choose the chic creamy-soft lamb but isn’t that a bit too tame? The gold python Blackberry clutch is available exclusively through us. How much you ask? $340.
Jacquet Fritz Junior creates some amazing face sculptures with used toilet paper rolls.
Continue reading for more:
