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Posts Tagged ‘Alien’

How to Add Vintage Frame Overlays Using Alien Skin Exposure X

20 Mar

Here is a quick and snazzy tip on adding some cool retro and vintage frame overlays to your photographs, including polaroids and borders, using Alien Skin Exposure X. It’s easy as pie, and takes seconds! Unlike Photoshop, adding frames in Exposure X does not require masking, or the use of layers.

adding-vintage-frames-tutorial-alien-skin-exposure_0007

But first… why add frames?

  1. You may be going for a certain look and want your images to stand out.
  2. You may want to use your images in scrapbooks and blogs that have  a specific theme.
  3. You might just be feeling super creative and want to do something different.

Whatever your reason, it’s a fun experiment, and of course, highly dependent on your taste.

Here’s how to add a frame

Open Alien Skin Exposure X (the latest version is 10, but previous versions work just the same). Click the + icon on the top left corner of the window to add folders from your computer. Choose the folder you want to add, and double click. You may notice that when you open the folder, your images will be initially displayed as a Grid as shown on the second photo below.

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Click Fit on the upper right corner of the window and you will see (as shown on the first photo) that your chosen image is enlarged, but you can still see the rest of the set, in the thumbnails just below. Once you have your image, look on the right panel, and bring up the Overlays option by clicking on the arrow. Tick the border, then click on the box showing the overlay and a pop up window, giving you a variety of overlay options, comes up. You can scroll through these options to find the overlay you want to use.

You can work on each photo individually or select all using Cmd/Ctrl + A, and your chosen settings will be applied to all the images. TypeCmd/Ctrl + D to deselect, and click on one photo to work on it individually. Don’t forget to use the Overall Intensity slider on the top right corner of the window, it works like the opacity slider in Photoshop. You also have a selection of view options that allow you to see the various before and after splits, as shown on the image below. In this case, the left half of the photo has the overlay and the right half shows the original. This is helpful in gauging the intensity of the overlay applied, and its effect on the original image.

adding-vintage-frames-tutorial-alien-skin-exposure_0001

After you have applied your frames on each image, you now need to export them. Select all the images using Cmd/Ctrl + A, then either go to the Exposure bar File menu and select Export, or simply typeCmd/Ctrl + E, and you can export your new images to a folder you designate. I suggest that you keep the suggested file suffix, or change it to something of your choice, so you know these are the new files with the Exposure edits, should you want to keep them in the same folder. You will still have your original images in tact and untouched, in case you want to revisit them later.

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Here are the images that I used in this tutorial, with the added frames using Alien Skin Exposure X.

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I hope you enjoyed this quick tip. Have fun experimenting with frames as well as other special effects. Do share any other quick tips on adding vintage frames in the comments below.

This week on dPS we are featuring articles on special effects. Check out the others that have already been published here:

  • How to Photograph the Full Band of the Milky Way
  • Fire Spinning with Steel Wool – A Special Effects Tutorial
  • Special Effect – How to Create Multiple Flash Exposures in a Single Frame
  • Stacking Light Trails for Night Photography Special Effects
  • 26 Unique Special Effects Photos to Spark Your Creativity
  • Weekly Photography Challenge – Special Effects
  • Tips for Shooting Through Objects to Create a Special Effect

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The post How to Add Vintage Frame Overlays Using Alien Skin Exposure X by Lily Sawyer appeared first on Digital Photography School.


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Augmented Reality: Aerial Footage of Distorted Alien Landscapes

16 Feb

[ By Steph in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

alien landscapes 1

“Technology can help nature understand itself,” says AUJIK, a self-proclaimed cult that melds faux mythologies, fictitious landscapes and wildly distorted architecture with a philosophy they call “animism for the Digital Age.” The quasi-spiritualist Japanese collective gives us a look into the world of their imagination via simulated drone footage, swooping us over and through their vision of nature awakened in a new way by technological integration.

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“Since the late 2000’s, the online presence of mysterious nature/tech cult AUJIK quietly spread across video platforms featuring proposed active members and fabricated histories. These virtual appearances suggest decades-old lineage through theoretical schematics outlining their transgression emission, citing faux reports arguing the life of inanimate matter and modern forms of animism from fictional anthropologists and philosophers.”

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“For AUJIK, nature is divided into Refined and Primitive categories. This separation presents a conflict that is the root of all chaos in the world, and in order to reach a sublime state, AUJIK generates rituals to harmonize the organic and synthetic realms. Refined nature consists of evolved technology such as robotics, artificial intelligence, cybernetics, DNA manipulations, and body enhancements. The Primitive includes fauna, flora, and the Earth itself with its precious stones, minerals, and metals.”

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Natural settings, rocks, plants and even living creatures become something more than themselves, infused with a new power, growing in a way that they never actually could in our current reality, bound as it is by the laws of physics. Digital forces invade and transform everything from dark forests to dense cities, warping the architecture, creating a bizarre parallel universe.

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[ By Steph in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

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Alien Skin releases non-destructive photo editor Exposure X

11 Dec

Alien Skin has launched Exposure X, its non-destructive photo editor and film emulation software for Mac OS X and Windows. Exposure X is the successor to Exposure 7, and functions as both a plug-in for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop as well as a standalone editor. Features include a revamped user interface, RAW image editing, and an import system that doesn’t use a catalog file.

Plans to release Exposure X were announced weeks ago. As promised, the software combines simplified design with non-destructive editing tools for organizing, editing, processing, and storing photos. Exposure X doesn’t use a catalog file, instead opening photos directly from the source folder. The interface, meanwhile, does away with separate modules, presenting a full set of tools at all times, according to Alien Skin. Analog looks can be applied to images, including Kodachrome, Lo-Fi, Daguerreotypes, and more. 

Exposure X is a free upgrade for Exposure 7 owners and $ 99 USD for those with other Exposure versions. The software is $ 149 USD for new customers.

Via: Alien Skin

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Alien Skin Exposure X ‘nondestructive’ photo editor to launch by year’s end

24 Nov

Alien Skin Software plans to release a new ‘nondestructive’ photo editing application called Exposure X by the end of the year. Exposure X will include several changes over Exposure 7, including improvements to the user interface, file management tools, and new keyboard shortcuts. Read more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Space Architecture: Astronomers Sight Alien ‘Megastructures’

25 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

space observatory seti

Scientists and alien life seekers alike are all looking to solve the mystery of a distant star, activity around which, according to astronomers including Jason Wright of Penn State University, suggests a “swarm of megastructures” (images via SETI).

allan telescope array

While no one has sighted little green men, the phenomenon is perplexing. “Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilisation to build,” says Wright. The puzzle centers around a series of dimming events around a star to which no conventional scientific explanation (such as dust clouds or passing planets) seems to apply. The star is in the wrong stage of maturity to be flickering as it appears to be without some external factor yet to be discovered.

seti superearth

Wright is not alone, and we may not be either. The anomaly was first spotted by citizen volunteers (Planet Hunters) drafted to look for planets around stars through the Kepler Space Telescope, then subsequently confirmed by observing scientists. “We are looking at [KIC 8462852,  near the Milky Way] with the Allen Telescope Array,” said Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California. “We’d never seen anything like this star,” says Tabetha Boyajian, a postdoc at Yale. “It was really weird. We thought it might be bad data or movement on the spacecraft, but everything checked out.”

One of the most fascinating things about this find is that this is all so difficult to visualize. We have no high-resolution imagery that would making the determination of ‘natural’ versus ‘artificial’ easy to make or the problem simpler to understand. Instead, we are left with theories and interpretations of data, which so far imply a non-natural space project that could be anything from an orbital solar array to a space colony under construction or even an outright attempt to reflect light in patterns in order to contact other civilizations. And while there are other possibilities, none of the current nature-centric suggestions hold up to scrutiny as yet. Given the history of such finds, one should expect to be disappointed, but for now the mystery remains a source of excitement for scientists and civilians alike.

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[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

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Alien Architecture: Surreal Cities for Future Worlds

25 Aug

[ By Steph in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

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Will the architecture of the distant future be recognizable to us based on what we have built up to this point in human history, or beyond what we’re able to conceive? Take a look at any retro-futuristic architectural visions and you’ll most likely see structures influenced by the era in which they were created, but one contemporary illustrator is attempting to take such speculative creations into deep reaches of the imagination.

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Graphic designer Mike Winkelman has created a series of digital illustrations that combine hyperrealism with structures that can seem physically impossible, but in a maybe-someday kind of way. Unlike the kind of fantasy architecture that feels totally dreamlike, such as floating houses, these visions often seem to employ technology that hasn’t yet been created.

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Winkelman (known as Beeple) is on his eight consecutive year of drawing something every day, and hasn’t missed a single day in all that time. He uses Cinema 4D, Octane Renderer, X-particles, Zbrush and other tools to build these sci-fi worlds, some of which seem like they could be connected in an overarching narrative.

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It’s the kind of work, presented sans commentary or explanation, that really gets your brain going imagining what the story could be for each piece. Dozens of these drawings can be found on the artist’s Behance, and select prints are available on Society 6.

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Alien Skin offers Exposure 7 with Raw support

11 Dec

Alien Skin software has announced Exposure 7, a new version of its flagship film emulation software. This iteration introduces non-destructive Raw editing, supporting files from a number of Canon and Nikon cameras as well as a handful of mirrorless models from Fujifilm, Olympus and Sony. Read more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Abandoned Alien Homestead: Forsaken UFO House in Florida

14 Jul

[ By Steve in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

UFOhouse_mainx

Painted pink and encrusted with graffiti, the abandoned UFO house in Homestead, Florida, has a backstory as mysterious as its otherworldly architecture.

Lions & Tigers & Bears, Oh My!

abandoned Florida UFO house

abandoned Florida UFO house

Located in Homestead, Florida, the so-called “UFO House” (or “Alien House”) was built around 1974 when the town’s population was roughly 15,000. Forty years later, Homestead is home to just over 60,000 yet the UFO House, situated at 37350 Southwest 214th Avenue, is still remarkably isolated… as if the original owner wasn’t interested in having neighbors, EVAR. Credit Abandoned Florida for many of these crisp, clear & creepy images.

abandoned Florida UFO house

abandoned Homestead Florida UFO house

abandoned Homestead Florida UFO house

abandoned Homestead Florida UFO house

Lessee now, why would someone of obvious financial means in ’70s south Florida take steps to ensure exclusivity above and beyond the call? One doesn’t have to consult Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs to arrive at a plausible explanation and a decades-long rumor mill has helped fill in the gaps. The prevailing theory goes something like this: the original builder-owner was allegedly involved in drug trafficking using the front of being an exotic animal importer. The contraband was supposedly hidden in compartments built into the floors of the animal cages. Say hello to my leetle friend, Tony Montana the Tiger!

abandoned Homestead Florida UFO house

abandoned Homestead Florida UFO house

“My friend lived down a dirt road from this place,” relates someone who visited the UFO House around 1979. “It was out in the middle of agriculture fields off of Palm Drive as I remember. We used to ride her dirt bike down there to look at these exotic animals that were caged in back of the house, mostly big cats like tigers and jaguars. We had heard the rumors about it being a drug smuggler using the animals as a cover and one day when we went around the outside of the property a man came out of the house, jumped into a car (old Monte Carlo?) and chased us through the fields. We were terrified and he wouldn’t let up until he caught up with us (we were just 2 twelve year old girls tearing along these dirt roads on a tiny dirt bike). He finally caught us and told us not to ever go back there.” Thanks to Flickr user KACP (Kris Alan Carter Photography) for the above images.

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Abandoned Alien Homestead Forsaken Ufo House In Florida

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Alien Skin Software’s Exposure 6 now available

11 Jun

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Alien Skin Software has launched an update to its popular photography effects software, Exposure. Announced in April, Exposure 6 has a new processing engine for instant image effect previews, a new user interface for a faster workflow and tools for ‘Bokeh.’ It’s available for download now at $ 149 for new users and as a $ 69 upgrade for existing users. Read more

News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Alien Skin Software announces Exposure 6 plugin

29 Apr

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Alien Skin Software has released the latest version of its flagship photography effects software. Exposure 6 now includes a ‘Bokeh’ focus and lens-simulation feature, an updated image processing engine for instant previews, enhanced user interface for quick workflow, and unlimited creative texture control. The analog film emulation and creative effects software integrates with Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, and Aperture or can be launched as a stand-alone program. Learn more

News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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