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Posts Tagged ‘Object’

Adobe teases new Sensei-powered Object Selection Tool for easy masks and more

31 Oct

Adobe has shared a new sneak peek of its new Sensei-powered Object Selection Tool that will soon be available inside Adobe Photoshop CC.

As demonstrated in the video, the new tool uses Adobe Sensei AI to automatically select an object within the frame when a selection is made via the Marquee or Lasso selection modes. It’s also possible to add or remove individual elements within the image using the same Object Selection Tool for more precise edits.

This new feature appears to be a more refined version of the Select Subject Tool Adobe revealed in early 2018. It’s unknown when this new feature will make its way into Adobe Photoshop CC, but it seems as though teaser videos like this are released no more than a month or two before the feature makes it into the public version of the app.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Challenge Yourself by Photographing One Object [video]

01 Feb

The post Challenge Yourself by Photographing One Object appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

In this great video from COOPH, they ask you to challenge yourself by photographing one object!

Will you do the challenge? If so, show us your results in the comments below!

?

Look for a versatile object that allows you to photograph it in different ways.

Take your object and try the following techniques:

Techniques

1. Get texture

Go close-up or use a macro lens to create different effects

2. Play with Colors

Add color using crayons, pencils or textas. Elevate your object to create bokeh with the colored background.
Experiment with color gels. Make contrast with color.

 

3. Experiment with Black and White

Use dramatic lighting.

4. Shoot Silhouettes

Cut some wire and attach to your object. Shoot in front of a bright light source. Bounce your side light with a mirror to create a glowing silhouette.

5. Cut and Peel it

Cut it into shapes. Use a whiteboard to reflect and a translucent surface to place your object on. Place your object on the translucent board, and backlight it.

6. Shape it

Make some creative cuts. Find interesting patterns that match and place your object onto it.

 

You may also find the following helpful:

How to Use Colored Gels for Creative Off-Camera Flash Photography

Tips for Fast and Effective Studio Product Photography

Reflections on Product Photography

How to Make Funky Colorful Images of Ordinary Plastic Objects Using a Polarizing Filter

Add Interest to your Background with Colored Gels

How to Backlight Translucent Objects for Dramatic Effect

10 Amazing Photography Tricks You Can Do at Home with Everyday Objects

How to Use Backlight to Create Incredible Images

 

The post Challenge Yourself by Photographing One Object appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.


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SLC-0L-02: Shiny Object, Using an iPhone and the Sun

26 May

Whether photographing people or objects, how you approach your lighting is far more important than what camera and lighting gear you use.

To illustrate, today we are going to photograph a complex, mirrored surface—an alto saxophone—using just an iPhone for our camera and the sun as our light source. Read more »
Strobist

 
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This is why Google’s impressive object removal tool was never released

19 May

At its 2018 I/O developer conference Google presented a number of improvements to its Photos app, but there was no talk about an exciting feature that was demoed the previous year: an object removal tool that automatically removes obstructions like fences, window panes from your photos.

The feature caused quite a buzz when it was demoed in early 2017, and people have been waiting on it ever since… so why has it disappeared? The answer is simpler than you might think. According to an interview with the Google Photos team on XDA, object removal was simply de-prioritized in the development queue, giving way to other AI-powered features in Google Lens.

In the interview, Google team members said that the technology exists and could be deployed, but that Google prioritizes products based on what is most important for people, and other machine learning applications were prioritized over object removal. This means the technology might eventually be implemented into Google Photos or another Google app if the company changes its mind (and development queue), but we probably should not hold our breath.

When it was first demoed, object removal looked impressive and exceedingly useful. As you can see in the video above, the feature was shown as 100 percent automatic, without the need for any manual editing. Sure, professional photographers might want a bit more control over their cloning, but the vast majority of Google Photos users probably don’t know what the Clone Stamp tool or Content Aware Fill even is.

If you’ve been waiting for object removal to finally make an appearance on your smartphone, knowing the source code is still stored on some hard drive at Google HQ might not be much of a consolation… but least we know the reason why it has never been released.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Concrete Like You’ve Never Seen It: 15 Unexpected Furniture & Object Designs

21 Sep

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

Concrete might typically be cold, hard, impersonal and impermeable, but treat it right and it’ll soften right up into surprisingly comfortable, accessible and usable everyday items, from pens and iPhone skins to rocking chairs and squishy-looking seating. Cast it from pillowy molds, 3D-print it in squiggles, brush it onto highly detailed objects, impregnate it into textiles or imprint it with delicate textures and you’ll have objects full of intriguing contradictions.

Concrete 3D Printer Enables Innovation

This 3D printer by Dutch company ROHACO spits out concrete in all manner of shapes, even squiggly lines, through a swivel head attached to a hose from a concrete mixer. Not only does this enable concrete to take unprecedented forms, it makes it possible to 3D print entire homes unsupervised, with the kinds of curves and details that would normally take an extraordinary amount of work.

3D-Printed Concrete Canoe

3D printing with concrete makes it possible to produce things like the skelETHon 3D printed concrete canoe, which won first place at the 16th Concrete Canoe Regatta competition in Germany. That’s right, it’s not even the first canoe to be made from concrete! The inner frame of this one is made of concrete reinforced with stiff steel fibers, while the shell is a two- to three-millimeter-thick waterproof concrete skin.

Concrete & Canvas Seating

These objects are a bit of a contradiction: simultaneously appearing soft and hard. That’s because they’re both, technically. ‘Fabric’ is an outdoor seating collection by Miriam Estévez, wherein soft fabric poufs are soaked in a liquid concrete and allowed to dry in order to create a surprisingly strong, durable, waterproof result.

Traditional Chair Covered in Concrete

You might imagine that someone took a mold of a traditional chair and then cast it with solid concrete, producing the detailed form you see before you. The truth is actually much simpler. Bentu Design teamed up with Guangzhou fine arts students to carefully cover an existing chair with concrete mixture, making sure to preserve every detail, from the scallops along the wooden frame at the top to each individual upholstery nail.

Delicate Persian & Islamic Patterned Tables

Concrete doesn’t take on the adjective ‘delicate’ easily, but every now and then, something qualifies. This disc-shaped tabletop, just a few millimeters thick, balances on the neck of a water-filled jug to form a beautiful recycled coffee table. Milan-based design studio Daevas printed the top with a traditional Persian pattern.

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Concrete Like Youve Never Seen It 15 Unexpected Furniture Object Designs

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[ By SA Rogers in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

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Pencil Art: 50+ Sculptures Explore the Hidden Beauty of This Utilitarian Object

04 Sep

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

A pencil is usually a tool, but what happens when artists subvert its common usage, transforming it into a medium for sculpting instead? Extraordinary sculpting skills paired with a steady hand and a magnifying glass make it possible to carve amazingly tiny figures out of the pencil’s lead. Some artists see flowers or portraits in cast-off pencil shavings, or glue masses of the writing instruments together to sculpt and sand them into new forms punctuated by the graphite or colored pigments inside each pencil’s core.

Pencil Lead Carvings by Salavat Fidai

HBO Asia recently commissioned an incredible set of Game of Thrones-themed pencil lead carvings from Russian artist Salavat Fidai, including the sigils of each House, a White Walker, the dragons and the Iron Throne. It takes Fidai about 6 to 12 hours to sculpt each one using a craft knife, a magnifying glass and a microscope. The artist says the most challenging piece in the collection was the throne, which took over three weeks to perfect. Of course, the Game of Thrones pieces are just the latest works from Fidai, who has also carved tiny architecture, superheroes and other fictional characters, and much more.

Vases Made of Pencils by Studio Markunpoika

Hundreds of pencils are glued together into a solid mass and then carved on a machine lathe to create vases and other decorative objects, revealing the insides of the pencils. Studio Markunpoika describes their process: “‘Amalgamated’ is a collection which explores the relationship of a mass produced ‘tool’ and its individual purpose. The beauty of the pencil as an object seems to go unnoticed if utilized only for their primary purpose. ‘Amalgamated’ is a visual and tactile investigation using pencils as a raw material. This holistic principle has been the fundament for creating this set of vases; let the pencils become a thing themselves.”

Pencil Lead Carvings by Dalton Ghetti

The most impressive works by Dalton Ghetti are undoubtedly those which turn single pencil leads into chains. You can’t help but stare at each one for a while, wondering how he managed to pull them off. The fact that the artist has been refining his process since childhood might tell you a thing or two about how he’s able to pull pieces like these off – or that some of his pieces can take months or even years to complete. He also carves his tiny sculptures without the aid of a microscope or magnifying glass, using sewing needles and razor blades.

Pencil Sculptures by Jennifer Maestre

The colorful bristling creatures of Jennifer Maestre seem to have come from the depths of the sea, their appendages recalling the natural shapes of urchins, anemones, coral, octopi and jellyfish. The artist uses colored pencils as a medium for her unusual sculptures. “The spines of the urchin, so dangerous yet beautiful, serve as an explicit warning against contact. The alluring texture of the spines draws the touch in spite of the possible consequences. The tension unveiled, we feel push and pull, desire and repulsion. The sections of pencils present aspects of sharp and smooth for two very different textural and aesthetic experiences. Paradox and surprise are integral in my choice of materials.”

Pencil Lead Carvings by Cindy Chinn

Cindy Chinn takes advantage of the length of graphite contained within a pencil, tunnel-like inside the wood, and translates it into lines of marching elephants or trains. Her ‘Elephant Walk’ series was commissioned by the California-based Epiphany Elephant Museum. Of the train piece, Chinn says “This piece was designed using straight lead pieces for the rails, with the tiny carved train placed and securely glued on top of the rails. The train engine is only 3/16” of an inch tall. The pencil is 5-5/8” long and mounted in a wood shadowbox frame as shown in the photos.”

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Pencil Art 50 Sculptures Explore The Hidden Beauty Of This Utilitarian Object

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[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Sony releases machine vision sensor capable of 1000 fps object tracking

17 May

Sony has released a new machine vision CMOS sensor, and though it’s destined for assembly lines and robots, it’s still interesting to us. Like the chip in the RX100 V, the IMX382 is a stacked, backside-illuminated chip capable of 1000 fps imaging. And, like that sensor, its stacked design includes signal processing circuitry in the chip. Unlike the RX100 V’s sensor, though, the 1.27MP IMX382 conducts video processing and subject recognition in parallel, so that it outputs both a ‘viewing’ stream and a ‘sensing’ stream simultaneously.

The sensing processing uses color and brightness information obtained from the sensor, enabling incredibly fast subject identification and tracking at 1000 fps. You can see what that looks like in the video below:

At a little over 1 megapixel this sensor is not destined for a smartphone or camera. And of course those applications get more complicated since they also have to re-focus a lens to keep up with a moving subject, but it’s interesting to see what levels of recognition and tracking possible when you bring signal processing to the chip itself.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Samsung virtual assistant rumored to use camera for object identification

21 Jan

In its upcoming flagship smartphone Galaxy S8 Samsung is expected to implement a Siri or Google Assistant style virtual assistant named Bixby. According to sources of SamMobile, Bixby will include visual search capabilities and be able to analyze a photograph and identify objects within the frame. The system will also perform optical character recognition on visible text. Users will be able to launch the service via the camera app or a dedicated button on the side of the device. 

We have seen apps with similar functionalities before, for example Google Goggles, but Bixby is reportedly aiming to take things to the next level by offering a higher degree of interchange with other applications installed on the phone. For example, users will be able to use detected objects or text to order on shopping apps or perform searches.  

The Bixby technology is likely to have come from Viv Labs, a startup created by former Apple employees and Siri co-founders Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer, and Chris Bringham. Viv Labs was acquired by Samsung last October. It’s not quite clear at this point when the Galaxy S8 will be revealed to the public. It could be at the Mobile World Congress at the end of February or on a dedicated event as late as April. In any case, we’re looking forward to the camera being used in innovative ways on the new Samsung. 

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Unidentified Floating Object: Sea Vessel With Underwater Lookout

17 May

[ By Steph in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

unidentified floating object 1

Here’s one UFO you won’t be seeing in the skies, but rather on the surface of the sea, half of its iconic shape disguised beneath the waves in the form of an underwater viewing dome. The ‘Unidentified Floating Object’ concept is the newest weird watercraft design from Italian water transportation company Jet Capsule, envisioned as a semi-autonomous floating home complete with a vegetable garden, water generator and wind turbine.

unidentified floating object 6

unidentified floating object 2

You won’t get very far very fast, as this thing reaches a top speed of just 3.5mph, but it’s not meant to be a speedboat or even really a means of getting from one place to another. It’s a recreational watercraft crossed with a vacation home, offering habitable areas both above and below the surface of the water, including a sub-level bathroom where you can shower while gazing out at the surrounding marine life.

unidentified floating object 5

unidentified floating object 7

unidentified floating object 9

The flat ring around the central sphere functions as an exercise track for jogging or biking, and there’s a plantable strip so you can grow grass, flowers, trees or food. Opening the top hatch enables the collection of both solar energy and rainwater, and underwater turbines gather energy from the currents. There’s an anchor on an elastic cord so you can stay in place when you want to. The top cabin features a built-in kitchen, semi-circular dining area and lots of windows for taking in the views, and the whole thing runs on a battery-powered jet motor.

unidentified floating objet 3

unidentified floating object 4

unidentified floating object 8

Jet Capsule is about to seek funding to create the first working prototype, with a Kickstarter launch reportedly coming soon, so it looks like they’re serious about getting this thing into the hands of consumers. No word yet on an estimated retail price.

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Lockheed Lounge: Meet The World’s Most Expensive Object

30 Apr

[ By Steph in Design & Furniture & Decor. ]

lockheed lounge 1

What about this chaise lounge makes it worth the equivalent of approximately ten middle-class suburban homes, or 5,000 Ikea couches? The Lockheed Lounge by Marc Newson set a record for the world’s most expensive design object created by a living person after it sold for more than £2 million (over $ 3 million USD at today’s exchange rate.)

lockheed lounge 2

One prototype, four artist’s proofs and ten editions of the seat have been created since the Lockheed Lounge’s design in 1990, and it’s perhaps best known to people outside the design community for being prominently featured in Madonna’s 1993 video for the song ‘Rain.’ It’s this particular lounge that got snapped up for millions – over the phone, no less – when it recently went up for auction.

Screen Shot 2015-04-29 at 11.37.21 AM

The aircraft-inspired furniture design was an immediate success when an early version of it debuted at a Sydney gallery, and it’s been in demand among the world’s wealthiest design collectors ever since, especially since the shape was refined to become smoother and more free-flowing. It’s made of thin aluminum plates welded together and riveted from the inside. The core is made of fiberglass-reinforced plastic.

The sale cements Newson’s status as one of the world’s highest-grossing designers. His works collectively brought in over £8.5 million in April alone.

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