Cinemagraphs are a combination of video and still photography, visit webthumb usually more of a photograph with some motion. The term cinemagraph was coined by Jamie Beck and Kevin Berg. Cinemagraphs are actually animated gifs, no rx which have been around for a long time, but they have a cinematic quality and retain the feel of a photograph.
A photographer friend of mine, Jenny Chen, was visting Vancouver so we decided to collaborate on a photoshoot and use the opportunity to try to create some cinemagraphs. It was the first time either of us had tried this. I followed an excellent video tutorial, which demonstrates how to create cinemagraphs using Photoshop CS5 Extended.
I love these animated gifs and wanted to try something like that myself. I did a photoshoot a couple of months ago and used a fog machine to create a misty background. It would be cool to show the mist swirling around in a short animated gif. The original photo had some mist, but I wanted to add some more in Photoshop and then animate it.
Original:
Original Photo
Animated:
Fog Animation Effect
Photoshop CS5
Level of difficulty: Intermediate. You should be familiar with working with layers, resizing images and using the warp tool.
Create the mist layers:
(Click on the screen shots to zoom)
Create a blank layer above the edited/retouched photo
Paint some mist on the blank layer & name the layer Mist 1. I used these mist brushes by SpiritSighs.
Mist Brushes
Copy the layer, name it Mist 2 and warp it using Edit => Transform => Warp. You can warp the mist to make it look like it has drifted around.
Copy the warped layer and repeat with another warp (Mist 3).
Copy the above layer and warp it again (Mist 4). You will now have the original image plus four mist layers above it. Click on Fig. 1 to expand.
Fig. 1 Layer palette with mist layers
Create the Animation Frames:
Select the 5 layers and open the animation window (Window => animation - Fig. 2). Make sure you are in frame view (Fig. 3).
Fig. 2 Opening the Animation Window
Fig. 3 Animation window in frame view
Click on the frame and duplicate it by dragging it to the new frame icon. Repeat this four times to give a total of 5 frames (Fig. 4 & 5).
Fig. 4 Duplicating the frame
Fig. 5 Duplicating the frame
Click on the first frame. Go to the layers panel and make only the base layer (retouch) visible (Fig. 6).
Fig. 6 Click on the eye to hide, click again to reveal layer
Click on the second frame and make the retouch layer on the Mist 1 layer visible using the layers panel
Click on the third frame and make the base layer & the Mist 2 layer visible.
Click on the fourth frame and make the base layer & the Mist 3 layer visible
Click on the fifth frame & make the base layer & the Mist 4 layer visible
Select all 5 frames by clicking on the first and Shift-Clicking on the last one.
Change the frame delay time to 0.1 (Fig. 7) You can try different timings depending on what works best for your project.
Fig. 7 Change frame delay
Tween the animation to make it run more smoothly
Click on the first frame and Shift-click on the second frame
Go to the animation menu and choose Tween... (Fig. 8)
Fig. 8 Animation Menu
Enter 10 in the "frames to add box" and select all layers, and position & opacity (Fig. 9)
Fig. 9 Tween Dialog Box
Select frames 12 & 13 and repeat the Tween for these two frames. Repeat this for frames 23 & 24 and 34 & 35 (See Fig. 10)
Fig. 10 Tweening Frames
Duplicate the last frame (45) and move it to the front
Tween the first and second frames as before. This makes the animation smoothly cycle back to the beginning.
Make sure the repeat mode is "Forever"
Save everything!
Check it out - when you press the play button you will have a pretty smooth animation!
Save the animated gif
Resize the image to the size that you want (I used a height of 375 pixels because it gave me a file size under 2 MB). Go to Image => Image Size and select the size that you want, making sure to lock the aspect ratio.
Go to File => Save for Web & Devices.
Set to "forever"
Select Gif and Save (Fig. 11)
Fig. 11 Saving the GIF
To view the animated gif, open it with your browser.
I'm looking forward to doing some more of these animations and have lots of ideas for future shoots! If you have tried it, please share by posting a link in the comments section.
I am a freelance photographer located in the beautiful city of Vancouver, Canada. I'm passionate https://www.glenerinpharmacy.com/buy-viagra-online/ about photography and will work with you to get that shot that makes you go "wow!". Anything from portrait to glamour and fashion, and edgy conceptual shoots. I'm open to ideas and love collaborative work. My goal is to get that shot that will blow you away!
Check out my portfolio! I am a freelance photographer located in the beautiful city of Vancouver, Canada. I'm passionate about photography and will work with you to get that shot that makes you go "wow!". Anything from portrait to glamour and fashion, and edgy conceptual shoots. I'm open to ideas and love collaborative work. My goal is to get that shot that will blow you away!
Check out my portfolio! I am following my passion for photography! After 19 years working in the corporate world as a scientist, approved I made the switch to running my own photography business in 2009. As a kid I was developing my own film and printing my photos, view and later I got more serious with a 35mm camera. I bought my first digital camera in 1999 and love both film and digital today. In 2007, troche I started taking photography courses at Langara College, one of the top photography programs in Canada. I expect to complete the program by the end of the 2010.
Check out my portfolio! I am a freelance photographer located in the beautiful city of Vancouver, Canada. I'm passionate about photography and will work with you to get that shot that makes you go "wow!". Anything from portrait to glamour and fashion, and edgy conceptual shoots. I'm open to ideas and love collaborative work. My goal is to get that shot that will blow you away!
Check out my portfolio! I am following my passion for photography! After 19 years working in the corporate world as a scientist, approved I made the switch to running my own photography business in 2009. As a kid I was developing my own film and printing my photos, view and later I got more serious with a 35mm camera. I bought my first digital camera in 1999 and love both film and digital today. In 2007, troche I started taking photography courses at Langara College, one of the top photography programs in Canada. I expect to complete the program by the end of the 2010.
In this video I show you how I do basic retouching on a beauty portrait, including cleaning up blemishes on the skin, removing stray hairs, brightening up the eyes, retouching lipstick and smoothing the skin using Adobe Lightroom 3.2 and Photoshop CS4. The final image is still very natural looking and does not look like it has been significantly altered.
Bokeh is normally created in-camera by using a shallow depth-of-field and focusing on the subject and allowing the other parts of the image to become blurry. For this shot I wanted to create a glam look by adding some bokeh in Photoshop.
First I retouched the photo, smoothing the skin and removing any blemishes. There are a variety of ways to do this - here is one short step-by-step example.
I added a blank layer above the top layer, and selected a hard-edged round brush and set the foreground colour to white. I wanted the brush to paint a bunch of random circles so I went to the brush window and selected "shape dynamics" and moved the slider for "size jitter" to around 30%, selected "scattering" and checked "both axes" and moved the slider to around 480%, "count" to 2, and "count jitter" to around 30%. FInally, I selected "other dynamics" and changed the "opacity jitter" to 10%. You might need to play around with the settings to get something that looks good for you. I then painted the layer with a few strokes. I added a layer effect - "gradient overlay" and used white for the foreground colour and some gold from the lips for the background. It was a linear gradient with an angle of 118 degrees, and normal blend mode. Finally, I adjusted the layer opacity to 67%.
I then added another blank layer above this, and painted some more circles, then I used the Gaussian blur filter to make these blurry. You will need to play around with the radius that best works for you. I added some layer effects - "outer glow" and used the eye dropper to grab some gold colour from the lips, and changed the blend mode to screen. I also used "inner glow" with a light yellow colour (ffffbe). I used a levels adjustment layer, clipped to this layer and lightened up the bokeh circles until they glowed a little. I then changed the layer opacity to about 50%.
Finally, I used a curves adjustment layer above all the other layers to tweak the contrast of the overall image.