PRESENTING RESULTS FOR EUROCITYGroup Members : Cindy Chen, Katrina Pickett, Phil WalkemeyerRoles of Individuals All group members were actively involved in critiquing each others work and helped improve each others quality of work. Photographs were taken by all three group memebers throughout the summer. The online updates were organized and formatted collectively. Each group member focuses on one particular final image to present. (In order of occurrence on Final webpage) White Buildings EuroCity - Cindy Chen EuroCity Panoramic - Phillip Walkemeyer Narrow Alley EuroCity - Katrina Pickett Final Results ( PREFER SIZES of about 800x600 )Check out our Final Presentation, it has a pretty accurate result of what we did.G2-Final What IMAGES were used ( PREFER SIZES of about 400x300)The Final Presentation page includes all of the images that we used, except for the base panoramic picture used in "Eurocity Panoramic". This was not included because it is the background of the image and thus obvious.See the final presentation photos here: G2-Final DESCRIPTIONWhat were the goals?Our goal was to create a pictorial city, that had various monumental and non-monumental works of architecture from Europe, into a single image. We wanted to convey our sense of a conglomerate European city and culture. Each of the group members chose to display this theme in a different manner.1) The "White Buildings Eurocity" image focuses on the similarity and structure of the old world buildings (Tower of Pisa and Notre Dame) and that of the more recent building in Rome: the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II. 2) "Eurocity Panoramic" provides an iconic driven view of the Barcelona landscape, showing the major architectural works from the various European cities we visited. The skyline is intentionally blended for a fairy tale like feel, emphasizing the non-literal aspects of the image. 3) "Narrow Alley Eurocity" combines the street fabric of Rome and Barcelona. It focuses on the pedestrian view and the bodily experience of walking through the various cities. How stock footage was capturedWe captured stock footage from our travels around Europe using handheld digital cameras of average quality. For instance, all the photos in Eurocity Panoramic were taken with a Nikon Coolpix 3700. In all, we used various images taken from Barcelona, Paris, Rome, Pisa, and Segovia. We felt it was important to have pictures unique to our own experience since we were trying to convey the personal notions of a blended Europe, which we perceived from our travels.Other Material that was used (acquired!)In some of our updates and attempts we used a picture of the Collosem taken by Salil Das, with his permission. Our final images were all our own.Tools used and HOW?We used Paintshop pro 7 and Photoshop CS2 for the final compilation of images, cutting, cropping, resizing, editing color, blurring, etc.For example in the image "Eurocity Panoramic" all architectural icons were cut from the original pictures using the magic wand and erase tools. The background was set to transparent beforehand, so that the image would make a suitable mask. The edges of the icon mask were then passed over with the blur tool, in order to allow the mask to blend more effectively. If there were any obstacles preventing the icon from being a suitable mask (such as people or cars), the clone stamp tool was used to remove them. The icon mask was then placed in the base panoramic as a new layer. Once placed as the new layer, the size/scale was adjusted as appropriate for the image. Also the lighting on the icon was changed, as necessary, using the burn and dodge tools of Photoshop. Additionally the tools of perspective, skew and warp were used to try and match the geometry configurations of the base image. However, these tools had limited effect if the original perspective was not similar to that of the base image (i.e. the coliseum) Lastly, to enhance the reality of the image, a piece of the base background was copied as a new layer and used to mask a portion of the icon. The .mov file of "Eurocity Panoramic" was created easily using Canon's Photostitch software. Code or scripting (include as an attachment OR link)No code or scripting was used.What worked?Pretty much everything we had hoped for worked. We were able to successfully pull out images from various cities, and synthesize them into one picture. The pictures were all a success in that they contained coherent set of objects, which could be viewed and recognized.What was unexpected?Sometimes the images would not match up perfectly so we would have to do a bit of blurring etc. Sometimes the image matched onto another exactly so we didn't have to do anything. The perspective/skew/warp of the images in the Eurocity Panoramic was sometimes problematic. Because the base image was taken from a hilltop, the houses were seen from above ( roofs etc.); however most of the monument shots were taken from the ground level. This caused a problem with the coliseum mask, though the taller monuments fared better. Also in Eurocity, the scale of the monuments generally had to be larger in the base picture than in reality, in order to bring focus to them.What did NOT work?1. The perspective/skew/warp/whatever of the monuments (esp. the coliseum) in the Eurocity Panorama.2. Also, it is obvious in the tree next to the Tower of Pisa, that all of the blue background has not been removed. This is difficult because of all the small gaps created by the leaves of the tree. 3. The Italian skyline isn't quite flush with the ocean. 4. Shadows were very difficult to align and adjust in the narrow alley photo. The street behind the white van looks a little too sunny compared to the street in front of the van. 5. Although not entirely a result of photoshop the top of the building on the right in the narrow alley photo looks heavily manipulated. This a combined result of the original image's unique qualities and some shadowing/blur problems. How would you fix it?1. Travel to Europe again and take shots from elevated positions of the various monuments ( haha ok . . no) Find pictures on the internet of the various monuments with the correct orientation.2. Spend more time removing the blue background with the eraser or magic wand. 3. It was a human error when creating the mask of the ocean. I would redo the ocean mask and make sure the Italian skyline extends below the mask, ensuring a crisper line. 4. Perhaps by modifiying the top of the narrow alley building more, the manipulated effect can be lessoned. I would attempt to increase the defination of the lines of brick on the upper portion of the wall and spend more time playing with the roof to give it a natural look. Thoughts for the future of this effort?In the future, we would collage more. Also more time would be spent on blending the Photoshop layers. Also we could incorporate a Global City, instead of just a EuroCity. The scope of this would need to include other countries such as the U.S., China, and India.Other detials and DOCUMENTATION.Note the progression of our work from the initial stages to its final form. We mistakenly began with images of lower quality, because we felt they would be easier to work with. In the proposal (G2-Proposal), the images of the monuments have been blacked out, while in the update (G2-Update) the base image was grainy due to the presence of rain in the picture. Update2 (G2-Update2) contains a black and white panorama that used photomontage to merge the monuments, and also a photoshop picture scattered with monuments. From the reviews and feedback we received on the work precursor to the final, we chose, for our last images, to work solely in photoshop on high resolution color photos. Also we tried to limit the amount of material in the photo so that it did not look disjointed or splashed together. Thus, all of our final photos are in color, and do not seem overly crowded with additional monuments and features.The creation of the white building and the narrow alley was very similar. We provide a detailed discription of how the effect was achieved for the Narrow Alley EuroCity: Two base photos were selected that gave a staight on view of a city street. It was necessary to choose images with as moving peices (people and cars) and as similar lighting direction as possible. We chose a street in the gothic area of the old city in Barcelona and a street in the hotel district of Rome. Both photos were taken in the morning hours. The Rome street was too wide to merely place the Barcelona street in the middle, so we narrowed the street by cutting out the middle. The road cobbles were left with a very jagged edge that had to be patched over and merged back together. A trash can and a car had to be removed from the right side of the roman street so they didnt intersect with the other side of the street. The outside edges of the Barcelona street were removed and then the two streets were joined.  A few objects from the Barcelona street's foreground were chosen and merged onto the Roman sides to add some continuity to the depth of the street. The tops of the two Roman buildings were copied from the original image and placed back on top of the Barcelona street so that they appeared to stick out over the street like a normal roof would do. The right side of the Barcelona streets center was slightly too sunny, a shaded layer was added to cover some of this effect, the layer was then blended with the two origianal layers. A large green fern/bush in the Barcelona street looked out of place in the Roman street because of its overwhelming size. Using the clone tool in photoshop, the number of the leaves was increased and their size was decreased to attempt to give it a tree look. The "tree" was then blurred slightly to give it a believable distance effect. Once it was placed behind the white van from Rome the effect was decently achieved. EuroCity Panoramic - Described previously.
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