Ipod Photo Sequence – Tutorial

Posted by rupee on Wednesday, March 16, 2011 in Articles | 0 comments

Have you, like me, ever wanted to re-create the visual awesomeness of those funky ipod adverts from a few years back? You remember the ones with the silhouettes in all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes?

I was recently asked by a friend to help design a t-shirt along these very lines and I was eager to accept! He already had the concept in mind. It was to be several silhouetted images in a row depicting a cartwheel sequence. Sounds simple when you say it like that!

I really enjoyed the whole process and I figured it’s been a while since I added any tutorials on here, so here goes…

Step 1
Firstly you need your concept clear in your mind. As this was already taken care of for me, it saved a lot of time! When choosing a sequence or even just a single image silhouette, try and come up with something that will really stand out. Once this is done you need to make sure your subject knows what they are doing!

Step 2

Finding the right place to shoot the base images can make a big difference when it comes to editing in Photoshop. Asking your subject to dress is a different colour to the background also helps… (I negated to do this and was left with a much harder job…)

Step 3

Set your camera on a sturdy tripod and set the shooting mode to continuous burst. Make sure the area is well lit so you can use a fast shutter speed without the need for flash.

Step 4

I shot the same sequence many times over, so I had plenty of images to choose from when putting the final image together, varying the angle here and there as well. The better the camera the faster the frame rate (obviously!) I used my Nikon D90 with a frame rate of 4.5 fps and this was plenty. We envisaged we would need about 5 or 6 pictures to fill the space on a t-shirt.

Here is one of the images we used…

Step 5

Once all the base images were shot it was back to the Mac for the real work to begin! After importing all the images into lightroom I added keywords and rated the ones I thought would work best together, I also deleted any that hadn’t worked. I was left with about 15 images that all had the potential to work really well. I think with a keener eye I could have narrowed it down even more, but as it was my first time I gave myself a bit of breathing room!

Step 6

I chose to work on the pictures individually in Photoshop. So after dragging in from Lightroom, settle on the dimensions of your canvas and resize your original photo.
Go Image> Image Size menu. Click on Resample Image and choose Bicubic Sharper from the drop-down menu. This is the best setting for making sure that an image doesn’t blur.

Step 7

The next part is the hardest and most time consuming, but its definitely worth taking your time over…  There are several ways to make a selection, I used the magic wand tool and zoomed in massively to make small alterations where necessary.

Step 8

Next, create a new canvas with 2 layers, layer 1 will be your coloured background of choice (I went with shocking pink!) Layer 2 will be you cutout.

Now make sure layer 2 is active. Command-click (PC: Control-click) to select your cutout. Set your foreground color to black, and use Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace) to fill the selected cutout with the black.

Next, copy and paste your image onto your background (if you didn’t already)

Pretty striking hey?

I did it in a slightly different order to what I described as you will see, but the way I’ve described is probably the most sensible!

All you have to do now it repeat for as many photos as you want in your sequence! It sounds easy here, but I slaved away for hours trying to get the edges right! As you will probably see I didnt do a super tight job, but for a first attempt I was pretty pleased!

I also added a ground line which is a simple touch but adds to the finished image nicely!

Let me know what you think!