Noir Graphic Design Studios

A recent project of mine. Feel free to contact me for your graphic design needs. Thanks!

Tutorial: Vintage Grunge Effect

This is the first of hopefully many tutorials to come. This recipe of Lightroom adjustments is a cool way of making a photograph look a little more darker and edgy. I shot this photo recently and while it looks cool I think it can look a little cooler.

Programs used: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 and Adobe Photoshop CS3

The first step of editing any photograph is to crop it accordingly. Using the crop tool in Lightroom I've isolated the car slightly to the left in this horizontal fashion.

This series of tweaks are what it's all about. Crank up the Recovery, Fill, Blacks, Brightness, Contrast, and Vibrance all the way up and adjust slightly if necessary. To combat the crazy colors you'll end up seeing, turn the saturation almost all the way down. This will give it the faded, vintage look.

Next, I've adjusted the color temperature slightly to color correct the ground since it was looking rather blue.

Bring up the color sliders and make adjustments as necessary. In this instance I brought up the saturation in the greens to make the plants pop a little more since they got lost with the previous adjustments.

Now, to make the sky pop. Open the photo in Photoshop and create a new layer. Make sure black is selected as your foreground color and open the gradient tool and pick the black to transparency option. On the new layer, hold SHIFT and drag downward from the top of the photo to the middle. Select Overlay as the blending option in the layers palette.

For a final touch I'll be adding glints to the highlighted areas of the car. The key is to not over do it. Create a new a layer and select the brush tool. Under the brush palette options choose Assorted brushes and use brush number 48 which looks like an X. Increase the brush size by using the bracket keys and click once on the area needed. In this case I chose one on the rear view mirror and a few on the chrome bumper. Reduce the opacity of this layer down to 45%.

Boom Bam. You're done.

Dare To Be Like The iPhone

I've recently upgraded my phone to the new LG Dare from Verizon. My contract has been up for a little while now but no phone really caught my eye. I knew I wanted one with a QWERTY (hey, that's fun to type. Try typing it like ending a piano recital) keyboard so I was checking out the Alias and the Glyde but it wasn't mindblowing enough for me to drop $100 when my current phone is just fine. Of course I want the iPhone. A friend of mine has one and it's pretty damn sweet but I am not going to switch carriers because everyone and my mother (literally) is on Verizon and the only thing I use my phone for is text messaging and maybe an hour of talk time per month. I'm also not very keen on paying over $100 a month on a damn cell phone bill. F that. The Dare is an obvious competitor for the iPhone for Verizon customers. It's not a smart phone. It's a "feature heavy" phone as I like to call it. All touch screen with with a 3.2 megapixel camera. 3.2 I say! The photo editing features are insane with options to change, brightness, contrast, sharpness with custom cropping. You can change the ISO settings, has a flash and it autofocuses like a point and shoot. It's quite amazing for a camera phone. Another useful tool that it has that I never thought I would have any use for is the drawing pad. I can draw with my finger and change the brush size and color as well as erase areas like a pencil. Fun for drawing obscene pictures and sending them to my friends and loved ones. Always makes me laugh. It's super sleek and small enough for men like myself to carry it around comfortably in my pocket. MicroSD card compatible for music, videos, and photos. The touch screen takes getting used to but I find that you must use the tip of your nail instead of the finger tip for best results. There is no need for me to tack on an additional 50% to my bill for data usage, but this phone also sports an HTML web browser. A perfect iPhone substitute until Apple drops it's contract with AT&T.

A touch of the screen will bring up a shortcut list of your most frequently used tools. Customizable of course.

QWERTY keypad for text messaging and any other text input. Turn the phone 90 degrees and the screen will orient itself as shown.

Photoshop World Conference & Expo

Coming up September 4-6 is Photoshop World Conference & Expo in Las Vegas and I will be there! Hotel is booked and registration is paid for. I just need to buy my plane ticket. 3 days of Photoshop and design classes taught by industry greats such as Scott Kelby, Dave Cross, and Matt Kloskowski. In between classes there will be a tech expo with exhibitors such as Canon, Nikon, and Adobe where I can see all the latest gadgets and software. (image above taken from the Photoshop World website. Check it out)

In preparation for my trip I recently purchased a new camera/laptop backpack- the Kata DR-467. A friend of mine has the model below this one, the only difference being that the one I bought holds up to a 17" laptop. It looks bad ass and is ergonomically comfortable. When not carrying your camera, the dividers can be taken out and the entire bag can be used as a simple backpack. It also has a built in rain cover in case the worst happens. I should be getting it this week. It will make things easier in the airport and trekking through the expo keeping my laptop, camera and other digital devices with me in one bag instead of bringing a separate bag for my laptop and camera. Most bags I was checking out were well over $100 to get the laptop option but I got this baby for an even $66 from Amazon. B&H and Adorama lists it $79.95 but if you buy it from Amazon who goes through Adorama (don't ask me why it's cheaper) it's only $66 bucks. No tax. Free shipping. Boom bam.

The X-Files: I Want To Believe In This Movie

Since I am captivated in the X-Files world at the moment, watching disc after disc of Mulder and Scully sexual tension and alien chasing, the new movie didn't entirely disappoint me but I can see how fans who have been away from the series the past 7 or 8 years could be. SPOILER ALERT: The story is a stand alone case involving a psychic pedophile Catholic preacher who is the only link to find a series of missing women, one of whom is an FBI agent. At this point in time, Mulder and Scully are no longer working for the FBI but are called in to assist finding the missing women because of their successful history with the X-Files and pyschic phenomenon. The movie is a long monster of the week episode but Mulder and Scully don't even have their FBI credentials or guns to get things done. The second story arch involves Mulder and Scully's personal relationship and whether they should call it off or not because Mulder's heart and time is still very much into exposing the truth and Scully is over the whole thing. I enjoyed the movie because it's just more X-Files to watch but I believe they could have and should have focused on the mythology storyline and given some closure and pay off to long time fans of the series.

Why So Serious? Because That's What It Takes.

It's been awhile since my last post but I've been eerily occupied watching the highly addictive X-Files. See previous post. So I must apologize to myself and my fiance (the only people who read this blog) for not giving us gripping journalistic endeavors to embark on. So let's see if I can catch us up shall we? I've heard something about some movie called The Dark Knight that has been doing reasonably well at the box office. I guess I should check that one out sometime... Obviously I am being a douchebag because I have seen it twice already with a third time on my schedule of things to do. I was there for the midnight screening with 500 other people playing board games and ordering pizza in the lobby waiting to be let in. The movie was unbelievable. I'm hesitant to call it a movie- The film was unbelievable. I don't even want to call it a comic book movie. It's really just a film making masterpiece. The storyline moved along like a freight train fleshing out these characters that make you believe in a world where a man dressed as a bat and a psycho dressed as a clown really exist. Heath's performance was spectacular as everyone already knows. I can't wait to watch it again, but next time it will be in IMAX. I'm sure I will be scared shitless to see Harvey Dent's grotesque face revealed on a 6 story screen.




The joker poster above now graces the wall of my room framed behind glass. It's quite creepy because it looks as though he is writing on the frame. Below are some shots from that studio shoot. I love seeing how graphic artists turn raw studio/photography into awesome works of art. I hope to be doing projects like this someday.