Since we are part of the Tyler Photo community we need to exhibit our photographs in the Tyler Photo Gallery. The optimum way to exhibit Smartphone photographs would be to hang 20 smartphones on the wall. Unfortunately, we do not have the resources to do this.
The next logical option is to hang some prints. This seems sort of counterintuitive, however, since this class is about smartphone photographs that are meant to be shared with other smartphones and on the web. Putting them on paper doesn't seem quite right. But we still have to show this work somehow so the rest of the photo people know what we are doing.
[The original idea was to make small prints on paper in a traditional format. But even then, resolution becomes an issue. Screen resolution is only 72 pixels per inch. That is very low. Printed images are 300 pixels per inch. That is more than four times larger. To put even a 4" x 6" photo on paper you need to have a resolution something like 1200 by 1600 pixels. That is bigger than many of the smartphone photos, especially after they have been processed by various apps that tend to reduce resolution.]
Here’s the plan for making something that is in between:
We will print pictures of your phones displaying your photographs on the screen at exactly life size.
The problem with doing this is that we cannot just scan our phones. There are a couple of reasons for this. When scanning a phone that is not brand new, every nick and scratch shows up. This is not optimum. Plus, the scanner cannot capture both the body of the phone and the picture on the screen at the same time. Scanners work differently for scanning flat objects (reflective) vs. scanning backlit film (transmissive, equivalent to scanning a back-lit screen).
The solution is to take each person's POW photograph and superimpose it on a product shot of the actual phone that was used to make it, and then print that image on paper at exactly life-size. We will use a metallic-base paper that will give it a sheen like the glass front of the phone. This way it will be clear where these images are coming from, how they are made, and even why they look the way they look.
The other benefit is that the resolution only needs to be the size of the picture on the screen of the phone. (The phone shot needs to be about 500 x 960 pixels, depending on model, and the photo image is about 400 x 600 depending on the phone model and the aspect ratio of the final photo. The body of the phone of like a black border that we are used to seeing on traditional darkroom prints, just in a completely new and different way.
MAKING SMARTPHONE PRINTS
Here is a recipe on how to overlay your photo onto a product shot of your phone in Photoshop. Watch the video tutorial for more detailed instructions. [posted at the end]
go online and find a product shot of your exact phone
find a good clean, flat, straight-on shot, not on any angle,
against a white background.
if there is a little cast shadow at the bottom, that is okay
the shot needs to be is large enough so it can be resized down to exactly life-size
this means look for pictures that are at least 500 x 900 pixels
resize the smartphone picture to exactly life-size
use image> image size [cmd] [opt] i
set the resolution to 300 ppi (or at least 200 pip if the source image is small)
you have to know the real size of the phone,
either by measuring it or looking up the specs online
set the width of the phone to match the actual width of the phone
save this file with a new name
use file> save as... [cmd] [shft] s
save in the tiff format with lzw compression, macintosh byte order
give it a new name like: phone_Master.tiff
resize your POW photo to match the size of the window in the phone picture
measure using the ruler tool
the narrow dimension is the most important
use image> image size [cmd] [opt] i
set the picture size to match the smaller dimension of the screen are as measured
add padding to the POW photo
if the photo has been cropped or resized by a phone app
it may not be the same size as the phone window
use image> canvas size to add black space to the photo
save this file with a new name
use file> save as... [cmd] [shft] s
save in the tiff format with lzw compression, macintosh byte order
give it a new name like: your_name_C1_Phone.tiff
overlay your POW photo into the window of the phone shot
use the move tool on the toolbox [v]
drag the POW photo on top of the picture of the phone
the photo will appear on its own layer
align the two photos
save the composite photo again
use the same tiff options
upload the finished photo to OWLbox
there will be a folder, e.g. phone pix - crit 1
When it is time to prepare the Exhibition Photo for the next crit, you can rescale and pad the new photo and drag that on top of this same Master file. You will end up with a separate layer for each critique photo. These can be individually turned on and off allowing you to print just the newest crit picture. This will leave you with one single file that will have all of your critique photos on it.
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