COMPOSITION
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Composition – 5 tips for creating perfect cinematic lighting and making your work look stunningRead more: Composition – 5 tips for creating perfect cinematic lighting and making your work look stunninghttp://www.diyphotography.net/5-tips-creating-perfect-cinematic-lighting-making-work-look-stunning/ 1. Learn the rules of lighting 2. Learn when to break the rules 3. Make your key light larger 4. Reverse keying 5. Always be backlighting 
DESIGN
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Mania Carta – Photorealistic Characters Made in BlenderRead more: Mania Carta – Photorealistic Characters Made in BlenderManiacarta is an Artist based in Tokyo, her Artworks are unique and she strive to create the best characters that have soul in the World. https://80.lv/articles/marvelous-photorealistic-characters-made-in-blender-by-mania-carta/ https://www.instagram.com/mania_carta/     
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The Hybrids by Phil Langer – hyper-realistic AI-generated human animal portraitsRead more: The Hybrids by Phil Langer – hyper-realistic AI-generated human animal portraitshttps://www.reddit.com/r/aiArt/comments/1azepd6/hybrid_portraits_by_phil_langer/ https://www.thehybridportraits.com/ https://www.instagram.com/hybridportraits/ 
COLOR
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Light and Matter : The 2018 theory of Physically-Based Rendering and Shading by AllegorithmicRead more: Light and Matter : The 2018 theory of Physically-Based Rendering and Shading by Allegorithmicacademy.substance3d.com/courses/the-pbr-guide-part-1 academy.substance3d.com/courses/the-pbr-guide-part-2 Local copy:
 
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A Brief History of Color in ArtRead more: A Brief History of Color in Artwww.artsy.net/article/the-art-genome-project-a-brief-history-of-color-in-art Of all the pigments that have been banned over the centuries, the color most missed by painters is likely Lead White. This hue could capture and reflect a gleam of light like no other, though its production was anything but glamorous. The 17th-century Dutch method for manufacturing the pigment involved layering cow and horse manure over lead and vinegar. After three months in a sealed room, these materials would combine to create flakes of pure white. While scientists in the late 19th century identified lead as poisonous, it wasn’t until 1978 that the United States banned the production of lead white paint. More reading: 
 www.canva.com/learn/color-meanings/https://www.infogrades.com/history-events-infographics/bizarre-history-of-colors/ 
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Black Body color aka the Planckian Locus curve for white point eye perceptionRead more: Black Body color aka the Planckian Locus curve for white point eye perceptionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation  Black-body radiation is the type of electromagnetic radiation within or surrounding a body in thermodynamic equilibrium with its environment, or emitted by a black body (an opaque and non-reflective body) held at constant, uniform temperature. The radiation has a specific spectrum and intensity that depends only on the temperature of the body. A black-body at room temperature appears black, as most of the energy it radiates is infra-red and cannot be perceived by the human eye. At higher temperatures, black bodies glow with increasing intensity and colors that range from dull red to blindingly brilliant blue-white as the temperature increases. (more…)
LIGHTING
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What is the Light Field?Read more: What is the Light Field?http://lightfield-forum.com/what-is-the-lightfield/ The light field consists of the total of all light rays in 3D space, flowing through every point and in every direction. How to Record a Light Field- a single, robotically controlled camera
- a rotating arc of cameras
- an array of cameras or camera modules
- a single camera or camera lens fitted with a microlens array
 
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Cinematographers Blueprint 300dpi posterRead more: Cinematographers Blueprint 300dpi posterThe 300dpi digital poster is now available to all PixelSham.com subscribers. If you have already subscribed and wish a copy, please send me a note through the contact page. 
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Christopher Butler – Understanding the Eye-Mind Connection – Vision is a mental processRead more: Christopher Butler – Understanding the Eye-Mind Connection – Vision is a mental processhttps://www.chrbutler.com/understanding-the-eye-mind-connection The intricate relationship between the eyes and the brain, often termed the eye-mind connection, reveals that vision is predominantly a cognitive process. This understanding has profound implications for fields such as design, where capturing and maintaining attention is paramount. This essay delves into the nuances of visual perception, the brain’s role in interpreting visual data, and how this knowledge can be applied to effective design strategies. This cognitive aspect of vision is evident in phenomena such as optical illusions, where the brain interprets visual information in a way that contradicts physical reality. These illusions underscore that what we “see” is not merely a direct recording of the external world but a constructed experience shaped by cognitive processes. Understanding the cognitive nature of vision is crucial for effective design. Designers must consider how the brain processes visual information to create compelling and engaging visuals. This involves several key principles: - Attention and Engagement
- Visual Hierarchy
- Cognitive Load Management
- Context and Meaning
  
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DiffusionLight: HDRI Light Probes for Free by Painting a Chrome BallRead more: DiffusionLight: HDRI Light Probes for Free by Painting a Chrome Ballhttps://diffusionlight.github.io/ https://github.com/DiffusionLight/DiffusionLight https://github.com/DiffusionLight/DiffusionLight?tab=MIT-1-ov-file#readme https://colab.research.google.com/drive/15pC4qb9mEtRYsW3utXkk-jnaeVxUy-0S “a simple yet effective technique to estimate lighting in a single input image. Current techniques rely heavily on HDR panorama datasets to train neural networks to regress an input with limited field-of-view to a full environment map. However, these approaches often struggle with real-world, uncontrolled settings due to the limited diversity and size of their datasets. To address this problem, we leverage diffusion models trained on billions of standard images to render a chrome ball into the input image. Despite its simplicity, this task remains challenging: the diffusion models often insert incorrect or inconsistent objects and cannot readily generate images in HDR format. Our research uncovers a surprising relationship between the appearance of chrome balls and the initial diffusion noise map, which we utilize to consistently generate high-quality chrome balls. We further fine-tune an LDR difusion model (Stable Diffusion XL) with LoRA, enabling it to perform exposure bracketing for HDR light estimation. Our method produces convincing light estimates across diverse settings and demonstrates superior generalization to in-the-wild scenarios.”  
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HDRI shooting and editing by Xuan Prada and Greg ZaalRead more: HDRI shooting and editing by Xuan Prada and Greg Zaalwww.xuanprada.com/blog/2014/11/3/hdri-shooting http://blog.gregzaal.com/2016/03/16/make-your-own-hdri/ http://blog.hdrihaven.com/how-to-create-high-quality-hdri/  Shooting checklist - Full coverage of the scene (fish-eye shots)
- Backplates for look-development (including ground or floor)
- Macbeth chart for white balance
- Grey ball for lighting calibration
- Chrome ball for lighting orientation
- Basic scene measurements
- Material samples
- Individual HDR artificial lighting sources if required
 Methodology (more…)
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Composition – These are the basic lighting techniques you need to know for photography and filmRead more: Composition – These are the basic lighting techniques you need to know for photography and filmhttp://www.diyphotography.net/basic-lighting-techniques-need-know-photography-film/ Amongst the basic techniques, there’s… 1- Side lighting – Literally how it sounds, lighting a subject from the side when they’re faced toward you 2- Rembrandt lighting – Here the light is at around 45 degrees over from the front of the subject, raised and pointing down at 45 degrees 3- Back lighting – Again, how it sounds, lighting a subject from behind. This can help to add drama with silouettes 4- Rim lighting – This produces a light glowing outline around your subject 5- Key light – The main light source, and it’s not necessarily always the brightest light source 6- Fill light – This is used to fill in the shadows and provide detail that would otherwise be blackness 7- Cross lighting – Using two lights placed opposite from each other to light two subjects 
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domeble – Hi-Resolution CGI Backplates and 360° HDRIRead more: domeble – Hi-Resolution CGI Backplates and 360° HDRIWhen collecting hdri make sure the data supports basic metadata, such as: - Iso
- Aperture
- Exposure time or shutter time
- Color temperature
- Color space Exposure value (what the sensor receives of the sun intensity in lux)
- 7+ brackets (with 5 or 6 being the perceived balanced exposure)
 In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminances (a Photometry measure of the luminous intensity per unit area of light travelling in a given direction. It describes the amount of light that passes through or is emitted from a particular area, and falls within a given solid angle) between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wider dynamic range allows HDR images to represent more accurately the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight and to the deepest shadows. The two main sources of HDR imagery are computer renderings and merging of multiple photographs, which in turn are known as low dynamic range (LDR) or standard dynamic range (SDR) images. Tone Mapping (Look-up) techniques, which reduce overall contrast to facilitate display of HDR images on devices with lower dynamic range, can be applied to produce images with preserved or exaggerated local contrast for artistic effect. Photography In photography, dynamic range is measured in Exposure Values (in photography, exposure value denotes all combinations of camera shutter speed and relative aperture that give the same exposure. The concept was developed in Germany in the 1950s) differences or stops, between the brightest and darkest parts of the image that show detail. An increase of one EV or one stop is a doubling of the amount of light. The human response to brightness is well approximated by a Steven’s power law, which over a reasonable range is close to logarithmic, as described by the Weber�Fechner law, which is one reason that logarithmic measures of light intensity are often used as well. HDR is short for High Dynamic Range. It’s a term used to describe an image which contains a greater exposure range than the “black” to “white” that 8 or 16-bit integer formats (JPEG, TIFF, PNG) can describe. Whereas these Low Dynamic Range images (LDR) can hold perhaps 8 to 10 f-stops of image information, HDR images can describe beyond 30 stops and stored in 32 bit images.  
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