COMPOSITION
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Composition – cinematography Cheat SheetRead more: Composition – cinematography Cheat Sheet Where is our eye attracted first? Why? Size. Focus. Lighting. Color. Size. Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) on the right. 
 Focus. He’s one of the two objects in focus.
 Lighting. Mr. White is large and in focus and Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) is highlighted by
 a shaft of light.
 Color. Both are black and white but the read on Mr. White’s shirt now really stands out.
 (more…)
 What type of lighting?
DESIGN
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Mike Wong – AtoMeow – A Blue noise image stippling in ProcessingRead more: Mike Wong – AtoMeow – A Blue noise image stippling in Processing https://github.com/mwkm/atoMeow https://www.shadertoy.com/view/7s3XzX This demo is created for coders who are familiar with this awesome creative coding platform. You may quickly modify the code to work for video or to stipple your own Procssing drawings by turning them into PImageand run the simulation. This demo code also serves as a reference implementation of my article Blue noise sampling using an N-body simulation-based method. If you are interested in 2.5D, you may mod the code to achieve what I discussed in this artist friendly article.Convert your video to a dotted noise. 
COLOR
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StudioBinder.com – CRI color rendering indexRead more: StudioBinder.com – CRI color rendering indexwww.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-color-rendering-index “The Color Rendering Index is a measurement of how faithfully a light source reveals the colors of whatever it illuminates, it describes the ability of a light source to reveal the color of an object, as compared to the color a natural light source would provide. The highest possible CRI is 100. A CRI of 100 generally refers to a perfect black body, like a tungsten light source or the sun. ” www.pixelsham.com/2021/04/28/types-of-film-lights-and-their-efficiency 
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Victor Perez – The Color Management Handbook for Visual Effects ArtistsRead more: Victor Perez – The Color Management Handbook for Visual Effects ArtistsDigital Color Principles, Color Management Fundamentals & ACES Workflows 
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Björn Ottosson – How software gets color wrongRead more: Björn Ottosson – How software gets color wronghttps://bottosson.github.io/posts/colorwrong/ Most software around us today are decent at accurately displaying colors. Processing of colors is another story unfortunately, and is often done badly. To understand what the problem is, let’s start with an example of three ways of blending green and magenta: - Perceptual blend – A smooth transition using a model designed to mimic human perception of color. The blending is done so that the perceived brightness and color varies smoothly and evenly.
- Linear blend – A model for blending color based on how light behaves physically. This type of blending can occur in many ways naturally, for example when colors are blended together by focus blur in a camera or when viewing a pattern of two colors at a distance.
- sRGB blend – This is how colors would normally be blended in computer software, using sRGB to represent the colors.
 Let’s look at some more examples of blending of colors, to see how these problems surface more practically. The examples use strong colors since then the differences are more pronounced. This is using the same three ways of blending colors as the first example. Instead of making it as easy as possible to work with color, most software make it unnecessarily hard, by doing image processing with representations not designed for it. Approximating the physical behavior of light with linear RGB models is one easy thing to do, but more work is needed to create image representations tailored for image processing and human perception. Also see: 
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PBR Color Reference List for Materials – by Grzegorz BaranRead more: PBR Color Reference List for Materials – by Grzegorz Baran“The list should be helpful for every material artist who work on PBR materials as it contains over 200 color values measured with PCE-RGB2 1002 Color Spectrometer device and presented in linear and sRGB (2.2) gamma space. All color values, HUE and Saturation in this list come from measurements taken with PCE-RGB2 1002 Color Spectrometer device and are presented in linear and sRGB (2.2) gamma space (more info at the end of this video) I calculated Relative Luminance and Luminance values based on captured color using my own equation which takes color based luminance perception into consideration. Bare in mind that there is no ‘one’ color per substance as nothing in nature is even 100% uniform and any value in +/-10% range from these should be considered as correct one. Therefore this list should be always considered as a color reference for material’s albedos, not ulitimate and absolute truth.“ 
LIGHTING
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Custom bokeh in a raytraced DOF renderRead more: Custom bokeh in a raytraced DOF renderTo achieve a custom pinhole camera effect with a custom bokeh in Arnold Raytracer, you can follow these steps: - Set the render camera with a focal length around 50 (or as needed)
- Set the F-Stop to a high value (e.g., 22).
- Set the focus distance as you require
- Turn on DOF
- Place a plane a few cm in front of the camera.
- Texture the plane with a transparent shape at the center of it. (Transmission with no specular roughness)
 
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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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Composition – cinematography Cheat SheetRead more: Composition – cinematography Cheat Sheet Where is our eye attracted first? Why? Size. Focus. Lighting. Color. Size. Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) on the right. 
 Focus. He’s one of the two objects in focus.
 Lighting. Mr. White is large and in focus and Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) is highlighted by
 a shaft of light.
 Color. Both are black and white but the read on Mr. White’s shirt now really stands out.
 (more…)
 What type of lighting?
- 
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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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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Rec-2020 – TVs new color gamut standard used by Dolby Vision?Read more: Rec-2020 – TVs new color gamut standard used by Dolby Vision?https://www.hdrsoft.com/resources/dri.html#bit-depth  The dynamic range is a ratio between the maximum and minimum values of a physical measurement. Its definition depends on what the dynamic range refers to. For a scene: Dynamic range is the ratio between the brightest and darkest parts of the scene. For a camera: Dynamic range is the ratio of saturation to noise. More specifically, the ratio of the intensity that just saturates the camera to the intensity that just lifts the camera response one standard deviation above camera noise. For a display: Dynamic range is the ratio between the maximum and minimum intensities emitted from the screen. The Dynamic Range of real-world scenes can be quite high — ratios of 100,000:1 are common in the natural world. An HDR (High Dynamic Range) image stores pixel values that span the whole tonal range of real-world scenes. Therefore, an HDR image is encoded in a format that allows the largest range of values, e.g. floating-point values stored with 32 bits per color channel. Another characteristics of an HDR image is that it stores linear values. This means that the value of a pixel from an HDR image is proportional to the amount of light measured by the camera. For TVs HDR is great, but it’s not the only new TV feature worth discussing. (more…)
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HDRI Median Cut pluginRead more: HDRI Median Cut pluginwww.hdrlabs.com/picturenaut/plugins.html  Note. The Median Cut algorithm is typically used for color quantization, which involves reducing the number of colors in an image while preserving its visual quality. It doesn’t directly provide a way to identify the brightest areas in an image. However, if you’re interested in identifying the brightest areas, you might want to look into other methods like thresholding, histogram analysis, or edge detection, through openCV for example. Here is an openCV example: (more…)
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