Planet Photoshop

Cool Olympic Stuff!!

Well, we are at the halfway point of the Olympic games over in Beijing and it’s already one for history books. I must first convey, once again, a big congrats to Michael Phelps for becoming the most decorated Olympian both in a single games and of all time. Way to go Michael!!

Almost as cool as that is something I have been seeing on the NBC Olympics website. For some of the events they have been displaying what’s known as Stromotion. Which is basically showing the progression of an event over time in a single image. It’s especially cool with the gymnastics events as it shows each step of the routine. I could describe it all day but you really have to see for yourself. In case you are wondering, yes, this can be easily done in Photoshop. Here’s the link.

Posted by Corey Barker

Corey is the newest education and curriculum developer for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. He is a graduate of the Ringling School of Art & Design in Sarasota, Fl, with a degree in Illustration. Over the years, Corey has worked as a graphic artist in a variety of disciplines such as illustration, commercial design, large format printing, motion graphics, web design and photography. His expertise in Photoshop and Illustrator have earned him numerous awards in illustration, graphic design and photography. Using Photoshop since Version 2, his expertise and creativity have evolved exponentially with every new version, which makes Corey an invaluable addition to the NAPP team.

3 comments on “Cool Olympic Stuff!!

  1. Just wondering, how do you do it in photoshop? I’ve been searching for tutorials to give it a whirl and just haven’t found the right stromotion guide. But yea, I think this is probably the coolest sports effect ever. thanks.

  2. Corey,

    I’ve done this effect before by seperating video frames into layers and then hand masking the motion. The result is excellent, but it’s a time consuming process if there are many many frames. Is there a way to automate the process?

    The new Statistics script in CS3 can do the opposite, it can remove all the action objects and result in just a blank background, but I can’t seem to get it to have an additive effect. Some of the stack modes will attempt to add, but they always look transparent and over saturated (like an overlay blend mode) instead of a solid object.

    The photomerge isn’t exactly the right solution either. It just creates a solid black mask on the overlapping layers.

    any ideas?