I have set up a little site to show practical things I am doing: thinkering.co.uk. I decided that it should be very minimal - no descriptions just display, similar to a gallery perhaps. It will contain experiments conducted in relation to my research as well as any other bits I get up to. I'm hoping to add historical content too, so it will be a bit of a biography.
A few ideas have surfaced over the last few weeks. Mainly in relation to the 'Inside Photoshop' article I read by Lev Manovich as well as 'Pixel' (in Software Studies a Lexicon) by Graham Harwood.
More in-depth info relating to LM article available here: Inside Photoshop
LM's schemes divide media specific techniques into two parts:
1. Augmented simulation of the pre-digital and
2. New computational techniques that have 'no obvious equivalents in previous physical or electronic media'
He states that automation is a key feature when considering the above, though makes a distinction between high level automation (algorithms) - a new computational technique and 'low level automation' (algorithms that links users/ ui/ tools/ outcomes which must be manipulated manually) - augmented simulation etc...interesting.
This made me wonder if it was possible to set the two schemes in motion, against each other within Photoshop (PS), the idea being that a traditional manually manipulated technique/tool would be put in the hands of an algorithm. i.e high level automation subverts manual manipulation of the augmented pre-digital technique.
This idea was in part inspired by John Hilliards 'Camera recording it's Own Condition' (1971).
It is possible to run and write useful scripts for PS to automate tasks, such as batching and resizing etc. but I wasn't sure how accessible this would be - turns out it's fairly straightforward, though not brilliantly supported IMO. As well as writing scripts yourself from scratch, you can set up a listener for the Actions panel (move scripting plugin from Applications>PS>Plug-ins>Scripting>Utilities to Plug-ins>Automate) to capture functions and then rework these by accessing the script listener log file that is produced as a result.
Anyway, found that Adobe have Extendscript Toolkit utility for writing functions and that this can be done in JScript. Adobe also ships with reference/ guide for doing this (a bit basic).
Useful info on scripting PS found on WWW include:
Adobe Devnet PS Scripting - documentation etc.
Russell Browns Scripts - Dr Brown, very good with downloadable scripts
Morris Photographics - simple explainations
PS-Scripts Forum - useful forum (a lot aren't!)
Kirupa Tutorial
Adobe TV meets Dr Brown for Scripts
Summary of outcomes
It was good to get stuck in finally and the results weren't bad, the best of which is this Pallet knife filter. The filter was scripted to run 500 times and then compiled into a contact sheet. I quite like the fact that to begin, the manual manipulation is obvious and measured but before too long, the automation produces a blurry blue-green moire which creeps across the image - frames combined and exported as a GIF show how this grows. Other examples in this set show simple simulated photo-correction procedures (colour balance, levels etc.) automated, with larger examples showing some interesting abstractions that resulted.
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