15,000 layer photoshop file...

adam

http://www.shoutwire.com/viewstory/9293/15_000_Layer_Photoshop_File


• The image size is 40 inches by 120 inches.
• The flattened file weighs in at 1.7 Gigabytes.
• It took eleven months (close to 2,000 hours) to create.
• The painting is comprised of close to fifty individual Photoshop files.
• Taking a cumulative total of all the files, the overall image contains over 15,000 layers.
• Over 500 alpha channels were used for various effects.
• Over 250,000 paths make up the multitude of shapes throughout the scene.

The end result isn't all that impressive.

malcolm

I bet he didn't bother naming every f-ing layer!

Neo_God

Jesus fuck! Who the hell does that?!?! The largest I've ever gotten with a photoshop file was close to 55 layers I think, and that was just for the small animation (the one in my avy actually).

Daz

[ QUOTE ]
The end result isn't all that impressive.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed. Somebody sent me this the other day touting it as 'the most amazing piece of photoreal Art eVar'. A claim that I begged to differ on.

I see no practical need or purpose in a 1.7 gig Photoshop file. To me it shows a distinct lack of commitment and confidence on the part of the Artist. To label yourself as a 'digital photo realist artist' is an odd monicker in this day and age. Particularly since his other works are even less impressive than this, and far from photo real. They feel *very* 'airbrushy'. It all smacks a little of a publicity stunt.

Tulkamir

I really don't get the point behind that. I'd have to agree also that the end result was a bit of a let down.

adam

You know (Daz), I believe he probably did this for the sake of creating such a large photoshop file and not for the sake of creating something "photo-real" by way of painting within Photoshop. Now, of course anyone could open a new PS file and start creating layers like made and try and beat this record, but he had to do something somewhat artistic to give it any merit.

I still think it looks dull, though.

Illusions

Umm. I actually think you guys are being a bit harsh on him. Yes, it is not the most photorealistic painting ever. In fact, I'm thinking that its a misnomer for this work. On his site he says he uses Photoshop and Illustrator, and the info itself said that this it has 250,000 paths in it comprising the shapes. My take on this is that this is mostly illustrator work, with photoshop touchup afterwards. The fact that this would also print out to 4 feet x 10 feet, ie. the size of a mural.

Weiser_Cain

I ride that train to work now.

Daz

For me its more the fact that he labels himself as a 'digital photo realist artist' that inspires me to heavily critique it. His work is nice in that old school clean airbrushed way, but it's clearly far from photo-real. When I studied Airbrushing at Art school and was into this shit, there were countless Japanese guys that you could definitely say were masters of photo-real Art. Heck Chuck Close can make photo-real Art and still have it retain an inherantly interesting quality. This is a non photo-real train in a station. ( nice that it is to ride on Im sure Weiser ) It's just not that compelling a subject, and nor is it photo-real. Im not saying that he meant it to be photo-real, but when he describes himself as that kind of artist, it's hard not to judge his work in that light. It's not 'bad' at all. It is impressive in several ways. I certainly don't think I could commit to 11 months on one painting.

Tulkamir

Not a misnomer Illusions, if you read his site he is really into how realistic his work is. The one quote is "I consider myself a hyper-realistic artist". This just doesn't live up to that. Nor does much of his other stuff in my opinion.

Suppose he likely did do it just to make the biggest file possible, seems a bit pointless, but I suppose that'd be the most likely reason reason.

McIlroy

He would be better of claiming this as a Matte painting . I was watching the behind the scenes for Episode 3 ,and one of the matte painters who was showing off a digital matte painting said it tooks 3-4 months to create the panoramic scene .It did not have anywhere near the detail that train station has .

SouL

Does this guy want a pat on the back for having a 15,000 layer photoshop file? What? I don't get it?
Hey, here's a tip: CTRL+E

Toomas

Has anyone else actually seen the files? It might be so that he made the whole 15k layer stuff up to score some hits to hes folio or something.
Also it smells fishy, 15k layers, 50 files, thats like 300 layer per file at 40"x120"? Can you actually work with file like that?

Ruz

hmm i thought it was pretty good

sinistergfx

Quick! Somebody tell this guy about 3d! or merge down for that matter.

I used to be into that whole 5zillion layers of tons of overlapping gradients, layer effects, and stuff like that, but then I realized it's a big waste of time and it was really just me being a wuss. -Painting- on a minimal amount of layers and merging down turned out to be much more productive and looks better.

Slum

Whatever happened to just painting in one layer? I know I fall into the trap of having too many layers, but I've found that when you have that much junk to deal with and organize, and keep track of, you lose sight of the end result and it gets frustrating. A few layers or so for a 'painting' is all that's needed.

I just realized this is the guy that used to go on ZD TV and Tech TV to do Photoshop Tips. Ha! I do like some of his stuff on the last page of the Fine Art section. There's some pretty neat images from 1990 or so. He was definitely pushing the limits of digital painting back then.

Ryno

I can make a 3d box with 30,000,000 polygons.

Bet he can't do that.

Seriously, unless you have a specific reason for not collapsing layers, you are just being a panzy. Commit to your art, and have confidence in the decisions you make. What's the worse thing that can happen? You might have to re-paint something a little bit. Oooohhh, scary.... To me this is a much more acceptable option than having to deal with some ridiculously large and unmanageable file.

MoP

That guy evidently doesn't have very good working practises.

Agreed with Daz, in fact I'd say a lot of areas look like Photoshop filter and layer effects.

I remember having to work with a 275-layer Photoshop file (NOT created by myself, I stress!) ... it was near impossible to understand, and hardly any of the layers were named ... I managed to merge it down to 20 layers, made it much easier to work with and much smaller file size.

Seems kinda pointless, like he's adding a new layer for every single change he makes.

moose

I bet he started using CS instead of CS2 because of its horrible performance with a lot of layers.

I love the close ups.... and that when you look at the entire image you have to nearly squint to find where they are. where's waldo!?!? meh, it probably would have come out much more cohesive if it was merged and worked all at once. He's probably cheating and having one layer for each colored light + bevel + shadow.

//edit
he has some pretty good paintings on the rest of his site, but they all seem traced, or made with an eye dropper. very lifelike, but very lifeless.

SouL

Layer effects.... LOLOLOLOLOL

danr

since no-one has brought this up yet ...

sorry, but why spend 2000 hours making a picture of something so insanely DULL?

palm

This is a tribute to stupidity! But I still can’t help being impressed by his dedication.;)

Krisonrik

why spend so much time on a 2D picture while Daz can easily pwn him with a 3D scene looking much more realistic and takes much less time? I swear people are running out of things to do...

Gmanx

"..unveiled at Photoshop World in Miami"

There's the money right there - it's a Photoshop headline-stealer, and not a very good one at that.

Sage

I thought it was nice. The huge file size is probably do to the dpi used for print. I imagine that is why it would be used for in the end. After reading the info on what took to make this it states the "flattened file weighs in at 1.7 Gigabytes"... He had to make the image in sepearate files to get this to work.

I'm sure a image that huge would take a very long time to render that's if the system can do it at all. This was probably a contract he got commissioned to do hence the dull nature of it. I do like the realistic lightning he has going on. I knew a professor once that made his students of his 3d class render out images at 640x480 at 720 dpi. The software used would croak after awhile and make rendering errors caused by bugs found in the 3d software. Part of it was the Macs used didn't have enough ram 96 megs. This was back in 1999 and the software used was crappy. I explained to him that the system and the software could not deal with his expectation. He didn't like it but listened since I was the TA and Lab tech and all his students had the same problem rendering out their work.

Does anyone knows what kind of specs a system would need to render and image like this, the train scene, for print at say 2048 dpi at 40 inches by 120 inches say using Mays, Max, XSI or Lightwave and about how long it would take? I'm just curious about it.


I thought this statement was silly.
"Taking a cumulative total of all the files, the overall image contains over 15,000 layers." It really doesn't mean anything except the process was tedious. I did like the work itself but the bragging is what is really bringing it down.

I have made images at 720 dpi 11 by 17 for print( for Graphic Design coursework) and it's a pain after all the layers start to build up. If it's for a client there really is no commiting because many clients want things changed several times, oh and they usually don't know what they want.

Alex

Daz

I don't believe it was a paid contract for a client. It would have said so. 11 months? Everything about it smacks of a publicity stunt (which clearly worked so in that respect it has probably paid off for the artist). As Gmanx just said : "unveiled at Photoshop world". People always overestimate how high a dpi is needed for print artwork. There is no justification for this file size and amount of layers other than showing off.

Making your working process 10 times longer and much much harder by working in 15,000 layers in anticipation of 'potential client changes' is a pretty ridiculous notion sorry.

Eric Chadwick

my boner is bigger than your boner.

Toomas

Sage like how you render 640x480 at 720dpi???
640x480 defines that the image is 640 pixels wide and 480 high, the dpi will change according to the paper size its printed on...

Snowfly

I saw this and was pretty impressed by it, but yeah his working file has too much bloat. Totally inefficient workflow, but tweakable. My guess is this guy paints with paths and a mouse.

Krisonrik

I'd be much more impressed if he achieved that with 1 layer in photoshop. Spam number to impress people is not what an artiest should do. If it's good, there is no help needed from huge numbers. If it sucks, huge number will only impress "noob" (well I don't know if people here actually use that term).

sinistergfx

Potential client changes? Like change the viewing angle?
HAHAHAHA.

Sage

Toomas what I said was poorly explained. The 3d software used to render for that class was called Infini-d and it allowed the user to specify a setting 640x480 as I said earlier or inches. It was designed to be user friendly so did all the conversions for the user. If you increased the dpi from 72 to 720 the software would render out an image that was 8.889 x 6.667 inches at 720 dpi. The professors idea was to have all the detail present when the image got printed. He wasn't too happy when I told him it couldn't be done.

Daz I guess I sort of wanted to point out the possiblity that that the artist made this for print. All his other work seemed to be created for that media. It's actually very easy to make a file with nothing in it be over a gig. Took me a minute when I looked up the numbers I stated for Toomas. If anyone makes a blank photoshop file 8.889 x 6.667 inches at 720 dpi photoshop claims it is 87 megs. Also doing that image with more than 20 layers is just lame. What's even more funny is that he really didn't use 15,000 layers, maybe in his mind he did, but whatever, to each their own. I do agree with you Daz that his workflow sucks.

Sinistergfx I can only imagine he wanted to add a big Gargoyle with a a huge cock and scream I did this with 15,000 layers, I'm sooo freaking cool! I tend to look for a logical explanation for things even when there isn't one. Maybe he doesn't know what adjustment layers or replace color are in Photoshop so using 15,000 layers seemed like a great idea.

Alex