It goes without saying that 2020 changed everything. It was a devastating year with lots of adjustments, including changes in the way most people conduct business. Many things shifted to being remote and digital marketing became more important....
The 80s were a wild time, for many reasons but design was one of them. These are some of the 80's biggest design faux pas. ...
We discussed seasons and location and how they can add interest to an image. Showcasing your product in a different environment just gives your customer a little more information about your product than a traditional studio image....
We wanted to talk about a more commonly used tool, and the one we recommend the most: Location. We all know that location is everything, and it is important to keep in mind when creating a marketing image....
One of our biggest goals as a company is to help our clients tell a story with their images, helping them showcase the best aspects of their product(s) and showing the end consumer why this is the product for them. ...
Let’s have a quick chat about room scenes and vignettes. While room scenes are our ULTIMATE favorite to create we want to talk about what vignettes can bring to the table when used in combination with room scenes....
To say that the 1930s and 40s were a tumultuous time would be an understatement. One of the most notable events of course being World War II and the impact it had on the job market, housing shortage and baby boom. This had a major effect on the way average Americans lived....
“Industrial” and “Minimalism” are movements we have come to know and love, especially when it comes to interior design and architecture. But these trends are no where close to being new....
Did you know that the world of special effects and CGI as we know it all started with a cat? That’s right cats have been a trend since the 1960s, more specifically 1968. This is when a group of Russian mathematicians and physicists developed a groundbreaking mathematical model that allowed them to move a cat across a screen. The journey that CGI has taken over the years since have been astronomical, and I mean that in the most literal sense.The first feature film to use 3D animation was Futureworld in 1976 (Westworld used 2D in 1973) followed by movies like Star Wars (1977), Alien (1979) and Superman (1978) to more modern movies and like Avatar (2009), Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), and Black Panther (2018). Of course CGI is used in many things outside of movies like video games, still images, and even things like medical training. CGI is more widely used than ever and has helped us expand the possibilities of art, storytelling and technology. Computer Generated Imaging has given us opportunities that many would have considered impossible. Companies have greatly benefited from the use of CGI when it comes to advertisements, it has not only cut down on cost but also time and equipment. Car commercials, for example, have the ability to shoot a commercial without even having the car on site. This awesome device (shown to the right) is called The Blackbird and it is used in the production of car commercials to give the CG car a realistic feel. This has helped create a relationship to the road that can be difficult to create otherwise. PIX-US works in the domain of advertising and marketing images and was founded to do for the home fashion and products industries what CGI had done in the automotive industries. Outside of cars CGI is used in advertisements all the time from sports, to clothing, even food, the abilities of CGI are only limited to your imagination. So in the end we owe all of this to a cat, which just means that cats have always owned the internet and always will. ...
Everyone perceives color differently, and women are better at it than men. This dates back to the dawn of time and traditional hunter/gatherer roles. Over the years, color-matching has evolved to such a degree that a science has been developed around it complete with its own number values, scales and terminology. There’s also a science behind the human perception of color. It’s called colorimetry and involves the study of human physiology (color receptors in the human eye) and the technology employed to more closely determine how people perceive color. You may wonder how you personally see color. PIX-US recommends that anyone with professional imaging needs test their own color matching aptitude with online tests like X-Rite’s (formerly Gretag Macbeth). Another equally important step is examining your color-viewing tools environment, and that’s where this article can help. We tell you what you can do and why. In the photography and CGI industries, nuances between colors can make or break a project. That’s why we take it so seriously. We want to limit frustration over color-matching by providing background about our process and tips for optimal viewing of our images. The PIX-US Color-Matching Process At PIX-US we have machines and software to help match the color of your product. These include color-calibrated graphics monitors, color viewing stations from Just NormLicht, and several different color analyzation tools. Several team members (including both men and women) assess the trueness of the match. As part of the color matching process, we pick an area in a mid-value light and not too close to strong colors. Then we work to match that area and have the other areas reach a state where the viewer logically understands it’s the same product whether in shadow or highlight. If we try to match the color of every piece of product in all areas by taking out all highlights, shadows, and color reflections we end up with a flat, boring image that looks like the product was just dropped in with Photoshop, leaving a much less desirable result. Here’s a look at our setup: 1. We have new, color-calibrated monitors. The ultimate goal is to match...