Sam Gentle.com

Photoshop Light

Sketch of Photoshop Light

In honour of Dorkbot, which I went to for the first time today, here's a Dorkbot-style art-meets-technology idea I had a while back: Photoshop Light.

You set up a person in a chair with lights shining on them from 5 different directions: top, bottom, left, right and front. Each light is a digital projector being coordinated by a Photoshop-style interface. As you draw in the interface, the projectors change their image to make it appear like you're drawing on the person in the chair.

The tools would be mostly designed for painting shadows and light, tinting, and adjusting colour temperature, the goal being to experience the subtlety and importance of lighting in our perceptions. There would be a few presets for, say, regular light, dim light, evil-looking underlights, that sort of thing. But mostly I expect people would just play around and try to make their friends look either good or bad, depending on their preferences.

There would, of course, be the obligatory take-a-photo-and-tweet-it functionality built in.