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Edit photos to include in the 3d gallery

Overview

Name of explainer: Edit photos to include in the 3d gallery

Creative theme: Showcase month

Software used (for this explainer): Photoshop

User level: BEGINNER

This is explainer 1 of 8 in this series

This series includes:

Edit photos to include in the 3d gallery
Edit video clips to include in the 3d gallery
Create a Unity project and import a gallery scene
Add photos and videos to the 3d gallery
Add 3d objects to the gallery
Add sound to the gallery
Export a gallery tour as an mp4 video
Export the gallery to a VR headset

The Software

This series of explainers uses this software:

Photoshop for image editing. Similar results can also be achieved using Paintshop Pro or GIMP (free). See image editing month for full details about these applications and step-by-step explainers.

Premiere Pro for video editing. Similar results can also be achieved using VEGAS Pro or Shotcut (free). See video editing month for full details about these applications and step-by-step explainers.

Unity for working with a 3d gallery scene. See VR month for full details about Unity and step-by-step explainers for getting it up and running. We’re also using Modern Gallery, a PAID Unity gallery asset to import into our project and navigate in VR:

Additionally, we’re using AMBIENS AT+ videoclip, a PAID Unity asset that lets us export Unity camera movements as MP4 videos at up to 4k resolution:

At the time of writing, the combined cost of these paid Unity assets is approximately 80 GBP / 100 USD. You may also find FREE assets that will work just fine! Have a look at Sketchfab, CGTrader and TurboSquid, making sure to search for FREE or low-cost assets. The Unity asset store has regular sales so keep an eye out for discounts!

The gallery at the end of this series

Here’s how your gallery could look at the end of the project! We’ve chosen to start with two traditional ‘holiday memories’ sections…

…before moving on to commemorate British graffiti artist Banksy’s ‘Dismaland‘ showcase…

…and finishing with the beginnings of our very own ‘Arcade Corner’!

If you choose to export a gallery tour as a video file (explainer 7) or send the entire gallery to a VR headset (explainer 8), here’s how your gallery could look! The VR section is streamed from a Quest 2 headset:

The pre-requisities

This is an INTERMEDIATE explainer series overall, though the individual image editing and video editing explainers are suitable for beginners.

If you’re new to IT / computing, the explainers in this series relating to UNITY are not likely to be suitable. To get started with 3d software in a beginner-friendly environment, we recommend the free Tinkercad. See makeuseof for a helpful overview of 3d design.

Why would I do this?

Unless we’re aiming for a minimalist, near-empty gallery, we’ll need creative artefacts to ‘hang’ on the walls! We’ve raided our own photo and video collections and have decided to create three distinct ‘areas’ for this explainer series:

A ‘memories of Paris’ area. This will include images and a video and will be a clean / simple installation to welcome our visitors.
An ‘arcade corner’. This will include themed walls, at least one arcade machine ‘playing’ a game and various arcade / gaming posters. This area will be ‘dark’ themed to evoke the spirit of the arcades from the 80s and 90s.
A ‘Dismaland’ exhibition. In 2015 esteemed British graffiti artist Banksy created a dystopian ‘theme park’ on the beach at Weston Super Mare, England, for one week only. We were lucky enough to go along!

You can select any theme you like, from a WEDDING to a BIRTHDAY or FESTIVAL, or just fill the gallery with favourite things from your life 🙂

Short of inspiration? If you’d like to work with the actual images shown in the explainer, you can find them below!

Let’s do it!

Click the play icon to watch this video. Subtitles are available – Click the settings cog at the bottom right for options. You can also watch this video full-screen by clicking the full-screen icon at the bottom right.

Good to know

The explainer above is a recap of how to make simple image edits using Photoshop. Please see image editing month for full step-by-step explainers for Photoshop, PaintShop Pro and GIMP.

There’s no need to use highly detailed, high resolution images unless the detail level will matter for your gallery ‘visitors’. We’ll be using a mix of film and digital images, including low-rez screenshots from retro games for our gaming corner.

Get the image files!

In this explainer we work with a photo of Notre Dame, an epic landscape and a portrait of a senior couple. You can find them below in case you’d like to practice with them. Right-click on each and ‘save image as’. (The Paris picture is displayed correctly – We rotate and crop it in the explainer)

PARIS – Notre Dame using a film camera with 4 lenses

An epic shot that will need de-hazing and recoloring.

Image of a senior couple saved from a video file

Where to next?

Image editing is an important skill for many office-based / working from home roles. You could be creating images from scratch or editing photos for business use or for use on social media / Youtube etc. There’s no need to pay a penny to get started with image editing – Start with GIMP and see how you get on! See our explainers from image editing month for helpful ‘getting started’ explainers.

Remember, this is part of a series of explainers – Join us again for the other explainers in the series 🙂

Notes and updates

There are no notes or advisories at this time. This video explainer was last updated in June 2022. This page was last updated in June 2022.

We at pixels.cool are not responsible for the content of any external webpages or software downloaded from third party sites. Links are included in good faith at the time of writing. All explainer content is compiled in good faith using processes and methods used by the team. Modern software offers users many ways to accomplish a single task, and for reasons of clarity we choose not to refer to multiple options. All computer users should run up to date virus / security software at all times to minimise risks of data loss.