Using Photographs to Generate Design Ideas

Sometimes designers suffer from the design equivalent of writer's block.  If you're anything like me, you're sitting on a fairly large stack of digital images that can be used as inspiration sources.  Here's a trick I've used for design ideas that works with many photographs.  It does requiring using an image editing programs capable of using layers.

The Process:

1) Pick Your Source Image
This can be any image.  The image selected will impact the results and some work better than others.  This method will work with what would normally be a "bad" photograph.  Blurry images, over or underexposed photographs or images with uninspiring composition will work, and may produce better results than using a good photograph.

Here's the one I'm using for this example:

This is a shot of a neighbor's tree.  I decided to keep it in this orientation instead of rotating it 180 degrees.


2) Create Duplicate Layer and Rotate 180 Degrees
New layers need to be on top of the layer stack when using this method.  Keep this in mind through the rest of this example.  (Assume any newly created layer is on top from here on out.)

Change the layer's properties so that it interacts with the lower layer.  There are a limited options that will result in a symmetrical design.  Lighten Only or Darken Only both work throughout the process, Grain Merge will work for this first step as well (but not for later).

I chose to go with Lighten Only with this image.  You may want to use one layer mode, go through to the end of the process, then start over with a different layer mode.  Changing modes at any step in the process will alter the results.


3) Create Layer from Visible Image, flip horizontally
GIMP has two methods for doing this.  Edit->Copy Visible then Edit->Paste as New Layer.  GIMP also allows the creation of a new layer from the visible image by Right Clicking on a layer in the layer dock.  The layer dock is located in the top right corner in the above image.

Flip this new layer horizontally and change its properties to Lighten or Darken Only.  (You can choose a different layer mode if symmetry is not desired.)

Darken Only was used here.

This step can produce an useful image.  You might want to save this image before going further.


4) Create New Layer from Visible and Rotate 90 Degrees

Here's an example of how different layer modes impact the visible results.  The new layer was set to Lighten Only in the top image and Darken Only in the bottom.

Again, yo may want to save the results before continuing.


5)  Create New Layers From Visible Image, Rotate 45 Degrees

6) Duplicate Top Layer and Flip Horizontally

The final step requires two identical layers in order to produces symmetrical results.  Set both layers to the same mode.  Here's the image after this final step:

The image can be edited after this.  You may want to enhance contrast or saturation or turn the image into a square image for better tiling.