The Samoiloff Effect, and How to Make Your Own!

The Samoiloff Effect, named after its creator Adrian Samoiloff, is an intriguing visual phenomenon that occurs due to the interaction of contrasting colours. Heavily reliant on color theory, the samoiloff effect shows how certain images and objects can appear to change color or shape just by shining colored light on it. He was well known for his theatrical ideas, shifting the color of light to swap backgrounds in seconds. The effect is easy to understand, so I will be showing you all the uses and versions of the samoiloff effect and how you can make your own samoiloff image!

To make your own image, you will need a computer and some form of color printer. A free editing website called kleki is the editing software I will be using for this, and it is suggested, as it is completely free, no adds, and no download. Just search it, click it, and there you go!

The effect has been used all over the world, mostly in attractions, theatre, and paintings/graffiti. While browsing, I stumbled upon a social media influencer who paints incredible works of art, who goes by Helenya Apostolou, including the 3rd image attached, depicting colorful hands. The art form is made by taking certain colored paints, and putting them under colored lights, which tint the paint to make it either much darker, or nearly invisible, allowing you to have multiple images on the same canvas. The way to make these images can be very difficult though, so how do you make them yourself?

The attached images are a samoiloff image that I put together, depicting Alvin and The Chipmunks. The problem arises when you have images with a white or black background, because then you need to swap from additive to subtractive color mixing. here is a step-by-step guide for a 3 frame animation turned into a samoiloff:

The attached image shows 3 seperate images of frames in a walk cycle. you cannot include more than 3 images without it getting messed up though, so be wise with your 3 image choices. The image shows 3 frames of a walk cycle, that we will now change the color of.

As you can see in the 2 attached images, there is a colored image of the 3 frames, colored magenta, cyan, and yellow. In the next image, the 3 frames are stacked on top of each other, each with a "darken" effect on the layers below them. This is the equivalent of additive color mixing, due to colors adding up to form black, apart from subtractive color mixing, where they add up to white. Subtractive color mixing is more difficult, because it requires magenta, yellow, and cyan lighting, which is harder to find that the usual red, green, and blue lighting, so I will just be showing the simpler version. if your image looks similar to the second image, then your all good. Remember to include a white background!

You may find this surprising, but thats all that you need to do! To see the effect in real life, print the image in color and shine red, green, and blue light onto the image. For the best affect, shine the light in a dark room.

P.S. when coloring DETAILED images magenta, yellow, and cyan, it can be really difficult if you just using the fill tool. Instead, follow these steps:

1. Click on your image in the "layers" tab
2. Go to the "edit" tab and click "invert"
3. go to "curves" and click on one of the RGB colors that make up the chosen MYC colors (red+green=yellow)
4. drag one of the middle dots to the top left/bottom right corner to remove the color
5. repeat steps 3 & 4 with the other color that makes up your MYC color
6. click ok to apply changes
7. click invert

An attached image shows these steps followed on a normal color image.

I hope yours come out as good as mine did!

Helenya Apostolou Sources:

1. Article: https://boldjourney.com/meet-helenya-apostolou/
2. Personal Store: https://helenyaapostolou.com/
3. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/helenya_art/

Other Sources:

1. Kleki Editing Software: https://kleki.com/
2. Man Face in pictured instructions: https://www.salon.com/2019/04/15/evolution-of-the-human-face
3. Alvin & The Chipmunks Image (I edited off this): https://alvin.fandom.com/wiki/