Thursday, 4 October 2012

Photo Manipulation Assignment


For this assignment, I used two different editing programs to manipulate two different photos.

My first picture is one I took while on a trip to London, England last summer. It’s a picture of the London Bridge and River Thames. For this picture, I only used Photoshop elements. With this program, I first used the spot brush tool to take away a few of the random, tiny boats floating alongside the larger ones. I also took away a couple tiny dark spots in the sky, such as one above the bridge in the clouds. I then used auto smart fix to make any automatic changes to the picture such as to the lighting or the colour. After that, I used the topaz adjust 4 plug in to equalize the colour and then give the picture sort of a darker tone. After all that, I made a few small final adjustments to the picture. I decreased the sharpness which gave it more of a softer look. This also made it look sort of like a watercolour photo. I really liked that effect, because it made it look more like a painting then a photograph. And lastly I increased the strength of some of the smaller details which made all the lights along the harbor, bridge and boats more exposed. The reason I made these changes was to show how London has a dark side. It is an extremely beautiful city, and that can be seen in any photo taken by anyone anywhere inside of it. However, London has a dark past that involves slavery, torture and Jack the Ripper. So to me, this photo is a reminder that while the city is now beautiful and safe, it used to be ugly and sinister.
original
edited
The second photo I edited was taken by my mom. It was taken in the early evening of a cold fall night, as you can tell by the colour of the leaf in the picture. My mom likes to do crazy, random photo shoots whenever I come home, and I thought it would be a nice photo to edit. This one was a little more difficult to edit, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with it, I just knew I wanted to do something. I once again used Photoshop elements to edit this photo, along with the editing tools on Google+. First of all, I cropped the picture so my hands and chest couldn’t be seen. I then removed what I could of the unwanted wisps of hair on the side and top of my head. I’m just learning however, and couldn’t quite figure out how to do this properly and completely so I ended up darkening the background to hide it. It was just a test, but it turned out to have a desirable effect, so I decided to keep it. After that, I used an eye brightening tool to whiten the whites of my eyes a bit and brighten the irises. At this point, I went over to Google+ and used three effects, one was a colour burst effect which I applied to the leaf only, just to bring out the vibrant shades of red and yellow a little bit more. Secondly, I used the face paint effect to fill in the black eyeliner on the top of my eyelids so it looked even and full. I then applied the cross process effect with a bit of a fade to it so it wasn’t too overwhelming, but just enough to get it how I wanted it to look. At this point I realized the previous effect of brightening my eyes was no longer noticeable, but I didn’t mind as it looked the way I wanted it to. As you can see, I actually have two different edited versions of this photo. After “finishing” with the first one, I applied a cinemascope effect, and I really couldn’t decide which one I liked best so I’m displaying both. As for why I edited it this way, I’m not quite sure. Like I said earlier, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with this photo, I just wanted to do something, and with that in mind I think it turned out pretty nice!
 
original
edited
edited


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