Photo Shop
Tools Cropping: The crop tool can be used to select a particular area of an image and discard the portions outside of the chosen section. This tool assists in creating a focus point on an image and excluding unnecessary or excess space. The “slice� and slice select tools, like the crop tool, are used in isolating parts of images. The slice tool can be used to divide an image into different sections, and these separate parts can be used as pieces of a web page design once HTML and CSS are applied. The slice select tool allows sliced sections of an image to be adjusted and shifted. I used this almost all of my shoots because it is an essential tool in photoshop to make the image all round much better. Drawing: Photoshop includes a few versions of the pen tool. The pen tool creates precise paths that can be manipulated using anchor points. The freeform pen tool allows the user to draw paths freehand, and with the magnetic pen tool, the drawn path attaches closely to outlines of objects in an image, which is useful for isolating them from a background. I used this tool when cutting around the glasses in shoot one so that I could achieve a smooth cutting path. Painting: A few of the painting tools in Photoshop are the brush, pencil, gradient and paint bucket tools. These can be used to retouch images by altering and adding colored pixels. Original paintings can be created using the brush tool, since it has many different default brush-tips, and brush strokes be easily adjusted in size, shape and texture. There is an option to create custom brushes to suit the user’s needs, and original brushes and brush packages can be found on the web. The pencil tool allows the user to paint rough strokes on the canvas, creating a similar effect to a real pencil on paper. The gradient, fill and paint bucket tools are similar to each other, as they each fill areas of the canvas with color. I used the painting tools in most shoots, they are essential for rubbing through layer masks and also just generally erasing parts of layerd images because most of my shoots included photoshopping techniques to be used.
Tools Measuring: The eyedropper tool selects a color from an area of the image that is clicked, and samples it for future use. The hand tool navigates an image by moving it in any direction, and the zoom tool enlarges the part of an image that is clicked on, allowing for a closer view. I used the eye dropper tool to perfect some of the images because some of the close up shot eggsagerated spots on the subjects face so I used the eyedrop tool to select a color right next to the spot so that then I could rub over it and the spot would have appeared to vanish. Selection: The marquee tool can make selections that are single row, single column, rectangular and elliptical. Once an area of an image is highlighted, the move tool can be used to manually relocate the selected piece to anywhere on the canvas. The lasso tool is similar to the marquee tool, however, the user can make a custom selection by drawing it freehand. In addition, the lasso tool can make magnetic and polygonal selections. A lot of my images needed to use some of these tools in general for example if i wanted to earase around something I would use the polygonal lasso tool and then select the inverse. Typing: Photoshop also provides tools for adding and editing text. The type tools create an area where text can be entered, and the type mask tools create a selection area that has the shape of text. The type tool creates vector-based text, so symbols, letters and numbers in various fonts and colors can be re-sized while maintaining the same resolution. I used the tryping tool only in the last shoot but i also had to rasterize the layer (convert it into a photo) in order to use bleniding modes
Shoot one
Inspiration
Thumbnails
Thumbnails
Outcome
Self Review
The first problem that I encountered was that it is not possible to get the frame of the glasses in focus when the background or subject was also in focus, so what I had to do was take two different images (one of the frame of the glasses and my hand and one of the subject or person). I then had to cut out the frame of the glasses out and put it into the portrait image but I also had to cut out the lens of the glasses and use the blending op@ons so that I could make the final image as authen@c as possible with the reflec@ons you would get in photographing glasses. Composi@onally I had to change the image from the inspira@on because if I had both of the lenses in shot then this leC too liDle space for the subject so I had to compromise and only use one lens in shot. However, I s@ll feel that it is a very full shot with not a lot of empty space of color in it. I am vey pleased with the way that my image has turned out because I feel that it looks very authen@c and I believe that to someone who hasn’t done photography this doesn’t look photoshopped.
Shoot Two
Inspiration This photograph was done INSERT NAME and I feel that it has been a very influen>al photo in the conduc>ng of this shoot. I knew how I would go about doing this shoot straight away however this image gave me the ini>al idea. It is clear that this image has undergone photoshop but I think that the only thing it has had done to it is to get the eye and eyebrow to show through the arm. There is no composi>onal technique that I have no>ced in this photo but because it isn't a landscape photo it doesn’t maFer as much, I feel that composi>onal techniques aren’t as important in portrait photography. I like how in this photo there is very liFle color, the only vibrant color is the red on the lips and everything else is very pale with the subject almost blending in with the white background, I think this coloring suits this photo however it is not the style that I would use in my photo. I don’t think that the people I will be photography have the right skin complexion.
Thumbnails
Thumbnails
Outcome
Self Review
I feel that this shoot went very well because it was very simple. I tried to achieve the same coloring style as was in the shot I used in my inspira9on, my brother was a very good model because he has a freakishly fair skin complexion for being half Greek. I think that I was able to use the image in my inspira9on sec9on very well and learn what I needed to do before conduc9on the shoot. The main problem I encountered with this shoot was trying to get my brother to hold his head s9ll in between the two shots because the ini9al photoshoping plan was to have the two images layered over each other and rub through one but since my brother didn’t stay s9ll I had to cut out the eye from one shot and they copy, adjust and move the eye into place over the hand. I also changed the opacity of the layer down to 50% so that you could see some a the hand through the eye.
Season Tite
Inspiration
The idea for this photo came from an ar1cle that I had read in the magazine “Digital Photographer”. I like this style of image very much because it just strikes me as a very vibrant image. There will have been a substan1al amount of photoshop that has gone into this image because it is not possible to get that contrast and clarity with just a raw shot. There must have been a lot of toying with the contrast and other forms of making the wrinkles stand out so much. Composi1onally this image is very simple, the subject of the image is dead centre of the shot with very liDle else going on in the shot. I think that the hardest part of this shoot will be the photoshoping element. There is no depth of field in this shot because the en1re frame is occupied by the figures face which is the subject.
Thumbnails
Thumbnails
Outcome
Self Review I think that this shoot was one of my least successful ones because it found it surprisingly hard to achieve the same style or finish to the image that I used in my inspira:on sec:on. I think the man
Shoot Four
Inspiration
This is a photo that I found online whilst searching for ideas so I don’t have a specific ar8st for this shot however I will analyze and take inspira8on from this photo s8ll. In my opinion this image must have been photoshoped because the blueness of the eyes does not look natural so in the edi8ng of my shoot I will try to keep the photoshoping subtle but I will s8ll need to photograph someone that has either blue or green eyes because I want to keep the photoshoping to a minimum so the final image looks as natural as possible. One more thing that I would do in my image is to not have the subject occupying the en8re frame because there is no depth of field in this image what so ever so I will try to include some depth of field in my shoot, because I thing that this image looks quite empty due to the lack of it. I like how in this shot the subject has some material over most of her face which focuses our aCen8on to the eyes but it also compliment the color of the eyes because they are both of the same shade blue.
Thumbnails
Thumbnails
Outcome
Self Review
I feel that my shoot went very well because I was able to keep the photoshoping to a minimum which made for a very natural looking photo, I would like to think that you wouldn’t be able to no;ce that there was any photoshoping that went into this image. Upon edi;ng this shot all I changed was the color of the eyes slightly because the flash made the eyes look very pale and discolored as if they had been bleached even though Sophie has very blue eyes in person. I le@ in any other imperfec;ons like the barely visible spots or blemishes above/in between the eyebrows, I did this because I wanted to tamper with a liBle of the image as possible. Composi;onally I like this image a lot because I have copied the composi;onal technique of the shot that was used in the inspira;on sec;on however I said that it looked quite empty because there was no depth of field in the image so when I was cropping the image to size I le@ some of the background in so that you could see the unfocused or so@ feel to the hair.
Shoot Five
Inspiration The inspira+on for this shoot oddly came from a movie poster, the Final Des+na+on movie poster gave me an idea for a weird twist on the normal portraiture photography. The conduc+ng of this shoot would be very simple because all it is is taking a close up photo of someone’s face but the main part of this image would be in the edi+ng to make this very unnatural photo look as natural as possible. It is hard to analyze this photo because it was not intended to have any photographic techniques to be included all I can take from it is the idea and the concept of what I am going to do and exsiccate the shoo+ng in my own way.
Thumbnails
Thumbnails
Outcome
Self Review
The first problem that I encountered upon edi5ng this shoot was that photos where a slightly different style to the ones in the movie poster. In the poster the people have no expression on their face and the image has a much darker feel to it, I was very caught up in taking a very good ini5al image that I didn’t think of this however I don’t think that it affected the final outcome of the edited shots very much. I think that the edi5ng also went well and the blending look quite natural. The composi5on of this image was very simple, the subject was in the centre of the frame taking up most of the space with the skull taking up just a liCle bit more of its fair half of the image because if the face blended into the skull in the dead centre of the image then it looked too perfect and at a glance there was something that didn’t look right in the image. In conclusion I think that this shoot was very successful because the photoshoping and the ini5al shoot went well so there was really no reason why this image wouldn’t have turned out the way I intended it too.
Shoot Six
Inspiration
This image gave me a very good idea for a photo shoot, I instantly fell in love with this photo. I was searching through typographic and this is the image that struck me as the best mostly because it is clear that the person who did this has clearly taken a lot of <me and effort to edit this image because the words follow the contours of the face, this is incredibly hard to do so I can only try a much simpler version of this shot by using different blend modes and erasing.
Thumbnails
Outcome
Outcome
Self Review
There are two final outcomes here because I couldn’t decide which one was be6er, in one of them I just used a the blend mode overlay to slightly match the color of the text to the skin color which made for an interes?ng outcome however in the other one more photoshoping was needed. Instead of just using a blend mode I made the text a close together as possible so that if took up as much space as possible and then I selected the inverse of it and rubbed through the layer that had my brother’s face on it. This made for a very interes?ng photo because from a distance it looked like there are just come lines over his face but at a closer look you can see that it is actually text. This is the only photo shoot that I have done that has included a hidden meaning, the ?tle on the shot “always know your roots” may seem like it has no relevance however the text that is overlayed on the shot is actually a descrip?on of how photography started