Exercise:Interpretative Processing

The next exercise is really all about being creative. There are plenty of controls within photoshop which can be used to help interpret an image.  The image I have chosen to practise with is an old fishing boat from Whitstable.  This is  very much photographed therefore it will be interesting to try and do something a bit different with the image.

Above it the original raw photograph, it is a nice enough picture but one that has been taken many times by many many people. Below is my interpretation of it.

The adjustments I made were; the white balance was changed from auto to daylight. I then took the vibrancy and saturation sliders right down until I had a barely coloured photograph, the final adjustment was to increase the contrast. I chose to keep a small amount of colour in rather than go black and white, as I wanted to keep some of the interest in the boat and a black and white version isn't quite right on this.

For the second part of the exercise I need to take a photograph and make three different versions of it. It occurred to me that the chimneys I had used in the previous exercise would work well for this particularly after my comments.

Above is a reminder of the original raw shot.

I wanted to go for a vintage or aged look, something I think suited the age of the chimneys.

for the first photograph I kept the white balance as shot, I then opened the raw file and using layers I applied a photo filter, I choose a warming one at 56% to give an aged look.

For the second one I changed the white balance to daylight, I then adjusted the contrast, brightness and saturation sliders down before pushing the vibrancy slider up slightly. This gave a darker look to the photograph.

For the final photograph I used a custom white balance and adjusted the temperature and tint sliders and the saturation down, I was looking for a faded photograph look.

Photographs two and three had all the adjustments done in Raw, I only have elements 11 but I must admit I was surprised how much could be achieved just by using this.

I now need to assess whether I have achieved my aim for this exercise, I think the answer to that question is yes. The three photographs all show a look of aging, my favorite is photograph one I like the warmth to it, almost in a way like the afterglow from a sun set, or a photograph that has been kept in a box for a long time.