Exercise: Alteration

The final exercise of this section is called alteration, this time I need to make a deliberate alteration and in fact I need to 'remove' someone from a photograph.

for this exercise I needed to use tools from photoshop and I chose to use the clone stamp and also cutting and pasting of some areas.

 Above is the original photograph, I took this a while ago but I wanted to see what it would be like if I removed the person from it, and whether it might work as a background for writing.

Here I have started the removal process, I have cloned the water and I used the copy and paste to start on her legs and body. I found that the best think to do was make each area I wanted to work on about 75% larger so I could make sure I included all the details.  Problems occurred when using the cloning tool, if I strayed too far from an area therefore bringing other factors into the picture. An example of this would be rocks in the water when working on the head area rather than just water.

The finished result, I found it quite interesting using the copy and paste for the rocks I wanted to try and make them look as if they had always been there but also to have a slight variety, in the hope that anyone seeing this photograph for the first time might think it had been taken like that.  I feel that this photograph worked quite well and could be used as advertising as there is plenty of free space now to write on, it would also be possible to write over the rock area.

Exercise: Addition

For this exercise I need to add something to the photograph, in this instance it is a new sky, basically the idea is for me to take two photographs one exposed for the sky with nice clouds and not just a plain blue sky and the second exposed for the rest of the photograph. But... the weather which seems to have a common thread through this blog is once again not being kind to me and rather than wait for a cloudy day I am planning on going back through my photographs and finding a couple that I can use for the same sort of effect.

The three photographs I have decided to use are of Leeds Castle in Kent. This beautiful castle is a joy to photograph if the conditions are good, which on the day we chose were not ideal.  My first attempt will be made using photographs one and three, the third photograph was taken with a blue filter on it, as at the time of taking these photographs we hadn't done a lot of work on exposure of different parts of the photograph.

From the top I have combined the two photographs then gone into layers and multiply I then used a mask to mask the bottom of the photograph as I didn't want any changes to that part I then erased the over exposed sky.

I had two attempts at this and prefer the darker photograph.  I did have trouble trying to get the photographs lined up and used the transform tool to try to achieve the correct placement, this resulted in me having to apply a small amount of cropping.

I have just realised that I have shown the finished photograph and although I have shown the various steps I didn't show the sky erased and the photograph flattened and the same with the main body of the photograph, however I think the end result will be very similar.

This post production work could be said to be legitimate as sometimes the weather is not favourable to both land and sky and it is necessary to do this to achieve the correct exposure.

I have been looking through both the course notes and playing around in elements and have found photo merge, this is not something I have ever tried before, but over all I think the effect has worked quite well.

The two photographs with the area masked off and then shown on the second photograph.Below is how it started.

 

The next set shows the area I wanted to use.

 

 

The final photograph.

For the second part of this exercise I need to change a sky completely, this I think is pushing the limits, I do accept that this is a personal preference and there are people that are more than happy to change sky's as a bare minimum. I did in fact go to a wedding a few years ago where the bride and groom were told in advance that the sky's in their photographs would all be changed. 

 

for this I decided to try something a bit more extreme, I had a photograph of Reculver castle with is basically a front wall with some bits of wall and add a sunrise to it.

These were the two original photographs as you can see the sky was completed blank and I felt the castle needed something a bit more dramatic in keeping with its origins.

This is the finished photograph I have cropped a bit of the fore ground out as I considered it to be surplus to requirements.

I blended the photographs together then using the multiply layer I then erased the parts I didn't require.

Exercise:Enhancment

For this exercise I need to enhance a photograph, as this needs to be a head and shoulder shot I took advantage of taking this one at the same time as the previous exercise. My husband as very piercing eyes at times and I wanted to see how the enhancements would work on him.

This is the starting point all I have done is crop it slightly and adjust the clarity slider.

I then masked off the area I didn't want to adjust using the quick selection mask set at 50%  hardness, and then increased the brightness and contrast on his face.

I then went on to use a quick selection tool to draw round the iris and pupils of both eyes before adjusting the saturation and brightness of his eyes. 

Finally I adjusted the hue of his eyes, In doing so I changed the colour of his eyes from blue to green, I felt that that changing the colour of his eyes was a step too far and that reality had been tampered with, I think to enhance the eye colour if fine but to change the colour completely is wrong.

The photograph above it the finished article after the saturation adjustment has been done.
The photograph below is the finished article after the hue adjustment has been done.

I will let readers of this blog decide which they like best.



Now may be the best time to talk about the ethics of enhancing photographs in particular the enhancements of famous people that are done by the press, and the pressure it puts on normal people to look like that.  In particular when people are made to look a lot slimmer than they are, or they have their waists made smaller and their chests larger young girls are very prone to believing what they see in the press is real and they think if they were slimmer prettier taller etc they would be happier. People are slowly realising that the images are not real and in fact some celebrities are now saying no air brushing, something I applaud them for doing. hopefully this may also help reduce the amount of anorexia in young people.  About a year or so ago there was a programme on the TV with Gok Wan the well known stylist, he produced a series of three programmes with young people about making them feel normal, in the one a young girl was staving herself almost to death to look like the photographs of models she saw in magazines, to begin with he couldn't make her see the photographs were 'fake' and that no one really looked like that, in the end he took her to a model shoot where she met a model and watched her being photographed and then saw the photographs after they had been 'enhanced', when she saw the difference she finally started to see how people are 'dupped' ,that programme may well have saved her life.

As I said earlier there is nothing wrong with a small amount of air brushing for want of a better word, but this really should be limited in its use, to maybe the removal of blemishes and the like.

Exercise: Improvement or Interpretation.

This is all about taking a photograph and making 'improvements' to it.
These can take the shape of several things but the main objective of this exercise is to take a portrait style photograph and select the person from the setting and make them 'stand out'.

Having bribed hubby again I set about taking a photograph in the shade, when I was reasonably happy with the photograph I started the processing. firstly I cropped it in camera raw as I didn't want the top of the fence with wires showing, I then adjusted the clarity slider before opening the photograph in camera raw. I then used the quick selection tool to 'draw around' him and then used colour curves to make my adjustments.

Above is the screen print showing the adjustments made by me.  As you will be able to see I didn't make a huge change to the photograph, one thing for me to remember for next time is no check shirts as it flares, this is something I am normally aware of I don't really know why I forgot this time.

Above is the final photograph I am not 100% happy with this as I think there has been a bit of adjustment to the rest of the photograph which I didn't want.

As this exercise is about 'improvement' I think it is important to make some adjustments but not too many, there are many arguments for and against adjustments I think I will follow the exercises and see how my feeling change as they progress.  e. I have been asked to say how far I would go in making adjustments, my answer to this would be remove any noticeable blemishes, maybe brighten the eyes or smooth out the skin I would not however be happy altering body shapes.At the moment I believe in keeping images as close to the original object, person or what ever without loosing sight of the 'clients' wishes if there is one.