Assignment 5: Photo Manipulation

Of the assignments we have had so far, this one was definitely the most up my alley. I've loved messing around with Photoshop since I was a kid, so I was excited to take this assignment on using some of the pictures I took for previous assignments.

For the first image, I decided to really challenge myself. When this picture was critiqued during the genre photos assignment, I received feedback that it would be much stronger if the photo presented the building straight on and it the tree wasn't there. So, I decided to make this happen. I used a lot of different tools to make the manipulated image. First, I transformed the whole image using skew, distort, and perspective. Then, I used a combination of the stamp and patch tools to add extra windows and remove the tree completely. I thought about something one of the guys said in the video we watched in class last time - that you need to leave in enough of the original that the

Original Manipulated

viewer can still relate to the image. So, I left in a few of the shadows and dirt spots and window curtains from the original to give it more of an authentic feeling. This image took way longer than all of the other ones I did combined, but I am really happy with how it turned out!

Manipulated

Original

After spending so much time making the other building image as realistic looking as possible, I decided to go the opposite way with this one. I took this photo of a church for the narrative assignment and I really like the quality of the light and even the lens flare in it. Something about it kind of reminds me of a painting, more specifically, an impressionist paining because of the color and the "capturing of light." I've always liked pointillism, so I decided to give it a little bit of a Seurat look. First, I tweaked the color and saturation to make everything more vivid. Then, I used the Pointillize filter. This process was rather simple, but I like the outcome.

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For the third image, I decided to fully break with reality and take one of my nature pictures and make it completely unnatural. For this image, I cut out the bird from the rest of the picture and inverted it. Then, I used the Glowing Edges filter on each layer. In order for the bird to stand out as much as possible, I tweaked its color, hue, and saturation. I think this would make a really cool poster or t-shirt design.

For the fourth image, I used another nature genre photo. This time, I wanted to augment the sense of foreboding found in the original image. First, I increased the contrast. Then, I used a combination of the Dry Brush and Smudge Stick filters to enhance the image. I wanted it to seem like it is caught somewhere between a photo and a painting. It's not that dissimilar from the original in color or even texture, but it's just unrealistic enough that you know it's not a "true to life" image. Something about the final result reminds me a little of looking at coral underwater.

Original Manipulated

Original Manipulated

For the final image, I decided to take a picture and just enhance the image slightly so it retains a sense of realism. First, I cropped the image so that the random guy walking by was no longer in the shot and so the main subjects were more off-center. Then, I tweaked the color of the letters on the sign so they were brighter and had more red in correspondence with the other red elements in the image. I used the stamp tool to eliminate the washed out parts of the letters on the top of the sign and to remove some of the elements I found distracting like the bright spot of light in the background, the snap on the girl's bag, and the shiny zipper toggle on the guy's pants. I also darkened and slightly desaturated the girl walking in the background (seen just below the lower right

corner of the sign) and used the burn tool to darken the orange lights that are visible through the branches of the central tree. I think the overall effect is very natural looking but allows the viewer to see the main action of the photo more easily.