Photoshop Techniques

Photoshop Techniques

Original Image 1

Original Image 2

These are the original images before I started to alter them within Adobe Photoshop CS4. I used many techniques within photoshop to edit these images which consisted of using: desaturate, vingetting, unsharp mask, auto colour, auto tone, auto contrast, varying the brightness and contrast of the iamge as well as using the burn and dodge tool.

Within these versions, I have edited the colour, tone and contrast of the image by using auto colour, auto tone and auto contrast. These are within the tab, 'Image'. These actions can also be carried out via shortcuts. For tone, it is Shift+Ctrl+L. For contrast, it is Alt+Shift+Ctrl+L and for auto colour it is Shift+Ctrl+B.These effects make the image more vibrant and I feel like the subject stands out more due to contrasting with the background. The images are bolder and in comparison with the originals, they are more attractive which would cause more audience appeal.The auto tone adds as matt finish to the image, making the subject look more fetishistic as her vunerability is increased.The auto colour individually dilutes a colour into the image to enhance the image's colours as a whole to make the subject look more unique. Finally, auto contrast on its own increases the darkness of the darker colours inm the image as well as highlights the lighter ones. This draws attention to the subjects face as this is a lighter colour, giving the affect of a more emphasised presence.

In these two versions, I have removed all of the colour to leave monotone images by desaturating them. This was done by a shortcut Shift+Ctrl+U, it could also be done by accessing: 'Image', 'Adjustments' and then clicking the 'Desaturate' button. The desaturation emphasised the lighting within the iamges - showing darker and lighter places. After I desaturated the image, I then changed the overall brightness of the images as well as adjusting the contrast to make the lighter and darker places more highlighted by accessing 'Brightness/Contrast'. This gives the effect of a contrasting image that highlights the main subject more as she has a lighter face, contrasting with the darker background. On the left image, brightness is changed more that contrast where as on the right image, contrast is shown more than brightness. Within the right image, the burn and dodge tool were also used. The burn tool is used on the top corners of the image to darken them more, which draws the audience's attention to the subject. However, the dodge tool was also used to highlight the face of the subject more - by making it lighter. I changed the brush size by using the square brackets on the keyboard as this is less time-consuming and more efficient. These tools gave the subject more emphasis and contrasting colours.

Finally within these versions, I have altered the images by using the unsharp mask tool as well as vingetting the image.The unsharp mask method is a very subtle way of making the image sharper, especially sharpening the eyes as much as possible. These images has an almost subconsious effect on the audience due to the sharpness of the images. Unsharp mask was used by clicking on the 'Filter' tab, 'Sharpen' and then clicking 'Unsharp Mask'. The pixels also need to be changed to around 2pt/2.2pt so that the method is subtle. Vingetting has also been used on these images by using the elliptical marquee tool, changing the feathering to 60 - 90 pixels and then drawing by dragging the gradient line around the subject. After this, 'Select' and 'Inverse' have to be clicked in order to select the area around the subject to change it. The contrast has been changed within the selected area by accessing 'Image', 'Adjustments' and then 'Brightness/Contrast'. To finish the process of vingetting, Ctrl+D have to be pressed to deselect the areas.Vingetting drags the attention of the audience into the centre of the photograph to emphasise the subject.