Charlotte Smith A2 Media Blog: Evaluation: Question 4

I have created a prezi to answer part of this evaluation question, here is the link:
http://prezi.com/7zgldoylqaxc/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Next I will talk about various editing techniques and the media technologies I used for editing my photos.

All photo editing I did in photoshop. The following show the steps I used in photoshop during editing:

Adding a new background to a photo:

I did this for all the photos I took, as I felt that the previous backgrounds weren't good enough.

For my 'Empire' magazine photo, I used this photo, which I took on a day out, as the background.
As it was of both a city and park scene I felt it fit in with the urban feel of the film, which is set mainly in a city.
However, I used only a small section of the photo, as I didn't want the railings, cars or pillars in it. So I used the top right-hand corner as the background.

For the other photos I simply added a white background, as they were for the poster and I wanted the poster to have a clean look.

To add a new background I used Adobe photoshop.

First of all I opened up my edited photo of a person and created a new layer, adding in a photo of the background that I wanted to use (I'll refer to this layer as background). I unlocked the layer of the photo containing the person (for ease I'll call this layer person) and put this layer on top of the wanted background.

Then, using the quick select tool, I selected the person from the 'person' layer.

Once this was done I right clicked on the selection and clicked refine edges.

I set the smoothness to 22, feather to 2 pixels and shift edge to -3. Then I went around the hair with the brush tool, and set the output to new layer with layer mask.

I went round the new hair with the burn tool to make the white 'halo' lessened.

I basically follwed the steps from this video:

Shadow:

I added shadows to the photos I used in my poster following these steps:

Eyelashes:

As I felt that Abby's eyelashes weren't thick enough in the Empire photo, I added in eyelashes.

Step 1: Original picture.

Step 2: I set the brush tool to size 2, and the hardness and opacity to 100%.

Step 3: I created a new layer, and named it eyelashes.

Step 5: With the pen tool I drew a line and curved it to look like an eyelash. Then I right-clicked on the pen line, clicked stroke path and selected brush.

This created an eyelash, using the brush settings I had selected before. As it was too dark, I changed the opacity of the layer to 50%, and the light to soft light.

To create more eyelashes I simply pressed alt and dragged, this made new copies on different layers.

Step 6: To make the lashes look more realistic I turned on show transform controls in order to alter the length or angle of the lash.

Step 7: I neatened the layers by putting all the eyelash copies into a folder and named it group 1, for the first group of eyelashes.

The first finished layer:

Step 8: To make the lashes look even fuller I copied the folder and moved the eyelashes to lengthen and thicken their look.

Before eyelash editing:

After eyelash editing:

Airbrushing:

Airbrushing the skin for the photo I used for the magazine cover took a long time.

I followed the steps from this tutorial:

http://www.photoshoptutorials.ws/photoshop-tutorials/photo-retouching/retouch-airbrush-skin-photoshop/

This is how I airbrushed the photo:

Step 1: Used dodge and spot healing tool to brighten eyes and remove some blemishes.

Step 2: I created a new layer and copied the teeth onto it. Changed the layer settings to 'screen' and lowered the opacity to 20%.

Step 3: I decided the eyes were too bright so I copied them onto a new layer and lowered the opacity to 80%

Step 4: I used the eye dropper tool to select a colour of the skin that I liked, then I used the brush tool to paint over the skin using this colour. Lowered opacity to 30%.