Photoshop Editing

This week, we have been taking part in a Mac workshop, where we have been exploring Photoshop. We learnt about basic editing skills the first day; how to crop images and change the colour. On the second day, we did a photographic project. We worked in pairs and had to go out and take certain pictures. Included were different perspectives - take a picture close up and then far away, in a lift, and in a busy place. We then had to edit some, exploring different techniques that we have learnt. Here are my before and after photographs. 

Before 
I took this photograph because I found it fascinating looking up at these towering trees, and I think it fits well under the perspective category. 

  After 
  The first thing I did to the     image was rotate it. I think this new perspective definitely makes the picture look a lot more interesting, and it feels as if the tree is really intimidating. I chose to convert it to black and white, because it makes the image a lot more effective, and the contrast between the dark trunk and branches and the lighter leaves works really well. 

                  Before                                                                    After  

I wanted my partner to look quite domineering, so I took this picture looking up at her. I love the backdrop to this photo, and how it isn't taken looking straight infront. The expression on her face is quite peaceful, so I thought about converting it to sepia. To do this, I went on hue/saturation, and then ticked the colourize box. This works really well I think, and the lighter jacket makes her stand out from the background. 

Before 

After 

I've done a lot of photography of flowers before, and i've found that when you can't see the flowers stem, it's quite nice to really enhance the flower, making it appear as if it is jumping out off the page. I decided to colour spot this image, and to do that I cut around the flower, and copied it as a new layer. I converted the background layer to black and white, which meant that the flower was still in colour. To boost the tones, I used hue/saturation. I'm very pleased with this photograph.