DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY & IMAGING - WEEK 4

 ADJUSTMENT LAYERS AND FILTERS

Lecture

For Week 4 of our DPI lesson, we have completed the initial composition of our collage and its structure should remain largely unchanged. Mr. Yusoff moved on to teaching us how to begin rendering the final image that we would submit for this project. 

Throughout the lesson, he emphasized the use of adjustment layers such as saturation and hue, as well modifying the properties of the layer itself, such as by altering opacity, in order to create a subtle effect on the edited image.  Editing the colour curve of the image also helped to adjust the hue of the image in order to suit the overall colour palette. 

Visual Research

Before I started to render my final collage, I first had to take a closer look at the design of my current collage before I decided how to proceed with its rendering. 

(Fig 01, Journey, 15/4/2021)

I thought that the really saturated blue of the fins behind the door of the subject was really jarring and drew too much attention with its stark contrast to the background. As such, I resorted to altering the design of embellishments for the door, ideally to something less distracting, and something with more texture variation, instead of duplicates of a single item.

(Fig 02, Doorway to Heaven in Big Sur, by Pierre Leclerc)

I was browsing Pinterest when I took notice of this picture by Pierre Leclerc. I was intrigued by the light shaft that was given off by the sun shining through the archway, as it seemed akin to the composition of my collage. The ethereal effect of the lighting from the sun gave the image a soft, gentle feel, which I would like to incorporate into my collage. As such, I decided to implement it into the final design of my collage.

Exploring Ideas

(Fig 03, Altering Composition, 21/4/2021)

Deleting all the elements behind the door, I noticed that the black pile of gravel that I used as a mountainous background was in a completely flat perspective, like a sheet of paper laid down on a table, as opposed to the main subject who is slanted at a ~35 degree angle. I took it upon myself correct this inconsistency. I had a reasonable amount of experience in photo stitching, as such I was aware of the mesh transform tool. I turned both the rusted steel background as well as the black gravel into two separate meshes and contracted the rightmost anchor points while expanding those on the left, giving an illusion of perspective in the image. 

(Fig 04, Adding New Elements, 23/4/2021)

I was fond of the texture that the newspaper sample provided, as the non-uniformity created by different strings of text gave the composition some much needed variation to make it less boring. I still thought that the design was slightly bland, as such I implemented the fishes that I cropped for previous weeks and altered the hue to give some colour-saturated accents to make the collage a little less flat looking. I also added some glow between the background and midground to give some distinction of the subjects from the background, through the use of an airbrush.

Final Design Outcome

(Fig 05, JourneyFinal, 24/4/2021)

The final design came out quite satisfactory, though I felt the lack of quality in the lighting could've been rectified if I had installed an airbrush tool for Photoshop in order to create lighting with less hardness at the edges. The atmosphere that the collage gives off matched my reference image, to some degree at least. In hindsight, the newspaper clippings I used behind the door could've also used some more rendering in order to create a more seamless combination. The texture of the gravel is also visibly distorted slightly, which might've possibly been avoided by not scaling the image too large to distinguish minor details.

Lecturer Feedback

Mr. Yusoff was satisfied with my work. He commended my use of the slight glow effect that I had implemented to give some atmosphere, as well as the use of scaling/distortion in order to create an overall more cohesive image. He also commented that it was similar to a "doorway to heaven" theme, which actually coincides with the title of the reference image I used.

Reflection of the Week

The rendering of my collage for this week was, personally, more a test and refresher of my current skills in Photoshop rather than learning new technical aspects for Photoshop. I felt a bit more at ease working on an image in Photoshop rather than Illustrator. However, my eye for minor details could still use more work, as sometimes uncoordinated lighting or proportions can be noticed, but can't be accurately pinpointed to its source. Overall, I felt that this week was challenging in terms of creating a good render.