Final Touches

This week was full of new finessing techniques. We learned about the following: rotate arbitrary, curves, sharpening, masking, and forced depth of field. I really enjoyed playing around with the curves and sharpening the image. With adjusting the curves, it really allows me to adjust the photograph exactly how I want the image to look. I can increase the highlights and decrease the shadows to the exact degree I desire. This comes in handy for the photographs in the animal center due to the non-desirable lighting. I really like working with the sharpening filter. I can select the area that I want and manipulate the sharpness of the area. When working with animals this is an awesome tool because I can really bring out the definition in each hair. As instructed in the lecture, both of these edits should only be applied once the photograph is resized, flattened, and saved as a JPEG. In addition, these tools are also very harsh and should be used sparingly like salt and pepper on food.

Jayxn (89233) 

This is Jaynx! An adorable Great Dane/ Boxer mix puppy. He was extremely sweet and reminded me so much of my Great Dane when she was a puppy. In this photograph, in addition to the previous editing skills we have learned, I adjusted the curves in this picture to darken his black fur and brighten his white fur. Then I selected his face only and sharpened the selected area to really bring out the definition of his fur to contrast the rest of the photograph.

Lucas (88794)

This is a photograph of Lucas. He was extremely excited but I managed to get him to sit still momentarily thanks to Adrienne! The lighting in his cage was very dark so the curve adjustment really helped me lighten the photograph to bring out his beautiful stripes. I also sharpened the fur on his face to make it more dynamic.

Travis (89047)

Travis is an adorable puppy who is almost entirely white. He had the opposite problem of Lucas in that the image was too bright. He is also sitting next to his blanket that is white. By selecting the background and adjusting the highlights i was able to tone down the background so it was not as bright and so the focus was on Travis. I sharpened his face a little bit but it was difficult due to his all white fur.