Digital Manipulation - Masking and Selection

Painting a quick mask to make a detailed selection:-

My last attempt was to use the quick mask mode again using one image:-

                                              shutter 1/400 aperture f4.0 iso 200 FL35mm

This was my original image, taken at Calke Park (see Tree Story), in which I wanted to show the root detail of a tree.  The background was a bit distracting however with a lot going on which was detracting the eye from the main subject.  The light was not best placed either because I had caught the tree part in shadow, so its colours and textures were not fully shown.

 I placed the image in photoshop and did layer, duplicate layer.

 I ensured the default colours icon for foreground and background were set to black and white respectively.  Then I hit the quick mask icon at the bottom of the tool palette (this paints in red) and chose a hard brush, and size, to paint on the red mask.  I wanted to paint the mask over the main tree root subject in order to protect it from my amendments:

I used the left bracket to reduce my brush size when I got to nearer the edges and used the looking glass tool to zoom in to see how near the edges I was getting.

Then I hit the quick mask took again and this sets the selection with the 'marching ants'.  Now the tree content is protected and any amendments will affect the background and foreground only.  I decided to use the Lens Blur filter  (filter, blur, lens blur) to blur out the other areas to full extent.

When the adjustments box came up I experimented with the sliders and increased  the blade curvature to 61 and radius (which controls the blur extent) to 96.  These gave the background a good blur and the foreground a water wave like effect lapping up towards the forefront tree root centre. It also gave a 3D sort of effect to the left roots of the tree.  I accepted these adjustments with 'ok'.

That was the background and foreground sorted but the main subject could  do with adjustments too I thought, so I did select and inverse and this would give me the tree itself.  I now looked at the brightness/contrast and saturation levels and adjusted them to what I saw fit, with an increase to each.

The above shows the history box of adjustments carried out.  I then flattened the image and saved it as a jpg for showing on my blog.

                                                                         Down below

This end result really shows what I set out to take in camera...the base and root of a tree with its colours, textures, form, shape, lines and pattern.  The eye is now drawn to the main subject first, and its habitat secondary.
I did later wonder if I should have included the foreground area (at the foot of the tree) in the mask, therefore protecting it from the blur... so the tree root didn't look quite so 'plonked on', but I had enjoyed experimenting with my first thoughts and liked the effects created.

Digital Manipulation - Masking and Selection

I had another go at masking and selection using the mask icon within the layers palette this time and 2 different images:

                                              shutter 1/80 aperture f.4 iso 100 FL 105mm

                                                                      Looking in
                                              shutter 1/320 aperture f7.1 iso 200 FL 24mm

I took  'Looking in' on one of my Calke park trips and the flower image on the way home from there in someone's garden.  I was drawn to Looking in because of the pattern formation in the shadows of the foreground.   It looks like shadows at the foot of the trees form a pair of spectacles so my idea was to put a flower in each part of the frame...to look at the view with rose tinted glasses.  I used this flower, rather than one of my actual rose images because I thought its full big shape was better to act as the eyes.

The following screen grabs give examples of my process:

I placed both images in photoshop and moved the flower image to one side to look at them both. I copied the background layer.  I planned to remove most of the green background from the flower image, once I had given it a rough cut out and in thinking this, I knew it would be more important when it was placed in the left spectacle frame (which was on the tree trunk) more than the right one, because the right part of the frame was on the floor where patches of green grass would let it mix in.

I set about cutting the flower out using the lasso tool and did edit, copy, to copy this selection.

Then I opened the scene image and did edit paste.

I clicked on the mask icon in the layers palette at this stage then did transform scale to resize the flower (by dragging in the top right corner of the box that appears) to make it smaller:

At this same time I also needed to remove the green from around my rough cut out of the flower. I selected the brush tool and set a size of 20px and opacity of 85% and ensured black was set as the foreground colour.  Then I brushed around the edge of the flower to remove the unwanted green.  As I did so I changed the brush to smaller to get into the intricate parts more.  If I went too far and cut out abit of the flower it was ok because I had plenty of flower to play with, but if I made a big mistake and took a big part of it out, I could hit x (to revert to white as the foreground colour) and brush back over it to bring it back, then hit x to continue.  I did not need to do this however because where I did take the odd tip off I simply rounded its edge to blend in.

I zoomed into the flower to make the brushing easier (by cmd +)

I used the move tool to place the flower in position in the left hand part of the spectacles and continued to resize down to fit easily within the frame.  I thought the flower would look better rotated round slightly so did edit, transform rotate to turn it.

Now it was looking more eye like, I needed to use the brush tool again to paint it into the other part of the frame using the same method outlined in my previous Digital Masking and Selection blog. (see Digital Masking and selection).

Once I had done this I could move both the eyes together to position them as I saw fit, between the frames.

This was ok and as I had thought the green around the flower that I had brushed into the second eye blended into the scene because of the grass, but the eyes didn't really stand out enough.  I saved the image as a psd and a jpg, so that I could then go back into the psd to carry out more amendments:

I returned and opened the 'psd' in order to make the eyes stand out more because I didn't want it to look like the flowers were just plonked on and part of  the whole scene...  They needed more defining to make them stand out so I increased the brightness slider to its maximum.  This only affected the eye areas, because of the mask, and not the rest of the image.

By un- ticking the preview box I was able to compare the before and after look to check... Yes the eyes did stand out more on full brightness.

The above shows the history box.

At this stage I had saved the image as a psd to return to it later.  When I opened it again I cropped in to cut out some of the left side that was not necessary or relevant to the scene, and to place the main subject, the glasses, using the rule of thirds.  I then enhanced the contrast, brightness and colours overall.

Rose tinted glasses

I concluded that the white that now appeared around the flower eyes was fine because the background of eyes are white anyway.  I think the lightening of the flowers make them appear more like roses and I am satisfied with the final result because it achieved what I set out to do...to create a look of rose spectacles looking into a nature scene, so I flattened the image (layer flatten image) and saved as a jpg.

                                                      

Audi Channel: Designs for Life : Charlie Waite - research for theme 2

I have looked at the work of Charlie Waite on line and by book......


This is a screen grab of an image of him from the video above, working in the field, taking photographs of flowers which is what I have focussed on in theme 2, The closer View:

I like this picture showing Charlie out in the field because it is nice to see the photographer with their set up ready for taking the shot and it would be unusual to see ourselves in the picture doing that.  The scene is lovely with bold colour which I like.  It looks like a sea of poppies and he is obviously taking a shot of   a poppy/poppies close up.

Sandwich      

shutter 1/1328 aperture f4.0 iso 100 Fl 105mm

Sandwich has a similar composition to Charlie's except I am not in the scene.  I have shown this image here in this blog, even though it is part of my theme 1 work, because it is similar, and it shows how similarly my 2 themes can come together (close up subjects in a scene, can also make part of a full scene if the shot is taken and re-composed by differing the distance to subject) .  It depicts bold colour within its setting.  I took it near a brook (see Babbling image) not far from home.  I had wanted to capture a sea of rape seed.   My sky holds more detail than the one above,  and I see it as the bread, the rape seed as the butter,  and the tree sandwiched between.

Open Poppy

shutter1/200 aperture f.4.0 iso 100 FL 105mm

I didn't find a sea of poppies but in someone's garden I found a few odd ones blowing in the wind and showing their insides.  I captured this one just right to show the inner fur ball, which I found had interesting shape, pattern and texture.   Again it depicts bold colour, this time set against a plain background, which is what I have been searching for to put the emphasis on just the flower, in connection with my study of Heather Angel's work too.  I have found that I like to shoot close flowers on a wide aperture throwing the background into blur.

Charlie Waite is an English landscape photographer noted for his 'painterly' approach in using light and shade.  This interested me because I have been trying to emulate a painting sort of effect with my flower images.

He worked in theatre and television for 10 years before becoming a photographer.  He has wrote many books, one of which I have, entitled "Light and Land" and runs a photographic tour company of the same name.  These worldwide tours and workshops are ran with other top photographers like Joe Cornish and David Ward. 

taken by Charlie Waite

I love his above scene and the way the eye is drawn through to the light area, and the way the light area if part of a frame within a frame.   It would appear I am drawn to colour and bright light and  I think parts of very bright light can make an image very effective. 

Tree legs

shutter 1/40 aperture f7.1 iso 200 Fl 24mm

'Tree legs' comes from when I stood inside a tree and saw the bright light shining through from outside.   Again the eye is drawn to that area.  I liked the close detail of the trees legs with its colours, texture, form and pattern.  The image also shows perspective taken from this angle.

taken by Charlie Waite

This is another perspective look that I liked.  It looks like a leaf cloud is sweeping through Charlie's wood scene.  The eye is focussed on this cloud of striking leaf structure.   This image helped me form an idea for my manipulation assignment too (Fantasy brook).

Digital Manipulation - selections in a before and after image

I had another go with taking a selection from one image to mix it into another, because I wanted to improve an image with a larger selection...  I took the following 2 images and placed them into photoshop:

                                                  shutter 1/80 aperture f.7.1 iso 200 FL28mm

For the above shot I used the rule of thirds to place the main subject of the stump, because I liked its surroundings at the time and thought they should be included.  On reflection now though,  it may be thought that the stump is lost  in its surroundings.  Therefore I want  to try to improve on it and give it a bit of whizz.  For this manipulation I am going to centre the main subject and bring it upfront of the frame.

shutter 1/250 aperture f.4.0 iso100 FL 102mm

This is the second image I am using (bit of whizz)  in order to try and make the overall image more appealing.

I cropped into the stump image to get a closer view of the main subject, using the crop tool:

I gave it a more square look bringing it to centre frame, but still leaving enough background room to play with.

The following screen grabs show what I did next:-

I took a selection from the flowers image and using the history brush painted it into the stump image, all over the top section of the image working around the stump shape, but just cutting into it slightly at its back, in order to look like the flowers may be springing out of the stump. I wanted to bring it round quite low at the sides making the background the majority area of the frame, with the exception of the stump, in order to emphasize its form and texture and control of the scene.

I wanted the stump to have a sense of  the flowers  growing out of it, but also to show the type of habitat the stump was found in (a different one to what I had actually found it in).  I wanted the background  to look abit soft ( as in blurry) again to give more emphasis on the stump  and also to ensure the eye focusses on it primarily, instead of wondering around the background.  For these reasons I selected this flower image.

Then I used the spot healing brush to blend in the edges of where the flower scene (top portion) met the stump ground leaf (bottom portion) scene.

I noticed a small line of light at the left of the stump near to the joining edges and decided to blend it in using the  clone tool.

I tried a fade on the the use of the tool when I thought I had used it too heavily.

Flowery stump

 I love the colours together and think the background greens match in well and compliment the bright lit green of the moss.   The stump has a surreal  look,  being so close to the front of the frame, gives it a different perspective.  The high colour background helps emphasise its appearance making  Flowery stump stand out, so I achieved what I set out to do.  A 3D feel is given off in my opinion.  Now bright and colourful  this image is an improvement on the original,  which at first I liked, then decided it looked  plain and could be improved upon.  The scene shows colour, form, texture, perspective, perception lines and pattern.  It also makes me think about HD imagery and how I may give that a go in the future... this is an over the top image now,  but I like it.

Lighting:
I think I get away with the light and the way it falls on the flowers as part of the overall image because I have curved the right hand side ground leaves (the horizon) to give the perception of that ground going back with very bright light upon it as it goes back.  Therefore if the sun light is hitting from the low right  side angle it would also be shining bright on the lower flower drops just above the ground (right of image). I also told myself I could see necessary shadows lines accross the face of the stump from the flower stalk, and deep shadow to the forefront left and crevices right of the stumps roots, which also follows.

Presentation of images

I will be displaying my images on my blog for presentation of my final pictures.  There are frames that I could set them within, using photoshop,  if I wanted to and had more time.  Below shows a process I could use to create a black border within a larger document:-

By opening a new document with: file, new document and choose an image size of say international paper ( an A4 size), I could change the size boxes to width 297mm and height 210mm.

I could place my image in photoshop and move a whole selection of my image onto the new document by using the move too.  I could then use the edit, free transform and scale options, with a choice of 'black' by use of  the colour picker as shown below:-

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This would be a nice effect and I could display more than one picture within the document and experiment with different colours.  However I will not be using a framing method, due to time restraints.