This post outlines the different features of Photoshop used when creating my photographic essay.
Step 1.
I would open the original image first and remove any content that shouldn’t be in the final image. This included: people from the images of Stalin and his 3 allies/enemies, propaganda from the edited shop sign image.
I used two tools to remove objects from the original images.
Healing
The healing tool was the most useful tool for hiding people or words in images. I would take a sample from another area of the image by holding option and then clicking on an area. Then I would start clicking on areas of the image that I wanted to remove, and the tool would automatically replace these areas using a smart approach of the sample I had selected, whilst still paying attention to the surrounding pixels.
Stamp
For the following image, I had to rebuild part of the wall behind the character removed, otherwise the room wouldn’t look right behind Khloe Kardashian. I had to add in parts of the doorframe and separation in the wall that the healing tool didn’t work with. For this I used the stamp tool. Again, I made a selection of part of the doorframe and then clicked repeatedly moving down the screen to continue the doorframe down towards the floor. This means that the room still looks realistic in my edited photograph.
Step 2.
After editing the original images, I would edit the images to be layered dover the top. I used three tools when cutting out around subjects to add to images. This included adverts and people.
Magic Wand
To erase the background from pictures of people, the magic wand tool was useful for quickly selecting parts of the image. The magic wand tool automatically finds borders to different objects within images, and selecting these means I can quickly go over the image with the eraser tool and only remove the background. However, this method would leave imperfections around the object, and wasn’t entirely effective.
Eraser
To neaten up the edges around the cropped image, I used the eraser tool. I set the eraser to a very small size, and selected a faded ellipse bush. The fade in the brush helped to create softer edges as I slowly erased around my subject.
Feather
To further soften the edges of my subject, I used the feather tool. This helps to break up the border of the image, making it look less like it had been cut out by scissors, and thus blending in more smoothly when being layered over the original image.
Step 3.
I completed four steps when blending my cropped objects into the original images. I would copy and paste the cropped objects, and then use the eraser to make sure I had removed everything correctly.
Noise
All of my original images are old, and therefore they have surface noise to varying degrees. The first step when blending in my cropped images was to add a noise filter to the selected layer, change the mode to monochromatic and then adjust the size until it visually complimented the original image.
Black and white
I would then apply the same black and white filter to both the original image and the layered images. This ensured that the colouring of the images would be the same. A lot of the original images had tints of green or brown, and it was very hard to adjust the colour of the layered images to match them. I also think that have uniformity across images is important in a photographic essay.
Brightness/contrast
The final adjustment I would make to the images is to adjust the brightness and contrast of the layered images. The older photographs tend to have a much higher contrast and less detail than the modern photographs I have chosen, so I would increase the contrast of the layered images to suit the style of the older photograph. I would also use the brightness slider to help the layered images to blend in with the original photographs.
Digital Media: Theory and Critique 