Image Manipulation

Image Manipulation

One Day Project: National Geographic

15/06/15

For this one day project, we were instructed to take a photo, or multiple photos of ourself and to manipulate them, whilst included some techniques, such as soft portraiture effects. 

The idea of this project was to introduce some new techniques and put them into practice so that we would know how to use them in the future, and it was also to create some artwork that would go into an exhibition for the foundation and second year students.

The National Geographic was used as a template for the entire piece. There were some strict requirements that were to be met, as all pieces made would be put together for the exhibition and so had to have the same font, size, spacing and all images used had to have a white background.


 The head title of each piece could be anything, and so we weren't restricted with this, as long as it fit the font and size requirements and fit into the correct space. The small statement underneath the title could also include anything within reason, as long as it included your name and also fit the requirements.

















I created four designs, and with each I tried using multiple different effects. The first effect I used was Gaussian Blur, which would help to create an airbrushed effect, which is often used in industry to make things look better and to make facial features less harsh, therefore making people look more attractive.

The first design I created was the red one, which was the most difficult to figure out. Once I had done the effects and managed to meet the requirements for the piece, I could then begin to experiment using different filters. The second piece I created was the green one, which I experimented with using the Filter Gallery in photoshop. With this I used a ripple effect, changed the size and erased some of the parts that I didn't want, or that I wanted to make stand out.

The third piece I created was the brownish one, which I once again went into the filter gallery and used the mosaic tile effect. For the blue piece I mainly experimented with curves rather than any filters. This gave it a colourful twist.

My chosen piece was the green one because of the colours and the effect.

For each piece, the writing and the border colour was taken from a colour somewhere inside the image I had used.

How to create a soft portraiture effect:

The first thing I had to do was to change the levels and curves within the image, and crop anything out that I didn't want. Because one of the specifications was to have a white background, this would mean cropping out anything in the image background that wasn't white or that couldn't be changed through selective colour to white.

Once this was done, the image was to then be duplicated twice.

Once the image was duplicated, the copies were then to be renamed, the first copy 'Lighten', and the second copy 'Darken'. 

Then, going into the drop down list where it says 'normal', one the copy of the image called 'Lighten', you would chose the option 'Lighten', and on the copy labeled 'Darken', you would chose the option 'darken'.

 
The Lighten Layer would be changed to 60% opacity, and the darken layer to 40% opacity.

After this, the Gaussian Blur effect could then be added. Click on the 'Lighten' layer first.

The Gaussian Blur effect can be found in the filter heading under the blur option.

With this effect, you could then choose the intensity of the blur.

Once you had chosen the intensity, you then go into the 'Darken' layer and do the same, by simply going into the filter heading. Gaussian blur should now be at the top of the list, and simply clicking on it will add the same effect to this layer.

After this is done, you then merge the layers together by holding shidt and selecting both the 'Lighten' and 'Darken' layers, then going into the menu drop down list at the top of the box and clicking on Merge Layers.

After doing this, you then click on the small rectangle icon at the bottom of the box.

Making sure the white box is highlighten, you can then go into the eraser tool and bring back any features of the face that you want to stand out using a varying opacity and softness.

After this was done, I then had to create the template for the image to go in to. I did this using Illustrator.

Once in Illustrator, we had to measure an actual National Geographic book for the dimensions and then create a page of the same size. After measuring, I could then add in rulers and lines to the template. The border had to be a certain thickness as well. Once the border was complete ( I used the rectangle tool to do this and just dragged it over the entirety of the page.) Once I had done this, using the guidelines, I then created  smaller white rectangle for the middle, which would create a background for my image.