Photoshop Manipulation

Since I had chosen my final images it was time to play around with them in photoshop to see if I could manipulate them in any way to improve them.

I was influenced a lot by Nan Goldin and after looking at her photographs I realised that they're very gritty and have good colouration to them. I really wanted to try and adjust the colours slightly in Photoshop, whilst also messing around with other features and seeing what I could create.

Brightness

The first thing I thought to adjust would be the brightness of the image. This didn't really work that much however because of the lighting I had used in my room, it made the image appear very over saturated and I didn't really like the outcome.

Levels

Levels

Messing around with the levels was really interesting as it made certain parts of the image appear really dark and shadowy, whilst not really affecting others. I really liked the outcome of the second image, however once again I thought about printing and how it might appear too dark for the viewer. Also, because this image was taken with a different composition to the others I couldn't achieve the same effect on all of them, and I didn't want them to look very different as they wouldn't match as a series.

Exposure

Playing with the exposure was very self explanatory. It just made the images too dark and I didn't really like the outcome.

Auto Colour

Applying the auto colour feature had potential, however it made the images appear really blue, harsh and almost cold. As I was thinking about intimacy I preferred a warmer look to the image so I didn't want to make the skin look really washed out and harsh.

Colour Balance

Colour Balance

Adjusting the colour balance was the best manipulation I chose to do. I started off really extreme and put the cyen tones right down to -100, which made the image too blue as you can see in the top image. However, once I adjusted this to -50 I was really pleased with how it made the images look. It kept a warmth to the photographs, but also looked very Nan Goldin inspired, with the tones being more warm but all matching with an underlying colour match. I was really pleased with how this turned out and chose to apply this effect to my final three images.

Final Images

Finn / 9:49pm

Self Portrait / 9:32pm

Intimacy / 10:02pm