P4

Organising My Images and Applying Processing Techniques

In this blog post, I will explaining and providing evidence on how I organised my photographs and what editing techniques I applied to them all to meet the requirements of the client brief. This will include showing the before and afters of my photoshoot to display the differences, and will also include how I decided what photos I decided to keep and which ones I decided not to keep with justification.

First, I began by organising the pictures I would like to use by moving the files into their own separate older. I did this, as I had taken a lot of photographs during the photoshoot, and organising the 10 images I wanted to use in its own folder helped me find them with more ease. Once I had finished organising my selected photos, I opened a program called Adobe Lightroom, which allows the user to make high quality photo edits effortlessly. Lightroom serves as a better substitute over other programs such as Adobe Photoshop, as Lightroom's editing tools are not as destructive or complex as Photoshop's. Photoshop is better suited for heavy edits, such as removing an subject from a scene and other advanced image manipulation edits. As well as this, Lightroom does not alter any of the photographs original file, making it non-destructive.

The first photograph I decided to edit is the one selected in the screenshot above. Although I like the way this image generally looks, I noticed that compared to the others, it is quite dark because of the placement of the lighting in the image. To correct this, I will play with the settings and available editing tools until I am happy with the result. Based on the client brief, I am aiming for a product that contains warm and calm colours, that overall looks soft as a whole.

The first major change I made to correct the image was by cropping it slightly, so that the subject did not feel too far away from the camera and so it is not overwhelmed by the background and foreground. With the grid that appears when cropping an image, I can also consider applying the rule of thirds technique, even when editing.

After cropping the image to my liking, I began to apply to editing techniques that focussed on the lighting of the photograph. I will now explain how I made these edits, and justify my choices: Because the image was looking dark because of the natural lighting, I decided to increase the exposure slider. I only moved it slightly, as I was also planning to apply editing to the highlights and shadows of the photograph later on. After doing this, I decreased the contrast slider, to achieve that soft and dreamy look. Decreasing the contrast slider will decrease the intensity of the highlights and shadows in an image, whereas increasing them will do the opposite, making the highlights and shadows more prominent for a more dramatic effect. Just to ensure that the image was not too flat because of the low contrast, I decided to adjust the shadows, whites and blacks sliders until I was happy with the photograph, and made sure that it was not too dark nor too light.

In the image above, I have applied more edits to achieve a dreamy look for my photoshoot. The red outline you can see in the image is a mask I created, and displays the selection area of where I would like to apply the dreamy effect. Once I applied the mask, I was able to make changes to that specific selected area.

To achieve the look I was going for, I went down to the effects panel, and adjusted the sliders until I was satisfied. The first slider I adjusted was the texture slider, which applied a gentle blur to the selected area. If I were to increase this slider, it would serve as an effect to sharpen the image, making it look more intense. The clarity slider worked similar, but it increased and decreased the brightness. When I decreased the slider, it would make the photograph appear softer. I then adjusted the dehaze slider, which served as an effect to flatten out the darks and highlights in the photograph.

After applying the edits and making the changes, this was the final look for the photograph. Based on the first screenshot in this report, you can see a clear difference in the photographs. This post production edit is a lot more brighter and softer with warm desaturated colours and a blurry dreamy background, where as the other photograph was darker and dull-looking.

Considering that this image is quite different to the others, I will have to apply different settings. This photograph was taken in a flower bed near a memorial, whereas the other photographs are pictures of cherry blossom trees. The colours and composition of this photograph is different compared to the rest.

Since I was already quite satisfied with the way this photograph looked, I did not make any extreme changes in attempt to preserve the detail in the image. I followed a similar process for the other photograph I edited, making changes to the lighting sliders and creating a mask for the background to achieve the dreamy appearance.

With this photograph, I wanted to find a way to make it look good while still having a dark appearance. To do this, I figured out a way to make the image appear less dull and intense while still having dark undertones and shadows. 

For this photograph, I increased the contrast so that the shadows and highlights were more prominent and noticeable and to give it a sunset look. I then adjusted the colour sliders to enhance the visibility of the highlights in the trees in the background. This made the light on the leaves and the cherry blossoms look reflective and I liked how this edit turned out.

Considering that the lighting looked okay in this photograph, I attempted to not make any heavy edits to it. Instead, I focussed on making the quality better by sharpening it and by seeing how I can achieve the dreamy / soft effect once again.

Here is the post production edit for this photograph. Although the changes are subtle, I am generally happy with how the post production edits turned out. I used the available tools to add a soft blur to the cherry blossoms to make them appear warm and soft.

To evaluate this report, I have explained how I have applied processing techniques to the photographs from my photoshoot and how I was able to organise my images ready for the editing phase. I will be able to apply what I have learned to future photoshoots to be organised and ready.

Finished Photographs: