Blog #5

Required exercise Photo Edit

 This is the original picture.  It is pretty busy.

 In this picture I tried to capture the people without the distraction of the cars, but I'm not sure that was successful.

   In this picture, I wanted to focus on the line of traffic.  This was my first time playing around with the photo editing software on my new computer so I wasn't sure how to zoom in more.

The original picture was pretty yet again.  I think it gave me a lot to focus on for close ups.  Again, I don't love photo editing so this was something I really had to think about.

I decided to focus on the buildings in this shot and I love the way it turned out because this could stand separately without the foreground.  This looks like an entirely different picture.

I put it on Autofix for this one just to see what it would do.  The software decided to crop by the cab and make it the main focal point.

I love this shot!  I discovered something called the Selective focus under the effects button.  This tool allows you to highlight items or areas of focus and it automatically adjusts.  You can also make the focus medium, strong etc etc.  This is a great tool.

This is the original.  This picture seemed pretty simple because the colors are monochromatic.  There also aren't that many dolphins in the water so I thought it would be easy to crop. 

When I cropped this picture, I wanted the dolphin in the foreground to be the main focus, but I didn't like the fact that I couldn't isolate this one dolphin completely.  I still see a little of the other dolphins and it distracts me.

In this picture I used the selective focus tool again to zoom in and brighten up the main dolphin.  I think this makes it more of a focal point.

This is the original image.

I cropped this image to make the elephant seem to stand alone, but I don't think it works well here.  The chick has to be in the picture so it just looks like a smaller version of the original picture.

Here, I wanted to brighten up the elephant and the chicks to see if I could make them more of a main focus. I think this works.

The original image of the tree outside of my house on a snowy day.

In this picture, I used the selective focus tool to draw focus to the branches in the middle.  At first the contrast was so suddell that I barely noticed it, but then the more I studied it the more I noticed that there was a difference.



In this picture, I used the selective focus tool on a larger target area and I only used medium focus.  The differences are almost unrecognizable so I think this tool works best when it is used on a smaller area. 

These were the original candles in the store.  They have glitter and I wanted to make that noticeable in the picture.

Here, I zoomed in to try to show the glitter.  I can see the glitter now but I couldn't lighten up the picture or else the contrast wasn't that noticeable.  The picture is too dark.

Here, I was trying to lighten up the picture to show the contrast.

This is the original picture.  The fact that the bag got in the picture really bothered me, but I never got to take another picture of them.

Here I used the Selective focus tool to add details to the KNICKS cupcake with writing, but I noticed that the other picture became blurry so I didn't love this picture.  I also noticed that the picture looked really dark.  I don't know if this is because I used the strongest focus of the Selection Tool.

I decided to just crop the bag away and lighten up the picture.  This is the best one, but I've come to the conclusion that you can only make but so many improvements with editing a photo.  Sometimes you need to take another original photo.

Pick 2 Exercises

 

 

This is the exercise from DIY about border variations from page 197.  It is odd to get it right on the first try.  Out of all of these pictures with the border, I think the first one best compliments the picture.  This one is uniform and the colors are complimentary.  The last one does add a nice twist and color play.  I think that the pattern may distract from the picture but I like this one as well.  The thickness of the border off sets the size of the object.  When the border is thick it creates a balance and uniformity.  I really like the brightness and the color scheme.  I had to look it up because I wasn’t sure which color scheme was being utilized but I think it is an Analogous palettes.  Three adjacent colors from the color wheel are used.  It also seems like it could be Split-Complements because the greens are very similar and then the yellow adds a pop.  I’m not really sure but that is why I struggled with color choices for the frames.  The dark green is right next to the light green on the color wheel so I thought it would look better but it is my least favorite border.

 Exercise: Color Echo (design basics index p.219)

This exercise was a little frustrating for me in terms of what I wanted to do and what I actually knew how to do.  I saw the ads in the book and thought they were easier to make than they were.  I tried a photo editing software on my iphone, MS Paint etc etc.  When I finally was able to settle on a software, I decided to use the same picture because I liked the colors and I thought it’d be fun to spruce things up.  For this exercise since I couldn’t do all the fancy things, I decided to just do a banner and play with the picture colors.  Although, this was a difficult exercise for me, in this instance all of the pictures actually turned out to my liking.  I think the colors are all warm and complementary so they work well together and I played with the font.  The font on the second picture is my favorite.  It is serious, bold and loud.  It also helps create unity.