Composite Flower Fairy

My current design challenge is to use 5 different images to create one new image, and the theme has to be one of the seasons of the year. I chose Spring, and from the initial sketch you can see that I pictured a little flower fairy welcoming a butterfly into the season.

The images I chose for the composite image are seen below.

And here you can see how all the images are starting to come together. I used a combination of blending modes and masks to bring the different elements together (fiddly stuff!), and you can see that I changed my flower option part-way because the focus was not quite in the right spot for my liking.

And here is my final image. One sweet little flower fairy, welcoming Spring!

Composite image making

I am so flippin’ excited about composite images. Photoshop has such amazing tools for creating composites.

Take a look at these 3 images of my son playing soccer.

The final image was creating using the 3 separate images, plus the ball from the 3rd individual image which wouldn’t fit otherwise. A careful use of masks (including those fly-away laces) positioned Mr Soccer Extraordinaire in each soccer move. Using the content aware move tool helped fill the extra space on the left where the original photo didn’t quite extend to.

More photo edits

I discovered (after chatting to a photographer) that blogs have their own way of presenting the colours in photos, so the before and after photos I posted in the previous post really don’t capture the full changes that I made to them. So here are a new set of photos in which you can see some different types of editing I did with Adobe Photoshop.

In this first set of photos of the lighthouse, you can see that I have imported another photo with a more interesting sky and then used a mask so that it can be seen behind the lighthouse. I have also separately adjusted the blues and whites so they are more vivid.

The photo of the flower was taken with too much light in the background, so I have separately adjusted the brightness of the background and flower (by using masks) and cropped it to a more appealing layout – using the rule of thirds, and allowing space on the right hand side for the flower to “look” into.

In this photo of my delightful puppy, the sun was high and the shadow on his face was too contrasting, so I have lightened up the dark areas using a mask and adjusting the brightness settings. I have also cropped the photo so that his eyes are roughly a third of the way into the picture, and his nose points into the space beside his face. Isn’t he adorable? If you get any closer he will lick your face – I can promise you that!

Editing photos in Photoshop

My knowledge of Adobe Photoshop is growing exponentially at the moment, as I am in the midst of a design assignment! When it comes to photography I really hate the idea of taking a bad photo and then letting the software fix all my mistakes. But there are those days when it just all goes pear shaped and you need a helping hand. Or I may be creating a composite image, in which case Photoshop is essential.

In this first photo of the rosella, the background was very overexposed because the bird was in the shade but everything behind it is in full sun. I wasn’t going to reposition Mrs Rosella (or was it Mr?), so I took the photo so that the exposure was correct for the bird, despite the background being blinding. To correct the image in Photoshop, I first used a mask to separate the rosella from the background. I could then dial down the exposure and light setting of the background, to bring back some more colour. I then adjusted the light on the bird to bring out the colours in it’s shadows, and increased the vibrancy so you can really appreciate the amazing reds and blues.

before editing

after editing

The photo of the lilly pads on Rainbow Lake were so amazing in colour in real life, but unfortunately the weather was very overcast and therefore the colours in the photo were a little muddy and needed enhancing. The yellow in the flowers, by contrast, were a little overexposed, so I first used a mask to separate these flowers and even dial back their vibrancy a little. I then increased the light and vibrancy of the lilly pads so you could see how amazing the colours really were.

before editing

after editing

The photo of Rainbow Lake here was disappointing, as the cloud cover really dulled down the tones of the grass and lake. Increasing the vibrancy and contrast did the trick.

before editing

after editing

Principles of Design in Photography

The principles of design are the ways in which the elements are arranged to make the design work well. These principles include structure, unity, balance, perspective, hierarchy, scale, and contrast. I will use some of my photos here to illustrate.

The first image here, of the little dog, can illustrate the idea of balance. There are two main sets of colours – the greens and the greys/whites. The greens are darker and have more visual weight than the grey wooden boards, but the addition of the dog in that part of the image help to balance the weight of the colours. The dog is off-centre to the left, but the image is still balanced – as the the weight of the dog is balanced against the space it is gazing into.

The peacock here illustrates the idea of emphasis. The vivid blues of the peacock’s neck and head are so concentrated as compared to the distributed blues in the feathers that the neck and head are emphasised – bringing our attention to this part of the image.

The photo of the moss-covered fence help to illustrate perspective. You can see that the objects that are further away are less in focus and also smaller.

The side of this old farm shed uses the principle of rhythm and repetition with wooden planks. There is enough variation in the planks and colour to create interest or this would be a very boring photo!

These little beetle photo gives us an example of the use of scale. The size of the beetle would be unknown if it was not seen running along my daughter’s little finger!