Fashion Constructed Image: Post Production

Once our final image had been chosen, I had to start work on the post productrion of the image. We knew this would take quite a bit of time as there were many imperfections with our images and in our set. The first thing i did when exporting the image into photoshop was to create some guide lines for where the image would be cropped.

These lines helped me to notice that the perspective of the wall was all wrong. During the shoot we were forced to use a wider angled lens than we had planned for, so there were al sorts of distortions in the image that needed to be corrected.

Once this had been done, i started working on the global adjustments that would apply to all layers and adjustments done after this. These were the levels, curves, and the colour balance. All of these adjustments were made through layer effects so as not to completly change any of the pixels in the image. I started off by adjusting the colour balance, to try and make the reds blues and yellows as strong as possible.

Once i was happy with the colours, i realised that the adjustments had changed the colours in the models hand to a dark purple. This is something that can be readjusted later through Local Adjustments.
Next i made a levels adjustment layer to try and even out the light balance and increase the tonal range.

This also improved the colours in the image. For our final global adjustment, we adjusted the curves only slightly which increased the contrast.

Next, i had to start on the more localized adjustments that needed to be made, for example, removing unwanted shadows, local colour adjustment, local contrast adjustment and airbrushing. As we were not allowed to go over the top with the photoshop adjustments, and werent allowed to adjust any pixels on the original image, all of these adjustments had to be done through masks and layers.

My starting point for these adjustments was to remove the large shadow cast above the models head on the inside of the door.

To do this, i created another level, and used the spot healing tool. There is an option with this tool to allow sampling for the tool to be taken from all levels and not just the current one. Selecting this meant that i could sample from the base level, but create onto a new one. Once id done that, i just blended in the new piece of doorframe with the existing frame using a soft brush.

The next major adjustment that needed to be made was to the bridge between the doors. We all agreed that it needed to be smoother and more constant without the intruding shadows.

 To do this, we created a selection around the entire path, and turned this into a mask. On a seperate layer, we filled this mask with a gradient to represent the pathway. Afther this, we adjusted the opacity of the mask and layer to blend it into the image. This was probably the hardest part of the adjustments we made to the image.

Then came the adjustments to the hand colour of our model. Again this was done by making a selection around the hands, creating a mask, and making the adjustmnts onto another adjustment layer.

This was the end of the major adjustments. The only few things that needed to be changed were the brightness and contrast of the blue and red walls. The red wall through our lighting choices had ended up with a large vignette around the outside. This was easy enough to solve. I selected the areas that needed to be brightened, added a gradient to them to blend in with the already bright areas, and then created another adjustment layer to change the brightness.

I repeated this process twice, once on the left and once on the right, being careful to keep the adjustments even as i didnt want one side to be brighter than the other.

The last adjustment that needed to be made was to darken down and add contrast to the blue wall on the inside. This i decided to do with the levels rather than the brightness and contrast tool.

After adding an unsharp mask to the image, we were left with our final image.