Photoshopped Photo for Portfolio

For this assignment, we were to pick a photograph, or multiple photographs, and use a few different effects in photoshop to create a new photo.  These photoshopped photos show our abilities to utilize all of the elements of photoshop.  I chose four different photos to mess around with in photoshop.  I guess you could say this photo is in honor of my friend Elizabeth, because the three of the four photos are of her!

                The first photo that I used was one that I did not take, but I am actually in the photo; it was taken at a show I went to, and it was taken by photographer Dirk Mai.  It is the black and white photo of the crowd in the background of the photo.   The first thing I did with the photo of the crowd, which was originally in color, was I simply desaturated it.  After I desaturated it, I decided I didn’t like how the picture looked as just black and white, so I started to try all of the filters to see which I liked best and thought would look the best with the photo I was attempting to create.  I decided to use the poster edge filter, and I changed the edge thickness level to 1, the intensity level to 2, and the posturization level to 1.  I then took my first picture of Elizabeth (the one on the right) that I took one day when we were at the beach, and I took it while she was throwing sand in the air, hence why she is jumping up like that.  The first thing I did with this picture was to capture only Elizabeth’s body with the magnetic lasso tool.  Then, I copied and pasted her into the photo of the crowd, and used the free transform tool so she would fit into the crowd and so she wouldn’t look like a giant!  I then thresholded the image, using about 10 layers and changing the color I used for every layer.  After I finished with the first picture of Elizabeth, I started to work on the other two pictures of her.  They are both very similar and were taken at the same time, except that in the picture that is dominant in the front, she is taking a picture so her camera is shown in the photo.  I blended the less dominant photo into the background first and used the lighten filter to blend it with an opacity of 30.  I then blended the picture of her with the camera into the photo using the same filter but with an opacity of 60, so it would stand out more than the picture in the background.

                I really like how this photoshopped image came out.  I debated with myself over and over again while trying to decide what images to use.  I pretty much winged this photo as I went along; I had chosen the crowd picture first, and then decided what to do from there.  I hadn’t planned out any of the photo before I started, but I am very pleased with the outcome!