This week we are practicing cutouts in Adobe Photoshop. I took some fun photos in Turkey that I used for this assignment. For the full cutout I was not supposed to take flash photography in the museum that we were in, but as you can tell, I had the flash on this this picture. Oops.
1. Partial cutout
Before I cut out the focus…
After I cut out the focus…
Bridge of Love: 5-24-14; 5pm; Istanbul, Turkey; f 3.1; 1/400s; 6.3mm; Olympus T105
I loved the colors in this picture. The bridge gave such good shape to frame the passerby’s. I also like the consistency of the color red of the people in the picture. I used the Quick Select tool to grab the area and needed to refine the edges a lot on the left side. I had some trouble with the fence and the gradient of colors that caused the image to be less than straight on the left edge, but I think it would have needed a different tool to really flatten that out. The picture isn’t the greatest because it was taken before I knew anything about photography.
I almost included the woman sneezing, but realized this was not very elegant nor really balanced. I considered cutting out the woman on the right side of the picture, but this is my friend Gabby and I could not bring myself to taking her out.
2. Full cutout
Before I cut out the subject…
After I cut out the subject…
Pharaoh: 5-18-14; 5pm; Istanbul, Turkey; f 3.1; 1/30s; 6.3mm; Olympus T105; Fill flash
Using the Quick selection tool in Photoshop I was able to select most of the pharaoh without any interference. Part of the shoe on a person in the background was being picked up as part of the pharaoh. There I had to deselect the parts that the Quick selection tool had added to the selection. It did a great job not picking up on the jeans of a different person on the right side of the picture. I added some lightness to him to make it less dark.
To get the edges to be even I needed to add a smoothing effect under the refine edge tool. I set the subject on a black background because it contrasts the hieroglyphs beautifully. The detail really pops out more on a black background compared to a white background.
The song that I am listening to during this blog post is:
“Focus Concentration Music” – Brian Power