NEW IMAGE:
Original image by - Beth Icard
This is almost exactly the same image as below, except I added more of a blur to the background on a classmate's advice. I think that improved the image. I stand by my coloration choices of the foreground figures. I know it isn't exactly realistic, but as I mentioned in my explanation at the bottom of this page, I didn't intend it to be.
Original image by - Beth Icard
I thought a lot about the design principles we learned this week and focused a little more on those than on the tool skills we have been learning about recently. I was particularly interested in line and balance in this image. Also, it was really fun to play with. :)
Image found here
Process:
- I used a levels, curves, and two color balance adjustment layers on the background image before I was happy with it.
- I extracted the little girl from her background and placed her in the forest image, then used two color balance layers to change her coloring. I intentionally kept her on the pinky-reddish-yellow side in terms of coloring because I wanted her to seem warm and glowy against the green forest background.
- Originally, I had the girl placed in the whole background image, but that ended up looking too busy and overwhelming to me, so I cropped the background to the portrait shape of the final image.
- I used a masked black fill layer and two layers with black painted on in normal and overlay modes at 65% opacity to darken the background the way I wanted while leaving the middle portion "spotlighted."
- I put a gaussian blur filter on the background layer to further remove it from the direct focus of the image.
- I extracted the butterfly from its original image and added a paint spot in overlay mode to change the color slightly and to add a glow. I also added an outer glow.
- I copied the butterfly grouping four more times and then transformed the other butterflies with free transform, perspective, and distort to change their shape and size.
- I added glow spots with a soft brush, and light sparkles with a splatter brush. I added an outer glow to the sparkles.
Design thoughts:
- I used several pieces of advice from the "10 Rules of Photo Composition" webpage we read.
- Rule #3: Change the aspect ratio for a different view.
- I almost always make landscape-view images, so this time I shook it up and made it portrait-view. Also, like I said above, the entire background was too overwhelming for this image, so I shrunk the view to simplify.
- Rule #4: Avoid the middle.
- We're all familiar with this one by now. I placed the girl on the left side, but then I balanced her with the butterflies on the right.
- Rule #8: Be aware of your background.
- I actually worked pretty hard to make the background a background part of the image. I darkened it quite a bit and blurred it and cropped it so that it was less obvious than my foreground elements.
- I also thought about line and directing the eye, and tried to make the shape of this image girl-butterfly-butterfly-butterfly-butterfly-butterfly in a sort of curving diagonal shape.
- I was probably a little heavy-handed with my color correction and color changing this week, but I did that on purpose. I wanted this image to imitate the highly stylized and fantastical forests you see in fantasy and fairy contexts, like this one:
Image found here