Editing the Image

After setting up the scene with props, sorting the lighting and deciding on the camera angle, everything was in place for the photograph to be taken. After it was taken, I transferred the image onto my home computer, opened it in Photoshop CS3 and began editing. I was extremely satisfied with the photograph I had chosen, however I had made the mistake of moving my hand just as it was being taken and therefore imprinted a blur onto the picture. To fix this problem I looked at another picture that was taken just seconds before the one I had chosen and cloned the hand from this and placed it neatly onto my image. Luckily, as I had not moved the rest of my body or the surrounding props between the two pictures being taken, the cloning worked perfectly and I was left with a clean finish. The second aspect of the image that I decided to edit was the colour balance. I altered this to give the image a colder look and then brightened the image using curves. Next, I created a vignette by darkening all of the edges to focus the viewers attention on the centre of the photograph. After this, I introduced an overlay to create a grittier feel, especially to the surface of the table. At this point I noticed that the yellow in the image was particularly noticeable, so I decided to turn down the yellow colour channel to add to the dark, tedius nature of revising. Next, I created another vignette by darkening the upper area of the image, again bringing the attention to the student situated in the centre. Lastly, I added a high-pass filter to increase skin blemishes and make the student look more drawn and tired.