My manipulation assignment didn't turn out exactly how I wanted them to. One of them is pretty good, two of them are OK and one of them isn't great but with timing issues I don't think I'll be able to go out and do any re-shoots.
This picture of the six soldiers looking out over the countryside is my favourite of my manipulation images. It took a long time to put this image together. It's actually six images cut and pasted together, then dodged and burned to create the right lighting effects. Using the brightness and contrast tools, I adjusted the levels on each layer so they were pretty similar. Then, using the dodge tool, I lightened the sides of the soldiers to make it look as though they are all standing with the sun to their right. I also had to remove some of the telephone poles from the background using my old friend, the clone tool.
My only problem with the above image is the fact that it's obvious that it's the same guy. Well it is to me anyway. I tried another version of this image but blurred the guy at the front. I think I preferred this image though. This was achieved in pretty much the same way as the previous picture. The main difference was the fact that the levels were already pretty close as the two guys against the wall were taken at the same time under the same conditions. With the soldier at the front of the frame I had to erase a wall which he was leaning against. I just created a layer and used the erase tool for this job as the magnetic lasso tool was starting to annoy me.
Now then, while I find the above image to be acceptable, the below image has some quality issues. Blown up on a large scale it loses quality. Due to the way the image originally was I had to do a lot of messing about with brightness and contrast. I added some noise as well to try to give it a worn look. The smoke in the background was achieved by taking a photograph of some clouds and painstakingly cutting them up and making them look like an explosion.
It was a lot of effort but didn't come out as amazing as I had hoped. The above image is a much stronger image. I did have to use the magnetic lasso tool an awful lot on the main soldier. The three in the background were much easier to manipulate because they were all from the same series of photographs. I think I maybe should have removed the tree behind the main soldiers head. It's kind of like it's growing out of his helmet.
As part of the book I've been making on blurb, the images appear OK. I just feel that as large prints the images would look a bit suspect despite the amount of time and effort I put into editing them.
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