Image 1: Moving Cabs
For this Photoshop manipulation, I really wanted to play up the blur, so I did using the "Iris" option, as well as enhance the color to make it richer and deeper. I'm not one to really play up the cartoon-y aspects too much with Photoshop (that's likely a curse of using it at work a lot!) So, I wanted to enhance images more than necessarily adding too much noise to them.
Image 2: Bird
I wanted to play with color more on this one -- adjusting saturation levels, colors, and then also playing with contrast. I first turned this into a black and white image to get a base, then began to play with various adjustments.
Image 3: Couple in the Park
I really loved this photo just as it was -- the way that the foreground was so sharply in focus and the background a bit less clear. So, I decided to just really try my hand with new filters and opted for the liquify option. I had never used it before and ultimately, when I was finished, it reminded me of looking through a (distorted) window.
Image 4: Pig Street Art
This photo was already very bright and incorporated a lot of color, so I wanted to play that up even further with a sort of pop-art/cartoon-y element (very out of aesthetic character for me.) I changed the color composition, the saturation, the exposure -- just about everything you could think of -- to create a very fake, harsh looking image. And I actually really like the way it turned out.
Image 5: Melting Candle
For this image, I wanted to play with the color, as well as the Quick Select tool and inserting other images into the frame. I felt like the foreground and background were too orange and almost blended into one another, so I changed the color balance and saturation to get it looking more like two distinct things. Using layers, I copied the image of just the candle and pasted it back onto the photo, relocating it for a feel of many candles. Then I add curve to change the gradient -- and voila, three candles for the price of one.
