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Photography Image Manipulation

Most of my photography is composed in the viewfinder or on the LCD before I ever even shoot the picture, by where I position myself and how I frame the picture.  Since most of my work is nature photography, rarely do I ever do much more in post processing than just crop and increase the brightness a little or saturate the colors just a bit.  I am cautious not to alter the lighting or the color in an image very much for fear of making it look “wrong”.  I don’t want the viewer to immediately describe the photograph as “Photoshopped.”

But there are many photography applications which anyone can use, and they are fun to play with.  I use two on my iPhone, for fun and experimentation.  One is called Value Viewer, and it is a useful tool for seeing a value study of a composition before shooting it or painting it.  It also enables a lot of manipulation to create images that are strikingly different from the original.  The image below, left, is a dramatic piece in 3 values.  Beside it is the original rather non-descript photo of some random grasses beside the Bay.  Unfortunately, for some viewing this post on their smart-phones, one of the images may be appearing sideways, which makes it difficult to compare the two.  I don’t know how to correct that for phone viewing.

Final Image

Original Image

The image below left is enhanced using the iPhone app called Snapseed.  The original shot is on the right.  I sharpened it as far as the app would take it, and also increased the “drama” a little, to produce the image on the left.

In my last blog entry,  I griped about people “borrowing” some of my images from facebook and uploading them as their own, so you will see that I am experimenting with watermarking my finished pieces that are posted here on my art blog.  Should someone wish to purchase the image, the original of course does not have the watermark.  I am using the iPhone app Impression for simple watermarking.

Final Image

Original Image