Color Techniques

Four photographs were used for this project: Street Lights in San Francisco, Amethyst, Birds, and Clouds. I photographed each of these elements within the past month.

I first used color range to select an amethyst I had photographed. I thought it would be easy, but it wasn't! I then selected the glass in the street lamps and pasted the amethyst into each lamp. I used hue/saturation layer adjustments to change the color of both amethysts, and I experimented with changing the colors in curves. I feel there is a lot more control and variety in the curves option. I pasted an image of flying bird just above one of the lamps, (oh, I smart sharpened it before bringing it over to the main document). Then I used color range on a photo of clouds and brought the clouds and placed it in the lower sky behind the lamp post. I tried various colors, and decided not to get too "out there". The edges around the cloud are dark, but even though it doesn't look realistic, I liked the contrast it gave to the clouds. There is a gradient overlay on the entire image.

Also, I did play with some filters and changed the clouds.. using the cutout filter, and then transformed it and stretched it a lot. It gave the image a very different feel, but I'm submitting the more "realistic" one to my instructor. This is the more "playful, comic-bookish" background:























While using color range, I saw an effect which I really liked, so I took a screen shot of the grayscale image:

















Below are the four original photos I used for this assignment: