DPP Part 4 - Reality and Intervention - Exercise 2 - Improvement or Interpretation

DPP Part 4 - Reality and Intervention - Exercise 2 - Improvement or Interpretation

The purpose of this exercise is to use a portrait image in a setting and use a manual method to select just an area of the person in the image

This is the starting image, my intent will be to make the eyes more striking and to whiten the teeth. I will also zoom crop the image to make the face more dominate within the image.

I've then created a layer and coloured the eyes blue:

 This is a little scary :D However selecting the layer then setting the change to soft light the colour then becomes a bit translucent and the structure of the eye comes through. I'vge also reduced the fill % to 26% which reduces the strength and lets the eye colour look much more realistic, see image below:

I've then created a new layer, used the magnetic lasso and drawn around the teeth. Using this layer I've reduced contrast and increased brighten which has whitened the teeth, see below:

Then some cropping of the image and the image changes are completed

I would not normally consider eye colour changes unless there was a specific reason. Teeth whitening without going to the extremes many film stars do can make a be difference for the person you have taken the image of.

In my personal experience people are very worried about the colour of their teeth in portraits, just as our film stars who will go to lengths to have them whitened.

The purpose of the portrait when taken solely for the subject is to capture an image that they are happy with. In this instance whilst the captured image has been changed, the changes made are very subtle. Anything excessive will stand out as unreal and then the whole image will start to fall apart in the eyes of the viewer.

If you look at the front of any magazine, particularly TV magazines and you will see the subject on the front cover looking dramatically different when in film / on TV. No doubt this helps sell magazines.

I do recall as a younger lad seeing a poster of the Spice Girls in bikinis all looking very slim and trim. The following Sunday a reporter managed to capture a picture of one of the Spice girls on holiday on a beach and the difference was amazing. Perhaps sometimes where there is too much change when comparing final image to actual subject then difference will be clear the viewer will realise he has been duped by the image.