Photoshop Final Project – “Breakthrough”

For my final project I wanted to tackle the feelings I’ve had throughout this academic year. I wanted to show what it feels like to have a breakthrough. But that isn’t the end. Encountering challenges, pushing through barriers and seeing the positive results that come from refusing to back down is something I hope a lot of people can resonate with. Whether you have already overcome them or are just getting up to bat, I wanted to depict the stages in a journey to give hope to people who see the odds stacked against them.

The image itself is built to have strong line and harmony. The shooting star that creates a physical line from the batter to the firework carves a strong path for the eye to follow. The batter was given high contrast with the background to create a starting point for that line, finishing with the firework. The colors of the environment and placement of objects aim to create a feeling of unity, focusing on dusky oranges and deep indigos in agreement with the firework and shooting star.

Some of the photoshop processes used include color overlays on the batter and lots of composite imaging. Most of the elements are put onto the background by masking out the surroundings and dropping them onto the field. The shooting star and broken glass are the result of lots of transform techniques. The line was split into two pieces to make it look like its going through the glass, one in front and one behind.

After having a peer critique, I was given the suggestion to skew the glass so it looks like it has depth. I am very happy with this advice, because now it looks like the glass is forming a dome over the landscape, which goes well with my theme. Overall I am very pleased with the final product and hope it can resonate with people.

Lessons in Portrait Editing

Frequency separation was a humbling experience that showed me there is a lot more to photoshop than meets the eye. Splitting color and texture into separate algorithms and adjusting them accordingly is no easy task. I also learned the importance of saving projects as usable file types, and it was my failure to do so that delayed this blog post so much.

But all these problems are useful in the long run. Now, I’ll double check to name, save, and organize my files correctly. I’ll make sure that the source images I’m working on have enough light so that you can actually see the brightness added to the eyes.

One piece that was very successful was the process of removing blemishes using the healing tools. That is a very applicable skill that I can use in future portrait edits while I work on mastering frequency separation.

Overall, I failed forward and will take these constructive lessons with me as I continue my photoshop education.