My Book.

Untitled | Make Your Own Book

After having my book printed contain all my Assignment work for this course i was a little disappointed in how some of the colours appeared so what i have here is the whole of my book as it should appear so you can see clearly how it should look.

Another Photo I'd Didn't Use In Assignment 5.

I nearly forgot to include this shot, this was Adding A Little Light from my notes on assignment 5 that my tutor recommended me not to include, i still like it but instead i add the image I've already talked about in my changes to assignment 5 section.

Final Thoughts.

As i come to the end of another course i find myself asking what i have learned and what I'll take away from this. What i learned is simple Photoshop is a very powerful piece of software that is almost irreplaceable in the world of digital photography because of the creative powers it gives us. I seen alot of other peoples work over time and more often then not question how they produced that particular effect or how they'd made something look how they had but I'd never really before been able to gt my head around the processes involved or the time and effort that is needed to produce this work. From doing this course i now have the skill and confidence in using layers, blend modes, opacity control even using filter effects which before this point i had maybe played around with but never really understood the uses for them. On the whole i feel I've add a new side to my work that wasn't their before and found a new interest outside of wildlife and landscape photography, that's not saying i can't include what I've learn in this type of work its just now i can see other subjects as interesting because of the scope i have inside photoshop.

I was never a real fan of what i would call digital altered images but now i can see there merit and can understand why people are drawn to this way of working because more then once I've taken hours at a time just to get an image to look as i want it all because of the control that is available to me. I still think there are limits to how far you should alter photos but then maybe its down to the viewer to decide if I've gone to far, I'd like to think that i never have.

Changes to My 5th Assignment.

After getting my Tutor Report back for Assignment 5 there was some alterations that my tutor thought could improve my work that I've had a go at.

One of the first thinks that i wanted to put in this section was the original image i used for my Me Or Is It? It'll probably help you to understand exactly what i did by being able to see the two shots together so that's what I've included above. I have to say that I'm still very happy with this shot not because I've radically altered my appearance but more because of the overall look of the final image.

One of the first alterations recommended to me to try was to make the cracks smaller in my Cracked image. To do this i used the clone stamp to remove alot of the bigger cracks but what i ended up do was removing a lot more of these plus some of the smaller one to see how it would appear with less cracks. It does i suppose look a lot less busy because of the reduction and you can maybe appreciate the shot its self more but I'm still leaning towards used my first attempt in my final selection because my gut tells me its the better one of the two.

The next image he thought could do with a slight change was Harvest Time, here it was more that he felt that the harvesters appeared to be all in a line moving over the same area (which doesn't appear really that realistic) so what he thought might improve it would be to move the rear most one over to the right a bit. This as you can see i did but whether its actually an improvement I'm not completely sold on, yes they do now appear more spread out across the field but to me the composition of the shot doesn't feel right. In retrospect it might have look better if I'd shot a number of frames over a much larger area of the field instead of in a straight line because then a more spread view would have been easier to produce.

Finally my tutor didn't rate very highly my Adding A Little More Light photo, here I'd basically just added a lens flare affect to make it appear as if the sun was really bright in a room so instead i produced a new image above. Here i duplicated the original layer and then converted it to black and white before using the eraser tool to bring through the colour of the boats below, its not one of the original images i chose to use but i think it still fits into the pattern of the other shots i have in this assignment.

Work i didn't use in Assignment 5.

What I've included here are the images that i didn't like or just didn't think work so didn't include them in my 5th assignment.

This first image is a different version of my Doorway image, what i tried to do here was create a mist effect to make it feel even more mysterious but i just didn't think i got the effect to look real enough so in the end i chose to use a version without mist which work and looked a hell of a lot better.

The image above and the one below where two i tried using a process of adding a pattern so as to make it appear that the photo was made up of a series of squares. To make up these squares i used other photos in the case of the above image from the surrounding area while with the portrait i used other shots of myself. I didn't use either because i just didn't feel the images really fit in with the rest of the photos I'd done. The effect isn't a bad one its just I'd didn't think it felt right for this particular assignment.

Above is another attempt i had at a Tilt Shift image, the one i used in my assignment looked alot better and really showed off the nature of the process much better. Again it isn't exactly a bad photo its just i did feel it look right maybe i used to much blurring and it would have worked better if the background and foreground had a little more focus.

The final image i chose not to use was one where i had attempt to introduce a sunrise/set into a landscape. The landscape i used was relatively dull light wise so i was interested to see whether i could add this kind of lighting and change the complete feel of the original. I used lens flare to create the sun effect and then a number of layering,blending and brush effects to try and get it to look and feel right. Alot of the process i took from a number of different tutorials off the Internet combining them to try and get the image i wanted but in the end although it did alter the reality of the image i didn't think it look that realistic and in the end gave up on the process.

Planning For Assignment 5.

So here i am at the end of the course ready to take all I've learned so far and put into practice for my final assignment. What I'm asked to do is produce 12 images in the style i research in assignment 3 which was Altering Reality, this gives me a lot of scope for what i could produce because all the process given to you throughout the course can be used in one way or another to alter the realism of a photo. There are clear 2 kinds of photos that i can produce with this theme they are either ones that trick the person looking at it into believing that its real when it isn't and the second is one that clearly isn't real but yet believable in the way it appears.

I've already had a quick look on the student website just to get a idea of how other people have approach this subject and the results are quiet varied as you'd expect, one person RodTM took the approach of doing a whole series of images on the theme of unreal twins. A very clever set of image where the same person was posed in the same scene twice in different clothes and situations and then the two layer blended together seamlessly. Others had taken the approach of using all the skills they'd learn to create a group of images with no theme other than the idea of altering reality and i think this is defiantly the road i plan to go down because of the freedom of creativity this gives me within the idea.

Above is one of my first attempts where I've taking a photo and made it appear as if its almost a piece of street art because i first used an artist filter to give it the right look and then overlayed it over an image of a cracked worn surface to give it the right texture and feel. Overall very happy with this first attempt but i know i can still be far more creative yet.

Project 30: Strange Food.

For the final project in this course I'm returning to some similar ground that has already been covered earlier on but this time you're asked to look at the process from a slightly different point of view.

Where as before I've look at changing the colours of a scene or object to reflect a different feeling or season in the case of assignment 1 here its more of an extreme shift in the stile of Fauves and the German Expressionist painters.

The kind of work I'm referring to is shown above with two examples, the first by Henri Matisse and the second by Maurice de Vlaminck what they look to do was show strong colours and painting stile over the more realistic values that impressionist painters of the time were using. In other words they didn't want to create a true representation of what they saw but give a more distorted abstract view by using what they saw as extreme colours at the time. For example Matisse use very livid reds and pinks for the areas which normally would be painted in shades of green.

For the first part of the project your asked to use some work provided for you in the form of a lizard image and a file containing a multi coloured area, basically what i need to do was combine the two to create the above image so that instead of the lizard being brown and grey to match its environment you now have an extreme shift in colour so that it becomes rainbow in appearance. A simple step to begin with next to give a little more meaning to the idea of an extreme change in colour I'm asked to look at food. Here you can effect the view most when altering the colour of say vegetables because we all have in built into use what colour an everyday item should be to be appealing the example given in the course is a fresh cut of meat, we know it should be red but if it has a slight green ting we know that you should eat it. This maybe isn't the best example because what I'm then as to create is something with strange colours not rotten.

Above is the end result of my work, i chose a bunch of carrots as my subject then using the Hue/Saturation controls i was able to make the alterations you see above by taking the orange of the carrots and making them more green in colour, and then the green tops and turning them purple. Both are really extremes from the original colours but not so much that you instinctively imagine them as appearing rotten.

A final enjoyable project more dew to the fact of looking at a different artist group to understand there use of colour in there work then on the actual practical application of the theory. Another idea to take into my final assignment though which is never a bad thing.

Project 29: A Composite, Multi-Facetted View.

Moving on from project 28 here what I'm looking to produce isn't a seamless panorama but instead an image which gives the viewer something more to consider because of the multi angles and planes that you are placing together in a single image.

Its very much an abstract view that I'm aiming to produce by following a similar shooting process as with the previous project but on a much larger scale and by moving around the scene capturing it from a variety of different angles.

The image above was my first attempt at getting my head around working in this fashion, to begin with i just wanted to produce an image by taking a group of shots of a chosen scene and layering them together to produce a final view, i didn't what to add multi angles at this point i just wanted to focus on the actual scene and how to capture it. I was very happy with the end results at this point although i was surprised by how time consuming this process could easily become.

Moving onto the next stage of the process i select a much smaller area to work on but this time i wanted to add in the idea of multiple angles to begin to gain an idea of how to work in this area. Above are the results of this attempt, although I'm not overly happy with the end results i now had a much better idea of how i need to frame and move myself around the scene in order to complete this project to the level i wanted.

Above is my final image for this project and one that I'm fairly happy with, in all there's about 25 images involved in this one shot layered together in a way that still represents the original view but defiantly gives the view something more to think on. What i found worked best for me was not to go to mad and extreme on altering the view but by making small alterations to my position and focal length i found that i could get the view i was looking for. When working on this scale i did find that first time round i did capture all of the view because there's no way you can work to a pattern when shooting like I'd did with the last project, maybe its just me that finds i can't work this way but more then once when putting the frames together I'd discover i had a small whole that need a frame to plug it while other time i found that i could just slide another frame into the gap and the overall effect of the shot wasn't dented.

This and the last project i can most defiantly say have been some of my most favorite in this course because of how challenging I've found them but at the same time I've found the end results to be some of the most pleasing. In the future maybe even in my final assignment i can see that I'll be returning to this way of working.

Project 28: Digital Mosaic.

For the following projects I'm moving into the realms of more art then photography in some ways because you're asked in this project to study digital mosaic making and then in the following project which I'll come to later its a multi facetted view but again I'll explain more about this in dew course.

With Mosaic the example of work you're given to look at was produced by David Hockney (see http://www.hockneypictures.com/ ), what he did was use a Polaroid camera to capture small areas of his chosen subject and then take the results and put them together as a mosaic/collage. Some of his best work in this area i think is when he used the technique to photograph famous landmarks like the Brooklyn bridge because it gives a familiar view a completely different feel and look. Its a very clever way of producing an image because although there are areas of the image that have been duplicated because he's having to overlap shots to be sure he's capturing the whole scene the final images does look wrong in anyway because there is still the recognition of what the subject is.

The other way of approaching the subject would be to use photoshop to stitch the images together to create a final view of a subject, you would still capture the subject in the same manner overlapping the shots as you work but its just a different way of displaying the final results.

For my attempt at this kind of image i went for the Hockney approach and the subject i selected was some rose's. The first step was to create a blank file to work on in photoshop, then with a grid visible over the top of the blank canvas i started to open the images and lay them in order into the file. Th image below is the final results of this process.

What i found i liked about this way of working was how the final image looks, as I'd already said you do end up with a small amount of repetition but this does seem to have much of an effect on the overall image plus i liked the way that by having the light changing as i shot you end up with darker and lighter frames which equally add to the effect. One down side to working like this i found was its a little difficult to always keep track of what areas you've shot and which you haven't. What i found worked best was to shot it the way i intended to lay it out in the final images. This did help alot but you still have to be very focused on what you're doing to keep track of your progress. Overall i really enjoyed working this way because of way it tests you in being able to fore see how the end product will appear as you work, i defiantly can see myself using this process in the future.

More On Assignment 4.

After getting my Tutor report back for it was time to take on board the comments made on what I'd produced and then re access my work to see what alterations i need to make. What changes i have made in most cases are only minor tweaks but they do affect the end results in different ways.

Clutter Original.

Reworked Version.

With my Clutter image my tutor had pick out that around the light switch and plug I'd had trouble making them appear naturally angler when picking them out of the background. His suggestion (and something I'd never thought of doing) was to highlight the area using one of the lasso tools or crop tools so that when i used the eraser it would clear anything outside the selected area. As you can see the results are much better and the whole piece benefits from this change.

House On The Hill Original.

Reworked Version.

Here it was the tones in the sky which my tutor felt could do with some work, he felt they need brightening but i found it quiet hard to find the right balance in this respect. What i did feel on studying this shot again was that i felt it was too dark so using the brightness/contrast controls i set about experimenting to see if i could get a better balance this way. The final version i think works better for this change because it gives the feel of much more space somehow because the shadows aren't so imposing as before.

On The Beach Original.

Reworked Version.

In my next image i could understand and fully agree with where my tutor was coming from when he said that it would be better to remove the insulation board because it filled the space where i could show more of my beach scene. Clear it also is quiet a dominate feature that was detracting from the rest of the image so removal was a must. The problem i did find doing this was that when using the clone stamp i hadn't got a lot of clear wall to copy into the space so it turned into a little bit of a time consuming process but again it clear has paid off in the end.

Open Spaces Original.

Reworked Version.

The final image that need some work had similar problems as House On The Hill, i went in the end with a similar solution to resolve the fault by lightening the whole image only very slightly but i feel better for doing this.

One thing i have learnt from this process and I'll be looking out for in the future is that some times my work can be a little to dark, whether this is down to my personal preference of subjects or maybe the way i have my monitor setup i don't know right now but I'll need to look into this as soon as poss.

Project 27: 360 Panorama.

The premise for this project was pretty straight forward find a location which could be used to produce a 360 degree panorama and then shot it. The way to do this is first chose your spot and then with your camera mounted on a tripod begin shooting the scene by taking one shot then slightly turn the camera to the right or left making sure each time there is a small amount of overlap between each frame so that the software I'll be using later can join the frames more easily, when I'd rotated the camera the full 360 degrees i have all the frames i need and I'm ready to begin stitching them together.

The location i chose for my image was on the very top of Scafell Pike in the Lake District, this kind of grand vista i thought would suit this way of processing down to the ground and the final image backs this up. To begin with i followed the process layered down in the course material which was to use the free trail program provided to build my image. I got the results i was looking for with this program but the only problem being i couldn't save the results because of it being a trial and i wasn't about to pay nearly £300 for some software i might never use again so i had to begin to look at alternative way of producing my panoramic image. First i tried using my version of photoshop because it has 3D layering tools in it and i thought I'd be able to use these to take the flat image I'd produced using Photomerge and then place it into a 3D layer, unfortunately my computer isn't powerful enough to complete this process so i had to look for another alternative. Luckily i found a site on the Internet called http://www.dermandar.com/ here you can upload you shots and the online software will build your panorama for you (you'll find my image here http://www.dermandar.com/p/bOvlsf/on-top-of-scafell-pike). A real good find this site and one that i found easy and straight forward to use compared to some of the software you can download to do the same job which can be a little time consuming and to be honest quiet confusing at times.

Some points that i discovered when doing this project was that its best to shot all the images on manual settings so that you get the same exposure throughout the scene. Also its best to over exposure the darker areas as you can always fix these later in photoshop. One of the main things i feel is that some parts of the course need updating a little, for example here the software provided for you to create your panorama is from around 2004 as well as the offer for money off if you purchase the full version of the program, this isn't the first part of the course that I've felt this about as some of the other areas are beginning to feel a little dated. Its not a major problem but one that you need to be aware of.

Project 26: A Sequence In One Image.

For this project i had to produce something a little different in that in one single image i had to show a sequence of photos all blended together that portrayed movement in some way. To do this the best route was to get my camera mounted on my tripod and then keeping the camera in the same position shot the sequence i wanted. Being interested in wildlife photography i was on the look out for a suitable subject and one day i court site of a small rabbit that i thought might provide me with the perfect image. After positioning myself very quietly so as not to scare him off i settled in for a wait to see what kind of activity i might capture and was pleasantly surprised when he started to give himself a good clean. To begin with i did worry that the shutter noise might scare him off but luckily he seem completely happy for me to be there and never ran off till i was happy with what i captured and was packing up to leave.

When i came to combining the shots i found i had a small problem that i hadn't foreseen in that he hadn't move as much as I'd thought meaning that all the images just overlayed one another creating just a complete blur so i alter the way i combined the images to produce something a bit different because i was really happy with my shots and wanted to use them in some fashion. Below is what i finally produced.

In the course folder the first example they give you of this kind of imagery is of a bird of prey flying through the frame, although mine is similar in that its a series of images stitched together side by side it isn't exactly the same as you can see but it still show a series of images depicting movement in one single image. I did have a little trouble in blending the joins so that they aren't so obvious but in the end i think it turned out well. I know it isn't exactly what you're ask to produce but on the other hand i think it a good study of a wild animal and a different way of portraying animal behavior.

Photos I Didn't Use In Assignment 4.

What i present here is the collection of photos that i haven't chosen to use in my 4th Assignment for various reason which I'll explain as i go through them.

The problem i had with this first photo wasn't that the blend didn't work very well it was more the fact that there wasn't any real connection between the two images i used where as the majority of the work i sent to my tutor had some connection of one type or another. Its not bad but it just doesn't work right.

The next image i do quiet like but what made me leave it out of my final selection was because of the way the lines in the back wall make it feel as if the background is on a big slant compared to the door. I did try straightening the image in photoshop but found that when I'd straightened the background the door ended up instead at a very strange angle. A same in the end but its down to the fact that I'd did observe properly how the lines in the frame were running when i shot it.

This shot i again discounted firstly because of the lines in the tiles not appearing straight enough, i think this was more down to the wall then myself. Secondary, and the main problem was the way the colours didn't seem to work right together, because the tiles are such a bright colour i didn't think the darkness of the water and the shadows really help it to become a particularly appealing image. I did consider trying it as a black and white image but as it would have been the only one in the collection i discounted it straight away as it wouldn't have fit in at all.

The final image lost out because it didn't fit in with the overall theme, one it isn't an interior view that i placed a landscape into and secondly with only the small amount of colour in it it wouldn't have appear right with the rest of my work. I thought the symbolism of the shot works really well because the original is of the wall at the national memorial arboretum which has the names of all service people kill since the second world war on it and then with the poppies added over the top it just works.

Planning For Assignment 4.

For this assignment I'm asked to produce 8 landscape photographs which all address, in different ways, a common theme.(The suggested themes begin water, earth, fire, air) Clearly here I'm given alot of scope to be able as creative as i can be, my first thought was keep things simple and just shot a range of images following one of these theme and then use some of the methods I'd studied in the last section say to alter the light conditions or change the feel of the weather. The problem being that i can't say i feel overly inspired by this idea, but then the other day i read an article that gave me a much better idea.

Below are some examples of images produced by a photographer call Abelardo Morell (photos taken from his website http://www.abelardomorell.net/).

He produces these images in a mix of old fashion camera obscura technique and digital photography, what he does is first is turn a room completely dark by covering all the windows except for a small whole which the light from outside travels through and projects the image onto the opposite wall (it originally appears upside down but by using a prism he corrects this) then he captures the effect using a modern camera. Basically its alot like the way our own eyes capture images, what makes his work so interesting is the combination of the rooms and views that he finds and combines. Lets take the final example where the outside garden has be projected onto the wall, here its like you have to look twice to decide which parts are in the room and which are in the garden because the house plants blend so well into the theme. I also like the way the texture of the walls adds another dimension to an already clever concept.

What I'm thinking of doing for this assignment is something along the same idea but using photoshop to place landscapes onto the walls of room, i want it to feel like I've brought the outside into the room but i still want it to feel natural so maybe there should be some association between the two scenes. I'll have to think more on this but i thinks there's a good starting idea here.

Project 25: Blending Body Parts.

This was a project that I'd been looking forward to tackling because it's an area that I've attempted to play around with before but never had much success with so here goes.

Basically what I'm looking at here is creating some Surrealist images, what these are are images that are believable to look at but you know that there impossible in the really world. This kind of imagery has been around alot longer then photography but with modern photography software we're capable of producing some very original photos that in the past you might have only seen in paintings.

What I'm asked to do to begin with is take the hand image on the left and the tool on the right and combined them into one believable image. This is where I'd run into problems before because i could never get the blending quiet right but with the explanation here things went much better. The first job was to open the hand image ,then the tool shot and in this using the selection brush pick out the tool from the background. Next after pasting the tool over the second finger a little re-scaling was need just to fit the two parts together and then the harder work began, first i need to erase the handle of the scissor tool because with it spreading across the fingers it spoils the effect some what. With this done i set the eraser opacity to 20% and began to erase around the base of the tool so as to begin to blend the tool and finger seemingly together. Finally i flattened the layers as i was happy with the result which you can now see below.

I have to say this is by far the best blend I've ever done, i never really played around with the opacity before this course but now can understand the creativity that it give you because of the control over how much of the image below you let through at any time. Where i also have run into problems in the past has been with the consistency of the light when producing work like this, what i mean is that I'd shot one image and then in the next the light wouldn't appear the same and as much as I'd try I'd never seem to get it right but in the next part of the project I'd have to because what I'm next as to do is produce my own Surrealist image.

What i decided i wanted to do was combine a very natural image with something a little less natural so first i captured a few plant images and some wildlife shots of birds and insects. In the end i selected the above shot because i thought I'd be able to alter the petals and centre area in some way.

Next i had to find my unnatural image to add to it, above is the photo i took which I'd use for the central mass of the flower but i also tried to find metallic surfaces that i could then blend into the petals. This i found didn't work very well and i felt i was over complicating the subject a little so in the end i only work on the centre of the flower. It still ended up as a pretty good image as you can see below because it really looks as if the glass marble is part of the plant.

I used the red and yellow marble because of how the reds compliments the yellow so well and keeps the theme of warm colours which using the blue ones would have broke up. I feel that i handled my lighting problems pretty well but I'm still not that happy with this part of the process. This project is defiantly one i plan to come back to and have another crack at because i still feel that i can do something with the petals i just have to find the right image.

Project 24: Extreme Distortion.

This is one of them projects when you first look at it you think god that's going to be complicated but actually its not as bad as it seems. For this project your asked to look at extreme distortion and the effects that can be produced when using the Liquify tool.

To begin with you're given the two photos above to work with and asked to create a image where the measuring tape appears to be wrapped very tightly around the apple resulting in it looking as if its being squeezed. To do this the first step is to make the apple look squeezed, to do this i used the Liquify tool in the filtered menu, when selected i made the brush size around half the size of the apple then click first on the left hand side of the apple and dragged inwards and then repeated the process on the right hand side. Next i copied and pasted the measuring tape into the apple image and scaled it down to fit around the distorted area I'd just created, from here its beginning to look like the finished product but one little alteration i still wanted to make was to use the warp tool i have in my version of photoshop to make the fit even more realistic.

Above is the final version of my image, compared to the version on the course disc i haven't squeezed the apple anywhere near as much because i think it appear overly distorted if you push it as far as they have. If you look below I've produced my pepper image in a similar way to the apple one but this time I've gone to far more of an extreme approach. To me these kind of images work much better with the idea of less equals more, the less distortion added the better they look.

For the final part of this project you're asked to produce you're own conceptual image in which shape changing will make a point, so for this i came up with the idea of using the symbol of money and a belt to reflect the state of the economy and how everyone is having to so called tighten there metaphorical belts. Above is the photo of some money i used and below is the belt image i took for the other half of my final shot. I did have some problems matching the lighting of the two images but i feel i resolved this problem in the end through use of the flash. This is an area I've always struggled in and hope with further practice to resolve or at least get a better handle on.

The final image below was produced following the same process as in the first part of the project, what i like about it is the good contrast between the purple of the notes and the green of the belt they help to make it a good piece. The only criticism i do have on it is that at the time when i produced the image i was very happy with the amount of distortion I'd used but now when i look at it i feel maybe i over did it and that should i come back to this project a little reduction in the liquifying process would make it look better. Yet again maybe I'm being a bit over critical of my own work but i do find that if i look to long or to often at anything i take i slow start to dislike it and can always find things that I'd alter, but when I've fix that problem I'll find something else. I think all photographers go through a stage of hating there own work its just one of them things I'll have to work through.

Project 23: Facial Distortion.

As i move into looking at Distortion Tools and techniques the first project looks at easily the most widely know and most seen area of photography where these kind of techniques are used Portrait Photography. We're all use these days to seeing photos of celebrities where they've had a little work done digitally so most people have a little understanding of some of the methods used such as air brushing and now there are even dedicated pieces of software that are dedicated to this process. What I'm about to look at here is only a very basic couple of distortion tools but as ever they can drastically alter the appearance of an image.

Original Wide Angled Image.

Above is the first image I'm given to work on and as the title says its been taken with a wide angled lens which in its self has had an effect on how the subject appears. What the wide angle does is exaggerate in size anything that is nearer the camera so most professional photographs would opt for a medium telephoto lens to combat this problem. If you don't have this available to you there are ways to fix the distortion produced by the wide angle lens and that's what my next set of photos looks at.

Pinch Filter Extreme Distortion 1.

Punch Filter Extreme Distortion 2.




Pinch Filter At 10%.

The first two photos above show the kind of extreme that can be created when using a Pinch Filter. What a Pinch Filter actually does is reverse the wide angle lens effect when the slider is moved into the positive by pulling the centre of the image inwards (2), and when moved into the negative it has the opposite effect (1). What soon becomes clear when playing around with this filter is that it's only very small amounts of positive movement needed to correct the distortion so in the final image above where I've added only 10% you can see that the face appears much more in proportion so that the eyes and nose don't appear larger then they actually were.

For the next stage of this project I'm asked to use a portrait of my own and experiment with the Pinch and Spherize filters so as to gain more experience with how they effect the proportions of the face, the image I'm using above already to me looks strange in that the head and feature look over blown so now I'm going to look at how the filters effect it and if they improve it.

Pinch 25%.

Pinch 50%.

What the pinch filter does is to reduce the size of the features such as the eyes and nose but doesn't appear to alter the head size. What I've ended up with is something that almost creates a cartoon stile effect of the subject, especially in the final image.

Spherize 20%.

Spherize -10%.

When the Spherize filter is used in a positive manner it only increase the distortion making things appear even larger then ever, but what i did find was that when used in the negative at only 10% it reduced the distortion to the point that it appeared the natural and improves the overall look of the person.

In today's world in which how you look is very important for many reasons you can understand why these kind of tools are an important part of a portrait photographers arsenal and understanding the distortions that some lens create is very important. I guess people weren't lying when they said the camera can add 10 pounds.