Assignment 1

The theme I chose for my first assignment was firstly close up, macro photography. I then narrowed down my theme to office and computing objects. These objects allowed me to experiment with depth of field, to draw the observer’s eye to a particular point on the picture. The first, second and fourth are good examples of this method. All of my images are on a neutral background to ensure that the focus of the image is not interrupted. I also used the “close up” mode on the camera, with the flash disabled to ensure that harsh shadows and lighting did not effect my composition. I am yet to here from BigStockPhoto about my images, as they were uploaded on Monday, and have not yet been either approved of denied.

This image was worked on in Photoshop, by using an overlay layer to digitally whiten the background, enhancing the image. I have also cropped the image down, as the very top left of the original exposure was very dark, and not acceptable in the background. 
BigStockPhoto:
Keywords: black, close, computers, electronics, memory, modern, pen, stick, storage, technology, up, usb,
Categories:
Business » Objects
Computers » Miscellaneous
Objects » Electronics

To edit this photo, I again used an overlay layer to whiten the background, and some white paint to remove the very dark left corner of the image, making the background neutral, and more in keeping with BigStockPhoto’s other images.
BigStockPhoto:
Keywords: black, close, computers, electronics, input, mini, modern, mouse, notebook, pc, technology, up, usb,
Categories:
Business » Objects
Computers » Miscellaneous
Objects » Electronics

This image was not edited, although, I could have taken levels to lighten the whole image, but I feel it would have washed it out and not have been as striking. 
BigStockPhoto:
Keywords: blue, close, colour, craft, glass, green, hobby, jewellery, orange, pink, plastic, round, up,
Categories:
Abstract » Patterns
Objects » Currency
Objects » Extreme Close-Ups
(The currency catagory was a mistake. I clicked on the wrong one)

The final of my chosen images was of the highlighters. I had to do more work to this photo, as the exposure of the original was very dark and the forefront orange highlighter was giving the whole image an orange glow. To combat this I altered the levels, which both lightened and removed the orange feel. I again used an overlay layer to whiten the background, with some use of the blur tool, to try to improve the change between the light and dark aspects of the background.
BigStockPhoto:
Keywords: colours, green, highlighter, open, orange, pen, pink, stack, yellow,
Categories:
Business » Office
Education » Objects
Objects » Everyday



There are many different types of file formats for image files, and there are some key differences between them. Lossy file formats such as JPEG are formats which simplify the amount of data per row of pixels, so if there were 10 red pixels in a row, instead of saving each of them individually, it will save a block of 10 red pixels. This compression means that the overall file size is greatly reduced, but quality is lost in the process. This is noticed when zoomed in, and the image becomes “fuzzy” and blurred. Lossless file formats such as GIF, PNG, TIFF and PSD files do not compress the data, and because of this, the file size can be much larger. Every piece of pixel information is stored, and is a good file format to use, especially if editing, then coming back to the image at another time. In a perfect situation, I would have uploaded my images in one of the lossless formats, but the limit on the file size that you can upload to BigStockPhoto means that I have instead created highest quality JPEG files, from the Photoshop format.

First Workshop

In our first workshop task we were given some tasks to complete in photoshop, starting with basic photo manipulation, and moving onto more complicated tasks such as colouring and repairing images. After this we had a choice to either repair an image, or colour an image. After choosing colouring, I was presented with this image below as the starting point:

After the tutorial we had, I went on to start colouring, with each layer being made up of a single colour, and using the overlay and opacity functions. After 9 layers I was pleased with my result, especially as I had a very limited experience of photoshop, which was just cropping images. My result: