Process and experimentation towards the final piece

Before I created the final Photoshop piece, I experimented with different techniques and processes on Photoshop first. I was very interested in how I can manipulate the light in an image and then combine it with other images to create a whole new impression of the place, but still containing the quality of the light from both.

What I did was take an image that I had a lot of depth in it. That was placed as the background image. I then experimented with the brightness and contrast and started to look into how that affected the image. I realised that adding around 25% more contrast and brightness, the image would make the light more visible and make the surrounding buildings darker while the light itself much brighter.

Another tool I used was Hue & Saturation. This tool allowed me to manipulate the color of the image and mix other colors along with that. What I was able to do is make one area blue and the other orange and what I used that for was made the surrounding buildings blue and all the windows orange and what this did was created an impression of warmth and cold in the image where the insides of the buildings appeared much warmer that the outside.

When I was happy with the background, I was then able to add more layers onto the experiment. I took another one of my photographs and repeated the above steps, but at the same time used other techniques. One of them was cropping and cutting the image in half as well as getting rid of the background so only the buildings were visible. This allowed me to bring the image to the front and create more depth in the piece even though it was made of 2D photographs.

I also experimented with the transparency of the layers. Some of them covered too much from the front so by making them more transparent, I was able to make the things in the background more visible while still having the current layer at the front.

In the end I was able to produce 2 very interesting experiments that would lead me towards my final piece. In my final piece, I want to use all of those techniques and processes and push the outcome to the highest standards I can get it to.