Portrait Shoot forMagazine

Whether I was creating a music or fashion magazine, they both would of needed a portrait photography shoot. I chose to do a fashion magazine because I read them regularly and they’re what interest me the most. Fashion is important to a lot of girls and young women so I felt that I could really deliver on my own fashion magazine. My aim for the shoot was to have lots of different images to choose from of the pop star, then I would choose 4 of the best ones. We used a few props too such as a photo frame, glasses and a homemade dress.

Once I had collated all my images together, I had to put them altogether into a contact sheet. A contact sheet is where you can have lots of images on one A4 sheet, and this was a great way to see all the images on one page.

As you can see on the contact sheet they are all placed together on one image, although it looks a bit odd because some are portrait and some are landscape, it doesn’t matter too much because I can crop them to make them into a portrait image.. Now I can chose my favourite 4 and start to edit them on Photoshop..

For the front cover of my magazine, I wanted to choose an image that was nearly full length to show off the pop star. Out of all the full length ones I had produced, this was favourite one, and I think it will work well when placed on the front. The first step of editing I have done on this image is that I’ve changed the brightness of it, and you can clearly see the change, and how much more fresh and bright it looks.

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After changing the brightness of this image, I wanted to make the colours look a bit softer. I chose to use the Hue/Saturation option on the image>Adjustments tab. I had to play around with them first to see the effects they made but decided on what I’d done on the right image. The colours have been toned down a lot using the ’lightness’ option , I think it looks ok. For this to stand out more on the front cover of my magazine I'm going to further edit it and see what final image I create.

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The last bit of editing I did on this image was change the colour balance. I did this twice to see what changes it would make, and I liked it so I’ve kept it that way. I did sample using the magenta and yellow sliders, but it changed the colours completely and it didn’t look right. Overall I preferred the cyan slider. It added pink tones to her face and really flushed some colour into it. To bring the image together, I cropped it to a size that would work with the front cover. The image on the left is the finished image and I’m really happy with it.

The second image I’ve chosen to edit is this one, and this is the original image with no editing, The thing I love about this picture is that it’s looks as if it has been edited, you can see the lights at the side shining and focusing on her face, and it make her look really glowing. Because of this particular lighting as you can see on the right image, the colours in her face now need toning down to make her look a bit more flawless. This image is going to appear on the double page spread article, along with another image. I like how happy and content she looks, and this relates strongly to the article because she has achieved so much.

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So on this image, the first thing I did was adjust the brightness and contrast of the image. I didn’t want to make any major changes at this point, so I did it just enough that it was only a noticeable change. I then adjusted the colour balance of this image, but this time I didn’t use the cyan slider at all, I used the magenta and yellow. I tried the cyan option, but it was adding more pink tones in to the image and the face and that’s what I was trying to avoid. So I tried the other two and both of them together gave me this effect. It has taken the pinkish tones away from the face and they look like they are moving out of the centre. What I need to focus on now is toning down the colours around the face.

To take away the harshness from the face and its surroundings, I used the exposure adjustment. Like I was saying at the beginning, the light that was shining on her face caused the image to be over exposed, I took the exposure down only a little bit, and I did this in conjunction with the gamma correction slider. I like the way it looks now and I don’t think I want to add any more editing to it. This placed on the double page spread article will look really good, and blend in with the magazine. I cropped it to the size I wanted and I really love the way it has turned out.

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Looking at the original image on the left, its clear to see that it looks really dull, and you cant see the colours to their full potential. I tried adjusting the colour balance, and brightness like I have on the others and it just didn’t work. The colours went completely the wrong way I wanted them to so I couldn’t use them options. I decided I would use the Auto colour adjustment, and as I’d never used it before I didn’t know what to expect, apart from that it will automatically adjust the colours for me. When I clicked it, it instantly brightened up the whole image, for example, the leather jacket on the left image looks dull and faded. Then look at the image on the right and the leather jacket is now brightened up and you can tell it’s more black than faded. I really like the way it stands out, and looks like a dull film has been lifted off of it.

In the next steps I have used 2 more editing adjustments, curves and match colour. The curves adjustment is basically a graph with a line going diagonal upwards, and within that square in the box, every part of it has a different effect. I moved it around a bit and some of it was extreme editing, so I only moved it up slightly in the middle. If you look on the image you can see where the line originally was. It’s brightened up the image slightly and this is what I was aiming for. The last bit of editing I want to apply to the image is the match colour, and I have done this to the image on the right. Match colour has three option of editing which are luminance, colour intensity and fade. On the image I have used luminance only. It also brightened it u[p, and you can go as bright as you want it, but for my magazine purposed I wanted to keep it suttle.

This is the final cropped image to go on the article page along with the other one. I’m really happy with how I managed to brighten it up so much without distorting the image. I like how it had ended up and really happy with how it will look great with the second final image on the article page. I chose to use this image because she is posing with a mannequin, with one of her designs, so it has strong relations to what is being written in the article.

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The final fourth image I have chosen for editing is one of my model holding up one of her design dresses. I like this one because she is so enthusiastic about her own work and this makes it more exciting. The editing for this is going to be very suttle because the only main edit I want t do it change the brightness. It’s quite a dull picture so it needs some life throwing in to it. Another thing I have just noticed that needs editing out is the reflection on her glasses. You can see on her right lense that there is white square , so what I’ve done is used the cloning stamp tool. It turned out better than I expected actually I didn’t think I could do it with it being an eyeball, but I’m happy with that.

After cloning the eyeball on her face, I adjusted the brightness to bring the picture to life. Looking at it now it looks so much better than what it did. And the bonus is you can hardly even tell I’ve had to do any editing to the eyeball. I’d like to keep the image this way because I think it would work well on the contents page as it. The back drop in the background would act as a base, and then the contents of the magazine at the side of the image, but over the backdrop. I think it will add a rally good effect rather than just having the picture cropped, then the writing on white background.

The final adjustment I have made to the image is the editing of the colour balance. I used the cyan slider again, just to put some colour back in to the image after brightening it. I’m extremely happy with the way it’s turned out, and because I know where it’s going to be positioned on the page makes it even better. The way I’ve cropped it is I’ve left the left hand side background in with the picture, and cropped out the right. This is so the list of contents can be listed there.