Digital Photography & Imaging - Week 4

15/10/2025 (Week 4)

LEXANDRA FEODORA STEFANO/0384629

Digital Photography & Imaging / Bachelors of Design (Honours) in Creative Media

Task 4

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JUMPLINKS

1. LECTURE

2. INSTRUCTIONS

3. TASK

4. REFLECTION

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LECTURE

Adjustment Layer

Are a group of super useful, non-destructive image editing tools that add colour and tonal adjustments to the image without permanently changing its pixels. It can edit and discard adjustments or restore the original image at any time and makes the workflow in Photoshop more flexible and efficient. When adding the adjustment layer to an image, a new layer will appear over the image and a property panel specific to the type of adjustment selected will pop up. The properties panel will allow us to modify the adjustment layer. 

• Brightness/Contrast : makes adjustments to the tonal range of the image. Brightness slider is for adjusting the highlights. Contrast slider is for adjusting the shadows.
• Level : modifies the tonal value in an image by adjusting the levels of the shadow, mid tones, and highlights.
• Curves : adjust as many points as we want throughout the entire tonal range of the image and is the most powerful and precise tool for editing the tones in an image
• Exposure : exposure will adjust only the highlights, offset adjusts the mid tones, gamma will adjust the dark tones only
• Selective colour : selectively modifies the amount of primary colour without modifying the other colours in the image

Filter

Using filters to edit photos to change colour, add blur, or create a completely new image effect. 

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INSTRUCTIONS

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I9YGvnUDZ6O57Ng5oNR1gAx1N6NPK6W6/view?usp=drive_link 

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TASK

This task is an exercise on how to use the adjustment layers and filters on photoshop. There are 4 parts from this task, Hearst mansion (Shazam), Hearst mansion (my photo), and colouring 3 black and white photos. 

First Task (Hearst Mansion - Shazam)

I followed the instructions given in the slides, in total it should be 4 layers in total (background, shazam, shadow, and reflection)

Fig 1.1.1 Layers (15/10/2025)

Here is the final image

Fig 1.1.2 Shazam (15/10/2025)

Second Task (Hearst Mansion - My Photo)

I did the same thing with the second task, but instead of using Shazam, I used my own photo. Here is the photo that I used and the result. 

Fig 1.1.3 My Photo (15/10/2025)

Fig 1.1.4 Hearst Mansion - Me (15/10/2025)

Third Task (Colouring Black & White Picture)

For this task, we were asked to colour a black and white picture given in the google drive. Here is the original picture that I will be using.

Fig 1.2.1 Original Picture (15/10/2025)

Then, with the tutorial video given, I started separating the sections into different layers so I can colour it easier. After separating the colouring layers, I started colouring each part with different colours. Then, I blended the colours using overlay, colour, and soft light. Some of the colours looked off, so I adjusted it using Hue/Saturation and played with the opacity. Here is the result. 

Fig 1.2.2 Task 3 (15/10/2025)

Fourth Task (Colouring Black & White Picture from the Google Drive)

The fourth task is the same as the 3rd one, but we were given a separate google drive consisting of many black and white portraits. We were told to choose 1 or 2 images to colour in. I chose these two pictures to colour. 

Fig 1.2.3 Base (15/10/2025)

First, I started looking up reference photos to help me choose the colours for the 2 pictures. For the girl, I used Manon from Katseye as a reference. For Cameron Boyce, I used his own pictures as a reference. Here are the references. 

Fig 1.2.4 Reference (19/10/2025)

Then I used the same steps like the last task to colour in the base photos in Photoshop. I separated the layers then started colouring each part one by one. Then I blended the colours using overlay and soft light, also played with the opacity on certain layers. 

Fig 1.2.5 Layers (19/10/2025)

Here are the results after colouring the black and white pictures. 

Fig 1.2.6 Cameron Boyce (19/10/2025)

Fig 1.2.7 Girl 1 (19/10/2025)

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REFLECTION

This task was really fun. I got to explore so many new tools in Photoshop and learned how to edit different ways in this app. I learned how to add images to certain background, adjust the images, adding filters, recolouring images, and many more. The Hearst Mansion task was easier compared to the recolouring task because the tools were not as complicated and it was easier to select the objects that I want to remove. But the recolouring task was also very fun because I got to customize the colours from the images chosen. It was pretty difficult at first, but I got used to it pretty quickly.