Image Manipulation

Freddy Krueger

(Robert Englund)

Circa. 1980’s.

Firstly, I changed the brightness and contrast for this image. I accessed this by clicking Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast. I wanted a darker image to fit in with the black double page spread. I decreased the brightness by 115 and increased the contrast by 41. This feature allows me to tailor the colour of a photograph to my content.

Next, I used the crop tool which can be located on the tools bar on the left hand side. I cropped out the plain white sides on either side of the original image. Finally I used the sharpen tool, on the claw to make it stand out more. I wanted to do this as it is the more iconic part of the character.

Crop Tool

Sharpen Tool

The Final Image

For this image, I applied the same processes I used for the previous one of Freddy Krueger. Firstly, I decreased the brightness and increased the contrast. Secondly, I cropped out blank areas surrounding the subject and use the image as that.

Before After

For my own image, which was also the one I used for my front cover, I made some slight changes to it as I felt that any more would be unnecessary. Firstly, I cropped a part of the left side of the photograph out, as it too blank and made the image seem slightly uneven. After cropping this out, I stretched the image out slightly to make the masked, knife wielding figure slightly more prominent and threatening. I then went to Image>Adjustments>Shadows/Highlights. I increased the highlights amount to a high capacity and the shadows amount to a slight percentage. This helped bring out the brick wall in the background, which I think adds a murky, grimy dark element to the image and helps add to the horror theme. The highlight tool also put more emphasis on the gloves the model is wearing, which I think is a good effect.