Editing Publicity Shots

Matt and Yssy were predominantly the main editors for the promotional shots, with Harry and I chipping in every now and again when there were specific shots that we needed, that hadn't yet been edited. Adobe Photoshop ended out being a god send for our group, because some of us aren't the most confident in using the software; but everyone was given a chance to get to grips with editing images on its simple and easy to use interface.

One of the re-occurring issues we encountered when editing the shots, was Yssy's curly hair. Since the background for many of the original shots wasn't pure white, we needed to crop Yssy out of the shot and place her image onto a plain white background. However, because her hair is so curly and naturally spreads itself out and the very light colours in the tips of her hair, it was difficult to do so.

Quick selection tool

Our first step was to use the "quick selection" tool to highlight all of Yssy and separate her from the off-white background. This wasn't easy because of her hair, as Photoshop continually missed out the lighter parts of her hair, because it couldn't separate the colour of them and the background. 

Refine edge

To make sure that Yssy didn't look like we cut off a chunk of her hair with scissors when we place her onto a white background, we used the "refine edge" tool. This allowed us to increase the contrast in tones in the end of her hair and differentiate her hair from the background and fade out where the image crops the hair, to give it a natural point where it ends.

Before (Left), After(Right)

Once we had managed to give the crop of the image a neat finish, we placed her in front of a plain white background. This then gave us a blank template which we were then able to make adjustments to various elements of the images, such as colour, brightness and contrast.

Brightness and Contrast

In a lot of our original promo shots Yssy blends into the background way too much for our liking, because of our lighting on the day of the shoot. To bring her into the forefront, we adjusted the contrast and lighting to levels we were happy with.

Colouring

The next step for us was to address the unnatural skin tone this gave Yssy, which was very simple to rectify. Adjusting the colouring of the shot to give Yssy a warmer complexion rather than the grey tones wasn't a challenge.

 

Spot heal tool

In some of the tighter shots where Yssy's face is much more visible, we used the "spot heal" tool to blend any blemishes present into the face and make them less visible. We also used a preset known as "skin smoother" to iron out any discolouration to the skin and give it a much smoother look.

Adjusting rose

With some of our shots, there were specific elements which we weren't happy with. In this image for example, we wanted the rose to stand out more in the shot and have a much more intense colour. This was easily done, using the "quick selection" tool to highlight the rose and the adjusting the colouring of
the selected rose.