In
the first part, I showed how pieces were corrected, by painting
in missing parts, and extracted from their original backgrounds.
In this part, you will see how they are combined and further
corrected, to arrive at the final image.
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Here
are four composites. Each element is in its own layer. In
the first example, the apple is upper most layer and the grapes
are the bottom layer. In the second, the apple has been moved
behind the second layer, the sapodilla. Next, the apple is
moved down. Finally the grapes are moved both to the left
and to the upper most layer.
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This
is the final compostion from above, but placed over a black
background. This represents, certainly not the only arrangement,
but it is the one that was the most satisfying for me at
the time. And the black seems to make the colors a little
richer.
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The
next step is to enlarge the image and examine all the edges.
A small rectangle on marked by two pairs of blue lines, is
enlarged. In the middle example, you can see that there is
a line of white pixels around the grapes. In the example on
the far right, the white pixels have been either painted out
or darkened. These white pixels are an articfact of the extraction
process. Even though most of them are only a single pixel
wide, they do show up when printed. There is a process in
Photoshop that automates the removal of these white pixels,
called defringing. But, it would actually remove not only
the white pixel fringe, but also a single line of pixels around
all portions of the image, regardless of color. While tedious,
the process of removing these offending pixels by hand is
much more accurate and effective than were it automated. |
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As
this project developed, this composition on black is very
satisfying. The artifacts from extracting the pieces have
been removed, but the apple half is distractinly bright.
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A
mask was drawn around the apple half, just as one
my cut out a stencile, and the color curves were adjusted,
effecting only the apple half. This is one of the
most powerful controls in Photoshop. Any part of an
image can be adjusted: contrast, brightness, hue,
saturation, etc.
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Here
is a finished version of the image. It has been filtered to
make the colors a little more painterly, and the leaves and
grapes blend into the background a little. It is primarily
in this last stage that images will vary when printed. Should
it be as muted and dark here, or not? This allows the image
and its interpretation to vary, as might occur with gelatin
silver printing. |
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